by Lisa Black
“Exactly. Though that wouldn’t be often. You might also have men who would be laid off from one railway and picked up by another, so they might have had steady work in the area, but with a variety of companies. On top of that, so many of those railway companies don’t exist today…in fact practically none of them do. Somewhere in here we have a list of defunct U.S. railroad companies, and there’s at least two thousand. Around the turn of the century they all began to merge and combine until now there’s CSX and Norfolk Southern and a few others.”
She sighed. “Impossible, in other words.”
“Pretty much, yes.” He seemed disappointed to have disappointed her.
“Let’s go at it this way. What sort of job would a man have with the railroad that would entail traveling back and forth between New Castle, Pennsylvania, and Cleveland?”
He sat down at the table, resting his chin in one hand. “Brakeman, fireman, the engineer. Railroad police—the bums called them bulls.”
“Bulls.” James had included that word in his list, right under another notation about the railroad.
“Conductor—they had conductors on freight trains, too, not just the passenger rails. If you’re talking a passenger train with dining and sleeping cars, then you have porters, maids, cooks, waiters, and bartenders.”
She sank into a chair across from him. “On every train?”
“Every train.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Your next question will be which trains ran between New Castle and Cleveland, right?”
“Right.”
“Hundreds. Freight, passengers…even by 1935 there would have been cars belonging to fifty different companies. That’s why the Terminal Tower was originally called Union Terminal—a union station mean that the trains were not all from the same railroad. Anyway, yes, New Castle was a hub. Railways from all the eastern states went through there.”
“How many originated in New Castle? I mean, were there any railroads that ran only from New Castle to Cleveland and back again?”
“I’ll see if I can find some references, but it’s not likely that records would exist on a company that small. Most railways went at least to Pittsburgh, beyond New Castle, like the Alliance and Northern and the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. But there’s something else.”
She looked into his blue eyes and waited.
“Railway workers weren’t like stewardesses or business travelers; more like commuters. A conductor or brakeman might have made the run to New Castle on a daily basis, but they didn’t stay there overnight or over the weekend or anything like that. The train would be there long enough to unload and load back up and then they’d be heading back to Cleveland. For example, one of the many jobs my father had was brakeman on the Trenton branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He went across Pennsylvania every day, from Glenloch to Morrisville and back again, and would still be home in time for dinner.”
Her shoulders sank as she saw what he meant. No time for a Cleveland worker to be hanging out in New Castle killing people. “They didn’t have layovers?”
“Only as long as it took to unload and load, which could be hours, sure. But the workers had to work, not sit around idle.”
She tried another theory. “What about railroad employees who didn’t work on the moving trains?”
“Sure…the yardmaster, who controlled which cars were coupled to which trains…baggage handlers, station agents, an operator to work the telegraph. Section hands—those were the men who maintained the tracks. A dispatcher, mechanics, and welders.”
“Could a worker hitch a ride on the company’s train, like sort of a professional courtesy? Like I’m guessing pilots could let flight attendants hop a ride from one city to another if the plane had an empty seat…at least before 9/11.”
“I don’t really know, but I’m sure they did. Depending on whom you were buddies with, you could probably ride in the coal car or even the engine or just an empty seat. That would be easier on a train than any other form of transport because there are so many areas available. The engineer and fireman are all the way at the front of the train and the brakeman and conductor are in the very last car, the caboose. A person hitching a ride probably wouldn’t even have to work for that particular railway company…as you said, a professional courtesy. Especially for the higher-up positions in the company. But it would have to be someone who fit that criterion, not just some pal who didn’t want to pay for a ticket. It would have been too easy to lose a job over something like that, and especially in the 1930s…”
“People couldn’t afford to lose their jobs.”
“Exactly.”
They were silent for a moment, contemplating the various possibilities, as her optimism dispersed like dust motes in the sunlight. Narrowing the cast of suspects to one industry had not helped, not in an industry as extensive and varied as railroads.
Corliss put both his hands on the table, fingers loosely interlaced. “Then there could be employees who didn’t even work for the railroad. Mail cars had postal employees aboard each one, because they would spend the trip sorting the mail.”
She found that interesting. “Multitasking.”
“Exactly. So perhaps your killer did not work for the railroad but rode it?”
“And stayed overnight?”
“The mail carriers would not have, true, but traveling salesmen were common at the time. I’m sure business travel did not occur as often then as now, particularly during the Depression, but surely larger companies with offices in different cities sent employees back and forth.”
“So I need to find an organization that had branches in both Cleveland and New Castle.”
“One that still has employee records from seventy-five years ago.”
Now she rested her chin on one hand, shifting her bottom on the hard wooden chair. Every cop in the city had worked on the Torso killings when they occurred. Surely many of them had to have had the same ideas she did, back when all the corroborating information could be easily obtained. Yet they had not found the killer, so how on earth could she? Especially from three-quarters of a century away?
Not that she would rest until she’d exhausted every possibility, of course. When you started something, you finished it. Her grandfather had been very clear on that.
