Wednesday, October 4
When Nuri arrived at St. John’s, it was nearly three in the morning. He burst into the priest’s office.
“What happened?” he demanded before he was completely through the door.
Gerwazek nodded slowly. His skin looked waxy and pale, and he sat behind his desk dressed for Mass. Nuri slowed his approach when he saw that the satin robes were spotted with dirt and blood.
“What happened?” Nuri asked, softer this time. All Gerwazek had said on the phone, about fifteen minutes ago, was that he should come quickly.
Gerwazek looked at Nuri with eyes that were heavy and bloodshot. “Maybe a miracle?” Gerwazek looked down at his hands. Nuri saw a wound on his right wrist and shuddered.
“Did Stefan attack you?”
Gerwazek shook his head. “No, he asked—he begged. After what I had seen, could I deny him?”
Nuri walked around the desk, put his hand on Gerwazek’s shoulder and knelt so he was at eye level with the priest. “What happened with Stefan? What did you see?”
“He took Communion.” The statement lay heavy on the air. Nuri’s mind raced through all the possibilities of what might have happened. A vampire was supposed to cringe from things holy—at least things Christian—what would Communion do to Stefan?
“He took the wafer, and I thought he was going to die. I never thought I’d see a demon possessing someone, but that’s what it was. A demon throwing him to the ground, tearing at his own flesh. Then he came back, was rational, took the wine—” Gerwazek shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it. “I saw him become the image of Christ. I saw him bleed from the wounds of the crucifixion—”
“He took your blood?”
“He collapsed and begged me for it. How could I refuse?”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. I slept, I don’t know how long before I called you.”
Nuri slammed his fist into the desk. “We lost him! After all this, he’s going to fall back to Melchior!”
Gerwazek shook his head.
“He bit you and walked out? Where else is he going to go?”
“He won’t return to evil. The Lord has touched him.”
Nuri stood up. “How do you know that?”
Gerwazek held out his wrist in front of Nuri. “Because I am still alive.”
Stefan walked the night-drenched streets of Cleveland, searching for a place to call home. In his wake he left five or six people sleeping, people who had looked into his eyes and couldn’t refuse his request.
He was dressed in some of Gerwazek’s clothes, old black trousers and a black shirt with a priest’s collar. He wore nothing on his feet. Gerwazek’s clothes hung loose on him, the cuffs of the trousers dragging on the ground.
Stefan looked out at the night and felt an uncanny sense of freedom. Melchior was a distant ghost to him, a dim memory of the purgatory he had crossed to reach this point.
For the first time since his death, since before his death, Stefan Ryzard felt whole.
As the night sky turned ruddy violet, he stopped. He had reached Public Square. On one side towered the Union Terminal Building, once the headquarters of the Van Sweringen empire. Across from the terminal stood a small sandstone church, walls black with age. The sign above the front of the building read, “Old Stone Church.”
Before, when he’d felt himself damned for what Melchior had done to him, being this close to a house of God would have put him in pain. Now, as Stefan looked up at the twin Gothic towers flanking the entrance, he saw it as a refuge.
He walked inside, and hid himself deep in the basement. He stayed there that day, knowing he was safe.
1939
15
Thursday, July 6
“Who the hell is Frank Dolezal?” Ness said. “Good Lord, was he ever a suspect?”
A collection of the highest ranking cops in Cleveland were crowded into Ness’ office, and Ness stared at all of them in turn. A few looked abashed, a few stared blankly—the ones who hadn’t heard about Dolezal yet. Someone said, “The name may have come up in the investigation—”
“Every name in the Roaring Third has come up in the investigation,” a cynical voice answered.
Ness stared out at all of them, feeling a near-unbearable frustration. The case was like an albatross, dragging him down with it. When he had finally razed the shantytowns, he had hoped to take away the murderer’s prey. Everyone agreed that he preyed on hobos and transients, and Ness had removed the population from Cleveland. The press and the public had blasted him for it, but in the time that had passed, he felt he might be vindicated. There’d been no more murders for nearly a year.
