Trail of Blood (27 page)

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 relationships become the focal point of your article.”

He blinked in the sudden light, motes dancing in the space 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 competitive 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 attitude 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 identities, 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 identities 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.”

St. Peter’s Church at Superior and Seventeenth sprang upward from the concrete sidewalk as a soaring edifice of stone and stained glass. The last Mass had just ended, and parishioners spilled out of the massive 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’ nobody 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 Mass 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 glass pictures that glowed even in the cold winter light, the quiet. Especially the quiet.

They found the priest in the vestry. Father Donatello had wasted no time in removing the vestments and adding a heavy sweater and then a coat. When he spoke, his breath misted. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

They explained the need to retrace Flo Polillo’s steps.

“You can ask the ladies in the kitchen,” the gray-haired man said as he led them to a large building behind the church. “But we have so many people come to us for help. Sometimes we give food to eight hundred men a
day
.”

A heavy door revealed a large room with opaque windows and chipped linoleum. It smelled of stewed cabbage and body odor. Tables and a motley assortment of chairs had been set up, and most were filled with men, though plenty of women and children sat among them. James’s gaze fell on one, a too-thin toddler on her mother’s lap. Her long lashes and porcelain skin contrasted with the patched, stained little coat. She reached for a roll, but her mother kept it out of reach and broke the stiff bread into smaller pieces, giving her one at a time, either to keep her from choking or to stretch the meal out. The child stuffed each piece into her mouth and set to chewing with a determined motion of her tiny jaw. The girl’s father, hollow-eyed and with an expression one muscle short of a snarl, noticed James’s scrutiny and glared until the cop looked away.

You’d let your son starve for your pride….

Would he?

The priest was leading them toward the kitchen. “We never know from one day to the next what we’re going to be given to work with. Many grocers will be generous with old bread and meats, but it’s awfully hard to get decent vegetables, especially in winter. Everything is harder in the winter. We keep the heating at a minimum to divert funds here, but on top of all that, we have more people to serve.”

“Why?” Walter asked. “Because they can’t survive in the shanties in this cold?”

“No, there’s just more
of
them. Once the lake freezes, the port closes for the winter and that ends a lot of jobs. On top of that, some of the mills and auto plants in Detroit closed down and those men came here. Is this about that poor woman they found in the alley?”

“What do you think about a bas—a man like this, Father?” Walter surprised James by asking. “Is he controlled by the devil, or just a rotten man?”

“I get asked variations of that question all the time, my son, and I’ve not yet found a perfect answer. I believe it’s a combination of both.”

He introduced them to three ladies dressed in practical and similar garb, with no other characteristics in common: a teenage girl, dull and pockmarked; a woman of about thirty with a peaches-and-cream complexion; and a hatchet-faced matron. Not one recalled Flo Polillo.

“Well, thanks anyway, ladies—” Walter began.

James interrupted. “Father, what’s that?” He gestured to three large crates that someone had labeled with white paint: men’s, women’s, and CHILDREN’S.

“This is where we put the available clothing. The ladies here dole it out as best they can based on size and need. It doesn’t last long.”

Resting on top of the women’s pile sat a bright blue summer frock, too cool for this time of year and too frilly for everyday use. A rich girl must have cleaned out her closet.

James pulled out a photo of the blue coat from the first victim. He explained—very briefly—why they were looking for the owner of the coat. The occupants of nearby tables paid no attention to them but continued to eat with solemn focus and little conversation.

The priest said, “Even if it came here, these are only the odds and ends. Most of the clothing is given as direct relief, with shelter and food—over thirty-two thousand families last year. So I really can’t guess where your coats would have ended up.”

“I understand, Father,” James said. But then the matronly one took the photo and said, with faint German overtones that raised the hair on the back of James’s neck, “Yah, I remember. We got two of them.”

“Yeah?” James couldn’t believe their luck.

“Goot inseams. Extra stitching at the cuff. Donated by Bailey’s.”

“The department store,” James said. They had been able to find the origin from the tag. “You know your coats.”

“I supervised the line at the shirtwaist factory until the crash.” She surveyed his frayed cuffs and worn buttons.

“Did you see who took it?”

The girl and the peaches-and-cream woman shook their heads, but the older one said, “I helped a gentleman into one of them. I don’t know what happened to the other.”

“What man? What did he look like?”

“Short for a man, and stocky. Dark hair. The color suited him. He seemed pleased when I told him so.”

At least ten questions threatened to burst from James at once, so he made himself take a breath and pull out his notebook. Walter let him handle it, more interested in the visual examination of Miss Peaches and Cream.

“What was his name?”

She shrugged.

“When was this?”

“Early summer, I zuppose. Still cool at the night. I remember thinking he could use a light coat.”

“Did he stay here at the church?”

The priest answered that. “No, we don’t have anything like that. We help find houses for families, sometimes, but we don’t have the resources to provide both food
and
shelter.”

“Ma’am, did this man tell you where he spent his nights? Or even his days?”

“I don’t remember. I juzt happen to recall the coat, that’s all.”

“Then did he say anything about the coat?” James asked in desperation.

Her face cleared. “Yes, I remember now. He seemed quite pleased with it, like I said, and said perhaps it would help him get a job like he’d had before.”

James refrained from grasping her arm. “What job?”

“Oh,
ich weiss nicht
—I don’t know. Looking for work is all these men do, all day, every day. Poor souls.”

A man at the closest table glanced up at them. His eyes blazed at the description before reality snuffed out the flame and he turned his face downward once again.

“But what kind—”