He struggled to his feet, stumbled, weaved, his dizziness threatening to take him. But he made it to his cane, and he grabbed hold of it. The firmness of it, the solid shaft and silver handle gave him a grounding that filled him with a sense of something in this nightmare to hold on to. Still, his head swirled, his mind gyrated, and his ears rang out with a silent cry from his soul.
Somehow, Ransom fought off the disorientation and the inner turmoil that wanted to bring him down. He slowly gathered up every ounce of remaining strength and charged into the black, inky passageway where he could hear them but not see the remaining three beasts with long knives. The one who’d leapt into the water afire, while badly burned, had joined his siblings, one of whom had the long hair of a girl, Audra, he wondered. Ransom rushed in at the feral children screaming and madly swinging his cane, the deadly silver wolf’s-head hoping to tear into the trio of vultures. At the same time, Ransom blindly fired his gun nonstop, hoping to further even the odds.
He saw winking deadly blades reflected by each gunshot flash, and he felt a glancing blow to the head where another knife struck out at him, then another cut him in the side, and a third jabbed him in the back as the whirlwind of maniacal children dodged his cane and survived his bullets and somehow got past him and were splashing down the tunnel in the water, escaping.
He wheeled and reloaded and fired and fired until his gun clicked empty again. Then he went to his knees again, the cane crumbling under his weight, and Alastair Ransom passed out, his blood running the incline and mingling with the two dead adult cannibals in the sewage.
Ransom’s last thoughts were of Jane and Gabby and how much time and pleasure of their company he will have lost. Dead here…cold and alone and dead, he thought.
“I’m dying in this rat’s nest,” he muttered aloud in a final attempt to call out to Behan or anyone within hearing. Ransom then rolled over onto his back, his watch in his hand, thinking One more thing to do before giving in…passing out…
Alastair was unconscious when they found him, his rescuers locating him by the sound of chimes playing the old English tune “Green Sleeves.” When Jane, Gabby, Behan, and Fenger, and the uniforms got to him, they saw his watch had been opened and thrown toward dry ground.
And in fact the first uniformed police to locate him had followed Logan’s original route because he’d heard the music, unsure what it meant. Jane, who’d heard the chimes before, had shouted, “It’s him! It’s Ransom!”
What they came across after the watch terrified Jane and Gabby, for at first what was left of Jed Logan, everyone took for what was left of Alastair Ransom. All this excitement happened before officers, led by a shaken Ken Behan, pushed ahead, finding Alastair bleeding out. These officers encircled Ransom’s inert body half in, half out of the water, with lanterns, and Behan shouted back to the others, “Down here! It’s Ransom! He’s here!”
Behan had dropped to his knees there in the water, tearful, his nerves shot, seeing the big man bleeding and dying on top of having seen his partner, Logan, butchered like a ham on a spit. “Dr. Fenger! Come quick!”
Everyone getting a first look at Alastair assumed from the blood loss and his position that Ransom was dead, until Ken Behan, soaked and leaning in over Ransom, placed his hands on Alastair and felt life. He erupted with the news: “He’s alive and breathing!”
Behan continued shouting for medical help. Other officers had held the civilians, Dr. Fenger, Jane, and Gabby back, but now they burst down the lantern-lit corridor to where Alastair lay soaked in blood and sewage in the rising water. Someone estimated that if he hadn’t been found, that he’d’ve surely drowned in the next few minutes, proclaiming Behan a hero for having turned him over and having gotten his head out of the water when he did-all exaggerations Behan tried to deny. Others waded in and weighed in, the CPD closing ranks for one of their own, and together they heaved their huge cargo onto the dry floor.
Jane took in the fact that two other bodies floated in the water, both shabbily dressed adults, one woman, one man. She mentally reconstructed what had happened here, seeing that Fenger was doing likewise. She imagined how Alastair had been attacked by the dead couple in the water, and that just before he gave into his blood loss and faintness, Alastair had had presence of mind to open his chiming watch and toss it as far down the corridor as possible as a kind of beacon to others who might come in search of him.
With a great deal of disgust and outrage, Mike O’Malley and other officers worked the other bodies to dry ground, pronouncing both dead, the woman badly burned, gunshot wounds evident in both. The two dead people appeared a wretched pair indeed, from clothing to the lice crawling over them. In a moment, someone produced a huge curved knife with a hilt, the sort of thing one imagined pirates to use. “No telling what else we’ll turn up from these two,” said one officer.
A second held up a cleaver and said, “You think Ransom got the Leather Apron here?”
“Ransom always gets his man,” said a third, and this seemed to settle the question.
“You’re right. He got ’em,” said Behan to the others. “Inspector Alastair Ransom’s killed the Leather Aprons!”
A half-hearted cheer filled the underground passageway, but no one was ready yet to party, not with Ransom lying at their feet so near death.
“It’ll have to be sorted out,” said Dr. Christian Fenger who’d come behind the others, pushing cops out of his way, his medical bag in hand. From it, he snatched out surgical scissors and cut away at Ransom’s clothing, searching for the worst of the wounds. “He’s been stabbed multiple times, but I see no bullet wounds.”
Fenger next ripped away at his pants-legs and found several wounds to the big man’s legs, but none life-threatening in and of itself. He ripped away at his shirt and located a nasty wound to the left kidney area that would require surgery on his back, and another wound to his right side, not quite so deep. Fenger turned all attention to the worst of the knife wounds, the one to his shoulder, just above the heart.
He noted that Alastair’s forehead and cheek had also sustained slashes and abrasions.
Jane had dropped to her knees on the other side of Ransom, while Gabby kneeled alongside Fenger, each wanting to help. They shared items out of Fenger’s bag, tying off tourniquets, wrapping his lesser wounds as Fenger concentrated on the major problem.
“He’s been stabbed at least seven, eight times, and he’s got several cuts to the face,” Jane informed Behan, who, hovering close, whispered that the lads wanted to know the prognosis.
“Will he live?” Behan persisted.
“If we can staunch this wound to the shoulder,” Fenger assured him.
“And if we can keep out infection,” added Jane. “The water’s crawling with infectious disease organisms, no doubt.” She realized she sounded like a doctor.
Behan looked into her eyes, silently pleading.
“I believe he’s going to be all right,” she tried to assure Behan. “None of this is your fault, Inspector.”
“He’s so still,” said a tearful Gabby.
Jane added, “I’ve never seen him so white, not even when he was shot.”
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” said Fenger. “Gone into shock, I’m afraid.”
“Need to get him to a warm place.”
Agitated, Fenger agreed. “A clean, well-lit, warm place, yes-my surgery.”
A flash of light, repeated by another and another announced that Philo Keane had arrived. Philo somehow kept shooting even as he feared for Ransom’s life.
Finished with their mending, Dr. Fenger and Jane began shouting for the men standing about to carry Alastair out.
“There’s a waiting ambulance,” said Fenger.
“No, please, use the police wagon,” countered Philo, raising a few eyebrows, including Christian Fenger’s.