Trail Of Blood Part 18

Both doors farther along the hallway had opened. James glanced into the one on his left without making his interest too obvious. Three young men in s.h.i.+rtsleeves drew at sketching tables, two of them throwing mild and apparently amusing insults to each other. They were reproached by a pretty young woman at a typewriter.

The office on his right held an empty desk, two chairs, a small sink, shelves filled with books and rolled-up drawings and disheveled stacks of newspapers, and a sleeping dog. James walked on and out the south door. Walter did not follow and instead dipped into the architects' office, no doubt to make the acquaintance of the pretty secretary.

Of the two men outside, the shorter man had turned away, heading toward Kingsbury Run in a stained cardigan and trousers so frayed that the pattern of his underwear showed through. He had a peculiar step, picking up his right foot higher than his left, and James watched for a moment before he figured it out-the sole of the man's right shoe had come loose in front so that the wearer had to take care or he'd fold it in half with each step.

"Good afternoon," said the other man. His trousers were not threadbare and his white s.h.i.+rt was clean and crisp. He had a full head of brown hair and light blue eyes with even lighter spots. They reminded James of ginger ale, not the color but the fizz. He appeared to be about thirty-five.

"How are you this beautiful afternoon?"

"Fine, and yourself?"

"Quite well."

James nodded in the direction of the shuffling man. "Where's your friend going?"

The man gave a gentle smile and sat on a low bench, on which sat a plate with two sandwiches and three black soda bottles. "Probably to hop a boxcar back to Pittsburgh to look for work there. I don't know him, we just got to talking and shared some dinner. I have some corned beef hash here from Mike's on Thirtieth and some cookies my housekeeper made. Would you like some?"

"No, thanks."

"Or some soda pop? It's Mission Orange. I can't get enough of the stuff."

The man's gaze came to rest on James's shoes at the same time that his resolutely friendly tone penetrated James's mind. This guy had taken him for a hobo. A b.u.m, looking for a handout.

His stomach chose that moment to growl, a sound loud enough to be heard on the next street. He should have had lunch at the Terminal building with Walter. "I'm a cop."

"Oh. I'm...sorry. I should have asked after your occupation. It's just that so many men who wander through this city don't really want to talk about who they are."

Or remember who they were, James thought. "They know you're a soft touch?"

"No, but since we're next to the tracks we get a lot of men pa.s.sing through here." James could see what he meant. The wide valley made a perfect spot to hop on and off the trains for illegal rides across America. "They're all half starved," the man went on. "I've been lucky in my life, and I feel compelled to share that with my fellow man."

"What makes you so lucky?"

"My name is Arthur Corliss. I own the LEP-the Lake EriePennsylvania Railroad." He stood again and shook James's hand with a kindly but crus.h.i.+ng grip. As tall as Odessa but with Walter's weight, in muscle instead of paunch.

James asked, "You give handouts to the same b.u.ms who are going to ride your rails?"

"It's not their fault that this country's situation collapsed into rubble. Besides"-Corliss gave him a sheepish grin-"I convince them to use the B&O lines."

James laughed and let go of having been mistaken for a hobo. He knew if he bothered to look in the mirror it wouldn't be such a stretch. His s.h.i.+rts had been washed and worn for so many years that the weave had loosened. His cheeks had begun to sink into his mouth.

"Are you familiar with your neighbor Louis Odessa?"

"Dr. Louis? Yes. Why?"

James gave him a story, making it sound as if they had consulted Odessa for help identifying the vitamin pill. "He seems to have some highfalutin clients. Does he mind you feeding b.u.ms on his stoop?"

"No, no. Louis is generous in spirit, if not in cash. I merely give them something to eat, but Louis helps them decide what to eat for the rest of their lives."

"You're interested in vitamins and minerals and all that health stuff?"

"Absolutely. If you don't guard your health when you're young, it will be too late when you're old. At least that's what Louis says. He tells the architect boys that, too, but they won't listen."

James pulled the photos from his pocket. "Have you seen either of these men?"

Corliss took the picture, studied it. "No. Good Lord, this one barely looks human. Why do you ask?" A cloud pa.s.sed over the sun. The darkening sky reflected in his light-colored eyes.

"We're doing a routine inquiry."

The man stared at James for a moment longer, blankly, no doubt wondering where he had seen the photos before. Every citizen of Cleveland should see them in their sleep, James thought, with the attention the papers are lavis.h.i.+ng on the case. The people were both fascinated and repulsed, but most of all they were frightened.

But Corliss only nodded and solemnly asked, "It's about the man's wife, isn't it?"

James's blood picked up speed. "What about his wife?"

"Or his daughter, or whatever. Louis likes women," Corliss explained as if it were a condition Odessa couldn't help and should be pitied for. "Perhaps too much."

James merely smiled, nodded, gave up trying to link Louis Odessa to the two dead men on the hill, and went to retrieve Walter from the architects' office before leaving the building at 4950 Pullman.

