Lady in the Lake(43)

The Inner Harbor was a grimy place. The McCormick spice factory on the western edge filled the air with cinnamon, an odd contrast to the landscape. Maddie had seldom ventured as far south as the waterfront, although she had passed through on field trips to Fort McHenry when Seth was a child. She tried to imagine the sad, sick men who were being lured from bars and then left dead in vacant lots and alleys. But even they were treated with more respect than Cleo Sherwood. Their killer had been named, personified, and their deaths linked.

“How can Cleo Sherwood’s death be anything but a homicide?” she asked Diller. “How does a body get into the fountain in January?”

“Those are good questions,” Diller said. But he didn’t try to answer them.

The office of the medical examiner was a bright, sterile place. As Diller and Maddie entered, the men gathered at a gurney opened their tight circle, providing her an unobstructed view of the dead body lying there. It was a large man, his skin verging on purple. The body was positioned in such a way that she was staring straight at his crotch.

“This is Marjorie Schwartz,” Diller said.

“Madeline,” she said. She thought about offering her hand, decided it was unsterile. “I had hoped to talk to you about Cleo Sherwood.”

“Oh right, the Lady in the Lake,” the medical examiner said. Maddie made a mental note. She liked the nickname. Maybe using the term would humanize Cleo Sherwood’s story the way “Tic-Tac-Toe Killer” granted some dignity to his victims.

The ME took her to the bank of drawers, began banging them open haphazardly as if he didn’t know where Cleo Sherwood’s corpse might be. Maddie saw a man with stab wounds, several unremarkable corpses, and, finally, the one she had come for. Her stomach churned, but she maintained her composure.

“Her . . . face,” she said. It was barely a face and the color was neither white nor brown, more of a mottled gray.

“Did her mother have to see this?”

“Sister identified her.”

How, Maddie wondered. Instead she asked, “What caused this?”

“Water, five months of exposure—it’s not optimal. We have been able to establish that she didn’t drown and there’s no sign of trauma to the skeleton.”

“No, I mean, how can it be anything but a homicide? How would a body even get in that fountain?”

“That’s not our job,” the medical examiner said. “We look for cause of death. So far, we can’t find one.”

“What are the possibilities?”

“Exposure, hypothermia. Maybe she got stuck in the fountain—January first, the last day she was seen by anyone, was a mild day.”

“You think she swam to the fountain, fully clothed—she was fully clothed, right?—and crawled into the fountain?”

He read from a report: “‘Subject was wearing leopard-print slacks, a red wool coat, and a green blouse.’” Looking up: “You’d be amazed at what drunk people do. People on drugs, they’re even crazier.”

“You mean like LSD?” Maddie had read scary things about the drug in Time magazine.

“In Baltimore? Her? More like heroin.”

“Cleo Sherwood was a heroin addict?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s not something we can know.”

The men were watching her, gauging her, waiting for her to break. Maddie turned to Diller: “It’s almost noon. Do you want to go to lunch? I’m famished.”

He took her to a tavern across the street. “Babe Ruth’s father once owned this joint,” he said. Maddie’s stomach roiled when she saw some of the menu items—scrapple, shaved meats, piled high—but she was determined to eat heartily, or at least make a show of eating heartily. She was used to pretending to be the fun female who indulged in greasy, fattening foods. She ordered a club sandwich and French fries, knowing she would simply nibble at the sandwich, then push it around her plate, breaking it into ever smaller pieces. When Diller requested a beer, she did the same.

She had thought him unobservant, but he noticed how little food was making it to her mouth.

“Feeling off?”

“Trying to reduce,” she said. “Some women eat cottage cheese. I get exactly what I want, then eat only a few bites.”

They ate—he ate—in silence.

“Have you talked to her family?”

He seemed mystified by the question. “Whose?”

“Cleo Sherwood. The Lady in the Lake.” Trying out the phrase, making it hers.

“Why would I do that?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Isn’t that something you normally do when people die?”

He finished the last bite of his burger, dabbed his mouth with a napkin. He was not a coarse man. His manners were as good as Maddie’s, possibly better. His shirt was snowy white, his shave barbershop close, his seersucker jacket crisp.

“She’s colored.”

“So?”

He seemed to take the question seriously, if only because it was novel to him.

“They’re not big stories, the colored dying. I mean, it happens all the time. It’s the opposite of news. Dog bites man. Plus, you heard the ME. Probably drugs. She got high and decided she could swim to the fountain.”

“But her death was so public. And so mysterious.”