What a night. I'm really tired. My fingers are still so cold I can hardly write. I'm going to have to start carrying some warmer gloves with me if I do any more chasing around with Hanley.

We were all sitting in Porfello's around ten o'clock this evening when a cop came in and told Hanley that Cullitan, the county prosecutor, and Eliot Ness were going to raid the Harvard Club, the biggest gambling joint in the state.

We weren't going to miss this for the world. Jack, Dennis, Hanley and I jumped in my car, since I had a full tank of gas and a heater that worked. We raced over to the Harvard Club in Newburgh Heights.

When we got there it was only Cullitan and about fifteen men waiting outside. Hanley said that they were waiting for Ness before they stormed the place. Cullitan had tried to get in there with a warrant, but the owner, some slimy little thug named Patton, met him with a bunch of guys holding machine guns. He'd open fire on anyone who tried to get in, police or not.

Ten minutes later I could start to hear the sirens. Soon, the sound was deafening. In no time, there were another twenty-five police cars and almost as many motorcycles. It was like an invasion. In the first car was Eliot Ness, who jumped out before the car stopped and ran over to Cullitan.

Ness and Cullitan talked for a few minutes, and then Ness went up to the door of the club, completely unarmed, and pounded on it. Ness bellowed that he had the place completely surrounded by a hundred armed cops. Nothing happened. The door didn't open even a crack.

Ness picked several of the biggest guys and they broke down the heavy door. I was holding my breath, waiting for the machine gun fire, but there wasn't a sound. Once the door came down, Ness and the cops stampeded the place.

A few minutes later, they started bringing them out, customers and employees alike, with their hands in the air. Pretty soon they had all the police cars loaded up. The photographers were having a field day. Everybody seem to have one eye on the door, waiting for Ness to come out. Hanley and I were right near the door when Ness came out with Patton in handcuffs walking in front of him. What a mean looking sonofabitch that Patton is. Patton said something to Ness that he didn't like and Ness rammed him in the back with one of the confiscated guns, nearly knocking him down the steps. Patton turned around in a flash and raised his handcuffed arms to strike at Ness. It was wonderful, Ness had him down to the ground before Patton could even swing. The photographers went wild.

Afterwards, we went back to Porfello's where I dropped off Hanley in the parking lot. He had a lot of writing to do for the morning edition. Jack and Dennis went back in the bar to tell all their buddies, but I came back here to get some whiskey. I'd had enough excitement for one night.

That Eliot Ness really has a lot of guts going after the mob the way he does. I'll bet they're planning his funeral as I write. I'm surprised he ever got out of Chicago alive. They say he's a crack shot, but he never carries a gun. Hard to believe.

All of this excitement makes me restless. I guess I'm envious of this man and the recognition he gets. Tomorrow the papers will be filled with pictures of him and his raid. And I will be reading the news instead of making it. Nobody takes me seriously.

I've decided to try my luck with whores again. There's less risk in it for me. They haven't got a chance of getting away from me like that Andrassy punk almost did. I need to be much more careful now that we have this shiny new safety director and his new homicide chief.

I went to a new place tonight on Carnegie. I don't even remember the name of it. It was a crummy bar filled with the steel mill crowd. It was too damned cold to go hopping from bar to bar, so I stayed there, even though I didn't like the place at all.

I think it's the class of people there that I disliked the most. It's the swaggering, loud mouthed blue collar types that offend me. Everyone drinking up their week's pay. Swilling their beer, popping their shots and belching loudly. They're really disgusting. It's the kind of place I'd expect to find Michael on the eve of an election.

It's funny. I don't mind the really poor people or even the cheap hustlers in the bars on Prospect. They're quite interesting in their own way. It's the lower middle class that's so tiresome.

The only good things about this bar were that it was very warm inside and the whiskey was relatively cheap. The only practical problem was that I didn't see any whores. The few women seemed to be attached to specific men.

I was getting ready to go back out in the cold and find another bar when she came up the stairs from the pool tables they operate in the basement. She was short and plump with reddish brown hair. Her fortieth birthday had come and gone and taken with it any traces of good looks. After looking around the bar carefully, she headed right for me. She told me her name was Flo and asked me if I was lonely. I told her to sit down at my table.

Her round face had the coarse, hardened look of a woman that had been whoring all her life, but what she lacked in looks, she made up for in aggressiveness. Right after she sat down, she told me that for five dollars, she would keep me warm and happy the whole night.

I couldn't help myself. I laughed and told her that I could stay warm and happy all night with a $1.50 bottle of good whiskey. After a little good-natured haggling, we agreed on two dollars. I can be very generous when I know I'm not going to have to pay out.

I told her I'd get my car and pull it up to the corner of Carnegie, which was a few doors down from the bar. That way, she wouldn't have to get cold walking with me all the way to my car and, I thought to myself, no one would see us walking out together.

When she got into the car, I saw she had a May Company bag with her. I asked her what she bought and she pulled out a large doll. She told me she collects them and had nearly seventy of them back in her room. She chattered like a magpie about her dolls all the way back to my office, as though I could ever be interested in such a thing.

Once I got her back to the office, I wanted to get right to the main event. There was no possibility of any exciting foreplay with this woman, not like with the other whore. I didn't even have her take off her clothes. I just showed her around the place and ended the tour in the surgery.

Things went very smoothly. I have mastered this whole technique, almost to the point of routine. Maybe that's the problem. I'm not getting quite the same enjoyment that I used to. I still feel a wonderful sense of release, but the thrill isn't there anymore. I think it's because I'm rushing things too much. That night with the first whore was exquisite, all the excitement of the hunt and the capture. I didn't realize how much that added to the total experience.

I became bored with this ungainly beast almost immediately afterwards. I wished then that I had made her undress first. Her clothes were just soaked with blood. I struggled to pull them off and ended up having to cut them off her.

I really should get rid of her tonight. Every day she stays here is an extra risk. If I don't get her out of here tonight, I'll have to stay here in the office all day tomorrow just to make sure Louie doesn't wander in here to see that the pipes haven't frozen over.

I'm just so tired and it's so bloody cold outside. I still haven't thought about exactly what to do with her. I'll just clean her up tonight and worry about the rest of it tomorrow.

I didn't sleep well last night. I dreamed that Michael and Eliot Ness and about a thousand cops caught me and hung me from the top of the Terminal Tower. It was a silly dream, but it reminds me of how careful I need to be when I get rid of Flo's body. I'm sure as hell not going to risk going back to Kingsbury Run this time.

Just to make things easier for Dr. Pearse to recognize my work, I cut Flo's body in two pieces, just at the waist, the same way I did with the other whore. I didn't waste my time doing the careful surgery I did before. Any dumb asses that can't tell the work of a surgeon from the work of a butcher don't deserve any more of my time than is necessary to do the job.

In fact, I think I'll make my own little comment on that and put her body outside a butcher shop somewhere. The head's got to go somewhere they won't ever find it. Maybe in one of those big trash barrels they have outside the mills. I don't want to take the chance that someone will identify her and tie her back to me.

I slept late this morning. I was so tired from being out until three in the morning getting rid of Flo. After I wrapped her up in newspaper and put her in four large burlap bags, I drove back toward town until I found a butcher shop around 20th and Central. I parked my car a couple of blocks away and carried two of the sacks into the alley behind the butcher shop. