Some anonymous benefactor had paid his bail, but for now Ransom’s concern rested on an enormous egg protruding from the back of his head where that damn fool Muldoon had struck him, sending him into a blinding black light. He gave a fleeting thought to having to face Judge Grimes for misbehaving on a Sunday. Jacob Grimes brooked no chicanery but his own.
As for now, Ransom made a beeline for Cook County morgue and Dr. Christian Fenger. When Fenger heard he was outside his autopsy room, he sent assistants to keep him out.
They did so and forcefully, but Ransom hadn’t the heart to put up much of a fight. Aside from his head killing him, and the back pain from lying so long on a stone cell floor, he felt like one of those bulls in the arena, stabbed full with swords, knives, and lances, bleeding from multiple wounds. Whoever this madman running about the city was, he’d brought police to a standstill, and Alastair Ransom to his knees.
When Fenger came out, his lab coat discolored not with the hues of a blood rainbow but rather soot of Polly’s remains, he asked, “What can I do for you, Alastair? Why’re you here?”
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“Her ring.”
“What ring?”
“One I gave her. I want it.”
“Ring? There was no ring . . . no jewelry whatsoever.”
“Thanks to your men, no doubt.”
“I hate to think—”
“Give those ghouls a clear message: If I don’t have her ring, they’re going to lose something of far more —”
“Look here, Alastair, this is not the wild prairie town of your youth! And you’re not a law unto yourself. If I find Shanks or Gwinn’ve engaged in theft of a body then, by God, they’ll be arrested!”
“I want to hear
“Any inquiry will follow a civilized course.”
“Civilized course?” Ransom laughed.
“You don’t know that they did this. The killer may’ve taken the ring. Canvass the pawn shops.”
“Why . . . why her, Christian? Just a sweet kid beneath it all . . . for what purpose?”
“Perhaps Tewes can profess to understand the mind of a killer,” said Christian, “but I’ll not attempt it.”
“You talk to Shanks and Gwinn.”
“I personally trained those two, and they know better, Ransom.”
“Human nature being what it is . . . sometimes no amount of training’s going to overcome a theft of opportunity.”
“You’re upset, favoring your head. Let’s have a look.”
Ransom submitted to his impromptu examination.
“You’ve a considerable lump back here.”
“Astute of you, Doctor.”
“God, you can be a surly bastard.”
“I’ve gotta run. Give you the day to locate that ring. I know your men have it.”
“Go home. Rest, and Alastair, I’m truly sorry about your Merielle, and given the circumstances, I’m going to overlook it today, but don’t ever come back to my hospital making threats, or again stretch our friendship to its bounds.”
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“What, no balm for my head?”
“Ground aspirin in water three times a day for the pain.
Nothing else I can do. If you want any further help with it, go to Tewes.”
“Tewes really?”
“Submit to Tewes.”
“Submit?”
“Under his hands, you just might get some relief for that lump, and more importantly, you may get some long-term help with your temper and your suspicious nature and those recurrent headaches.”
“I am gone. Goodbye.”
Fenger called after his retreating figure, “Home, rest, Alastair!” Under his breath, he cursed Shanks and Gwinn, the two who’d transported Merielle’s remains. “Wouldn’t put it past the two of ’em to pawn items from a cadaver.
Scavengers . . . first come, first served.” Fenger went in search of Shanks and Gwinn.
Ransom had no intention of going home, despite the pain in his head, shoulders, and back. He’d caught a cab for the scene of the crime. The ride across the city on a crisp, clear morning, a hint of promise in the air, a hint of the goodness of life just out of reach, and Alastair cursed the illusion—this intangible called happiness. How many years now had he cajoled himself with jokes about it, comforted himself with rationalizations about it. Happiness for him remained a kind of cloud toward which he aspired, but once inside, the thing dissipated. Some old Gypsy woman at the fair would likely tell him he caused his own bad luck, his own suffering, and maybe she’d be right.
Ransom now paid the driver through the slot and painfully climbed from the carriage. He stood before the stark remains of the old tavern and apartment house, made starker by the sunlight beating down on smoldering blackened beams still crackling with heat.
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He went into it, like walking into a grim Rembrandt, filled with odd light and an enormous sadness. Wandering about the ashes, kicking about the debris field for the ring that Fenger said wasn’t on the body, he lamented the loss. It’d been a special gift, an heirloom, once his mother’s. He knew Shanks and Gwinn’s police records. A couple in more ways than he cared to give thought to; their in-tandem, small-time larceny had landed them in jail on frequent occasions. Dr.
Fenger had come to the jail, bailed them out, insisted on their good behavior, and gave the miscreants employment.
They took to the work of coroner’s men like rats to cheese, and on the side, they remained larcenous. Only now, their victims couldn’t report them. And the two deemed
His relationship to the killer had also become personal in the deepest way—hunter and hunted now joined by victim on an entirely new level.
From a distance, on the street corner, Jane watched Ransom, looking a ghost of himself, going amid the rubble. She’d guessed that he’d return to where Polly’d died once Dr.
Tewes bailed him out. He hadn’t disappointed her.
She sensed the truth of one conviction: the murders had come home to Ransom. It’d suddenly, dramatically become personal for Alastair, having seen Polly’s blackened, headless torso . . . having seen her hideous death. Torn from his life. She wondered if in some strange, twisted way if he’d somehow brought it on himself.
Body and head—according to Stratemeyer and con-firmed by Dr. Fenger—had come apart in the fall due to the severity of a wound sustained to the neck—by a garroting device.
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