Trail of Blood (6 page)

“Huh. Well, what else could they do with a location like that, between a freeway and the railroad tracks?”

Leo sipped his coffee, apparently the only nutrient he needed or wanted. “What I’m saying is, get done with what you need to do and release the location, just like you would do for any other crime scene.”

She counter-offered. “Can you get your buddy at the college of engineering to GPR the cellar?”

“Ground-penetrating radar? You think he buried bodies down there?”

“I think if he did, we should find them before the backhoes do.”

He considered this. “Okay. I’ll give him a call. But if he can’t work us in by tomorrow at the latest, we forget it.”

She nodded, yawned again, refilled her cup, and walked down the three flights of steps to the amphitheater.

Theresa examined most clothing and evidence in the old teaching amphitheater, since it minimized contamination to the lab and also had more room. The lab and its wide windows had better lighting, but the amphitheater worked well when one wanted no lighting at all. The small windows had been boarded over years ago to make slide shows more visible, and if she needed pitch dark all she had to do was hit the wall switch.

Never mind that most people would not want to find themselves standing in complete dark while inside a morgue. Theresa had worked there long enough to know that the dead will not bother you.

The living were, of course, another story entirely.

The back of the victim’s shirt, having been soaked in the decomposition fluid that seeped out as the body mummified, held together much better than the front of it. It had hardened into a sort of shield, which Theresa now slid underneath an infrared light.

She had observed the clothing first under ultraviolet light to see if any foreign fibers glowed or any defects—holes—showed up. Then she changed to infrared, which washed out blood and decomposition fluid and illuminated only the material underneath. Nothing of any interest.

She switched to the trousers, and what she saw surprised her.

She went next door to the photography department and fetched Zoe, explaining, “I need to do pictures as I go. This material is so fragile I’m afraid I’ll make a hole by touching it.”

The photographer sighed deeply. Then she made several trips between the two rooms, setting up two lights, a tripod for the camera, the red filter, and the remote shutter release, and sighed again. Infrared photography had to be done in the dark with an open shutter, so the subject—the pants—had to be completely still. Easy enough, but so did the camera. On top of that the camera had to be focused before the red filter blocked the view and then the filter added to the lens without disturbing the adjustment. “What is it that you’re trying to get?”

“Fouling,” Theresa told her. “There’s a little hole just under his waist-band, which I thought had just been the belt loop tearing away from the pants, but I saw what might be an oval of fouling around it. The killer might have shot him at close range with the barrel angled upward so the bullet traveled up the internal organs; that would explain why the anthropologist didn’t find any marks on the bones. When we’re done I’ll do a Griess test, which will probably dissolve what’s left of these pants.” She had hoped, against all probability, that James Miller had had a peaceful death. No such luck.

“Gunpowder will show up after a hundred years?”

“It’s only been seventy-four, but I don’t really know. I’ve never tested clothing more than a few days postmortem, that I can think of. I’ll have to hope that nitrites don’t decompose.”

“People do,” Zoe warned her.

“Thanks for the news flash.”

“I mean, I was just thinking…is that hostage negotiator still calling you?”

“I believe his interest has decomposed.” He would never be able to take anything as seriously as she took everything, and his hot and cold behavior must have been his way of telling her so. The irony of a man who made his living getting people to express their feelings not being able to express his own did not appeal to her. Theresa did not care for irony, which was too often cruel.

Zoe tested the shutter-release cable. “Are you sure? He’s been asking you out for, what, a year?”

Theresa didn’t glare at the photographer as she had at Don. Women were
supposed
to talk about these things, at least according to TV commercials, and she’d grown tired of talking to herself about it. “Chris Cavanaugh never wanted to date me. He wanted to sleep with me. God knows why.”

“Yeah, that’s such a mystery. Can you get the lights?”

Theresa flicked the switch, plunging the room into darkness. The dark brown trousers sat illuminated under a ghostly circle of red light. The body fluid stains receded into the cloth and the sooty area around the tiny hole got darker.

