Trail of Blood (33 page)

“Frank!” she shrieked, in a presumably hopeless attempt to alert the officers, and bounded up and along the side of the cars. That’s how they did it in the movies, lessen the difference between the train’s speed and yours.

It still outpaced her. She would have to grab the rungs of the next car.

It did occur to her to wonder what she would do if she caught it. She had no way of moving forward on the train toward the killer—unlike a passenger train, this one would have no pass-throughs between cars—but at least she could see where he jumped off. She could jump as well, pursue him, though once out of the crime scene he need have no qualms about ruining the effect by tacking on an extra murder.

But she had to catch the damn thing first.

She vaguely registered a sound that might have been Frank calling her name and hoped it was. The end of this car, the coupling between them, reach out and—

The killer pitched his bundle, tossing it underhand as one might abandon a basketball once the game ended. It landed in the narrowing strip of grass, directly in her path. If she didn’t stop running she might step on it.

Her right hand connected with the rung. It hurt slightly less than the other one had. Then her right foot slid in the loose gravel and she went down, instinctively curling into a ball to keep all fingers and toes and arms and extremities off the tracks and out of the blender of moving parts underneath the train cars.

Her body came to a stop with her face in the gravel and her knees only an inch or so from the rails, but without losing any bits of itself.

She opened her eyes to find someone else returning her look, but with the unwavering, unseeing gaze of the dead. The killer had thrown the head, wrapped loosely in a pair of pants, just as she had expected him to do, just as the original Torso killer had prescribed.

He still watched her from up the tracks, receding farther into the east with every split second, the train picking up speed as it moved out of the more populated downtown area. Could he see her reaction from there, or did he simply enjoy letting his gaze linger on the tableau he’d created?

Frank caught up with her. “Tess. I saw you fall, are you hurt? What the hell were you doing?”

“He did it. Surrounded by cops, he still did it.”

Frank clicked on his flashlight to see the head, though it was clearly visible in the parking lot lights strobing through the passing cars. He opened his mouth but apparently couldn’t think of a profanity bad enough to express his thoughts and pulled out the radio instead. He’d arranged for a link to the downtown train yard dispatch center and now asked them to tell the driver to stop the train, though they both knew that when he did, the killer would be long gone.

“He did it,” Theresa repeated.

“Damn,” Frank said.

At least it had stopped raining.

The body at the far end of the abandoned platform could tell her only this: that it belonged to an older man and that it had suffered no violence other than the loss of its head. The hands appeared clean and neatly manicured. Scraggly gray hair covered the chest, the shape of which would have benefited from a few more pounds. A deep red pool had spread from the shoulders.

It took a while to recall the train to the area, backing the cars slowly over the tracks—after, of course, examining the tracks closely for any evidence. The Conrail locomotive pulled a chain of fifty-seven cars bound for New Castle—a detail that caused her an extra frisson of dread—with a variety of cargo. Each car had been searched by teams of cops and Don Delgado, who found nothing. No pieces of ripped clothing, no murder weapon, and not a drop of blood.

Theresa also failed to find a trail of blood from the tracks to the body, so it seemed unlikely that the killer had decapitated the victim on the train. If he had, he could have simply tossed the body from the train without jumping off himself. No, he had wished to re-create the original murder as closely as possible. He had leapt from the train with the apparently unconscious man, cut off the head, then reboarded the train. He would have to be very strong, but then she already knew that. Like the original killer, he had carried two full-grown men down at least part of Jackass Hill—not a task for the feeble.

Had he at least undressed the victim while on the train, or had he not only decapitated but undressed the victim there at the end of the platform, as she crept ever closer to him? She couldn’t believe that. Every moment of this evening seemed to have happened in slow motion, but surely he had not had time for all that activity. He knew officers would be watching, and he had a train to catch.