CHAPTER 23.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9.

PRESENT DAY.

Theresa returned to the trace evidence lab. Their secretary huddled over her computer monitor, sneaking in a game of Solitaire while Leo's voice came as a steady hum from his office. Their boss could rival any teenage girl for hours spent on the phone. Theresa could also hear Don in the DNA rooms to the rear of the lab, singing quietly as he filled microtubes with extracted samples.

Theresa settled into her nook behind the FTIR and put on a mask before opening the samples she had collected from the two dead men, not to keep her breath from contaminating the fibers but so that an unexpected sneeze or sigh did not scatter them across the lab. Then she placed the gla.s.sine paper under the stereomicroscope to unfold it.

A single fiber, about an inch long, had been stuck to the inside of Richard Dunlop's wrist. Theresa used a fresh disposable scalpel to cut a piece off, then placed that section between a gla.s.s slide and a gla.s.s cover slip. A drop of mounting media would hold it together-permanently-and make its form clearly visible under a transmitted light microscope. A red fiber, with a trilobal shape, exactly what she had found stuck to Kim Hammond's hair. A micrometer scale confirmed the diameter. Because it took only a minute, Theresa switched the slide to the stage of her ancient polarizing microscope, under whose light the fiber appeared in colors of preppy green and pink. Polyester again-like what had been found on Kim Hammond. To confirm this finding Theresa cut another piece of the fiber from Richard Dunlop. It took several minutes and a few muttered curses to get the substance, once flattened, to stick to the window and not to the pick and the roller, but eventually it became situated in the path of the light beam. Polyester. It had to be carpeting; fibers of that thickness and with a trilobal shape would not be used in clothing or upholstery.

Theresa sighed. On TV a scientist would have a handy database of every carpet ever manufactured in the world and some way to find the customers who bought each one. In her real and much more inconvenient life, this data did not exist. The closest she could come was to e-mail the fiber's description and spectrum to the FBI so that they could compare it to their automotive carpet database. It had its limits and involved only carpeting made for automobiles. This fiber seemed too thick and too bright to come from a car, but even a remote possibility was well worth a try. And she liked to stay in touch with the FBI lab. They were friendly and helpful people.

After that, she would have to take her fiber and its specs and hit every carpeting supplier in the area, a monumental task for which she would never have the time. Surely red could not be a common color-though current interior decorating did seem to favor the jewel tones, especially in restaurants-but most carpets were a combination of colors. The overall color of a particular rug could be anything-say, beige-but with tiny colored flecks here and there. This would not be listed in anyone's inventory as red.

She repeated the process with the other fiber found on Dunlop, a round, black thread that turned out to be nylon. It could have come from nearly anything-a coat, a bag, sports equipment, a tarp. The other victim, Forrest, had the red fiber on his ankle and no black fibers.

Swabs of the adhesive residue from both men told her that it probably belonged to duct tape, an item most criminalists saw far too much of. Every rapist and serial killer kept a roll in their "kit." She could identify the adhesive as consistent with the killer's roll of tape, if she had the killer's roll of tape. Had he bound Forrest's wrists while he cut off his head? No, bruises would have formed as the victim struggled for life-unless he were still unconscious from the blow to the head. But the killer might also have taped his arms and ankles to make the body easier to work with as he moved it to the hillside. Either way, simply knowing that he had used duct tape would not help them. The stuff was simply too ubiquitous.

The killer had murdered them somewhere else, cleaned and prepped the bodies, then taken them to the hillside for display. Like the original Torso killer, he had carried the bodies of these two grown men down the hill-their skin had not been dragged through the undergrowth. Carried, and Forrest had to weigh close to two hundred pounds.

A shudder of relief ran through her that the man had run from her foolish pursuit last night. He could have taken her apart with his bare hands.

Theresa forced her mind from these gory images back to the forensic evidence. It didn't seem like much, so she decided to follow James Miller's example and make a list. Kim: missing part of neck-strangled?; red fiber; brown paint. Richard Dunlop: decapitated; red fiber; black fiber; drug history; adhesive. Levon Forrest: bludgeoned, decapitated; red fiber, adhesive.

"What have you got?" Leo appeared without warning, as he was wont to do, shoving her papers aside to perch on the edge of her desk across the aisle. This disruption to her desktop made her want to slap him upside the head with the polarizing microscope. Unlike him, she refrained. "Not much."

"Not much is not what I want to hear."

"Well, we have one thing in our favor. If this guy truly wants to re-create the Torso killer's murders, then we know where-"

"The next victim will turn up," Leo interjected.

"And who it will be, at least the gender. The third victim, actually the fourth if you count the Lady of the Lake, was a woman named Flo Polillo. She was found on a freezing January morning behind a manufacturing plant around East Twenty-second. Half of her, I mean. They found the other half about two blocks away."