There had been one debatable case where someone found some human bones in a Youngstown dump, but it really looked as if Ness had faced the problem down. The press and the public might have begun to feel that way, too.
Now the damn county sheriff claimed to have gotten what Eliot Ness and the massed force of the biggest manhunt in Cleveland history had failed to get. Sheriff O’Donnell said he had the Torso Murderer, and he was some immigrant named Frank Dolezal.
That was bad enough—
“He went and told the press before he told us,” Ness said to the assembled cops. He was fuming. “He’s running a circus, and he’s done everything to keep the city away from Dolezal.”
Everything to make sure that Ness had no part of the credit. Worse, it made the effort of last summer look pointless. He had done so much else for this city, why did this keep haunting him?
“I want detectives going after Dolezal’s background. Go over what we have, the interviews we’ve taken. If there’s evidence either way, damning him or clearing him, I want us to get it before the county boys. Everyone understand? And I want some detectives up at the county jail. We’re going to have a presence there, even if we don’t get in to see Dolezal.”
Ness clapped his hands and said, “Let’s get moving.”
Frank Dolezal sat in a chair while the sheriff and his deputies walked around and badgered him with questions. Every time O’Donnell said, “We know it was you, Frank,” Dolezal felt a tremor of fear shoot through his body. He was afraid of the words, that his slurred answers weren’t quite right, that in the end they wouldn’t believe him.
The room was hot, stifling. They sat him in a hard chair, and refused to let him move. Occasionally one of the deputies would strike him, and the pain would make him forget the heat, the lack of sleep, and let him concentrate on the fear.
They had to believe him, or he would lose his chance at a golden eternity. He managed to keep the denials going. That was the worst part. Taking the beatings, the heat, the violent shouts in his face, and still give them denials that he knew he would recant.
He knew they had the knives in his apartment, he knew that they’d tracked down the stories he’d been told to propagate. But he knew that they wouldn’t believe him unless he began with denial.
Time was all. He needed to deny everything for six hours at least, before he gave them a confession. And the confession needed to be convincing. The sheriff needed to believe he had the Torso Murderer.
If he didn’t, Frank Dolezal would lose his chance at eternity.
So Dolezal sat, drenched in sweat, bruises turning livid on his body, until his Master’s blood moved inside him and he felt that it was time.
“Okay,” he said in a thick accent, “I did it. Just stop.”
That got their attention. They began on him, asking for details, and Dolezal gave them, feeding them bits and pieces of the murders just as his Master had fed them to him. The confessions took hours more.
At the end Dolezal stared blankly ahead of him, the only emotion inside him a desire to fulfill his Master’s will.
16
Friday, July 7
Nuri was given the unenviable job of being present when Sheriff O’Donnell unveiled his big catch. As soon as he got to the county jail and saw all the press, he knew it wasn’t going
to be good. He was glad he was plainclothes. If he wore a Cleveland uniform, the reporters might ask him some embarrassing questions.
A sense of futility hung in the air, though perhaps he was the only one to sense it. Nuri knew for a fact that Frank Dolezal was at best a fall guy for the murders, at worse he was just an innocent schmo who crossed Sheriff O’Donnell’s path at the wrong time.
Nuri couldn’t even get to talk to the sheriff on behalf of the department. The sheriff was too busy.
So Nuri was stuck in a room with all the reporters, waiting for the sheriff to throw them all the story he wanted to give.
Eventually Sheriff O’Donnell walked in, a pair of his deputies leading in a man who had to be Frank Dolezal. The room became alive with a chain lightning of flashbulbs. Dolezal stared into the flashes as if he didn’t quite see the room of reporters.
Sheriff ODonnell spoke to them all, about how he had finally closed this five-year-old investigation, about how Dolezal had given him a detailed confession.
