Trail of Blood (35 page)

Jablonski said, “Maybe he went to other cities. Like here.”

“One skeleton turned up in Youngstown in 1939, which is also on the rail route from New Castle to Cleveland. But nothing else.”

“That we know of,” Chris said. “As you pointed out, communication was not what it is now.”

“But the Cleveland cops would have been watching for similar cases, especially after connecting with the New Castle bodies. I’m sure they would have found any similar murders that were out there to find.”

“How did he go back and forth without anyone figuring out that there’s something strange about the dude?” Jablonski wondered aloud.

“Because a whole lot more people rode passenger trains then than now, and, if my theory is correct and he worked on the railroad, then he wouldn’t have been noticed under any circumstances. Besides, there’s really only one New Castle murder that occurred while the Cleveland murders were going on, and that was in 1936.”

“You think he moved to Cleveland from New Castle and then moved back again?” Chris asked. “Or he did the 1936 case during, what, a visit to the dear old homestead?”

“Could be. Or he traveled between the cities every week for twenty years, and simply went in streaks as to where he preferred to pick his victims. Who knows?”

The cat came down from the bookshelf and jumped up on Jablonski’s lap, swatting the dog’s nose until he conceded petting privileges and moved on to the next man. Jablonski sniffed at his glass again. “Hardly Dom Pérignon, is it?”

For a rare moment, the silver-tongued hostage negotiator remained speechless, though his eyes spoke volumes.

“Anyway, then I looked for the other names I had. I got nothing on the medium, Morelli. But get this…” He paused, watching as both of them waited for him. Theresa allowed him his moment of drama. “I did find one of the architects’ names. Richard O’Reilly.”

“Huh,” she said.

“He had an office in the center of town, but his residence listing was way down on Route 18, almost to Mahoningtown.”

She stared at him with what had to be a blank expression. “Just north of the murder swamp, in other words.”

“Now that
is
interesting.”

Chris said, “In cop circles, that’s what we call suspicious.”

“Richard O’Reilly is not listed after 1933. Actually there were two other Richard O’Reillys there during that time, but their addresses don’t change and they were still listed in the city directory in 1935, when the architect guy we’re interested in was living in Cleveland and working at 4950 Pullman.”

Theresa nodded. “I don’t know what, if anything, it proves, but it certainly is interesting.”

The young man beamed, but not with pride—something more reminiscent of a cat who had recently made the acquaintance of a canary. “I’m not done.”

He waited so long this time that her patience eroded. “
What?
”

“The Lawrence County Historical Society—that’s where New Castle is, Lawrence County—is housed in a mansion built in 1904 for a tin plate magnate. I’m not sure what tin plates are, actually, but I know what
magnate
means. That means he had a lot of money.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, prompting him.

“This magnate’s name was George Greer.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jablonski peered at her. “Greer.”

“Uh—
oh
.”

“What?” Chris asked. “Greer who?”

Theresa said, “As in Councilman Greer. The councilman who’s so hot on having 4950 Pullman razed to the ground.”

“Maybe to cover up an old family secret.” Jablonski nodded his head and topped it off by swigging champagne with a theatrical flourish, though he ruined the effect by coughing afterward.

“And maybe,” Theresa said, “Greer is simply a common name. We haven’t come across anyone named Greer in connection to the building.”

“Other than the councilman.”

“He just wants to collect his fee for building the recycling plant.” His fear at the crime scene had been real, and he couldn’t possibly have gotten from the RTA station onto that train with the victim in time to encounter her by the tracks. Not possibly…“Did you see him there?”

Jablonski drained his glass. “Who?”

She explained her encounter with the councilman.

“He wasn’t in the crowd outside the tape when I arrived,” Jablonski said insistently. “I milled through everyone present, trying to get tidbits and reactions. If he’d been there I would have interviewed him.”

No,
she thought,
impossible
. “Feel free to work on that angle, Jablonski, because my boss is already unhappy with me for getting on Greer’s sh—um, list.”

