Murdoch in the Jungle

by Romantic Nerd

In 1904 Detective Murdoch and Constable Crabtree investigate a murder involving the the meat-packing industry. Undercover as hobos, they encounter Upton Sinclair who is researching his novel, "The Jungle." Sinclair helps them with their investigation and to learn how to survive in this, dark, depressing and soul-torturing world of the early twentieth century JUNGLE.

12. Chapter 12:Kith & Kin

Murdoch in the Jungle_11_Kith and Kin

Perhaps, the hardest thing he had ever done in his life was to wrap the chain around the second pig's back foot. It was only rivaled in difficulty by his making the decision to set Constance Gardner free instead of stopping Julia's wedding to Darcy, and that decision, upon reflection, would lose to this. For, after that decision, acceptance had come, painful for sure, and yet there was a small sense of sweetness in the rightness of his suffering. He had battled with guilt then too, for his decision had not only cost him his happiness, it had cost the woman he loved in a way that both rocked and soothed his soul, the woman that he knew, from her note, felt the same way about him, and so because of that, he knew he had hurt her terribly with his decision, condemning her to an unsatisfactory life.

The reason the first time he committed the brutal, damning, act of placing the chain around that first pig's foot was not the worst, was simple – it was the last time that he was innocent. For when he did it the first time, he did not know what cruelty it wholly entailed. But after that, after he had heard the most blood-curdling sound of all his life as the pig screamed in terror and agony, being lifted by its foot into the air with a jerk, after he had heard the rattling and the clanking of the machinery, of the overhead assembly strain and fight the buckling with the convulsions and mortal fight of the pig, only to hear its torture move further and further away across the ceiling, until finally it was silenced by what he knew was the peace of its being butchered, sliced and bled out, exsanguinated, farther down the line, after that he knew. That was the last time he did it when it was not a sin.

And so the only break William would have in the ordeal, a ten minute break, the whole receiving end of the line still, finally quiet, the only break in his shift, came. In all his days he had not felt such a tilt and twist in the ground underneath him, wondering if he would appear drunk to the other workers as he walked to the door. Nausea had already wrenched his stomach, his vomit just mixed and washed away with all the other bodily fluids that had dropped to the floor on the killing bed. He had been crying for hours, no longer aware of the tears on his cheeks, he stepped through the doorway and paused, watching the other men walk down the staircase at the end of the hall.

Somehow through it all, beckoning him with a last bastion of hope that there was a reason for him to have caused such horror to the naïve, childlike animals, his eyes fixed on the door at the opposite end of the hallway, the one that led to the offices of Armour's Meatpacking Plant. He took a deep breath, and he pushed himself, seemingly uphill through the wind-tunnel and torrents of his devastation and guilt, to the door. It was why he had come – to learn the truth about what had happened to Adomas Baltavesky.

The flush of heat, once he stepped into the administrative corridor breezed across his cheeks, rosying them. By the time he stood in front of the door with the name, "Jonathon Ogden Armour," he had regained much of his composure, focusing his mind on his intended story, slipping into his role. The door was ajar, so his knock would be light.

"Excuse me sir. I'm a new worker and I was hoping to speak with you about something that I feel could benefit us both," William said respectfully, working to do so with an air of confidence.

The man was tall and thin, reminding him of Dr. Tash. The desk he sat behind, extravagant and quite huge, seemed aimed at intimidating whoever stood on the other side of it – in this case – him. Armour did not give his visitor the courtesy of looking up from the papers on his desk, saying, "Welcome to Armour Meatpackers… Mr…?"

"Codrum," William replied, stepping further into the room, "Henry Codrum, Mr. Armour." He decided to say nothing more, to wait for the man in power to invite him to do so.

"Are you on your break Mr. Codrum?" Armour asked, still not looking up.

"Yes sir," William answered.

"Then you'd best make it quick – our policy here is to dock an hour's pay for any lateness," he added, finally lifting his eyes – strikingly blue, and big, like Julia's, William noticed – with the man's smile registering as evil with its blatant smugness, as if claiming his right to expect submission.

"I will, um, Mr. Armour, I have a talent for invention, and I have been admiring your impressive set-up here," William started with a nod. He drew in a breath and continued, "I have found myself inspired with some ideas… that perhaps you would find useful…" He waited.

"Go on," Armour said.

"Well, for instance, I have been working on the killing bed, um, with the pigs, and I have noticed that the process used to hoist them up onto the assembly creates much turmoil…" William worried momentarily for Armour sighed, showing impatience, and William thought to himself that the man would not care about the suffering of the pigs, so he would need a different angle. "Um, sir the animal's thrashing about endangers both the men around and the whole assembly. The machine seems vulnerable to injury, which of course would cost time and money…"

Armour nodded, and the frown was gone.

William went on, "I have invented a sort of electric gun…"

Armour raised an eyebrow, looking impressed.

"It works off of a charge, so it is mobile, and it shoots wired darts into the body, releasing an electrical current that upon contact overwhelms the nervous system, rendering the uh, pig in this case, um it renders the pig temporarily paralyzed. Then the pig can be hoisted safely onto the assembly without the fuss and the risk to man and machinery – and importantly, this method would not affect the quality of the meat produced down the line," William said, unable to hide his pride and excitement with his gadget.

"Sounds like a good idea, um…" Armour said, unsure of William's name…

"Codrum," William answered.

There was a feint whistle, both men looking to the door. William's shift was starting up again.

"Sir, I believe I could invent more… uh, but I would need to know more about what you already have here," William rushed his point, looking at various items around the man's office – clandestinely looking for log books that might contain records of Adomas Baltavesky's employment here – he eyed the file cabinet and said, "Like how do you keep your records, uh there are lots of ways to make record keeping more effective and efficient. Oh, and of course, the rest of the plant… sir." He waited now, both men knowing it would cost him back with the manager of the killing beds.

Armour's delay grew uncomfortable and William added, "Or I could come back after my shift, sir?"

"No, no. I'll be… I always lunch from 12:30 till 2:00 or so. No, let's have you start by looking around the pig processing works first – today, when you're done. I'll tell Mandley to take you around," Armour concluded, signaling with a toss of the head towards the door. His eyes back down on his papers he dismissively added, "You'd best hurry Codrum," his patronizing tone stirring insult within William.

"Thank you sir," William rushed to say heading out in a rush. "Tomorrow when he's out to lunch then," William applauded himself as he hurried back to the cold, heart-wrenching killing bed.

The manger bellowed, sounding much like the Inspector, "That two minutes is gonna cost you an hour's pay Codrum, and if it happens again I'll be addin' the cumulative expense of the time down the whole line. You start this thing off – you make the big bucks for this job, I've half a mind to drop you right now. Good thing for you there ain't a bloke waitin' right here to step in… or I would."

To some degree William was grateful for the surge of fear the man ignited in him, it distracting him slightly from the dreadful task he had begun to take up once again. Brace as he could however against it, the shrieking of the terrified, brutalized animal, the sound so distinctly human in character, it destroyed him right down to his very core. "There'll never be enough visits to the Confessional to heal this," he worried, reaching for the next chain, opening it wide between his two hands, the bitter-hard metal of the links threatening to freeze right to his skin through the holes in his gloves, and then forcing himself to target the next cloven-foot…

After finishing his tour of the pork processing buildings with Mr. Mandley, William headed back to the meat-packing room to find George. He found the same two disturbing images kept invading his thoughts, bouncing from one, to stubbornly be rejected and pushed away, only to be replaced by the intrusion of the other. The first was, expectedly, the screeches and screams of the pigs piercing his ears while he cringed with the view of his own hands grasping around the next pig's chain… And the other image, it was from last night, from a repetitive nightmare. It always started the same way, with Julia being deliciously seductive with him, stepping up behind him, nibbling and kissing, her raspy, lusty voice in his ear, his neck, her perfect hands cherishing and awakening his flesh, growing dangerously closer and closer to his most sensitive spot, spinning his head into a soup and draining away all of his blood – luring its fire into his groin, fortifying it and swelling it… and then he would look down to see that her hands were too big, so indelicate – and those hands on his body, they were most definitely – male – and he was certain of the man to whom they belonged – with teeth-gritting fury and panic erupting in him, William knew those were the hands of Flannel Bull and the fiend had him in his grip, in the palm of his hand.

