Part 12 (1/2)
”You have no idea what you're interfering with, Ms. MacLean.” He managed to make her name sound like an obscenity, standing close enough for her to feel the heat from his chest and smell the garlic from his lunch.
”I know a man was murdered-”
”The economy of this city is being murdered every day! Every minute we delay a recovery project, more Clevelanders have to declare bankruptcy and face foreclosure. I want that building released immediately.”
”You were right in the first place, Councilman. This has nothing to do with me personally. We investigate every homicide thoroughly and we will do so in this case. After we examine the cellar with ground-penetrating radar, we will promptly release the building.”
”I'll bill the county for lost ti-what?”
”I have someone lined up to do it this afternoon. If no new information turns up, then we are done with the building.” She hated to do it, but she would have to let the site of James Miller's murder go. ”Provided my supervisor concurs.”
Her supervisor nodded feverishly.
The councilman backed off a few inches, allowing her a half-fresh breath of air. ”That's what we're waiting on? For some egghead to look for buried bodies?”
She would not have expected the councilman to be aware of the uses of ground-penetrating radar. ”Yes. The time elapsed since the murder occurred doesn't mean we investigate with any less diligence-”
”It's that b.a.s.t.a.r.d from the Twenty-second Ward, isn't it? He put you up to this.”
”Councilman,” she said with a sigh, preparing to tell him that she wouldn't know the Twenty-second Ward if her car broke down in the middle of it, but he stepped up to her again until his blue pinstriped s.h.i.+rt blotted the rest of the room from her vision.
”Don't bother, I don't care who it is. But understand this: This is a very important project. Very important. So if I get one more problem from this office, if you affect this project in any way again, you'll never get another job in this county. Got it?”
Too surprised to be afraid or even angry, she said, ”Yes. And I'm sure Officer Miller sends his posthumous apologies for getting himself murdered in a building you want to sell.”
His eyebrows knitted themselves together as he tried to work out those words into a statement relevant to him, apparently failed, and turned to go. Leo hurried after him, echoing cries of ”So glad we could be of a.s.sistance, Councilman,” down the hall.
Theresa waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. ”I hope you don't mind me speaking for you, James,” she muttered. ”But I thought it appropriate.”
Somewhere in the next world, she felt sure, James Miller chuckled.
In the empty room, she sat down at the conference table to read the article. Brandon Jablonski had not written it, though his name appeared as a contributor. But the wording and the enthusiasm for the Torso Murders sounded like him.
It began with a brief recap of the Torso killings and their impact on a depressed Cleveland. By the sixth murder, twenty-five detectives were working the case full-time, the most a.s.signed in Cleveland history. They investigated every missing or suspicious person report; traced every piece of clothing found with the bodies; ran down even trivial, back-stabbing complaints citizens made against their husbands, coworkers, or neighbors. The city counted on the great Eliot Ness to solve the case, but he never personally took the reins of the effort, instead working on a widespread police corruption case that resulted in thirteen convictions, two hundred suspensions, and a host of rea.s.signments and resignations. A different kind of authority figure began to spearhead the ma.s.s of information being acc.u.mulated about the killer-the slight, scholarly county coroner Dr. Samuel Gerber. The case had fascinated him.
As always, Theresa had to smile at the mention of his name. Her first supervisor in the trace evidence section, Mary Cowan, had worked with Dr. Gerber during the infamous Sam Sheppard trial.
Neither famous man nor the battalion of law enforcement officers working for them could find the Torso killer, but that is not a reflection of their abilities or determination. The Torso killer defied efforts at capture because he did not behave like a serial killer on TV. He did not adhere to a rigid process for selecting each victim or disposing of each corpse. He did nothing to make his behavior predictable so that some well-dressed team of agents could swoop in before the last commercial break. No one could have caught him unless by the sheerest luck.
