Trail of Blood

by Lisa Black

Go with Irene.

  She charged the northeast corner.

  Hands still tied, she tried to run up the pile of rubble and immediately fell, forcing sharp pieces of stone into her hands and knee. As she pushed upward her feet collapsed the gravel underneath her, and she tried to angle her hands to use the rope around her wrists as a cushion. She might as well have tried to climb a sand dune implanted with razor blades.

  Looking up, she saw that the very top edge of the building had not yet fallen but hung as an angled arch over the hole in the lower corner. The next strike would drop the remaining stones straight down. They might even fall on their own, right onto her.

  Yet even as she climbed, waiting for a weighted ball large enough to encompass her entire body to swing directly into her skull, she wondered if Corliss had made it out. Was she now scurrying over his body?

  The whine of the diesel engine slipped into a higher gear. She couldn’t get enough air through the thick gag and had no choice but to suck in dust through her nose. Screaming remained impossible; she produced no more than a low grunting uhh-hh-hh as she climbed.

  Her right foot slipped again, forcing splinters into her right knee until a ripple of nausea ran through her stomach. Three feet to go. It couldn’t be more than three feet.

  The call came again.

  “All clear!”

  The other foot slipped. Her fingers grasped, painfully, for a hold.

  She crawled, more than climbed, the last foot to poke her head above ground level. “Uhh-hh-hh!”

  Theresa could see nothing but brilliant light, not the ground, not the men behind the machines, not the huge iron ball coming her way. She didn’t try, simply kept her head down and her body in a crouch and moved northeast, stumbling over the rubble. She had pictured herself bursting out of the wall to safety, but the outside of the building now stood as littered with broken stone as the inside, a sharp and uneven terrain.

  “Hey!”

  Still as blind as if she had no eyes at all, she heard the wrecking ball whistling through the air just as her foot touched something familiar. Grass.

  Perhaps it was the column of air displaced by the swinging iron, or some sixth sense that allowed her to feel its location, but her knees buckled and she threw herself to the lawn, rolling and rolling and rolling over slivers of rock that cut her with every touch, until the night burst once more with thunder and a shower of broken rock. She pressed her face into the earth to protect it, curling her arms and legs in as best she could.

  This time was better. Fewer projectiles struck her and the air became only a bit dusty instead of unbreathable. Even after the trembles in the ground faded away, she did not move. No sense getting in the way of the return swing. In fact, now that she was out of the building, no real reason to move at all.

  Except that suddenly there were hands on her, lots of feet around her, and strained, excited voices.

  “Holy shit, lady, what are you doing?”

  “Why the hell were you in there?”

  “She’s tied. Look, she’s tied.”

  The faces above her were visible now that they were all on the same side of the lights, the men illuminated with brilliant glare so that they seemed to be boys telling scary tales with the aid of a flashlight. She grabbed the one who had bent the lowest and used him to haul herself to a sitting position.

  “You okay? Are you okay, lady?”

  “Uhh-hh-hh.”

  A familiar click, and another man dug his finger under her gag. Then he slipped in a blade and sliced it off. She took a second to rub her jaw, which felt frozen in place. The habit men had of carrying pocket knives…That’s a good habit, she decided.

  “Hands,” she said, although it didn’t come out quite that clearly, and thrust her wrists toward him. He obediently sawed at the ropes with the swiftness of an adrenaline rush.

  “Don’t cut her,” another man told him.

  “Hardly matters at this point,” she said, though that didn’t come out so clear either. She could see the blood coating her hands, could feel it oozing down her legs as she stood. “The man. Did you see the man come out?”

  They continued to ask her questions, so that she raised her voice. “Did you see a man come out of the building?” But even as she asked, she realized that of course they hadn’t. If they had, they would have postponed the demolition until they rechecked the premises.

  “A man?”

  “What were you doing in there?”

  “What man?”

  “You mean that guy?” one said, pointing.

  Everyone turned. Overflow from the dazzling lights lit up the parking lot and street enough to illuminate the only figure moving away from them, a man who wove through the heavy machinery to pause on the edge of Kingsbury Run. Corliss.

  “Call 911,” she said, pushed past the men, and ran.

  She crossed the lot and dodged through the wreckers. With luck Corliss’s injury had slowed him—no, he had probably wanted to watch, to see that she did not escape, that there would be no chance of her body being found. He would want to see the end of what his father had begun. She reached the top of the ridge and plunged over.

  The slope had not gotten any easier to traverse since her last trip down it, still an irregular surface dotted with brush and rocks. A train rumbled in the distance.

  What the hell am I doing? The blood loss would probably bring her to her knees before she caught up with him anyway, and she had dropped the knife in her scramble from the building. They knew him now, his name. She would tell Frank, the cops would go get him…what could she do, by herself?

  She kept running.

  She had made it only halfway down the hill when Corliss reached the bottom and turned to the west, away from the RTA station, disappearing into the dark and a light fog. It hung in vague wisps throughout the valley as the ground cooled in the absence of sun.