The same thoughts plagued his sleep last night, each time he would gasp, and snap awake with a jerk, most of the time alerting George, surely rendering his friend's night nearly as useless as his own. And now as he walked through Armour's pork-processing buildings, it seemed completely unavoidable and inevitable that these two repulsive, repugnant memories would leap frog to replay one after the other, now that he was not attending to anything in particular to distract his mind, as if the dastardly memories were intentionally taking advantage of the fact that he could not possibly dispel both of them at the same time.

Despair hazardously close, William spotted George in the smaller, freezing-cold building where the meat is packed and prepared for shipment. He reminded himself to be careful to catch George between knife strokes so as to minimize the chance that he might accidently slice off a finger. His mind flashed with an association to that particular type of disaster, to the murdering, law-evader Mulligan's claim that the blood on the green rug in his office wasn't Ieva's blood, but instead came from a worker who had cut off a finger. Unfortunately, now William had another dreadful image to shake-off, not to mention the reminder of another dead-end in the case to discourage him. He got George's attention, waited about half an hour till his break and then filled him in on what he thought was his good luck, explaining his plan to break into Armour's office tomorrow after his shift on the killing bed. Excitedly he shared that he had learned that Armour went out to lunch every day from 12:30 – 2:00. Knowing that George still had many hours of work on his shift, William went back to their little room – grateful, so very looking forward to, his first bath for a very long time, expecting that the other residents would not return home as early as he was, thus freeing up the tiny bathroom at the end of the hall.

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This time, Julia's dream was built around a memory, and it took her down a path that she had fantasized about for weeks afterwards at the time, back when it had occurred. She had been arrested for teaching women about contraceptives and was being held down in one of the jail calls in Stationhouse # 4. Darcy and she were married but he was out town at the time – and she had been glad for that… but… William had come down to talk with her.

Julia felt him there, even before she saw him, before she heard him draw in a breath. He affected her very being, her essence, down to her core, somehow, his presence, his closeness setting her every atom into a higher energy orbital – she could almost hear the hum. They had not seen each other for quite some time, and she wondered if he had moved on… Really, she wondered if she had. The moment she lifted her eyes to see him there, she felt her womb flip over, and her heart lighten, and threaten to take flight. She heard the whoosh of the breeze calling her to soar, and she knew for certain then that she had not… she had definitely not, moved on. And she knew it would be difficult to hide it from him.

"Julia," his beautiful voice tingled her ears, and then he sighed, "Let me get the Constable to unlock this cell, so we can speak properly."

"Constable Crabtree refused to lock it," she replied, opening the cell door to him. Her mind raced down so many tracks at once. She marveled at how this one man, William Murdoch and only William Murdoch, could throw her so off balance. At the same time, an enticing flash, a fantasy, so electrical and sexually charged that it threatened to buckle her knees, drew her breath and her attention, as she imagined his taking her suddenly, roughly, into his arms, kissing her passionately, desperately, hungrily backing her to the tiny cot, having his way with her, the springs squeaking away with each of his scrumptious, powerful thrusts into her. And her insides seemed to spiral and melt away. She had to drop her eyes away. She had to keep in control. "How did she manage it," she wondered, as she heard her own voice, only slightly dry, say nonchalantly to him, "Please come in detective."

She argued her case about taking the contraception matter to court, prompting William to challenge her resolve, warning her that she could face two years in prison. His concern seemed authentic, and she felt it deep down, his caring warmed her heart. William's big, gorgeous brown eyes met hers with such force, and he contended, "Julia, you're being stubborn."

And she was, but it was taking such bravery to do so, and his strength only seemed to feed her courage, something she had felt from being with him before. She remembered it then, on a side note, that his ability to empower her, like no one else in her life had ever done so completely before, it had been one of the reasons she had fallen so head over heels in love with him… before. Julia insisted, her curls dancing in the periphery as she did so, that she knew she was right. She reframed his statement, showing her own attributes in a more positive light, not stubborn. "I like to think determined," she said, stepping back deeper into the cell.

And she saw something happen… in his face, in his eyes, and she knew in her heart that he was shaken, that he felt it surging inside of him and he was losing the battle with it – and she knew – and it threatened to upend her, that William Murdoch loved her still.

"William," she whispered, feeling the earth move underneath her, the walls fall in and fall away. His hand behind her waist, her neck snapping back with the intensity of his tug, and my God, he kissed her. There had never been a need greater than the need she had right now to be closer to this man. "Please William," she heard her own voice beg, whisper in his ear, "I've missed you. I want you. Please William."

And her dreams came true then, and he pushed her back and then down onto the cot… He rushed to pull off his clothes, his lustful, darkened eyes honing with such a drive into hers. Suddenly, he had removed her bloomers, and he was right there on top of her, so heavy and strong, and their eyes locked tight, and he asked her… somehow… And she answered him firmly, wrapping her legs around his waist, "Please William." And then she felt it, the heavenly pressure and heat as he breeched her, so solid, forcing her to yield, to take him in, to surround him. Their harmonized moans twisted and twirled around each other in the air, rising and echoing, dispersing into the distance, like smoke, like steam, hers loud and demanding, his lush and quiet, privately and deeply it vibrated through her eardrum, sunk down into her soul. Such ferocious, sweet pleasure wrenched and pleaded inside her core with the feelings, so intense, so sultry, of him sliding in farther, and farther into her, squeezing in deeper and deeper still, closer, getting ever so much closer, to the one perfect spot where their union meant more than life itself. And she needed him closer, deeper, harder, stronger, more, so much more, for just that one final miniscule inch. Rupture and rapture were just out of grasp, and so she pulled him with every ounce of strength she had… And she heard his sonorous breath in her ear, only the tiniest tick of time more… BUT…

What was that over there? Heaven dropping away from them, they both turned to see…

It was Mulligan's big, hairy dog again, still covered in blood. The pet had escaped from the murderer's car. It trotted right into their cell. It plopped down on the rug there, contaminating it with blood. And then Julia remembered that she had something extremely urgent to tell William. It was at the tip of her tongue. The words, they started, "William, Mulligan's automobile pet… it isn't…"

And then, so suddenly, she was just plain awake, and alone in their bed in the night. Not in the cell. Not with William, remembering that he had left to go undercover, that he was in danger, that he might never come home, and as she had done back then, she missed him so very terribly and she wanted him more than she ever thought would be possible… And she reminded herself that, unlike back then, he was hers, and that it was true that he loved her, and he had married her, and that they were about to have a baby, and in that instant she was both ecstatic with joy for her good fortune, their good fortune, and saddened and terrified too, that she would lose him again.

Julia took a deep breath, her eyes adjusting now to the darkness. She so wanted to finish her statement to him, pushing to remember the urgent message. She had been saying, "It isn't… It isn't… WHAT!?" Frustration took her again as reality gained hold. She sat up in the ringing late-night silence and chased after the dream. A cell – she was, they were – in a cell. And there was that dog again, Mulligan's pet, the one that lives only in his car… And again it was covered in blood. There's something about that dog that only I know – and it's something I have to tell William. But I can't remember what it is.

She tried going back to the previous dream, the one with a similar theme from the night before. In that one she had known that the dog was a female not a male, that this was something she could catch Mulligan in lying about. William would be able to pull the rug out from under the murderer, so to speak, if she brought that to light. "Was that it again," she asked herself about this most recent dream, "Was I going to say it isn't a male, it's a female?" She just wasn't sure.

Having had requested her subconscious to send her a clearer message about the meaning of the odd dream, Julia had to admit, this didn't feel any clearer. She tried to analyze more from what she could remember. One thing was that the jail cells were white – not the dingy beige-color that Stationhouse 4's cells were in real life. She remembered now, even the bars were white. "That's definitely odd. Perhaps some sort of statement about purity – back at the time of the dream William had never, uh, it would have been his first time – like it actually was on our wedding night," she considered. However, it didn't really resonate, "but somehow," she thought, this strange color of the cell was significant. "White cells…?" she pushed herself, "That does sound familiar," she thought. She sensed it had a connection to a fleeting thought she had had when she was reading recently. "Either the transverse Cesarean section, or the research on… determining… gender… in cells... That must be it!

