Trail Of Blood Part 30

Pop! "Theresa, while I admit to feeling a steady and magnetic attraction for you, I would never stoop to a felony to get your attention. Your friend let me in."

Her heart began to pound again.

He poured the clear and bubbly liquid into her gla.s.s. "Nice boy. Young for you, I would think, and without much fas.h.i.+on sense. He's upstairs working on your computer. Apparently you need virus protection."

She stood. "I need protection, all right. Jablonski!"

Her voice should have split the floor above her to let him fall through it, but the house remained silent for a shocked second or two before a slight creak sounded from the office room above.

"Jablonski!"

Steps pounded across the upstairs hallway and down the stairs. The reporter trotted into the kitchen and tried for a sheepish grin.

"Why did you break into my house?"

"I'm sorry to borrow your computer, but I had to get tonight's murder in a half hour ago for tomorrow's edition-"

"What are you doing in my house? On my computer?" She turned to Chris. "I can't believe you let him browse through my computer."

"He was here when I arrived." The negotiator defended himself while filling his own gla.s.s. "And I'm hardly in a position to refuse other men access to you."

"You know why? Because we hardly know each other, that's why!"

"A situation"-he sipped-"I came here to remedy."

She whirled on the young man again. "Jablonski!"

"I didn't break in."

"I'm sure I didn't leave my home unlocked."

"Um, no. Not exactly." She glowered with what felt like nuclear strength until he added, "I guessed the code for your garage door opener. It's your birthday, which is not the best code for you to use, you know, for that reason alone."

"How did you know my birthday?" She turned to Chris as if this might have been some sort of conspiracy, but he threw up his hands to proclaim his innocence.

"I'm a reporter. I have my ways." Jablonski attempted the rakish grin, but the look on her face must have convinced him that it wouldn't work this time. "I went to the scene but your cops wouldn't let me in. Your cousin threatened to arrest me if I tried. He has a real att.i.tude, by the way."

"You have not yet seen an att.i.tude." Then she added, "You were at the train yard? I didn't see you."

"I knew he'd come there to re-create the Tattooed Man. I'd have been there much earlier but a tractor-trailer overturned and the turnpike became a parking lot west of Streetsboro...anyway, I saw you, with the gloves and the camera and the evidence. You're a formidable woman in your element, you know that?"

He looked at her with soft brown eyes full of admiration that normally would have melted her on the spot, but today the idea that she had been flanked by two men who felt free to invade her s.p.a.ce at will simply because they were handsome irritated her to no end. "Both of you need to leave now."

"But-" Chris protested.

"But," Jablonski said, "I went to New Castle!"

She should not have been swayed. Finding unexpected people in her home had startled her, particularly unexpected men with whom she did not have a blood tie. But..."And?"

"I think I know who the killer is."

"The Torso murderer, or the current one?"

"Both."

Her eyes narrowed. Jablonski obviously found the mores of polite society quite negotiable. But on the other hand, he might have something interesting to say.

"All right," she said at last. "Look in the cabinet over the stove and find a gla.s.s that isn't chipped."

"So," Jablonski said, once he sat at the table and plucked the champagne from Chris's ice bucket, "I drove to New Castle, Pennsylvania. It took me-could your boss maybe toss me some reimburs.e.m.e.nts to cover, like, my gas? Maybe?"

"No." Theresa sipped the bubbly liquid, which was not her favorite. Champagne in general had too many calories and not enough alcohol to suit her.

"The print media deserves the support of its community," he repeated like a mantra.

"I agree, but it's a police department investigation."

"I'll ask your cousin then."

She snorted. The boy did not understand government budgets.

Chris said nothing, with an expression that came dangerously close to pouting. Theresa began to feel glad Jablonski had come, if only to throw a wrench in Chris's suave plans.

"So, New Castle is kind of interesting. It started because some guy went out there to double-check surveys of land that the government donated to Revolutionary War veterans. He found that, oops, they screwed up and left out fifty acres. So this surveyor figures, No one's going to come looking for these fifty acres, I might as well help myself, and laid out his own little city."

"When was that?" Theresa asked.

"Seventeen ninety-eight."

"Very interesting. What did you find out about the 1920s and '30s?"

"It's also the hot dog capital of the world."

"Uh-huh."

"Really?" Chris asked. "Why?"

Trust a man to perk up at the mention of food.

Harry caught the discussion of dogs and laid his head on the young man's thigh, glancing upward with imploring eyes until he got petted.

"Something about Greek immigrants making chili dogs. I never really thought of chili dogs as Greek food, myself."

Theresa stopped sipping. "Did you find out anything relevant to the building at 4950 Pullman?"

"I think so. This swamp where all the dead bodies turned up is almost directly south of the city of New Castle, toward Pittsburgh, by a junction where all the railroads come together at a large station. And this swamp, well...it's a swamp, not much there. So then I went to the historical society and found the city directories for 1925 through 1935, and looked for the names of the 4950 Pullman tenants."

"I thought your victim died in 1936," Chris said to Theresa.

"He did, but the murders in New Castle began in 1923 and continued off and on until 1941."

"Why'd he stop?" Chris wondered. "World War II? Was the guy drafted?"

"Or the government protected the railroads so well that security got too tight for him to operate."

Jablonski sipped the champagne and gave Chris Cavanaugh an up-from-under glance. Chris's shoulder s.h.i.+fted like lava welling up from a dormant volcano. "I didn't find any mention of Corliss-well, actually I found two Corlisses, but they were residential addresses for a John and a Henry, I think, and no business listings."

