Trail of Blood (17 page)

“My point is, I wasn’t afraid of the people I encountered there. I’d never had any reason to be, and that, as it turned out, was a problem. More tea?”

“Sure.” Obviously Irene Schaffer would tell this story in her own way and her own time, and Theresa stopped trying to rush her. She wondered what had happened to the three children but knew she didn’t have time to hear each one’s history. And Irene might say that they never called or visited, and Theresa did not want to hear that. So was this the way the world ended? You lived all your life and did all these things and wound up with nothing but half a room in a building full of strangers, tethered by your own failing body?

She told herself that Irene didn’t seem miserable. “Why did you knock over a bank?”

The woman giggled like a teenager with a delightful secret. “If you want that story, young lady, you’ll have to come back for another visit. You
will
come back and see me again, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. So one day,” Irene said after the microwave
bing
-ed for the second time and two hard-of-hearing friends holding a conversation in the hallway had moved on, “I began to chat with this man sitting on the bench by the Pennsylvania tracks. It seemed as if he was waiting for the train, though it didn’t occur to me to wonder why he’d be by the freight lines. Anyway, I kind of hoped he’d come across with a cigarette or, better yet, a piece of candy—people often gave children candy in those days; I suppose guys like this is why it became such a no-no—and I finally dropped a hint or two. Then he said I should avoid candy as it would put too much sugar into my bloodstream and from the yellowish tint to my skin he could see that I had a touch of jaundice. Well, I
had
had jaundice at birth, my mother had told me that often enough. Actually two of my three kids had it as well—now I know how common it is, but then I thought it might be some flaw in my physical makeup, a weakness that could kill me, or at least keep me from seeing the world before I died. He went on talking about my liver function and all these other words I didn’t understand—hell, I was only fifteen and I had avoided school as much as possible. So he said he could tell me what I should and shouldn’t eat and what vitamins to take to stay healthy. But I needed to come to his office. So I popped right up and we went off to his office.” Irene shook her head as if in disbelief. The movement fluffed up the ends of the brown flip.

“And this was 1936?”

“April tenth, 1935. I’m ninety-one now.”

Theresa felt as if she should say
congratulations
but refrained. “Do you remember the address of this office?”

“Forty-nine fifty Pullman.” Irene squinted over the top of her cup. “Why do you
think
I called you?”

Theresa squirmed, feeling dumb. “And you walked there from West Third?”

“Sure. I had time and it was a sunny day. We walked everywhere then. Only rich people or businesses had cars. That’s why the whole country wasn’t obese, like nowadays.”

“Good point.”

“It never occurred to me to wonder why he had been at the train station if he didn’t need to meet a train.”

Recalling the information from the city directory, Theresa chose her questions carefully. “Do you remember this man’s name?”

“I’ll never forget it. Louis. Dr. Louis, he said.”

“And his office occupied which unit of the building?”

“I don’t know if it had a number. When you walked in the front door, from Pullman, you went down a hallway and turned right into the first office.”

“Do you remember anyone else in the building?”

“I heard sounds. I think I saw another open door up the hall and I heard people moving upstairs, so I figured the other offices were occupied but I didn’t actually see anyone.”

“What did his office look like?”

Irene shrugged. “Kind of bare. He had a desk and a bunch of shelves, with books and jars.”

“Jars of what?”

“Things floating in liquid. I didn’t want to look at them. Medicine has changed a lot over the years, let me tell you. People didn’t go to doctors for every little thing like they do now—you didn’t want to. Hospitals were scarier than jails in some places.”

“So you began to get nervous about this Dr. Louis?” Seventy-five years later, the bony fingers still entwined in her lap, pressing hard against each other.

“I asked if this would hurt, and he said no—you believe that? The bastard said no, that he only wanted to fill out a questionnaire about what I ate. He sat behind the desk and took out some papers and I sat in a chair. He asked if ate oatmeal, if I ate cherries, if I took aspirin, and he’d make little notes on these papers. It seemed to take forever. I remember I got bored until he gave me a bottle of soda pop out of a little icebox. Ginger ale. A whole bottle, just for me. That perked me up, for a while. Only a while, because that must have been what he put it in.”

