Part 23 (2/2)
He seemed disappointed. ”Yesterday's killer still won't leave us any clues, and today's killer drives right by us all and gets away.”
Theresa moved to the stairs. ”'Us all'?”
”I patrolled that area, too. I saw you, and that cop. You couldn't miss the cop, they sent a friggin' marked unit. All three of us driving that circuit, and we still missed him.”
She started up the steps, nearly tripping in her haste to see daylight again. ”You were there last night? I mean-”
He stayed right behind her, confessing his proximity to the crime scene in a completely natural tone of voice. ”Of course. It was obvious where the next body would be left-somewhat obvious, anyway-and what a story it would be if I had found the killer.”
She emerged onto the ground floor, Jablonski close behind, and took a deep breath, hoping for the crisp fall air. Instead she sucked in dust and memories. ”Speaking of stories, what I told you about my grandfather and great-grandfather, Mr. Jablonski, was in a casual, personal conversation. I didn't expect to see my family relations.h.i.+ps become the focal point of your article.”
He blinked in the sudden light, motes dancing in the s.p.a.ce between them. If he'd been much younger, he would have looked hurt. ”But you seemed so proud of them. I thought you'd like to tell the city about them.”
She couldn't lie, not here in the light. ”I did. I do-I mean, I love talking about them. But my cousin wasn't so happy. I can afford a certain amount of sangfroid, but he has to work in an intensely compet.i.tive environment. You never let people know what's important to you in that setting.”
”Sure, they'll tease him. But I've been in this business for a while, and believe me, as long as you're not being indicted, there's no such thing as bad publicity. In the long run it will help his career. Trust me.”
Almost certainly true, but she didn't care for such a cavalier att.i.tude toward other people's lives. She would have to chalk it up to a lesson she should have already learned-reporters are never off the record. She moved to the door, which was now nothing more than a stone arch.
”Besides, it gives the story a human face, a way to bring the past alive. The city has forgotten one of its most fascinating chapters, and it's up to us to remind them.”
”Us?”
”You and me. We seem to be the only two people around who know their history.”
”I very much doubt that.”
Jablonski advanced, invading her personal comfort zone-but then, her personal comfort zone had a larger diameter than most people's. ”That's why I need you to go to Pennsylvania with me.”
”What?”
”You know about the New Castle connection, right?”
”The string of similar murders? Yes.”
”Not just similar. Some bodies were found actually in unused train cars. One had newspapers from the same day in July, three years previously, from both Cleveland and Pittsburgh.”
He exited the building, then turned to take her arm for the few stone steps leading to the ground. She watched a train chug through the valley and said, ”I think those murders were committed by the same person, yes, but it's not a new theory. They knew about the similar murders in the thirties, too, and got nowhere with it.”
”But now we know the killer not only had some connection with that city, this city, the railroads, but also this building. That narrows the suspect pool. It gives us an advantage the cops in 1936 didn't have. We need to go there.”
”I need to go to work, Mr. Jablonski.”
”Work?” He laughed. ”He killed men and women, one by one, and put them in that swamp until they turned to skeletons. You tell me-how long does it take to strip all the flesh from a person's bones?”
”It depends on a lot of things, temperature, the conditions of the water, marine life,” she explained on the way to her car. ”Possibly as little as a month, but probably longer. A swamp is actually better than a river for that sort of thing because the water doesn't move; the body just stays in one place and decomposes.”
”That's what this guy did. He not only killed these people, he erased every bit of their ident.i.ties, took away everything that made them individuals. He wiped them from the face of the earth.” He leaned against her car as she unlocked the door. ”Come on, Theresa. Play hooky with me.”
He could be as charming as Chris Cavanaugh, in an even sneakier way, but that wasn't what tempted her to take him up on his offer. The Torso killer had so little respect-or so much hatred-for his victims that he had taken his victim's ident.i.ties along with their lives. He had done the same to James Miller, hiding him away from the rest of the world, letting his family think he had abandoned them, a man who had only tried to make the world a safer place.
But James Miller had been dead for seventy-six years, and she needed to concentrate on the man who would die today, who might be saved if she could find something useful in what the killer had left behind last night. ”I'm sorry, Mr. Jablonski. I have more immediate obligations.”
”Suit yourself.” He stepped back, giving her room to open the car door. ”I guess I'll see you here tonight then.”
She frowned at him from the driver's seat. ”Tonight?”
”The fourth victim. The Tattooed Man.” He swung the door shut on her. ”I wouldn't miss it for the world.”
CHAPTER 31.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26.
1936.
St. Peter's Church at Superior and Seventeenth sprang upward from the concrete sidewalk as a soaring edifice of stone and stained gla.s.s. The last Ma.s.s had just ended, and paris.h.i.+oners spilled out of the ma.s.sive wood doors to find their Sunday garb inadequate against the biting air. The church stood less than a mile from the lake, without enough barriers in between to stop the wind. The two cops clutched their coats.
”I wonder what he looks like,” James said aloud, his breath appearing as a misty puff.
”So does everyone else in the city,” his partner grumbled.
”I mean when he's killing them, the expression on his face. Calm? Crazed? Terrified? I saw a lot of different looks on the battlefield. I wonder where this guy falls.”
”That's a swell thought, Jimmy. Thanks for the heebie-jeebies.”
It had taken the rest of the morning, but James and Walter had visited Flo Polillo's prior places of (legal) employment. They had to eat in each place, of course, and by the third one James's stomach had grown so full that he had the staff box up his tiny portions to take home to Helen. It would help make up for having to spend her Sunday trapped in a chilly set of rooms.
Walter insisted it would relax the staff and clientele to see them as customers instead of policemen, and it worked. The staff talked. The customers talked. While the two detectives sipped coffee and ate a sandwich, the horrible news filtered through the city and agitated its inhabitants until they could not stop talking.
Not that James and Walter learned much. At first they would be told that Flo Polillo had been a fine waitress or barmaid, a cheery, roly-poly, hardworking woman. After the speaker relaxed into their role, the description would inevitably be refined to include the fact that she drank quite a bit, which would make her pecky and argumentative. She would be seen with one man for a while, then another, then another. Though not a bad worker when she worked, Flo eventually proved so unreliable that management had to let her go.
”A typical drunk, Flo,” the owner of Mike's tavern near Central told them. ”One day she'd be down in the dumps, sayin' n.o.body in the world cared about her, so what did it matter if she drank herself to death. Then she'd go to St. Peter's and get all inspired with the do-gooders there, decide to reform. Sure I can't interest you in another sandwich? Best corned beef in the city.” He gave what seemed like a relieved sigh when Walter turned down the offer.
At least all the free food put Walter in a good enough mood to trot up the steps of the church without hesitation. As a good Irishman he went to Ma.s.s as often as his wife could drag him, and the fortresslike exterior did not daunt him.
James followed with less enthusiasm. He had not set foot in a church since returning from Europe. He had not made a conscious decision about it; without his mother to coerce him, he had simply stopped going. Helen rarely went herself, and then only as a social event.
Once inside, he discovered that he still liked churches, the soaring arches overhead, the gla.s.s pictures that glowed even in the cold winter light, the quiet. Especially the quiet.
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