Part 14 (1/2)
CHAPTER 17.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8.
PRESENT DAY.
”What were you thinking?” Frank asked for the third time.
”I was thinking I'd like to get a look at the guy who was burying two dead bodies.”
”You didn't know that when you started out to take a stroll among the train tracks and the winos and maybe a few gang wars!”
”Are you looking at this? Besides, I called you, didn't I?”
”So I'd know where to pick up your body! Thanks a lot.” Frank rubbed the bridge of his nose, not because it hurt but because he and Theresa both had picked it up from a TV detective when they were kids as a way of expressing exasperation. Somehow exasperation came up a lot when they were together. ”Look, just promise me that you'll never wander through a train yard after dark again. First, that you'll never tell a reporter our family history again, and second, that you won't wander through train yards.”
It seemed unlikely that she would make a habit of either, so she figured it to be a safe bet. ”Okay. But are you looking at this?”
”Yeah,” he said. ”I see it.”
The first corpse lay on its left side, calves separated, arms loosely bent as if he were sleeping. That victim wore no clothes except for a pair of socks. The second victim, about twenty feet away and a little farther up the hill, lay on his back in a patch of dead goldenrod, with no clothes at all. The heads and male organs had been removed from both victims, the latter parts found together in a pile next to the second body. The killer had been working on the heads when Theresa interrupted him.
”I don't get it,” Angela Sanchez said, staring down, not at the severed cranium of a youngish man with brown hair, but at the foot-in-diameter hole dug into the ground next to it. ”He wasn't going to bury the bodies?”
Theresa shook her head. ”No. Just the heads. With enough of the hair sticking out of the dirt so that we'd be sure to find them.”
”Why?”
”Because that's what the original Torso killer did,” Theresa said.
”Victims one and two,” Frank intoned, ”were found here, in exactly these positions.”
”Victim one, anyway.” Theresa pointed at the corpse lying on its side.
”A photograph still exists of that one. We can't really be sure how he posed the other one. The records don't specify.”
”And the pile of clothing?” Angela asked. ”Is that like the original murders?”
”That, too.” Theresa had made another trip, a more cautious one this time, up the valley to retrieve her camera. She snapped another photo of the material stacked between a worn brick and a crushed McDonald's cup with at least a month of grime on it. ”It should be a coat, a s.h.i.+rt, pants, I think, maybe a hat. When Don gets here with the crime scene equipment I can examine it further.”
”That's only enough clothes for one guy, though.”
”I know, but that's what the first Torso killer did. This guy might deviate, though. He's already got a few details wrong.”
Angela waited until a rapid transit train pa.s.sed by, though the electric cars made much less noise than the diesel locomotives. ”Such as?”
”In the Torso killings, they were both white, and victim two was older than victim one-this one on his side-and had been killed at least a week before victim one. He also had something poured on him, possibly calcium hypochlorite, that made his skin leathery. Now these two guys-victim two appears older than one, yes, but he's also black; his skin has not been treated; and he certainly hasn't been dead for a week. I'd be surprised if it were more than a few hours. He either hasn't studied his history or he's not as patient as his predecessor. He doesn't want to wait a week. He certainly didn't want to wait a year.”
”I'm sure I'll regret asking this,” Angela said, ”but what do you mean by a year?”
”I'm sure I'll regret answering it. Monday's victim? The woman cut into pieces and thrown in Lake Erie?”
”Copying another one of the Torso killer's?”
”His first, so far as anyone knows. They called her the Lady of the Lake. Some of her-not the head-washed up on Euclid Beach, but because a year went by before the two men on the hillside were found, no one connected her murder to the series until much later. That's why they went back and called her victim zero.”
Frank said, ”So-a.s.suming that woman wasn't killed by a boyfriend or a freak boating accident-our new guy decided to collapse the timeline. A year became two days.”
Theresa tried to talk herself out of the theory. ”But the first Lady of the Lake had been dead for months when she surfaced, and her skin had been turned to leather as well. That's not consistent with Kim.”
Angela looked around, frowning in the bright halogens. ”Zero, one, and two. How many were there, again?”
”Twelve,” Frank said, ”officially.”
”Probably twice that in reality,” Theresa added.
Frank asked, ”Tess, can you identify him?”
”I can't even swear it was a him. I a.s.sume so, from the size of it-him-whatever I saw. One person, in dark clothes. I didn't see hair, whether he wore a coat or a hoodie or a mask or just had dark hair.”
”Weight?”
”Big, I guess. You know I'm lousy at that.”
”Well, think.”
They stood side by side, backs to the tracks, facing the corpses, waiting for more reinforcements to arrive so that the scene could be doc.u.mented and collected with all possible accuracy. She knew Frank had to draw every detail he could before the incident faded from her mind, if it faded. She just wished he would be a little more gentle about it. Her system had had a shock, even if she did not want to admit it.
”Think,” he said again. ”Bigger than me?”
”I think so, yes.” Theresa frowned; it felt like a guess and guessing was the one thing she was not supposed to do. Verifiable facts only, ma'am.
”Loose clothing?”
”I think so.”