Trail Of Blood Part 6

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6.

PRESENT DAY.

They pa.s.sed through a white-on-white hallway and into a completely changed environment from the front room. No carpets interrupted the light hardwood floor and no draperies blocked the high windows. No furniture save for a waist-high platform in the center of the room, which had to measure ten feet by fifteen.

Corliss stood at one end and turned a crank to roll up the clear plastic sheet that floated on the top, supported by metal rods placed in strategic locations.

No quaint village here. Highways, skysc.r.a.pers, and houses upon houses, through which the trains flowed, met, separated, and looped around again on the sh.o.r.es of a blue-"It's Cleveland," Theresa exclaimed. "You've modeled Cleveland."

"From Rocky River to Shaker Heights." Corliss bent over one corner of the platform, opened an electrical box, and flipped several switches. Tiny bulbs lit up in the windows of the office buildings, the airport, gas stations. Trains chugged to life.

"You even have the rapid transit cars." Theresa watched one of the electric commuter vehicles, on which she'd spent so many hours over the years, glide along beside a locomotive. Both at 1:64 scale, of course.

Even Jablonski seemed impressed. He took some stills, then switched back to the camcorder, its lens sweeping the model city from end to end.

Frank said nothing but circled the tableau as if he expected to witness the model citizenry engaging in various crimes. He needn't have worried. The replicated city had every accoutrement down to park benches but not one citizen. Theresa did not find that surprising-they'd have had to be the size of ants and number in the hundreds to populate this metropolis.

"Here's the Medical Examiner's Office." Theresa could have spent an hour noting every detail to the display. "How long did this take you to build?"

"About a year, I suppose. But I'm never really done. I'm always tinkering with it-I spent three days on the swing bridge this past week after its motor decided to quit. Then I decided to make it winter-at least in part of the city. Here, let me show you."

He picked up a pint-sized plastic container and popped off the lid. Before she could react, he scooped up her hand and immersed her fingers into the white goo. "Brush it on the trees like this, lightly, so it sort of frosts them but not completely."

It had been a long time since a man held her hand. The white stuff felt like cottage cheese but drier, the tiny plastic limbs rough but flexible. Under her fingers, Christmas came to Cleveland.

"Do you ever crash them?" Jablonski asked, tapping one engine as it went by.

"Of course not!" its creator snapped. "And don't touch that!"

"Sorry."

"I could stand here all day." Frank's voice sounded patently unconvincing, but perhaps only to someone who'd known him since her birth.

"But we really do need to learn more about your father's building."

"It's here." Theresa pointed out the stone structure's miniature copy. It looked better in the model than in real life-tidy and still alive.

Frank raised an eyebrow to let her know she was being less than helpful. "Can we check for the photographs, please?"

"Certainly. You have to excuse me, I don't get many opportunities to show it off. My neighbor is a fan, but other than him..." Edward Corliss handed Theresa a rag for her fingers, switched off his tiny city with obvious regret, carefully replaced the plastic dust cover, and took them to a much smaller room off the back of the house. Bookshelves covered nearly every inch of wall s.p.a.ce except for framed prints and drawings of trains, and it smelled of dust and pipe tobacco.

"They're not in an alb.u.m, I'm afraid, only loose in a box," Corliss warned them as he dug through one of the lower cabinets. "Father didn't always have my sense of order. Or Mother's."

"Where is your mother?" Frank asked.

"She pa.s.sed away, oh, must be more than forty years now. Before father did. Let's see what we have here." He sat at a wooden desk that would have required six bodybuilders to lift and flipped the top of a box that had once held Audubon Society note cards. The other three people in the room watched over his shoulder, Theresa leaning close enough to pick up the scent of Old Spice. She loathed Old Spice because her first boyfriend had worn it. She decided not to hold that against Edward Corliss.

After donning a pair of reading gla.s.ses, he turned the photos over, one by one, gently but methodically. "This is my baptism, you don't need to see that...those were our neighbors, they've since moved...my flat in England, I still regret selling that, the prices have shot up in the past few years...my graduation...ah, here's one. It's the outside of the building, though."

