City for Ransom Page 11

  For most of Fenger’s professional life, he was called a “curator of the deadhouse” but this medical genius was far more. He’d come on at Cook County in 1873 when the famous pioneer bacteriologists Drs. Isaac Danforth and Robert Koch paved the way for Christian Fenger’s inspiring and educational medical demonstrations—demonstrations that Jane’s father had insisted she see at age fourteen and fifteen. Fenger’s fascination in the evolving neurological sciences and neuropsychiatry, an infant science only hinted at in individual case reports, came out of an interest in neurosurgery. It was this area that a young Jane found fascinating—what explained the mind of humankind? To encourage her, Fenger insisted she take home copies of Northwestern Medical and Surgical Journal, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, and the Chicago Medical Journal and Examiner.

  Her father had seen to it that she study German and French so that she could read journals and reports coming out of Europe. But when it came time for her to complete her studies under Dr. Fenger at the Rush Medical College of Chicago, she found all medical reference libraries in the city inadequate to the task. In Chicago, no more than two sets of the great German yearbook, Schmidt’s Jahrbücher or the Virchow-Hirsch Jahresbericht could be found. In fact, these volumes could only be had at the abeyance of the founders of Rush Medical’s chief rival for students and publicity—Northwestern—and only by personal favor of the chiefs of medicine there. A long-standing feud between the leaders of the two institutions kept this from becoming a reality for Jane.

  This and a general lack of concern for developments in Europe, especially with regard to neurosciences, sent her off to Washington, D.C., to complete her dissertation for her Ph.D., but even in Washington, the competition to gain access to such journals proved impossible. This led her abroad to finish her studies toward her medical degree.

  However, she failed to heed her own internal advice against getting emotionally involved with a silver-tongued Frenchman with a probing eye and a soft caress. François Tewes derailed her up-till-now obsessive love affair with medicine. She found herself alone in France and pregnant. Still, determined to finish what little remained to accomplish her medical degree while hiding her pregnancy, she forged on to Germany, where she gained acceptance as a doctor.

  Her having had to leave Chicago due to a lack of books had outraged Dr. Fenger, who had, since her father’s death, become like a father to her, certainly a benefactor. She believed him secretly in love with her, but their age difference prevented him ever to broach the subject, and the sad creases about his eyes had only increased and deepened with each day. Seeing her off for D.C., he looked stricken there at the train station. She could only imagine how he felt when she’d wired him that being unsuccessful in Washington, she’d booked passage for France and eventually Germany. Using his recommendation, which she still cherished, she felt certain that a major medical facility in Paris or Berlin would accept and attach her, a woman, to a medical program in which she could attain her final goal—to practice surgery and eventually neurosurgery. However, such a position never materialized.

  These memories flooded in alongside the moment here in the surgical theater. Jane had learned only recently that after she’d left Dr. Fenger’s care and Chicago, that Christian had spearheaded a campaign to create a ten-thousand-volume surgical-medical library to be housed in the Newberry Library in the heart of the city. Later, in 1890, the John Crerar Library was founded by the wealthy railroad magnate, willing two million dollars to launch his medical library. By this time, when all the medical books at the Newberry had multiplied to well beyond thirty thousand, Dr. Fenger swore that no more promising medical students would have to leave America for Europe.

  Christian had loved her, had taken her under his wing, but he’d lost her to the same intolerance she faced daily as a woman in medicine. She’d stopped corresponding on learning of the pregnancy. And when she saw him nowadays, she saw the depth of his hurt smoldering as coals in a hearth. As much as it pained them both, Jane still could not tell him of her return, or her deception, not now…perhaps never.

  Fenger absolutely hated Dr. J. Phineas Tewes almost as much as he’d loved Jane Francis. And since Gabrielle looked so much like her in her youth, Jane had sent her to the rival school instead, out to Northwestern where Gabrielle had known the murdered boy—Cliffton—only too briefly. It’d been Gabrielle who’d been with Cliffton the night he died, and Gabby had pleaded with her mother that they go to the train station and offer him a place to sleep so that he’d not be in that cold and lonely place by himself without a dime. They’d argued, and then came the middle-of-the-night call from Nathan Kohler saying, “Our opportunity for your experiment has come.”

  She learned that a garroted body had been discovered at the train station. She’d prayed it would not be Purvis—and she feared that if it were and Gabby learned of it, she would never forgive her mother.

  Chief Nathan Kohler was the only one in authority who knew that she and Tewes were one and the same. She’d confessed it to him when he’d detected her utter discomfort in having to follow him into the stationhouse men’s room during their discussion over allowing Tewes access to the crime scene and victim. She’d lost composure as Kohler and others used the wall-length trough urinal.

  Nathan Kohler had read her well and had cruelly turned her scam on herself, threatening exposure if she failed him. At least Dr. Tewes had gotten into the crime scene even if it was as Nathan’s spy. So much drama in the horrid wake of the garroter. She sadly imagined the night of magic the victim and her Gabrielle had had at the world’s fair, and how the boy had depleted his last dime on Gabby to please her with ice cream and carved animals.

  And now the boy was a specimen for a room full of medical students to see what fire did to flesh and how an autopsy around the charred flesh was done.

  Dr. Fenger proved his usual able genius, making the autopsy look easy. He somehow remained above it all while his hands worked busily over the body as an artist’s hands might paint in oils.

  Fenger’s appointment to Cook County had indeed marked the coming of age of pathological specialization in Chicago in 1878, and now it was fifteen years later, and he showed no sign of slowing down, not superficially anyway. But Jane—as Tewes—knew better.

  Christian Fenger had come to Tewes out of a sense of desperation, having tried Spiritualism atop his Catholic upbringing, had even attempted the new fad of graveyard séances in a failing hope of reaching out to his dead parents, and he’d sunk to the level of looking for solace in the bottle, in various drugs such as opium and heroine, and finally searching for that elusive answer to all he sought in the arms of a series of philosophizing prostitutes. Something to do with having struck his father during an argument, and the elder Fenger dying of a heart attack hours later, and Christian, late in life, had become obsessed with making amends. Fenger had seen the guru of phrenology several times before breaking down and detailing the depth and longevity of his search for this personal Holy Grail, and the salvation of a tortured soul he showed to no one.

  As she watched his deft hands now from the gallery, she wondered what kind of surgery he’d seen during the Civil War as a field surgeon. He’d never spoken of it, not to her or her father. He’d come for dinner in those days, the only time she’d ever seen him relaxed, smiling, laughing. Most of the time, he complained of a morgue sorely lacking in rudimentary supplies and elementary equipment—from microscopes and alcohol to specimen jars and burners. He was ever searching for benefactors to improve the circumstances for all medicine in Chicago, and today there was seldom a medical professional who’d not learned from this man who read and spoke some twelve languages so that he could keep abreast of all medical breakthroughs the world over.

  The autopsy and teaching session came to an abrupt end. Fenger, exhausted but daring not show it, looked his age when he turned to find Dr. Tewes watching over his shoulder from the gallery.

  Their eyes met. If silence could kill, she thought. God…ho
w he hates what I’ve done. His initial fear had been that someone might discover he’d come to a phrenologist for help, but he’d left Tewes’s apothecary and consulting room with a great more dread than when he’d entered, having divulged all to Tewes in a flood of confession sorely needed, a confession he could not make to his priest.

  She knew how easily he could strangle her to death, he was that angry and filled with venom for Tewes. At the same time that Tewes had made this proud man a victim, Jane’s heart bled for Christian.

  “Dr. Tewes…” Fenger found his voice. “My office, please.”

  All of their dealings behind closed doors.

  Others no doubt wondered what a man of Fenger’s caliber had to do with the likes of a Dr. Tewes.

  She followed him down an institutional gray corridor to his office.

