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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—”
    â€œBut the heads in either case…they were nearly severed.”
    â€œLook, both were women…both women sustained multiple stab wounds to upper chest and abdomen. There are none on the boy.”
    â€œSo? 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.”
    â€œI see that Kohler has filled you in, but the two women had nothing whatsoever in common.”
    â€œPerhaps they do have commonalities to the killer. Perhaps 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 meticulous 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 Suréte, the oldest criminal investigation agency in Europe, and Tewes smelled like an alias even to them—as a Dr. François Tewes was reported as having died while imprisoned on charges of having killed a man in a brawl.
    Likely enough, Chicago’s Dr. Tewes was in his late twenties or early thirties; he with his full head of hair below the bowler, his small ears, dimpled chin, thin nose. This man was ambitiously working to build a reputation. What would solving a mystery do for his dubious practice?
    â€œA garrote killer in New York left six victims in water—dumping their bodies in rivers, lakes,” Tewes calmly maintained.
    â€œOur Chicago fellow seems more interested in fire than in water,” Ransom replied.
    â€œHe used a garrote?” asked Griffin, who’d rejoined them. “Like our madman here? Double-tiered?”
    Ransom shot a wilting look at Griffin that telegraphed his disappointment in Drimmer’s gullibility. “The good doctor here has something on Kohler, Griffin. That’s obvious with his letter of recommendation. Kohler informed him. That’s all there is to it.”
    â€œIt’s no letter of recommendation, Inspector,” countered Tewes. “Read it. It’s a direct order made to you.”
    Griffin tugged at Ransom’s sleeve. “You can’t afford any more trouble.”
    â€œDouble wires,” said Tewes mysteriously, “that crisscrossed in front to create a small diamond incision at or near the voice box in the females, and now the boy’s Adam’s apple. The deadly thing is likely a piano wire connected to two sturdy sticks, which he twists round the neck, making an immediate incision at once three hundred and sixty degrees. The tighter he winds it,