Trail Of Blood Part 22

She didn't want to pile on, knowing how awful he felt, but the dead pieces of flesh before her forced her to point it out: "There's a man out there right now to whom that will come as no comfort."

CHAPTER 29.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 26.

1936.

Sunday mornings were quiet in the cathouse business. No customers, and the staff catching up on their rest after the busy Sat.u.r.day-night trade. Consequently doors were opened to James and Walter only after a long wait and then by lined faces with tousled hair, faces none too happy to find cops on the doorstep but especially unhappy to be awakened earlier than usual on such a frigid day.

The first such madam they encountered told them so in no uncertain terms. Police were usually made welcome in exchange for their lack of enforcement of standing vice laws and a phoned tip whenever they were forced to make a raid in order to let the public think that cops occasionally did their jobs. Apparently the madam felt different rules applied in the harsh light of day, or she was just too tired to care. "What do you want? Get the h.e.l.l off my doorstep. Oh, come in, or I'll freeze to death right in this doorway, with all the neighbors staring."

"As if you care what your neighbors think, Rosie," Walter said, stamping the snow from his shoes onto the welcome mat in a show of politeness.

Rosie had deep lines in her face, a mouth set like granite, and a man's figure. A strong man. "I do. Some of them are my best customers. What do you want, this early on a Sunday? I know it ain't a visit with one of my girls, or you wouldn't have brought him along."

She meant James, with an inflection that made it sound as if he came from outer s.p.a.ce. Did everyone in town know him as the police department oddity, the b.u.m who can't figure out what's good for him?

Walter said, "Rosie, I got one question and one question only. Answer it and we'll be on our way and you can get back to your beauty sleep. Are you missing a girl?"

The woman blinked at him, then the sleepiness cleared. "Why, you found one? You got a girl in jail? You got her, you keep her, she's got nothing to do with me."

"Rosie, just tell me if you're short a girl, that's all. No trouble for you, I promise."

"Hah," she said before turning away. "That makes me feel a lot better, the word of a chizz."

When she had climbed the creaking stairs with the threadbare rose-patterned runner, James turned to his partner. "I see you two have met."

"So have you. Remember, we arrested two of her girls last year for rolling that drunk at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. At least it's warm in here."

"I suppose it has to be, since most of the people in it are undressed at any given time."

"Can't have the clients catching cold," Walter said in agreement.

"A cold would be the least of my worries," James said. Upstairs, he could hear the groans and protests as Rosie went from room to room, rousing the prost.i.tutes.

It did not take long. The madam thumped back down the steps and said to Walter, "They're all here."

"Every girl is accounted for? It's really important-"

"I got fifteen girls in this house, and all fifteen are upstairs in their beds. Now go away and let me get back to mine." She opened the door, hiding behind it to avoid the arctic blast from the street. "And don't come back unless it's paying business. You used up a free time with this little stunt."

Walter grinned his chubby little-boy grin. "I'd be upset if I thought you meant that."

"Out."

Out they went, and climbed into the freezing car. Walter gave a s.h.i.+ver as he started it up. "Isn't she a dilly? Her place sure looks a lot different during the day."

"Let that be a lesson to you."

Walter laughed. "Yeah, yeah. You should come by here sometime, when Helen gets on your nerves. Rosie's girls will do you right. They even play that Negro music you like."

"Ragtime."

"Yeah."

They repeated the process at three more cathouses before two detectives from the Third Precinct caught up with them. They could stop waking prost.i.tutes; even without a head, the dead woman had been identified by her fingerprints. James found that impressive. Those Bertillon unit guys did some interesting stuff.

"She's a drunk named Flo Polillo," they were told by one of the detectives. "The Bertillon unit had her prints from a prost.i.tution arrest. Didn't work at it steady, though, either waitressed in gin mills or mooched off any man she could get, not that she could have gotten a lot. I saw her mug shot. Forty-one and she looked sixty. Your captain's at her place," the detective added, and gave them the address. "We're heading to the Feather Company over on Central. That's where the burlap bags came from."

"And I'll bet you're just tickled," Walter said.

"Ain't you a gas."

James and Walter climbed back into the car. Any heat the engine built up inside instantly dissipated in the cold and they had to wait for it to warm again before driving to Flo Polillo's apartment at 3205 Carnegie Avenue. A fretting landlady let them in.

The shabby little room bulged with cops, but at least their gathered bulks warmed the air. Whatever her lifestyle, Flo Polillo had kept her place neat, with a dozen dolls arranged on the bed and bureau. Their tiny black eyes seemed to follow the activities of the men. James got the idea that even if the toys could talk, they would choose not to. Dolls could not be killed, could not suffer.

He and Walter found the captain at a small desk, poring over a notebook full of scrawls while an officer from the Bertillon unit crouched next to the radiator and poked with one hand at a tray of debris he held in the other. James detoured over to the metal pipes, which kept the room at a comfortable temperature. Picturing the city as a map, James figured that the body had been found about a mile away. Flo would not have willingly left her warm apartment to walk to her death on such a cold night. Her killer must have had a car.

He asked the cop, "What have you got?"

The Bertillon unit guy looked up through gla.s.ses perched on a red and running nose. "Bunch of nothing I swept up from the floor. Dirt. A b.u.t.ton. Piece of wood." He rubbed the half-inch sliver between his fingers and sniffed at the residue. "Smells like creosote. Coal tar."

"That's used in railroad ties, isn't it?"

"And electrical poles, and roads with wood bricks, and floors in most factories, and docks. Any place they want to preserve the wood."

"You think it's from the killer?"

