Part 36 (1/2)

Afterward Corliss took Kim down to his father's workroom and removed part of her neck to hide his finger marks, and so that the death would resemble the senior Corliss's work.

”Wheresh the notebook?” she managed to ask, more or less coherently.

”I burned it.”

One of her knees buckled, and she dropped the bottle to lean heavily on the edge of the platform. So little remained of James Miller and his time on this planet and Corliss had destroyed one more piece.

”I thought it prudent,” Corliss added, perhaps at the pained look on her face. ”Too bad I couldn't burn her. So I tried to make the most of it. I cleaned her up, just as my father would have done. And he'd never heard the word forensic.”

And yet Corliss Jr. left trace evidence behind, she thought. The snow and paint from his model were stuck in Kim's hair. Fibers from his car trunk and living room carpeting stayed with the two men on the hill. Polyethylene snowflakes had been on the handkerchief-probably Edward's handkerchief-placed in Van Horn's pocket to make the scene more similar to the Tattooed Man's.

Her pets' fur on the victim's clothing hadn't come from Jablonski or been the result of her own clumsy cross-contamination. The fur had gotten on Edward's white cotton dress s.h.i.+rt when he helped her down from a moving train car and had transferred onto Van Horn when Corliss wrestled his unconscious form into the trunk of his car.

She saw it all so clearly now and felt strangely unable to do a b.l.o.o.d.y thing about it. ”Whuu'd you do to m-”

”I'm sorry, my dear. It's Midazolam. When you turned down the tea I had to add it to the snow gel-with some DMSO, of course, so it could be absorbed.”

”Dental anesthetic,” she tried to say. Extremely fast-acting, but temporary.

”Borrowed it from the neighbor. I did tell you I minored in chemistry,” he said, chiding her.

”You killed them,” she said dumbly, her words so slurred she couldn't understand them herself.

”I did. I killed that little b.i.t.c.h and discovered how fun it was. Then you and that reporter showed up here, salivating over my father's work, and that gave me the idea. If I intended to follow in his footsteps, why not do it right-”

He caught her as her knees buckled and she fell, not gently, so that he had to tighten both arms around her torso firmly enough to leave bruises. Her foot slid into the bottle, scattering polyethylene flakes across the hardwood floor.

”You have no idea how much I regret this, Theresa,” he murmured in her ear.

She felt his lips on hers, and then nothing else.

CHAPTER 44.

SAt.u.r.dAY, SEPTEMBER 11.

PRESENT DAY.

The zoning and planning department's hallways were silent, the workers all home enjoying their weekend, and Brent made the most of their lack of supervision by tearing up and down the linoleum and listening to his screeches echo off the walls. His mother did not seem inclined to restrain him. Frank suspected she felt she deserved the officers' indulgence since they had interrupted her Sat.u.r.day, or she wanted the kid to burn off all the excess energy he could before they returned to their bungalow. Frank could only hope finding this blueprint would help point them to Kim's killer, that this entire exercise would not be for nothing.

At least, once her supervisor had arrived to unlock the offices, Sonia Kettle had quickly found what they had come for, since only a week had elapsed since she last retrieved it. She carried the old paper in one hand, as gently as she carried her baby in the other, to a worktable in the center of the storage room. ”Here it is.”

”What is that? Let me see!” her son demanded as she spread it on the wooden surface.

”No, Brent. It's very old. Do not touch it,” she added in a tone so stern that the child listened and contented himself with running up and down the aisles of cabinets. While shouting, of course.

The fragile papers contained an ill.u.s.tration of the outside view of the building at 4950 Pullman, then the upper floor, then the lower floor. Frank immediately honed in on the two offices on the west side of the layout. There, in neat and flowery script, the southwest corner room had been designated Mr. Corliss's suite. No such notation had been made for Dr. Louis Odessa. A logo reading Metetsky-O'Reilly, Architects appeared at the bottom.

Corliss's storage room extended from a doorway in the back of the office; a mirror image had become Odessa's s.p.a.ce. However, Corliss's closet had an additional feature noted. A small circle had been drawn into the floor, and an arrow pointed to it from the word drain.

James Miller had been found in Arthur Corliss's closet.

But that would not have meant anything to Kim Hammond, would it? Had the newspapers mentioned the hole in the floor? Had Jablonski's elaborate stories discussed it? He had definitely interviewed the construction crew.

Frank scoured the rest of the blueprint. What else would have put Kim in the path of her murderer? ”What did she say to you, Sonia, when you showed her this?”

”Brent! Quiet down, buddy. I don't remember-like I said, by that time I just wanted her to get done and go. But she thought it was cool, et cetera, liked the fancy handwriting.”

”The architects are on here, too,” Sanchez pointed out. Their office also had their names written on it, claiming that s.p.a.ce for the firm of Metetsky and O'Reilly.

”Did she make any specific comments?” Frank pressed Sonia Kettle.

”No. She, um, she had a little notebook that she kept looking at.”

Frank and Angela Sanchez perked up. ”Notebook?” they asked in unison.

”Yeah, a really old-looking little thing. The pages were brown and dusty and crumbling. She'd have to turn them really carefully, and then she'd look back at the blueprint, then turn a page. I didn't bother asking about it, I knew her well enough for that. Kim kept her little plans to herself more securely than a Hollywood producer with the script to a sequel.”

Frank and Sanchez met each other's gazes over the table. James Miller had jotted a note three-quarters of a century before that put Kim in the path of a killer. What had he written? And what did it mean in light of the blueprints?

”Brent! Be quiet! I wouldn't put too much stock in it, frankly,” Sonia Kettle added to the officers, sounding more and more put out by such a fuss over an ex-employee. ”Kim wasn't a bad kid, but in terms of brains...she had never been one to think things through, and from what I could see of her, that hadn't changed.”

Frank's phone rang, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it off his belt with an irritated swipe. Perhaps the woman had it right-Kim Hammond had picked up the wrong john, and the mystery went no deeper than that. ”h.e.l.lo?”

”Uncle Frank? Do you know where my mom is?” His niece sounded even more annoyed than he and Sonia Kettle put together. ”I mean, I caught a ride home to spend her birthday weekend together because I know this whole empty-nest thing has been getting to her, and now she's not even answering her phone.”

CHAPTER 45.

SAt.u.r.dAY, JUNE 6.

1936.

It occurred to James, while making his silent way into the building at 4950 Pullman, that he did not even know where Arthur Corliss lived. This did not concern him much. The man had mentioned a housekeeper, and a woman in the throes of the cleaning process would certainly stumble on some telltale artifact were her employer carving up young men there in the household. If James moved a saucer from one cabinet to another, Helen knew instantly. Women had nothing but their homes and their children to occupy them, all day, every day. Hence the near obsession a set of Fiestaware could cause.

He could buy it for her if he went with Walter.