Part 35 (1/2)

”You face this, Walt. Harwood will go down. They'll all go down. Times have changed.”

”Some things don't never change, Jimmy.”

”Corliss is our killer, I'm sure of it.” He wasn't, really, but he'd sooner encounter the Mad Butcher than help out the mob just so the other cops would play with him at recess.

”Are you afraid of Ness? Is that all this is?” Walter stared at his partner with both disappointment and a cold intelligence of which James would not have thought him capable. ”All this time I thought it was integrity.”

I did, too, James thought as he watched his partner walk away.

At least he was free to track down Arthur Corliss and his yellow dog.

The body had been hefted into a waiting hea.r.s.e, but the Bertillon unit guy still crouched among the weeds where it had lain. He seemed to be puzzling over something in the palm of his hand.

”What's that?” he asked.

”Piece of gla.s.s.” The guy held it up to the light. ”I found it under the body, sticking to his calf. It could have been here already, of course, there's plenty of trash around. Odd color, though.”

Something p.r.i.c.kled at the back of James's neck. ”Color?”

”I thought it was brown, like a beer bottle-that's mostly what you see down here-but it's actually black. Maybe a decorative thing...”

His voice faded into the distance as James sprinted up the hill.

CHAPTER 43.

SAt.u.r.dAY, SEPTEMBER 11.

PRESENT DAY.

Edward Corliss seemed surprised to find Theresa on his doorstep. ”Well, h.e.l.lo. Do come in.”

She apologized for dropping by unannounced and gave him her condolences upon the death of his friend as she followed him into the house. He thanked her but shrugged off the sympathies. ”I can't say William and I were great friends. I'm sorry for him, of course, but selfishly sorrier for myself. It's strange to have violence strike so close to one. And at my age you begin to take the death of peers personally, as if time itself is reminding you that yours is limited.”

And yet for all his calm tone, he did not head for the elegant living room, instead returning to the comfort of his model room. The trains were running, chugging through the fake buildings and hills, their tiny wheels making tiny clicks against tiny tracks.

Theresa circled the plastic city, taking in details she hadn't noticed on her first trip. He had specks underneath the solid water in the lake that looked like fish. The top of the Terminal Tower lit up. The Waterfront Line rapid transit had a graphic on its side to advertise the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She browsed and waited for Edward Corliss to ask questions. People always had questions about a murder.

Except him, apparently. He crouched over the rust-brown Center Street swing bridge, soldering the seam on a piece of track. Where had she heard about solder lately? Jablonski, and his oversize camera after she fell on him in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Pullman building.

Jablonski, who had had no trouble getting into her house and making friends with her dog, or sitting on the chair in front of the computer, where the cat liked to sleep. Jablonski, in his comfy cotton clothes that everything stuck to. Had last night really been his first visit?

”Would you care for a cup of tea?” he asked.

”No, thank you. I've come to ask for your help,” she said, and asked if William Van Horn often sketched near the preservation headquarters.

”Yes. Is that what he was doing when they mugged him?”

She didn't comment on what was almost certainly not a ”they” and not a mugging. ”I think so. I found a piece of a picture. I had hoped you could help me scout the area, figure out where he might have been sketching.”

”Oh. That would be William. The only human part of him was the artist part.” He straightened and unplugged the soldering iron, which left a gritty, metallic smell in the air. ”I don't mean that as harsh as it sounded. He made an excellent president for the society and I'm going to have a hard time filling his shoes. But he was, well...”

”A hard man to get to know.”

”Exactly.” He tested the track with one finger and, apparently satisfied, stood up.

”I think you'll be an excellent president.”

”Thank you.”

”So the society gets the Pennsylvania Railroad files after all.”

He raised one eyebrow slightly, as if he found that in poor taste but didn't want to embarra.s.s her by pointing it out. ”Yes. Let me set this down.” He puttered at a small table in the corner for a moment and then came back with an open plastic container for her. ”Would you do the honors, Ms. MacLean, before we strike out to search the rail yard? I'd like to get this city winterized before winter actually arrives.”

She took the container of paint-on snow. The faster she checked the preservation headquarters for Van Horn's abduction site the faster she could go home and see her daughter, but the man before her had nothing but trains and the memory of his father. She felt compelled to warn him of what might lie ahead if they identified that father as Cleveland's worst serial killer. Trains were all he had to keep from feeling as lonely as Irene Schaffer. She mixed the glop with one finger.

But could this be a case of like father, like son? Though she couldn't quite picture this older man jumping on and off trains carting the dead weight of a full-grown man, he still made at least as good a suspect as Jablonski or Greer.

The fake snow felt wetter today, sticking to her fingers as much as the rough branches of the plastic trees as she watched the trains go round and round. From Cleveland to New Castle, Pennsylvania. James Miller wouldn't have known about that series of similar murders; he died before the connection between the two cities had been uncovered.

Jablonski had flown with the theory, however. She had checked out the Plain Dealer that morning at the lab, and while the young man had thankfully restrained himself from quoting her as a source, he had put nearly every detail of last night's conversation into his story. When he ran out of facts he moved on to speculations. The man was truly obsessed. Perhaps too obsessed.

Though at least Jablonski wanted to preserve James Miller's final resting place. Councilman Greer had been agitating to destroy it since they discovered the body. Why? To hide a past crime? To destroy his connection to the current set of murders?

She gazed at the miniature Terminal Tower. Everything remained circ.u.mstantial. Just like the original Torso Murders, all the evidence was like a fog in the valley, constantly s.h.i.+fting in appearance and weight. Everything she'd learned in the past week added up to nothing.

”So.” Corliss adjusted two pine trees in the Metropark system as he talked, encouraging their trunks to stand ramrod straight. ”Do you still think my father might be this Torso killer?”

”I don't know. I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure. Unfortunately, James Miller's body was found in a s.p.a.ce that, most likely, only your father had access to.”

”How do you know that?”

She explained about her conversation with Irene Schaffer.

”Dr. Louis? That nutritionist?”

”Yes.”

”He sounds like a much more suspicious man than my father.”

”I agree. But the Torso killer never showed any interest in young girls, and her description of the closet puts it closer to the outer wall than the s.p.a.ce in which we found James Miller.”

”But you can't be sure. Perhaps the closets weren't of equal size. Perhaps Dr. Louis used them both. And even if there had been a door from my father's office, that doesn't mean my father used it.”