She combed the ten or so feet between the tracks and the body three times before giving up. The killer had not dropped any handy clues to his identity, which she found quite unsporting. Bad enough he made them all look like fools—he could at least throw her a bone for her efforts. Surely the man wanted to be caught, or he wouldn’t stick to a blueprint that told them the whens and wheres of his next murder.

Which murder came next? Another man, the only one found well out of the downtown area. On the west side, in the Metroparks.

The killer might be picking him out right now, coming up behind him, putting a tire iron to the skull or some chloroform to the face or simply asking for help getting his car started. She had no idea how he gained control over his victims. She had no idea how he chose them. She had no idea how to save this unlucky male who would die before the first golden glints of tomorrow’s sun warmed the sky.

She needed to catch this killer. Then she wanted to squeeze the life out of him with her bare hands. This no longer had to do with a fascination for history or making the ghost of her grandfather proud. She
wanted
this guy stopped, brought down, trussed up like a calf, and forced to look her in the eye.

The night-shift body snatchers, too brightly alert for her, lifted the limp form into a white plastic body bag, and she hiked up the track to the group of cops around the head. Frank had frozen all the heavy train traffic through the area so that they could work without fear of disruption. Theresa shuddered at the thought of encountering another train any time soon. Every time she thought of falling along the tracks, so close to those whirling, slicing wheels, her mind turned away and closed off the picture until it could fade to black.

Portable halogen lights again turned the area into a live display of harsh beams and deep shadows, where the cops’ faces were made even more pale and the browns and greens of the woods washed into a million shades of gray. At the center of it all lay a splash of bright color that only seemed more surreal given the neutral palette around it.

A light blue shirt, almost turquoise, glowed under the lights to near fluorescence. It had been ripped at one shoulder and the blood splashed across the front seemed oddly bright even though it had dried. A pair of khaki pants, similarly torn and bloody, wound its legs around and under the shirt and along the leaf-strewn earth. A belt and a pair of worn leather loafers stuffed with what should have been the man’s white socks had landed next to the pants. Among all these items lay the head. The third disunited head she’d encountered in less than a week.

That wouldn’t have been so bad, in and of itself. The only shocking part was how familiar the head looked.

The gray hair, the thin cheeks, and shaggy mustache…“I know him.”

“What?” Frank said at her elbow. How long had he been there?

“I know him. I mean, I met him. His name is William Van Horn. He’s the president of the American Railroad History Preservation Society. Was. He
was
the president. For the past eleven years, possibly only because of the Pennsylvania Railroad.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” It was only the humming of the electricity along the rapid transit tracks and the brightness of the lights that made her dizzy. “I’m just very confused.”

Frank shifted his weight, snapping a twig under one shoe. “Join the club.”

“Aren’t you going to ask how I know he was president of the preservation society?”

“Because you met him the other day, you told me that. And because that’s what his wallet says.”

“He had ID?”

“Driver’s license, a membership card from the train society, credit cards, and fifty-two dollars in cash.”

Theresa shook her head as she attached the heavy flash to the top of the Nikon, and Frank asked what was wrong. “He’s got everything right in this series except the victimology and the ID. None of the Torso victims had any identifying item found with them and he didn’t kill young girls like Kim.”

“She was a prostitute, now and then, like Flo Polillo,” Frank pointed out.

“Yes, but with very different looks. And this victim is a wealthy local man. Hardly a bum who wouldn’t be missed.”

“The killer might not have known that,” Frank said. “He sees some guy wandering around the train tracks and either doesn’t notice the designer clothing or doesn’t care. Please don’t tell me you’re annoyed with the killer over his lack of historical accuracy.”

“If he’s going to do this”—she crouched next to the head—“he should do it right.”

Van Horn wore, improbably, the same sneery look she had seen on him earlier, albeit with a slight cast of surprise. His right cheek had a light scratch with a trace of blood in it; otherwise the head seemed un-molested except for having been cut from the body. The slices there were not as tidy as on Kim, and the neck was the appropriate length.