“But it would make sense, wouldn’t it? Everyone always said the killer came from a wealthy family that covered up any clues to his guilt, and those politico types have usually been in that line of work for generations—”

“
Everyone
also said he had to have had medical training in order to dismember his victims, and I’m not one hundred percent down with that theory, either. People said a lot of things. They always do in unsolved cases.”

“But—”

The door to the garage opened suddenly, letting in the crisp fall air and Rachael, who carried a stack of books, a purse in the shape of Hello Kitty, a backpack, a bottle of water, and a duffel bag approximately as large as her torso slung across her back. “Hi, Mom. I wondered whose car that was—”

“Honey!”

Harry barked in excitement. Even the cat leapt from Jablonski’s lap in welcome.

And then her daughter, who had apparently not been murdered, been raped, flunked out, or been found dead in a ditch somewhere after a bad car accident, was in Theresa’s arms. “Did Tonya give you a ride? Are you hungry? Did you eat dinner? How are your classes? Do you like your teachers? What about your roommate?”

“I see you have company,” Rachael said as she allowed her mother to divest her of the heavy accoutrements. “Are you celebrating your birthday?”

“Hi, Rachael,” Chris Cavanaugh said, shooting a triumphant look at Jablonski.

“Hi, Chris.”

The duffel bag thudded to the floor. “No, we were talking about a case. You know Chris, and this is Brandon Jablonski, he’s a newspaper researcher. Thank you for the information, Mr. Jablonski, but you both have to leave now.”

The young man didn’t notice Chris’s smugness or Theresa’s hint, too busy taking in every inch of Theresa’s daughter until his mouth gaped open a bit. “Wow.”

“Especially you,” Theresa added.

Theresa bustled off to work bright and early on Saturday morning, intending to finish her examination of William Van Horn and his bloody clothing and get home before Rachael rolled out of bed. A month at college and still in teenager mode—without any classes to attend, her daughter would not rise before lunchtime.

A stern look combined with a mental pat on the head for his good work in New Castle had gotten Jablonski to shuffle out of her home without much difficulty, though she locked every door and window behind him. Chris Cavanaugh left only after a firm and excellent kiss in her cold garage, so that she went to bed flush with happiness, flattered at his continued (though sporadic) interest—
always date interesting men
—but mostly glad that her daughter had returned home safely and voluntarily.

Even the half-rotten-groceries smell that had long since permeated every ceramic tile in the old building seemed to greet her like a close friend as she waved to the deskman and plucked Van Horn’s ripped pants and shirt from the drying rack. She poked her head into the autopsy room, where Christine Johnson met her with a baleful expression and asked, “Do I have you to thank for this?”

“Yeah, I thought it might save you some time if I started cutting at the scene.”

The pretty doctor laughed, then contradicted that by saying: “You are so not funny, missy. I heard you met him the day before he turned up like this. Is that true?”

Theresa said yes. It still felt odd to her. She felt as if she should call Edward Corliss to express her condolences but didn’t know quite what to say.
I’m sorry the friend you introduced me to was murdered by a modern-day Torso killer. Which wouldn’t be you, would it, by the way?

She gathered what information she could from Christine and then went into the amphitheater to spread out the khaki pants. The pair of Burberrys was torn at the back; the pants found with one of the original victims, known only as the Tattooed Man, had also been described as ripped in the back. As in 1936, a white men’s handkerchief nestled in the rear pocket. She put that aside without unfolding it.

After noting the size, condition, staining, and label of the pants, she got out the 3M packaging tape and eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets of clear acetate paper and “taped” the front and back, inside and out, for hairs and fibers. As always, even a clean-looking piece of clothing gave up a myriad of loose trace evidence. A few black fibers, pieces of dead grass, and a dog hair.

She folded the pants—stiffened with blood—loosely and stuffed them into a paper bag. On a fresh, smaller piece of paper, she unfolded the clean handkerchief that had been found in the back pocket. A single bloodstain marred its snow-white material. She opened it carefully, with a magnifying lamp hovering above. She taped both sides and smoothed the tape onto the acetate, then moved the handkerchief to its own brown bag.

