ceilinged room. Work desks with comparison microscopes had been moved to one side, as had various file and card cabinets, to make room for rows of folding chairs; an aisle had been left to allow the slide projector its path to the screen set up before them. Few of the men were taking their seats as yet; they were studying in churchlike silence the wall of torso-murder photos the coroner had arranged for his guests. Coroner Samuel Gerber had also set a table, just in front of the large bulletin board where the photos were thumb-tacked, a table covered by a white cloth as if a meal were about to be served; but rather than china and silverware, the coroner provided an arrangement of human bones, including several skulls. The photos, and bones as well, were clearly labeled as to which victim or victims were represented.
Ness had stood in the hallway greeting the clinic attendees, shaking hands, thanking them for coming at such short notice. Among them were Dr. G. Clifford Watterson, professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University medical school; Dr. Louis A. Williamson, superintendent of the Newburg state hospital for the insane; Police Chief George Matowitz; County Prosecutor Frank T. Cullitan; Sergeant Hogan, head of the homicide squad; several other doctors, including a psychiatrist in the probation department of criminal courts; and various detectives, including Merlo and Curry, all of whom had worked one or more of the individual killings.
A brace of reporters had also been invited, to give evenhanded coverage to all the papers. The representative of the Plain Dealer was the last to show.
'You sure you know what you're doing?' Sam Wild, lighting up a Lucky Strike, asked Ness.
'Yes.'
Wild was a tall, pale, bony-looking man in his mid-thirties. His hair was dark blond and curly and his features were pointed, giving him a pleasantly satanic look. He wore a white seersucker suit and a blue bow tie and a straw fedora with a blue band.
'Your self-confidence is an example to us all,' Wild said, exhaling smoke, smiling, looking like a happy cadaver. 'But you're putting more on the line than just your good name, you know. Like your ass, for instance.'
'Sam, I'm just doing my job here.'
'Bullshit. Your job is to be an administrator. Your hobby is chasing crooks down. But I'm not complaining. You always do right by me where the headlines are concerned, and this is sure as hell no exception.'
Wild had been exclusively attached to City Hall, specifically to cover the activities of the safety director, for well over a year now.
'I'll get you your headlines,' Ness said.
Wild laughed. 'Christ, you're a smug son of a bitch! Well, I'm with you, pal. Only, you lead the way. I'll be right behind you- watching behind you.'
'With my 'ass' on the line like it is,' Ness said with a quiet smile, 'that'll come in handy.'
Wild's smirk dissolved and he stared at Ness with a curious blankness. 'Aren't you afraid?'
'Not really.'
'Don't shit me, Eliot. Don't you realize what you've done?'
'Sure. I'm risking embarrassment… maybe a career setback.. if I don't pull this one off.'
'Embarrassment? Career setback? You've come out and publicly made the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run your personal public enemy number one! That sick fucking son of a bitch is into wholesale human slaughter.'
'I noticed,' Ness said, taking Wild's arm, leading him into the lab, where the men were settling into their chairs, to one of which Ness led Wild. 'Now sit down and get out your notepad. You ain't seen nothing yet.'
'I haven't been covering this ghoulish damn story-'
'Well, you are now,' Ness said, and sat him down.
He walked down the aisle and turned and faced the assemblage of men, many of whom were trusted colleagues, such as Cullitan and Matowitz, while others-such as the various doctors who'd been asked in as experts-he knew only by reputation.
'Again, my thanks to all of you for rallying at such short notice,' he said. 'This is an emergency measure, as with the recent discovery of Butcher victim number nine, it's clear that these inhuman killings have reached epidemic proportions. It's my hope that this conference will channel various expert opinions-pointing the way toward a solution to this mystery. I'd like to turn the proceedings over to Coroner Gerber.'
There was polite applause as Coroner Gerber, a small, sallow man, rose from the front row and began by taking off his suit coat. Most others in the room followed the coroners lead, as the several wall-mounted fans weren't nearly up to combating the warmth of this summer night. Ness, who left his coat on, sat in the front row.
