Rusty Nail

CHAPTER 5

I DIDN’T SLEEP.

Slumber and I were old adversaries, and on an average night I spent six hours doing the toss and turn, with only one or two hours of actual REM.

But last night I had trouble even closing my eyes.

I managed to get through the Kork tape, right up to the sad, sickening end. I kept the sound on, so I heard all the begging, all the screams. All the laughing and grunting.

Cops tended to be more cynical than the average citizen, but I tried to err on the side of neutrality when it came to human nature. I’d seen good, and I’d seen evil, and mankind exhibited both.

Watching the tape changed that for me. I showered, slapped on some makeup, dressed quickly in generic flats, some black Kenneth Cole pants, and a beige turtleneck sweater from the Gap, and drove to work with absolute tunnel vision. There were no depths to human cruelty. The knowledge burned in my stomach like a hot coal.

We were told to be careful of the us against them mentality, but when I finally got to my office, fighting rush hour traffic, watching the honking and the swearing as humans cut each other off, I truly hated my fellow man. I tried to bury my feelings in work. After a cup of vending machine coffee that tasted slightly worse than it smelled, I began going through reports.

The CSU had lifted several dozen prints from the Kork house, which were being run through the database. No prints on the toe jar, or the note. The video that had been dropped off was a Sony brand, available everywhere. The envelope manufacturer still wasn’t known, but it looked like an average padded mailer, and was probably sold at thousands of stores.

The desk sergeant had used an Identikit to put together a composite of the man who dropped off the video. He was average height, thin, in his thirties, with a full blond beard. He wore reflective sunglasses, a Cubs baseball cap, and a hooded sweatshirt. The picture had an eerie similarity to the much-circulated artist’s sketch of the Unabomber.

No prints on the tape. Prints from Herb and the desk sergeant were lifted from the envelope, along with a white powder residue that smelled like cleanser, such as Ajax or Comet. It was an old burglar trick. Scrubbing your hands with detergent will temporarily strip your hands of their natural oils, making it impossible to leave prints.

I called 411, looking for a last known address of Diane Kork, the Gingerbread Man’s ex-wife. Couldn’t hurt to question her again, if someone had picked up where her husband had left off. I found her in Bucktown, unlisted. I gave the operator my badge number and a minute later he called me back with her address and phone number.

I called, got a machine, and left a message. Then I called the county morgue.

“Hughes.”

“Morning, Max. Jack Daniels.”

“Hi, Jack. Here’s what I got so far. Sixty-eight toes, from nine different bodies. They’ve been preserved, and I’m guessing they might be anywhere from twenty to fifty years old.”

Max was an assistant medical examiner, and he considered small talk a mark of unprofessionalism.

“Preserved?”

“Packed in salt. There are still some grains left. The skin is completely dehydrated, no biological activity present.”

“Is that why some of them are so small? They shrunk?”

“There’s been some shrinkage, yes, but many of the toes are tiny because they came from children.”

My mind catapulted me back to the video.

Hughes went on. “I’ve got a forensic anthropologist friend named Coran who’s taking a look at the X-rays – she’ll be more specific. I’m a soft tissue guy, not a bone guy.”

“Could they have come from corpses?”

“You thinking a grave robber?”

“Or an undertaker who keeps souvenirs.”

“Possibly. But several of the toes have slices along the toenails, and along the underside.”

“Hesitation marks?”

“They’re more consistent with defense marks. If someone were trying to cut off your toes, you’d struggle. Wouldn’t be easy to do, even to a child. I don’t think I can test for histamine in a dried specimen, but I’d bet my house they were removed while these people were still alive.”

Pleasant thought. I concentrated on the age. If the toes were twenty years old, they could have come from some of Kork’s early victims. But anything older would have been impossible.

“One more strange thing, Jack – each of the toes has a tiny hole running through them, through the bones.”

“Any idea what that means?”

“None.”

“Thanks, Max. Call me when you know more.”

I hit the computer, searching for missing persons reports going back to 1950.

The number was in the millions.

I added restrictions to my search, confining it to the Midwest, sticking to the years 1970-1996.

Millions became tens of thousands. Still too many to conceivably go through. I back-burnered the idea for later and spun through my Rolodex, looking for an old number at the UIC.

“You’ve reached the office of graphologist Dr. Francis Mulrooney. Please leave a message at the beep.”

“Dr. Mulrooney, this is Lieutenant Jack Daniels of the-”

A click. “Lieutenant Daniels? How delightful to hear from you! I apologize for not picking up. I’ve been forced to screen my calls lately due to some unpleasantness. How can I be of service?”

“Do you still have those handwriting samples from the Gingerbread Man case?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve got another note. It looks similar, but I’m not the expert. Any chance of you coming by sometime this week?”

“I’ve got some things coming up at the university. Let me check my schedule.”

I could picture him, reaching a delicately manicured hand into his tailored vest pocket for his appointment book. Mulrooney was short, thin, with a slight blond mustache, comically thick glasses, and a fetish for bow ties. Academics normally intimidated me, but this one I liked. He was both helpful and unpretentious, two traits most professors lacked.

“I’m free tomorrow, late afternoon. But if you’d like a fast and dirty opinion, you can fax it to me.”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Mulrooney read off his fax number. I had a photocopy of the recent Evanston note, and managed to feed that into my fax machine on my third try.

“It’s coming through now. Will you pardon me for a moment, Lieutenant?”

“Take your time.”

I trimmed my thumbnail with my teeth, imagining the petite man going over the writing sample with a magnifying glass.

“Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. Is the original in marker?”

“Yes.”

“Clever.”

“It’s clever to write in marker?”

“One of the things graphologists look at is pressure. Felt-tip pens disguise that. Tell me, the fax you sent, is this the original size, or did you enlarge it?”

“The real sample is half the size.”

“I see. I look forward to seeing the actual note. This is a very interesting sample. We don’t see this too often.”

“See what, Doctor?”

“It appears to be a forgery. Someone who has seen Kork’s original handwriting and has done their best to imitate it. The descending t-bars. The slant. The capitalization. But there are some obvious differences. First of all, Kork’s writing is heaviest in the lower zone. This person is an upper zone writer, an indicator of high intelligence. Also, there are some feminine characteristics at work here.”

I blinked. “A woman wrote this?”

“It’s impossible to determine sex from a handwriting sample, and men can have feminine qualities in their script, just as women can have masculine qualities.”

Mulrooney went into a lecture about the differences between male and female traits in handwriting, but my attention was drawn away by a very unpleasant surprise standing in my doorway.

“Dr. Mulrooney?” I interrupted. “Something just came up. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, of course. Until then, Lieutenant.”

I replaced the receiver on the cradle and turned to face my demons.