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Seemingly the only resident on the floor, William claimed the treasured and only bathroom at the end of the hallway as his own, securing the lock on the door. Only the smallest of mirrors, he would use it to shave. Flashes of memories of Julia watching his ritual warming his heart, he finished the job while the hot bath ran. He turned off the water, the tub now full, and began to undress.

It happened the moment he reached down to the ends of his shirtsleeves, felt the pinch of the button between his fingers. So invasively, so distinctly, he heard first, the cocking of a gun on the floor, and then Flannel Bull's despicable voice from behind him, so realistic in tone he spooked and jerked to turn to see if the man was really there. "Take off your shirt," came the command. Terror, and then fierce anger, cascaded through him, one after the other, so quickly that it was hard to distinguish the feelings. He felt totally helpless, his heart thumping savagely against the confines of his chest, then the register of the cramping weakness and stinging, debilitating frozen paralysis in his muscles as they worked to relax with the falseness of the alarm. William made himself breathe. "Just your imagination," he coached himself. He clamped his fists firmly around the edge of the sink countertop, worked to slow the nauseating ringing and spinning, concentrated on the feel of the floor under his feet. Another sigh, he moved on, "You were taking a bath," he reminded himself and tried to focus.

Naked, immersed in the muscle-melting heat and permeating dampness of the hot water, he felt his body yield and soften. "If Julia were here she would soothe me," he thought, and he tried to recall how she would do it. A memory of being on vacation with her at the beach last summer seemed to float into him on luscious waves. He imagined her voice, intimate, warm on his skin, close. "Close your eyes William. Listen to the wind, the waves. Let the smell of the sea in… long, slow breaths… the gentle kissing of the warm breeze and the toasty heat of the sun on your skin. You don't need to do anything right now… Just be here with me…"

After a while, he moved again, picked up the soap, lathered up his hair, and his face and his neck and his chest… And then he saw… And with it misery flew back inside of him… He saw his own hands. And he remembered seeing them, although gloved at the time, grasping the ends of a thick chain, and clasping it around a pig's hoof. And again the urge to recoil and wince, to avoid at all costs the shrill impact of the sounds as they came, of the terrified pigs as each one was hurled upside down in inescapable pain. "These hands, my hands, have caused unspeakable torment, over and over again," he said in his head. The pit of despair lingered before him.

"Confess your sins, William," the message came to him, and with it his heart opened to the tiny ray of hope. There would be a Catholic Church, surely; perhaps Adomas had even sought healing there.

Later, after the spiritual healing afforded through re-connecting with God, he paused in the dirty street to appreciate the light of a striking full moon still low on the horizon, and William felt the reassuring tug of exhaustion. With a deep breath he took in the cold stench of the air of the Chicago stockyards and imagined the tiny bed waiting for him up in the room he was sharing with George. Having had nearly no sleep, it seemed for days, he was confident he would sleep well tonight. He felt a restoration of his faith, and with it, he was more himself again.

He wondered if perchance at this very moment Julia was gazing up at the same moon. Astronomically he knew, he saw it in his mind's eye, that the source of the moon's pale luminosity, the magical glow's very presence in the night sky attesting to the presence of it, was the Sun. And so too it was with Julia – for she was the source of the warmth in his heart, and although she was not right there next to him, they were connected as surely as the Sun lights the Moon.

Four large steps up out of the street to get onto the sidewalk, and his mind did the calculations, and he knew it was likely true, that the Lithuanian man Sinclair had told them about, the man named Jurgis, had come home to find his toddler son had drown in the street. Pushing the nauseating thought, the disturbing recognition, away, he used the key and let himself in.

Once upstairs there was ample evidence that George had been home. "Probably out to get some dinner," William figured as he stripped down to his underwear and crawled under the covers. He allowed himself the pleasure of looking at his photo of Julia for a few moments, strengthening the feeling of love he felt for her before he set it aside and turned out the light. William was fast asleep by the time George returned.

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Thursday

In the tiny bed, only about four in the morning, yet just before he needed to rise to go to work at Armour's pork-processing facility, William was having a beautiful dream, lucid and realistic, grounded in his memories of making love to Julia at the beach this summer in the moonlight. She had teased him, giving him a playful shove and then running off heading up the beach to the woods through the cool sand. He watched her, feeling his primal male urges grow with the sight of her jiggly, curvy flesh bouncing about in the glow of the pale lunar light. When he caught up to her, he pinned her against a tree trunk, and kissed her, and explored her magnificent body until he felt her drop heavy, and weak, and her devastating, wildly hungry moan moved his world. It was she who broke the spell, surprising him as she said, "I do believe you told me you enjoyed climbing trees detective. Let's test those lumberjacking skills shall we?" she challenged, turning and lifting a leg, indicating she wanted him to boost her up into the tree. He obliged her, enjoying the view of her body from below as she demonstrated that she, too, was quite at home in a tree, bounding and climbing higher and higher in the luminous light.

He took up chase, the beast within him stunning with its prowess, he had soon pinned her once again against the significantly higher, and now thinner, trunk, each of them sharing the same two branches with their bare feet to hold them there locked together, suspended in the sea air. The breeze, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore below, seemed so much louder and potent up here. A blissful whisper rustled the leaves all around them, and he took her there, with all his might.

With his final thrusts, the delicious flood of pleasure rippling through him, William was coaxed to wake by his body's movements, as well as the sensation of an added substance, wet and sticky, against his skin inside of his underwear. Immediately he knew he was in the small room with George, and that the little alarm clock with the humungous, blaring ring had not yet been triggered. He checked to see if George was there in the bed next to him in the dark, still sleeping, and he let out a sigh with the recognition that he was.

William laid his head back down on the bed and searched for the lush remnants of the feelings of completion and perfection, finding the heat and ooze still there, out near his edges. He turned his pillow lengthwise and pulled it in close to him, imagining it was Julia in his arms with her head on his chest. Lingering there in the dark with her, he watched the magic go, like the pinkish hues scattering and dimming after the sun has gone down, fading to magnificent blues until all the glow is gone. He imagined that she squeezed him tight and then slid her fingers enticingly across his chest and confided, "That was wonderful William, I feel it down to my toes," as she rubbed her hot feet up and down his legs. In his mind the fantasy prompted a giggle, for he had remembered his recent torturing of her with his cold feet.

With a smile on his face, William gathered up her photograph and took the little clock with him into the bathroom at the end of the hall to set it for George later. With the alarm-clock, he left George a note, not wanting to wake him, laying out his plan. Today would be their last day here in Chicago. He would complete his shift which ended at 1:00 PM. Then he would sneak into Armour's office while Armour was out to lunch. He would find the logs and records of Adomas Baltavesky's jobs and his pay, and hopefully he would take the appropriate documents needed as proof that Adomas had been the one committing the sabotage of the refrigerated meat last summer. Then he would come get George in the meatpacking building, and they would leave. They would go to Winnipeg as was originally planned.

William expected that Ettie's connections would help him obtain proof as to whether it had been Davies, albeit most likely through Mulligan in this case, or Burns, who had hired Adomas Baltavesky to destroy the American meat. He was coming to accept that they might never come to know exactly who had killed Adomas Baltavesky, although he reasoned it was most likely a spy working for Clegg. However, Davies and Mulligan or Burns was to be held accountable for planning and hiring Adomas to destroy the meat, and subsequently killing five innocent people, and he now intended to focus the case on gathering evidence against the culprit, or culprits, of that crime, having to accept that doing so would have to be good enough.

Stopping in the hallway bathroom, William used the light to quickly sketch out the plans for his weaponized capacitor. He intended to leave the design for his electric gun in Mr. Mandley's mailbox in the hopes that Mr. Armour would start using it to stun the pigs before they were slung up onto the ceiling to be slaughtered. It offered him a slight chance to offer repentance for what harm he had done.

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The baby kicked, and Julia reached to soothe it, placing her hand lovingly on her belly. She noticed that she had been humming, the contended sound of it providing proof of the lifting of her mood. The idea had sparked magnificent thrills within her – perhaps there were some blood characteristics that could be used to match specific people to a sample of blood left at a crime scene, while at the same time eliminating others. Now, she worked with a purpose, down in the lab room William had built for her in their house. "Little one," she spoke out loud to their child, "I wish your daddy were here. He would be so excited too, I know he would." Well, at least she had Isaac to share it with. She had called him and told him all about her idea. He was even coming over later today to provide his blood for some of the tests.

Sprawled out all over the lab were journals and books opened to studies of genetics and blood. One set of research focused on an area Dr. Grace had contributed to, well at least in the small world of Toronto pathology, if not amongst her publishing medical peers. This was a method of blood donor discrimination based on the A, B, C, and D typing of blood. For this method of identifying a characteristic of an individual that matched a given blood sample, Julia was waiting for a call back from the university to learn if the friend she had there, Dr. Reddick, would be able to provide her with the various A, B and D antigens she would need for the tests. Each of these different antigens would be applied to the blood samples to see which ones, if any (in the case of C), clumped around the red cells. In this manner, blood found at a crime scene could be matched to a particular blood-type (A, B, C, or D), and this would eliminate some suspects and further incriminate others.

However, Julia was much more intrigued by the second set of articles. These were on detecting differences in the nuclear material of cells, particularly the parts of the nucleus that some researchers, such as Walter Sutton and Theodore Bolveri, called chromal units. This research showed that there might be detectable differences in this chromal material between men and women. It was this idea, that it might be possible to tell whether blood came from a man or a woman from this nuclear chromal material, that she believed had been linked to her weird, recurring dreams.

Julia found herself stimulated by the fact that one of the researchers in this field was a woman, named Nettie Maria Stevens. Based on earlier research with salamanders, she was examining the nuclear units in insect eggs and sperm, predicting that humans too would have less chromal units in the sperm than in the egg, making for an expectation of finding an odd number of chromal units in sperm (and men's nuclei) and an even number in eggs (and women's nuclei). You should in theory then, Julia figured, be able to take any cell's nucleus in the body, and examine the relative amount, and symmetry – oddness vs. evenness, of chromal units to match it to that commonly found in men or that commonly found in women, thus identifying the sex of the person that blood came from.

Already examining her own blood, prepared and stained on slides, she had spent nearly an hour looking through the microscope. She was hunting for a white blood cell. It was this discovery that she received from her subconscious in her dream, use white cells! It was a major solution to the problem she had run into last summer, at the time thinking her idea about identifying the gender of a person who had left blood at a crime scene to be a flop because red blood cells lack a nucleus. As white blood cells contain a nucleus, they could provide the needed chromal material for the gender test. Unfortunately, she needed a somewhat rare white blood cell – one that was in the process of mitosis, or dividing – most preferably in the last stage of division called metaphase. Finding dividing white blood cells was particularly challenging because most white blood cells do not divide, instead being made by the individual's bone marrow. Therefore, the search for a useful one promised to be long and tedious, and most likely would require relatively large amounts of her blood to examine.

She turned the low-power knob to focus and spotted a potential cell. Switching to high power, adjusting the focus it revealed itself, clear as a textbook diagram – a white cell in metaphase! Unaware that she was holding her breath with its majesty and her good luck, she admired the perfect symmetry of the two opposing rows of darkly stained, snake-like rod-shaped sections of chromal units. "I wonder if Isaac's blood will have less symmetry?" her scientific predictions developed…

She heard the phone ring upstairs. "Dr. Reddick from the university!" she hoped. In her nearly eight-months pregnant state, she decided not to rush up to the phone from down in the basement, relying on Eloise to answer it and come to get her if the situation deemed necessary.

))) (((

"Perfect!" William nearly declared aloud. He had found a page of the Armour payroll logs that recorded Adomas Baltavesky as receiving payment for work as an icer on trains from Chicago to Toronto, Buffalo, and New York City during the pay-period of July 16th to July 31st. He had proof that Adomas Baltavesky was in a position to be the one who had sabotaged the meat last summer! Carefully he ripped out the page and tucked into his pants pocket. It would irk him later that he didn't make his escape at that moment, but he had wondered if anyone else had worked with Adomas as an icer who might be able to provide witness testimony to the fact that Adomas actually removed the ice from the trains after each icing station along the routes. Thus he searched through the logbook for just that few moments more, running through the alphabetical listings of men's names with their job listings and payments, checking for any other "icers" for the same time…

It was the sound of a key in the lock; William quickly identified the disturbance from behind him with a jolt of panic. Armour stepped in just as William turned around from the open file cabinet to face the office door. Oh, there was absolutely no faking his way out of this, William had been caught red-handed.

"Mr. Codrum," Armour said, his voice too loud, too excited, to pull off his attempt at acting smug, "It seems you got yourself a chance to look through my files after all."

William closed the book, not wanting to give away what he had been looking for.

Armour pulled a handgun out from under his long-tailed jacket and aimed it at William. "Now, Mr. Codrum, if that is really your name, I would prefer not to shoot you…"

William's mind was going a hundred miles a minute, and it was going in multiple directions at the same time. He could throw the book at him, risking that the surprise would throw off his aim, it might allow for an escape… Alternatively, this could be his last breath on this Earth, part of him saying his goodbyes and apologies to Julia, and despairing at the loss of the chance to raise his child…

Armour had gone on, "… We so much prefer not to have bullets in the Christmas Hams. And make no mistake Codrum, you will be part of people's Christmas Hams this year," the magnate-toff taunted.

Deciding that talking might at least give him time to think, William said, "Mr. Armour sir…" William's eyes wide but firm holding Armour's, "I do not believe my offense warrants killing me, sir." He saw a blink… an opportunity. "Admittedly sir, I should not have snuck into your office, but I wanted to impress you sir. I wanted to garner some idea of how your system works so I could show you ways to improve it, sir…" He curled a corner of his mouth, asking the man to consider his plea. Amazingly, even to William himself, the logic of his claim seemed plausible.

Not lowering the gun, Armour sighed. "I admit I see no attempt to steal, Codrum," he gave. He flicked the pistol a few times towards the desk and instructed William to put the logbook on the desk. Then he ordered him to stand, with his hands up above his head, and with his back against the wall. Armour approached the desk and, glancing back and forth between William and the logbook, he flipped through the pages of the book.

William's heart picked up the pace again, suspecting that Armour would discover the missing page in the book – the one currently in his pocket. Perhaps he should explain before the man made the discovery. He pushed himself to speak. "Alright sir, I was really looking to find the whereabouts of a friend, sir. He um, well he's been missing and I have important news for him from his wife… Uh, about their son, sir," William said, finding he had been able to move closer to the door without Armour seeming to have noticed.

Armour was urgently looking for evidence of which pages William had been looking at, growing more and more suspicious as William rushed to explain.

William spotted a big, heavy, bronze pig statue on the small table near the door. He had his plan!

Armour hurried, spotting some smudges on a few pages, probably from the little sneak's filthy hands, "Codrum and the other little fellow he came with… My copper brought them in… Said they came from Toronto didn't he?" Armour's mind drilled his memory trying to assess the danger this man presented. "Wasn't that icer we hired from Toronto too? What was his name? Balt-something… Look in the B's…"

The whack sound of the bronze pig statue against Armour's head worried William. He really didn't want to have killed the man. However, he was out the door before he could figure out how severely he had injured the man. He definitely did not have long to get away, whether he had mistakenly killed Jonathon Armour or not.

Even in the rush to find George and make their getaway, William still went to Mr. Mandley's mailbox and left the plans for a more humane way of preparing the pigs for slaughter. As much as possible, he had hoped it would clear his conscience. They needed to stop by the room they had rented to collect their minimal belongings. Wanting a train to Winnipeg as soon as possible, they had at first considered taking a passenger train, despite their state of dirty, stinky, hobo-like attire. William remembered that trains to Winnipeg from Chicago would cross the border into Canada, and as such, would require passing through customs… And that would require identification, which he and George had intentionally not brought along with them in order to best keep their identities a secret. As a result, they needed to hop the first train to Winnipeg that was not a passenger train, thus ending up on a train coming from the south that was loaded up with cotton.

))) (((

Julia heard Eloise coming down the stairs and forced herself to pull her attention away from drawing the diagram of the chromal units of her white blood cell, pushing the microscope away and pausing her pencil.