“You think it’s my father, don’t you?”
She blinked in surprise, having hoped this conclusion would escape his notice. Then she would not have to feel guilty about picking his brain while placing his ancestor near the top of her short list of suspects. But Arthur Corliss had spent his life in the rail yards and a dead cop had been found in his building, and his son was not a stupid man.
“Not necessarily. He owned 4950 Pullman, and he owned the railroad. But as you’ve just pointed out, so many people and professions interacted daily with the train system without being part of it. Then there were the other tenants in your father’s building, who could fit our criteria. Maybe that firm of architects had a branch in New Castle—after all, who better than architects to build a secret room into their office—or perhaps it’s as simple as the fact that one of them grew up in Pennsylvania and went back now and then to visit.”
This did not cheer Corliss much. “I hope you can find out, after all this time. I hate seeing my family name in the papers.”
“That won’t happen through me,” she said in the same sober manner, reflecting that he and Frank saw eye to eye on that subject.
“I wasn’t worried about you. That Mr. Jablonski has been hovering around me like some kind of vampire bat ever since you found those two bodies on the hillside. He calls, shows up on my doorstep, and leaves messages to ask about my father and the building on Pullman. No matter how much I try to explain, he doesn’t understand my father—and neither do you. He liked human beings, and they liked him. He had a great compassion for people from all walks of life—more, frankly, than I do. He felt lucky to have wealth at a time when some had lost everything they owned, to be well fed while others literally starved to death, to be
clean when they lived in cardboard shacks.” He covered her hand with his fingers and looked into her eyes. “He never renounced a person until they failed to live up to their humanity. I know this. So you see, Ms. MacLean, it’s not merely an intellectual exercise to me.”
Theresa tried to extricate her fingers, found them too well pinned, and thought: This is why I could never be a cop. How did they look into the eyes of a mother who thought her son to be pure and sweet and tell her that he had raped a schoolmate? Or prove to a husband that his wife had emptied their bank accounts of her own free will, to run away with her lover? Tell a small child that their parent valued their drugs more than their offspring?
That perhaps Edward Corliss had seen only the side of his father that he wanted to see, or had been permitted to see. Ted Bundy had been quite the charmer as well. “I wouldn’t—”
A third voice interrupted her. “Finding everything you need?”
She jumped. William Van Horn stood in the doorway, staring at their commingled hands. The sneer on his thin face seemed as irrational as it did obnoxious, and yet it made her heart thud as if she’d been caught chewing gum in study hall.
“Yes, thank you,” she said.
Edward Corliss removed his hand.
When Van Horn dematerialized from the doorway, she leaned across the table and whispered, “What is up with that guy, anyway? Will this become an election scandal, you caught canoodling with a nonmember?”
He laughed, the air exploding out of his nose before he could stop it. “And in the library, no less. No, no particular reason for William to look so superior. He just always does. It doesn’t win him any friends, but he enjoys his own company so much he doesn’t mind.”
Now she snickered. “Then why is he president?”
“Because his great-uncle was the last CEO of the Pennsylvania Railroad and left all the artifacts of its one-hundred-and-twenty-four-year reign to William. He parcels these out to the society a few at a time, and only as a loan. The pressure gauge in the lobby and the photograph of the Congressional Express are examples.”
“Oh.”
She must have worn a blank expression, because he went on. “The Pennsylvania Railroad was a behemoth. It absorbed eight hundred smaller companies during its reign.”
“It’s not operating now?”
“The lines were eventually divided between Conrail and Amtrak. Twenty years later, Conrail’s lines were divided between CSX and Norfolk Southern. It’s a heartbreaking business, now that you mention it.”
“You said your father worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad?”
“Yes, but as a lowly brakeman, not CEO. I have no claim to William’s collection, so he will continue to ransom them for social acceptance. Ah well, one does what one must, I suppose.”
Theresa shook her head, couldn’t think of anything else to ask, and thanked him for a most interesting afternoon. “Thank you for teaching me how to hop trains. Not that I intend to make a habit of it.”
“You’re very welcome. And I will continue to poke around my house to see if anything has survived from my father’s business concerns. I doubt I’ll find any items of interest, but I’ll let you know if I do.” He patted her arm as they left the building, but she had the distinct impression that he would carefully weigh the significance of any such item beforehand. If it could possibly implicate his father she might never hear of it.
But she couldn’t do anything about that, and couldn’t blame him. Who would want the world to know they were the progeny of a serial killer?
She thanked him for his time and got into her car. As she pulled out of the parking lot she caught his image in the rearview mirror, watching her leave, suddenly looking his age as his shoulders drooped and he frowned. The vitality he’d shown earlier seemed to fade as if his mind now followed tracks it did not care to travel.
