Trail Of Blood Part 23

Theresa turned away from the slope and crossed the gra.s.s to the abandoned building. Another fifteen minutes and she would miss the M.E.'s morning viewing conference, ensuring Leo's ire, but her crime scene would be demolished by sunset. Councilman Greer's construction would remain on schedule.

The teardown crew had already returned to work and now only four central pillars and the wall studs remained. The floor had been cleared and the ceiling removed until she could see straight up to the inside of the roof. The place seemed bigger without the walls, and brighter now that they no longer blocked the light from the broken-out windows. The fog-coated sunlight softened the stones and turned the shadows to gray.

Armed with only a Maglite, Theresa scanned the area for signs of life. The smell of urine told her that the city's homeless had been making use of the place, but no one seemed to be around now.

From Edward Corliss's description and the photograph he gave them, she could a.s.sume the original layout. Half of the ground floor, the half on her left, had belonged to the architects and the medium. The area on the right had made up Louis Odessa's and Arthur Corliss's offices. She wandered to the s.p.a.ce where they had found the table, where the two offices would have backed up against each other.

Outside, a stray cat or dog moved through the uncut brush around the building. The faint rustling began, then faded near the northwest corner.

The construction crew had done too good a job. Nothing remained on the studs to indicate where a wall had gone straight or turned, what might have been a doorway opening to the front office or the rear. She crouched, brus.h.i.+ng the remaining plaster dust and a few stray leaves off the floorboards. If one of these areas had been James Miller's murder chamber or Louis Odessa's closet-or if the two cubicles were one and the same-there should be a wear pattern in the floor leading into and out of it.

A train clattered in the distance. Twenty feet above, the roof creaked as if the fog pressed on it.

The floor had been polished at some point and no doubt carpeted at another. The solid tongue-in-groove planks showed scratches and nicks and nail holes from tenants past. She followed the line of studs along the floor, trying to keep her pants off the dust but eventually giving up. Normally she waited until she got to work to get dirty, but not today. "Sometimes," her grandfather had often told her, "you have to get down on your hands and knees." She always thought it had been his way of warning her against pride, but perhaps he'd meant it literally.

Wait, she had gone at this wrong. The building had been nearly new when James Miller became entombed there-the closet entrance became a solid wall for all subsequent tenants. She should look at the gaps between the studs that did not show evidence of traffic in and out.

More time spent on the knees, without any real findings. Not even seventy-five years of feet had worn down the hefty planks in any discernible pattern. Arthur Corliss or Louis Odessa? Which one had walled up James Miller's body? Or did she have the floor plan backward, somehow, and the architects had occupied this s.p.a.ce, surely more skilled at creating new walls than a medium would be?

The tiniest sound, almost a vibration more than an audible noise, reached her. It could have been the cat outside leaping to a windowsill, or the tiniest s.h.i.+ft of a ceiling beam in the fall breeze. But she didn't think so.

She stood, flicked off her flashlight, and moved across the building to the cellar staircase. Her footsteps made only a whisper over the wooden planks, a series of small creaks.

At the top, she stopped and listened. It would be stupid to go down there, of course. If the sound came from anything other than a stray cat or a racc.o.o.n, it would probably be one of the vagrants who had used the upper floor as a toilet recently and retreated to the bas.e.m.e.nt when she approached. Perhaps a camp had been set up-the earthen cellar would have been warmer during the night than anyplace on the surface. Homeless men-or women-were most likely timid and nonviolent...but she shouldn't take the chance.

She lowered her foot to the first step, heavy and solid.

But what if she were to find some descendant of the Mad Butcher, an apprentice who carried on his work? Someone who had not been surprised by the discovery of James Miller's body. Someone who knew how and why he had been laid to rest on a crude table in a secret chamber.

Someone who knew.

She took two more downward steps, waited. No sound, save for her own breathing.

This was stupid.

But wasn't it just as stupid to be afraid of the dark? It was only a cellar, after all. So what if a murder had happened here years and years ago?

Another step. She didn't believe in ghosts, anyway. If they existed, they didn't hang around crime scenes or even their old bodies. She'd spent enough hours with both to know.

Pity, really. She would have enjoyed meeting James Miller's ghost.

Her toes found the next board.

Though it wasn't ghosts one needed to fear here, not in an abandoned building in a large city with no one close enough to hear you scream.

Almost there.

He waited until she had one step to go to blind her.

The ray of light that struck her eyes seemed too bright for a handheld lamp, but rather like the startling beam of an approaching train. The toe of her Reebok slid off the edge of the last step and she fell even as her fingers clutched the Maglite. Her legs buckled and she would have wound up in a heap on the hard-packed earth if the man hadn't been in the way.

His flashlight fell away; it pointed toward the steps and provided a backlight with which to silhouette the man. He rose to his feet, unfolding a dense form that kept rising and rising, and the only thought in her mind became They were right. He really is a monster.

