Trail of Blood (12 page)

Except the lines.

“What’s that?”

Helen leaned against the doorjamb, soft brown hair back in a braid, flannel nightgown reaching her ankles. He didn’t dare tell her the origin of the coat. Helen didn’t like to hear about his job at all; his exploits as a Marine on a heroic field of battle made good dinnertime conversation for their few friends, but not breaking up a brawl or wrestling with a teenage house thief. Especially if the story involved blood, immoral behavior, or dirt.

Besides, he wouldn’t know where to begin describing what he’d seen on that hill. “I worked on a burglary case this evening.”

“Wash that table good when you’re done. And there’s coffee in the pot, if you want to warm it up.”

“Thanks. Is Johnny sleeping?”

“Like the baby he is,” she joked. Helen was a decade his junior, and it had taken seven years of marriage to conceive John; no matter what else occurred she and James remained united in their adoration of the towheaded infant—even if Helen had expected more amenities in a marriage to a man with a steady job. She winced as someone thumped a chair on the floor in the apartment upstairs. “Even through the Taylors’ nightly argument.”

“Good.” He bent over the coat once more. Walking home from the station he had formed more theories about how the bodies came to rest where they did. Perhaps the killer had thrown them from the trains and then jumped himself, or perhaps he had dragged them down the hill fully dressed, removed the clothing at the scene, and took most of it away with him. That way the skin would not have been scratched or poked.

Helen said, “Have you heard of Fiestaware?”

“Hmm? No.”

She pulled out a chair, sat down, then must have caught the faint funk of the dead man’s coat and pushed herself backward a foot. “It’s a new line of dishes. They’re heavy pottery and they come in all these bright colors.”

“Honey? Do you have a magnifying glass?”

She left the room, returning with the round glass and a magazine, already opened to a dog-eared page. “See? This is Fiestaware. It should be available around Christmas.”

He glanced at the ad featuring a tomato-red plate, glossy, concentric circles the only design element. Tacky, he thought, but knew better than to say so. “Looks kind of—garish.”

“Bright,” Helen corrected him. “It would give the kitchen some color.”

He glanced around. “You wanted everything white. You said it was sanitary.”

The magnifying glass confirmed his observations. No slivers of weeds or broken leaves. This coat had not been dragged down the hill or thrown from a train. The guys at the scene were right. This monster had carried both men, both nearly as tall and a little heavier than James, a considerable distance.

“It is sanitary. But it will also make the dishes stand out.”

“What’s wrong with china?” He should just shut up, he knew, but failing to keep up-to-date with Helen’s budget could have consequences, and besides, he needed to get this conversation over with so he could concentrate.

“China’s old-fashioned. You can’t have a spaghetti party on china.”

“Now we’re having people over for spaghetti?”

Back in her chair, she flipped another page in her magazine but declined to show it to him. He knew it would feature a photo of a group of well-dressed, laughing people eating the Italian import, another new craze that didn’t appeal to him.

He turned the left front pocket out, slowly pushing the fabric out from the inside, with the glass held above it. Lint, a dried and crumbled sprig of clover, and some brown shards. He moved the glass up and down to bring them into clearer focus, decided they were most likely tobacco. He had rolled enough cigarettes to know. “Do we have an envelope?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I need to put this in something. To keep it.”

She looked up from the magazine. “Pocket lint? You’ve been reading Sherlock Holmes stories again, haven’t you?”

“Helen!”

“I have two envelopes left and I need one to pay the electric bill.”

He couldn’t argue with that. “All right. How about a piece of paper?”

“I keep some scraps in the knife drawer.”

When James had folded the motley collection into the center of a department store advertisement, he turned his attention to the right pocket. A hole had worn through the thin cotton, and nothing save some fuzz remained. Items in the pocket would have fallen into the lining. He flipped the coat open.

Helen sighed audibly. “It would be nice to have a spaghetti party,” she said now. “It would be even nicer to have some friends to invite to it.”

“Sure.” He patted the lining with his fingers, detecting a coin, a stick-like object, and two small, hard nubs. Now, how to get them out?

“We could invite Walter and his wife.”

