Trail of Blood

by Lisa Black

  She had observed the clothing first under ultraviolet light to see if any foreign fibers glowed or any defects—holes—showed up. Then she changed to infrared, which washed out blood and decomposition fluid and illuminated only the material underneath. Nothing of any interest.

  She switched to the trousers, and what she saw surprised her.

  She went next door to the photography department and fetched Zoe, explaining, “I need to do pictures as I go. This material is so fragile I’m afraid I’ll make a hole by touching it.”

  The photographer sighed deeply. Then she made several trips between the two rooms, setting up two lights, a tripod for the camera, the red filter, and the remote shutter release, and sighed again. Infrared photography had to be done in the dark with an open shutter, so the subject—the pants—had to be completely still. Easy enough, but so did the camera. On top of that the camera had to be focused before the red filter blocked the view and then the filter added to the lens without disturbing the adjustment. “What is it that you’re trying to get?”

  “Fouling,” Theresa told her. “There’s a little hole just under his waist-band, which I thought had just been the belt loop tearing away from the pants, but I saw what might be an oval of fouling around it. The killer might have shot him at close range with the barrel angled upward so the bullet traveled up the internal organs; that would explain why the anthropologist didn’t find any marks on the bones. When we’re done I’ll do a Griess test, which will probably dissolve what’s left of these pants.” She had hoped, against all probability, that James Miller had had a peaceful death. No such luck.

  “Gunpowder will show up after a hundred years?”

  “It’s only been seventy-four, but I don’t really know. I’ve never tested clothing more than a few days postmortem, that I can think of. I’ll have to hope that nitrites don’t decompose.”

  “People do,” Zoe warned her.

  “Thanks for the news flash.”

  “I mean, I was just thinking…is that hostage negotiator still calling you?”

  “I believe his interest has decomposed.” He would never be able to take anything as seriously as she took everything, and his hot and cold behavior must have been his way of telling her so. The irony of a man who made his living getting people to express their feelings not being able to express his own did not appeal to her. Theresa did not care for irony, which was too often cruel.

  Zoe tested the shutter-release cable. “Are you sure? He’s been asking you out for, what, a year?”

  Theresa didn’t glare at the photographer as she had at Don. Women were supposed to talk about these things, at least according to TV commercials, and she’d grown tired of talking to herself about it. “Chris Cavanaugh never wanted to date me. He wanted to sleep with me. God knows why.”

  “Yeah, that’s such a mystery. Can you get the lights?”

  Theresa flicked the switch, plunging the room into darkness. The dark brown trousers sat illuminated under a ghostly circle of red light. The body fluid stains receded into the cloth and the sooty area around the tiny hole got darker.

  “That could be fouling,” Zoe said.

  Theresa hesitated to call it. “It could be, but I’ve never worked on something so old before. Why would he be shot? None of the Torso victims were shot.”

  “Why is there a problem if you make it with the hostage negotiator?”

  “But then the way he left the body—that wasn’t the Torso killer’s MO either.”

  The photographer persisted. “You aren’t married. Neither is he.”

  “Because then I’d be one more notch on Cavanaugh’s bedpost or gun belt or whatever analogy would be appropriate to him, me and the city manager’s daughter and whomever else he winks at. And then he’d move on to the next negotiation. It’s what he does.”

  Zoe depressed the plunger on the remote cable. “So the surest way to get rid of him would be to hop in the sack? And the best way to keep him coming around is to stay out of it?”

  And there Theresa stood, caught in the net of her own logic.

  “Um—yeah.”

  Zoe advanced the film, depressed the plunger again. “That is a pickle.”

  The door to the hallway cracked open, which let in the whining sound of a bone saw from down the hallway. Christine Johnson’s exquisite face poked in.

  “Hey,” the pathologist told Theresa, “did you know your guy was shot?”

  CHAPTER 7

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6

  PRESENT DAY

  “Unfortunately,” Theresa told her cousin, “that counts against it being one of the Torso Murders.”

  He stopped at a red light on Lakeshore, giving her a good view of the stadium. She still missed the old one, that oversize and clunky edifice that had housed both football and baseball fans for sixty-four years. The modern structure had crystal video screens and more bathrooms but held no memories for her.

  “That’s unfortunate?” Frank asked.

  “If James Miller has nothing to do with the Torso killings, then his murder exists only in the little vacuum we found him in. All attendant information has almost certainly been lost over the years.”

  “We may never find answers, then,” Frank said.

  “We will,” Theresa said insistently. “I will. But if he was a Torso victim it would have given us a place to start—we’d have had information from the other murders to consider. And it certainly would have made things interesting. Think how pleased Grandpa would be that we got to work on the case.”

  The light changed. Frank said, “Arthur Corliss sold his building in 1959, died ten years later. We don’t know what happened to the wife, but they had one child, Edward Corliss, born 1950.”

  “And that’s who we’re going to see?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where’s your partner?”

  “Sanchez is taking the construction crew through their statements again, trying to figure out which unit our murder room belonged to. She might get somewhere if those guys can keep their eyes off her chest, but that will be difficult. The lavatories were the only concession to modernity; each unit added closets and storage space piecemeal over the years until the interior walls were jumbled. The fire took some walls down and the crew did the rest, but they weren’t paying much attention to what partitions were where, not with Councilman Greer breathing down their necks. He’s in some kind of hurry for this project to go through. He says it’s because the grant will expire, but he’s probably got a kickback check waiting on a completion date.”

  “They knocked down half the walls to that little room without noticing the table?”

  “They saw it, but between the dim light and the plaster dust covering their goggles they couldn’t see what was on it until they were close enough to touch.”

  “The building is still secured, right?” Theresa asked.

  “For the moment,” Frank said. “The chief’s already gotten a call from Greer. The councilman really has a hard-on for the demolition and is already laying down threats of unfavorable voting come budget time. Happily for us, the chief hates the good councilman’s guts. Something about a round of buyouts in the late nineties.”

  “Do you have a photograph of him? Miller?” she asked.

  “I think we’re past the point of a visual ID, cuz.”

  “Very funny. I’d just like to see what he looked like. Was he married? Any children?”

  “Wife named Helen, don’t know about kids. I can’t tell if anyone investigated her. He wasn’t considered a homicide, just a deserter.”

  “Which he wasn’t.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  Frank chuckled and hit the gas, and the car shot from the I-90 on-ramp to a precarious position between a tractor-trailer and a school bus in less time than even Ford advertisements predicted.

  Theresa stifled a gasp, then averted her eyes from the how’s my driving? sign nearly touching their front bumper by glancing into the back
-seat. “Why did you bring the stalker along?”

  “I’m not a stalker,” Brandon Jablonski said mildly. “What was that you said about your grandfather?”

  “Relax, I’m kidding.” At least she thought she was. He didn’t look at all sinister in the cold light of day; in fact he seemed to be all lean determination and stubbled good looks, notebook at the ready. “It’s just that I’ve never seen my cousin bring a reporter to an interview before.”

  Frank made a face he didn’t bother to hide from the rearview mirror. “The chief—the police chief, not the homicide chief—considered this a good PR opportunity. After the media ran the story of James Miller and his Torso killer–like death, we’ve been deluged with calls, so he figures we should use it to make us look good.”

  “Bringing a reporter along on an investigation.”

  “The chief also figured that since it’s the coldest case Cleveland PD’s ever worked, the killer has to be as dead as his victim, so publicity won’t cause a problem at a trial.”

  “I don’t know. Some people can be pretty hardy.”

  Every time Theresa glanced at the rearview mirror she met Brandon Jablonski’s warm brown eyes, as if they shared some secret joke—probably how he thought of scaring the crap out of her in the parking lot last night. Now he said, “What would you do if you find the guy and he’s ninety-six years old?”

  “Arrest him,” Frank said.

  “Really,” the man said thoughtfully.

  “Yep.”

  Theresa stole another look at Brandon Jablonski. “PR,” she said.

  “Sometimes I swear your chief and Leo must be twins. They never miss a trick.”

  “They could be, since that’s why you’re here as well as Mr. Jablonski.”

  “What?”

  They continued through Lakewood, crossed the Rocky River, and took a right. “The chief likes the cousins angle.”

  Jablonski added, “The combination of police work and forensic science, represented by two members of the same family, tackling Cleveland’s toughest case. You can’t make up stuff better than that.”

  Frank made that face again. “He thinks it’s cute.”

  “Well, we are sort of cute,” she admitted.

  “Especially you.” Jablonski grinned. “What was that you said about your grandfather?”

  Theresa hesitated. Speaking of her family out of pride was one thing, speaking of it for possible publication quite another. But she had opened the door, so she said, “Our grandfather and great-grandfather were cops.”

  “Really,” Jablonski said. “Did they teach you about the Torso Murders?”

  “Not really. They occurred before Grandpa Joe’s time, and our great-grandfather was a juvenile probation officer, more of a social worker. He met Eliot Ness, though.”

  “Yeah?” The researcher leaned forward, resting his elbows on the back of the front seat like a restless teenager. “The great man himself?”

  “Yeah, when Ness founded the Cleveland Boys’ Town. Great-grandpa didn’t care for him, though. Too dapper.”

  Jablonski frowned. “Dapper?”

  “Something of a ladies’ man.”

  “Oh.” She could feel his breath on her neck. “Am I dapper?”

  “I wouldn’t have any idea. And shouldn’t you be wearing a seat belt?”

  He sat back, lips curved. “Still, that’s intriguing. Can the current generation solve the crime that stumped their forefathers?”

  Frank went on as if neither she nor Jablonski had spoken. “Also, you see bodies cut open every day. We need to figure out who installed a dismemberment chamber in that building, and you’ll probably know what to look for more than I will. Like that drain hole.”

  Jablonski promptly returned his face to the back of the front seat. “You think that was how he got rid of the blood? They always theorized that the Torso killer had to have medical or surgical—or even pathology—training, since he decapitated his victims so neatly.”

  Theresa didn’t ask how he knew the details of the table in the building, only said, “Yeah, but I don’t buy that. One summer—I call it the Summer of the Stabbings—”

  Her cousin gave a small groan. “Not this story again.”

  “One each, in June, July, and August, I had a guy come in dead of a single stab wound. Big guys, healthy guys. All three hit in the upper left shoulder, because when a killer is right-handed and faces their victim for their Norman Bates moment, they stab the left shoulder. The knife went down behind the rib cage and nicked the heart. All three died before help could arrive, even though at least one had another person present who promptly called 911. All three had been stabbed by their girlfriends or ex-girlfriends.”

  Frank tried to cut in. “Now—”

  She didn’t let him. “Now, these girls weren’t med students, and they certainly weren’t doctors.”

  “Still,” Jablonski said, his attention pinging back and forth between them, “it can’t be easy to cut someone’s head off. So how do you learn to do it without nicking a bone if you’re not a doctor or a surgeon, or a butcher?”

  “Same way you learn anything else. Practice. And,” she added, “he practiced a lot.”

  “We’re here,” Frank said.

  Edward Corliss lived in the smallest house on a very expensive street, with nothing on the other side of the structure but Lake Erie. The home had stained glass in the front door, marble steps, and a modest but expensive dark sedan in the drive, but Theresa considered its prettiest asset to be the sweeping maple tree in the center of the yard, its leaves ablaze in red, yellow, and orange. The private cocoon of fall foliage nearly hid the neighboring drives, but she could just glimpse a man in a white lab coat stepping into a Mercedes.

  She stepped out of the car and sucked in the smell of autumn.

  Frank walked beside her and Jablonski took up the rear, following too closely for comfort. She sidled over a bit, uncomfortable with a man both flirtatious and too young for her. She had not encountered one before this. Most men flirting with her these days were in the midst of retirement planning.

  Their peal went unanswered. Frank, never one for patience, suggested they look around back.

  “It might take him a while to get to the door,” Theresa pointed out. How old is he?”

  Already walking away, Frank said, “Sixty-one. And he sounded hearty enough on the phone.”

  Theresa followed her cousin and Jablonski followed her. “Tell me about your grandfather. He was a cop?”

  “Forty years,” she replied. Ivy covered the wall on her left and shrubs lined up to her right. She brushed her hand along their piney branches as they filed to the back. There, the blue expanse of water with the sun reflecting from each wave both greeted and blinded them.

  A single dock jutted from the shore, with a small sailboat tied up at its end. Frank had been right; a man made his surefooted way along the bow as he wrapped the sail—though Theresa doubted this could be Edward Corliss. Perhaps he had a son.

  When Frank reached the dock and kept going, Theresa followed eagerly. Like any Clevelander, she never needed an excuse to go near the water and breathe in that familiar scent of gasoline and dead fish that meant family vacations on Catawba Island and that feeling of peace a body of water always conferred.

  The man on the boat heard them and turned. Wearing a plain burgundy sweatshirt and jeans, he had blue eyes and silvered hair and appeared delighted to see them. “Hello! You must be the detectives.”

  He leapt to the dock, causing only a minor tremor in the wood, and Frank completed the introductions. Edward Corliss shook hands with each of them, pressing Theresa’s gently in his firm fingers. He had an easy smile and the trimness of one who had long ago embraced whole wheat tortillas.

  “I’m sorry if you waited at the front—I didn’t expect you to get here so quickly.”

  “Are you getting it ready for winter?” Frank asked, nodding at the sailboat.

  “No! It’s too early yet. I don’t pu
t Jenny away until the lake threatens to freeze. Let’s go inside and see if I can help you, shall we?”

  He took up the rear, guiding them off the dock like a good captain, and they followed him inside. Theresa ran her fingers through her hair to repair whatever damage the lake’s gusty winds had done to it.

  Corliss ushered them into an oversize front room done up in russet and gold tones, the colors splashing against the white walls. Windows made up most of the north wall, from which every whitecap on the lake could be seen in frothing clarity. Scarlet carpeting, jacquard sofas, a vast fireplace.

  And trains. Lots of trains.

  They collected on every surface, end tables, the high mantel, and circled the room on three high shelves. A mahogany table that could have seated twelve had been given over to a mountaintop village with miniature houses and farms and more train tracks than any real mountaintop village would have. Two engines with several cars wound through it, occasionally passing but not colliding with each other. She swore she could smell the evergreens.

  “Wow,” Theresa said.

  “Yes,” Corliss said. “I went a little overboard in here. One of the hazards of bachelorhood, not having a wife to stop me. But you’re here about my father’s building, right? Would you like to sit down?”

  Theresa would rather have studied the snow-covered village and its trains but followed her cousin to the crisp settee. Jablonski perched on the edge of a wing chair, pulling a tiny camcorder from one of his two camera bags. He clicked it on and aimed it at Theresa.

  “Your father constructed the building at 4950 Pullman?” Frank began.

  “Yes. I mean, he contracted for it to be built.”

  “Did he have any other buildings in Cleveland?”

  “No, no. My father was a railroad man; he only dabbled in landlord-ship that one time, and only as an investment. My father—his name was Arthur—”

  “We know.”

  Corliss spoke of the large train systems with the same enthusiasm he showed for his miniature ones. “He started working in the rail yards as a boy, moving through every job they had, from loading to shoveling coal to coupler, eventually to detective—like you—with a small railroad company in Pennsylvania. By the time the line’s owner began to fall into ill health, my father had enough saved to buy the line. You see, around the turn of the century there were hundreds of small, limited-span lines. In the 1910s and ’20s, bigger companies began to buy up the mom-and-pop lines and turned into conglomerates like the Pennsylvania Railroad and the B&O.”