"Dr. Ogden," Eloise stood in the doorway of her lab, "There is a Miss Weston on the phone for you…"

Oh my, Julia just hadn't expected that. It threw her off kilter to be honest, catapulting her into a struggle to come up with any plausible reason for the madam, Ettie Weston of all people, a woman who her husband, the straight-laced and buttoned-down William Murdoch, had had a previous romantic relationship with, there just wasn't any good possible reason that she would have to call… here… and … to call now?

Eloise had finished her message, the words arriving after a delay in the odd, time-tunnel inside of Julia's head, "It's about the detective," she had heard Eloise's voice say in her brain, the woman stating what Julia already knew was obvious. It was strange too, that Julia noticed that she herself was already half-way up the stairs.

She stood before the table in the foyer, the phone receiver resting innocently next to the phone, waiting, so dizzy, she felt the world closing in and falling apart. Unable to imagine … but so sure it would not be good, Julia considered not ever picking it up... But really, the world had already changed. Her eyes found William's hat, his cherished homburg hanging on its peg in their foyer, falsely suggesting that he was home. A feeling of portence shivered and shuttered through her with the recognition that his hat might never sit on his head again.

Ettie Weston stood in her room in her brothel, ear to the phone receiver, thinking as she waited, that William Murdoch had become quite the toff in the end. She was surprised by her reactions of anger and contempt, but she had never thought he would end up being the type of man to have servants answering his phone… "It had to be because of her," she thought, aware of a change in static, preparing to speak with… his wife.

"Dr. Julia Ogden," Julia said into the receiver.

"Hello Dr. Ogden. My name is Ettie Weston. I kn…

"I know who you are Miss Weston," Julia interrupted. She wished her tone had not come out as being so… annoyed. She forced herself to breathe and then continued, "We met a long time ago… You ran the Music Academy, um… where I examined the body of a prostitute who had been murdered."

"Yes," Ettie replied, "That is true. I… William was supposed to arrive here, um, in Winnipeg, late Tuesday, or possibly on Wednesday at the latest…

"Supposed to?" Julia heard the words and they sparked fear in her. Her brain had already run forward – William was lost, the terrifying thought had not yet taken hold. And it competed for her attention, with another thought, more complicated, twisted, convoluted… hard to get a handle on, but it had to do with the fact that Ettie Weston was expecting William to come to her…

"I know that in the winter, the snow, the weather, can delay trains, so I didn't call until I checked, and all the train lines from Toronto to Winnipeg, passenger and freight – because he would most likely take the freight trains… um, because well, because of being disguised as a hobo… And all the trains were running on time since Monday. It's just… I'm worried…" Ettie explained. There was a pause.

Julia floundered. She felt she might faint. It was all she could do to remain standing. "William," her brain tried, almost as if she were calling him. Her eyes began to swell, she felt too hot… and too cold.

Ettie spoke again, thinking she needed to explain why she called a bit better, "I was wondering if perhaps you had heard from him, or… if maybe he had decided not to come after all?"

Julia pushed herself to speak, "No, he did go… um, undercover as you say." Hearing the panic in her own voice seemed to set off the dominoes inside of her, and the panic escalated, making her voice squeak as she continued, "I haven't heard from him." Even the voice inside of her head squeaked as it sounded the alarm, "Something's wrong! Something's wrong!"

Yet, Julia's mind nagged at her, part of it having had traveled down a different neural path in her brain. It pushed her to ask the question, and she heard herself ask it, almost as if it were someone else doing the asking, "William made plans to meet you – before he left?"

Ettie felt her body react instantly to his wife's question – with an ecstatic jolt, a musical hum. Deciding she did not have time to figure out why the question made her so happy, and trying to mask her reaction, she replied matter-of-factly, "Yes. He was going to arrive, as I said, late Tuesday or Wednesday, with a friend, a constable, after they traveled on the trains undercover as hobos… Um, that's why I called here and not to the Stationhouse. I had the impression this was… a sort of, off-the-record kind of trip…"

Those particular words caused an amazing pain, a wild nauseating pain, with their implication of secrecy, clenching Julia's gut, prompting her to place her hand on her belly. Then, feeling their baby with the touch, the panic resurfaced, "William was missing! She was pregnant and he was missing! She would have to do this alone – without him! William…" Ettie had gone on, she had missed some. Julia tried to pay attention, certain the woman's words were important, despite her being so overwhelmed.

"…He was planning to stay here – with me, his friend too. We have, well, the victims in the case he's been working on came from here, in Winnipeg, and he thought… uh, that I might have some… connections to help him on the case. Not just with, um, well with my line of work, but also because I know all the bigwigs… that Will thought might be involved with the case," Ettie explained logically.

"Will! Will!" Julia's rageful voice screamed inside of her head, "She calls him Will!"

Julia nodded her head, her jaw beginning to tighten, "I see," she said curtly.

"He said he would probably stay here for a few days," Ettie continued, "Um, stay here with me in my coffee house."

Her mouth agape, Julia was so floored she could not make a sound. All her wind was gone. The phone held to each woman's ear, nothing but silence on the line…

"Dr. Ogden?" Ettie finally asked.

"Thank you for calling… And letting me know," Julia said, sounding spacey. She hung up the phone before she heard, before she decided she didn't care, Ettie's request that she call her if she heard from William. She hung up the phone before she could get the woman's phone number.

She had to get out to the street, to go find him… Still, she knew that she didn't know where he was, didn't know where to look… but he definitely wasn't here… And the world was too big for her to search to find him… And William was gone… maybe forever…

Intolerable, Julia wobbled, knees weak, and rushed to the door. Trying to regain some control in the utterly topsy-turvey world, she started to batter herself with accusations about how stupid she had been to let him go… And then she remembered who had called, and what William had planned to do, to stay with his previous lover, and not to let her know.

Julia hurled the front door open, rushing out into the cold. Momentarily fear and panic outweighed her anger, and then it would get all swirled up with her self-loathing again, and she was going to be sick, and then she was sick, vomiting on the porch steps, the brownish liquid staining the white snow. And then the tears and the convulsions came. And then she felt Eloise take her in her arms and she had a towel to clean her face. And she's trying so hard to calm her… but Eloise looks terrified herself. "William's missing. He's lost. He's gone! I never should have let him go. He might be dead – he might never ever come home. And he snuck away to see an old lover. And he never made it there. And my God I don't know what to do…"

Eloise brought her mistress up into her bedroom and suggested she would make her a draft to calm her down. Julia told her not to do so, that Isaac had said no more alcohol because of the baby. Eloise watched as Julia lost her mind. Over and over again she got into and out of bed. Then Julia got up, with a purpose, looked about the room, and then gathered up William's pillow, and some blankets and his pajamas and brought the bundle down to the living room. "If he did ever come home, he would be sleeping on the couch," Julia hollered in her head.

She marched down into the lab room, seemingly unaware that Eloise was in tow, so furious she refused to continue the experiment. She didn't want to do anything that had anything to do with William Murdoch ever again, she thought, instantly falling into sobs, the torrents of which were so power they brought her to her knees. She stayed down there on the lab room floor, balling her eyes out.

Feeling utterly helpless, Eloise phoned Dr. Tash and told him what she knew, that there had been a call from a woman named Miss Weston about the detective. The call had upset Dr. Ogden terribly. "She mostly seems to be crying, sir, she's completely out of control. It can't be good for the baby," Eloise pleaded, "Then, suddenly she just… switches, and becomes very angry. She is definitely angry with the detective; she put his bedding and pajamas on the couch – he well, she is definitely angry with him. Can you come over doctor, as soon as possible?"

))) (((

Back in Winnipeg, Ettie hung up the phone, her heart pumping so wildly in her chest that she could no longer deny it – "He didn't tell his wife! There was hope!" and then she knew it, she knew she still loved William Murdoch – and there was a chance that he still loved her too.

))) (((

It was nearly an hour before Jonathon Armour came to. Before he had a man bring him to the hospital to get stitches to the side of his head, he examined the bronze pig, glad to see the heirloom was not significantly dented. Then he remembered the logbook, and found the B's. "Baltavesky," now he remembered the man's name! – Baltavesky's records had been torn out! This Codrum was a spy from Toronto, just like Baltavesky had been. Armour called over to the meatpacking building, furious to discover that Codrum's little friend had gone missing too.