  Alone with Tewes, fresh from the Purvis autopsy, Dr. Christian Fenger liberally washed his hands even though he’d been wearing rubber gloves during the autopsy. He splashed about at the sink in his office, taking his time, in no hurry to learn what Tewes wanted next. He toweled off and tossed the towel over his left shoulder, went to his desk and yanked a drawer open.

  For a moment, she feared he’d pull out a pistol and shoot her. Instead, Fenger pulled out a large bottle of whiskey and two glasses. She couldn’t blame him, as Tewes held sway over him even here in his own office; a continuing threat, seated vulturelike, wanting more of him. He must think the demands on him would never end.

  “Will you join me in a drink, a toast to a successful difficult autopsy that told us nothing we didn’t already know?”

  She took the drink proffered only because Tewes would. She must constantly do what Tewes would not hesitate doing, such as blackmailing the most respected medical man in Chicago.

  “I am only here to thank you, Dr. Fenger.”

  “Indeed, and why thank me?”

  “As a result of your gaining me entry to the crime scene, I was able to meet my…my objectives.”

  “I am supposed to be comforted that you met your goals then, Dr. Tewes?”

  “If there’d been any other way, I can assure you—”

  “Assure me? Assure me, you? The rest of my life you can say that word, and I would not be assured, sir. You are the worst sort of vermin crawling about this anthill we call a city.”

  “But you love Chicago and always have.”

  “What would you know of love?”

  “Perhaps more than you realize.”

  They stared across at one another. “Did you face someone’s rope once, Tewes, the way you protect that neck of yours? Where was it they wanted to hang you?”

  She reached instinctively to the ascot worn to hide her lack of a protruding Adam’s apple. She played the hand he dealt. “Let’s just say that in Europe, the locals can get nasty.”

  “Trust me, Chicagoans can get nasty, even those in high places.”

  “Shall I take that as a threat, sir?”

  “Take it any way you wish.” He downed a second whiskey.

  “Aside from your womanizing, you’ve taken to drink, yet you continue to practice as a surgeon, Dr. Fenger. If I had any morals, I should report you to the American Medical Association and let the authorities deal with your—”

  “Just what in flaming Gomorrah’d you come here for, Tewes?”

  “Your findings, of course, on the boy from the train station.”

  “You miserable…” he muttered then checked himself. “So, it’s a private report you’re wanting?” His grip on the whiskey glass threatened to shatter it. “You have my early report.”

  “I need to know one way or another all you can tell me about the killing. I’m doing my part in…in creating a kind of explanation as to the killer’s motive and method and…and what this might say about him—for Chief Kohler, to help in apprehending this madman before he should kill again. It’s that simple.”

  Fenger looked stunned at this. “Really…a kind of sizing up of the killer. It hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “I believe if we could understand the makeup…that is the mental makeup of this madman…perhaps through the very clues he’s left us…then perhaps we might know better where to find him or how to lay a kind of pigeon—”

  “—trap for him, indeed. Tewes, have you sufficient knowledge of human nature and the homo sapien’s mind to…to begin to affect such…such magic?”

  “I welcome your help, Dr. Fenger, sir.”

  “And this has been your goal…all along?”

  “It has been, yes, as the boy…sadly…has had some history with my daughter, you see, being in university together—he studying architecture and she, ahhh…” Jane hesitated a moment.

  “And she is studying?”

  “Medicine.”

  “Really? Doing her work at NU…”

  “Same as young Purvis in there,” she eluded to the morgue. “Enrolled at Northwestern.”

  “Ahhh, yes…fine school, but she’ll face harassment at the hands of backward, stupid instructors and ignorant fellow students who’ve difficulty with the notion of women practicing medicine. I…I once thought that way myself until…well, that’s a long story.”

  She swallowed hard. “Then you will consult with me on this matter of creating a kind of mental map of the killer?”

  “If you can do this, and if it proves a useful investigatory tool, Dr. Tewes, you’ll’ve made medical news, a new use for neuropsychiatry—forensic in nature. The idea of it…intriguing.”

