Wild nodded slowly. "There've been a lot of nicknames for this killer in the papers… the Headhunter, the Torso Killer…"
"But not 'Mad Doctor.' Sam, Lloyd is a failed doctor. A failed surgeon."
Wild scratched his chin. "I don't know, Viv. He's a big healthy guy, he flunked out of medical school, he's seeing a psychiatrist, he wants to wait till after he's married to make whoopee with his wife. That doesn't add up to a mass murderer, exactly."
"There's something else. You see, I… I did a little investigating of public records. Frankly, I think that's what made Eliot a little… well, not angry but put out with me. That I was taking it upon myself to investigate this, when I'm no longer on the city payroll as any kind of investigator."
"Well, it's a hell of a dangerous case to go poking around in, unofficially. He's probably concerned for your safety."
"Yes," she said archly, "he's the safety director, after all. Sam, he just listened blankly-didn't write a thing down. Just told me, firmly-almost, God, angry-to stay out of the case. That I was no longer associated with his office. Period. Damn, he was cold."
"Viv, like I said, this is a hell of a dangerous-"
"Let me tell you what I found out. Lloyd Watterson manages his father's business affairs. These include certain properties in the Flats and in the Third precinct. Rooming houses."
The skin on the back of Wild's neck began to tingle.
"He oversees them," she said. "Collects rent and such from the landladies who manage them. And do you know where he lives?"
"At home with daddy?"
"No. He lives on Central Avenue. In the Third precinct. In a building that used to be his father's."
"His fathers?"
"Yes. It's where his father first hung out a shingle. It's a goddamn doctor's office, Sam."
Wild swallowed, stabbing out his cigarette. "Christ. It could be this 'murder lab' they've been looking for…"
"Eliot Ness doesn't seem to think so," she said tightly. "And you know something else?"
He was almost afraid to ask, but he did: "What?"
"Lloyd told Jennifer what he's being treated for. By the psychiatrist. It's what made her start crying and break down in my arms and confide so much in me."
"So what is Lloyd being treated for, anyway?"
Her smile was small and smug. "Homosexual tendencies," she said.
And she sipped her lemonade.
Lloyd Watterson lived just off Kingsbury Run on Central Avenue in a rooming-house district. From the small but weed-overrun lawn and the boarded-up basement windows, the modest bungalow, its white paint curling off, might have been abandoned. There were signs of inhabitation, though, namely the draped front windows and some mail sticking out of a box by the front door.
It was midafternoon, and Wild was having second thoughts.
"What if he comes home?"
"He isn't home," Viv said. "He and Jennifer are at the club today; I checked it out thoroughly, Sam, and anyway, if he comes home unexpectedly, I'll start honking the horn."
"Swell. Then what? I'm unarmed."
"I have a gun," she said, simply, and showed him a small pearl-handled automatic in her purse.
"Do you know how to use it?"
"I'm the best female skeet shooter in town."
"Well, hell-anybody who can shoot female skeet with a twenty-five automatic is Jake with me. He sighed. "Here goes."
She stayed behind in her little shiny blue Bugatti sports car, which couldn't have been more out of place in this neighborhood. Hers was one of the few cars parked on the street, and the sidewalks were relatively empty as well.
The game plan was for Wild to get inside that bungalow and snoop around enough to see if there was any possibility that the residence, reconverted from a general practitioners office years ago, might still be a surgery of sorts. To see if it might indeed be a possible "murder lab."
If Wild felt that was the case, he would tell the director of public safety.
Wild's say-so, both he and Vivian felt, would be enough to get Eliot off the dime. And if Lloyd turned out to be the Butcher, there would be the scoop of a lifetime in it for Wild. He-not Eliot Ness-would be the man who "got" the Butcher.
Which was all well and good, but what if there was more substantial evidence of butchery? What if he found a stock of torso parts in cold storage, a virtual human meat locker? What if a half-carved victim lay on a surgical table?
It was a warm day, but Wild shivered.
He had a cynical nature, and he had seen about all there was to see in his time. But the small, unprepossessing frame house before him chilled him like nothing he'd ever faced.
Reluctantly, pitching a spent Lucky behind him into the street, he climbed the half dozen steps, his hand on the rusting rail.
He didn't care what Viv said, he wanted to make sure Watterson wasn't home; so he knocked. Should Lloyd come to the door, Wild might ask directions to the nearest gas station, or maybe do a man-in-the-street (or on-the-porch) interview about the Butcher. How does it feel living in this neighborhood when it's under the cloud of these killings?
Of course, right now the cloud the neighborhood was under was from the shantytown fire. The acrid smell of smoke was everywhere.
He knocked again.
Nothing.
Like any good reporter, Wild carried several skeleton keys, and the first he tried worked. Wasn't this his lucky day.
Just inside, in the foyer, he noted several built-in coat hooks on the wall. What had been the waiting room was off to the right, converted to a small, well-furnished living room. The furnishings looked comfortable but not cheap, and the oriental artwork and tapestries on the walls were more expensive than you would expect to find on Central Avenue. Nothing suspicious, exactly, but this place clearly was a bachelor hideaway of some sort.
A door off the reconverted waiting room stood open on a room that was larger, but strangely empty. It had been, perhaps still was, an office; a rolltop desk, like Eliot's, and several half-filled bookcases. Several wooden chairs. On the desk, Wild noted, was a stack of ledgers; also an adding machine. In the bookcase, medical texts, books on anatomy. That, and the emptiness of the room, after the homey coziness of the adjacent living room, unnerved him.
But he stayed with it. He peeked into what he thought would be closets, but turned out to be cubicles with examining tables. The tiny rooms were clean but smelled musty; they didn't seem to have seen recent use.
He went back through the small living room and into the hall and walked down to the kitchen. It was white and clean, smelling of disinfectant. There was a kitchen table with a newspaper-Wilds paper, the Plain Dealer — folded open to the funnies. Otherwise, there was no sign of anyone's living here. No dishes in the sink or food out on the counter.
Years ago this place had been set up to be a residence in back and a doctor's office in front; so the bedroom and a small dining room were off the hall and the kitchen respectively. Those rooms remained to be inspected, but, for a moment, Wild thought he should just get the hell out. It wasn't that he was scared: the only thing thus far that really disconcerted him was that big, mostly empty office. And why shouldn't it be mostly empty? Lloyd wasn't a doctor; the only item of any use to him in that room was the desk, and his business ledgers had been on the desktop, just as they should be. Nothing suspicious.
No, Wild was thinking he'd made a mistake coming here. Lloyd was not a suspect. He was just somebody Viv knew who fit parts of the Butchers projected profile. And both Wild and Viv had axes to grind against Eliot, at the moment, impairing both their judgments.
He was trespassing for no good reason. He ought to just get the fuck out.
As he stood in the kitchen contemplating all this, he found himself facing the large Frigidaire refrigerator.