Nuri stared at Dolezal. The man was wide-eyed, staring ahead, looking like an empty husk. As Nuri stared, he thought he could see something in those staring eyes, a familiar depthlessness, as if he were looking into an abyss, an abyss which stared back.
The reporters began shouting questions. Nuri didn’t listen to them. He kept looking at Dolezal. The man was sweaty, unshaven, probably beaten by his captors, and he just kept staring. Nuri moved around the back of the room until he looked directly into the man’s eyes.
He hadn’t imagined it. Nuri could see it in the man’s eyes. A blackness that filled everything behind his eyes. A cloud of darkness more felt than seen. Nuri saw that and knew that the devil had touched this man.
Of course he confessed, Nuri thought. He was told to confess. Ordered to confess. Willed by the darkness flowing through his veins.
Seeing that, Nuri was consumed by the same helplessness he had felt when he had lost Stefan. There was a man here, still human, who had fallen so far in the darkness that Nuri couldn’t help him even if the sheriff would let him near him. Everyone wanted the Torso Murderer, and Dolezal and his owner had provided that.
All Nuri could do was say they were wrong.
Nuri watched as the legal road to Melchoir was shut down.
17
Thursday, August 24
A deputy sheriff sat at a desk at the entrance to the holding area of the Cuyahoga County Jail. It was during visiting hours, a dull routine of ushering prisoners to the visiting area and back again. One of the prisoners was the Torso Killer, Frank Dolezal.
There was a pause, shortly after lunch, so the deputy’s feet were up on his desk, and he was thumbing through the latest copy of Weird Tales.
A shadow fell across his magazine, and he looked up.
His eyes met the gaze of Melchior, and his face turned into a slack mask. No words were exchanged, but when Melchoir slid by the desk, the deputy put down the magazine and went off to bring back a prisoner he had forgotten until just that moment. He wouldn’t return for nearly half an hour, though he would later insist it wasn’t more than three minutes.
Melchoir walked down the aisle of cells, unseen, unnoticed.
He stopped in front of Frank Dolezal’s cell. Dolezal stood in the front of the cell, as if he had felt his Master coming. He gripped the bars and said to the shadow walking before him. “It is time, My Lord?”
Melchoir’s shadow nodded.
Dolezal’s eyes lit with hope, his lips turning with a perverse joy. The beatings had been worth it. He would become one of the chosen now. One of the blood.
A whisper came from Melchoir. “Take those rags.” He pointed at a pile of cleaning rags heaped in the corner of Dolezal’s cell. “Tie them together.
Dolezal nodded and did as he was told, making a short length with the rags tied end-to-end.
“Fasten it to that hook, here.” Melchoir reached to the ceiling of Dolezal’s cell, where a rusted hook projected from the concrete. His arm extended, through the bars, more than was natural, until a pale finger touched the metal.
Dolezal did so, watching his Master with wide eyes.
“Loop the other end around your neck,” Melchoir said.
The first flickers of doubt crossed Dolezal’s face. Melchoir stared at him and repeated, “Do it.”
All the force of hell seemed to reside in those two words, and Dolezal found his hands working of their own accord. The doubt was turning to fear as the rags tightened around his neck. His traitor hands had fastened them tight enough that it was painful to croak the word, “Why?”
The rags were slack between Dolezal’s neck and the hook above.
Melchior reached a hand through the bars and rested it on Dolezal’s forehead. “Because it is necessary,” Melchoir said, and pushed down on Dolezal’s head.
Dolezal’s legs slipped out from under him and the rags went taut. He clawed at his neck, and kicked out with his feet. He tried to scream, but it only came out as a strangled gasp.
“They will want your body,” Melchior said. “Head intact, I’m afraid.” He looked down at the struggling form. “Crush the neck long enough, it’s as good as decapitation.”
No one seemed to hear Dolezal’s struggles. Eventually, his body hung slack. Still, Melchior held his hand to Dolezal’s head, as if dispensing a blessing.