“That could be fouling,” Zoe said.

Theresa hesitated to call it. “It could be, but I’ve never worked on something so old before. Why would he be shot? None of the Torso victims were shot.”

“Why is there a problem if you make it with the hostage negotiator?”

“But then the way he left the body—that wasn’t the Torso killer’s MO either.”

The photographer persisted. “You aren’t married. Neither is he.”

“Because then I’d be one more notch on Cavanaugh’s bedpost or gun belt or whatever analogy would be appropriate to him, me and the city manager’s daughter and whomever else he winks at. And then he’d move on to the next negotiation. It’s what he does.”

Zoe depressed the plunger on the remote cable. “So the surest way to get rid of him would be to hop in the sack? And the best way to keep him coming around is to stay out of it?”

And there Theresa stood, caught in the net of her own logic.

“Um—yeah.”

Zoe advanced the film, depressed the plunger again. “That
is
a pickle.”

The door to the hallway cracked open, which let in the whining sound of a bone saw from down the hallway. Christine Johnson’s exquisite face poked in.

“Hey,” the pathologist told Theresa, “did you know your guy was shot?”

“Unfortunately,” Theresa told her cousin, “that counts against it being one of the Torso Murders.”

He stopped at a red light on Lakeshore, giving her a good view of the stadium. She still missed the old one, that oversize and clunky edifice that had housed both football and baseball fans for sixty-four years. The modern structure had crystal video screens and more bathrooms but held no memories for her.

“That’s unfortunate?” Frank asked.

“If James Miller has nothing to do with the Torso killings, then his murder exists only in the little vacuum we found him in. All attendant information has almost certainly been lost over the years.”

“We may never find answers, then,” Frank said.

“We will,” Theresa said insistently. “I will. But if he was a Torso victim it would have given us a place to start—we’d have had information from the other murders to consider. And it certainly would have made things interesting. Think how pleased Grandpa would be that we got to work on the case.”

The light changed. Frank said, “Arthur Corliss sold his building in 1959, died ten years later. We don’t know what happened to the wife, but they had one child, Edward Corliss, born 1950.”

“And that’s who we’re going to see?”

“Yep.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“Sanchez is taking the construction crew through their statements again, trying to figure out which unit our murder room belonged to. She might get somewhere if those guys can keep their eyes off her chest, but that will be difficult. The lavatories were the only concession to modernity; each unit added closets and storage space piecemeal over the years until the interior walls were jumbled. The fire took some walls down and the crew did the rest, but they weren’t paying much attention to what partitions were where, not with Councilman Greer breathing down their necks. He’s in some kind of hurry for this project to go through. He says it’s because the grant will expire, but he’s probably got a kickback check waiting on a completion date.”

“They knocked down half the walls to that little room without noticing the table?”

“They saw it, but between the dim light and the plaster dust covering their goggles they couldn’t see what was
on
it until they were close enough to touch.”

“The building is still secured, right?” Theresa asked.

“For the moment,” Frank said. “The chief’s already gotten a call from Greer. The councilman really has a hard-on for the demolition and is already laying down threats of unfavorable voting come budget time. Happily for us, the chief hates the good councilman’s guts. Something about a round of buyouts in the late nineties.”

“Do you have a photograph of him? Miller?” she asked.

“I think we’re past the point of a visual ID, cuz.”

“Very funny. I’d just like to see what he looked like. Was he married? Any children?”

“Wife named Helen, don’t know about kids. I can’t tell if anyone investigated her. He wasn’t considered a homicide, just a deserter.”

“Which he wasn’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

Frank chuckled and hit the gas, and the car shot from the I-90 on-ramp to a precarious position between a tractor-trailer and a school bus in less time than even Ford advertisements predicted.

Theresa stifled a gasp, then averted her eyes from the how’s my driving? sign nearly touching their front bumper by glancing into the back-seat. “Why did you bring the stalker along?”

“I’m not a stalker,” Brandon Jablonski said mildly. “What was that you said about your grandfather?”

