Trail of Blood

by Lisa Black

  “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.”

  James gave one more valiant effort to mold his accumulated suspicions into something resembling proof. “Including shoveling coal.”

  “Indeed. Dirty job, but it kept my muscles up.”

  Spots of light began to appear before James’s eyes. “And you were a bull.”

  “Railroad detective, yes. I kept the army of parasites from bringing a working system down. Like you.”

  “No,” James said, straightening. “Not like me.”

  Arthur Corliss was the Torso killer. James had to get help to make the arrest. He didn’t feel strong enough to even lift a pair of handcuffs, much less get them on somebody. He headed for the door, or at least tried to, steadying himself with one hand on the desk. There would be a call box at the next corner, he could alert the station—

  “Where are you going, Detective?”

  “Haffa…haffa…” He’d never make it to the door.

  Corliss grasped one shoulder and spun him around as easily as a rag doll.

  Anger and fear powered James’s arms, which shoved Corliss back a foot and surprised them both. That was it, though. He had nothing left with which to resist when Corliss grasped James’s collar with his left hand and pulled James’s service revolver from the holster with his right.

  This could not be a good development, James thought. Then Corliss pulled the trigger and set the inside of his body on fire.

  James felt as if he had exploded from the inside out, in addition to being vaguely surprised not to see the floorboards covered in gore as he slipped down to them.

  With his last gasp of consciousness, James insisted, “Not like me.”

  “If you say so,” Arthur Corliss conceded. Then he took both of James’s hands and dragged him into the small closet.

  Helen, James thought. Johnny.

  CHAPTER 46

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  PRESENT DAY

  Theresa smelled the earth before she felt it. Cool and firm, pressing against her back and legs; she should have been fairly comfortable but somehow wasn’t. Her head ached, her jaw felt stiff, and the chill of the outdoors had seeped in and through every bone in her body. She shivered, convulsing. Only then did she realize her legs were tied down.

  Her eyes, blurred and in near dark, could not tell her much about her surroundings, but they didn’t need to. She knew instantly where Corliss had taken her.

  She was in the basement of the building at 4950 Pullman, approximately underneath the room where James Miller had lain for seventy-four years.

  Why hadn’t Edward killed her?

  Then she heard movement. He simply hadn’t killed her yet.

  A vague amount of dusky light filtered down the stairwell and silhouetted Edward Corliss as he straightened from the support column to which he had tied her legs.

  Why would he bring her here? Some sort of symmetry with his father’s crimes? To live out this fantasy of re-creating his father’s crimes, as he had with Van Horn’s body? But which of the Torso killer’s famous victims would she be?

  Then the noises from outside finally penetrated, and she knew that historical accuracy had little to do with it. She heard men’s voices, distant and indistinct, and the rumblings of large diesel engines heavy enough to vibrate the ground beneath her. They were coming to destroy the building, to collapse the stone walls into the hole beneath them and pour concrete over the whole mess. Her body would never be found.

  No, wait. Surely they would do a walk-through, one last check to make sure a kid or a homeless man or a cat was not still inside. Right?

  But they must have already done that. Corliss would have waited until they took one last look around and returned to their equipment on the north lawn, between the building and the road. Then he carried her in via the south lawn, out of their sight, and got down the steps without being seen through the window cutouts. That’s the only reason he would have cut this so close.

  Any minute now the ball would swing and the stones would bury her. She should have been unconscious, but absorbing a drug through the skin must be an uncertain business. He would have had a hard time calculating the dose. A small slip, but obviously the only break she was going to get.

  She blinked her eyes until they cleared and saw him give a tug to the knot he had tied around the post. She wanted to point out that the first swing of the wrecking ball would collapse the northeast corner right into their stairwell, blocking his only avenue of escape, but the tight gag in her mouth prevented speech. Besides, why should she tip him off? Instead, she lay limp and still, hands tied together over her stomach, as he picked up the bundle of thick rope and wrists he had created. He wanted to check that part of his tableau, too. A perfectionist to the last.

  When he did, she grabbed his shirt with both hands and bucked with both feet, pulling him down to the ground. If she would die down here, so would he.

