"Come on now, Ness," Morrison said, his smile nasty, "aren't you just a little tiny bit bitter?"
"Bitter?"
"Hell, man-the sheriff stole your thunder! I remember all that press you got, coming out saying you were personally going to take on the Butcher. Well, the sheriff caught him, and that left you with a whole handful of nothing."
Viv said sharply, "Kenneth, I hardly think the demise of the prime suspect in the Butcher case made Sheriff O'Connell a hero. The press, the Cleveland Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union.. they were all, all over him, like a bad smell!"
Ness was struck by the bittersweet expression Ev wore as she studied Viv. It seemed to both please and sadden her to see Viv stick up for him.
"Come on, Eliot," Viv was saying. "Defend yourself! Admit it-you think the sheriff got away with murder. Literal murder."
"Maybe," Ness said, his voice barely audible. "But my office can't do a damned thing about it."
"Well," Viv said, "your pal Sam Wild has. He and half the reporters and editorial writers in town gave O'Connell hell. And they still are, months later."
"I would say," Morrison said, lifting his glass to Ness, "that the sheriff's reelection possibilities are just about nil."
Ness raised an eyebrow and his glass to Morrison. "I'll say this much-whether the sheriff killed Mr. Dolezal or not, he's killed his own political future."
Watterson slid his arm around Jennifer and said pleasantly; "So is the Butcher case open or closed, Mr. Ness-Eliot?"
"Lloyd, the mayor feels that unless or until bodies begin turning up again, the case should be considered closed-unofficially."
"Don't you have anyone working the case anymore?"
"Officially the slayings are unsolved-and I've kept two good men on it."
"Ah," Watterson said, smiling, as if reassured.
Ev, who'd been largely silent throughout the conversation, said, "Eliot, you haven't said what you really think. Do you think the Butcher is alive or dead?"
"Oh, I think he's still out there."
Viv smirked and said, "So do I. But he'll stay in hiding. He won't be back."
Ev turned to Viv and asked her why.
"It's obvious, dear," she said. "He can hide behind a dead man-this fellow Dolezal. Right, Eliot?"
"I think you're right to this extent, Viv: that's why we haven't heard from him in a number of months. But he'll be back. We have not, I'm afraid, heard the last of him."
Watterson seemed interested and almost amused by that. "Why's that, Eliot?"
"Because of the killing. That'll bring him back out in the open."
"The killing?" Watterson asked, confused. "What about it?"
"He likes it. Now, if you'll excuse us… I think the band is coming back from its break."
They bid the group their good-byes; Ness could feel Viv's eyes on his back as he headed out to the dance floor with Ev. Ina Ray Hutton and her girls were playing "Star Dust" and the lighting had shifted from coral to blue. He held Ev close, but she pulled gently away and looked at him with dark, searching eyes.
"Are you still in love with her?" Ev asked.
"Don't be silly, doll."
"She's still in love with you."
"I don't think she ever was in love with me."
"Oh, Eliot-don't you be silly."
"Look, we just had a fling. I'd rather not talk about that. That's the past. I'm interested in the present."
"And the future?'
"And the future."
He held her close and she let him.
They were headed back to their table when a waiter stopped them.
"Mr. Ness," he said. "Telephone for you in the lounge."
He left Ev at their table and walked to the bar in the dimly lit, walnut-paneled lounge. He hadn't left word where he'd be, but he wasn't terribly surprised to have been tracked down. It didn't take much of a detective to figure Ness would be in the Vogue Room on a Saturday night. The only other two possibilities were the Bronze Room at the Cleveland Hotel or his country club.
The bartender directed him to the one of the over-stuffed davenports where a table with a phone waited. He sat and spoke his name into the receiver.
It was Curry.
"Chief, he's back at it again."
"You don't mean the Butcher?"
"That's exactly who I mean."
"Christ. Tell me."
"We got an arm without a hand; a lower leg, from ankle to foot. Clean dismemberments with a sharp knife, I'd say."
"God. Where?"
"Washed up on the riverbank near the foot of Superior Avenue, below the Run. Not far from where some pieces of the last two turned up."
"An arm and a leg at the foot, huh," he said wryly. "Where are you now?"
"Merlo's still at the scene. I'm calling from a saloon that I don't imagine is quite as nice as the one you're in."
"Can you tell anything from what you've seen? Man or woman?"
"Woman. Not much decomposition. It's either fresh or refrigerated. One new twist."
"Oh?"
"He might've tortured this one, some."
"How?"
"The arm's scarred up, blistered. They look like sores or acid burns or something. Suppose that means something?"
"I'm sure it does," Ness said. "I just wish it did to me."
He told Curry he'd meet him at the crime scene and hurried in to make his apologies to Ev. She would understand. They always did at first.
TWO
CHAPTER 15
Sam Wild was standing in a rock and refuse-strewn wasteland near the intersection of East Ninth Street and Shore Drive. It was five-thirty in the afternoon, within spitting distance of the business district, though you'd never know it, judging from these several desolate sloping acres of rubble and rubbish. He was perhaps twenty-five feet from Shore Drive, where homebound traffic was clogged, many motorists stopping there and on East Ninth, perhaps two hundred feet away; a cordon of uniformed cops was keeping hordes of onlookers back.
Word of the latest torso find had spread fast.
Scouting the vast dump was a handful of plainclothes detectives, including the youngish Curry and older, haunted-looking Merlo. The slabs and chunks and hunks of cement beneath their feet, and the occasional concrete pillar that lay about as if discarded by some nonchalant Samson, were debris from the expo. All that was left of a once-proud city of the future.
In charge, of course-and in this summer heat the only man in a vested suit rather than shirtsleeves-was the safety director himself, who was at the moment bending over the headless body of a woman, waving away flies.
The upper and lower arms and upper and lower legs and hands and feet had all been neatly severed from the torso by an unknown party; but the pieces had been put back where they belonged, assembled like a puzzle, by Ness and Coroner Gerber. The small pale coroner, with his salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, and wire-frame glasses, all in medical white, seemed strangely out of place in this desert of garbage and stones. He was kneeling over the reassembled corpse, raising a hand over it like a priest making a benediction.
The remains had been discovered, less than an hour ago, by an out-of-work young man named James Beason, who'd been searching the dump for scrap metal; at the moment he was being questioned just within Wild's earshot by Curry.
Wild, who'd been in Ness's office when the call came in, had been allowed along on the condition that he didn't take any notes; otherwise, other reporters-not invited along-would take offense. That was okay with Wild. He had a hell of a memory.
Beason, a man of average build in dungarees and workshirt, seemed calm, considering.
"I was getting ready to gather up the scrap iron I found and put it in my wheelbarrow," he was saying. "You know… so I could sell it to a junkyard? Then I seen what looked like a real colorful coat sticking out from under these rocks that was piled up neat."