Dr. Tewes, we’ve danced long enough here with the devil. Time to salvage what little dignity the boy has left, get him to our morgue, and you can examine him there to your heart’s content. Deal?” “You don’t begin to understand, do you,
“We need to return the train station to normal, fill out the paperwork, try to determine who the victim is, and get on the trail of his killer
20
ROBERT W. WALKER
Ransom turned from Tewes, but this time the smaller man caught his arm and confronted Alastair. “Just hold on there, man!”
“What in bloody hell do you hope to accomplish here, Tewes?”
“I have an order allowing me to examine the cranial structure.” Tewes again held the letter up to Ransom’s eyes, the signature unmistakable. “Look, Inspector, I’m not interested in taking over your case or your territory, or whatever it is you fear losing. Shit, all I want—” “Fear? I don’t fear anything from you, Tewes, believe me.”
“If I can have a moment—just a moment—with the dead before all is lost—”
“Speak to the dead, is it? Through your gifted fingers, Doctor?” Alastair did not take the letter from Tewes but stared into the deep brown eyes of a man he’d been quietly investigating, a man he considered a consummate con artist.
Philo Keane stepped in when he saw Alastair reach both hands to his head, staving off a stabbing pain. “All right . . .
Ransom put up a hand to Philo. “Allow me to introduce you, photographic wizard Mr. Philo Keane, Dr. James Phineas Tewes—”
“Dr. James Phineas Murdoch Tewes to be exact,” corrected Tewes.
“A man who likely needs all his names to cover his tracks,” added Ransom.
“Aliases?” asked Philo, taking Alastair’s lead.
Tewes looked strange, a pale, thin, dismal face, hardly ever given to smile. He made slow movements, and his voice—always deep—somehow never rose above a whispering growl.
Ransom put a hand on Philo’s shoulder, and spoke to him.
“Dr. Tewes is well known in Chicago, mostly from fliers posted on every street lamp and shop window.”
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21
“Posters? Really?” asked Philo, squinting.
“The fliers propose that Tewes here can cure madness and depression. A new form of littering so far as I’m concerned.”
Ransom mentally flashed on the last such advertisement that he’d seen only that morning, tacked to a telegraph pole outside his police district house on Des Plaines.
Tewes gladly unfolded a bill now from his breast pocket and handed it to Mr. Keane. It read:
Phrenological & Magnetic Examiner
at his residence, 2nd house north
of the Episcopal Church.
DR. TEWES
May be consulted in all cases of Nervous or Mental difficulty. Application of the remedies will enable relief or cure any case of Monoma-nia, Insanity or Recent Madness wherein there is no Inflammation or destruction of the Mental Organs. Dr. Tewes’s attention to diseases of the nervous system, such as St. Vitus’s Dance and Spinal Afflictions has resulted in some remarkable cures. Having been engaged for the past ten years in teaching Mental Philosophy, Phrenology, together with numerous Phreno Magnetic Experiments enable Dr. Tewes to give correct and true delineations of Mental Dispositions of different persons. A visit to Dr.
Tewes can be profitable to any and all who wish to better understand their own natures, and how best to apply their talents in the world at large.
Ransom said, “I don’t for a moment believe Dr. Tewes can cure a headache, much less a mental disorder, Mr. Keane, but as you see, he advertises himself a magician, capable of 22
ROBERT W. WALKER
repairing mental disorders!” Ransom then said to Tewes,
“What sort of game are you at here, Tewes? No one here has any need of your questionable services. Certainly, not this dead boy.”
“I am a psychic medium, sir, as well as a phrenologist. I am informed that two similar cases of garroting murders have occurred here. The killer has not been apprehended in either instance, and I fear—” “I fail to see how you can help out here.”
“Kohler informs me this is the third garroted
“My God,” muttered Philo, “Kohler fights against fingerprint identification, but he attaches a medium to the case.”
“I assure you, none of these cases’ve been definitively linked by evidence,” Alastair lied even as he wondered why Nathan would divulge such information to anyone not on the case.
“But there are
Ransom silently agreed that the geography of these murders was correct. “As I said, no official link has been made.”
“How can anyone of sense not see the glaring—”
“The other cases involved a young female—a clerk at Allen & Boynton’s on State Street—and before that a park prostitute. Slash wounds were entirely different, and—”
“But the heads in either case . . . they were nearly severed.”
“Look, both were women . . . both women sustained multiple stab wounds to upper chest and abdomen. There are none on the boy.”
“So? It only means he is getting more adept at the garrote,” countered Tewes. “And I’m given to understand that the store clerk was carrying child, making the death toll four.”
“I see that Kohler has filled you in, but the two women had nothing whatsoever in common.”
“Perhaps they do have commonalities to the killer. Per
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23
haps their commonality is their mutual killer.” Getting no response, Dr. Tewes, chin held high, added, “Yes, well then . . .
Inspector, while you may be correct in your assumption that these murders are unrelated, if you do not mind, I would like to take a closer look at the boy’s body on site. Your meticu-lous care, your photographs, your scientific approach not withstanding, you’ll not have anyone in your Bertillon card files to match this killer.” Ransom lit his pipe and began smoking the Havana blend that he’d been thumbing in his coat pocket the entire time.
Smoking calmed nerves, or so Dr. McKinnette said. He blew smoke into Tewes’s eyes.
Dr. Tewes’s soft features made determining his age difficult, but Ransom thought him born a conniving adult. The slight man proved unremarkable save how expensively he dressed—a broad Sampson Brothers overcoat layering a three-piece suit and a gold watch fob reflecting light off its surface. His title of medical doctor had been earned supposedly in France, but he had no such degree in America. A background check on the man only went back some seven years, and then nothing, as if he’d not existed before then. A similar check with authorities in France, and still nothing of a Dr. or a Mr. Tewes fitting his description could be found before he turned up at France’s Royal Academy of Medicine. Ransom had made numerous police contacts in the Surete, the oldest criminal
