Max Collins - Butcher's dozen

O'Connell glared at Ness, though the red was fading from his face as he said, "All right. But I think I'd like one of my deputies as a witness. To make some notes."

"I don't think you will." Ness gestured to the sheriff's tidy desk. "Sit down, Sheriff."

Sighing out his nose, the sheriff moved behind the desk with an agility that belied his size and folded his hands on a green desk blotter. His fingers were thick, the hands massive. His eyes were lidded with contempt.

It was the Wednesday after Frank Dolezal's arrest. Dolezal, who had made two suicide attempts, was alive and somewhere in this building, in this jail. In all that time Ness had not been able to arrange a meeting with the suspect-or sheriff, for that matter.

"You have a prisoner I'd like to see," Ness told him.

"We have a suspect in the Kingsbury Run investigation," O'Connel said blandly, "if that's what you mean."

"That's what I mean."

"Nobody sees this suspect but my people."

"Including a lawyer?" Ness asked with mock innocence.

They both knew that if the suspect had seen a lawyer, Dolezal would have been released by now, on a writ of habeas corpus.

"He hasn't been indicted yet," the sheriff said.

"And the court isn't allowed to appoint an attorney until after he's been indicted. Of course. But a suspect is supposed to be indicted within seventy-two hours. You've had Mr. Dolezal in custody for six days now."

"It's an unusual case. Now I'm a busy man, Mr. Ness. If you don't mind…"

"I do mind, and I've only begun. Your nap and the Police Gazette are just going to have wait."

The sheriff's mouth curled into a sneer, but he said nothing.

"Yesterday you hauled Mr. Dolezal over to the East Cleveland police department," Ness said, "for a lie detector test. Why did you bother driving over there when just across the way we have a modern facility which Chief Matowitz and I would have been glad to make available to you?"

"I prefer to keep my investigation of this case separate from yours."

Ness smiled. "Ah, but Sheriff, there are no rivalries between good men in the pursuit of justice. I haven't been unkind to you in the press, have I?"

"The hell you haven't. Your detectives have been smearing me from-"

"My detectives are men with their own minds and their own way of seeing things and expressing themselves. They have a right to say what they wish, to the press or anyone else. There's a document called the Constitution of the United States, with which you apparently aren't familiar, that guarantees them that right."

The sheriff's mouth twitched. "I have work to do. If you're here to get information about the Dolezal case, I'm afraid I can't give you any. It's confidential."

"Oh, but I'm here to share some information with you."

The sheriff arched an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"Certain scientific findings. As Deputy McFarlin may have told you, I was up in Dolezal's 'murder den,' as you've been referring to it in the papers, the very day you arrested the suspect. I took some scrapings from the bathroom floor."

"So what? We had a chemist check that for us. He found human blood. On a butcher knife, too. Everybody knows that."

"Yes, and I understand the chemist is Deputy McFarlin's brother-in-law. He works for a couple of M.D.'s, I understand."

"That's right."

"Well, I had my scrapings checked as well. Dr. Eckert, a pathologist at Western Reserve University, a completely objective third party, tested them for me. I just got his findings this afternoon."

The sheriff snorted derisively. "What took him so long?"

"He said the high iron content of the deposits around the bathtub feet complicated the tests, made it take days to get accurate results. I have his analysis right here, if you'd like to see it." Ness made a show of reaching for something in his pocket, then abandoned the effort with a wave of one hand, saying, "Actually, it's not complex. I think I can remember exactly the composition of the material, in Dr. Eckert's own scientific phraseology… 'just plain dirt.'"

The sheriff's tiny eyes bugged and he half-rose from his seat. "What?"

"Dirt, Sheriff. No blood, human or animal, present."

O'Connell clearly did not know what to say. Slowly he sat back down.

Ness gestured with an open hand. "Of course, experts on such matters do disagree."

The sheriff put on a tight smile and said, "Mr. Ness. All due respect. With or without bloodstains, we got the Butcher, right here in this jail. You may not like it. It may not help your reputation any

… it may not help you get my job for yourself, for instance… but justice, like you said, is gonna be served."

"Do tell."

"Yeah, I do. Those lie detector tests were positive."

"They're not admissible."

"They point to Dolezal's guilt, nevertheless." The sheriff began counting off items on his fingers. "Andrassy, Wallace, and Polillo frequented his room; he admits it, and his neighbors confirm. They all frequented that bar at Twentieth and Central. He's an admitted sexual pervert. He's given to fits of violence and rage during drinkin' bouts. He lived in proximity of where some of the body parts was found. He was fixing to move out of a place where his rent was paid up a month in advance, because the neighborhood was being searched by fire wardens. Most important, he's confessed."

Ness smiled and raised a forefinger. "Ah. His confession. Like when he confessed throwing the Polillo head, arms, and legs in the lake."

The sheriff shifted in his chair.

"Unfortunately," Ness continued, "after you released the confession to the press, some bad sport pointed out to a certain reporter that Dolezal doing that in January was… unlikely. Unless he sawed a hole in the ice."

The sheriff sighed heavily. "We checked the records and found the lake was ice-covered at that time, yes."

"From the shore out to beyond the breakwall," Ness said. "Somebody must've got their facts mixed up-perhaps whoever was questioning the suspect-because the arms and legs of Flo Polillo were among the body parts that turned up behind that manufacturing plant."

The sheriff shrugged. "We confronted the suspect with those facts."

Ness smiled pleasantly. "And lo and behold-he changed his story. He remembered leaving the arms and legs in that alley. He remembered it was only the head he'd disposed of eleswhere, and not in the lake."

Another shrug. "Well, he mighta got confused about which victim was which. Body parts of two of the woman victims did turn up in Lake Erie, you know."

"But after you 'confronted' him, he sorted it out. Said he burned Polillo's head and buried the skull."

"Never mind all that," O'Connell said, mouth pursed with irritation, eyes moving.

On Monday the sheriff had taken Dolezal, manacled and surrounded by deputies, to Kingsbury Run, so that he might lead them to where he buried Flo Polillo's skull. A few reporters, among them Sam Wild, had been allowed to trail along, at a distance. The suspect had led them up and down, through the sumac bushes and sunflowers, past the infamous stagnant pool where body parts had once floated, but he just couldn't remember where he'd buried Flo's skull. Then under the East Thirty-fourth Street bridge, a deputy spotted a pile of bones.

Dolezal had become hysterical upon sight of them and began babbling that he was sorry for what he'd done. O'Connell gloatingly displayed the discovery to the accompanying press, who took pictures of the sheriff with his prize pile of bones, which weren't the Polillo skull but sufficed-at least until the embarrassed sheriff had to reveal to the press the next day that the bones were those of a dog.

"What really interests me about your excursion into the Run," Ness said, "was that Dolezal was heard, by the reporters, to complain his ribs were hurting him. And he had an ugly shiner as well, I understand."