Theresa peered at the black-and-white image, still sharp after so many years. "Which one is your father?"

He tapped a lean finger on the man in the center, who was wearing creased trousers and a white s.h.i.+rt with a tie. He bore some resemblance to his son, mainly in the deep-set eyes, but seemed taller. He carried his suit coat tossed over one shoulder, and a rounded hat had been pushed back from his forehead. He posed in front of the same entrance Theresa had pa.s.sed through yesterday morning; his clothing and the shadow behind him told her the picture had been taken in summertime, when the sun hung to the north.

"Who are the other people?" Frank asked.

On Arthur's right stood a gaunt man in similar clothing and a young woman in a long black skirt and a coat festooned with chiffon scarves. She had wavy dark hair and smiled. The man didn't. On the other side of the owner, two young men seemed to be jostling with each other and their images had blurred. Behind them and off to the side sat a man with less-neat clothing and a ruined expression.

Corliss said, "I'm only guessing, you understand, but I'm sure my father told me at some point that these two young men are the architects I spoke of. And-again, I'm not sure-this man could be that doctor."

"The nutritionist?" Theresa asked.

"The dietician, yes."

"Who's the woman? Is that your mother?"

"No." Edward Corliss brought the photo closer to his face and then backed it away again, as if that might help jog his memory. "I have no idea. She could be the medium. Father always described her as an outlandish dresser."

"What about this man, in the background?"

Corliss shrugged. "Again, no idea. He could be anyone, someone working for the other tenants, a pa.s.serby. He could have been a b.u.m, I mean, a hobo. My father used to try to help them during the Depression, give them a meal, let them sleep there a night or two if he had any vacant units. I said he had a soft heart, and during those years there were plenty of men who needed one."

"When was this photo taken?" she asked.

Corliss turned it over, showed them the May 5, 1936, printed in block letters. "The man could have been a messenger for the railroads or one of the other businesses, I suppose, or he could have spent the night on the front stoop and hadn't left before they snapped the picture. As I said, a common occurrence then as now, the poor souls sleeping on the sidewalk. Sometimes I think not much has changed."

Jablonski spoke, startling Theresa. He had moved to just behind her left shoulder. "Who took the picture?"

All four people peered at the snap with new interest.

"Your mother?" Theresa suggested.

"No, they didn't meet until after the war. I really don't know. A friend, I suppose, or another tenant."

Frank asked, "Did he ever mention someone disappearing from his building? A tenant? A client? Even a hobo?"

Corliss considered the question, shook his head. "I'm sure I would remember something like that."

"Did he ever mention a James Miller?"

"Not that I recall."

"So you have no idea who this dead man we found could be?"

"I've been thinking of nothing else since you called this morning. No.

I have no idea." His eyelids fluttered suddenly. "Surely you don't think my father had something to do with that."

"We don't have any theories at present. Do you mind if we borrow this picture?"

Corliss pulled it away, toward his own chest. "My father wouldn't kill anyone. No one."

"I understand," Theresa said.

"Unless they deserved it," he added, and turned over the picture. The sentiment did not seem too odd; Theresa had heard it before. Corliss continued to sort through the photos but the only other find, from an investigator's point of view, came near the bottom of the box.

"This is my father's office at the Pullman building," Corliss told them.

Corliss Sr.'s office bore a great resemblance to Corliss Jr.'s study, aside from the color of the walls-white in the photo, pale caramel in the room in which they currently stood. Plenty of bookshelves supporting model trains instead of books, and framed pictures of same. Arthur Corliss stood by himself, facing the camera with crossed arms and a self-satisfied expression. A notation at the bottom read: November 1935.

"This is the same desk," Theresa said.

Edward patted the worn surface as if pleased she had noticed. "Solid cherry. An unusual design for the time, the flat top. Office desks were always rolltops, with all those little cubbies for storing things, but as office work increased in the new century, efficiency experts decided that a plain top minimized clutter and backlog. The pigeonholes made it too easy for workers to stash their work and forget it."