“Put what in?”

“Whatever it was he gave me to knock me out, because the next thing I remember, I woke up on a cot in another room and Dr. Louis was un-buttoning my blouse.”

Theresa could barely breathe. “What other room? What did you do?”

“I couldn’t move at first, my arms felt so heavy. He kept saying I shouldn’t worry, that this wouldn’t hurt, he was only examining my jaundice, but even at fifteen I wasn’t that stupid and I would have clocked him one if I hadn’t been so groggy. But when he got my brassiere off and put his lips—well, I clocked him one anyway, groggy or no.”

“What did he do?”

“Fell back on the floor—he’d been perching on the edge of this cot, and I guess he was off balance…. I jumped right over him and out the door, which led into his office. We were in a little closet, or storage area, behind his desk. Lucky for me he hadn’t locked his office door, and I went right out it and out of the building and didn’t stop running until I got to my aunt’s house.”

“Did you scream?”

“The whole way home.”

“Did anyone from the building come to help?”

“It was dark by then. I don’t know how long that bastard had me in there, but it had to be at least six hours. He drugged me, then waited for everyone else to go home.”

Or he had afternoon appointments he couldn’t cancel,
Theresa thought,
and wanted plenty of time alone with his prize.
Detectives had long theorized that the Torso killer had lured and drugged his victims, to explain why they had no defensive injuries and remnants of a last meal in their stomachs.

But on the other hand, the Butcher had preferred young adult males, sometimes older males, and rarely women. Never young girls. Though perhaps after meeting Irene Schaffer he had decided they were too much trouble.

“Did you tell your mother?”

“I told everybody. My uncle called the police, and they came to the house. The next day they took me back to the building to identify this Dr. Louis, which I did, plain and simple. Nearly peed my pants, but I stood between those two cops and pointed right at him.”

“What did he say?”

“He nodded and smiled and told the police I would come around the offices sometimes, begging for a handout, and he’d felt sorry for me and gave me an apple once and a peppermint. He said the day before he’d had nothing for me, and that I got angry and said he’d be sorry.”

“They believed him?” Theresa could picture the man in Edward Corliss’s photo, tall and well dressed, describing his version of events with that clipped, professional tone that still swayed juries more than any female could.

“Things were different then,” Irene Schaffer repeated. “Doctors were gods. I was a truant tomboy and there were no witnesses. Apparently he had no record and in those days they didn’t have computers that gave you a map of where all the mashers live.”

Theresa chewed at her thumbnail. “And you think this man could be the Torso killer?”

“They always said he was a doctor, and the office is right on the banks of Kingsbury Run. Dr. Louis hung out at the rail yards, down by West Third and the Abbey Street Bridge, where they found some of the bodies. Don’t bite your nails, dear.”

“The detectives checked every person in the city with a record of sexual offenses. Maybe they would have investigated him.” Theresa didn’t bother wishing to read all the original police reports. She knew from books on the subject that nearly all of the voluminous case material had been lost over the years.

“Not that chubby cop,” Irene said, her mouth set in a hard line. “The skinny one, I think he believed me. But there was nothing he could do.”

“Which cop?”

“The one whose body you found. James Miller.”

Theresa drove home in a daze. So much information, so many years. James Miller had been killed in 1936 in the same building in which Irene Schaffer had been nearly molested—by a doctor with, one would assume, the anatomical knowledge to cut up a body. Did James go there to confront the doctor about Irene, over a year later? Why? Had James found some evidence in the meantime? Did he then stumble on the Torso killer?

Or did the doctor kill James to prevent his own arrest for the molestation, and both incidents had nothing to do with the Torso killer? After all, the serial killer liked to dump his victims, not preserve them for posterity.

And he had dumped two nearly on the doorstep of 4950 Pullman. Seventy-five years later, someone repeated the process. Why? How?

It had begun to rain again, and Theresa slowed to negotiate the sharp curve from 480 onto southbound I-71. The car behind her insisted on riding four inches from her bumper. Missing a headlight, it winked at her in her rearview mirror and the rain pelted her windshield even harder as she sped up.

