Trail Of Blood Part 34

"And she's got his notebook."

"-and she sees something on the blueprints that leads her to the killer? What?"

"Maybe it's Corliss. She confronted him and he killed her."

"Corliss is the only tenant we know about, but that doesn't mean he was Miller's suspect. Who knows what Miller wrote in that notebook?"

Sonia came back into the kitchen area and took the baby to the kitchen sink to rinse off the spit-up. Brent made a triumphant return to the table, legitimately freed from his exile, both the motorcycle and SpongeBob in hand.

"Mrs. Kettle?" Frank asked. "Can you show us those blueprints?"

"Sure. It will only take a minute now that I know where they are. Come by Monday morning and-"

"I meant now."

She looked up from drying her daughter's face with a paper towel. "Now? No, I can't-I mean, I don't have a key to our offices, they don't give keys to peons-and I think the building itself is locked-"

"If we get your supervisor to unlock the offices?"

She perched the baby on her hip with an expression of profound unhappiness. Brent, sensing a significant decision, swung his body from person to person as the exchange went on.

Sanchez asked, "Are you worried that your boss will be mad you showed Kim the blueprints?"

"No, he won't really care about that. It's just that my husband is at work and I don't have a babysitter I can call at short notice. We'd have to take the kids with us." She finished on a determined note. "And you'd have to give us a ride there and back."

Frank bit the figurative bullet. "Brent, how would you like to ride in a real police car?"

CHAPTER 42.

SAt.u.r.dAY, JUNE 6.

1936.

The dead man's head had turned up the day before, wrapped in (presumably) his own clothing and left under a willow tree just southwest of the East Fifty-fifth Street bridge, where any pa.s.serby would spot it. The pa.s.sersby happened to be two Negro boys playing hooky that pleasant Friday.

The killer had not had to wait long for the rest of his handiwork to be discovered. A railroad detective regularly checked the area, looking for items stolen from the cars, and knew the macabre bundle had not been there the day before. "Right across from the railroad police station," Walter pointed out from their vantage point atop the edge of the Kingsbury Run valley. This detail seemed to disturb him more than any other. "Why do that? He gets off on the risk? Or he wants to rub our noses in it?"

James recalled Corliss's words. "Maybe he likes nothing so much as getting away with something."

"I'd like nothing so much as rubbing his nose in this dead guy's a.s.s, that's for sure. 'Course he's probably already done that. Pervert." Walter spat out the last word but lacked the wind for any more as they picked their way down the slope, only half a mile to the east of where they'd found the first two bodies.

Then Walter puffed, "They are not going to be happy with us."

"It's not our fault."

"Has that ever helped, with a wife?"

"It used to." James couldn't blame his wife for being disappointed. She had been looking forward to spending this Sat.u.r.day on a drive in the country with Walter and his wife after being cooped up all winter long. Summer had arrived, with at least as much certainty as one could get in Cleveland, where warm weather could never be counted on no matter the month. The women wanted to see the rolling green hills of Cuyahoga Falls. But once the body turned up, the detectives no longer had the day off. No cop in the city had the day off.

Helen's mood had already been foul enough after Friday, her personal wash day, despite the fact that she could now hang the clothes outside and away from the soot of the woodstove. Was.h.i.+ng took the entire day and left her back aching and her hands blistered from the boiling water. James's interest in finding the building at 4950 Pullman mentioned in the newspaper-now reopened after renovations made necessary when a tenant cooked food on a hobo stove and set his office alight-had been met with a tight-lipped scowl from his wearied wife. James hadn't dared to speak to her until well after lunchtime. Even his having splurged on the newspaper did not thaw her; only the proposed outing had brightened the horizon. When Walter arrived to collect him, they had thrown the news at Helen like a curveball and ran out before she could catch it and bean them.

"Who found it?" James asked his partner as they picked their way through the spring weeds, careful not to slip down the sharp incline.

"Two crane operators for the railroad. Every cop in the city looking for this b.u.m's body, and a couple of joes stumble on it."

They reached the valley floor. Everything reminded James of the first two victims, the knots of cops standing around watching other cops beat the weeds for clues, a police captain smoking a cigar as if he wanted to punish it. The cl.u.s.ter around the dead, naked flesh on the ground. The rumble of a train along the tracks, warning them to stay out of its way. Everything except the air, which had the turgid feel of summer rather than the crisp breeze of early fall.