His fingers barely fit through the hole. He couldn’t rip the lining out; that might get him in trouble with the very captain who had entrusted him with the item. Besides, the Bertillon guys would examine the coat for pieces of evidence; he and Walter were merely supposed to trace it. But he didn’t want to wait. “Where’s your sewing scissors?”

She crossed her legs. “Who else besides the McKennas?”

Quicker to get the scissors himself. He sliced through a mere four sets of stitches at the bottom of the liner, figuring he could explain it to the Bertillon unit when he turned it over to them. James also figured he’d better address Helen’s latest gambit before she invited half the neighborhood. “I’m not sure we can afford new dishes. I’m not sure we can afford spaghetti.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Can you hold this up? By the shoulders, like this. I need to work out whatever’s in the lining.” He hoped any future newspaper accounts would not mention this coat. If Helen ever found out what she’d put her hands on, they’d have another murder to investigate—his own.

She took her time about it but helped him suspend the coat over the kitchen table. He shook the lining and worked one side of the coat’s layers toward the tiny opening he’d created. Along with the lint and grains of dirt, a penny and two pills fell out. “I know it’s hard for you to stretch this household as far as you do, honey. But the whole country’s in a depression.”

“We don’t have to be. You choose to.”

He started on the other side of the coat instead of responding. His fingers worked out the stick, and that’s all it was, a thin twig from some kind of plant. Why would a guy have something like that in his pocket? But he had clover in the other one, so why not?

“All I’m saying is, next time a butcher wants to give you a roast or a grocer offers you a sack of apples, take it. Just take it. If they want to give you gifts, who are you to turn them down?”

He snorted, unable to ignore the terminology. “Gifts? Is that what Walter’s wife calls them?”

Helen dropped the coat onto the table and resumed her seat.

The 1932 penny had a spot of tar on its reverse. The pills were different, both round and white, but one had an
A
stamped into it and a slightly larger diameter. “What are these?”

“How should I know?” Helen leaned forward to glance at them. “Aspirin? Ask a pharmacist.”

His breath whistled through his teeth in frustration. “They’ll be closed this time of night.”

“Yes, they will. At least take it from the guys running numbers, or the—what d’ya call them, the bad men—pimps. At least take
their
‘gift.’

It will just go back into their business if you don’t.”

“Well, that’s a handy bit of reasoning.”

“You’d let your son starve for your pride?”

They’d had this conversation so many times now that he wouldn’t have believed it could still wound him. “Of course not. But Johnny’s not starving, and it’s not just my pride.”

“Then what is it? Don’t tell me you’re afraid of losing your job, James, because they can’t fire the whole force. You’re more likely to lose it because your superiors don’t trust you because you’re not like them.”

Helen was not stupid.

Maybe I am,
James thought, unable to find the words to describe what he meant. “It’s not pride—it’s not
only
pride. It’s because if I’m like everyone else, if being a cop doesn’t stand for something but makes me just one more hustler in with all the other hustlers, then…what’s the point?”

“Point? Your life has to have a
point
?”

It sounded ridiculous the way she said it, and yet…“Yes. Doesn’t everyone’s?”

She stared at him so long that he expected a burst of either tears or laughter. But in the end she merely stood up and walked out, taking her magazine with her, their inability to communicate intact.

Helen had buried both her parents, left her family farm, and withstood the birth of Johnny with barely a whimper. She could handle adversity when she knew no alternative existed. But what James saw as integrity looked to her like a willful, purposeless deprivation. A seething anger had replaced any former admiration for him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. They had no one in the city to talk to except each other, and lately they couldn’t even do that.

James warmed up the coffee and, not for the first time, wished he could afford a shot of bourbon in it. But if it meant depriving his wife of her Fiesta whatsits, then he could not indulge himself. He thought perhaps he
should
give in. What difference would one more corrupt cop make, in a city crawling with them?

His gaze fell on the two pills, a more concrete topic than his marriage, and one with concrete answers. When did the drugstore open?

