Still he expected the next headless corpse to be Stefan.
In a way he almost hoped so. The uncertainty of having his ex-partner missing, with no sign of his fate, was gnawing at him. Stefan had stepped into something dark, and what might have happened to him could be worse than a death by decapitation.
Nuri walked back from the morgue, returning to the mundane world of police work, unenlightened and fearful.
3
Tuesday, July 6
It was the summer that some of the worst parts of Europe came to visit the city. Striking workers mixing with Communists verged near to riot enough times that the National Guard had been called in to keep the peace. By the start of July the downtown area, especially around the Flats by the river, looked as if it was under martial law.
Carl Selig had never been to Cleveland before, and he felt out of his depth. He stood on a road overlooking some train tracks, feeling intolerably hot in his uniform, wondering what would happen if he got in a situation where he had to shoot somebody. He had his Springfield ready, as he was ordered to, but the thought of firing it made him weak in the knees.
Fortunately, today he had a quiet spot to observe. No demonstrators waving red-and-black flags, no one throwing stones or bricks, no hired thugs trying to club the workers into submission. Standing here, overlooking the quiet rails, Carl could try to believe that the presence of the guardsmen was quieting things down.
He could believe it if it wasn’t for the rumors that found their way to him. He heard about shots being fired, of looting downtown, and one grotesque story about a human body, or parts of one, seen floating in the river.
Thinking of those things made him wish he was back in Oberlin.
At least he had a quiet spot to tend to. There was little here to watch but the occasional train passing by, and a small village of tin shacks where about half a dozen tramps made their home. The lack of anything else to draw his attention made him more aware of how hot he was, and how the sweat was gathering under his helmet. The tramps had a fire going, and the smell of it made the heat feel worse.
At least the sun was going down.
Night came, and though Carl was still a few hours short of relief, he began to feel a little easier about the riots. Nothing was going to happen in front of him today. He should have been able to relax a little.
Instead, he kept thinking of the body—or what the private telling him insisted, the pieces of it—found floating in the Cuyahoga. It was a gruesome idea, and Carl’s mind had trouble letting go of it. Even more gruesome was the story that there was some maniac who had chopped up eight other people before this one. Every one killed by cutting off their head.
It would have been another stupid scare story if it wasn’t for the fact that Carl had heard about the murders in Cleveland long before he ever came into the National Guard.
Carl decided that a maniac he could shoot. He had doubts about a striker or a Communist, but a full-fledged madman he figured he could shoot. Though as darkness fell across the tracks and the little shantytown, Carl hoped his theory wouldn’t be tested.
Near the end of his watch, he heard a train. That wasn’t unusual. What caught his ear was the sound of it, the odd lengthening note that made it seem as if the train was slowing down. The appearance of the eastbound train bore that out. As the engine’s lights swept across first him, then the hill below him, then the tramps’ shanties, then the hills beyond, Carl could see that the train was screeching to a stop just below him.
There was no sense to it that he could see. There was no station, no siding, no landmark to speak of outside of the little collection of rough shacks below. The tramps themselves gave witness to the remarkable event. They made their lives on the tracks, and certainly knew more arcana of the rails than Carl, but they stood and stared at the slowing beast as if they, too, were dumbfounded as to the reason it was stopping.
The train came to a complete stop, the engine somewhat distant now, and before the little tramp village sat a line of black boxcars. For a long time there was no sound but a soft hissing from the direction of the engine.
The tramps, out of curiosity, or out of a sudden wanderlust brought on by the proximity of transportation, began to approach the cars. The light was dim, only from the fire by the tramps’ camp, but Carl counted seven of them.
Carl felt a sudden unease, a prickling at the back of his neck. Everything seemed suddenly so wrong, as if the normal world had just fallen away from him, leaving him naked in some netherworld. The scene below him was nearly a hundred yards away, but he still took a step back.
As if triggered by his evil thoughts, the doors on the dark boxcars slid open in front of the tramps. There was a sudden flurry of motion that Carl could barely make sense of. He had a brief impression of grasping hands from the darkness, some barely human. He thought some of the tramps tried to turn, perhaps even run. It seemed only a second before he saw the tramps’ kicking feet retreat into the darkness of the boxcars and the doors slide shut.
Carl stood in stunned silence for the space of a heartbeat ...
... and another ...
When he heard a scream from below him, he broke from his paralysis and began running down the slope. He stumbled madly, brush tearing at his uniform, roots twisting his ankles, but somehow he remained upright even as he lost his helmet. He called out, “Stop,” and the word was little more than an inarticulate bellow that seared his lungs.
The scream continued, merging with the sound of the engine firing up to move again.
Carl raised his Springfield in some vain hope to stop the train, and it was then that the brush finally caught his feet, sending him tumbling face-first into the ground. He lost the Springfield in the fall, but it didn’t go off.
Carl pushed himself up to see the train moving past him, accelerating. As he watched, he was certain that he heard, under the sound of the screeching engine, the scream abruptly cease.
By the time Carl had reached his feet, the boxcars were long past him and the train was moving by as if it had never stopped. Cars slid by him, clattering along the tracks. There was no sign of what, if anything had happened.