Armour phoned his man Graveson, and put him quickly onto the trail to deal with the Canadian spies. Graveson was such a wild card though, obsessive and outright spooky, even in Jonathan Ogden Armour's opinion. Armour predicted what would happen. The eerie man would disappear, would not be heard from for weeks, whether he had killed Codrum and his little buddy right away, or whether it took him weeks to get the deed done. That was just how Graveson was. When he had killed Baltavesky last summer, it had been nearly a month before he showed up to collect his pay, nearly a month after he had killed the man. "Maybe for the better in the end," Armour thought to himself, "it makes it less likely for people to link me with anything crazy Graveson does for me."

"Goddamn Canadians…" Armour cursed out loud, the thought making him think to call Clegg, for the man was a spy working for the American government after all. We can't have these Canadians coming down here stirring up trouble.

After filling Clegg in, the government spy said he suspected he knew who this Codrum was. "There are actually many clues," Clegg claimed into the phone while Armour nursed his bleeding head. "The physical description, fortyish, handsome, big brown eyes, bit of a baby face, dark hair..." he explained. It had thrown Clegg off that Codrum wasn't wearing a suit and a homburg, but the other clues had clinched it for him. Clegg reasoned out more of the evidence, "Codrum said he was an inventor, Murdoch is an inventor. Codrum had a little sidekick friend named George, George Flowers of all things, Murdoch has this quirky constable that follows him around like a puppy. Codrum was looking for Baltavesky's files, now that was definitely something a detective like William Murdoch would do. And the word 'Codrum' is the word 'Murdoch' backw…"

"Detective William Murdoch?!" Armour screamed into the phone, stopping Clegg mid-sentence, "Did you say Detective William Murdoch, from Toronto Canada! The same Detective William Murdoch who is married to Dr. Julia Ogden!?

"Yes. Yes, all of that is true," replied Clegg, sensing something was terribly wrong.

"Oh this is unbelievable," Armour said, speaking slower now, "Absolutely unbelievable. Jules' husband, the one she has this amazing storybook romance with, at least according to my mother and to all the papers… my first cousin, my mother Malvina Ogden's niece's husband. You mean to tell me, Clegg, that I just almost killed my own first cousin… Jules' fairytale husband, Detective William Murdoch?"

There was a hesitation on the phone, giving Armour a moment to breathe, before Clegg responded, "Yes, I do believe so."

The men ended the call, Clegg already starting to figure out where they would have gone and how to find them.

Armour reflected as he was driven to the hospital by his chauffer in his eloquent, lavish automobile. "To tell the truth," Armour thought. "Maybe it would have been better if I had killed Murdoch… After all, now the man might live to tell Jules – and Jules would surely kill me. Hell, she lost her mind when I just pulled the legs off of some damn daddy-longlegs spiders. What the hell is she going to do when she learns that I almost shot the love of her life, and then that I planned to chop him up to be packaged into Christmas Hams? Maybe it would be better to have Graveson find this Murdoch before Clegg does and kill him? he admitted to himself, feeling torn. Well, he decided to let fate decide this one. Besides, Clegg never said he wasn't planning on killing Murdoch. Maybe either way the man ends up dead and Jules would be none the wiser.

))) (((

Julia picked up the phone. She had decided to call the Inspector, as once again her worry had overtaken her anger and suspicion. "Inspector? It's Julia… Ogden," she said into the receiver. Her composure crumbled, her voice taking on its customary squeak with her panic, "William is missing," she blubbered out, looking desperately at his hat hanging on its peg, clinging to its presence as the only means of grounding she had.

The Inspector's heart felt a tug for the woman. She was clearly upset. "Yes doctor," he said as calmly as possible, "We have had men out looking for him for three days now."

Suspecting that William had let the Inspector in on his plans, and that the Inspector was playing at not knowing that he had really gone out undercover instead of being, "lost," she hurried to explain, "No really missing?"

Inspector Brackenreid's brain rushed to solve the problem. He remembered that Murdoch had told him in confidence that the good doctor had become very dependent since she had gotten pregnant. "Would the bugger have agreed to call her – and then hasn't been able to?" he asked himself. "Doctor," he said, doing his best at pulling off his calm and collected tone without sounding condescending, "you must know that making phone calls… without giving your true identi…"

"No. No, Inspector. It's not that… Someone he was meant to meet – to stay with in Winnipeg, just called," Julia hurried, hearing her own voice wavering into the phone, starting to squeak again, "He didn't show up in Winnipeg, Inspector," and her body yielded, shaking and folding as the tears slid down her cheeks to be quickly brushed aside. She tried with all her might to listen into the phone for the Inspector's authoritative voice through the waves of emotion all around her and through her.

"I see," the Inspector replied, understanding now that something was definitely wrong. "I'll notify all the constabularies from here to Winnipeg, doctor. Get them to send men out to the trains. Um, best if we stick to freight train routes I think…"

Julia interrupted him, grateful for his confidence, reassured that he had a plan for what to do, the little bit of relief it gave her freeing her somewhat from her anxiety, allowing her to remember that she could have stopped the whole thing. She confessed her torment, telling him, "He gave me the choice Inspector. I could have gotten him to stay. He would have stayed if I asked…"

He heard her fall into sobbing on the other end of the line. His heart sank so for her. "Doctor… We'll find him. I'm sure he's fine. He had George with him, hmm?" he asked.

With every ounce of courage she had, Julia forced herself to stand up taller, to sniffle back the tears. Nodding, she answered, "Yes. Yes, of course, Inspector. Thank you." Her mind taunted though, "He had had Jackson with him when he was almost killed on the meat-hook… it turned out that not being alone guaranteed little, at least with the extremely ruthless and powerful forces William was dealing with now."

) (

Soon after her call to the Inspector, Isaac came. He listened compassionately as she told him everything, that William had gone undercover and was missing, that he had deceived her about his plans to stay with an old lover in Winnipeg, and that the woman had called and said he had never arrived. Acting both as her doctor and as her friend, he gave her a draft and told her to take another if she became this upset again. Dr. Tash reasoned that the chances of the drugs in the draft hurting the baby were less than the chances that Julia's wrenching and sobbing so severely would harm the baby. And then he told her that there was still every chance that William was alive, for the man was highly skilled at his work, and that he would probably be coming home soon, and not to give up hope until she knew for sure otherwise – and maybe when William gets here, he can explain about this planned stay with his former lover. He reminded her to see that it may not be as bad as she feared it was. He left her in Eloise's capable hands, instructing the woman to only leave her alone overnight if Julia had managed to remain as calm as she was right now.

) (

Somehow, Julia had managed to fall asleep again after the first nightmare, after she had dreamt that Ettie Weston had brought her William's hat, telling her that the homburg was all that was left of him after he had disappeared, after he had stepped up onto a train, and it had chugged around the bend out of Miss Weston's sight, and then even the smoke had disappeared, and then Ettie knew, and Julia knew too, that William was gone, gone forever. She had woken up from her own sobbing, and it had taken her quite some time to stop crying, but she must have fallen back asleep. She knew she had eventually done so because she woke up in the middle of the night, once more, startling from a dream in which she had been in the process of losing her mind, fighting tooth and nail to survive the torment of seeing that William had disappeared right before her very eyes. This dream was different though, she thought, feeling the gurgling of anger in her belly, for in this one he had been leaving her – to go to Ettie.

Julia felt the rage burst inside of her. She smacked the bed in the darkness, making contact with the spot where he would have been, if he were home, gritting her teeth so hard that a thought passed by warning her that she might chip a tooth. In a fit, she rolled over, faced away from his side of the bed, not wanting to think about him anymore.

