He opened the small cedar chest and peered inside, others over his shoulder doing likewise. Doilies, knitted items, caps, mostly small, mostly children’s items. As Alastair picked through the chest, Kohler said, “My God, the cretin has kept items from his victims, kept them as…as souvenirs of the murders.”
The others gasped at this conclusion.
“It’s worse than that, I fear,” said Alastair, now lifting out baby booties, infant hats, and infant clothing. A set of old tintypes, old tins-pictures created from a process predating photography.
Philo, always the interested artist and historian of photography, automatically grabbed for the tins, as he wanted simply to handle the old metal depictions and to closely examine the features as well as the quality of the work. As an artist, he found the tintypes of boundless interest. But Ransom withheld one of the tins and held it up to the weak light, a depiction of a comely if hefty young woman with features burned into Alastair’s brain. “It’s her…it’s her when she was Grace.”
“What?” asked Philo.
Logan inched closer.
Behan swallowed hard.
Philo Keane stepped back and snapped a photo of what Ransom held in his hands.
Kohler erupted. “What in God’s name does this mean, Ransom? Who the hell is Grace?”
Alastair dropped everything back into the cedar box and painfully got back to his feet, using his cane to steady himself. How long since I’ve had sleep? How much of an attack on my sensibilities can I absorb?
“Well, man! Spit it out!” ordered Kohler.
Ransom casually went toward a window and opened it, allowing in more air, and in the light, he produced the photo that Philo Keane had given him, the photo of an entire homeless family of five-mother, father, and three children. He held it up to the waiting, anxious group of detectives, cops, newsmen, and Philo.
“What’re you saying, Ransom?” demanded Kohler.
“This is what Leather Apron looks like. Take a good look.”
Every eye was focused on the desperate faces of the homeless family.
“Are you saying…” began Logan.
“…that Leather Apron?” continued Behan.
“…is not just two killers but a mother and a father?” asked Thom Carmichael.
“The knives…the many cuts that Dr. Fenger speaks of,” said Philo, a realization coming over him. “There could be as many as five separate attackers?”
“It’s a family affair, yes. And this is no chest of souvenirs of their victims, but souvenirs from the killer’s childhood, maybe the old homestead.”
“Family heirlooms,” croaked Philo.
“Father, mother, and children?” asked Logan, eyes wide.
“All murderous, all cannibals?”
“This is a helluva story,” muttered Carmichael.
“Some story, and one of our own making.” Ransom turned to the window and breathed in fresh air off the river. Morning sun had burned off all fog but a dampness remained in the air.
“Whataya mean one of our own making?” asked Kohler, pursuing him.
“Same as Stead means in his book?” asked Carmichael.
This alerted Ransom, and he faced Thom. “You’ve read William Stead’s book?”
“I am perhaps the first to do so.”
“Has it found a publisher?”
“It has.”
“Good…good.”
“What in blazes does a book have to do with all this?” shouted Kohler. “And who the devil is this woman in the tintype?”
The irony was lost on Kohler, that they stood in a graveyard of dead books amid a city full of illiterates, amid the remains of this horror, only now learning that William Stead’s exhaustive exposé of the treatment of indigent and homeless in Chicago, entitled If Christ Came to Chicago, had been published. The question remained who would read it, and who might care? Further irony lost on Nathan was the subject of the ancient picture.
“I don’t see that a book has anything to do with any of this butchery,” added Kohler in his ear. “And who the bloody hell is this?” he demanded, pushing the old picture into Ransom’s face.
Ransom glared at Nathan. “We oft create our own monsters, Nathan-you among them!” He grabbed the tintype and held it overhead, shouting, “It’s Bloody Mary when she was young! Now step off.”
Nathan smiled. “Then that old witch indeed had something to do with the Vanishings after all.”
Philo weighed in, asking, “Do you think this cannibalistic family was pushed to it by our ignoring them, Alastair, until desperation and hunger drove them to…to cannibalizing children?”
“Throwaway children, yes. Nameless, faceless ones even in death. Then came Anne Chapman and Alice Cadin, two not homeless, two with names and faces.”
“No one asked for this,” countered Behan.
“Disposable children,” added Ransom. “Until Chapman.”
Philo snapped a photo of Ransom. He’d secretly begun to compile a kind of photographic history of Alastair Ransom. Some were photos of Alastair in various undercover disguises, but this time Philo had caught in a moment of time the rage on Ransom’s face as he muttered through clenched teeth, “Now we’ve got to hunt down and kill the monsters we’ve spawned.”
CHAPTER 18
Philo Keane did exactly as his good friend and police detective boss told him to do, and so he now stood over the remains of the unknown child being autopsied by Dr. Christian Fenger. Philo took pictures of the carved up body as Fenger and his most senior assistants worked to create an autopsy report. The coroner for the City of Chicago worked in what appeared weary fatigue, his findings corroborating all that Alastair had concluded regarding the number of suspects being perhaps as many as five, all with separate knives, a view that Fenger had early on suspected from the few clues left them. Once again, Christian proved a remarkable medical genius.
Philo also informed his good friend Dr. Fenger of the box of heirlooms discovered at the warehouse. He also explained the significance of Ransom’s having seen Philo’s photo of the homeless family-“A representation of desperation,” Philo finished.
“What about Alastair?” asked the doctor, not looking up from his work.
“What about Alastair?” asked Philo.
“How is he holding up?”
“Ahhh…yes, well, he is the strongest man I know in all regards but this…well this had him reeling, I can tell you.”
“I must see him and soon.”
“To medicate him?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“I suspect he is home by now, but most certainly unconscious.”
“Thanks, Philo. I’ll catch up with him.”
“So what do you make of the latest victim?”
“Sixteen, maybe fifteen. Bit older than the others. Male…weight about-”
“Hold on! Male? Ransom believes her…ahhh, him…ahhh, it a female.”
“It’s rather impossible to tell when the chest and private parts are removed, now isn’t it?” asked Fenger.
One of his assistants quietly said, “Trust us, Mr. Keane, we would know.”
Fenger continued aloud dictating as another assistant took down his every word. “Ninety pounds, long blond hair-seemingly that of a girl’s.” He stopped to give Philo a nod. “Missing every appendage and major organ, excluding the brain. Bones show normal growth, no obvious disorders, multiple stab wounds and multiple carvings after death.”
Alastair had indeed found his home and his bed; he calculated he had not had any sleep for thirty-six hours, and his last sleep had been disturbed at best. He showered, shaved, and went to bed, drawing the heavy burgundy curtains around his bedroom like a cloak. In the semi-dark, he struggled to find sleep, fitful of mind, feeling guilty at his humble comforts, knowing that a killing family in the manner of a coven of wolves continued to hunt its prey in Ransom’s city.