The tapings showed only minute particles of lint, except for one dark fiber and three white specks. They seemed to be round and flat. She would have to run them through the FTIR to be sure, but they seemed very similar to the ones found on Kim Hammond.

Theresa covered the table with a fresh piece of brown paper from the large roll mounted at the end and repeated the process with the shirt. The shirt did not offer any new insights, only a few splotches of blood, most likely transfer from the severed head. No particular staining on the shoulders, which supported her theory that the clothing had been removed prior to the decapitation.

When she had finished taping the shirt, she covered the table with yet another fresh piece of paper and placed the shirt on the upper half and the pants on the lower half, both facing upward. Then she pulled out the loafers and held them in her hands. Dirt, dead grass, and a few pieces of fine gravel had been wedged into the treads.

Frank appeared in the doorway. “Mornin’, cuz. I finished your birthday cake for breakfast. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all—what, you stayed at your mother’s last night?”

“I don’t know about
stayed
. Stopped in for a shower and a change of clothes.”

Theresa felt guilty. She should have spent a sleepless night working on the case, too, but motherhood had interfered. “But why—”

“A certain young lady didn’t take our breakup well and tends to call and pound on my door at odd hours. It’s not worth changing my number—she’ll get over it before long.”

“
Frank
.” Sometimes she wondered where his restlessness came from. No one else in the family was like that. He hadn’t learned it from his father—whatever bad habits his father may have had, philandering wasn’t one of them. Theresa sighed and didn’t bother to tell him that it was high time he grew up and started dating nice, sensible women like Angela Sanchez. The tone of her one word said it all.

He ignored both her tone and her meaning. “What do we have so far?”

“Christine said his coronary arteries would have taken him out in a few more years if someone hadn’t cut his head off.”

“Is he missing any sections of neck, by the way?”

“Nope. Both halves fit perfectly. Christine also thinks there’s a blunt force injury on the back of the head, and no defensive wounds. Not even a bruise.”

“So the killer got up close without much difficulty. Like it was someone he knew.”

“He seemed a bit hard of hearing when I met him. It might not have been difficult to sneak up on him. So then the killer takes him to the train, undresses him en route, and jumps off for the decapitation.”

“Why undress him on the train? How do you know that?”

“Because there’s no staining on the shirt that would indicate he had it on at the time of the decapitation, no staining on the shoulders. It seemed to me there should have been more blood at the scene, so maybe he killed Van Horn by slitting his throat somewhere else, but there’s no spray or flow down the front of his shirt. No, he undressed him first to save time, then killed him at the scene because that’s how the Torso killer did it. He brought a live victim to that valley, just to slaughter him right at our feet.”

“Don’t take this personally, Tess.”

She looked at him as if he’d begun speaking Swahili. “How am I
not
supposed to take this personally? Aren’t you?”

He didn’t confess what she knew he believed—
It’s different for me, I’m a cop
—and instead asked, “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Did you?” she shot back. “What about his house?”

“Shipshape and buttoned up. The man was a neat freak of the highest caliber, and you were right, he had pretty much no life at all outside the preservation society. His datebook had their official doings written in for the next six months and nothing else. No lunch dates, no business meetings. Not even a doctor’s appointment.”

“Unless he kept two. One for society business, and another for personal appointments.”

“Good thought, cuz. But we didn’t find a second one and no sign of someone else rifling through his possessions. Besides, the landlady confirmed his loner status. Their lobby is locked and only residents can enter. Of course someone could have buzzed in a delivery boy or the killer could have ducked in behind a tenant. Sanchez has a couple of uniformed guys and they’re canvassing the neighbors now. And the scene is still secure—we had to let the rapids start up again, but aside from that—so you can see it in the daylight. Though the two on duty there were going to do a second search as soon as the sun came up.”

“Then I don’t really need to go, do I?”