by Lisa Black
“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.”
“How did he sound?”
“Not like he was perched on a train platform juggling the phone, a naked dead man, and a bundle of clothing, that’s for sure.”
“I can’t see a guy that old jumping from a train anyway, much less clutching a body.”
“Watch who you’re calling old. We’re going to have to hold this scene, you know.” She could never see a valid reason to search a crime scene in the dark. Even the brightest halogens could not substitute for daylight, and the deep shadows they created could do more harm than good.
“Of course. But for now, go home, get some sleep. We’ll start again in the morning.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, and”—he tossed one arm around her shoulders and brushed her temple with his lips—“happy birthday.”
CHAPTER 38
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
PRESENT DAY
Theresa drove home, intending only to shower, change into dry clothes, arm herself with every caffeinated drink in her fridge, and go back to the lab. When she pulled into her own driveway with almost no gas in the tank and rumblings in her stomach, it occurred to her that she should have at least brought a piece of her birthday cake home. It would have hit the spot right then and perhaps she would have had some energy to deal with whoever had invaded her home in her absence.
Her garage door stood open and light glowed from behind the ill-fitting door into the house. She really would have to get that fixed. Perhaps even start locking it.
Not that she expected a burglar or assassin. Such stealthy types would hardly drive a flashy sports car, or park it in front of the home they were attacking. Perhaps—her heart leapt at the idea—Rachael had gotten a ride home from college. Though who did she know who could afford such a car, and surely she would not go on a trip through several counties with a boy she had just met? Unless it was a girl, a fellow student who had borrowed her parents’ car—
Theresa turned the knob and entered her kitchen.
Chris Cavanaugh, the police department’s star hostage negotiator, sat at her table with a bottle of something in an ice-filled steel chiller and several open manila files that did not belong to her. He glanced up from his writing as she walked in. Apparently he’d been catching up on his paperwork as he waited.
Her watchdog, Harry, lay on the floor at his feet and opened one eye at her arrival. The young and normally unsociable cat perched on top of the bookcase behind Chris, as if she’d been reading over his shoulder.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
“Chris.” She shut the door behind her and strung her purse over the back of a chair. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought you a bottle of bubbly to celebrate.” But he said this more with grim determination than cheer.
“Big help you are,” she told her dog, who got up and pushed his snout into her thigh by way of apology.
“You shouldn’t expect a lot out of a golden retriever. They’re too friendly,” Chris told her.
Exhaustion overtook her knees and she slid into the chair. “Chris. I haven’t seen you in a month.”
“You keep track? I’m flattered.”
“I mean, I just don’t get you. We’ve never slept together and probably never will. I’m not one hundred percent sure I even like you, and I can’t imagine why you show any interest in me other than a desire to bed every last woman in Cleveland regardless of age, marital status—”
While she talked, he stood up and retrieved her only two matching wineglasses from the top shelf over the stove—choosing the correct cabinet immediately, which made her pause long enough for him to say: “That’s just the birthday baggage seeping out. I keep talking to you because I like you, and you keep talking to me because I’m cute. You and me just get along.” He set a glass in front of her, bent over, and kissed her lips, which, as always, made her blood churn and pitch in her veins.
He was cute.
He had good skin, she reflected as he unwound the wire frame that held the cork in place and peeled off the foil covering with a thumbnail. And the dimples, which made up for the receding hairline and the touch of smarminess. But could she talk to him? There is no you and me, she thought. “Christopher.”
“I’m cuter than your friend, anyway,” he added with that oddly flat affect.
“What friend? And if you ever break into my house again I’ll have you arrested.”
Pop! “Theresa, while I admit to feeling a steady and magnetic attraction for you, I would never stoop to a felony to get your attention. Your friend let me in.”
Her heart began to pound again.
He poured the clear and bubbly liquid into her glass. “Nice boy. Young for you, I would think, and without much fashion sense. He’s upstairs working on your computer. Apparently you need virus protection.”
She stood. “I need protection, all right. Jablonski!”