From what she could see with a Maglite, the mouth had nothing in it but blood. Small flecks spotted the gray hair and appeared to be tiny leaves blown there from the surrounding weeds. Blood had been patted onto his right temple, probably from coming into contact with the wet pants. But the head seemed otherwise clean. The clothing, too, was only stained in spots and not soaked, the shoulders only spotted with blood. Definitely removed before decapitation.

Theresa let the heavy camera dangle from her shoulder while she sketched, still muttering to herself over the consistencies, and inconsistencies, of the murders. The ID bothered her. The original Torso killer had taken pains to keep his victims from being identified, with great success. Names had been found for only three of the twelve, and only two of those with complete certainty. Kim might still have been Jane Doe if it hadn’t been for her criminal history. But a lot had changed since 1935. They had identified all his victims so far, without too much trouble, so perhaps he decided not to worry about it.

“Has this guy’s family been notified?” she asked Frank as she worked.

“Sanchez is at his address now, but apparently he lives alone. She woke up his landlady, who reports that Mr. Van Horn had no kin and not many friends. His life revolved around his job and the railroad preservation society.”

“What job?”

“Draftsman at an architectural firm on Fifty-fifth.”

“That makes sense. He was quite an artist.”

“But he never got ahead.”

She peered at him.

“At the firm. Never got a-
head
?”

“Haven’t you heard a pun is the lowest form of humor?” she asked, thrilled to have Frank joking with her again. He didn’t hold their grandfather against her, not really.

“I’ve heard it. I just don’t believe it.”

“When was the last time seen?”

“His landlady talked to him yesterday evening. When the firm opens up tomorrow morning we’ll find out if he went to work. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. I just didn’t want to be the last person to see him alive.” She couldn’t have said why, only that she did not want to get in the habit of meeting victims
before
they died. She preferred to have a completely impersonal relationship with the people on the gurneys. “I’m deeply unhappy about something.”

“Turning forty? Get over it, cuz. You could still pass for thirty.”

“I meant having met a murder victim before he became a murder victim.”

“It’s creepy,” he said in agreement.

“It’s giving me bad feelings about my new friend Edward Corliss. He introduces me to Van Horn yesterday, who today becomes the victim of our neo-Torso killer.”

“Does Corliss have a motive to kill this guy?”

“Aside from the power and prestige of the presidency of the American Railroad History Preservation Society?”

“Don’t laugh. Men have killed for a lot less.”

A shudder ran through her. “I’m not laughing.”

Frank shook his head, the bright halogen beams glinting off his sandy blond hair. “I’ll admit that if that’s a coincidence, it’s an uncomfortable one. But here’s what I’m thinking: This guy’s unmarried, no family, not many friends, and Kim did occasional hooking. What if Van Horn was one of her occasional clients?”

This seemed quite probable to Theresa. Her impression of Van Horn had been that he was a smug and stuffy man, probably quite lonely with no idea what to do about it. He might want a young girl to play the role of adoring student, or simply to be someone he could feel superior to, in order to be comfortable during their encounters. And he would have felt vastly superior to Kim Hammond. Theresa asked Frank, “So whoever killed Kim decided to kill her john as well? Is that the pool from which he’s been culling his victims?”

“Happily for us, she did not seem to have a very prolific career.”

“Would her mother know Kim’s clients or friends? The junkie lived in the neighborhood. Peggy Hall worked up the street.”

“I got the idea her mother preferred not to know much about Kim at all.”

Theresa looked around again, the wind lifting the hair from her face. Van Horn must have spent a lot of time in this area, drawing trains, hanging out at the preservation society headquarters only a short walk up the river. And Kim lived by the West Side Market, not even three miles away. Their paths could have crossed. She didn’t believe in coincidence, but…“There’s something else, too.” She explained how she had spoken with Edward Corliss not ninety seconds before seeing the killer by the platform. “He said he was on his boat.”