"Yeah, he, um-" Leo stopped there and waited for Theresa to fill in the details he clearly couldn't remember or had never known.

"He cut her body into pieces and left the pieces wrapped in newspaper and burlap bags, placed in bushel baskets. A dog found them. Can you still get bushel baskets?"

"Can you still get burlap bags?"

"Our killer has a problem, though, according to Google Earth."

Leo raised one eyebrow and sipped his coffee. He would not ask, of course.

"The back of the Hart Manufacturing Plant is now an I-90 interchange. Today's killer might have to break with tradition."

"Shouldn't play in traffic," Leo agreed, then made a show of checking his watch as Theresa gathered her jacket and purse, in order to clearly ill.u.s.trate how fifteen minutes remained until quitting time. "Leaving early?"

"Not exactly."

CHAPTER 24.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9.

PRESENT DAY.

The pleasant hum that trains made when a comfortable distance from one's ears changed to a heart-rattling, eardrum-shattering, colossal banging when up close. And if they blew their horn, forget it. Five years of your life would be shaved off, at a minimum. Of course she had already learned that the night before; oddly enough the sound was no less shocking in the light of day.

But she loved them anyway.

"I can't help it," she told Edward Corliss. "I can't help but admire something whose design has not essentially changed in, what, two hundred years?"

They sat on a polyurethane bench designed to look like an ancient wooden one, next to the tracks near West Third Street, only a mile from Jacka.s.s Hill but on the other side of the river. The day had taken a turn toward winter and the breeze across the river chilled her skin more quickly than the sun could warm it. Theresa snuggled farther into her woolen blazer and added, "But I suppose that's silly. I don't really know a thing about trains."

"No, no, I agree completely," Edward a.s.sured her. "The propulsion systems changed over time, from wood to coal to diesel, and some to electric. But the structure of the cars and the tracks is the same as it was when people tied up their horses in front of the dry goods store."

The train in front of them, which had been moving slowly, finally came to a halt and then reversed, causing a new series of the deafening clangs to echo up the row as the coupling of each car collided with the next in line. Theresa put her hands over her ears. She swore the vibration plucked at every vein in her body as if they were overtightened guitar strings.

Then she felt Edward's hand on her raised elbow. "Do you want to walk along the tracks a bit?" he shouted.

She nodded, not at all sure that she meant it.

The tracks near the station had been kept in good order, with fresh gravel filling the gaps between one set and another. The stones crunched underneath her feet as they walked. The rails could have been there for a hundred years, the tops rounded and smooth from the weight of the trains. The air smelled of diesel fuel and fish.

Six sets of tracks pa.s.sed rather close to each other, with only ten feet of clearance between them. A short train rumbled along the outermost rails, still close enough to rattle the ground. She looked about her constantly, afraid that with all the noise caused by one train, another could sneak up without warning. Hadn't Irene Schaffer said something about sneaking into the zoo through the elephant cage? It must have felt like this, pa.s.sing through a pen of tame but still dangerous animals.

Corliss pointed to a section where two sets of rails converged into one, where a train coming into the station would either continue on the original track or veer off on another one. The rails at the point of convergence formed a sloping X shape. "Those point blades-see the rail that yellow warbler is sitting on?-can slide from side to side, so that the train will go to the left-or the right-side track. The f.l.a.n.g.e of the wheel catches the inside of the rail. That's what keeps a train on its track."

She expected to see some heavy piece of machinery present to move the rails, but only a squat motor no bigger than a garbage disposal sat on the ground to the side of the rails. An unlabeled red sign in the shape of a hexagon protruded from the top to mark its location. "I'm guessing you no longer have a person stand out here to throw the switch."

"No, it's all done by remote now. The switch engine is operated from inside the station. Even when they were hand-operated it was still done from inside the station-they just ran an underground cable from the switch to the operator."

Another train approached, one track over. Its trail of cars stretched into the distance, and perhaps the engineer saw Edward and Theresa, because he blew the whistle, or horn, or whatever one would call it. All Theresa knew was that she had never heard a louder sound in her life and her skin tingled where she must have jumped out of it temporarily. Her muscles ached as they froze solid in instinctive terror. She would never have believed one simple, loud noise could have such an effect on her. The cars chugged by, both pus.h.i.+ng and sucking the air around her so that her body swayed.

Edward Corliss took her upper arm, gently but firmly.

When the noise subsided as the train continued to slow, she asked him, "And people used to hop on and off these things?"

"Like a moving walkway at the airport," he said. "If you wanted to go to the next town and couldn't hitch a ride or find the money for bus fare, trains became your only option. And as the Depression wore on, the b.u.ms who moved around the country had no money and no friends. My father said one day he had to rout out eleven guys from one set of cars."

"It's hard to picture how devastating the Depression was to this country."

"It is. Although," he added, as if it might cheer her up, "hopping trains was around long before the Depression. Soldiers did it to get back home after the Civil War ended."

"The army didn't give them a ride home?"