The Unknown Beloved(23)

“That’s one of the reasons. Mostly, there’s people listening in. I don’t say anything on the telephone I don’t want to read in the papers. Learned my lesson with Capone always tapping my wires.”

“What else did you come up with in your clinic?”

“He’s smart. He’s strong. Most definitely male. Everybody agreed on that aspect, though the emasculations of some of the victims made some folks wonder.”

“It made me wonder.”

Ness grimaced. “The medical practice next to Raus Funeral Home has five doctors on staff. And actually, a mortician is up there on the list of probable professions. So you’re sitting right in the thick of it in that room we’re renting on Broadway, not to mention you’re right across from St. Alexis. We have a file on all of them.” He jerked his thumb toward the back seat and the box on the floor.

Malone’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m guessing that’s for me.”

“At this point, there isn’t a doctor, butcher, orderly, or undertaker in town that we don’t have some information on.” Ness made a circle in the air with his pointer finger. “This is where he hunts, and this is where he dumps. Which makes me think this is also where he lives. Not in the Run, necessarily, but in the neighborhoods on the rim. He’s comfortable here. He knows the hidey-holes and the shortcuts. He knows the routines and the businesses. He knows the people who won’t be missed or searched for. He might not be a nobody . . . but he needs nobodies.”

“So you want me snooping around the hospital, looking at who is on staff and trying to establish patterns, see if any alarm bells go off.”

“Yeah. You’ll want to do that. And you’ll also want to go down there.” Ness nodded toward the shantytowns below them. “You’ll want to look into it all, I’m guessing. In your files is a whole list of leads the detectives on this case have run down in the last two years.”

“I saw that. Haven’t spent any time on it yet, though. I didn’t want to put ideas in my head until I had my own impressions.”

“Well, you’re in for a treat. Just to give you an idea, we’ve looked into reports of a voodoo temple, an abortion clinic, a secret cult, and a self-confessed soul eater. We questioned a hunchback that eats his supper with a medieval sword and a hatchet, depending on the day of the week. A woman on Carnegie, not too far from where Victim Number Three lived, was reported for her collection of headless dolls. A couple detectives went by and questioned her. The dolls came in several variations. Some were simply missing their heads, but others were cut up in pieces and put in tiny burlap bags. Lots of amazing details,” Ness said, the sarcasm dripping from his voice. “She sells them on Euclid Beach as souvenirs. Calls them Torso Dolls. People buy them. So she keeps making them.”

“Hey . . . times are hard,” Malone said, monotone. “A girl’s gotta eat.”

“We thought we had a lead when one of our complaints involved a man—a Negro named One-Armed Willie—who knew both Flo Polillo and Rose Wallace, Victim Number Three and Victim Number Eight. He has a sheet a mile long, and the brass got excited. But he has one goddamn arm. He gets by pretty well, considering, but there is no way in hell he’s the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. He isn’t physically capable of it.”

“Yeah. And the problem with scapegoats is the murders don’t stop when you lock ’em up.”

“Yeah. Inconvenient.” Eliot smiled ruefully, but he was suddenly weary. He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his haystack hair.

“You okay, Ness?”

“I’m okay, Malone. Just haven’t been sleeping a whole lot. And when I do, it’s usually on the couch in my office.”

“Edna kick you out?” Malone only asked because he knew Ness was going to tell him.

“No. She left. And I don’t see the point in going home most nights.”

“She left for good?”

“Yeah. She stayed at her mother’s house after Christmas. I came back alone. She doesn’t want to be here anymore.”

“She doesn’t want to be here? Why not?” Malone swept his hand toward the rows of shanties lining the base of the cliff below them. If he squinted, the clusters and outcroppings looked like a filthy, tattered quilt. A tattered quilt in a junkyard.

Ness was silent.

“I’m sorry, Ness,” Malone grunted. He wasn’t very good at sympathy.

Eliot sighed, wrapping his arms around the big wheel and staring down into the ramshackle jungle. “Yeah. Me too. But I’m also . . . relieved.”

“I understand that.” He did. When Irene had asked him to go, he’d been relieved too. It was exhausting being responsible for someone else’s happiness.

“She said she would come back for some of the public functions I’ll need her for. Keep the papers quiet. Not for me. I don’t really care. But Congressman Sweeney keeps hammering Mayor Burton over this Butcher business. Democrats and Republicans, you know how it is. Everybody’s always looking for an angle to bury each other. But I don’t want to be a political liability.”

“Gotta keep up appearances,” Malone said, tone dry. Eliot knew all about appearances, and he juggled that part of the spotlight well, even though he’d never been very political himself. Politics and public service, even in the bureau, was all about appearance. Malone had learned that the images most people presented to the world didn’t reflect reality. Which, for some reason, had his thoughts bouncing back to Dani Flanagan. She had her own methods of getting at the truth.