Ness nodded, then said, 'I'd put her weight at around one twenty.'
'Yes,' Gerber said. 'Again, allowing for the head. Small hands.' He bent down and picked up a severed foot, studied it. 'Size nine shoe.'
'Large foot,' Ness said.
'Maybe they just seem that way,' Wild offered, 'when you pick 'em up and look at 'em close.'
The coroner gave the reporter a quietly withering look. Wild smiled at him pleasantly, lit up a Lucky.
'We have a piece of jewelry,' the coroner said. 'The first time for a clue of that nature, I believe-a gold filigree ring that apparently was on so snug it would have to've been cut off for removal. Though why that would have stopped our man is beyond me.'
Ness said, 'Can you tell me when this woman was killed?'
'I will if you don't hold me to it,' Gerber said. 'My estimate at the moment is a year.'
'A year?' Wild blurted.
The coroner glanced at Wild darkly.
Ness gave Wild a warning look but said, 'Sam, if you'd like, take a closer look at the body.'
Wild pitched the newly lit Lucky away and moved closer.
Ness pointed and said, 'You can see that while the decomposition is limited, portions are dry and hard-as if preserved. And the stench is modest.'
'Yeah, right,' Wild said, nose twitching.
Gerber said, 'She's been kept in a refrigerator, I'd say.'
'Then,' Wild said, 'she was dumped here recently.'
'Yes,' Ness said. He pointed over to some cardboard boxes nearby. One of them bore the bright colors of the Quick-Frozen Seafood Company and the other the labels of the Boston Biscuit Company; two others had markings that indicated they were from the Central Market area.
'The arms and legs were wrapped in butcher paper and twine,' Ness said, still pointing to the boxes, 'and left in those. Only the torso, wrapped in that quilt, was under the pile of rocks.'
The colorful gingham patchwork quilt he referred to was also nearby.
Ness was saying, 'If those boxes had been sitting out here for a year-'
'They wouldn't look so brand-new,' Wild finished, nodding. The boxes indeed were not at all weathered. 'So- where the hell's her head?'
'Who knows?' Ness said, and sighed, glancing wearily about the littered landscape.
Gerber said, 'Six out of twelve, this makes, where he hasn't left us the head.'
'Maybe,' Wild offered cheerfully, 'this guy's got a collection in his attic.'
'Maybe,' Ness said.
Wild took off his straw fedora and wiped his brow. 'If so, in this weather, it's gonna smell choice.'
Gerber, with no apparent irony, said, 'That's what refrigerators are for, Mr. Wild.'
'Hey!' somebody called.
About one hundred and fifty feet to the east, somber Merlo was waving his straw hat frantically.
'Got something!' he called.
They walked briskly over, where Merlo was pointing to another cardboard box, a big one. As if a present had been unwrapped, butcher paper was peeled back to reveal what the box held: an assembly of bones. Dozens of them.
Gerber poked inside the box. 'Human, all right… neck vertebrae… dorsal vertebrae… ribs… pelvic bones.' He rummaged around in there like a kid searching for the toy in Crackerjacks. 'No skull.'
'Man or woman?'
'I don't know. Small person-that is, not tall. Big rib cage, though. Barrel chest. Probably a man. Five six, maybe. Dead a year, perhaps.'
Wild said, 'But not refrigerated.'
Gerber ignored that. 'Somebody get something… a container… a bucket or something. I want to sort a Few of these out.'
Ness gestured. 'There's a can over there. Get it, Sam, would you?'
Wild went over and picked up the can; it was an old gallon container of some kind, with the lid on. He tried to pry it open with his fingertips, then asked around for a pocketknife. Curry had one and handed it to him.
Ness was saying to Merlo, 'There may be more bones scattered about this dump. Gather as many reliable volunteers as you can and go over this rock pile. Pick up every tin can, board, rock-look under and in everything. Examine every possible place of concealment.'
Wild pried off the lid and looked inside the can and said, 'Oh, Christ.'
It was a skull.
Wisps of blondish-white hair clung to it.
Wincing, he handed it, still in the can, to Gerber, who beamed; this was the first time Wild remembered ever seeing the man look happy.
'That's what I mean,' Ness said, as if Wild had performed this feat to prove his point, 'about places of concealment.'
'I think this is a man,' Gerber said, looking in at the skull. He drew it out and looked at it; its hollow eyes stared back at him. 'He's not young-blond hair turning white.'
'No kiddin' he's not young.' Wild shuddered.
Ness left Gerber and Merlo to deal with the box of bones and the can with the skull and returned to the pieces of the woman, Wild following along. Ness again knelt near the body, again waving flies away.
He gestured to the severed right hand, which seemed to reach for an empty soap box not far away, fingers stretched toward the Gold Dust twins.
'We got a few breaks this time,' he said. 'The Butcher hasn't always left us the hands. So this gives us fingerprint possibilities-even if the Bertillion boys do have one hundred thousand thumbprints to sort through in a given category.'
'And there's that nice specific piece of jewelry to try to trace,' Wild said, gesturing toward the hand with the filigree ring.
'Not to mention those cardboard boxes, which clearly come from the Central Market area.'
'Where all the finer transients go shopping,' Wild said archly.
Ness stood. Smiled grimly to himself. 'Think I'm going to have to throw a little party tonight.'
Wild frowned in mild confusion. 'What, that little shindig at the country club tonight, you mean?'
'No. This party's after the one at the country club. Later tonight-at Kingsbury Run.'
A few minutes later Curry hollered out.
He'd found the girl's head, wrapped in butcher paper and twine. She was brunette and had been pretty. Ness said the girl looked vaguely familiar to him, but he just couldn't place her.
That didn't surprise Wild.
Ness knew his share of women.
Out on the country club terrace the ten-piece band was playing Cole Porter and a balmy breeze from Lake Erie was playing with the women's hair. Wild considered the surroundings a considerable step up from the lakeshore garbage dump of this afternoon. There were plenty of good-looking women present-low-cut dresses, bare shoulders- and lots of men in evening clothes for them to dance with. But some of the golfers were still here from late-afternoon rounds, so there were sports clothes and a few business suits-like Wild's white seersucker number- mixed in.
Even some of the women were dressed casually-for instance, the tall, slender blonde in pink shirt and pale green pleated skirt who sat down next to Wild at the little white-mesh metal table. The air smelled like a flower garden: some of it was flowers, and some of it was her.
'Buy you a Bacardi, Viv,' Wild said.
'No,' Vivian Chalmers said, touching his arm. Her jade-color eyes were looking for trouble. 'You're just a poor working stiff. Seeing as how I'm of a moneyed class, I'll buy.'
'Seeing as how you're of a moneyed class, I'll let you.'
