Trail of Blood

by Lisa Black

  Theresa called up the spectrum for the white flecks she had found on Kim. No surprise there. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey!” Frank said.

  “The white flecks I found on Kim Hammond are identical to the white flecks I found in Van Horn’s handkerchief.”

  “This notebook has the same handwriting as the one in Kim Hammond’s apartment.”

  They stared at each other over the top of her microscope. “What?”

  “What?”

  Frank said, “When we searched her belongings, she had a little notebook like this one with the same handwriting. Her mother said it belonged to Kim’s father.”

  “James Miller couldn’t have been Kim’s father.” Theresa felt silly even thinking such a thing. “But—”

  “He could have been her grandfather, or great-grandfather, or whatever. I’ve got to go talk to her mother again. What did you say about white somethings?”

  Theresa explained about the specks found stuck to the paint in Kim’s hair. “They’re identical to the ones I just found in Van Horn’s handkerchief. Granted, there’s not a lot to their composition—polyethylene and titanium dioxide and a few trace elements—but they’re identical.”

  “So she was the Lady of the Lake.”

  “This guy began his copycat spree with James Miller’s granddaughter? How?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.” Her cousin no longer seemed a bit tired. Coffee forgotten, he pulled on a glove, snatched up the notebook, and absently planted a kiss on her cheek before barreling out the door.

  “You can’t take that without—” She heard the stairwell door open. He hadn’t wanted to wait for the creaking elevator or to sign the property form to check out the notebook. She laughed in his wake but felt fairly reenergized herself. At least Kim Hammond had been linked—and how—which meant they had only one crazed decapitating murderer preying on the citizens of Cleveland instead of two.

  This man had killed five people in as many days and had probably already abducted the next young man in the series. Yet like the original Torso killer, he remained a ghost.

  But at the same time, all she wanted to do was go home. At only ten o’clock she had more or less completed all reasonable work on William Van Horn. She had only to stop by the crime scene on her way home and then call her cousin to release the patrol officers. Every cop in the city would be working on this case. Surely they could spare her long enough for her to make her only child some breakfast.

  With a pang she reminded herself that both James Miller and his only descendant had been wiped from the earth.

  She analyzed the fibers found on Van Horn. The blue carpet fibers were made of polyester, and the black nylon fiber matched the ones found on Kim and Richard Dunlop. The khaki and turquoise cotton fibers could not be assayed on the FTIR, of course, but a microscopic comparison with sample fibers from Van Horn’s shirt and pants indicated a common origin.

  This left only the animal hairs, and she plunked the dog hair down on the microscope stage. She could be out of there in twenty minutes. Fifteen minutes to drive to the crime scene, maybe ten given the light weekend traffic…though she still wanted to pay Edward Corliss a visit to express her condolences, since he had introduced her to the victim and all, but that could wait until Monday. A phone call would do.

  She had not found any animal hairs on Kim, but then they had never found Kim’s clothing. The hairs would stick to cloth much more easily than to skin; she knew that from constantly picking the fine wisps off her own clothes. Animal fur was insidious, and Theresa often swore that after the current set she would never get another cat or dog, no matter how adorable, soft, or funny they were.

  She kept a reference library of animal hairs mounted on glass slides in an undersize metal filing cabinet designed for exactly that purpose, and she began to put one slide after another on the stage opposite the hairs found on Van Horn. With the comparison microscope she could view both slides at once.

  The yellow dog hair reminded her of a retriever like her own, and using the reference slide for comparison she decided that the killer had one as well.

  Exactly like hers. She had used Harry’s fur for her reference library, and the dog hair on Van Horn appeared to be identical. Of course, it didn’t mean much—all golden retrievers looked pretty much the same, didn’t they?

  But Harry was not purebred. In fact, Harry had belonged to Theresa’s deceased fiancé and she had no idea of his actual ancestry, except that he had come from a pound and his fur had always seemed darker than the classic gold of that type of dog.

  She wrote One dog hair, app. gold retriever into her notebook and went on to the finer, dark hairs. They were nothing like Harry’s, of that she felt certain.

  The thicker guard hairs of cats and dogs were quite easy to tell apart by the distinct roots. The roots of dog hairs ended in a smooth spade shape, while the cat’s ended in an uncharacteristically awkward mess of tendrils. But the thinner undercoat or fur hairs, which kept the animals insulated, were not so easily separated. Often the roots appeared to be a cross between the two.

  The medulla is a channel running through the center of the hair. It could be clear, if filled with cells, or black if hollow. The medulla in these three hairs appeared as a series of black bubbles, known as a string-of-pearls medulla, usually found in cats. The overlapping scales making up the outer cuticle were long and thin, or spinous, which indicated a cat. She got out her cat fur slides.

  The hairs were solid black, with no coloration or banding to give any indication of breed. So she really could not consider it significant that the hairs were alike in every way to those of her own cat.

  Anubis, named for the stern-faced Egyptian god, had been given to her by a neighbor of her cousin’s. He had been an only child, the offspring of a gray Persian mother and a father who snuck into the yard one night under cover of darkness and never returned. This made him fairly unique, and not only in his own mind.