Her voice should have split the floor above her to let him fall through it, but the house remained silent for a shocked second or two before a slight creak sounded from the office room above.
“Jablonski!”
Steps pounded across the upstairs hallway and down the stairs. The reporter trotted into the kitchen and tried for a sheepish grin.
“Why did you break into my house?”
“I’m sorry to borrow your computer, but I had to get tonight’s murder in a half hour ago for tomorrow’s edition—”
“What are you doing in my house? On my computer?” She turned to Chris. “I can’t believe you let him browse through my computer.”
“He was here when I arrived.” The negotiator defended himself while filling his own glass. “And I’m hardly in a position to refuse other men acc
ess to you.”
“You know why? Because we hardly know each other, that’s why!”
“A situation”—he sipped—“I came here to remedy.”
She whirled on the young man again. “Jablonski!”
“I didn’t break in.”
“I’m sure I didn’t leave my home unlocked.”
“Um, no. Not exactly.” She glowered with what felt like nuclear strength until he added, “I guessed the code for your garage door opener. It’s your birthday, which is not the best code for you to use, you know, for that reason alone.”
“How did you know my birthday?” She turned to Chris as if this might have been some sort of conspiracy, but he threw up his hands to proclaim his innocence.
“I’m a reporter. I have my ways.” Jablonski attempted the rakish grin, but the look on her face must have convinced him that it wouldn’t work this time. “I went to the scene but your cops wouldn’t let me in. Your cousin threatened to arrest me if I tried. He has a real attitude, by the way.”
“You have not yet seen an attitude.” Then she added, “You were at the train yard? I didn’t see you.”
“I knew he’d come there to re-create the Tattooed Man. I’d have been there much earlier but a tractor-trailer overturned and the turnpike became a parking lot west of Streetsboro…anyway, I saw you, with the gloves and the camera and the evidence. You’re a formidable woman in your element, you know that?”
He looked at her with soft brown eyes full of admiration that normally would have melted her on the spot, but today the idea that she had been flanked by two men who felt free to invade her space at will simply because they were handsome irritated her to no end. “Both of you need to leave now.”
“But—” Chris protested.
“But,” Jablonski said, “I went to New Castle!”
She should not have been swayed. Finding unexpected people in her home had startled her, particularly unexpected men with whom she did not have a blood tie. But…“And?”
“I think I know who the killer is.”
“The Torso murderer, or the current one?”
“Both.”
Her eyes narrowed. Jablonski obviously found the mores of polite society quite negotiable. But on the other hand, he might have something interesting to say.
“All right,” she said at last. “Look in the cabinet over the stove and find a glass that isn’t chipped.”
“So,” Jablonski said, once he sat at the table and plucked the champagne from Chris’s ice bucket, “I drove to New Castle, Pennsylvania. It took me—could your boss maybe toss me some reimbursements to cover, like, my gas? Maybe?”
“No.” Theresa sipped the bubbly liquid, which was not her favorite. Champagne in general had too many calories and not enough alcohol to suit her.
“The print media deserves the support of its community,” he repeated like a mantra.
“I agree, but it’s a police department investigation.”
“I’ll ask your cousin then.”
She snorted. The boy did not understand government budgets.
Chris said nothing, with an expression that came dangerously close to pouting. Theresa began to feel glad Jablonski had come, if only to throw a wrench in Chris’s suave plans.
“So, New Castle is kind of interesting. It started because some guy went out there to double-check surveys of land that the government donated to Revolutionary War veterans. He found that, oops, they screwed up and left out fifty acres. So this surveyor figures, No one’s going to come looking for these fifty acres, I might as well help myself, and laid out his own little city.”
“When was that?” Theresa asked.
“Seventeen ninety-eight.”
“Very interesting. What did you find out about the 1920s and ’30s?”
“It’s also the hot dog capital of the world.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Really?” Chris asked. “Why?”
Trust a man to perk up at the mention of food.
Harry caught the discussion of dogs and laid his head on the young man’s thigh, glancing upward with imploring eyes until he got petted.
