City for Ransom

Like a man shackled, he studied the victim’s features—not so mangled as to be unrecognizable. He called out to the crowd, “Anyone know her?”

“Here sir, a purse,” offered one uniformed officer dripping from the waist down.

Ransom pulled out papers, letters. Love letters addressed to a Chesley Mandor, from a suitor named Joseph Trelaine.

“Chicago address. Where is he now?” Is he our Phantom?

And if not and she got into a boat with a man . . . ” Then it occurred to him. What if Trelaine were still out there in the black lagoon? “You fellows, get a useable boat and some gas lamps and go up in the tunnel there and look for anything . . .

unusual.”

Ransom’s latest homicide became a double-homicide as he watched a second body float just beyond the tunnel entrance, facedown if he had one—for as the weak lamplight played over the corpse, searchers could not tell. Using an oar to bring the body, like a lost vessel, into the gunwale of his boat, Alastair found it difficult to get a fix on the man, his size, weight, cut of his jib; impossible with his body floating half under, waterlogged. Ransom and the uniformed policeman on the oars worked to turn the floater in the water, almost flipping the drift boat in which they knelt. The corpse CITY FOR RANSOM

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rolled like a log, and the soggy three-piece suit and best shoes tugged heavily back, as if some submerged creature held sway. Then the body hit the boat—hard—and both oarsman and inspector gasped to find it a headless torso.

“Did it fall off—the head, I mean—when we turned him?” asked the oarsman.

“I think not. Likely separated sometime earlier.”

“In the depths of the lagoon is it?”

“I suspect so.”

Ransom lashed the body to the side with hemp, not wanting to haul it aboard or scuttle the boat. “Fodder for Shanks and Gwinn he is,” said the cop turned oarsman.

“Not before we bag all personal effects, do you understand? Your name, Officer?”

“Callahan, sir.”

“Callahan, I’m personally holding you responsible for Trelaine’s effects, if this be Trelaine—and Mandor’s. Understood?”

“Ahhh . . . yes, sir. Yes sir.”

After securing Trelaine, they started to shore with the body. Young Callahan, his blond hair lifting with each stroke, perspired until his hair flattened.

“Bastard this one is . . . a true blackhearted monster,”

commented Ransom.

“Aye, sir, indeed.”

Trelaine, like the woman, had tasted of the killer’s favorite weapon, but how, here out on the water? Was the monster telling them no place in the city was safe? Nothing sacred? Ransom must know how. How had the killer gotten so near a courting couple out here on the lagoon? The entire crime must be recreated to make sense of it.

Soon, Griffin had rowed out to join them. Ransom put him in charge of the reenactment, awkward as it was in boats to recreate. He himself played the killer, each of the others playing a part. The one playing Chesley cursed, disgruntled that he’d drawn a woman’s role. By now they began in earnest to get it done. And as they walked—or rather 216

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boated—through it, Ransom looked for opportunity, imagining himself the killer up to mischief here, and he looked to locate clues, when Griff pointed out a strange mark against the tunnel wall. It turned out to be a black- gray smoky bloody handprint.

“The bastard’s teasing us!” said Griff.

“It’s sure his hand again, his mark as it were.”

“But why would he—”

“Wants us to choke on it.”

“Give ’im credit in the papers.”

“Wants us to know it’s his work?” added Alastair. “Like a bloody artist signing a painting.”

“Aye. Still, we must compare it to the one we found at the train station.”

“If we can find a sober Philo Keane, get him and his camera on a boat, and to this point.”

“With daylight . . . he might do best getting this,” replied Griff, sounding optimistic.

“Body set aflame, shoved through the tunnel while the killer grabbed hold of the grating here and climbed the fieldstone overpass. Crowds coming and going, someone had to’ve seen the bastard come o’er the top.” “People’re wrapped up in their own lives, but sure sixty good citizens’ll be lining up with perfect descriptions.”

Ransom frowned at Griff. “Sarcasm in the young, Griff, is not a pretty thing. Look, we’ll get Thom’s help, get the papers to claim we have several eyewitnesses who saw the killer exit the water at this point.” “What good would it do?”

“You tell me.”

Griff pondered a moment. “Sell papers?”

“It’ll serve our purposes. To put him on notice, keep him on guard, make him more cautious! All of that, and it may make him take more risks. And hopefully Thom’s story will draw some real witnesses as well.” “Actual witnesses. Sounds too good to be true.”

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“I’m ’sposed to be the old cynic here, Griff.”

From all they’d pieced together, the killer had somehow enticed the young couple over to his boat, likely with some pretense of his having trouble with a leak or steerage, anything to lure them close. Perhaps one of the victims or both knew the killer, or at least knew him by sight. He must surely look harmless indeed. Invisible . . . blends, Tewes had insisted.

Ransom summed it up for Griff. “As the victim affably attempted to look over the problem, he lost his life, garroted in a matter of seconds, dead and dropped into the water. The killer then leapt into her boat and secured the garrote about her neck. No telling how long he made her suffer. At least this is how I see it unfolding.” Griff swallowed hard. “Then there’s a second boat drifting free out here unless . . .”

“Unless all three had disembarked in the same boat.”

“And the attendant is of no help on that score?”

“None whatever. Look, if there is a second boat floating in the darkness, it may contain clues, gentlemen,” he told the others. “Find that boat and get it to me and touch nothing.

Do you understand?”

The young officers concurred, excited over the prospect of contributing to locating and bringing this madman to justice, and having their names associated with the famous Alastair Ransom.

They fanned out, searching for the missing, phantom boat.

A pair of the fools singing out, “Row-row-row your boat, gently down the stream . . . ”

“Trelaine’s head could well be lying in that boat, so be prepared, lads!” Ransom’s words silenced the chorus of

“Merrily, merrily, merrily.”

Again it was Griffin who’d made the gruesome discovery, alerting the others to the empty boat. When Ransom’s boat came alongside, he stared into Griffin’s eyes, and he said,

“Quite the bloodhound you’ve become.”

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