Part 21 (2/2)
”So you came here tonight because you thought this guy might kill again and he might do it tonight and he might dump the body here,” he asked with some skepticism. Never mind that he was there for the same reason-he had been a.s.signed. It was different.
”It seemed a distinct possibility.” The double murder on Jacka.s.s Hill had come immediately after the Lady of the Lake, if Kim Hammond was supposed to be the Lady of the Lake, so why not telescope the rest of the series as well? ”And that means that at this moment he's dropping off the rest of this woman's body somewhere around 1419 Orange Avenue. We have to go there. Now.”
”There's no we here, um, ma'am,” the cop said, trying for a combination of stern and courteous and missing both. ”A car has been sent and they don't need help. This is our job, not yours.”
He was correct, of course, in that she was not armed, not trained, did not get increased pay for hazardous conditions, and had no authority to apprehend or arrest anyone. But he made it sound like none of that mattered. All that mattered was that she was not a cop-not one of them.
”I understand. Besides, you can't leave this crime scene unsecured,” she told him. ”However, I can.”
She walked to her car before he could argue, feeling fairly sure he wouldn't shoot her. Fairly sure. She hastily threw too much money to the young woman in the tollbooth for the half hour of parking and turned right on Orange, Fourteenth, then East Twenty-second. Down to Broadway, turn right. Once upon a time this area had been referred to as the Roaring Third, a rough conglomeration of bars and tenements. Her great-grandfather would have known that.
In the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s north of Broadway as it intersected with Orange, she found it.
”We could have caught the killer,” Theresa complained to her cousin an hour later, ”if that kid had come here when I told him to.”
”Wasn't an option. He couldn't leave a dead body unattended. Besides, the killer could have dropped this off and been back in his car in ten seconds. He was probably halfway home by the time you found the first body-the first pieces of the body.” Frank straightened up, towering over her and her find, his back to the phalanx of mobile news vans corralled behind the yellow tape. Their lights nearly blinded her, but she could see Brandon Jablonski front and center, his gaze fixed on her.
”We could have caught him,” she said again. A gust of cool wind hit her face with no effect upon her internal temperature. They'd been so close.
Frank showed her no sympathy. ”He could have caught you, wandering around like that. Or any of the other a.s.sorted killers, rapists, and general miscreants that roam this city after dark. What were you thinking?”
Angela Sanchez had gone to the post office building to see if they had outdoor cameras that might have caught the killer's brief stop by the side of the road. Two officers, armed with small but brilliant lights, combed the gra.s.s, but Theresa doubted they would find anything. The killer most likely placed one milk crate, made the twenty-foot walk back to his car, and did the same to the second. No dirt to retain tire tracks or shoeprints, no reason to hang around dropping a cigarette or a b.l.o.o.d.y glove.
Theresa said, ”I was thinking this guy has to go to certain places to live out his little fantasy of re-creating the Torso Murders. All we have to do is be there. He should be the easiest killer to catch in the history of forensics and instead he drove right past us!”
”Don't shout,” Frank warned her, jerking his chin at the reporters. ”Those guys have parabolic mikes. But at least now we know he apparently plans to complete all twelve murders in twelve days. I won't have any trouble getting the manpower we need to get him tomorrow night. It's not too late.”
”It's too late for her,” Theresa said, nodding at the victim's calf. It protruded from the milk crate like a prop from the kind of late-night movie only bored teenagers watch.
”I can see that,” Frank snapped. ”What is here? I mean-”
”The upper half of a female torso, the lower halves of both legs, and the left arm. Exactly what we should have. He's read all the books.”
”No head?”
”The cops in '36 never found Flo Polillo's head.”
”Is that newspaper?”
After photographing the milk crate and its contents from every possible angle, Theresa had removed the arm and laid it in the clean body bag Don Delgado brought from the office. ”Yesterday's Plain Dealer. It should be both the Plain Dealer and last year's issue of the Cleveland News, but of course the News has been defunct since 1960.”
”Any ID so far?”
”There won't be. No wallet, no jewelry, not a sc.r.a.p of clothing. They identified Flo Polillo-one of only three of his victims positively identified-by her fingerprints.”
”Maybe we'll do the same. It worked on Kim Hammond.”
”I don't know.” A cool dampness worked its way through her pants as she knelt over the palm, examining the skin with a halogen flashlight. ”Nails are neat and conservative, no polish. No track marks. She's healthy but older.”
”You can tell that from her fingernails?”
She cracked a smile for the first time that evening. ”No, the arm itself. We show our age in the elbows and knees. You can exercise, eat right, get plastic surgery, but the elbows and knees will always betray you.”
She unwrapped the next piece. The killer had cut through the leg at the hip and the knee, leaving the two ends of the femur only slightly damaged. Theresa closed her eyes, opened them. In this job she did not have the luxury of turning away.
”He did that neatly,” Frank said, his voice sounding oddly strangled.
”He did it carefully,” she said, correcting him, forcing herself to examine the flesh. ”Not neatly. He made numerous cuts into the skin, leaving the edges ragged. Then he got through the tendons and cartilage with some kind of saw, I think.”
”Handsaw or electric?” Frank still sounded oh-so-deliberately casual. Behind him she could hear the murmur of the paparazzi shouting questions to anyone who came near them.
”I can't tell. We need Christine for that. But he took chips out of the bone to get it done. It looks neat because he washed it all up so well. There's no blood. He let the body drain, then cleaned the pieces. He probably even dried them because the paper didn't stick too much.”
Frank coughed.
She frowned at him. ”You're not going to throw up in my crime scene, are you?”
”Wouldn't dream of it. Notice the paper?”
”Yeah, it's-” She looked down. In the too-bright light she recognized the photograph that had been rolled around the victim's thigh. Herself, standing on the hillside below 4950 Pullman, her head bent toward a flash of white skin on the ground. It had been taken the evening before by some reporter with a quality telephoto lens.
”This guy could be sending you a message, Tess.”
”I doubt it.” At her cousin's snort she added hastily, ”He's throwing this series of murders together day by day and we have only one newspaper in town. It's not like he had a choice.”
”Could have used the Beacon Journal,” Frank grumbled.
She took the illogic of this as a measure of his agitation. ”The Torso killer used Cleveland papers. Akron wouldn't count. Relax, cuz. He doesn't kill another woman for four or five more murders yet.”
”Oh, comforting. So tomorrow's victim will be a man?”
”Yeah. His head will be rolled up in his pants and his body found about a thousand feet away.”
”The Tattooed Man. Yeah, I remember. Where did he turn up again?”
”Back near Jacka.s.s Hill, in the valley under the East Fifty-fifth Street bridge. Within sight of 4950 Pullman.”
Frank lit a cigarette, striking the match too hard and breaking it. He put the ends in his pocket and used a second one. ”Then we'll get him there. I'll have every cop in Cleveland in that valley, from side to side. He won't get away this time.”
<script>