And now he stood between her and the only means of escape.

She had managed to hold on to her Maglite, but he was on her before she could either swing it or turn it on, yanking her up by her shoulders hard enough to leave bruises on both arms. She opened her mouth to scream.

"What the h.e.l.l are you trying to do, kill me?" said this demon of the depths with a puff of onion-bagel-scented breath.

"Jablonski!"

"What are you doing here? Are you finding evidence? Are you planting evidence?" He gave her a little shake, little meaning it didn't completely loosen her fillings. "You have to tell me!"

Initial relief-at least she knew her attacker-turned to renewed fear. "Let go of me!"

He didn't. "Who is he? Who is this new killer? You know, don't you?"

Enough of this. At the risk of kicking a sleeping psychotic, she used the flashlight as a battering ram into his solar plexus. "Let go of me!"

"Ow," he said with a surprised and offended tone. "What did you do that for?"

Don't back down. Show strength. "Why did you blind me, trip me, and then try to rattle my brains?"

"I didn't mean to put the beam in your face like that," the researcher told her, using wiry arms to set her back on her feet. "You scared me."

"I scared you!"

He retrieved his flashlight but kept it pointed at the floor so that she could see him, the lean face, brown hair gone awry, a fresh set of fas.h.i.+onably casual clothes. Two camera bags and a large, square Kodak dangled from one shoulder. "I didn't know you were here. This building is so solid.... I don't know why Greer keeps saying it's unsafe."

"What were you doing down here?" Her voice still rang an octave higher than normal and her breath came in short gasps.

"Taking pictures." He hefted the Kodak an inch for ill.u.s.tration. "d.a.m.n, I'm going to have to solder this strap mount again."

She sucked in some air, held it, and let it out slowly. Calm down. You have nothing to fear from this guy. "Is that a digital?"

"Yeah, an ancient model that I got for ten cents on the dollar. Unfortunately, given how fast the technology advanced, I still overpaid. But I got to thinking about this cellar and figured he had to bury more bodies here. No one knows how many people he killed, you know. With all the transients moving through this town at that time, it could have gotten up in the triple digits. We still can't be sure how many Bundy killed, right?"

"No." She s.h.i.+fted a few inches to her left, the first step in a cautious circle back to the stairway, not wanting him to see how much he had spooked her.

"Yes. He probably only walled up that guy because he ran out of room down here. I figured I'd better get in here before Greer sends the wreckers. I have a shovel in the car."

"I mean no, there aren't any bodies buried here. A geology team from CSU came out here yesterday with ground-penetrating radar. There's nothing beneath us but dirt."

He seemed disappointed. "Yesterday's killer still won't leave us any clues, and today's killer drives right by us all and gets away."

Theresa moved to the stairs. "'Us all'?"

"I patrolled that area, too. I saw you, and that cop. You couldn't miss the cop, they sent a friggin' marked unit. All three of us driving that circuit, and we still missed him."

She started up the steps, nearly tripping in her haste to see daylight again. "You were there last night? I mean-"

He stayed right behind her, confessing his proximity to the crime scene in a completely natural tone of voice. "Of course. It was obvious where the next body would be left-somewhat obvious, anyway-and what a story it would be if I had found the killer."

She emerged onto the ground floor, Jablonski close behind, and took a deep breath, hoping for the crisp fall air. Instead she sucked in dust and memories. "Speaking of stories, what I told you about my grandfather and great-grandfather, Mr. Jablonski, was in a casual, personal conversation. I didn't expect to see my family relations.h.i.+ps become the focal point of your article."

He blinked in the sudden light, motes dancing in the s.p.a.ce between them. If he'd been much younger, he would have looked hurt. "But you seemed so proud of them. I thought you'd like to tell the city about them."

She couldn't lie, not here in the light. "I did. I do-I mean, I love talking about them. But my cousin wasn't so happy. I can afford a certain amount of sangfroid, but he has to work in an intensely compet.i.tive environment. You never let people know what's important to you in that setting."

"Sure, they'll tease him. But I've been in this business for a while, and believe me, as long as you're not being indicted, there's no such thing as bad publicity. In the long run it will help his career. Trust me."

Almost certainly true, but she didn't care for such a cavalier att.i.tude toward other people's lives. She would have to chalk it up to a lesson she should have already learned-reporters are never off the record. She moved to the door, which was now nothing more than a stone arch.

"Besides, it gives the story a human face, a way to bring the past alive. The city has forgotten one of its most fascinating chapters, and it's up to us to remind them."

"Us?"

"You and me. We seem to be the only two people around who know their history."

"I very much doubt that."

Jablonski advanced, invading her personal comfort zone-but then, her personal comfort zone had a larger diameter than most people's. "That's why I need you to go to Pennsylvania with me."

"What?"

"You know about the New Castle connection, right?"