Then she felt it, metallic and cold at fist. She had forgotten that she had it on – the locket. It was sandwiched between her breasts. A memory, a beautiful memory, of William snuggling up behind her, slipping his arm around her, his fingers squeezing between her breasts as his breath rattled her ear, and he took hold of the locket, and she felt him hard and wanting her against her buttocks… And oh my God she missed him so… And the tears started to form again… But then, like that rare occurrence when lightning hits before the storm has yet arrived…

An absolute, insane fury swept through her. She wanted it off! Yanked at the locket! Becoming even more furious, gritting her teeth violently with her inability to break the chain. She jerked up in the bed, yanking the chain of the locket over her head, tearing out locks of her hair from the root with the torrential pull, and then she flung the locket with everything she had…

She heard it in the blackness, the metal of it smacking against the closed bedroom door across the room, and then a splattering as the pieces ricocheted apart. It was destroyed now – she was certain – the locket now in pieces. My God the anger didn't slacken… And now it seemed to be steaming with her failure to hold back the tears. She wanted to punch, to hit, to kick, and to scream – at the top of her lungs – and to cry and to curl up and die…

She had to get out of here, couldn't take it in this bedroom without him, while being so angry with him, she couldn't stand it for one more second. She ran to the door through the dark, guided by the sonar created by her pounding heart and her thundering footsteps…

Sudden slicing pain, "OW!" she screamed out, the sting on the bottom of her foot cut into her by the broken knife-edge of the locket resting broken on the wooden floor in the blackness. "God damn it!" she bellowed, the guarantee that no one would hear her outburst only hurting her more. Julia pounded her fist into the door, its location closer to her than she had anticipated, lowering the power of her swing. Unsatisfied, she smacked it again, and then again, finally the temptation waning, and instead of lashing out she propped herself on the vanity and fell into weeping.

A few moments later she took a deep breath and wiped her eyes, sniffled, and then reached to turn on the light. Checking the injury, she noticed the dark hue of the blood from the wound in the bottom of her foot, and she knew it had sliced pretty deeply. Her eyes sought the locket, finding that only half of it was there. Her photo, her half… it rested there in its broken state, William's half, with William's photo, nowhere to be found, lost, gone… "Apropos," she thought, and then the two things happened so quickly, the one after the other, that they felt to be one. She remembered a time he had said, 'apropos,' when they had almost made love the first time on the picnic blanket in the park, and he had said he thought their drinking of absinthe would be apropos. Her heart had nearly leapt out of her chest with her excitement back then, William Murdoch was going to drink absinthe with her… And my God, he looked so astoundingly gorgeous in the golden light of the sunset, and her world had spun and spun, for she was so very, very in love with this man… And then so quickly after the memory flashed, she began to punish herself for remembering that beautiful moment, for the torture it brought to her now, her mind screaming at her, "Must everything remind me of him!"

The despair, the anger, just overwhelmed her and she fell down to the floor and she cried and cried, propped up there against their bedroom door. And she remembered when she had cried like this after he had become lustful for their waitress at George's Awards Dinner… And then she heard, or was it just remembered hearing, his lovely voice in her mind, coaxing her to stop crying, to breathe, to think of something else, to tell him how many teeth humans have, and then how many ribs, and it had worked… again, and she was no longer convulsing with the crushing emotions, and she was in control now, and she rubbed her hand over the baby, and she tried to reassure the child inside of her, that it would be alright, somehow.

))) (((

Unfortunately, the train that William and George had run with all their might to board, planning to catch it on a series of curves in the train tracks, anticipating that it would have slowed to handle the turns, lacked even one opened train car door. Struggling through the slushy snow next to the moving train as car after car overtook them, they saw that their only chance to get on the train would be to grab a hold of the railing along the small entryway at the front-to-rear connection between two cars. They had gotten aboard only to find that they could not move forward or backward through the train cars. They were stuck, standing in the tiny space, outside in the freezing rain, as the train sped along towards Winnipeg on its nine hour route.

Not only did the abhorrent physical conditions of riding to Winnipeg this way cause them suffering and hardship, it also allowed for railguards along the route to spot the two men. Unavoidably, someone had contacted Clegg about it – and probably Armour's fanatical assassin, Graveson, as well. Thus, when William and George arrived at Ettie Weston's Coffee House, they did not arrive unnoticed. They had been followed.

Arriving at the back door of the brothel at two in the morning on a Friday, Miss Weston's place was still bustling with activity. Soaking wet and exhausted, William and George were invited in by one of the prostitutes. William informed her that Miss Weston had been expecting them, but they were a few days late. The scantily-clad woman explained that the whole establishment had been on the lookout for them, and that Miss Weston would be very glad to know they had made it. She sent another woman up to get the esteemed madam, and she had them sit near the wood stove in the kitchen and quickly brought each of them a blanket.

By the time Ettie showed up, both William and George had been… strongly encouraged by the giggling and seductive women to get out of their drenched and disgusting hobo clothing. Each of their outfits was strung out in pieces, including their underwear, all over various parts of the kitchen to dry. William and George each clung desperately to the edges of the cloth of their blankets, struggling to keep their shivering, naked bodies wrapped within the blankets while women's hands stroked and tucked and rubbed in efforts to help them, "dry off and warm up."

"Now girls," Ettie said from the entrance into the kitchen, "that one there is mine." Ettie approached and the three women surrounding William parted smoothly, switching to join the pair of women fondling George.

"Miss Weston," William said, a huge smile betraying his relief with her rescue.

"Willia…" she started to say, quickly being stopped…

"Henry," he corrected, "Henry Codrum."

Ettie paused and smiled. "Mr. Codrum," she replied, successfully fighting her urge to put her hands on him, "You had us worried."

Ettie told the women that Mr. Codrum would be staying with her, and she gave… Mr. Flowers the torturous task of choosing which of the women he would stay with. William noticed that, try as he might, George couldn't wipe the quirky smile off of his face. Giving in to the urge to chuckle, William teased, "Tough choice George."

The flabbergasted sidekick responded, "That it is sir," soon losing his attention to the vivacious wiggling and touching and even little flickers of kisses seeming to come from all around him. They were treated to food and drink while their sleeping arrangements were finalized, both William's and George's rooms needing to be evacuated of their current male co-occupants.

When William finally got upstairs to Ettie's room, he was so tired that he had to battle with himself not to fall right into her bed. He placed his backsack in a corner, reassuring himself that the ripped-out page from Armour's logbook was still safe and relatively dry inside of it, thanks to his having applied waterproofing oil to the outer surface. The two of them, with him still wrapped in the blanket, talked for a few moments. She suggested he take a warm shower, and she laid out some rather elaborate silk men's pajamas for him. She tactfully suggested that he use the special shampoo for men who have been, "roughing it," William knowing the special concoction was to help with a lice problem. Then she said she had some business to attend to downstairs but wouldn't be too long. She left him to shower and change.

Uncomfortable with the gaudy, extravagant style of the whole place, especially the pajamas, William sighed. "The warm shower sounds nice," he thought. As stiff and wearied as he was, William found that he didn't have the energy to fantasize about being with Julia while he was in the shower as he usually did. Although he regretted this as he was accustomed to the pleasure it brought him, he was also too depleted to be thrown for a loop by intrusive thoughts of the horrors and victimization he had seen, he had been through, and even he himself had perpetrated, on the pigs at least.

He emerged from the bathroom, clothed in the silk pajamas, clean and sleepy. Looking down at the bed, he fought to hold at bay his worries about being in this situation with Ettie – and with his own wife not knowing about it and being herself so worried about him. He told himself that Ettie knew he was a married man now, yet he was certain that it would be unwise to sleep in the bed with Ettie. He decided to make a place for himself to sleep on the floor. He leaned over to see if there was more than one blanket and…

There was a clicking of the key in the bedroom door behind him! It scared the daylights out of him, surging flashes of terror which were re-ignited with the all too recent experience of having Armour walk in on him while he snuck about stealing evidence from the man's files that Adomas Baltavesky had worked there. The consequences of being caught had been dire, with him being nearly killed and, once again, almost sent down the meat-processing line, this time to become packaged into Christmas Hams. Reacting with the now familiar battle between fight or flight, William jerked to turn and face the door, already reaching for the nearby lamp as a weapon.

Terrence Meyers stepped into the room, his instincts jumping to defense with the unexpected sight of a man in Ettie's room about to attack. "Murdoch!" he declared. His mind couldn't possibly go fast enough to figure this out. "What the hell was Murdoch doing in Ettie's room – in her guest pajamas!?" his brain crusaded.

"Meyers!?" William exclaimed, "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Realizing he was no longer in mortal danger, Meyers relaxed and relief settled in. "Coming to get my razor," he replied.

