by Lisa Black
“Two crane operators for the railroad. Every cop in the city looking for this bum’s body, and a couple of joes stumble on it.”
They reached the valley floor. Everything reminded James of the first two victims, the knots of cops standing around watching other cops beat the weeds for clues, a police captain smoking a cigar as if he wanted to punish it. The cluster around the dead, naked flesh on the ground. The rumble of a train along the tracks, warning them to stay out of its way. Everything except the air, which had the turgid feel of summer rather than the crisp breeze of early fall.
They approached the body and its attendants.
The dead young man, minus his head, lay on his side, tucked under the branches of a sumac bush as if this would provide enough cover to make it blend in with the surroundings. But if the killer had wanted to conceal the body, why not tuck it farther into the growth on the hill or dump it in the river? Why leave it practically on the doorstep of the railroad police for the Nickel Plate line? But then, if he wanted to mock the police, why not make it even more showy?
For the first time—and it startled him to recognize it for the first time—James wondered if the killer was insane. Naturally anyone who would do such a thing must be, his mind instinctively responded, but James had met a few men during the war who had illustrated the different shades of insanity. They had not given any sign of imbalance or shell shock and could converse and function and obey orders like any other soldier. Only their eyes gave them away, the slight smile that lingered around their lips when they drove a bayonet in more times than necessary. They enjoyed killing.
Walter and most men would chalk that up to evil, but James did not believe in evil. It smacked of the supernatural and seemed too easy an excuse for grown men who should take responsibility for their actions.
But if they weren’t evil and they weren’t insane, what were they?
Dangerous, he thought. That’s all I need to know.
He and Walter weaseled past the gawking cops to see. Walter said, as if he hadn’t quite caught his breath, “At least he left this one his balls.”
“Look at those tattoos.” The victim had colored patterns on both his arms and his legs—a heart, anchors, flags, the names Helen and Paul on one forearm, and a butterfly on the left shoulder.
“Sailor,” Walter announced. “Who else would have all of those? He’s got two anchors—but what the hell kind of man gets a butterfly? Pervert.”
“Never know,” said a plainclothes officer crouched by the feet, picking debris off the skin with a pair of tweezers. James recognized him as one of the Bertillon unit guys, the one who had made the photo of the coat for him. “It could have been his nickname for his girl or something.”
“Only a whore would have a nickname like that.”
“He’s a sailor. What other kind of dame would he know? She’s probably some island floozy, dances in a grass skirt.” The cop paused in his work for a moment, apparently to enjoy the vision of a tropical paradise, with a sandy beach and coconuts and no dead bodies. “This is my day off. I had tickets to see the Indians play in that new stadium. They say it’s really nice.”
Walter snorted his lack of sympathy. “And I still say this guy’s a pervert. Otherwise, how did he fall in with our Butcher?”
A uniformed guy James didn’t recognize called to his partner, and Walter toddled off. As this happened a couple times per day, James didn’t pay any attention to it. Instead, he asked the Bertillon unit cop, “Find anything?”
“Grass, weeds. A few dog hairs. Two black hairs that could be our killer’s or could be his. We’ll have to take a closer look.”
“No other injuries? Besides…the—”
“Besides his head being cut off, you mean? No. He is otherwise un molested. It only took a few slices, too, from the looks of it. This madman knows what he’s doing.”
“No ID yet?”
“No. Kind of odd. Nice-looking young guy, you’d figure somebody would miss him—at least that’s what we thought yesterday when we only had the head. But with all these tattoos…if he’s a sailor, he could have blown into town from anywhere. I have high hopes for the fingerprints, too.” James noticed that the tips of the fingers had been blackened with ink. “But it’s been an hour, so if he turned up in our files nobody’s told me yet.”
“Was this body here when they found the head?” James asked.
The Bertillon guy winced. “You can bet that’s the question of the hour. Anyone in this gully yesterday is going to be called on the carpet and probably flogged for not searching past the bridge. We’re only about a thousand feet away.”
“Maybe it wasn’t here. He hung on to the guy found with Andrassy for a few days before dumping them both. He could have kept the body a day longer than the head.”
The cop picked another twig from the calf and dropped it into a jar before jerking his head to the east. “Even if he did, they should have found that.”
James went to investigate. That turned out to be an irregular oval of dried, dark red liquid in the dirt and leaves, approximately two feet by three. The density appeared to vary, heavier where the dirt had more clay than loam, lighter over loose soil. The edges broke up here and there, as if some object had been dragged from the perimeter. Of the weeds that remained firm and upright with their cells brought back to life by spring, most had been painted with the stuff.
Walter joined him. “Not tough to guess what that is.”
“But why is it here?”
“Gee, you think the headless corpse over there might have something to do with it?”
“But it’s not like him, not tidy. He didn’t keep that young man’s blood in a bucket and pour it here. He killed him here, spraying all the weeds, see? The other bodies—”
“The other ones were killed somewhere else and then dumped.” Walter turned as he surveyed the run. Trees on both sides hid the gully from the view of any nearby houses. “At night there would be no one here to see him.”