  The hairs matched perfectly, something she would never say in court. No, in court she would say that “the microscopic characteristics of both sets of hairs are such that they could have had a common origin.” Right after she explained how she contaminated a victim’s clothing.

  Theresa had no illusions about her ability to do just that. Animal fur got everywhere, and she felt sure it could be found on every item of clothing she owned if she only looked hard enough. But she had worn a disposable lab coat when examining the clothing downstairs, and at the crime scene…though the cuffs of her long-sleeved T-shirt peeked out from the rolled-up ends of the Tyvek sleeves. Could she have brushed those cuffs to the shirt and pants as she moved them around?

  Had she brushed against Van Horn at the preservation society headquarters? No, she’d only touched his hand. Besides, he had been wearing dark pants and a white shirt at the time, so he must have changed clothes later in the day. Of course the hairs could have transferred from the first set of clothes when he picked up the second. They could have clung to the chair she sat in when speaking with Edward Corliss, and then Van Horn sat there later and picked them up. The chairs were hard wood, no upholstery, which made it unlikely but not impossible. But four hairs?

  Her heart began to beat faster and she told it not to. She had no reason to be upset. Golden retriever mixes and black cats were hardly uncommon in the Cleveland area. She had no reason to believe that these particular hairs came from her two particular animals. Perhaps Van Horn’s landlady also happened to have a golden retriever mix and a black, half-Persian cat. Last night the woman had spoken to the victim. Perhaps she and Van Horn were more than friends.

  And perhaps Theresa needed to be a whole lot more careful about how she handled evidence. Any defense attorney in the city would jump at the chance to point that out in court. Isn’t it true, Ms. MacLean, that you have a letter of reprimand in your personnel file for contaminating evidence?…

  What to do now? She could note the hairs and their description and leave it at
that. She could note the hairs and add “possible examiner contamination” and hope that no one would ever delve deeply enough into the case to notice. Or she could tell somebody. This would invite at best a tongue-lashing from Leo, or at worst some sort of disciplinary procedure that he would probably make up as he went along and might involve everything from remedial training to suspension. And with Rachael in college, Theresa couldn’t afford to lose even a few pennies from her paycheck.

  Didn’t matter. She’d have to inform her supervisor, and the sooner the better. In any sort of law enforcement position, the cover-up always screwed you worse than the actual crime.

  Theresa got her purse from her desk, locked up the lab, and headed for the crime scene.

  CHAPTER 40

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  PRESENT DAY

  “I don’t get it,” Angela Sanchez said to her partner as they climbed the steps at Riverview Towers once more. As if she had read his mind at some point during their earlier trip, she had made him go first so he could not observe the tilt of her hips as they ascended. It made the journey less interesting to Frank. On the other hand, the hope remained that she might be observing his rear in motion, and the thought buoyed him through the last two turns. He needed a boost after being up all night.

  She went on. “You really think Kim Hammond had James Miller’s notebooks?”

  “Yep.” Short sentences allowed him to hide the pants of breath. Theresa was right, he should stop smoking.

  “How?”

  He came to their destination and knocked. “That’s what we’re here to find out. Mrs. Hammond?”

  He had called ahead to be sure she would be at home, and she answered the door promptly. Nothing had changed since their last visit, except the woman’s clothing. The dingy windows, the smell of yesterday’s coffee, all Kim’s worldly possessions kept in a few shoeboxes under the futon. Frank sighed in relief at the sight of them, having worried that Mrs. Hammond might throw them out. She didn’t seem too sentimental to him. Grieving, but not sentimental.

  “We need to go through Kim’s things again,” he told her mother, and went to his knees on the floor, risking the fleas and who knew what else living in the carpet fibers.

  “Do you know who killed her?”

  “Not yet.”

  Mrs. Hammond sat on the plaid sofa. “But you’re still working on it.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Good,” Kim’s mother said.

  Frank found the notebook exactly as he’d left it, next to the eagle medal on the faded ribbon. A momentary curiosity won out and he held up the medal. “What is this?”

  “That belonged to Kim’s father.”

  “And he left when she was in junior high?”

  “No, that was her stepfather.”

  Aha, Frank thought. That was why Dr. Christine had trouble finding the birth certificate—because Kim hadn’t been born with the name Hammond. “Mr. Hammond was her stepfather?”

  The woman nodded without any great interest. “Eladio married me and adopted her when she was ten. I had high hopes. I think we both did, Kim and I. But he ran out on us a few years later, just like my first husband. I really know how to pick ’em.”

  “And your first husband’s name?”

  “John Miller.”

  Even though he’d been expecting it, the news shot through Frank like an electrical charge. This, he knew, was where the case would all come together. “And John Miller’s father’s name?”

  She rubbed her eyes. “Um—another J. Jake…no, James. Jim.”

  “James Miller.”

  “Yeah. I guess he’d be Kim’s grandfather. That medal belonged to him. He was in World War I.”

  “In the Marines? It’s a Distinguished Service Cross.”

  “I guess.” Now she peered at him. “Why?”

  “Did this notebook come from James Miller, too?”