From his notes, however, James had been investigating the Torso killings. He might have completely forgotten about Irene and wound up entombed in 4950 Pullman as a coincidence.

But James had believed the young girl, in a world where no one else would.

Speaking of young girls, now they had Kim Hammond. Unlike Dr. Louis and the Torso killer, the sick bastard who had decapitated Kim still walked the streets, and like the Torso killer he did not intend to stop. Who were these two male victims? Did the killer know them, these mannequins in his diorama? Did he realize that, while he imitated a 1935 murder, Theresa would not be imitating 1935 investigative technology? Science had come a long way since then and she meant to utilize all of it.

What helped the Torso killer remain anonymous then had a great deal to do with the inability to identify his victims. They must have been transients, members of the uncounted, unseen forces riding the rails and looking for work. Very few people lived that way anymore; even today’s version of that group, the homeless, was somewhat monitored and not so mobile.

Once home, she pulled her car into its spot but left the garage door open. She would go out again to walk next door and say good night to her mother.

Rachael had called. The blinking light on the answering machine let her know this as soon as she entered the house. It had to be Rachael—no one else ever called her besides Frank, who would use the Nextel. Theresa dropped her purse and empty lunch bag on the table and pushed the black button on the console.

It won’t be her,
she warned herself as she waited for the tape to rewind.
It will be a dial tone left over from a computerized sales pitch, or the library calling with a book on hold. Or even Chris Cavanaugh.

“Hi, Mom, it’s me. Just wanted to tell you everything’s fine. Talk to you later, bye.”

Rachael. Why hadn’t she called on the cell? She should know Theresa wouldn’t be home, that she’d be at work or en route, so call on the cell. Instead Rachael rang when she knew Theresa would not be there, to avoid wasting twenty minutes on a conversation with her mother. That was okay, though. Her daughter sounded healthy and had been alive as late as this afternoon, and that was the important thing.

Theresa checked the caller ID: 6:00 P.M. She
should
have been home by then but had dallied with the cellar at 4950 Pullman, a couple of dead bodies, and Irene Schaffer.

Okay. Rachael had attempted to voluntarily call her mother.
Life is good. Life is just as it should be.

And it gave her a reason to call her back and apologize for missing the call.

No answer. She left a message.

Theresa washed her face, changed her clothes, thought—not seriously—about cooking something to eat, and wandered into Rachael’s room, as she did at least once a day, just to make sure the cat wasn’t sleeping on the bed and the dog hadn’t made off with one of the stuffed animals. Which of course they hadn’t, because Theresa kept the door shut. But she checked anyway. The room remained in perfect order, which told her, more than the silence or the untouched food in the refrigerator or always finding the TV remote right where she left it, that her daughter was gone.

Rachael’s window faced the street. A single car passed slowly by, with one dark headlight.

Theresa made sure to close Rachael’s bedroom door behind her. Then she walked through the strengthening rain to the next home, where she asked her mother if her great-grandfather had ever mentioned the Torso Murders.

Agnes sat at her kitchen table, sorting recipes, gray hair bouncing in classic curls. “I don’t think so. Do you think apple turnovers are better with cheese or with a honey glaze?”

“I think they’re better with vanilla ice cream. What about Grandpa Joe?”

“He liked the honey glaze.”

“The Torso Murders, Mom.”

“Oh, that. I don’t remember. It was before his time.”

“But Great-grandpa would have been working at Boys’ Town right after Eliot Ness founded it.”

Her mother looked up from the stained pieces of paper. “Oh, yes. Joe used to mention that now and then. Usually when you two would be watching repeats of that
Untouchables
show—the one with Robert Stack. He shouldn’t have let you watch that stuff.”

“Or I wouldn’t be a practicing ghoul today, I know.” Theresa didn’t try to explain that “all that stuff” was the only stuff she’d ever cared about. If other people found that odd, she couldn’t have cared less, so long as it seemed normal and fine in the eyes of the man she admired above all others.