  A sparse but tough bush caught her midshin. She somersaulted the last ten or fifteen feet to the bottom but had at least gotten down the hill. A shout from behind her and a weak beam of light told her that one or more of the construction workers had located a flashlight and were in pursuit. But they were too far behind Corliss. So was she.

  Then she heard him, a stentorian wheeze. Perhaps she could catch him after all. He did have an extra twenty years and a stab wound. Just then she tripped over a train track, slamming one elbow into a tie and nearly braining herself on the second rail.

  Through a break in the mist she saw him, speeding up and over the next set of rails as if he had their locations memorized.

  She knew she really should stop. It was not her job to chase murderers. She ought to call Frank. Did she still have her cell phone on her?

  She hoped Rachael had not gone back to college.

  Where was Corliss going to go, anyway?

  Theresa pushed herself to her feet with her bleeding hands and continued, taking care to watch for the shadows of the tracks on the ground. It might not have been her job to haul Edward Corliss to justice, but maybe she didn’t care so much about justice right then. Maybe she just wanted to beat his brains in.

  The train she had heard in the distance had not stayed there. Heading west toward them, its headlamp made the fog glow like a living entity. Corliss raced across the run, trying to beat the iron monster and let it cut her off from him. His father had moved through Cleveland like a phantom for over a decade. Edward had learned how to murder from him. He might also have learned how to disappear.

  The wet fog slapped her face, but it didn’t help to dredge up more energy for her tired legs. She tried like hell to push another ounce of adrenaline from her glands, give herself one little boost…. Try all you like, her over-forty body let her know. It’s not there anymore.

  But he could not get away!

  She kept running.

  Corliss had only ten feet to the track, but he still had to get over it before the speeding engine hit him…perhaps the image of the cattle-catcher slicing his feet off at the ankles
made him hesitate. Perhaps he knew he couldn’t make it. He slowed and blew his chance of beating the train. The engine roared up the track in front of him, cutting off his escape and certainly moving too fast to jump.

  As he stopped, Theresa’s tired form began to slow as well, so automatically that her brain did not notice it for a second or two.

  The mist worked both for and against her, taking the light from the construction workers above and diffusing it throughout the valley, making parts of the run easier to see than they would normally have been. But the fog’s undulations made it seem as if the world were moving and made distances difficult to estimate.

  For instance, she could see the train passing behind Corliss. But it seemed as if the end were approaching very fast, too fast, so fast that it would free Corliss before she could reach him. The train consisted of only five or ten cars, not long enough to imprison him.

  Perhaps it was only a trick of the light. She peered into the fog for a better look, stepped into a hollow, and turned her ankle. The bolt of pain brought her to her knees.

  Corliss began to run toward the rear of the train, increasing the speed with which it was passing him.

  She pushed up with her good foot and sped on. The last car, a blue boxcar with a bright light on its rear corner, came toward them.

  “Corliss!” Why she thought shouting would help…

  The blue boxcar drew parallel with him for one split second, then went on its western way and left the track free.

  Corliss glanced back at her with, she could swear, a grin of pure triumph. He might not escape detection forever, but at least he could best her on his home field, here among the trains. Then he leapt up and over the tracks as lightly as a man one-third his age.

  But a second train had come from the west, moving in the same direction, its noise and lights obscured by the first train. Corliss stood dead center in the second set of tracks when it struck him.

  It happened so fast that Theresa could not comprehend how one moment Corliss stood on the tracks, and in the next an iron behemoth swept across the landscape, slicing the night in two. She didn’t understand. But her body did, and stopped running.

  Footsteps pounded up behind her. She didn’t turn, expecting it to be one of the construction crew.

  “Theresa!” Frank grasped her with both arms, holding her, shaking her, even going so far as to cup her face in his hands. “Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”

  “Sorry,” she told him. “Broke my promise. Where did he go?”

  “I went to Corliss’s house but couldn’t find—are you all right? Are you in shock?”

  “Dunno. Where did he go?”

  With his hands on her shoulders he answered in a patently reasonable tone that only annoyed her. “The train hit him.”

  “I know that,” she snapped. “But where did he go?”

  “The train would have flung the body forward, so we’ll find him somewhere up there. Which side of the tracks, that’s anybody’s guess. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

  “Oh, I’m hurt.” Every inch of her skin seemed to be stinging and bleeding. Her elbow throbbed and her right ankle had already begun to stiffen. “But I’ll live. I think.”

  He put his arms around her and she held on to him, bleeding all over one of his good shirts, and knew it didn’t matter a damn who had been their grandfather’s favorite.

  Members of the construction crew had caught up with them, flashlights waving. “Did you see what happened? Who was that dude? Look over there.”

  “It’s a crime scene,” Frank protested. “You can’t—”

  “We won’t touch nothing. Hey, is that blood?”

  “Frank?” Theresa asked, her voice muffled by his windbreaker, her aching arms still wrapped around his body.

  “What?”

  “Did Rachael go back to school?”

  A pause, during which he let her go in order to look at her rather oddly. “No. She’s still home. She’s the one who told me you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “Oh. Good.” She withdrew her palms and blew on them, not knowing what else to do for the stinging pain. “Good.”

