Part 2 (1/2)
”Is that Leo?” Frank asked, referring to her problematic boss. He watched her with the phone to his ear, obviously on hold.
”No.” She brushed the last specks off the badge, avoiding her cousin's eye. He had many of the characteristics of an older brother-the annoying ones. If he sniffed an uncomfortable subject, he'd run that rabbit to ground every time.
He merely raised an eyebrow, phone still clamped to his ear. ”Who, then?”
”Chris.”
”Cavanaugh?”
”Yep.”
”You're not taking his calls? Why?”
”Because I have more important things to do right now.”
”What'd that showy a.s.s do, stand you up for a date?” Frank had never been a fan of the high-profile hostage negotiator.
”That wouldn't be possible, since we're not even really dating.”
”I should think not-what? Yes, I'm here.” He relayed the gun information to the person on the phone, and Theresa turned back to the body.
Besides, if she and Chris were really dating, he would call her more than once a month before texting for a lunch date as if she'd drop everything for the opportunity to see him. And he wouldn't have taken the city manager's daughter to the Cleveland Playhouse benefit last week.
Of course it was okay that he did, because they weren't really dating. Besides, the benefit was more of a political event.
She set the badge next to the left foot. The shoe on that foot had what appeared to be masking tape wrapped around the toe.
The body s.n.a.t.c.hers, the Medical Examiner's Office transport ambulance, were on their way with a Sawzall. She would cover the body with paper but still refused the plastic wrap idea.
Frank snapped his phone shut. ”James Miller.”
”What?”
”CPD a.s.signed a Smith and Wesson with that serial number to a James Miller.”
”How did you find that out so fast?”
”We got a great guy running our history museum and he's got all the rolls from back then. Miller joined the force in 1929, was promoted to detective in 1932, was dismissed in 1936 for dereliction of duty.”
”Don't you have to turn in your gun and badge when you get fired?”
”Usually. The historian has got to check some other records but says it isn't clear why he was fired-the way the notes he could locate are worded, they could mean that Miller became derelict and was therefore fired. In other words, went AWOL.”
Theresa looked down, automatically directing her gaze to the head of the body when of course the head no longer sat at its usual spot at the top of the spinal cord. ”Wouldn't a cop suddenly going missing cause a stir?”
”Of course it would. I'm sure they investigated, but it will take a while to track down those reports. That's if this is even him, and not someone who stole James Miller's badge and gun either to p.a.w.n it or use it. Those were desperate times. The Torso killer wasn't the only one operating in Cleveland.”
”What do you mean? We had another serial killer?”
”I meant the other kind of serial killers-mobsters. Cleveland was a wide-open town then. They'd cracked down in New York and Chicago, but here they stayed under the radar and had most of the cops on the force on their payrolls. That Untouchable guy had to come here and clean it up.”
”Eliot Ness. I know, but I thought hit men dumped their bodies, not constructed little shrines to them.”
”It's not a shrine. I've gone through every pebble on the floor and they left nothing in this room but the body. And they would have wanted to make absolutely sure this body did not turn up-even then, they didn't kill cops if they could help it. This table could have been here for another reason, gambling, making bathtub gin. Miller finds them, or wants a bigger cut or something, so they slit his throat, wall the place up, and conceal two crimes at once.”
”I don't know,” she said skeptically. ”Why make such a statement with the beheading if you didn't want to display it as an object lesson for everyone else?”
”We don't know that they didn't. There could have been a gap of time between the murder and closing the room.”
She didn't want to picture a line of delinquent clients traipsing past to gape at the body of James Miller. Spreading the brown paper shroud over the bones, she tucked it in at the edges. Officer Miller would be subjected to only empathetic gazes from now on.
Theresa picked up one of the halogen lights, aimed it at the remaining wall. The light danced off the ancient wood and the plaster welling up through its cracks. The construction appeared steady and strong; the job had not been done in haste. It might be the original structure, but then they had no way to tell what the two and a half missing walls had been like before their destruction. If the walling up of James Miller had been flimsily done it wouldn't have kept him secret all these years.
The wood had aged over the years with a speckled pattern of discoloration. She took a small bottle of Hemastix test strips out of her crime scene kit and dampened the ends with distilled water. Then she got Frank to hold the light for her while she pressed a wet yellow tip to a large stain, dark against the dark wood. The feltlike yellow material instantly turned a deep blue. ”There's blood on the walls.”
”Wow, what a shock. Wouldn't cutting someone's head off produce a lot of blood?”
”That depends on how it's done. If it takes a number of cuts to the carotids, then there would be blood spraying everywhere for a few seconds. Even if there's only one quick stroke severing the neck, the heart could keep pumping out the rest of the blood since cardiac tissue can function more or less independently of the brain-a.s.suming the victim is still alive, of course. But this”-she stood back, taking in all the darkened spots as a pattern and not merely a characteristic of the wood-”isn't one or two arterial spurts. The drops are more discrete, separated.”
”Castoff?” Frank suggested.
”Upon castoff upon castoff, upon castoff.”
”As if someone got really medieval on his a.s.s?”
Theresa couldn't help but picture the Mad Butcher, dancing around the room covered in his victim's blood, each thrust of the knife scattering red liquid across the wood and plaster. A fall breeze drifted through the windows behind her, carrying with it a hint of winter, and brushed the back of her neck.
She tested a few more stains. They all reacted positively. ”Yes, it's only four feet from the table, but it seems like an awful lot of drops for a relatively small amount of damage to the body. There's no evidence of multiple stab wounds and/or bludgeoning, and no fractures.”
”If it's mob work, it could have been something more subtle, some technique that hurts a lot but doesn't kill quickly. Maybe they had questions for Officer Miller he didn't want to answer. Or asked for something he didn't want to give back. Though I can't see why they'd leave him armed, in that case.”
Theresa dug a sliver of wood from one stain with a disposable scalpel, dropping it into a small manila envelope. She marked the location on her crime scene sketch before moving on to another stain. ”Or this guy isn't the only person who was killed in this room.”
”You really do think this is the Torso killer's workshop?”
”I think I need to sit down.” A joke, with no place to sit-but it really was too much: the bizarre circ.u.mstances, the time warp, the victim being a cop, the possible connection to a historic serial killer. ”Who's going to tell Mr. Lansky that we need to hang on to this building for a while?”
”I vote for you.”
”I vote for Leo.” Her boss had a deft hand for dealing with anyone he thought potentially useful to him-i.e., anyone outside the Medical Examiner's Office-and would have the clout to hold up even a city councilman's pet project. Whether he would have the fort.i.tude, of course...Leo's grasp of local politics exceeded even his considerable grasp of forensics.
”Good luck with that,” her cousin told her.