"The string of similar murders? Yes."

"Not just similar. Some bodies were found actually in unused train cars. One had newspapers from the same day in July, three years previously, from both Cleveland and Pittsburgh."

He exited the building, then turned to take her arm for the few stone steps leading to the ground. She watched a train chug through the valley and said, "I think those murders were committed by the same person, yes, but it's not a new theory. They knew about the similar murders in the thirties, too, and got nowhere with it."

"But now we know the killer not only had some connection with that city, this city, the railroads, but also this building. That narrows the suspect pool. It gives us an advantage the cops in 1936 didn't have. We need to go there."

"I need to go to work, Mr. Jablonski."

"Work?" He laughed. "He killed men and women, one by one, and put them in that swamp until they turned to skeletons. You tell me-how long does it take to strip all the flesh from a person's bones?"

"It depends on a lot of things, temperature, the conditions of the water, marine life," she explained on the way to her car. "Possibly as little as a month, but probably longer. A swamp is actually better than a river for that sort of thing because the water doesn't move; the body just stays in one place and decomposes."

"That's what this guy did. He not only killed these people, he erased every bit of their ident.i.ties, took away everything that made them individuals. He wiped them from the face of the earth." He leaned against her car as she unlocked the door. "Come on, Theresa. Play hooky with me."

He could be as charming as Chris Cavanaugh, in an even sneakier way, but that wasn't what tempted her to take him up on his offer. The Torso killer had so little respect-or so much hatred-for his victims that he had taken his victim's ident.i.ties along with their lives. He had done the same to James Miller, hiding him away from the rest of the world, letting his family think he had abandoned them, a man who had only tried to make the world a safer place.

But James Miller had been dead for seventy-six years, and she needed to concentrate on the man who would die today, who might be saved if she could find something useful in what the killer had left behind last night. "I'm sorry, Mr. Jablonski. I have more immediate obligations."

"Suit yourself." He stepped back, giving her room to open the car door. "I guess I'll see you here tonight then."

She frowned at him from the driver's seat. "Tonight?"

"The fourth victim. The Tattooed Man." He swung the door shut on her. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

CHAPTER 31.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 26.

1936.

St. Peter's Church at Superior and Seventeenth sprang upward from the concrete sidewalk as a soaring edifice of stone and stained gla.s.s. The last Ma.s.s had just ended, and paris.h.i.+oners spilled out of the ma.s.sive wood doors to find their Sunday garb inadequate against the biting air. The church stood less than a mile from the lake, without enough barriers in between to stop the wind. The two cops clutched their coats.

"I wonder what he looks like," James said aloud, his breath appearing as a misty puff.

"So does everyone else in the city," his partner grumbled.

"I mean when he's killing them, the expression on his face. Calm? Crazed? Terrified? I saw a lot of different looks on the battlefield. I wonder where this guy falls."

"That's a swell thought, Jimmy. Thanks for the heebie-jeebies."

It had taken the rest of the morning, but James and Walter had visited Flo Polillo's prior places of (legal) employment. They had to eat in each place, of course, and by the third one James's stomach had grown so full that he had the staff box up his tiny portions to take home to Helen. It would help make up for having to spend her Sunday trapped in a chilly set of rooms.

Walter insisted it would relax the staff and clientele to see them as customers instead of policemen, and it worked. The staff talked. The customers talked. While the two detectives sipped coffee and ate a sandwich, the horrible news filtered through the city and agitated its inhabitants until they could not stop talking.

Not that James and Walter learned much. At first they would be told that Flo Polillo had been a fine waitress or barmaid, a cheery, roly-poly, hardworking woman. After the speaker relaxed into their role, the description would inevitably be refined to include the fact that she drank quite a bit, which would make her pecky and argumentative. She would be seen with one man for a while, then another, then another. Though not a bad worker when she worked, Flo eventually proved so unreliable that management had to let her go.

"A typical drunk, Flo," the owner of Mike's tavern near Central told them. "One day she'd be down in the dumps, sayin' n.o.body in the world cared about her, so what did it matter if she drank herself to death. Then she'd go to St. Peter's and get all inspired with the do-gooders there, decide to reform. Sure I can't interest you in another sandwich? Best corned beef in the city." He gave what seemed like a relieved sigh when Walter turned down the offer.

At least all the free food put Walter in a good enough mood to trot up the steps of the church without hesitation. As a good Irishman he went to Ma.s.s as often as his wife could drag him, and the fortresslike exterior did not daunt him.

James followed with less enthusiasm. He had not set foot in a church since returning from Europe. He had not made a conscious decision about it; without his mother to coerce him, he had simply stopped going. Helen rarely went herself, and then only as a social event.

Once inside, he discovered that he still liked churches, the soaring arches overhead, the gla.s.s pictures that glowed even in the cold winter light, the quiet. Especially the quiet.