They approached the body and its attendants.

The dead young man, minus his head, lay on his side, tucked under the branches of a sumac bush as if this would provide enough cover to make it blend in with the surroundings. But if the killer had wanted to conceal the body, why not tuck it farther into the growth on the hill or dump it in the river? Why leave it practically on the doorstep of the railroad police for the Nickel Plate line? But then, if he wanted to mock the police, why not make it even more showy?

For the first time-and it startled him to recognize it for the first time-James wondered if the killer was insane. Naturally anyone who would do such a thing must be, his mind instinctively responded, but James had met a few men during the war who had ill.u.s.trated the different shades of insanity. They had not given any sign of imbalance or sh.e.l.l shock and could converse and function and obey orders like any other soldier. Only their eyes gave them away, the slight smile that lingered around their lips when they drove a bayonet in more times than necessary. They enjoyed killing.

Walter and most men would chalk that up to evil, but James did not believe in evil. It smacked of the supernatural and seemed too easy an excuse for grown men who should take responsibility for their actions.

But if they weren't evil and they weren't insane, what were they?

Dangerous, he thought. That's all I need to know.

He and Walter weaseled past the gawking cops to see. Walter said, as if he hadn't quite caught his breath, "At least he left this one his b.a.l.l.s."

"Look at those tattoos." The victim had colored patterns on both his arms and his legs-a heart, anchors, flags, the names Helen and Paul on one forearm, and a b.u.t.terfly on the left shoulder.

"Sailor," Walter announced. "Who else would have all of those? He's got two anchors-but what the h.e.l.l kind of man gets a b.u.t.terfly? Pervert."

"Never know," said a plainclothes officer crouched by the feet, picking debris off the skin with a pair of tweezers. James recognized him as one of the Bertillon unit guys, the one who had made the photo of the coat for him. "It could have been his nickname for his girl or something."

"Only a wh.o.r.e would have a nickname like that."

"He's a sailor. What other kind of dame would he know? She's probably some island floozy, dances in a gra.s.s skirt." The cop paused in his work for a moment, apparently to enjoy the vision of a tropical paradise, with a sandy beach and coconuts and no dead bodies. "This is my day off. I had tickets to see the Indians play in that new stadium. They say it's really nice."

Walter snorted his lack of sympathy. "And I still say this guy's a pervert. Otherwise, how did he fall in with our Butcher?"

A uniformed guy James didn't recognize called to his partner, and Walter toddled off. As this happened a couple times per day, James didn't pay any attention to it. Instead, he asked the Bertillon unit cop, "Find anything?"

"Gra.s.s, weeds. A few dog hairs. Two black hairs that could be our killer's or could be his. We'll have to take a closer look."

"No other injuries? Besides...the-"

"Besides his head being cut off, you mean? No. He is otherwise un molested. It only took a few slices, too, from the looks of it. This madman knows what he's doing."

"No ID yet?"

"No. Kind of odd. Nice-looking young guy, you'd figure somebody would miss him-at least that's what we thought yesterday when we only had the head. But with all these tattoos...if he's a sailor, he could have blown into town from anywhere. I have high hopes for the fingerprints, too." James noticed that the tips of the fingers had been blackened with ink. "But it's been an hour, so if he turned up in our files n.o.body's told me yet."

"Was this body here when they found the head?" James asked.

The Bertillon guy winced. "You can bet that's the question of the hour. Anyone in this gully yesterday is going to be called on the carpet and probably flogged for not searching past the bridge. We're only about a thousand feet away."

"Maybe it wasn't here. He hung on to the guy found with Andra.s.sy for a few days before dumping them both. He could have kept the body a day longer than the head."

The cop picked another twig from the calf and dropped it into a jar before jerking his head to the east. "Even if he did, they should have found that."

James went to investigate. That turned out to be an irregular oval of dried, dark red liquid in the dirt and leaves, approximately two feet by three. The density appeared to vary, heavier where the dirt had more clay than loam, lighter over loose soil. The edges broke up here and there, as if some object had been dragged from the perimeter. Of the weeds that remained firm and upright with their cells brought back to life by spring, most had been painted with the stuff.

Walter joined him. "Not tough to guess what that is."

"But why is it here?"

"Gee, you think the headless corpse over there might have something to do with it?"