  Once he was on the floor she let go just long enough to strike at his chest with her tied-together fists. It didn’t feel to her like she did much damage, so she tried again, hitting at his face. He grabbed her hair. She tried to knee him in the groin but didn’t have enough slack in the rope holding her ankles. She heard the slight clink of metal as his keys slid from his side pocket, falling onto the packed earthen floor.

  She rolled upright, sitting on his right thigh. Her hands came down again, missing his chin in the dark and hitting him in the right eye. He immediately released her hair and pressed both hands to his face, groaning. She ran her hands along the floor to find the keys, sometimes useful as a weapon, and found something much better.

  He had kept his trusty folding knife in the same pocket.

  Now she had to get it open with bound hands and a writhing man underneath her. Using her toes to scoot herself backward, she raised herself up an inch or two and then fell, planting her knee in his groin.

  He doubled automatically, body-slamming her over backward, knife still clutched in her fingers. She couldn’t do much to stop herself, not with her wrists tied together.

  His assault paused; apparently he needed a second to get air back into his lungs. During that time her fingers grasped the largest ridge on the side of the knife and pulled.

  The sounds from outside became more distinct. One of the diesel engines began to whine in a higher gear. Someone spoke over a mega-phone, his words ominous: “Stand clear.”

  Corliss would not stop attacking long enough for her to learn the technique of sawing at the rope around her wrists while still bound by it, so she drew up her knees and applied the blade to the rope holding her ankles. It was thick, though. She’d never get through it in time to move away from him.

  The vague duskiness creeping down the stairwell provided just enough light for his fists to find her; he struck her shoulder hard enough to rattle her teeth and then grabbed her shirt. She tried to duck while continuing to work at the rope. His hands slid to her throat and began to squeeze.

  She abandoned her ankles and sliced at his arm with the knife. It felt as if she’d only grazed his jacket, but he gave a surprised grunt as if she’d cut the flesh. His fingers found new strength, tightening enough in one split second to bring stars to her eyes.

  She twisted her body toward him and with both hands thrust the knife upward.

  A deeper grunt now, and he let go. She saw him press both his hands to his stomach, or perhaps she only imagined it.

  Then he reached out to take the knife away from her, but his fingers found only its blade and she sliced him again without even trying.

  “All clear!” yelled a man outside. The diesel engine gave another bellow.

  Corliss backed off. He couldn’t get the knife away from her without risking more injuries, and besides, he didn’t have time. He had to get out now or be trapped with her
.

  He ran.

  She screamed, producing only a pitiful mewl that would not be heard over the machinery outside. Trying to pull the gag down from her mouth only caused her to scrape her cheeks with her fingernails and wasted one valuable second. She applied the knife to the rope around her ankles.

  Corliss ran up the old wooden steps, on all fours from the sound of it.

  Nearly through the rope, but the remaining strand held her ankles fast.

  Then her world exploded in a thunderous boom of vibration and noise. The northeast corner of the building caved in, and the rubble of the heavy stone walls immediately broke through the floor. The old timbers gave way with sharp cracks, like a volley of rifle fire. Shards of stone flew everywhere, forcing her into the fetal position to protect her face while she felt sickening pain in her arm, back, and thigh.

  Next came the dust, so that when she finally could take a breath the air had been filled with bits of mortar, sawdust, dirt, and sand. She coughed it back out, then tried to breathe only through her mouth. At least the gag could provide some kind of filter.

  Light struck her from above. A blinding array of floodlights was aimed at the building. Couldn’t they see her? They would stay a safe distance back, away from the flying shards and dusty air, too far away to see into the pit of the basement.

  Then she discovered that her scrabbling had snapped the last rope strand, and her ankles were free. She stood, choking, her eyes closed to slits against the onslaught of elements around her, and hesitated for one fateful second.

  Retreat into the back of the basement, and hope they knocked off for coffee halfway through the demolition? Or try to climb up that slope of broken rock to get out before the rest of the building came down on top of her?

  Irene Schaffer had said they paused between each swing, to study the last blow’s effects before deciding where to place the next.