CHAPTER 26
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26
1936
James had not forgotten the two headless men on Jackass Hill, but he no longer carried the blue coat or its pills around with him. After he and Walter exhausted all possibilities for identification, they had turned it over to the identification unit for scientific analysis. Then they personally drove fifteen possible relatives of the unidentified man to the morgue to view the decapitated victim. The staff there would drape a sheet over the ragged bottom of the neck to spare the men, but to James the sharp falling-off of the cloth where a body should have been seemed worse, the situation made even more bizarre by trying to make the gore presentable. And they brought only men there, even if there were mothers or wives who might more easily have recognized the missing person. The morgue was no place for a lady.
Some of those men had fainted straightaway, and all insisted that the dead…thing did not resemble their missing relative or friend or neighbor. It did not help that the body’s lack of not only clothing but genitalia convinced every adult in the city that the murderer had to be extremely perverted, and what would their friend or relative or neighbor have been doing in the company of any such man? James worried that someone might recognize the man and simply refuse to admit it.
Officers probed the background of the first victim—identified as petty criminal Edward Andrassy—and his family, friends, and habits, but every lead petered out without revealing the killer.
James kept up with the investigation, pestering the main detectives with questions and carefully absorbing any drop of office scuttlebutt, but he knew that the odds of finding a solution grew smaller with every passing day. He and Walter had plenty of burglaries, assaults, and domestic complaints to keep them occupied; at home Helen did not abandon her quest for new dishes and baby John caught a cold. James consoled himself that the killer had been a hobo who had sensibly hopped a boxcar and left town even as the bodies cooled on the hillside. That way it did not keep him up at night, despite the savagery of the murders. Every cop knew there were ones you weren’t going to solve, and you either made your peace with that or you got into another line of work. James wasn’t even the lead investigator, anyway, just a rookie gold shield who didn’t take bribes and therefore wasn’t trusted.
So he left the two victims to the angels and continued to plod through his daily life. He never expected there would be more.
James had that Sunday off, which had dawned crisp and very cold. Frost covered the windows and Helen didn’t even consider going to church services and exposing baby John to the winter air. James had been awake most of the night, lying on his side, facing the bassinet, listening to each breath moving in and out of his son’s tiny chest. The cold—little more than a case of the sniffles—did not truly threaten the baby but still he worried, and besides, concentrating on John gave both James and Helen a break from thinking about each other.
Twelve noon found him at the kitchen table eating a portion of soup, thin but hot, when someone pounded on the door. James opened it to a gust of unheated air and his partner, who began speaking immediately. “We got another one, Jimmy me boy, and I’m told it makes those two bums on the hill look like a school picnic. It’s the most disgusting—good afternoon, Helen. How is little John coming along?”
James felt the soup turn to ice in his stomach. “You mean—another body like—”
“But it’s Sunday, and you’re not even scheduled,” Helen protested. “You can’t have to work on a Sunday.”
Walter grimaced along with her. “I guess we never sleep, just like those Pinkertons. But we ain’t got a choice—every cop in the city will be working this one.”
James got his coat and muffler as his wife repeated, “But it’s Sunday. I thought we could go out this evening, leave John with Mrs. Tsolt downstairs and see a show—”
The winter months were hard on her, confined to these four walls with only a coughing baby for company. “I’m sorry, honey. But there’s nothing I can do.”
Her scowl indicated that she found him less than credible.
“You’ll have to come over for dinner real soon, He
len,” Walter put in. “The missus has been asking about you.”
Walter was a nice guy in a lot of ways, or maybe he found Helen his biggest ally in the attempt to get James around to the right way of thinking. In either case, her scowl lessened, and after one more check on the sleeping baby, James went with his partner into the icy streets.
The temperature had been arrested well below freezing; he could tell from the way his nostrils stuck together when he inhaled. Between that and its being Sunday, the roadways were largely empty. Their department-assigned car spluttered a bit before it would start.
“Only one this time?” James asked.
“Yep. And in more pieces than the first two. He didn’t only remove the head, he separated the body at the waist and cut off the arms and legs.”
Bile rose at the back of James’s throat and he swallowed hard, then told himself it was only the exhaust fumes seeping into the closed vehicle. “Where?”
“In an alley at East Twentieth and Central.”
“Who found him?”
“Her,” Walter said, correcting him. “This one’s a woman.”
This surprised James more than the body being found on a city street instead of an isolated hillside. He had been assuming the killer was some kind of sodomite, but perhaps his tastes were more omnivorous. Or he had tried to be clever and mutilated the first two bodies to make it look like a sexual thing so that the cops would waste their time chasing perverts.
Or whoever murdered this woman was a different person entirely and they had two killers running around out there, outdoing each other in savagery.
James didn’t know which option would be better.
They passed East Thirtieth, tires sliding over the occasional patches of ice. Walter filled him in. “Officially, the reporting party is a dog. Barked for hours until some Negro woman got tired of it and goes to shoo him, and finds two half-bushel baskets with burlap sacks on top of them. She peeks under the burlap and sees what looks like meat wrapped in newspapers. Now this woman figures it belongs to a meat market around the corner so she goes over there and tells the owner there’s some hams sitting out in the alley. He thinks he’s been robbed, goes rushing out to investigate, and gets the surprise of his life.”