“I can tell you,” the Hat said. “Doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce he drove over to the Examiner to fill Richardson in, in person. This is going to be a big case. Ever see the like, Heller?”
“Well, actually…”
The Hat snapped his fingers; the sleepy eyes popped awake. “You have! You worked that Butcher case in Cleveland! When was it, ’38?”
That floored me. “How the hell do you know that, Harry?”
The Hat shrugged. “You turned up in the middle of the Peete case, Nate. I researched you. I know things about you that you’ve forgotten… Brownie, Mr. Heller here is thick with Eliot Ness.”
“Who?” Brown asked.
“Ness-he ran the Capone squad in Chicago, then made all those headlines in Cleveland, running the Mayfield Mob out of town. Youngest safety director in these United States, Ness was.”
“Oh,” Brown said. But it was obviously all news to him.
Under their lids, the Hat’s eyes fixed on me like gunsights. “You think I should talk to Mr. Ness about this, Nate? That case was never solved, was it?”
“What case?” Brown asked.
“The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. Thirteen torso killings… like this one, here.”
“Not quite like this one,” I said. “The Butcher usually dismembered his victims, and usually decapitated them, just for good measure… This is a similar M.O., but-”
“Why don’t you call Mr. Ness for me?” the Hat asked genially. “He’s not safety director, anymore, I realize…”
“That’s right. He’s in private business.”
“But it would be nice to get his read on this. Would you mind?”
“No! No, not at all.”
That was Harry the Hat for you. His whole style was low-key-no intimidation, no rubber hoses from the Hat; he had a gentle touch, using psychology and subtle manipulation, to get confessions out of suspects.
“Mr. Heller here is a true detective, in the best sense, Brownie. We’re lucky to have him with us… a lucky coincidence.”
“I, uh, don’t see anything so coincidental about it,” I said.
Brown was frowning, eyes disappearing into slits on his basketball-shaped head. “You don’t think it’s a coincidence? A private dick at a murder scene?”
“Who worked another torso slaying,” Hansen added pleasantly. “That is, slay- ings.”
“Listen, boys, I’m just waiting for my ride. You’ve got a lot to do. Let me just get out of your way…”
The Hat put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you pitch in? A man of your expertise. What have you noticed?”
So I shared my observations with them, as I had with Bill Fowley, pointing here, pointing there: the lack of blood, the clean nature of the bisection itself, the discarded cement sack, the bloody obscured footprint on the driveway, the tire marks.
“You see, Brownie? A master detective, our friend from Chicago.”
We were still on the sidewalk, near the corpse.
“You’ve hardly left anything for us to do, Nate.” The Hat leaned over the corpse, touched the white flesh of her thigh, near where a chunk had been carved away. “She’s cold…” He eased his hand underneath her, just a little. He looked up at me in surprise. “Ground’s wet.”
I frowned. “Dew?”
Brown frowned. “Do what?”
Hansen nodded at me. “She was left here before dawn, when the ground was still wet with dew… I’d say this body was washed, perhaps soaked in water, possibly scrubbed…”
I’d forgotten to mention the bristles; I pointed those out.
Hansen, still kneeling, nodded. “Possibly an effort to remove latent prints.”
Brown-who, of course, was also kneeling-said, “Maybe she was strangled… Look at those ligature marks on her neck.”
“I’m not so sure she was strangled,” the Hat said. “That large wound to the head could have caused a fatal concussion.”
I was staring at the girl’s face; I didn’t want to-but I was compelled, as if I were trying to find the pretty features somewhere there, despite the battered forehead and the carved clown’s grin.
The Hat, standing, brushing off his expensive suit, picked up on that: he didn’t miss much.
“What is it, Nate? There’s something personal, here. My nose is twitching again.”
“It’s just the flies, Harry.”
“Don’t kid a kidder, Nate. What is it? What were you seeing when you looked down at her?”
And what I told him, as far as it went, was the truth: “It’s… she looks like my wife, is all. A little like my wife… and it shakes me up, looking at her. You mind if I…?”
“No. You can move away. Say-where I can reach you?”
“At the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
His eyebrows rose. “Very nice. You and Fred must be doing well.”
“Maybe so, but my suits still aren’t as nice as yours, Harry.”
The tiny mouth grinned, a hole in his face filled with teeth. “It isn’t just about money, Nate-it’s also about good taste… Ah! Lieutenant Haskins!”
I turned as Haskins, back from his mission, strode up, giving me an excuse to fade back to the street. That fucking Fowley-where the hell was he?
“Ray Pinker is on his way,” Haskins said.
“Fine job, Lieutenant,” the Hat said. He looked toward where the vacant lot yawned at the backyards of distant, finished homes. Several uniformed officers were picking through the weeds and grass. “And what are those gentlemen up to?”
“I thought we should get started, going over the ground,” Haskins said. “If anything turns up, we’ll have it ready for the lab boys.”
A smile twitched on the Hat’s tiny mouth. “Call them off, would you? At this rate there won’t be anything for the lab to find.”
Haskins, embarrassed, nodded, and was turning to take care of that when the Hat clutched him by the shoulder, saying, “Send them out to do something useful-let’s canvass the neighborhood for the woman who made the phone call, and perhaps locate someone else who may have seen something, anything… hmmm?”
“Yes.”
“And once you’ve done that, I want you to find some newspapers and cover up that poor girl’s body. With the sun coming out, we need to preserve the body from discoloration, for Ray Pinker and the coroner.”
Haskins looked up at the sky-the sun indeed was starting to poke its streaky fingers through the clouds-then nodded and scurried away.
Sighing, Harry the Hat-holding up a hand to freeze Brown in place (Simon says Stay!)-wandered over to where I was standing, in the street.
Sidling up me, the Hat said, “I don’t think the lieutenant understands the sacred nature of a crime scene.”
“The what?”
“Nate, it’s sacred, this ground… sacred and profane, yes… but mostly sacred. Murder is a marriage between victim and slayer-it’s a bond formed between two people that ties them together. It’s more binding than marriage, though… you can divorce a mate, you can even remarry a mate… but you can only murder somebody once.”
Was he needling me, with this marriage metaphor, after I mentioned the corpse reminded me of my wife?
But I said only, “That’s, uh, hard to argue with, Harry.”
He nodded toward the vacant lot, reached out a hand as if in benediction. “On that sacred ground, murderer and victim were together, one last time-even if he didn’t kill her, even if he only deposited the remains. And that nasty tableau, Nate, it’s a work of art, in the killer’s mind… and, frankly, in mine… it’s a reflection of his mind, his personality… That sacred ground contains all the clues and evidence we might need to solve this murder, or at least it did before that boob from University allowed reporters and cops and God knows who else to trample around on it.”
“That was some speech, Harry-but how do you know it’s a ‘he’?”
That made him wince in thought. “What do you mean, Nate?”
“You keep referring to the murderer as ‘he’… Couldn’t it be a ‘she’?”
“Look at that display, Nate-it’s a sex crime.”
“Lesbians kill people, too. You see any sign of semen?”
“She was washed clean of it.”