“Except the trains.”
“Yeah, your damn trains. All he’d have to do is drop down when one came by. It would be pitch dark out here.”
“Exactly, so why?”
“There you go with the why again. Because he’s a crazy pervert, that’s why.”
“I mean, why outdoors? Why not in his lair or workshop or wherever he holed up to kill the first three?”
They took a few steps back to the corpse. Walter said, “This stiff is a young guy, got a decent enough shape. Maybe he had second thoughts about his new friend.”
“He tried to get away, and the guy had to work fast. That’s possible,” James admitted, “supposing the killer had the weapon along with him, and probably did. But I’m wondering if he did it outdoors because he had no choice.”
Walter squinted at him in the sunlight. Behind him, the men from the morgue spread out a clean sheet next to the body. The Bertillon unit guy got ready to topple the body over onto it.
“Maybe he had to work outdoors because he lost his workspace. He’s been kicked out of his house or his wife or some out-of-town guests arrived unexpectedly. Or his office had been closed for repairs because they had a fire.” He told Walter about the notice in the paper.
“So who’s your suspect? Corliss or Odessa?”
“Either. Both. The victims have been healthy men and one large woman. They’d be a lot easier to handle with a partner.”
Walter shook his head. “Just because we’ve run across them, Jimmy, don’t mean either one is the guy. Every cop in this city has a suspect in mind and good reasons to pick them up.”
James looked down at the cop by the corpse, now plucking evidence off the side the body had been lying on. “What color are those dog hairs?”
“Yellow. Why?”
James raised his eyebrows at Walter. “Corliss’s dog is yellow.”
“So’s mine, Jimmy. And Odessa only likes good-looking girls and Corliss is as milquetoast as any guy I’ve ever met. Face it—you ain’
t going to necessarily be the hero here.”
James’s face burned from more than the sunlight. “That’s not the point.”
“Yeah, it kinda is. Look, we’ll let the captain know about your little theory, and we’ll go around and talk to that doctor again. But right now we’ve got a job to do.” He nodded his head to the side and walked out of earshot of the men around the body. James followed with a sinking heart. They’d played this little drama before. The sooner they got it over with, the sooner he could get back to work.
Over Walter’s shoulder, James watched the Bertillon unit guy put the dog hairs in an envelope. He wondered if they needed another man in that unit. Did they feel pressure due to their access to the evidence? How many hairs and coat buttons and shoeprints got “lost” on the way to the lab? Or did their scientific world stay removed from that of the beat cops?
“Ness is going to raid Harwood’s place tonight,” Walter said without preamble.
“Harwood.”
“Commander of the Fourteenth.”
“I know who he is.” Captain Harwood perched nearly at the pinnacle of corruption in the city; no vice could exist in his region without his stamp of approval, or his hand in the till.
“Some city councilman out there has a beef with Harwood and he put a bee in Ness’s bonnet about the Blackhawk Inn. We’ve got to help move the tables out of the back room before Ness and his handpicked band of saints get there.”
“We?”
“Yes, Jimmy, we.” It would have been funny under other circumstances, the jolly Walter wearing an expression of such grim determination. “You gotta make up your mind. Either be a cop like the rest of us, or—”
“Or what?”
“Or I swear to God I’ll walk into the captain’s office first thing Monday morning and request a new partner. And you’ll need to find some other line of work.”
Because everyone else in the department would refuse to work with him. On the other hand…“Ness has the mayor behind him, and, as you said, it’s an election year. Why not keep ourselves out of it and let Harwood clean up his own mess?”
Walter went straight for his trump card. “There’s a double sawbuck in it for you.”
Twenty dollars would pay his rent for the month, and Walter knew it.
“You could buy Helen those dishes she’s been pining for. Harwood’s boys are desperate for help. Every cop in the city is busy with this thing.” He waved his hand toward the decapitated corpse as the morgue boys wrapped it loosely in its new shroud.
“We’re busy with it, too.”
“We’re rubberneckers. The captain isn’t here and we have no assignment. You’re out of excuses, Jimmy. Face it.”
“You face this, Walt. Harwood will go down. They’ll all go down. Times have changed.”
“Some things don’t never change, Jimmy.”
“Corliss is our killer, I’m sure of it.” He wasn’t, really, but he’d sooner encounter the Mad Butcher than help out the mob just so the other cops would play with him at recess.
“Are you afraid of Ness? Is that all this is?” Walter stared at his partner with both disappointment and a cold intelligence of which James would not have thought him capable. “All this time I thought it was integrity.”
I did, too, James thought as he watched his partner walk away.
At least he was free to track down Arthur Corliss and his yellow dog.
The body had been hefted into a waiting hearse, but the Bertillon unit guy still crouched among the weeds where it had lain. He seemed to be puzzling over something in the palm of his hand.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Piece of glass.” The guy held it up to the light. “I found it under the body, sticking to his calf. It could have been here already, of course, there’s plenty of trash around. Odd color, though.”
Something prickled at the back of James’s neck. “Color?”