Gerber, eyes large and dark and mournful behind wire-frame glasses, was a man of forty who looked older, white beginning to overtake his dark hair, including his mustache, lines creasing his face.
Nonetheless, he had great energy as he spoke, moving restlessly before his audience.
'This mass-murder mystery is the equal of any of the famous mass-murder cases known in history,' Gerber said with a strange combination of enthusiasm and dread. 'Equal in interest, gruesomeness, and-most important, gentlemen-ingenuity on the part of the murderer.' He glanced toward the back of the room and said, 'Lights.'
And the lights went out and the projector came on. In photos sometimes larger than life, the sorry parade of dismembered bodies began.
Of the victims whose bodies were found by the two boys at the bottom of Jackass Hill on September 23, 1935, one had been identified, through fingerprints: the younger man, Edward Andrassy, twenty-eight years old, a minor street tough in the so-called Roaring Third precinct, the seedy, crime-ridden area adjacent to Kingsbury Run. Possibly a homosexual, Andrassy had once been employed at Cleveland City Hospital as an orderly. The older, stocky victim had not been identified.
On January 26, 1936, in the Roaring Third itself, the next victim emerged, in several installments. First, a local butcher, attracted by the insistent barking of a dog behind a nearby factory, found various body parts of a white woman-lower torso, right arm, both thighs-wrapped in newspaper, left in two burlap bags and a half-bushel basket. Thirteen days later, the left arm and lower legs turned up behind an empty building on Orange Avenue, SE, near East Fourteenth Street. Though the head had not yet turned up, identification was made by fingerprints, an identification confirmed by the woman's ex-husband, who recognized an abdominal scar. The woman was Florence Polillo, a forty-one-year-old, heavyset, heavy-drinking prostitute.
On June 5, 1936, two colored youngsters playing hooky from school were wandering Kingsbury Run much as had those two other boys in 1935. Just half a mile from Jackass Hill, the boys noticed a pair of trousers balled up and stuck under a tree on the embankment. One of the boys grabbed a stick and poked at the pants, and a head rolled out and tumbled to their feet.
This was the head of the handsome young man, thought to be a sailor, whose heavily tattooed body had turned up intact in bushes nearby; the elaborate body markings seemed to insure prompt identification. While the sailor's fingerprints were not on file, a poster detailing his tattoos and including a photo of his handsome, almost pretty, dead face had been widely circulated to the press (and was still on display at the expo). To date, he remained unidentified.
On July 22, 1936, a man's head had been found separated from his body; the two lay fifteen feet apart in the weeds near railroad tracks and a hobo camp, in the dismal, desolate Big Creek region on the West Side of town. This victim-like the tattooed apparent sailor-had not been emasculated. He remained unidentified, his death mask on display at the expo.
On September 10, 1936, a hobo hopping a freight spotted two halves of a male torso bobbing in the fetid, stagnant pool where the sewers flowed out from under Kingsbury Run into the Cuyahoga. Police fished out the torso halves, then with grappling hooks brought up the lower legs and thighs. Then they provided a diver with the thankless job of the decade: to go exploring for the arms and head in the pool of excrement. When this task proved as fruitless as it had been unpleasant, the pool was drained, flushed with a fire hose. No head. No arms. No identification. Also no genitals: the Butcher had, with this victim, reverted to his emasculating ways.
February 23rd of this year, the upper torso of a young woman washed up on Euclid beach from the icy waters of Lake Erie, where it had apparently drifted from the Cuyahoga. The woman was not identified, but the discovery caused police to recall another similar incident.
Two and a half years before, on September 5, 1934, a man gathering driftwood on that same beach had discovered the lower torso of a woman; a few days later, a suitcase containing the headless upper torso was fished out of the same waters. Prior to the February 23rd discovery, Gerber conceded, this slaying had not been connected to the Mad Butcher. It had not yet been officially added to the roster.