The Depression had hit this industrial city hard and nearly one-quarter of the population depended on some form of government aid to survive. It fell to juvenile probation officer Gabriel Beck to help the smallest victims of this crisis, kids we would call ”at risk” today.
His son, Joseph Beck, became a police officer as well, patrolling the streets of Cleveland as it moved into postwar prosperity and saw the birth of rock and roll.
His grandchildren diversified the family effort. One a cop and one a forensic scientist, the better to surround and choke off today's criminals. Citizens hope these two have inherited more than just their crystal-blue eyes from their ancestors, because they're going to need it to solve their latest case: a newly discovered victim of the same Torso killer that prowled Cleveland all those years ago.
History has come full circle.
Jablonski had included two photos, a famous grainy black-and-white photo of a decapitated body from the original case, and a snap of her and Frank on the dock behind Edward Corliss's house. They were both identified by name in the caption. A profile, she decided, was not her best angle- Her phone rang.
”Did you see the paper?” her cousin demanded as soon as she flipped it open.
CHAPTER 15.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8.
PRESENT DAY.
Theresa began to wind the extension cord, looping it around one elbow. ”Thanks for coming out at such short notice.”
”No problem.” The balding geology professor patted the square, squat machine-Cleveland State had the only ground-penetrating radar within the city limits, so far as Theresa knew. ”You know I'm always happy to get out of the office. I'm only sorry we couldn't find a body for you.”
Theresa sneezed the dust out of her nose. They had crossed the hard dirt floor of the cellar at 4950 Pullman enough times to a.s.sure Theresa that no victims of the Torso murderer, or anyone else, had been interred there. Just as well. She had frustrated Councilman Greer for as long as she dared. Now his demolition could proceed.
”You find out who killed that girl? The one in the lake?” The professor stood backward on the steps, yanked until the machine was perched on the edge of the riser, risking back injury. Theresa lifted at the same time, the metal bars cool against her palms.
”Not yet.”
”I hope you do soon. It's all my giggling ma.s.s of America's future leaders can talk about when they should be reviewing for the quiz.”
Theresa lifted in unison, pa.s.sing another step.
”I try to tell them it will be the boyfriend. It always is.”
”They disagree, I'm sure.”
”To a man-woman, I mean. 'Oh no,' they'll say, 'he loves me.' Sweet things. Makes me glad I have sons.”
Theresa didn't distress him with tales of men killed by their girlfriends, only helped him heft the machine's bulk out to his car, thanked him again, and said good-bye. It had been daylight when she and the professor had arrived, but now the haze of dusk had settled over the city. Time to go. Yet she drifted away from her car, over to the brush-covered slope.
The Kingsbury Run valley-named for the first white settler in this western reserve, who purchased land that would later become the city of Cleveland-traveled in a meandering slash across northeast Ohio. It began two miles away at the West Third Street train switch-house on the Cuyahoga River, on the southern edge of downtown Cleveland. Theresa now stood at, roughly, the opposite end of it. The run officially continued for another four miles into the eastern suburbs, but past Fifty-fifth the tracks diverged and the valley grew less defined.
Cleveland was safer than a lot of large cities, but no one hung around East Fifty-fifth and Kingsbury Run after dark. Not unless they were very tough, which she wasn't, and not if they valued their personal safety, which she did.
Still.
She swung her head to the right and left. Tall dried weeds persisted between the rails. A Red Line car of the rapid transit system took off from the East Fifty-fifth station and moved slowly west toward Tower City, its windows spa.r.s.ely populated with commuters who hadn't gotten the day off or kids and young adults going downtown to enjoy the long weekend to its last drop. As the clatter of the train car died away, it left only the hum of vehicles on 490 behind her and the breeze whispering through the undergrowth.
The Torso killer had also been known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, though only three of his twelve or so known victims were found there. But those three were arguably the most dramatic; one, under the huge East Fifty-fifth bridge to her right, and two on this same bank, about-she looked to her left-forty feet from where she stood.