"And the nutritionist?"

"I'm getting to that." Clearly Jablonski wanted to tell his story his way, so she listened. "I found a Dr. Odessa listed under physicians, without a first name noted. Then I tried business listings. No individual practice, but in a section for hospital staff I found a Dr. Odessa at the Shenango Valley Hospital from 1926 through 1930. Still no first name and he disappears after 1930."

"Specialty?"

"Anesthesia."

Theresa pondered this, twirling the stem of the gla.s.s between her fingers. "That's interesting."

"Why?" Chris asked.

"It could be a different Dr. Odessa, of course. But our Dr. Louis knew how to slip young Irene a mickey, and if he had made a habit of using his wares on female patients he might have been run out of town on a-well, on a rail."

"A mickey?" Chris asked.

But Jablonski ran with it.

"So he moves to a new city and a new job."

"He stays off hospital staff and doesn't have a partner, so there's no one to monitor his activities."

"And you two think this guy is the Torso killer?" Chris asked, resting his elbow on the pile of paperwork he'd brought with him.

"Yes," Jablonski said. "Maybe."

"Not necessarily," Theresa said. "The Torso killer killed many more young men than women, and none of them teenagers. On the other hand Odessa may have had access to the room in 4950 Pullman where we found James Miller's body, so we can't eliminate him."

"This killer is amazing, really," Jablonski said with that now-familiar glow of enthusiasm for the subject. "Going back and forth between the two cities, lopping off heads, never getting caught by either police department."

"He's not that amazing," Theresa said with annoyance. "Communication then was not what it is now, and forensics was severely limited."

"But they connected the New Castle cases after the sixth or seventh murder, right? So he killed one after another in two different locations, and they still never caught him."

"The New Castle murders weren't that steady. There were gaps-I have a chart of it around here. Hang on a second."

Theresa went up her steps two at a time and retrieved a legal pad from the desk in her small home office. She b.u.mped the computer mouse as she did so, and her annoyance increased as she saw that Brandon had left a Web page open. A picture of one of the Torso's victims appeared, the one known only as the Tattooed Man. Jablonski had been doing research as he waited for her. She moved the cursor to the X in the upper right-hand corner and then hesitated. They might want to use the PC to look up some piece of information, so she figured she might as well leave it on.

Her gaze fell to the text on the page. She had a.s.sumed it to be a factual history of the murders, but it seemed to be one person's fantasy about the case from the killer's point of view. Certain words jumped out at her, with a heavy emphasis on the s.e.xual aspects of the killing.

She minimized the page, deciding to come back and check the history of Jablonski's time on her computer after the two men left.

She returned to the table. "The New Castle murders began in 1923, with three bodies found that year and two in the following year, mostly skeletons. Then nothing until 1936. That's a thirteen-year gap."

Jablonski said, "Maybe he went to other cities. Like here."

"One skeleton turned up in Youngstown in 1939, which is also on the rail route from New Castle to Cleveland. But nothing else."

"That we know of," Chris said. "As you pointed out, communication was not what it is now."

"But the Cleveland cops would have been watching for similar cases, especially after connecting with the New Castle bodies. I'm sure they would have found any similar murders that were out there to find."

"How did he go back and forth without anyone figuring out that there's something strange about the dude?" Jablonski wondered aloud.

"Because a whole lot more people rode pa.s.senger trains then than now, and, if my theory is correct and he worked on the railroad, then he wouldn't have been noticed under any circ.u.mstances. Besides, there's really only one New Castle murder that occurred while the Cleveland murders were going on, and that was in 1936."

"You think he moved to Cleveland from New Castle and then moved back again?" Chris asked. "Or he did the 1936 case during, what, a visit to the dear old homestead?"

"Could be. Or he traveled between the cities every week for twenty years, and simply went in streaks as to where he preferred to pick his victims. Who knows?"

The cat came down from the bookshelf and jumped up on Jablonski's lap, swatting the dog's nose until he conceded petting privileges and moved on to the next man. Jablonski sniffed at his gla.s.s again. "Hardly Dom Perignon, is it?"

For a rare moment, the silver-tongued hostage negotiator remained speechless, though his eyes spoke volumes.

"Anyway, then I looked for the other names I had. I got nothing on the medium, Morelli. But get this..." He paused, watching as both of them waited for him. Theresa allowed him his moment of drama. "I did find one of the architects' names. Richard O'Reilly."

"Huh," she said.

"He had an office in the center of town, but his residence listing was way down on Route 18, almost to Mahoningtown."

She stared at him with what had to be a blank expression. "Just north of the murder swamp, in other words."

"Now that is interesting."

Chris said, "In cop circles, that's what we call suspicious."

"Richard O'Reilly is not listed after 1933. Actually there were two other Richard O'Reillys there during that time, but their addresses don't change and they were still listed in the city directory in 1935, when the architect guy we're interested in was living in Cleveland and working at 4950 Pullman."

Theresa nodded. "I don't know what, if anything, it proves, but it certainly is interesting."

The young man beamed, but not with pride-something more reminiscent of a cat who had recently made the acquaintance of a canary. "I'm not done."

He waited so long this time that her patience eroded. "What?"

"The Lawrence County Historical Society-that's where New Castle is, Lawrence County-is housed in a mansion built in 1904 for a tin plate magnate. I'm not sure what tin plates are, actually, but I know what magnate means. That means he had a lot of money."

"Uh-huh," she said, prompting him.

"This magnate's name was George Greer."

"Uh-huh."