William had seen a man's toiletries in Ettie's bathroom, figuring the man who had had to leave so quickly had forgotten them in the rush when he had been cleared out. He saw recognition of the situation on Meyer's face, only a second before he himself grasped what was going on. Meyers was the man who had been in Ettie's room… The one who had been in Ettie's bed… The one who had been kicked out to make room for – him.

For his part, Meyers' brain was solving things quickly too. William Murdoch was the very same man, the man Ettie had called, "Will," who Ettie had spoken with on the phone a while back, while they were in bed together. Murdoch was the very same man on that phone who Meyers had sensed – that his Ettie – the woman he had had to admit to himself he had fallen in love with – that his Ettie, though he knew she would never be only his – My God, it was Murdoch who was the man she was in love with… Unbelievable! William Murdoch!

Meyers didn't have time for the raging thoughts of covetousness that followed his comprehension of all this, and yet they poured through him all the same – Murdoch had already won the one and only other woman in the world that racked his very hold on life, Murdoch had married the only other astounding woman he had ever found, besides Ettie Weston, who had tempted him to fall in love. My God, wasn't Dr. Julia Ogden good enough for this… "How is it even possible," he suddenly asked himself, "that a man as straight-laced and boring as Murdoch could possibly get two such outstanding women to fall in love with him? It just wasn't fair!"

Both men stepped back, wanting time to think. "I, uh…" William started. "Miss Weston… um, knows some of the men I… well for this case… that I'm working on. She uh, I have known her for a long time," he said.

"Obviously," Meyers said eyeing the bed, and then Murdoch in her guest pajamas. His tone betrayed his jealousy, and that made him even more perturbed. Thinking he would have the upper hand if he stuck to business, for an elite government spy trumps a lowly detective anytime, he asked, "And which "men" is it that you are looking to Miss Weston to… help you with detective?"

Challenged by the question, William acted spontaneously, which in his case tended to mean answering with the truth. "Uh… meatpackers, mostly," he said. A pang of fear, and also of guilt pounced on William, for he had remembered the whack sound of the bronze pig cracking against Jonathan Armour's head… and he worried that he might have just implicated himself in the wealthy man's murder. Trying to draw Meyers' attention away from Armour, he added, "Like Davies and Burns," hoping to keep the conversation about Canadians.

Meyers was worried now, but from a professional perspective rather than a personal one. "Perhaps Murdoch had gotten himself all messed up in this fiasco with the meat last summer…"

And William suddenly remembered that he had thought Meyers was dead!

Speaking at the same time, William asked, "Didn't you die in Pendrick's rocket?" and Meyers said, "You'd best leave this whole meat business to the spies Murdoch."

Once again the men stood facing each other silently. Meyers moved first, taking a deep breath and walking into the bathroom to get his razor and other things. "I figured Pendrick wasn't planning on dying in his rocket – there had to be a way to survive. I found the flying suit… and figured out how to eject. Ended up in Borneo… Quite a bother really," he explained.

"I see," William answered. Truth be told, he liked Meyers, even though he wouldn't trust him with a ten-foot pole – or an eleven-foot one for that matter either. He was glad to learn that the peculiar spy had not met his demise. William considered letting Meyers' comment about, 'leaving the meat-packing business to the spies,' go by without addressing it. He probably should have. That would have been the smart thing to do and he knew it, but… his emotions had gotten the best of him. He wondered if maybe… maybe Meyers, being a top spy and all, well maybe such an important man for national security would have heard if someone had killed an important American toff like Jonathan Ogden and that this murderer was now on the run to Canada. He weakened and asked, "Um, Meyers…"

Meyers stood now in the bathroom door with his arms nearly full of various toiletry items. He paused and looked directly at Murdoch.

"Have you… heard anything, um, any news about any of the American meat magnates?" William asked. He gestured towards the door, thinking he would need to help Meyers open it since his hands were so full.

The spy trouble-detector inside of Meyers had been alerted with Murdoch's question, but Meyers was well-trained and showed no sign of alarm or suspicion. "Damn," he thought, "Murdoch is tangled up in the mess from last summer! Dammit!" Meyers had not heard much of anything from the States for a while, so he would normally have answered the man's question in the negative, but he decided to gather more information before giving this away. Calmly, seemingly completely unattached to the answer, he asked, "Which man did you have in mind, Murdoch..?"

And then it hit Meyers like a brick! He wondered if Murdoch even knew?! If the cigar-smoking spy had been forced to wager a guess, he would have figured that the detective didn't know… Yes, that was his best guess, that Detective William Murdoch didn't know that one of the wealthiest, dirtiest, most slimy bastards in all of the USA, Jonathan Ogden Armour, was his very own first cousin. Suddenly he felt the surge of power in his chest, and strangely in his groin as well, for he would surely shock the man with the astounding truth that Murdoch was himself the kin of the worst, 'meat magnate,' in all the land. Oh, Meyers had observed Murdoch for years. He knew that the man was passionately opposed to wealthy, abusive men on some deep, personal level. Meyers wondered if Murdoch himself was even aware of his own strong aversion to such men. In his manipulative spy-heart, Meyers had ascertained years ago that one of the best ways to get Detective William Murdoch to do what you wanted him to do was to show him how doing so would bring a cruel, power-mongering toff down. Meyers forced himself to be tranquil, for sending this bombshell to its target clandestinely would ultimately arm it with the utmost power.

Meyers said, "I would think you would be most interested in your own kin, Murdoch…" And he watched as confusion wrinkled Murdoch's brow, loving it, feeling the glee spew throughout his veins.

"Kin?" William asked, an eyebrow arching up.

"Yes of course, your first cousin by marriage – Jonathan Ogden Armour…" Meyers said slowly, milking each syllable. "Magnificent!" he thought, "Like he got punched in the stomach."

The words landed, and sunk, and William's jaw dropped with the stun of it and the instantaneous lack of air to breathe, for William knew it was true – with his marriage to Julia he had become one of her family. And her family was full of wealthy men, and wealthy men, at least in William's opinion… wealthy men likely got wealthy at the expense of others. And now he was among them. And he could feel nothing but shame. This alteration in the way he could be in the world had just suddenly changed everything. He would be seen as such a man? William shook his head, trying to deny the truth of it, but he already knew he had failed.

And then the thoughts, memories, connections came, and he remembered that Julia and Ruby had spoken of their malicious cousin, Jonathan. Jonathan's mother was Julia's and Ruby's Aunt Malvina! She had come to their wedding! Wasn't it Armour who had sent that ostentatious Ming vase as a wedding gift – the one Julia donated to the museum!?

William's big brown eyes locked wide and burdened to Meyers' steely blue ones, with their pupils tiny and honed. William felt the sting, sensed it had been intentional.

"You're one of them Murdoch," Meyers said, digging the barb in. "You'd do just as well to ask your wife as me, I'd suggest, about any news of Jonathan Ogden Armour," he said, now walking to the door and waiting for Murdoch to open it for him. With a strut, Meyers left.

Irritated, William pulled a pillow and a blanket down onto the floor from Ettie's bed and turned out the light. He only hoped his exhaustion would lend him to sleep. Nestling down on top of the plush blanket, pulling one side up over himself for covers, he noted that the silk fabric of the pajamas felt surprisingly sumptuous. The world was such a strange place, he drifted off thinking… full of kith and kin and rivals and foes, and the boundaries between them so often got blurred… and he'd almost killed, for all he knew maybe he had actually killed, his own cousin… and for that matter, his own cousin had almost killed him. And he wondered, right before the nothingness surrounded him, how it could be that we are all one and the same in the end.

Author's note:

Scientific understanding of contemporary genetics and sex chromosomes are quite different today than what Julia would have encountered when reading about it in 1904. Now we know that men have the same number of chromosomes as women, but that their Y-chromosome is much, much smaller than their X-chromosome. This is why scientists at the turn of the century saw the number of chromosomes as being a likely difference between the sexes. Fortunately for this story, the detection of a different number of chromosomes in the blood, as opposed to a significantly different size of one of the chromosomes in the blood would lead to the same, correct, gender identification. Thus I believe that Dr. Julia Ogden could have used the tests I described to identify the gender of an individual who had left a blood sample at a crime scene.