Carl had no idea what to do. None of his standing orders covered this situation. He stood and watched the train pass by. Too soon, it seemed, the last car passed him. He was left in the darkness by the tracks, the only light the remains of the tramps’ fire, the only sound the receding noise of the train’s passage.
Slowly, Carl backed away from the tracks, climbing the hill, gathering his gun and his helmet. He began to wonder if what he had seen had actually happened.
1938
4
Monday, March 21
“Four of these in the past year,” Mayor Burton said. He stood with Ness on the handball court, but neither of them were playing. “The last one floating down the Cuyahoga.”
Ness nodded. There didn’t seem to be much to say. With the press becoming less than supportive, Ness was hoping that the body in the river would be the last and that he’d hear no more of this madman. There had been a barrage of criticism after the last body, and the Democrats had used the failure of the Torso Murder investigation against Ness and Burton in the last election. During the campaign the Democrats said that they didn’t need a “G-man from Chicago;” they needed a local lawman who wasn’t more concerned about witch-hunts in the police department than he was dead Clevelanders.
“Something has got to be done to ease the public mind,” Burton said.
Ness could only smile weakly at that. Every few months, the mayor would fixate on the one problem of the killer. Ness didn’t have that luxury. He had to deal with problems as far-ranging as corruption in the department, to union racketeering, to traffic safety. Somehow, whenever anyone talked about these murders, they lost sight of all the progress Ness had made in these areas. It was annoying.
“Can’t we do a dragnet, a house-to-house search—”
Ness shook his head. “You know what kind of resources
that would take? We can’t even be sure he’s in the area. He hasn’t left us any signs for nearly eight months.”
“You could find his butcher hall, the place he dismembers his victims.”
“It’s an extreme reaction, sir. I don’t know if it is warranted.”
Mayor Burton leaned against the wall of the court and wiped a little sweat he had left over from the game. “Maybe. Have there been any leads in the case?”
“Too many.” Ness waved over the hardwood floor of the court and said, “I could fill this court ten feet deep with transcripts of every tip we’ve gotten, every interview we’ve done, and every false confession we’ve received. Everyone from taxi drivers to National Guardsmen have seen something suspicious in the Run.” He shook his head and said, “The publicity on this case makes people crawl out of the woodwork.”
Burton gave him a look as if he couldn’t believe Ness bad-mouthing publicity of any sort. “Well, I just want you to remember that a house-to-house is always an option.”
“It’s not even certain that our man’s in the Roaring Third.”
Mayor Burton shook his head. “The three victims you’ve identified were all from the area—”
“The identification of Rose Wallace was tentative, not official-the remains were skeletal.”
Mayor Burton waved his hand as if it wasn’t an important enough detail to be bothered with. “And you wouldn’t get long odds that all these unidentified bodies weren’t tramps and transients.”
Ness nodded, Mayor Burton was just repeating the most popular theory, that this maniac was some homosexual predator, preying on the underbelly of Cleveland’s population. Though the last one, in the river, had a manicure that was at odds with him being a tramp.
Ness would have felt better if one of the “tramp” victims had been invited. “We are investigating that angle. Every night now we have some detectives undercover in the shantytowns around the flats, and up toward the Run.”
“That I’m glad to hear.” Mayor Burton picked up a towel from a bench by the door and wiped the back of his neck. “Well, I have to get back to the office, I have meetings to attend to. I suppose you have work to get to.”
Ness nodded.
As Mayor Burton left he turned to face Ness one last time, “Remember, it’s always an option.”
“I know,” Ness said as the mayor left.
When Mayor Burton entered his office, Eric Dietrich was waiting for him. The man was seated across from his desk. Mayor Burton hung up his overcoat and said, “I’ve been expecting you.”
Dietrich nodded, “I like to hear news of your administration from you. The newspapers can distort things.” He twisted his cane in his hand so the handle spun in front of him.
“That’s true,” Mayor Burton said as he moved around behind his desk. He didn’t extend his hand or make eye contact. He knew that Dietrich didn’t mind; he seemed to be aware of how his touch, and his gaze, disturbed others. Dietrich remained seated at an angle, turning his cane, looking off into the corner of Mayor Burton’s office.
“I do want to reassure myself that my recommendations for the next Republican administration reflect well on me.”
“I understand.” Mayor Burton did understand. Dietrich was very active behind the scenes in the Republican Party, and it seemed clear, ever since he’d become mayor, that Dietrich had some voice in the cabinet makeup of the next Republican president. Originally Burton’s ambitions had never extended much beyond the cleaning up of his own city. But Dietrich represented opportunities he could neither refuse nor ignore.
“The mutilation killings, those still worry you. No progress?” Dietrich kept twirling the cane.
The mayor nodded. That seemed Dietrich’s personal fixation. Rarely would the businessman ask him questions about taxes or how he managed to get the city coffers to pay deferred salaries of city workers. Always crime. Always the murders and how he planned to deal with them.
“Yes, but it’s been months since we’ve had one. Maybe we’ve been lucky, and the monster died, moved, or was imprisoned for something else.”
