Trail of Blood (41 page)

The fragile papers contained an illustration 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 space. 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 space 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 snatched 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. “Hello?”

“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.”

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.

The top step creaked. Not that it mattered, really. The sun had only begun to set and the front door stood slightly ajar. James entered the hallway. Three of the offices were dark and closed, but light poured from Arthur Corliss’s space.

He did not plan to take the man by surprise. He did not feel 100 percent sure yet. Nearly everything that applied to Arthur Corliss also applied to Louis Odessa, except their preference for company. Arthur Corliss sought out the down-and-out men, the ones looking for work, the ones without relatives to report them missing. He spoke kindly to them. He fed them.

They would trust him.

He needed to follow up on his clues, and then he would turn his information over to the captain and ask for an arrest warrant. James could do nothing by himself. He knew that.

At the office door he saw Corliss inside, doing nothing more sinister than laying in a fresh supply of Mission Orange soda, his favorite, in their signature black bottles. Had Corliss offered one to the latest young man before killing him? Or had they broken during the fire and a shard lodged in the sole of his shoe, only to come loose when he dumped the body?

The shelves were clean and freshly painted, books and bottles and drawings returned, all except for the newspapers. Those must have gone up in the blaze. Flo Polillo’s body parts had been wrapped in two different newspapers, dated five months apart. Who else would have a five-month-old newspaper handy but a man who made a habit of collecting them?

The yellow dog lay under the window, no longer interested in the radiator on this warm evening. He opened one eye, saw James, closed it again.

He could swear he hadn’t made a sound, but Corliss whirled around all the same. “Oh, Detective. Good afternoon. Evening, really.”

“I thought you’d be here. Moving your things back in after the renovations?”

The man chuckled and set the last bottle on his shelf. “They never really left, merely got shuffled around while the painters worked. The fire only damaged my table and the things on it, but the smoke got every where. Nasty stuff, smoke. The smell went through the whole building. Auralina had to throw out two of her robes, and did she get after me about that! I’ll have to pay her three times what they were worth.”

“The fire started here?”

“Oh, yes, I’m entirely to blame.” He opened a carton and began to pull books out, setting them on the shelf one by one, in no apparent order. “I made a hobo stove out of tin cans and lit a little coal fire in it. I propped it up on two bricks on the table but then went outside to drink a soda with the men and—”

“What men?”

Corliss paused, book in hand. From a step or two closer James could see that the books were in alphabetical order by the author’s name. “A couple of joes came by looking for work. One of them hadn’t eaten in two days and I merely wanted to warm some beans for him. I should have taken the blasted thing outside, of course, but I didn’t think it would get that hot. You’re not going to report me to the fire marshal, are you? Doesn’t matter, he already made a report.”

“You used coal instead of oil?”

“I know, another silly thing. But such a tiny stove hardly makes any fumes, and I have a handy supply of coal.” He tossed the empty carton on the floor and opened another.

“From your train cars?” James asked, feeling, under his blazer, the gun at his side.

“Yes. Stealing from one’s employer, that’s called. But I
am
the employer and I can’t technically steal from myself, can I?”

“How long did everyone have to clear out of the building for?”

“A couple of weeks, it’s been.” He peered at James. “Why all this interest in my fire?”

Because that’s why you had to kill this last one outside, isn’t it? Your building had painters and workmen crawling all over it and you decided you couldn’t wait.
“Well, you know how fascinated I am by Dr. Louis’s closet.”

Corliss chuckled again. “I suspect many ladies have been, too.”

“What do you keep in yours?” James eyed the door behind the man’s desk.

Did he imagine it, the momentary halt in Corliss’s act of placing one more volume next to the others? “No young girls, I can assure you of that.”

“I believe it,” James said with sincerity. “Did the painters redo that as well?”

Another book, carefully placed. “It didn’t seem worth painting a storage space. And the smoke barely penetrated.”

“Mind if I look at it?”

Corliss abandoned the books and stared at him. “You want to see my closet?”

“If you don’t mind.” James didn’t bother coming up with an excuse for the request, unable to think of one that would make the slightest sense.

Finally the other man shrugged. “Help yourself. If you’d like to bring out another carton while you’re at it, that would be swell.”

James skirted the inner wall, rounded the desk, and turned the knob to the storage room, all without removing his gaze from Arthur Corliss, who had gone back to unpacking books.

James entered the storage space, still moving sideways.

