Trail Of Blood Part 35

"You face this, Walt. Harwood will go down. They'll all go down. Times have changed."

"Some things don't never change, Jimmy."

"Corliss is our killer, I'm sure of it." He wasn't, really, but he'd sooner encounter the Mad Butcher than help out the mob just so the other cops would play with him at recess.

"Are you afraid of Ness? Is that all this is?" Walter stared at his partner with both disappointment and a cold intelligence of which James would not have thought him capable. "All this time I thought it was integrity."

I did, too, James thought as he watched his partner walk away.

At least he was free to track down Arthur Corliss and his yellow dog.

The body had been hefted into a waiting hea.r.s.e, but the Bertillon unit guy still crouched among the weeds where it had lain. He seemed to be puzzling over something in the palm of his hand.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Piece of gla.s.s." The guy held it up to the light. "I found it under the body, sticking to his calf. It could have been here already, of course, there's plenty of trash around. Odd color, though."

Something p.r.i.c.kled at the back of James's neck. "Color?"

"I thought it was brown, like a beer bottle-that's mostly what you see down here-but it's actually black. Maybe a decorative thing..."

His voice faded into the distance as James sprinted up the hill.

CHAPTER 43.

SAt.u.r.dAY, SEPTEMBER 11.

PRESENT DAY.

Edward Corliss seemed surprised to find Theresa on his doorstep. "Well, h.e.l.lo. Do come in."

She apologized for dropping by unannounced and gave him her condolences upon the death of his friend as she followed him into the house. He thanked her but shrugged off the sympathies. "I can't say William and I were great friends. I'm sorry for him, of course, but selfishly sorrier for myself. It's strange to have violence strike so close to one. And at my age you begin to take the death of peers personally, as if time itself is reminding you that yours is limited."

And yet for all his calm tone, he did not head for the elegant living room, instead returning to the comfort of his model room. The trains were running, chugging through the fake buildings and hills, their tiny wheels making tiny clicks against tiny tracks.

Theresa circled the plastic city, taking in details she hadn't noticed on her first trip. He had specks underneath the solid water in the lake that looked like fish. The top of the Terminal Tower lit up. The Waterfront Line rapid transit had a graphic on its side to advertise the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She browsed and waited for Edward Corliss to ask questions. People always had questions about a murder.

Except him, apparently. He crouched over the rust-brown Center Street swing bridge, soldering the seam on a piece of track. Where had she heard about solder lately? Jablonski, and his oversize camera after she fell on him in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Pullman building.

Jablonski, who had had no trouble getting into her house and making friends with her dog, or sitting on the chair in front of the computer, where the cat liked to sleep. Jablonski, in his comfy cotton clothes that everything stuck to. Had last night really been his first visit?

"Would you care for a cup of tea?" he asked.

"No, thank you. I've come to ask for your help," she said, and asked if William Van Horn often sketched near the preservation headquarters.

"Yes. Is that what he was doing when they mugged him?"

She didn't comment on what was almost certainly not a "they" and not a mugging. "I think so. I found a piece of a picture. I had hoped you could help me scout the area, figure out where he might have been sketching."

"Oh. That would be William. The only human part of him was the artist part." He straightened and unplugged the soldering iron, which left a gritty, metallic smell in the air. "I don't mean that as harsh as it sounded. He made an excellent president for the society and I'm going to have a hard time filling his shoes. But he was, well..."

"A hard man to get to know."

"Exactly." He tested the track with one finger and, apparently satisfied, stood up.

"I think you'll be an excellent president."

"Thank you."

"So the society gets the Pennsylvania Railroad files after all."

He raised one eyebrow slightly, as if he found that in poor taste but didn't want to embarra.s.s her by pointing it out. "Yes. Let me set this down." He puttered at a small table in the corner for a moment and then came back with an open plastic container for her. "Would you do the honors, Ms. MacLean, before we strike out to search the rail yard? I'd like to get this city winterized before winter actually arrives."

She took the container of paint-on snow. The faster she checked the preservation headquarters for Van Horn's abduction site the faster she could go home and see her daughter, but the man before her had nothing but trains and the memory of his father. She felt compelled to warn him of what might lie ahead if they identified that father as Cleveland's worst serial killer. Trains were all he had to keep from feeling as lonely as Irene Schaffer. She mixed the glop with one finger.