  “Yeah. Lord knows why Johnny kept it. Or why I gave it to Kim, or why she kept it. Probably because when you’ve got nothing else…” She stood up and went to the kitchenette, pouring a cup of too-strong-smelling coffee into a cup without milk or sugar.

  “Did you ever meet your father-in-law?” Sanchez asked.

  The woman snorted. “Of course not. He ran out on Johnny and his mother before Johnny could even walk. He left that woman in the middle of the Depression. Men couldn’t even buy a job then, much less a woman. She—I don’t know how she survived. Johnny wouldn’t go into details.”

  “What else did he tell you about his father?”

  She leaned against the wall as she spoke, as if she no longer had the strength to remain upright. “Nothing, other than he hated the guy with a passion.”

  “But he kept his notebooks?”

  “Like I said, when you’ve got nothing else…Johnny figured he would have had an okay life if his father had stuck around, if he had had enough to eat and a decent place to live. He could have at least finished high school. Instead he had to scrape by, stealing what he couldn’t con people out of. I felt sorry for him, so, like an idiot, I married him.” She finished her cup with one desperate gulp. “Again, I had high hopes. He was a lot older than me. I thought that would make him more stable. Hah! All that happened was he ran out on me and Kim before she could walk. Don’t they say history repeats itself?”

  History repeats itself.

  Frank asked, “Where is Johnny now?”

  “Dead. They found him in an alley off of East Seventy-first.”

  “When was that?”

  “Hell, I don’t remember. I think Kim had just turned five.”

  Eighteen years before. Frank turned this fact over in his mind as he got off his creaking knees and pulled up a wooden chair. “What did he die of?”

  “Natural causes. My guess is he had a heart attack banging some hooker, but I hate to think that because it would mean he died happy. I never told Kim…. I mean, I told her he died of a heart attack, but not the circumstances. She had already started to ask if he would ever come back for us, and I didn’t want her to spend her life waiting.”

  History repeats itself.

  “Why?” Mrs. Hammond demanded again, sinking into the plaid sofa once again. “What does her grandfather’s old things have to do with her getting killed?”

  Frank and Angela Sanchez exchanged a glance, and she asked the question: “Did Kim mention a news story in which a body had been found in an old building off of Fifty-fifth, by any chance?”

  The furrow between her eyes deepened with each question. “What?”

  “The newspapers and TV news all reported—”

  “Newspapers are one of those little luxuries I don’t have, and I never watch the news. Kim did, sometimes, but she never said nothing to me about some body. Why?”

  “We found James Miller’s body in a building at 4950 Pullman.”

  They let this sink in. It took some time. Frank had an image of her mind approaching the concept like a timid animal to a strange object, coming closer, then backing away to get another perspective, unsure whether this was something valuable, or dangerous, or simply irrelevant.

  “Johnny’s father? Damn…but what does that have to do with Kim?”

  Frank said, “That’s what we’re trying to find out. She never mentioned it? Had she brought up her father in the last few days? Ask questions about him or her grandfather?”

  “No. I’d remember. I don’t think we’ve talked about Johnny in years. I tried not to bring him up. There were too many—what do you call it, parallels? All these things that seemed the same between their two lives, Kim and her father. I didn’t want her to end up like him. Kim thought the same way Johnny did—that life had not been fair to her, so she deserved a break. I think it’s the only thing she inherited, besides that medal and those notebooks.”

  “Notebooks, plural? How many were there?”

  “Two.”

  “There’s only one here now.”

  The crease between her eyes
threatened to become permanent. “There were two.”

  Frank thumbed through the pages. The first date noted read May 5, 1935, and the last August 8 of the same year. The one in Theresa’s lab began in April 1936. That left eight months. James Miller had made some notations during those eight months that made Kim Hammond think that she knew who killed him, and she had not shared this theory with her mother or her friend—meaning there was money involved, money that Kim didn’t want to share.

  “The last few days before she died, who did she talk to, visit, go hang out with?” He had asked that question before, but perhaps a memory had come back in the meantime.

  “I don’t know. I was at work.”

  “She didn’t mention looking up any old friends—”

  “I told her to stay away from her old friends. She was, too. Like I told you before, the only suggestion I have is that bastard down the hall.”

  “Okay.” They would have to interview the drug dealer again for any hint of where Kim had been headed, what plans had revolved through her little mind. She had learned that her grandfather had died in the building at 4950 Pullman. She should have been happy that he had not run out on her father as all had supposed…but perhaps not. Perhaps that made the ruination of Johnny’s life all the more poignant.

  But it had not depressed Kim. It energized her. Why?

  The building—

  “Mrs. Hammond.” His voice burst out so suddenly it startled him as well as the grieving woman. “You said Kim worked one summer at city hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Clerk-type stuff, I guess, for the zoning and planning office. Filing plans, typing up allotment forms.”

  “Did she stay in touch with any of her coworkers there?”

  “Kim wasn’t the staying-in-touch type,” her mother said as if that were an endearing trait.

  He tried to hone in by different means. “She was in high school then? Did she get along with everyone in that office?”