"But it's not like him, not tidy. He didn't keep that young man's blood in a bucket and pour it here. He killed him here, spraying all the weeds, see? The other bodies-"

"The other ones were killed somewhere else and then dumped." Walter turned as he surveyed the run. Trees on both sides hid the gully from the view of any nearby houses. "At night there would be no one here to see him."

"Except the trains."

"Yeah, your d.a.m.n trains. All he'd have to do is drop down when one came by. It would be pitch dark out here."

"Exactly, so why?"

"There you go with the why again. Because he's a crazy pervert, that's why."

"I mean, why outdoors? Why not in his lair or workshop or wherever he holed up to kill the first three?"

They took a few steps back to the corpse. Walter said, "This stiff is a young guy, got a decent enough shape. Maybe he had second thoughts about his new friend."

"He tried to get away, and the guy had to work fast. That's possible," James admitted, "supposing the killer had the weapon along with him, and probably did. But I'm wondering if he did it outdoors because he had no choice."

Walter squinted at him in the sunlight. Behind him, the men from the morgue spread out a clean sheet next to the body. The Bertillon unit guy got ready to topple the body over onto it.

"Maybe he had to work outdoors because he lost his works.p.a.ce. He's been kicked out of his house or his wife or some out-of-town guests arrived unexpectedly. Or his office had been closed for repairs because they had a fire." He told Walter about the notice in the paper.

"So who's your suspect? Corliss or Odessa?"

"Either. Both. The victims have been healthy men and one large woman. They'd be a lot easier to handle with a partner."

Walter shook his head. "Just because we've run across them, Jimmy, don't mean either one is the guy. Every cop in this city has a suspect in mind and good reasons to pick them up."

James looked down at the cop by the corpse, now plucking evidence off the side the body had been lying on. "What color are those dog hairs?"

"Yellow. Why?"

James raised his eyebrows at Walter. "Corliss's dog is yellow."

"So's mine, Jimmy. And Odessa only likes good-looking girls and Corliss is as milquetoast as any guy I've ever met. Face it-you ain't going to necessarily be the hero here."

James's face burned from more than the sunlight. "That's not the point."

"Yeah, it kinda is. Look, we'll let the captain know about your little theory, and we'll go around and talk to that doctor again. But right now we've got a job to do." He nodded his head to the side and walked out of earshot of the men around the body. James followed with a sinking heart. They'd played this little drama before. The sooner they got it over with, the sooner he could get back to work.

Over Walter's shoulder, James watched the Bertillon unit guy put the dog hairs in an envelope. He wondered if they needed another man in that unit. Did they feel pressure due to their access to the evidence? How many hairs and coat b.u.t.tons and shoeprints got "lost" on the way to the lab? Or did their scientific world stay removed from that of the beat cops?

"Ness is going to raid Harwood's place tonight," Walter said without preamble.

"Harwood."

"Commander of the Fourteenth."

"I know who he is." Captain Harwood perched nearly at the pinnacle of corruption in the city; no vice could exist in his region without his stamp of approval, or his hand in the till.

"Some city councilman out there has a beef with Harwood and he put a bee in Ness's bonnet about the Blackhawk Inn. We've got to help move the tables out of the back room before Ness and his handpicked band of saints get there."

"We?"

"Yes, Jimmy, we." It would have been funny under other circ.u.mstances, the jolly Walter wearing an expression of such grim determination. "You gotta make up your mind. Either be a cop like the rest of us, or-"

"Or what?"

"Or I swear to G.o.d I'll walk into the captain's office first thing Monday morning and request a new partner. And you'll need to find some other line of work."

Because everyone else in the department would refuse to work with him. On the other hand..."Ness has the mayor behind him, and, as you said, it's an election year. Why not keep ourselves out of it and let Harwood clean up his own mess?"

Walter went straight for his trump card. "There's a double sawbuck in it for you."

Twenty dollars would pay his rent for the month, and Walter knew it.

"You could buy Helen those dishes she's been pining for. Harwood's boys are desperate for help. Every cop in the city is busy with this thing." He waved his hand toward the decapitated corpse as the morgue boys wrapped it loosely in its new shroud.

"We're busy with it, too."

"We're rubberneckers. The captain isn't here and we have no a.s.signment. You're out of excuses, Jimmy. Face it."