“Something about Greek immigrants making chili dogs. I never really thought of chili dogs as Greek food, myself.”
Theresa stopped sipping. “Did you find out anything relevant to the building at 4950 Pullman?”
“I think so. This swamp where all the dead bodies turned up is almost directly south of the city of New Castle, toward Pittsburgh, by a junction where all the railroads come together at a large station. And this swamp, well…it’s a swamp, not much there. So then I went to the historical society and found the city directories for 1925 through 1935, and looked for the names of the 4950 Pullman tenants.”
“I thought your victim died in 1936,” Chris said to Theresa.
“He did, but the murders in New Castle began in 1923 and continued off and on until 1941.”
“Why’d he stop?” Chris wondered. “World War II? Was the guy drafted?”
“Or the government protected the railroads so well that security got too tight for him to operate.”
Jablonski sipped the champagne and gave Chris Cavanaugh an up-from-under glance. Chris’s shoulder shifted like lava welling up from a dormant volcano. “I didn’t find any mention of Corliss—well, actually I found two Corlisses, but they were residential addresses for a John and a Henry, I think, and no business listings.”
“And the nutritionist?”
“I’m getting to that.” Clearly Jablonski wanted to tell his story his way, so she listened. “I found a Dr. Odessa listed under physicians, without a first name noted. Then I tried business listings. No individual practice, but in a section for hospital staff I found a Dr. Odessa at the Shenango Valley Hospital from 1926 through 1930. Still no first name and he disappears after 1930.”
“Specialty?”
“Anesthesia.”
Theresa pondered this, twirling the stem of the glass between her fingers. “That’s interesting.”
“Why?” Chris asked.
“It could be a different Dr. Odessa, of course. But our Dr. Louis knew how to slip young Irene a mickey, and if he had made a habit of using his wares on female patients he might have been run out of town on a—well, on a rail.”
“A mickey?” Chris asked.
But Jablonski ran with it.
“So he moves to a new city and a new job.”
“He stays off hospital staff and doesn’t have a partner, so there’s no one to monitor his activities.”
“And you two think this guy is the Torso killer?” Chris asked, resting his elbow on the pile of paperwork he’d brought with him.
“Yes,” Jablonski said. “Maybe.”
“Not necessarily,” Theresa said. “The Torso killer killed many more young men than women, and none of them teenagers. On the other hand Odessa may have had access to the room in 4950 Pullman where we found James Miller’s body, so we can’t eliminate him.”
“This killer is amazing, really,” Jablonski said with that now-familiar glow of enthusiasm for the subject. “Going back and forth between the two cities, lopping off heads, never getting caught by either police department.”
“He’s not that amazing,” Theresa said with annoyance. “Communication then was not what it is now, and forensics was severely limited.”
“But they connected the New Castle cases after the sixth or seventh murder, right? So he killed one after another in two different locations, and they still never caught him.”
“The New Castle murders weren’t that steady. There were gaps—I have a chart of it around here. Hang on a second.”
Theresa went up her steps two at a time and retrieved a legal pad from the desk in her small home office. She bumped the computer mouse as she did so, and her annoyance increased as she saw that Brandon had left a Web page open. A picture of one of the Torso’s victims appeared, the one known only as the Tattooed Man. Jablonski had been doing research as he waited for her. She
moved the cursor to the X in the upper right-hand corner and then hesitated. They might want to use the PC to look up some piece of information, so she figured she might as well leave it on.
Her gaze fell to the text on the page. She had assumed it to be a factual history of the murders, but it seemed to be one person’s fantasy about the case from the killer’s point of view. Certain words jumped out at her, with a heavy emphasis on the sexual aspects of the killing.
She minimized the page, deciding to come back and check the history of Jablonski’s time on her computer after the two men left.
She returned to the table. “The New Castle murders began in 1923, with three bodies found that year and two in the following year, mostly skeletons. Then nothing until 1936. That’s a thirteen-year gap.”
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?”