The storage space mirrored Odessa’s, except shelves lined only the north wall. The rest of the area had been taken over by a table made out of unfinished wood planks and two-by-fours, with a lip running around the edge. Some of the smoke had left its odor lingering on the air. Otherwise the small room smelled like the disinfectant Helen used to use on their sinks, back when they could afford to join the national obsession about germs. James sniffed, tried to detect that tinny blood-and-offal smell he remembered from the war and occasional visits to the morgue. Nothing.

Nevertheless, he did not turn his back to the door.

He saw what Corliss meant about the cartons. At least five were stacked on the table and he plucked one from the top of the pile before reemerging into the office, feeling a bit ridiculous. He must have been wrong, he thought. Odessa moved back to the top of his short list of suspects.

“I hope you found that edifying, Detective.”

“Oh, greatly. It’s the same size as Odessa’s, I see. Where do you want this?”

“On the desk, if you don’t mind.” He continued to unpack, and James returned to the closet for another box.

James heard Corliss uncap two bottles of Mission Orange. “Here. If you’re going to help, I can at least provide refreshments.”

James hadn’t had a soda in over a week, and he’d had to walk the two miles from the murder scene since Walter had taken the car. He accepted the bottle, formed from the black glass he had thought so incriminating, and figured that every drugstore counter in the city served the fizzy flavored liquid. What a pill he was. He drained half the bottle in a few swallows.

“You fellows have had a busy weekend, I see from the papers.” Corliss tapped a folded pile on one shelf, already reestablishing his newspaper collection. “A murdered young man. Are you and your partner assigned to that case?”

“Only peripherally.”

“Amazing, that such things could happen in this day and age. But I suppose vengeance never goes out of style.”

“We can’t even identify two of the four. They may not have known anyone in this town.”
Except,
James thought,
for whoever killed them.
He perched one hip on the edge of the desk; it had been a long day. “Andrassy was just a punk and the woman never bothered anybody. Who would feel vengeance toward people like that?”

“Any member of society, I suppose. Given what they were.” Corliss placed another book, squaring it until it lined up in formation with the others. “Thieves. Parasites. An army of them, men who used to be men, who have been reduced to little more than animals by a travesty of economics.”

“I thought you…you seemed sympathetic to the…”

“The dispossessed? Of course I am. It’s not their fault—you think I don’t know that? But that doesn’t change the fact that they have become a scourge upon those of us who are left, who still have productive lives.”

James drained the rest of his soda pop and set the bottle down. “So someone killed them for the betterment of society?”

“Isn’t that what you do? What men have always done?” Corliss took the last book from the carton and piled it atop the first empty one on the floor. “Soldiers killed in the war, to keep the American system from foreign invaders. You officers lock the criminals away, sometimes execute them, not because of what they are but to keep them from doing more harm in the future. I would think if anyone understood the protection of society, you would.”

Years ago James thought that was what his job was about. Now, thinking of his department, his fellows in the blue line, Walter’s offer…they had become parasites and thieves, as well. The Butcher ought to have been stalking them instead of the downtrodden, because the cops had had a choice in what they became.

“Are you all right, Detective? I hope I haven’t upset you.”

“No…”

“Would you mind grabbing one more carton for me? Then I think I’ll cease for the night.”

James did, because it gave him time to consider his next move. Maybe he could pet the dog, collect some hairs. Could the Bertillon unit tell one yellow dog from another? Or could Walter be right, and James chased shadows only to avoid being chased by Ness’s gang? He picked up a box from the surface of the table, revealing an irregular pattern of staining on the unfinished wood. At the same time he noticed that what looked like an extra leg in one corner was actually a pipe, draining from the table through the floor. This should have meant something to him, he felt, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. It had been much too long of a day, and the idea of not having a job come Monday morning taxed his brain.

Corliss accepted the carton, opened it, began stacking books. He seemed about as dangerous as his dog.

“What do you use that table for, the one in your closet?” James asked.

“You
are
fascinated by my storage room, aren’t you? Just storage. It holds plans and blueprints, since they don’t fit comfortably on a shelf and the edge keeps them from rolling off.”

“What’s the pipe for?”

“Pardon?”

“Pipe. Like a drain. Going into the floor.” What was the matter with him? He sounded only barely intelligible.

“Washing parts. I do still tinker with bits and pieces of the locomotives. I was quite a mechanic in my day. I’ve held every job one can have on a railroad. That’s how I learned to run one.”