But could this be a case of like father, like son? Though she couldn't quite picture this older man jumping on and off trains carting the dead weight of a full-grown man, he still made at least as good a suspect as Jablonski or Greer.

The fake snow felt wetter today, sticking to her fingers as much as the rough branches of the plastic trees as she watched the trains go round and round. From Cleveland to New Castle, Pennsylvania. James Miller wouldn't have known about that series of similar murders; he died before the connection between the two cities had been uncovered.

Jablonski had flown with the theory, however. She had checked out the Plain Dealer that morning at the lab, and while the young man had thankfully restrained himself from quoting her as a source, he had put nearly every detail of last night's conversation into his story. When he ran out of facts he moved on to speculations. The man was truly obsessed. Perhaps too obsessed.

Though at least Jablonski wanted to preserve James Miller's final resting place. Councilman Greer had been agitating to destroy it since they discovered the body. Why? To hide a past crime? To destroy his connection to the current set of murders?

She gazed at the miniature Terminal Tower. Everything remained circ.u.mstantial. Just like the original Torso Murders, all the evidence was like a fog in the valley, constantly s.h.i.+fting in appearance and weight. Everything she'd learned in the past week added up to nothing.

"So." Corliss adjusted two pine trees in the Metropark system as he talked, encouraging their trunks to stand ramrod straight. "Do you still think my father might be this Torso killer?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure. Unfortunately, James Miller's body was found in a s.p.a.ce that, most likely, only your father had access to."

"How do you know that?"

She explained about her conversation with Irene Schaffer.

"Dr. Louis? That nutritionist?"

"Yes."

"He sounds like a much more suspicious man than my father."

"I agree. But the Torso killer never showed any interest in young girls, and her description of the closet puts it closer to the outer wall than the s.p.a.ce in which we found James Miller."

"But you can't be sure. Perhaps the closets weren't of equal size. Perhaps Dr. Louis used them both. And even if there had been a door from my father's office, that doesn't mean my father used it."

She said nothing, having no reason to think the closets weren't of symmetrical sizes, and though one could say all one liked about proof it was pretty hard to explain away a corpse turning up in your storeroom.

"It would help if we had the original blueprints."

"If I find them, I'll let you know."

She brushed whiteness along the branches of a fir tree, dotted it on the browning leaves of an oak. "I thought you had looked through all your father's papers already."

"I did. But they probably had to have the building inspected when they sold it, and any paperwork would be in the Penn Railroad collection. If I find anything, I'll keep it out for you."

"Thank you." Most people would not have been so cooperative with someone trying to prove their parent's guilt. But perhaps Edward needed to know as much as she did.

The trees at last standing to his specifications, he added, "But you know, I might even be mixed up in my recollections and that wasn't my father's office at all. Plus the architects who designed the building worked in it. They could have put in all sorts of secret rooms without anyone else's knowledge."

True, though unlikely. The floor had been too solid to be breached from the cellar, and the construction crew had not found anything to indicate access to the s.p.a.ce from the second floor. Too craven to press him, she only asked, "Is that enough?"

He inspected her work, saying, "A little more."

Something tugged at her brain cells, wanting their attention. The mention of their neighbor state had echoed a previous conversation, from her first visit to Edward's home. "You said your father worked for and then bought a railroad in Pennsylvania?"

"That's where it was based. The track system went from Harrisburg to Chicago."

He added the loose fake snow on top of her wet coating, creating a snowfall realistic enough to warrant mention on the Weather Channel.

"Winter has come to your city," she told him.

He let more flakes drift to the top of the music auditorium. Apparently Cleveland had had a blizzard. "Snow covers up a mult.i.tude of sins. Little imperfections, roof sections that don't perfectly meld."

Theresa's legs began to feel heavy. The late night and early morning had caught up with her. "My dad used to say that about paint. Covering up a mult.i.tude of sins, I mean."

Snow. Paint.

"Where did your father live in Pennsylvania? When he worked for the railroad?" To get his attention away from the model, she added, "The one he later bought."

He recapped the container. "Oh, a little town, you've probably never heard of it. There's pretty much nothing there except train tracks."

"Where?" she asked again, pursuing some body of thought that would not quite gel.

"New Castle."

And, just like that, the final piece fell into place.