“I thought it was brown, like a beer bottle—that’s mostly what you see down here—but it’s actually black. Maybe a decorative thing…”
His voice faded into the distance as James sprinted up the hill.
CHAPTER 43
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11
PRESENT DAY
Edward Corliss seemed surprised to find Theresa on his doorstep. “Well, hello. Do come in.”
She apologized for dropping by unannounced and gave him her condolences upon the death of his friend as she followed him into the house. He thanked her but shrugged off the sympathies. “I can’t say William and I were great friends. I’m sorry for him, of course, but selfishly sorrier for myself. It’s strange to have violence strike so close to one. And at my age you begin to take the death of peers personally, as if time itself is reminding you that yours is limited.”
And yet for all his calm tone, he did not head for the elegant living room, instead returning to the comfort of his model room. The trains were running, chugging through the fake buildings and hills, their tiny wheels making tiny clicks against tiny tracks.
Theresa circled the plastic city, taking in details she hadn’t noticed on her first trip. He had specks underneath the solid water in the lake that looked like fish. The top of the Terminal Tower lit up. The Waterfront Line rapid transit had a graphic on its side to advertise the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She browsed and waited for Edward Corliss to ask questions. People always had questions about a murder.
Except him, apparently. He crouched over the rust-brown Center Street swing bridge, soldering the seam on a piece of track. Where had she heard about solder lately? Jablonski, and his oversize camera after she fell on him in the basement of the Pullman building.
Jablonski, who had had no trouble getting into her house and making friends with her dog, or sitting on the chair in front of the computer, where the cat liked to sleep. Jablonski, in his comfy cotton clothes that everything stuck to. Had last night really been his first visit?
“Would you care for a cup of tea?” he asked.
“No, thank you. I’ve come to ask for your help,” she said, and asked if William Van Horn often sketched near the preservation headquarters.
“Yes. Is that what he was doing when they mugged him?”
She didn’t comment on what was almost certainly not a “they” and not a mugging. “I think so. I found a piece of a picture. I had hoped you could help me scout the area, figure out where he might have been sketching.”
“Oh. That would be William. The only human part of him was the artist part.” He straightened and unplugged the soldering iron, which left a gritty, metallic smell in the air. “I don’t mean that as harsh as it sounded. He made an excellent president for the society and I’m going to have a hard time filling his shoes. But he was, well…”
“A hard man to get to know.”
“Exactly.” He tested the track with one finger and, apparently satisfied, stood up.
“I think you’ll be an excellent president.”
“Thank you.”
“So the society gets the Pennsylvania Railroad files after all.”
He raised one eyebrow slightly, as if he found that in poor taste but didn’t want to embarrass her by pointing it out. “Yes. Let me set this down.” He puttered at a small table in the corner for a moment and then came back with an open plastic container for her. “Would you do the honors, Ms. MacLean, before we strike out to search the rail yard? I’d like to get this city winterized before winter actually arrives.”
She took the container of paint-on snow. The faster she checked the preservation headquarters for Van Horn’s abduction site the faster she could go home and see her daughter, but the man before her had nothing but trains and the memory of his father. She felt compelled to warn him of what might lie ahead if they identified that father as Cleveland’s worst serial killer. Trains were all he had to keep from feeling as lonely as Irene Schaffer. She mixed the glop with one finger.
But could this be a case of like father, like son? Though she couldn’t quite picture
this older man jumping on and off trains carting the dead weight of a full-grown man, he still made at least as good a suspect as Jablonski or Greer.
The fake snow felt wetter today, sticking to her fingers as much as the rough branches of the plastic trees as she watched the trains go round and round. From Cleveland to New Castle, Pennsylvania. James Miller wouldn’t have known about that series of similar murders; he died before the connection between the two cities had been uncovered.
Jablonski had flown with the theory, however. She had checked out the Plain Dealer that morning at the lab, and while the young man had thankfully restrained himself from quoting her as a source, he had put nearly every detail of last night’s conversation into his story. When he ran out of facts he moved on to speculations. The man was truly obsessed. Perhaps too obsessed.
Though at least Jablonski wanted to preserve James Miller’s final resting place. Councilman Greer had been agitating to destroy it since they discovered the body. Why? To hide a past crime? To destroy his connection to the current set of murders?
She gazed at the miniature Terminal Tower. Everything remained circumstantial. Just like the original Torso Murders, all the evidence was like a fog in the valley, constantly shifting in appearance and weight. Everything she’d learned in the past week added up to nothing.
“So.” Corliss adjusted two pine trees in the Metropark system as he talked, encouraging their trunks to stand ramrod straight. “Do you still think my father might be this Torso killer?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure. Unfortunately, James Miller’s body was found in a space that, most likely, only your father had access to.”
“How do you know that?”
She explained about her conversation with Irene Schaffer.
“Dr. Louis? That nutritionist?”
“Yes.”
“He sounds like a much more suspicious man than my father.”
“I agree. But the Torso killer never showed any interest in young girls, and her description of the closet puts it closer to the outer wall than the space in which we found James Miller.”