Part 1 (2/2)
”The anthropologist will have to say for sure, but he's got that b.u.mp at the back of the skull that men have.”
Frank probed the sandy hair on the back of his head as an apparent fact-checking exercise but said only: ”How long has he been here?”
”A long time. That's all I'm prepared to say for now.” Even when disturbed the body did not smell bad, only a bit musty. The many foul odors from the decomposition process had long ago dissipated along with the flesh. Theresa pulled gently on the leather belt, hoping for a wallet in the back pocket. It held together only slightly better than the pants, though the steel buckle merely needed a little polis.h.i.+ng. A triangular object, previously hidden underneath the body, came along with the belt.
”Is that a gun?” Frank asked.
She slid the dusty object from its case, tilted it under the bright light.
”Smith and Wesson thirty-eight.”
”Let me see.”
”Do not break it open and/or unload it,” she ordered him before she handed it over. No matter how versed a cop became in forensic principles, they never quite lost that ”making the gun safe” habit.
”I know, I know.” He, too, held the weapon under one of the portable lights for a better look.
Theresa took a moment to retrieve an important piece of her crime scene kit-the emergency hair clip. The red curls kept tickling her cheeks as she looked down at the corpse. The movement kept her warm as the sun rose enough to burn off the fog. Mourning doves sighed and cars buzzed along 490 in the distance. ”Where's your partner today?”
”Sanchez is at city hall, running down the building history.”
Never too busy to tease her cousin, she said, ”You've been partners for six months. You can't call her Angela?”
”We're cops. We don't do that first-name stuff.”
”Yeah, sure. How about Angie?”
”How about you get this wrapped up so I can get back to murders that happened this week and not this decade?”
”Maybe it's not a homicide.”
”Besides,” he went on, ”she hates Angie. Not a homicide? He's carrying a gun, and do you think his head wound up between his legs by accident?”
”I'm saying that this table, even though it's made out of wood, reminds me of our autopsy tables. It has a lip installed around the edge, as if to keep the blood in or to keep the patient from sliding off. There's a hole at the bottom that might have had a drain attached to it, with a hole in the floor underneath it that's been filled in with some sort of rubber. Was there a funeral home at this address? A medical school?”
”And they just happened to leave a body behind when they cleared out?”
”Stranger things have happened. It could even be some sort of shrine.”
”Removing someone's head and placing it between his feet is not normally considered a sign of respect.”
”Again, stranger things, and if that's the case then this is just abuse of a corpse, not murder. That's why we need a list of tenants. Also, I haven't found any signs of violence. No gunshots or blunt force trauma to the skull, no visible breaks or nicks in what I can see of the ribs. His bones seem intact.”
”Aside from the head having been removed.”
”Yeah, aside from that.”
Theresa checked the right back pocket of the trousers, reaching in with a cautious and gloved hand. Technically she should have patted them or removed the pants first. Reaching into unknown pockets could result in disastrous encounters with dirty needles or other unpleasant items. But the extremely delicate condition of the clothing made her put aside her own rules. The man had six cents on him, a nickel and a penny. Again, she picked up the halogen lamp for a closer look. ”I don't even know about this decade.”
Frank had been inspecting the one remaining wall. ”What do you mean?”
”I don't know if you're going to want to hear this. I don't even want to hear this.”
”What?”
”It may sound simplistic, but pocket change is generally a reliable indicator of the time a body went missing. You would think we would carry around coins from any year in the past twenty or so, but as a practical matter-”
He came closer, peered over her shoulder at the items in her palm.
”Spit it out, Tess. What year are they?”
”The penny,” she told him, ”is from 1931. The nickel says 1935.”
He picked up the copper coin with Lincoln's head on one side and sheaves of wheat on the reverse, gently, as if it might disintegrate as easily as the man's s.h.i.+rt. Theresa flipped over the nickel, viewing the standard American Indian and buffalo reliefs.
”You mean this body's been here for seventy-five years?” Frank demanded.
Several things occurred to Theresa.
First, that-a.s.suming the man had been murdered-at least they did not have a deranged, decapitating killer running around the city. The killer would almost certainly be as deceased as his victim by now, or at least too frail to be hefting bodies onto dissecting tables.
Second, that given the time lapse, this case would be very difficult, if not impossible, to solve.
Third, that the year 1935 put this man's death in the midst of the infamous Torso Murder spree, in which at least a dozen people were killed, usually dismembered and scattered about the Cleveland area like the seeds for a grisly harvest. The killer had never been caught and all but three of the victims remained unidentified.
Most had been found in or near the desolate valley outside, called Kingsbury Run. Oh, and the press would fall on the story like cats on an open can of tuna.
”c.r.a.p,” she said.
”Yeah,” her cousin said, seconding that.
Six cents. Had the killer robbed the victim and not bothered with the coins? Or had six cents been a reasonable amount of pocket change at that time? She found herself glancing at the skull, as if it could tell her. How had he come to be walled up? Hadn't anyone missed him? ”Who owned this patch of floor, that they could brick it in without anyone else noticing? Was this one big room, or apartments, or what?”
”I'm a little fuzzy on that myself,” Frank told her. ”Yo! Mr. Lansky!”
The man approached, holding his unlit cigar in front of him like a talisman, stopping at the two-by-fours that marked the edge of the small room. When asked, he explained what he had found when they first began clearing the building, three weeks before. His gaze settled on the bones laid out on the table and stayed there throughout the conversation.
”The south side of the ground floor had serious fire damage, really blackened. The upper floors weren't bad. The hallway pa.s.sed through the center of the building, so that the offices had exterior windows.”
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