Melchior stood that way with Dolezal, pressure on the broken neck and windpipe, until he was certain Dolezal wouldn’t rise again. When he was certain, Melchior strode from the jail unnoticed by all who saw him.
The suicide of Frank Dolezal marked the end of the official investigation into the Torso Murders. Even with questions about the confession and the bizarre nature of the suicide, even though the case remained officially unsolved, the Cleveland Police had little impetus to continue the case. No more bodies were found. In the eyes of all but a few, it was over.
BOOK FOUR
March 1942—October 1944
THE STREETS OF HELL
1942
1
Sunday, March 1
Times were quiet for Eliot Ness. He was easing toward middle age, his career was going forward, and the press and the public thought he was doing a good job. He had the credit for taking one of the country’s most dangerous cities and making it one of the safest.
As he sat in his den, reading a newspaper, and drinking a tumbler of Scotch, his thoughts were nowhere near the string of bodies that had begun on the shores of Euclid Beach Park in 1934. His thoughts were on the paper, on Europe. At the moment he thought of all his men that had gone overseas, how they were doing. A lot of his force, firemen, patrol officers, and a few detectives were fighting. He wondered how many of them would be coming home.
His musings were interrupted by a knock at the door.
He looked up from the paper and at a clock on the wall. It was after eleven. Who would be knocking at this time of night?
He wanted to ignore the late visitor, but his wife had gone to bed early and he was afraid that the persistent knocking would wake her. He put the paper aside as the knocking continued and walked to the door.
Angry at the interruption, he was ready to curse his visitor, but when he saw who the man was, the words died on his lips. The tumbler of Scotch he carried slipped out of his fingers.
Standing on his doorstep was Stefan Ryzard.
“What are you doing here?” Ness finally said.
“I want you to listen to me,” Stefan said.
He looked into Ness’ eyes, and Ness thought he could sense something in his gaze, something dark and inhuman. Ness tried to shrug off the feeling and bent to retrieve the tumbler. “Listen to you? I should arrest you. Your ex-partner witnessed you at the scene of a murder.”
Stefan smiled down at him, and the smile made Ness feel cold, alone, and badly exposed. He began worrying about his wife’s safety.
“That must have been a long time ago,” Stefan said. “Things have changed.”
Ness looked at hi
m, empty glass in his hand. Time seemed to have done well by Stefan. He didn’t look any older than when Ness had last seen him. If anything he looked younger. There was an eerie confidence in his face that Ness found unnerving.
“Will you let me in?” Stefan asked.
Ness considered closing the door on his one-time detective. Ness suspected that if he did so, he would never see Stefan again.
He wondered what it was that could have taken Stefan out of hiding. He gestured back into the house, into the den, and said, “Come in, Mr. Ryzard.”
Stefan entered, and Ness noticed that he carried a large attaché case with him.
Ness followed him and asked, “What do you want?”
Stefan took a seat and pulled a coffee table toward him. He opened the buckles on the case and said, “I want your complete attention for two hours.”
It went much longer than two hours.
“You assigned me,” Stefan began, “to gather evidence on Eric Dietrich in relation to the murders of Edward Andrassy, Flo Polillo, and a number of other unidentified people.” He spilled the case onto the table in front of him. “I have evidence now, and I am here now because the only cop I trust is overseas.”
Ness sat on the other side of the table, mounded high with papers and photographs as Stefan began to tell him about the thing called Eric Dietrich, began to tell him about the creatures of the night. The story was unbelievable, and Ness tried to protest, but every time he met Stefan’s gaze, he fell into silence.
All the deaths, every one and more, were either at Dietrich’s hands or at his orders. This wasn’t a case of a madman murdering transients. Each death was an assassination, with purpose, meant to inspire terror in Dietrich’s enemies. In some cases the deaths were followers of Dietrich who dared to defect, in others they were the leadership of Dietrich’s main opposition. By the time Ness burned the shantytowns, those shantytowns had been the sole refuge, the remnants of the society that Dietrich displaced trying to leave via the only avenue left them.
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