Part 11 (1/2)
”Are you investigating the Torso Murders?”
How did this get past the switchboard? All calls had been routed to the police department, where they had more operators and were used to dealing with the cranks and the nuts and the people who simply wanted to chat about Cleveland's colorful past. ”I need to refer you to-”
”I saw your name in the paper. I want to talk to you about who killed that man you found in the building on Pullman.”
”You need to speak to the police.”
”I've already spoken to the police. I've spoken to the police for the past eighty years and they've never done me a bit of good. I want to speak to you.”
Eighty years? ”I appreciate that, but I doubt I can help you-”
”Never doubt, young lady. The world is just waiting for a sign of doubt to pin your feet to the floor and keep you in your place. I signed up to be an army nurse and spent the Second World War in the Pacific. Then I built an orphanage, walked along the Great Wall, knocked over a bank, and had three children. Never doubt.”
”Okay,” Theresa said. ”And you know something about who killed James Miller?”
”I should.”
”Why?”
”Because he almost killed me, too.”
She called Frank, who a.s.sured her that since the murder had occurred seventy-four years previously she should feel free to investigate to her heart's content and not worry about stepping on CPD toes, especially since his toes were currently following the trail of the murder that had occurred that week. ”You want to go visit some old lady, go right ahead.”
”Her name is Irene Schaffer Martin-but she was Irene Schaffer then, a young girl. If she can actually recall the players in that building-”
”-and she's not completely senile,” Frank added, ”then sure, it could be helpful.”
”I would think you'd be more interested in the murder of a fellow police officer.”
”Notes made at the time suggest that my fellow police officer was up to his neck with a local boss named Harwood, and I'm not seeing anything to refute that.”
”Did this Harwood make a habit of beheading his victims like the Torso killer?” she shot back.
”Speaking of that,” he answered without answering, ”the homicide unit received twenty-five phone calls just this morning from people whose great-grandpa or distant uncle or ex-neighbor told them who the Torso killer was. We even had one who said he was the Torso killer despite the fact that he wasn't born until the late fifties. Recall also that the entire police force worked on this case for over a decade and got nowhere. The freakin' untouchable Eliot Ness got nowhere. My own captain says he can't decide if he's a.s.signing it to me as a reward or a punishment. Meanwhile I got a twenty-two-year-old with her head cut off, so excuse me if I find that a little more pressing, especially since nothing gets the media's attention like the brutal murder of the young and nubile. So go ahead and talk to this lady, and if she's got anything real or even plausible to say, I'll come out and take a statement. Deal?”
”All right.” Perhaps that would be best, anyway. The woman had been firm about not wanting the police, and given Frank's mood, Theresa didn't want him either.
”Did you hear about-”
”Speaking of James Miller,” she said at the same time, ”did you get the ballistics back?”
”They've got to work the rust out before they can do a test-fire. Say, you might want to check out that nursing home while you're there. Now that you've pa.s.sed over the hill.”
”You're farther down the other side than I am. And it's a retirement community.” She placed the receiver in its cradle and enjoyed approximately ten seconds undisturbed by any male animal before Leo stood in front of her desk with a ma.s.s spec report and a cell phone, as if ready to dial up U.S. News & World Report at any moment. ”What's up?”
”Um...nothing.”
Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, and better to check out Irene Schaffer before unleas.h.i.+ng the hounds of gonzo journalism on her. Or Leo.
Theresa went looking for Christine Johnson. She found the doctor in the autopsy room reserved for decomposed bodies-an odor-soaked room that could make grown men ill-snipping the fingers off James Miller's desiccated body. Theresa averted her eyes. ”I hate it when you do that.”
”Cleveland PD wants 'em.” The doctor brought the handles of the pruning shears together, the snap sound identical to the sound of a small branch breaking. ”They think if they work with the skin enough they can tease out a positive ID with prints. Apparently all cops were fingerprinted, even back then. Good luck to them, I say-these suckers are dry.”
Of course merely finding James Miller's gun and badge on the corpse would not be sufficient identification. But the man being made to suffer this final indignity overwhelmed her. She tried to focus on an empty latex glove box on the counter. No one ever stocked the decomp room. ”I wanted to know if you'd reached any conclusions about Kim Hammond and her missing section of neck.”
”Nope.” Snap.
”No?”
”I can't really be sure what killed her, much less what happened to her neck.”
”Having her head cut off didn't do it?”
”She had too much blood left in her heart to have died of exsanguination. But so far tox is negative, no drugs, certainly no OD. She had edema in the lungs, no edema in the heart, and petechiae in the eyes.” Snap. ”That might mean asphyxiation, but pulmonary edema can result from a dozen different things, probably three dozen.”
Theresa turned to ask, ”Could she have been-augh. How many times are you going to have to do that?”
”Ten. I should think that would be obvious. Ten fingers, five on each hand. Humans are remarkably consistent that way.”
”Could Kim have been smothered?”
”Doubt it. There were no impressions of her teeth against the inside of her mouth.”
”Strangled?”
”Possibly.”
Theresa watched her drop a severed, shriveled digit into a small jar of 70 percent alcohol and tried not to picture James Miller's hands as he took his careful notes. ”You think someone could have cut out part of her neck to disguise the fact that she'd been strangled and not decapitated?”
”Or he saw a TV show where the cops got a fingerprint or the precise and unique size of the killer's hand from a bruise on the victim's skin or some such nonsense. Or he doesn't care what we think the cause of death is but does care what we think of his handiwork, and”-snap-”he did such a hack job taking the head off that he kept trying to neaten up the edges, which would be no easy task once the head had been disarticulated. Then he wound up shaving a lot more off than intended.”
Theresa helped her zip up James Miller's body bag. ”It just seems weird.”
”Really? You mean the part where he killed her or the part where he cut her body into pieces and threw them in the lake?”
”I mean a.s.suming Kim is a strangulation that looks like a decapitation. James Miller is a gunshot that looked like a decapitation.”
Christine screwed lids onto the jars, tightening each one. ”Oh, sure. The two have a lot in common, except that one occurred seventy-five years before the other. That kind of sets them apart.”
”Seventy-four. I don't think they were committed by the same person. I just think it's weird.”
”Maybe your respective killers don't care about official cause of death. They just like removing people's heads.”