"Interesting," Theresa said.

Frank didn't find the historical trivia quite as fascinating. "There's a door."

"Door?" Corliss asked.

"Door?" Jablonski asked.

Theresa noted the opening, framed by wooden molding, in the wall behind the desk. "Is that the bathroom? Did you ever visit your father's office, Mr. Corliss? Do you remember its arrangement?"

He frowned in concentration, peering at the photograph. "Vaguely. I would have been only seven or eight, you understand."

"Did it have a small lavatory?"

"It had a sink. I remember how old the fixtures seemed. And a bit rusty."

"Anything else? A closet? A storage s.p.a.ce?"

"I don't think so, but I really can't be sure. I had just turned nine when he sold the place." He handed the photo to Frank and went through the rest of the box but did not find any more of the building at 4950 Pullman.

With the interview winding down, Jablonski the stringer came to life.

"Did you work for your father's railroad, Mr. Corliss?"

"A bit, in my younger days. I ran the dispatch office for a few years, but then decided to break away to the more sophisticated climes in Europe and England. Silly, as it turned out, but not entirely unproductive: I read mechanics and chemistry at Oxford and then settled down to a respectable job as a civil engineer."

"Buildings?"

"No, roads. Traffic patterns were our main concern." He stood up, visibly stretching his legs, and plucked a four-inch-long locomotive carved from ivory from a shelf. He pressed it into Theresa's hands, guiding her fingers over the glossy surface. His eyes, she noticed, were blue with blue-gray flecks, like bubbles in champagne. "I bought that from a pipe maker in Bath...remarkably smooth, don't you think? Anyway, then my father died and I returned to manage his estate. I also took over his position in the preservation society."

Jablonski pounced on this. "The what?"

Frank's pager buzzed, that angry-bee sound.

Corliss answered without looking away from Theresa. She had not been a tactile person for many years but somehow didn't mind the warmth of his hands wrapping hers around the ivory train. "The American Railroad History Preservation Society. I'm the vice president. We're hosting a c.o.c.ktail partyslashfund-raiser at the art museum next month. You should come."

Was this older man hitting on her?

Of course as her officially ancient birthday loomed, sixty-one no longer seemed too far out of line, especially a well-spoken and interesting sixty-one, so perhaps she should consider- Then she thought of her fiance, dead for fifteen months now, and it all seemed absurd. Her, her job, a seventy-four-year-old corpse.

"All of you," Corliss added.

"It's beautiful," she said of the train, and placed it back on the shelf.

"Thank you for showing us around."

"Any time. I'm only too happy to share my collection. See this gear? It's from an original Union Pacific steam locomotive."

"We have to go," Frank said.

"Mr. Corliss, did your father ever mention the Torso Murders?" Jablonski asked.

"The what? Oh, those, the bodies in the river. I'm not that old, young man. Those things happened long before I was born."

"Now," Frank added.

Both host and reporter seemed disappointed as the party moved back to the front door, their voices echoing slightly against the foyer's high ceiling. Corliss said, "Do come back if I can help in any other way. Take my card, Detective-there's my phone number. It's been a pleasure to meet you."

"Thanks," Frank said.

Jablonski asked if he could come back with follow-up questions, perhaps in the next day or two, and Corliss agreed.

"Thank you," Theresa told him. He responded by touching her elbow as she made her way over the threshold, a courteous gesture, gentlemanly, except for the way his thumb caressed her forearm as he did it.

As she slid into the pa.s.senger seat, she noticed Corliss still watching from the open door. "That was interesting."

Frank mumbled under his breath.

"Did you get a call?"

"I'm going to drop you off at your car, Mr. Jablonski," he said by way of response, and nosed the car out onto the boulevard.

"Your boss said I could stay with you two all afternoon, following the investigation...."

"Only the cold case. Not a current one."

The grim way he said it convinced Theresa that the rest of her day had just been claimed as well.