“And perhaps you just haven’t found his latest.”
Mayor Burton didn’t like the way Dietrich said that. “I’ve talked to Ness about stepping up the investigation. We’re already using every resource at our disposal.”
“Not quite,” Dietrich said, and he stopped twirling his cane. “If you wish to be sure to drive a dangerous wolf from the forest, drive away the deer. Perhaps even burn the forest. ”
Dietrich’s voice sounded grave, and Burton leaned forward. “What, exactly, are you saying?”
“You know where he draws his victims. I’ve heard you say it often enough. The nameless tramps and hobos that line the tracks of this city.”
“Drive the tramps away?” Mayor Burton asked. “How?”
5
Thursday, April 7
Detective Nuri Lapidos was doing his turn in purgatory. He was dressed in old ragged clothes that itched and refused to fit right. The rain and mud weren’t helping. He slogged along the tracks under the glare of the rail-yard lights, but more often in the darkness. The only things he carried that were at odds with the tramp outfit were a badge and a revolver, both well hidden.
The badge was for the railroad cops, the revolver was to be for the murderer that was supposed to prowl these rails. He doubted that the revolver would help if they met. He also doubted that they would meet down here by the train tracks.
Still, Nuri followed his assignment, slogging through the mud, stopping at the small temporary communities the rootless unemployed had thrown up around the flats. He would stop here and there, and try and dry himself by someone’s fire.
Through the night he would try to talk to the people he met, talk about the stories they had formed about the predators in the darkness along the tracks. Between these talks he would walk along the tracks, looking like a potential victim for those predators.
Few of the stories he collected would be fit for the homicide squad. Even so, they made Nuri uneasy.
He heard stories about a pale man, or sometimes a woman, interrupted while drinking the blood of a sleeping man. Sometimes these nocturnal creatures would run, and sometimes they would turn demonic and attack the witness. The stories were always accompanied by nervous laughter—though whenever someone claimed to be that witness, they didn’t join in the laughter.
It was late now, past midnight, and Nuri was slogging along to find a fourth group of tramps tonight. He pulled his ragged overcoat around him, more against the darkness than against the rain, which had already soaked him to the skin.
He stumbled forward, leaving the tracks, making for a blurry spot of light that seemed to hover underneath a drawbridge that extended over the Cuyahoga. He was halfway to it before he saw that the glow was more than a simple campfire. Some of the small makeshift buildings were burning.
Nuri started running. The night air in the river basin played games with sound. One moment he heard nothing but the rush of rain, and the next he was certain he could hear laughter. Under the laughter there could have been screams, inhuman screams, like an animal caught in the flames.
Nuri, still running, drew his gun.
Shadows ran out of the darkness toward him, faster than anything had a right to move. The shapes were only vaguely human as they loped by him. Nuri raised his gun, but the shadowy figures passed by him as if they didn’t even see him, or didn’t care.
Nuri had only the briefest impression of claws, leathery skin, and a loping stride. Then they were gone, and all that was left was an odd keening sound coming from between Nuri and the fire.
He didn’t want to advance any further, but those things might have left people there, in the fire. Nuri looked back after the things, but the darkness had swallowed them. Then he advanced toward the fire.
The keening became louder.
The smell of things burning, flesh and hair, began to reach him through the rain. It became stronger as Nuri ap
proached something that lay on the ground between him and the fire. The thing steamed in the rain, and Nuri was almost upon it before he could see what it was. When he did see it, he stopped.
Before him was a corpse burned across most of its body. It was twisted, the flesh charred and black. Steam rose from it in the rain. The shape was only vaguely human, and not only because of the destruction wrought upon its flesh. Like the shapes that had passed him in the darkness, this thing’s limbs were misproportioned, its back was arched, and its skull was twisted into a muzzle that had too many teeth.
Empty eye sockets stared at him from a face of blackened flesh.
Nuri looked up. The fire was dying away. He could still hear laughter, and a pair of voices. The voices weren’t close enough to make anything out yet. Nuri started edging toward the fire again.
Something grabbed his ankle.
Nuri pitched forward, and his revolver went flying into the darkness. He sucked in a breath and got a mouthful of sour mud.
Something clung to his leg. Nuri scrambled to flip himself over to look at what was grabbing at him, and in a flash of lightning, saw the corpse clutching at him.
As he watched, the charred form moved. The flesh was burned enough that he could hear it rustle. The corpse made another sound, something like breaking bone, as it turned toward him.
Nuri sat up and tried frantically to pry the charred hand from his leg. The thing moved slowly, but it was advancing on him, pulling itself by the one arm. Fluid leaked from cracks in its black skin as it moved. The face had changed, the muzzle retreating, so what closed on him was a naked human skull covered with a few remnants of crumbling black flesh.
It was keening at him.
Nuri tore at the hand gripping him until his fingernails were bloody. Its grip was like an iron band on his ankle. He tore at the exposed tendons on the back of it, and in response, the grip briefly loosened. Nuri tore his foot away, leaving the thing with his shoe.
Blood & Rust Page 53