“Ah, Dani.”
“Louisa was an old d-doll. She was like a friend that never complained and was up for anything. That’s what Flo thought.”
“How did you know they were hers?”
“When I touched her coat, I saw her dolls. Remember? She hoped they would be taken care of. She knew she was going to die, and she thought of her dolls.”
He’d been under the impression she’d been talking about sex when Flo Polillo “hoped he’d be quick.” She’d been talking about death.
“Well, damn.”
He took out his hanky and blotted at her cheeks, trying to drive at the same time. He didn’t want to hand the handkerchief to Dani. It would give him away the moment she pressed it to her palms, so he wiped her tears for her.
“She loved them. I can see them all, the way she saw them. She brushed their hair and made them clothes. She gave them names, Michael.”
“Ah, Dani,” he said again. “You sat through three hours of bloody evidence last Friday, the toughest bird I’ve ever seen. But you’re crying over dolls?” he asked, shoving his hanky back into his chest pocket. He thought maybe Hart Manufacturing would have to wait for another day.
She swiped at her cheeks and kept her gaze straight ahead.
“You need to hold on to something?”
“Yes, please.”
With his left hand on the wheel, he reached across her with his right, hooked her around the hips, and bodily slid her over until she was pressed up against him on the seat. Then she wrapped her arms around his bicep, turned her face into his shoulder, and cried her heart out.
Later that night, when Malone had girded himself up and Dani had long since dried her eyes, they went through the rest of the box.
“You catching a whiff of anything?” Malone asked after she’d held Rose Wallace’s scarf every which way and gotten nothing.
“You say that like I’m a bloodhound.” She looked up from the scarf and gave him a small smile. He relaxed a little, grateful there would be no tears. His chest had hurt all evening.
“You were the one who described it that way,” he reminded her, voice mild. “Not me. I told you to stop touching things. You wouldn’t listen.”
“The whole box smells like mildew and mothballs, but there’s something beneath it.”
Malone couldn’t smell anything.
“It’s hair tonic. Something Rose used on her curls. And a particular brand of cigarettes.”
Malone sighed. None of this was going to tell them anything.
“Do you think it was Willie who killed her?” she asked.
“No.”
“Rose felt his meanness as keenly as his . . . care,” she said. “Care” wasn’t a great substitute for “lovemaking skills,” but Malone didn’t need it spelled out.
“Willie’s mean is different from the Butcher’s mean. Not to mention most of the murders would have taken two arms, unlike lovemaking.”
“Maybe Willie just killed Rose,” she said softly. “She was small.”
“I’ve thought about that. What better way to get away with murder? Just cut ’em up, toss ’em in a feed bag, and throw them in the water. Everyone will blame it on the Butcher.”
Dani nodded like she’d thought of that too.
“It’s just . . . not that easy to cut someone up, Dani.”
“I never assumed it was.”
“Whoever is doing this knows what he’s doing. The marks on the neck and around the joints display knowledge. And he always sections the torsos the same way. On Victim Number Nine the blade appears to have been getting dull. I think that frustrated the killer. He started hacking. Eliot thinks he’s losing control. But I don’t know. Bottom line, it’s the same guy doing all that cutting. All ten—all eleven—victims have telltale marks that somebody trying to pull a copycat wouldn’t know or be able to replicate.”
“I see.”
That reminded him of something. Malone strode to his desk and dug through the ever-growing stack of files. He found the one for Victim #9, the man whose pieces had been found in the Cuyahoga a month after Rose Wallace’s bones were found under the bridge. He scanned the details until he found what he was looking for. A woman’s silk stocking and the top half of a man’s torso wrapped in newspapers dated three weeks earlier were fished out of the water. A single stocking.
He stared, not knowing what to make of it, not knowing if he should make anything of it. At this point, everything felt like a clue . . . and a cruel joke.