“It might not even be the Butcher,” someone said, hopeful.
“It’s him all right. You just wait. They’ll find more. They always do.”
“How many is it now?” someone else wailed.
“Eleven, if you count the Lady of the Lake.”
“I heard them say whoever it belongs to hasn’t been dead for very long.”
“Steve” turned out to be Steve Morosky, a railroad worker, who at about 2:00 p.m. had walked to the end of Superior Avenue to visit a friend who lived in a shanty nearby. He was surrounded by a crowd, telling his story with wide gestures. He’d probably had to tell it several times already and seemed to be enjoying the attention. Two detectives in matching white straw hats and baggy suits were plying him with questions.
“I saw a guy drop a burlap bag into the water about a month ago off the Jefferson Street Bridge. He was driving a Lincoln. Real suspicious,” a man called out, and one of the detectives peeled away to get his statement.
Malone saw David Cowles of the Scientific Bureau leaving the scene and ran to catch up with him. He’d known David since their Capone days, and when he called out to him, David turned and greeted him in surprise. The man’s face was wreathed in worry and strain, and his trousers were streaked with mud.
“Mike,” he said. “Ness said you were in town. Bad business, this. Bad.”
“What do you know, David?”
“Not much. I’m heading to the lab at the morgue right now. That’ll tell us more. But unless we find the rest, we aren’t going to ever know much.”
“Can I ride along?” Malone asked. No one was paying attention to him or Cowles. Eliot was already being trailed by cameras and hounded by reporters with pencils and notepads, even though he hadn’t been on the scene for more than fifteen minutes.
“Yeah. You can. Jump in.”
They drove to the city morgue, Cowles talking all the way, Malone digesting his initial findings. David was as level-headed and unpretentious as they came, and he and Eliot Ness were tied at the hip. He knew all about the “Unknowns” and Malone’s assignment.
“It’s a woman. White. Young. Slim. Blond,” David rattled off.
“Blond?” Malone said, surprised. “How did you get that from her calf?”
“I found some long blond hairs wrapped around it,” he said, grim. “Leg hasn’t been in the river that long. Woman dead at the most a week, I’d say. And no abrasions—besides the amputation marks—on the skin. I doubt the piece went through the storm grate.”
Cowles didn’t want to introduce him to the inner circle, and Malone didn’t care to be noticed or made, so he hung back when they reached the city morgue, lurking across the street until, just like at the Superior Avenue site, a crowd began to form, awaiting word from the coroner. He watched Eliot arrive an hour later and swing into a parking spot near the entrance. He was accompanied by men Malone didn’t know, and all walked swiftly into the building, ignoring the questions and the shouted pleas for information.
It wasn’t until nearly eight o’clock that the newly elected Cuyahoga County coroner, Samuel Gerber, tall, prematurely gray, and distinguished in his red-ribboned straw hat, white shoes, and tan suit, addressed the gathering, standing in the glow of the entrance lights, his hands clasped behind his back, his countenance sober. He was only Malone’s age, but his silver hair gave him an air of gravitas his years might not. Eliot said he’d only gained the position in November on the Democratic ticket, which would mean this was his first case as coroner in the string of killings.
“We’re awaiting the results from additional tests and X-rays,” Gerber began, projecting his voice. “But, having studied each of the previous murders, I do believe this is the work of the Butcher.”
The crowd moaned in terror and delight. That would get printed on the front page of every newspaper in Cleveland and beyond. It reminded him of a radio serial. “Tune in next time, folks, for the continuing adventures of . . . the Torso Killer!”
The coroner continued after his weighty pause. “The specimen discovered on the banks of the Cuyahoga near Superior Avenue is the lower left leg, severed above the ankle and below the knee. Our preliminary findings are that the victim was female, between twenty-five and thirty, about five feet two inches tall, and approximately a hundred and twenty pounds. Knife marks on the bones are consistent with other victims, though it does appear that the slayer was more frenzied in this killing than in the past.”