The guy sniffled and dropped the sliver of wood back into the tray next to the white flower-shaped b.u.t.ton. "Sure. Or the victim. Or her landlady. Or off the shoes of one of the twenty cops who walked around in here before I swept. I don't believe the killer ever came here. There's no blood in the place, not on the carpet, not in the bathtub or sink. I'd like to see him cut up a body like that without blood."

"What if he washed it up?"

"It's not like a shaving nick. The benzidine would still find traces, with that much being splashed around." He gestured to a wooden case that lay open on the floor. "It's a chemical, turns blue when it comes in contact with blood. Then we could do another test to find out what type the blood is-A or B or-"

"I know," James said. "We had a tour through your lab once."

"Hey," Walter called.

James thanked the cop, left him to his tray of dirt, and returned to his partner's side.

Their superior did not look pleased to see them, but he hadn't looked pleased before he saw them, either. James could swear that the man's bald spot expanded and contracted in response to stress. Right now it seemed to be pus.h.i.+ng the fringe of brown hair out until it crowded his ears and forehead like a flapper's bandeau. "What are you doing here?" the captain asked as he flipped through the small journal.

"Came to help," Walter said.

"Well, ain't you the Boy Scouts."

"What did they find on the body?" James asked.

"That her diary?" Walter asked.

"No, it's her money-she made three payments to a doctor named Manzella-and wages, at least the legal ones. This hag worked as a barmaid and waitress in about six different restaurants and juice joints. I'm going to need you to hit every one and question the owner, the busboy, delivery clerks, each and every customer. Got it?"

"Right, Cap."

"What was found on the body?" James asked again.

The captain gave him a considering look, the kind that usually preceded the comment that perhaps James would be happier in another precinct, but he said only, "Newspapers-yesterday's News and the Plain Dealer from a day last August. Dog hairs. Fur, I mean, but then that's who made the initial report, so to speak. Found by a dog. h.e.l.l of an epitaph. Besides that there was coal dust and cinders, like maybe she'd been laying on lump coal at some point and it left dents in the skin."

"A coal car," James said promptly. "He killed her down by the tracks, like the other two, and carted her back up here in pieces. He hid the pieces in a coal car until he could go back for them. The coal would absorb the blood and the stains wouldn't show against the black lumps."

"Great, Miller. By the way, what's your house heated with?"

James's flow of words. .h.i.t a bottleneck. "Coal."

"And it's kept where?"

"In the coal cellar."

"Great place to hide a body, wouldn't it be?"

"Yeah. But, Cap-"

"And the other guys weren't killed by the tracks, were they? Just dumped."

"We think that because there weren't any pools of blood by the rails. But that could explain what happened to it-he killed them in the coal car, which then rode out of town."

"Except he didn't only get rid of their blood, he washed it off the bodies as well. And we didn't find any coal or cinders on those two dead guys. Aside from the heads coming off, I see more things different than the same here. The first time, the guy obviously had a s.e.x problem with men, he only took the head off and didn't cover or wrap the bodies in anything. No newspaper, no coal. This time the doc says the cuts were neat-like a doctor or a butcher-but he wrenched the bones apart like he was in some kind of fit."

Walter made a face and clutched his stomach. "Don't think about upchucking here, McKenna," the captain warned him. "It's got to be some kind of crazy doctor. Who else would know how to do something like that neatly?"

"Someone who's practiced it," James said, thinking aloud. "Helen's squeamish about most everything, but she can debone a chicken in minutes with a few quick slices."

"You think your wife's killing people, Miller?" the captain asked without a smile.

"She grew up on a farm and got good at certain things. Maybe this guy did, too."

"Nah," Walter said. "A chicken's a lot different than a person, and a doctor would have the equipment, the workroom, a car to dump the bodies-"

"Maybe," the captain said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "But this lady wasn't no society Jane, if you catch my drift. She couldn't have afforded no doctor with a car. No, I'm guessing this b.i.t.c.h got on the wrong side of a boyfriend who'll have a line of arrests going back to when he wore short pants. How he learned to cut up bodies, we can ask him when we arrest him. So get out there and find out who she's been making whoopee with. You two ever find the source of that blue coat from the two guys on the hill?"

"Yeah-" James began.

"Bailey's department store had three of them," Walter cut in, his technique smooth from practice. "Sold one, and the guy still has it. The other two didn't sell and some do-gooder in the bargain bas.e.m.e.nt donated them to St. Peter's soup kitchen."

"Not bad. After you report everything there is to learn about Flo Polillo's waitressing career, get to that church and find out where those two other coats went. And, Miller-"

James had half turned and now stepped back. "Yeah?"

"When you're done with that, you can check out the rail yards. But do the restaurants first."

Walter brightened more than he had when told to visit the wh.o.r.ehouses. "Restaurants?"

James sighed.

CHAPTER 30.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10.

PRESENT DAY.

The temperature had begun to dip in the mornings, creating a fog that hung over the old steel mill and the river and Kingsbury Run like an unreliable s.h.i.+eld, s.h.i.+fting and dissipating and then, unexpectedly, revealing. Now it lay wet and chilled against the back of Theresa's neck as she gazed out over the weeds poking up between the railroad ties. On her last visit, there had been two dead bodies on this hillside with her. If there were more today, the fog hid them.

Behind her sat the hollowed-out building at 4950 Pullman. On her left, the ravine stretched another mile and a half to the west to end at the Cuyahoga River. To her right, the East Fifty-fifth bridge spanned the gorge, concrete legs picking their way among the train and RTA tracks. Almost nothing had changed in this valley for seventy-five years, except the graffiti.

This place had never given up a clue to the Mad Butcher's ident.i.ty and wouldn't now.