  “Found him!” shouted one of the men from farther up the track.

  CHAPTER 47

  THE FOLLOWING MAY

  The Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a graceful oval of stone and marble, located a few blocks northwest of the Capitol. The annual service to remember officers who died in the line of duty takes place each spring, the season of renewal. Theresa breathed in the light scent of cherry blossoms and wondered if Edward Corliss had repeated the Torso Murders to distract police from seeing his connection to the first and fifth victims, or because he really enjoyed doing so.

  “Thanks for coming with me,” she said.

  “And miss a photo op?” Chris Cavanaugh scoffed. “As if.”

  The plaza thronged with people, even though it would be hours before the candlelight ceremony took place. For the third time in as many minutes, Theresa traced the engraved marble with her finger. James F. Miller.

  “Good job getting him added,” Chris told her. “Everyone got so hysterical about solving the Torso Murders, it would have been another seventy-five years before anyone thought about Miller.”

  “I just wish—”

  When she didn’t go on, Chris prompted her: “What?”

  “I wish we knew what happened.”

  “To Miller? Yeah, I know what you mean. Did he know Arthur Corliss was the Torso killer? Did he stumble on it? He was in plain clothes—maybe Arthur didn’t know he was a cop until after he’d already killed him. Then he figured he’d better not take any chances with this one and sealed up his little room. But he didn’t stop killing.”

  A breeze wandered through, chilling the skin on her bare arms. “No. He didn’t stop.” Corliss had to have been right on top of him, the gun right up against his gut, to leave heavy gunshot residue on his shirt. How had he gotten James’s service weapon away from him? Did James worry, with his last breath, that his son would grow up thinking he had abandoned his family? What about his wife? Why had she doubted him? Didn’t they get along? Was he lonely? Or did he shut everyone and everything out, except his work, because sometimes life was more comfortable that way?

  If so, did he regret that at the end?

  Yes, there were many things she would have liked to discuss with James Miller.

  Aloud, she said: “I wonder why the other cops didn’t follow up on Corliss. If James had a lead, you’d think they would have picked it up after he disappeared.”

  “Maybe he didn’t tell anyone. Either wanted to keep the glory, or”—he glanced around and lowered his voice, as if it were sacrilege to suppose such a thing in such a place—“he wanted to shake the killer down, collect a little hush money.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Those were desperate times,” Chris reminded her.

  “I don’t believe that,” she repeated, though she couldn’t have said why. Her finger traced the engraved letters one more time. “Maybe the other detectives investigated Corliss but didn’t have enough for an arrest. We can’t know, since most of the records are missing.”

  “That’s true. I’m just a little concerned, that’s all. I think you’re in love with the guy.”

  She jerked her hand away from the marble. “It’s a little tough to compete with a ghost, especially a heroic one.” With a light and respectful touch he guided her chin up so she had to meet his gaze. “But he’s dead, Theresa. And I’m here.”

  Life is short. Always date interesting men.

  She linked her arm through his. “So you are.”

  NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Torso killer did indeed exist, and his crimes proceeded more or less as I’ve written them here, except for the clues I invented, such as the pills and the glass. Aside from the great Eliot Ness (and the suspect Captain Harwood), all the police officers mentioned in this book are fictitious. T
he coat James traced did exist, though I have no reason to believe the clues were divvied up at the crime scene.

  Other historical notes: Fiestaware was not on the market until early 1936.

  Flo Polillo did work as a barmaid and waitress, but I do not know if there really was a Mike’s on East Thirtieth, or if they had the best corned beef in the city. St. Peter’s had a soup kitchen until its recent closure; I do not know for sure if they had one in the 1930s, or if the figures I quoted are from one particular location, or if the diocese had more than one kitchen operating in the city. Also, I have it on good authority that neither the Nickel Plate nor the New York Central railroads served New Castle, Pennsylvania, an unhappy piece of information that blew my whole theory. Congratulations to Kim Hammond, who won the character name auction at Boucheron 2009, and thus commissioned her own surrogate murder.

  I’d like to thank all those who assisted me with this book: my mother, Florence, who braved a frozen street to visit the Cleveland Police Museum with me; my sisters, who never mind pulling over on the way to lunch at Lola’s so that I can jump out and take pictures of odd places; my husband, Russ, who knows the nooks and crannies of Cleveland better than I do; my invaluable critique partners Sharon Wildwind and Sheri Chapin; Tom Carey; Don Moore; Bernie Juszak; and Sheldon Lustig of the New York Central System Historical Society.

  And of course this all would not be possible without Elaine Koster and Stephanie Lehmann at the Elaine Koster Agency, and David High-fill at William Morrow.

  MURDERS OF THE MAD BUTCHER OF KINGSBURY RUN

  CLEVELAND, OHIO

  Date Found: September 5, 1934

  Victim: W/F (Lady of the Lake)

  Victim’s Age: 30s

  Location Found: Euclid Beach

  Date Found: September 23, 1935

  Victim: W/M

  Victim’s Age: c. 45

  Location Found: East 49th & Kingsbury

  Victim: Edward Andrassy (W/M)

  Victim’s Age: 28