“Relax, I’m kidding.” At least she thought she was. He didn’t look at all sinister in the cold light of day; in fact he seemed to be all lean determination and stubbled good looks, notebook at the ready. “It’s just that I’ve never seen my cousin bring a reporter to an interview before.”

Frank made a face he didn’t bother to hide from the rearview mirror. “The chief—the police chief, not the homicide chief—considered this a good PR opportunity. After the media ran the story of James Miller and his Torso killer–like death, we’ve been deluged with calls, so he figures we should use it to make us look good.”

“Bringing a reporter along on an investigation.”

“The chief also figured that since it’s the coldest case Cleveland PD’s ever worked, the killer has to be as dead as his victim, so publicity won’t cause a problem at a trial.”

“I don’t know. Some people can be pretty hardy.”

Every time Theresa glanced at the rearview mirror she met Brandon Jablonski’s warm brown eyes, as if they shared some secret joke—probably how he thought of scaring the crap out of her in the parking lot last night. Now he said, “What would you do if you find the guy and he’s ninety-six years old?”

“Arrest him,” Frank said.

“Really,” the man said thoughtfully.

“Yep.”

Theresa stole another look at Brandon Jablonski. “PR,” she said.

“Sometimes I swear your chief and Leo must be twins. They never miss a trick.”

“They could be, since that’s why you’re here as well as Mr. Jablonski.”

“What?”

They continued through Lakewood, crossed the Rocky River, and took a right. “The chief likes the cousins angle.”

Jablonski added, “The combination of police work and forensic science, represented by two members of the same family, tackling Cleveland’s toughest case. You can’t make up stuff better than that.”

Frank made that face again. “He thinks it’s cute.”

“Well, we
are
sort of cute,” she admitted.

“Especially you.” Jablonski grinned. “What was that you said about your grandfather?”

Theresa hesitated. Speaking of her family out of pride was one thing, speaking of it for possible publication quite another. But she had opened the door, so she said, “Our grandfather and great-grandfather were cops.”

“Really,” Jablonski said. “Did they teach you about the Torso Murders?”

“Not really. They occurred before Grandpa Joe’s time, and our great-grandfather was a juvenile probation officer, more of a social worker. He met Eliot Ness, though.”

“Yeah?” The researcher leaned forward, resting his elbows on the back of the front seat like a restless teenager. “The great man himself?”

“Yeah, when Ness founded the Cleveland Boys’ Town. Great-grandpa didn’t care for him, though. Too dapper.”

Jablonski frowned. “Dapper?”

“Something of a ladies’ man.”

“Oh.” She could feel his breath on her neck. “Am I dapper?”

“I wouldn’t have any idea. And shouldn’t you be wearing a seat belt?”

He sat back, lips curved. “Still, that’s intriguing. Can the current generation solve the crime that stumped their forefathers?”

Frank went on as if neither she nor Jablonski had spoken. “Also, you see bodies cut open every day. We need to figure out who installed a dismemberment chamber in that building, and you’ll probably know what to look for more than I will. Like that drain hole.”

Jablonski promptly returned his face to the back of the front seat. “You think that was how he got rid of the blood? They always theorized that the Torso killer had to have medical or surgical—or even pathology—training, since he decapitated his victims so neatly.”

Theresa didn’t ask how he knew the details of the table in the building, only said, “Yeah, but I don’t buy that. One summer—I call it the Summer of the Stabbings—”

Her cousin gave a small groan. “Not this story again.”

“One each, in June, July, and August, I had a guy come in dead of a single stab wound. Big guys, healthy guys. All three hit in the upper left shoulder, because when a killer is right-handed and faces their victim for their Norman Bates moment, they stab the left shoulder. The knife went down behind the rib cage and nicked the heart. All three died before help could arrive, even though at least one had another person present who promptly called 911. All three had been stabbed by their girlfriends or ex-girlfriends.”

Frank tried to cut in. “Now—”