“What is it?”
“Found in the rubble.”
“But what does it mean?”
“It may mean our killer shops at Carson, Pirie, Scott, the department store.”
“He shops at Carson’s?” She sounded incredulous.
“Speak of State Street windows. He may perhaps work there.”
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“What’s next? How do you proceed to interrogate everyone who walks in and out of a department store on the busiest street in the city?”
“Maybe . . . just maybe she ripped this from his coat in the hope I’d find it.”
Jane gave him this fantasy. “Yes . . . most likely.”
“You think so?”
“In one fashion or another we’re all interconnected. Her last thoughts were likely of you crashing the door down, saving her.”
“Connected. Sounds right.”
Tewes leaned in toward Ransom, sensing he needed to hear more. “Call me a fraud if you like, a spiritualist, a necromancer, but I believe images we retain in our minds that become our personal ghosts are electromagnetic in nature. And I believe that we’re all intertwined with magnetic rays that live in and around us.” “Magnetic rays that live inside us?” He sounded both skeptical and curious.
“In our minds, yes, and our bodies. We’re made up of millions of atoms. This much science tells us, and how are these atoms held together but by a magical magnetism of soul and miniature telepathy between these atoms? They hold our very cells in harmonious bondage.” “I suppose you’re writing a book on all this”—he stopped short of calling it nonsense—“I mean how it all relates to your phrenology, your visions.”
“Do not tempt me. In this magnetic field I refer to, we all touch upon one another’s thoughts, feelings, aspirations in an empathic field that God wants us one and all to acknowledge but most . . . well most of us are blind to it, blind in sight and touch.” “And I suppose you’re more attuned and open to this field than anyone else?”
“Than the average, yes. It’s a biochemical connection that holds our thoughts in place and creates the miracle of 186
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thought leaping across time and space just as there are necessary
“
“Damn it, Detective, have you never seen living human tissue below the microscope?”
“I have . . . at the morgue . . . on occasion, yes.”
“Tissue in a dead man living on, yes.”
“I never thought of it quite like that.”
“And that life can be sustained in a Petri dish indefinitely.”
“It can? I had no idea.”
“The magnetism inherent in all life, sir. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. And the human brain, that marvel of nature . . . it’s the single most complex organism in the universe. An electrochemical device not unlike Philo Keane’s camera in that regard, powered by electrochemical energy.” “You’re losing me, Doctor.”
“I believe the brain somehow stores messages, even after death, in some strange way only the future or God might reveal.”
“Stores images like a camera, as in memories—even
“Memory lives on . . . at least at the cellular level, the level too miniature for the human eye. Cells living on, functioning for a time even after all activity ceases in the body.”
“Cells living on after . . . continuing to store messages?
Do you know what this sounds like, Dr. Tewes?”
“I know what it sounds like, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, the fantastic ravings of some lunatic storyteller, but science has always lagged behind the prophets. Look, if you pluck a leaf from a tree and place it below the microscope, the cells are still alive and active.” “And you think the same is true of the brain?”
“Yes, on a cellular level, absolutely. Look, I know you could have me committed, but I’m trusting you with my innermost beliefs here. Do you see this table before you, Alastair?”
“Of course, I do. Why?”
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“At the microscopic level, the atoms in this tabletop’re spinning about, bombarding one another, electrically charged both positively and negatively, in a constant state of flux—movement, but not to the naked eye! We only see—” “A solid, a cold dead block of wood.”
“Cut from a long dead tree.”
“So in a sense . . . it remains alive although in appearance dead.”
“Take comfort that your Merielle’s soul is at least as active now as this tabletop.”
He’d meant to entrap this phrenological medium by encouraging him to “read” his sore head, but he hadn’t counted on such talk.
“Your killer is a man no one suspects; like the table, superficially apparent yet not so apparent.”
“Taken for granted, you mean. . . . I could go to Carson, Pirie, Scott, stake out the store all day, see him more than once come and go and still not see him?”
“Precisely. Dead perhaps on the surface, comes alive only when he kills. A man with well-polished boots and his clothing tailored, a cloak, a cane, a top hat.”
“A description fitting thousands going about our streets.
It’s not a great help, Doctor.”
“But it tells you
“Agreed, it’d only be a waste of time.”
“Comparatively speaking, the Tugs of Chicago’re mere muggers to this monster deviant.”
“This creep is no known entity.”
“No anarchist, second-story man, or habitual wife beater, no. This madman is unique, clever, educated, possibly upper crust.”
“Or plays it well?”
“He’s interested in shocking us all, Inspector, from the police to the citizen at the fair. It’s a bloody game to ’im.”
“A game? Of course it’s a game. But what is the goal?
Why does he kill? Just to shock us? There must be more.”
“As mundane a motive as it may seem, you must accept it.
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There’s a strong possibility he’s only interested in the hide-and-seek, the hunt, his mind in some manner captivated . . .
in rapt awe with the idea of controlling when and where death occurs.”
“A twisted angel of death.”
Dr. Tewes finished another lager.
“Is there any more? Are you withholding anything?”
“If Fenger’s not told you, you should know that Polly passed out after the carotid artery was compromised. The same moment that the garrote sliced a three hundred and sixty-degree cut around the neck, she was gone.