Theresa finished transcribing the notebook found in James Miller’s pocket, except for several pages too badly stuck together by decomposition fluid. He had definitely investigated some of the Torso killings. He had even sketched one of the crime scenes at Kingsbury Run, the area that used to be known as Jackass Hill, with two sad stick figures without heads to represent the victims. One had been labeled “A” for Edward Andrassy, she guessed, one of the few identified victims. The other had a question mark.

In the margin, he’d noted,
Don’t tell Helen
.

His wife? What couldn’t he tell her? And why?

Not that there wasn’t a mountain of daily details Theresa had kept from her daughter, ex-husband, and mother over the years. Tiny facts that could not be gossiped about at the workplace or beauty salon because you never knew who talked to whom, and knowledge or lack of it could convict or exonerate a suspect. Or items that were simply too gruesome or disturbing to unleash upon those who weren’t trained to live among them. It could be a lonely line of work, always filtering one’s speech, always compartmentalizing one’s life for the protection of others.

The infrared spectrometer gave a beep; it had finished searching its database for a spectrum like that from the two white flecks found on Kim Hammond. The specks had appeared to be nearly circular under the stereomicroscope, bright white and soft, like plastic. The Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer interpreted a transmission of light through the specks and produced a spectrum showing the functional groups present in its molecules. Polyethylene. Great. One of the most common polymers around.

The lines wavered before her eyes and she yawned. Sleeping hadn’t been so easy in the past few years, especially since the incident at the Federal Reserve. Sometimes she could still feel the barrel of a gun grinding into her flesh—another thing she and James Miller had in common. But she had lived through her experience. James had not been as lucky.

Her desk phone rang, and she bruised one shin getting around the FTIR in time to answer it.

“Is this Theresa MacLean?” a woman demanded, her aged voice quavering a bit.

“Yes.”

“Are you investigating the Torso Murders?”

How did this get past the switchboard? All calls had been routed to the police department, where they had more operators and were used to dealing with the cranks and the nuts and the people who simply wanted to chat about Cleveland’s colorful past. “I need to refer you to—”

“I saw your name in the paper. I want to talk to you about who killed that man you found in the building on Pullman.”

“You need to speak to the police.”

“I’ve already spoken to the police. I’ve spoken to the police for the past eighty years and they’ve never done me a bit of good. I want to speak to you.”

Eighty years?
“I appreciate that, but I doubt I can help you—”

“Never doubt, young lady. The world is just waiting for a sign of doubt to pin your feet to the floor and keep you in your place. I signed up to be an army nurse and spent the Second World War in the Pacific. Then I built an orphanage, walked along the Great Wall, knocked over a bank, and had three children. Never doubt.”

“Okay,” Theresa said. “And you know something about who killed James Miller?”

“I should.”

“Why?”

“Because he almost killed me, too.”

She called Frank, who assured her that since the murder had occurred seventy-four years previously she should feel free to investigate to her heart’s content and not worry about stepping on CPD toes, especially since his toes were currently following the trail of the murder that had occurred that week. “You want to go visit some old lady, go right ahead.”

“Her name is Irene Schaffer Martin—but she was Irene Schaffer then, a young girl. If she can actually recall the players in that building—”

“—and she’s not completely senile,” Frank added, “then sure, it could be helpful.”

“I would think you’d be more interested in the murder of a fellow police officer.”

“Notes made at the time suggest that my fellow police officer was up to his neck with a local boss named Harwood, and I’m not seeing anything to refute that.”

“Did this Harwood make a habit of beheading his victims like the Torso killer?” she shot back.

“Speaking of that,” he answered without answering, “the homicide unit received twenty-five phone calls just this morning from people whose great-grandpa or distant uncle or ex-neighbor told them who the Torso killer was. We even had one who said
he
was the Torso killer despite the fact that he wasn’t born until the late fifties. Recall also that the entire police force worked on this case for over a decade and got nowhere. The freakin’ untouchable Eliot
Ness
got nowhere. My own captain says he can’t decide if he’s assigning it to me as a reward or a punishment. Meanwhile I got a twenty-two-year-old with her head cut off, so excuse me if I find that a little more pressing, especially since nothing gets the media’s attention like the brutal murder of the young and nubile. So go ahead and talk to this lady, and if she’s got anything real or even plausible to say, I’ll come out and take a statement. Deal?”