  “It is an idea born, sir, of many years of observing human nature…the mind.”

  “Then all of this phrenological business, what you advertise? All for show?”

  “Not entirely, sir. Magnetic healing has its place alongside other methods of relaxing and helping the patient.”

  “The medical community here has you down as a cold and calculating, money-grubbing fraud, Tewes. Nothing I can add to that will condemn you further.”

  “I guess I’ve honed my reputation well.”

  “Part of your cover to get the ailing and sick and malaise ridden into your clinic.”

  “Most of the population are superstitious, and abhor going under the knife, your new anesthetics notwithstanding, sir. They come to me for relief of their mental stresses so often associated with—”

  “—their physical deformities and diseases, yes—like my own. So am I to congratulate you for taking my patients?”

  “I only offer succor and advice. Dispense known medicinals from my private apothecary. And while we are so openly speaking, when I was a mere child, I saw you operate, and I heard what you said about mind and body—”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “—having to be treated as one. I never forgot that.”

  “You were in my lectures?”

  “Years ago…in the company of an adult.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. I’d’ve never guessed it. You are full of surprises, Tewes.”

  Today Christian Fenger had people flocking to see him work; so many in fact, the crowds had to be regulated. He now put bottle and glasses away. “Did I know your father?”

  “No, sir. We were passing through on our way to the Northwest territories.” Damn it, why don’t I end this ruse and tell this dear man the truth, she asked herself, and her hand went to the ascot to pull it away, and she leaned over to reveal her cleavage when a gunshot-pounding knock came at the door.

  Jane straightened and turned away from Fenger, tightening the ascot all in one fluid motion as Fenger cried out, “Enter! Come on in, Inspector.” To Tewes, he added, “I know his signature knock.”

  Ransom stood in the doorway.

  “Well now,” said Fenger, “I see we are all here.”

  “Kohler informs me, Christian, that it was your idea all along to have Tewes here sticking his nose in on my case.”

  “He’s right.”

  “What’re we coming to when a street charlatan can just waltz in o
n an official police investigation?” Alastair’s voice rose with each syllable, “Claiming divining powers by reading bumps on a dead man’s head!”

  “Now, Alastair—”

  “What’s bloody next? Tewes here telling us what steps we need take, and who we interrogate, and who we let slide, and who we shadow? Christ! Tell me that!”

  “Just calm down, Alastair. Don’t get your feathers up.”

  “And a fine hello to you, too, Inspector,” said Tewes.

  “Tewes, if some night I see you coming along a dark alleyway—”

  “Just so politic is this man, such a wit with words.”

  “Calm down! Both of you!” shouted Fenger as Tewes and Ransom glared into one another’s eyes.

  Ransom thought the man’s eyes familiar, and he put them together with the sister. They were damn near identical; definitely related.

  “Alastair, James here is—”

  “James?”

  “Yes, James has a useful plan to help discover who your killer is. Now this fiend has struck three times we know of, and any fresh perspective as unique and as thoughtful as James’s bears a hearing.”

  “I don’t believe you’re buying this nonsense, Christian.”

  “Dr. Tewes has a plan you can only benefit from.”

  “What’s he got on you and the chief, Christian? Is it your lifestyle, your—”

  “He’s got a plan to psychologically examine the killer’s methodology, his steps, his choice of murder weapon, his very thinking, Ransom.”

  “That’s my bloody job!”

  “You need bloody science on this one, Alastair. Get used to the idea.”

  “I don’t take orders from you, Dr. Fenger.”

  “Stubborn, hardheaded Irish Mick-cop!”

  “This is not the way I solve cases, kowtowing to a so-called psychic.”

  “I claim only healing powers,” corrected Tewes.

  “Reading the bumps on a dead man’s head—that is not my idea of solid police work, Dr. Tewes. And as for you, Christian, you ought to know better.”

  “Every new science has its critics so why should phrenology be any—”