Trail of Blood by Lisa Black Page A
Authors: Lisa Black
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Suspense fiction, Crime, Serial Murderers, Murder, Investigation, Murder - Investigation, Cold cases (Criminal investigation), Women Forensic Scientists, Cleveland (Ohio), MacLean; Theresa (Fictitious character)
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captain had given it to him and with him it would stay. He hadn’t even wanted to leave the station itself, a situation as unusual as the two bodies on the hill in its way. For one evening he didn’t feel like an outsider with his own coworkers. For one short period the other cops forgot all about who was on the level and who was bent and who was out-and-out crooked, united by a common horror.
He walked home from the precinct house at Wilson and East Fifty-fifth, dead leaves scuffling under his feet, fresh air in his lungs, carrying the paper bag.
Chapter 11
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER
PRESENT DAY
Theresa picked up the miniature notebook, which James Miller had left folded open to the most recent page; many of the preceding pages were covered in writing, stuck to each other in some spots, and the sheets after that point were blank. The first section of the notebook had wound up in the center; thus protected, the writing remained relatively clear.
James had begun his notes on April 20, 1936, with the case of a purse snatched from a lady’s arm outside the Playhouse Square movie theater. His handwriting could get murky, but it seemed James had noted the woman’s description of the perpetrator (twenty-five to thirty, torn brown jacket) and the movie she had intended to see (
A Quiet Fourth
with Betty Grable). He had interviewed a few witnesses, expressing his opinion of their veracity with a system of exclamation points and question marks. Theresa could picture him, in a brown suit coat with a hat pulled low on his brow, the marquee lightbulb glinting off his eyes as he stared down a squirrely customer.
Leo’s voice at her elbow made her jump. “So is it him?”
“Who?”
“The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.”
“Leo, aren’t we’re going to look a bit foolish if we suggest to the population of Cleveland that we have a nonagenarian serial killer in our midst?”
“They’d love it. If we can link this guy to the Torso killer the national outlets will pick it up. Then these local TV wimps will have to run the story, councilman or no councilman. What’s that? Is that from the girl?”
“No, our 1935 victim.” She began to separate the pages, gently, using a plastic set of tweezers. “The girl didn’t have anything on her but a tiny blob of brown paint in her hair. It’s got a fiber in it, though, probably carpeting, red polyester in a trilobal shape. Oh, and also two little flecks of white stuff.”
“
Stuff
is not a forensic conclusion.”
“I’ll run it through the FTIR. Otherwise the lake scrubbed her poor little body ’til it gleamed. There was no one in Latent Prints on the holiday, but I suspect they’ll turn up her ID today—she looks unnaturally skinny to me, with that junkie pallor.” The tips of the notebook pages crumbled as she pulled on them to open the book flat.
“You going to put that under the ALS? I’ll go with you.”
She protested. “You really don’t have to do that….”
“Don’t be silly. I’m always ready to help one of my staff with a thorny problem. Besides,
U.S. News and World Report
will be calling this afternoon and I’d like to have something to tell them.”
“But I thought we never released information on an open ca—”
“I’d like,” he repeated, holding the door open for her, “to have something to tell them.”
She kept her sigh to herself and carried the notebook in its tray down the two flights of steps. The ultraviolet light apparatus stayed in the amphitheater, since she normally used it for clothing examinations.
They were in luck. The decomp fluid hadn’t caused the ink to run, and the ultraviolet light moved past the decades-old blood and decomposition fluid as if they weren’t there, then sank into the writing as if filling up its indentations with blackness.
“It seems to be a list.” She stared at the page, sorting out the words in her head.
“One would assume he took notes on his investigation, just like
He walked home from the precinct house at Wilson and East Fifty-fifth, dead leaves scuffling under his feet, fresh air in his lungs, carrying the paper bag.
Chapter 11
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER
PRESENT DAY
Theresa picked up the miniature notebook, which James Miller had left folded open to the most recent page; many of the preceding pages were covered in writing, stuck to each other in some spots, and the sheets after that point were blank. The first section of the notebook had wound up in the center; thus protected, the writing remained relatively clear.
James had begun his notes on April 20, 1936, with the case of a purse snatched from a lady’s arm outside the Playhouse Square movie theater. His handwriting could get murky, but it seemed James had noted the woman’s description of the perpetrator (twenty-five to thirty, torn brown jacket) and the movie she had intended to see (
A Quiet Fourth
with Betty Grable). He had interviewed a few witnesses, expressing his opinion of their veracity with a system of exclamation points and question marks. Theresa could picture him, in a brown suit coat with a hat pulled low on his brow, the marquee lightbulb glinting off his eyes as he stared down a squirrely customer.
Leo’s voice at her elbow made her jump. “So is it him?”
“Who?”
“The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.”
“Leo, aren’t we’re going to look a bit foolish if we suggest to the population of Cleveland that we have a nonagenarian serial killer in our midst?”
“They’d love it. If we can link this guy to the Torso killer the national outlets will pick it up. Then these local TV wimps will have to run the story, councilman or no councilman. What’s that? Is that from the girl?”
“No, our 1935 victim.” She began to separate the pages, gently, using a plastic set of tweezers. “The girl didn’t have anything on her but a tiny blob of brown paint in her hair. It’s got a fiber in it, though, probably carpeting, red polyester in a trilobal shape. Oh, and also two little flecks of white stuff.”
“
Stuff
is not a forensic conclusion.”
“I’ll run it through the FTIR. Otherwise the lake scrubbed her poor little body ’til it gleamed. There was no one in Latent Prints on the holiday, but I suspect they’ll turn up her ID today—she looks unnaturally skinny to me, with that junkie pallor.” The tips of the notebook pages crumbled as she pulled on them to open the book flat.
“You going to put that under the ALS? I’ll go with you.”
She protested. “You really don’t have to do that….”
“Don’t be silly. I’m always ready to help one of my staff with a thorny problem. Besides,
U.S. News and World Report
will be calling this afternoon and I’d like to have something to tell them.”
“But I thought we never released information on an open ca—”
“I’d like,” he repeated, holding the door open for her, “to have something to tell them.”
She kept her sigh to herself and carried the notebook in its tray down the two flights of steps. The ultraviolet light apparatus stayed in the amphitheater, since she normally used it for clothing examinations.
They were in luck. The decomp fluid hadn’t caused the ink to run, and the ultraviolet light moved past the decades-old blood and decomposition fluid as if they weren’t there, then sank into the writing as if filling up its indentations with blackness.
“It seems to be a list.” She stared at the page, sorting out the words in her head.
“One would assume he took notes on his investigation, just like
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