The Unknown Beloved(67)

“Son of a gun,” Malone cursed beneath his breath.

“I’m not far,” Eliot barked into the mouthpiece. “Five minutes out.”

He hung up the gadget, squealed out of the parking lot, and headed north, eyes grim, both hands on the wheel.

“Nine months. Nine months and nothing. I had hoped that he was through,” Malone said.

“Yeah. Me too. But we found a bundle of clothes in January, right around the time you got into town. Women’s clothing, all neatly packaged in newsprint . . . kinda like Flo Polillo in the produce baskets. No body parts, though. Just bloody clothing. We’ve been holding our breath. What do you want to bet the leg belongs to a woman?”

“What? When were you going to tell me about that?” Malone asked, incredulous. A bundle of clothing. His thoughts instantly went to Dani.

“I didn’t purposely not tell you, Mike. There just wasn’t much to go on. It got added to the long list of things we don’t know.”

“Let me out here,” Malone demanded as they neared their destination. “I don’t want people seeing me with you. And keep me in the goddamn loop,” he snarled. “I want everything you know, the minute you know it.”

Ness dropped him off about a block from the already gathering crowd and proceeded down the street without him.





16


By the time Malone worked his way into a position where he could see the water and the police presence, he’d heard several versions of what had happened and what had been discovered.

“It’s a woman’s calf. Severed below the knee and above the ankle. No foot,” someone said. “Joe said Steve poked at it with a stick thinking it might be a fish.”

The waterway where the leg had been spotted was not much more than a big ditch with steep embankments and a bad bridge. A storm drain fed into it, and men were already in waders trying to see if other “pieces” had been caught in the grate. No efforts were being made to keep the crowd back, and people swarmed the banks looking for the rest of the woman. It was no way to conduct a thorough—or clean—investigation.

“It might not even be the Butcher,” someone said, hopeful.

“It’s him all right. You just wait. They’ll find more. They always do.”

“How many is it now?” someone else wailed.

“Eleven, if you count the Lady of the Lake.”

“I heard them say whoever it belongs to hasn’t been dead for very long.”

“Steve” turned out to be Steve Morosky, a railroad worker, who at about 2:00 p.m. had walked to the end of Superior Avenue to visit a friend who lived in a shanty nearby. He was surrounded by a crowd, telling his story with wide gestures. He’d probably had to tell it several times already and seemed to be enjoying the attention. Two detectives in matching white straw hats and baggy suits were plying him with questions.

“I saw a guy drop a burlap bag into the water about a month ago off the Jefferson Street Bridge. He was driving a Lincoln. Real suspicious,” a man called out, and one of the detectives peeled away to get his statement.

Malone saw David Cowles of the Scientific Bureau leaving the scene and ran to catch up with him. He’d known David since their Capone days, and when he called out to him, David turned and greeted him in surprise. The man’s face was wreathed in worry and strain, and his trousers were streaked with mud.

“Mike,” he said. “Ness said you were in town. Bad business, this. Bad.”

“What do you know, David?”

“Not much. I’m heading to the lab at the morgue right now. That’ll tell us more. But unless we find the rest, we aren’t going to ever know much.”

“Can I ride along?” Malone asked. No one was paying attention to him or Cowles. Eliot was already being trailed by cameras and hounded by reporters with pencils and notepads, even though he hadn’t been on the scene for more than fifteen minutes.

“Yeah. You can. Jump in.”

They drove to the city morgue, Cowles talking all the way, Malone digesting his initial findings. David was as level-headed and unpretentious as they came, and he and Eliot Ness were tied at the hip. He knew all about the “Unknowns” and Malone’s assignment.

“It’s a woman. White. Young. Slim. Blond,” David rattled off.

“Blond?” Malone said, surprised. “How did you get that from her calf?”

“I found some long blond hairs wrapped around it,” he said, grim. “Leg hasn’t been in the river that long. Woman dead at the most a week, I’d say. And no abrasions—besides the amputation marks—on the skin. I doubt the piece went through the storm grate.”

Cowles didn’t want to introduce him to the inner circle, and Malone didn’t care to be noticed or made, so he hung back when they reached the city morgue, lurking across the street until, just like at the Superior Avenue site, a crowd began to form, awaiting word from the coroner. He watched Eliot arrive an hour later and swing into a parking spot near the entrance. He was accompanied by men Malone didn’t know, and all walked swiftly into the building, ignoring the questions and the shouted pleas for information.

It wasn’t until nearly eight o’clock that the newly elected Cuyahoga County coroner, Samuel Gerber, tall, prematurely gray, and distinguished in his red-ribboned straw hat, white shoes, and tan suit, addressed the gathering, standing in the glow of the entrance lights, his hands clasped behind his back, his countenance sober. He was only Malone’s age, but his silver hair gave him an air of gravitas his years might not. Eliot said he’d only gained the position in November on the Democratic ticket, which would mean this was his first case as coroner in the string of killings.