Arthur Corliss fulfilled every requirement of the Torso killer. He had intimate knowledge of and free access to the railroad system. He worked in the Kingsbury Run area. He had lived in New Castle and had a business there. He owned and occupied not only the building but-apparently-the storage s.p.a.ce where James Miller had been slain.

She felt drunk-but not with success, as she could not summon the slightest happiness for solving the Torso killings. For one thing, the evidence seemed d.a.m.ning but still completely circ.u.mstantial. For another, she felt dismay on behalf of Edward Corliss. "And your father never-" What? Gave any sign of a depraved violence? Talked about his victims? Displayed his trophies, if he kept any? She knew she should shut up now, put down the white goop, and search the rail yard on her own, leaving him to sort out his family's ghosts in private. She needed to talk to Frank. Between the two of them they would figure out what to do.

"Never talked to me about being the Torso killer?" Edward gave her a weary smile and straightened. "This is a h.e.l.l of a job you have, Theresa."

"I know."

"The answer is no, he didn't. I'm sure he would never have mentioned it to Mother, either."

She felt her forehead crease in a frown, trying to make sense of this last part.

He took the container out of her limp hand. "She didn't know, you see. She believed him to be a great businessman and philanthropist-which he was-and only that. I would have spent my life believing it, too, if I hadn't crept into the cellar one day to pinch a beer and found a leg in the stationary tub."

She waited, the way one does when another person is talking too fast, hoping that if one gives it a little time one's brain will sort the words into an order that makes sense. Her problem was, they made too much sense already.

Edward went on, his light blue eyes dancing with light reflected from the white walls. "They never caught him, you see. He didn't go to jail, his family didn't whisk him off to some fancy asylum. He simply got over the need for attention and learned to hide his victims where no one would ever find them."

"Where?"

Edward smiled at this and shook his head. "Always the scientist. I don't know where. After I found half a man in our bas.e.m.e.nt-this bas.e.m.e.nt, I'll show you the room-I toasted him with the beer I'd taken and went back to my studies. When my father returned from whatever errand he'd been on-probably disposing of the first half of the body-he didn't know his sanctum had been breached, and I never said a word."

He picked up a stained towel and began to wipe the white stuff from her fingers as he spoke, gently tugging on each one. "All through the years, I never said a word, though I think I should have. The way he looked at me sometimes...he wanted to share it with his only child. That's natural for a parent, don't you think? Don't you share your secrets with your daughter? My father never told me, but I found my own way of coming and going from the bas.e.m.e.nt so that I could watch."

"Wahssh-"

"But I never killed." He moved closer to her, watching her face for its reactions. "Whatever demons drove my father didn't drive me. Not even when temptation would strike-when you work on roads, Theresa, the one thing you learn about human beings is that most are sheep. They simply do the same things over and over until someone tells them to do something else, and then they'll do that over and over until redirected again. Boring things, really. But I never harmed a one of them until that blond wh.o.r.e showed up on my doorstep. I have to admit I'm disappointed in you, Theresa. It's taken you a week to discover what that little bimbo figured out in two days."

Theresa grabbed for the edge of the table and caught up the bottle of fake snow instead. She opened her fingers to let it fall, then thought better of it. If she damaged the model there was no telling what Corliss could do, and besides, the label caught her attention. Polyethylene.

"Granted, it was only a guess on her part. She found my father's name in that notebook-"

"Wha no-"

"Some little book from her grandfather. He had written about Arthur in it and then she found his name on the blueprints. I happen to be listed in the phone book, so voila, she showed up on my doorstep."

Plastic snow. Polyethylene made to look like tiny snowflakes...circles.

She couldn't believe how slow her brain was working. Had worked.

As liberally as he applied the fake snow, it must have settled on all sorts of things, just as her pets' fur did.

"She wasn't positive my father was the killer, but figured the evidence came close enough. I don't think she even cared. She only had this wild idea about us taking to the talk-show circuit, making the most of her fifteen minutes, I guess. But I knew, and I had to get that notebook away from her."

They had struggled here-Kim brushed her arm against the hot soldering iron as Corliss strangled her, damaging the freshly painted swing bridge, infuriating him all the more. The struggle lodged paint and fake snow in her hair.

Physical evidence could chase all the fog away. And now she had it.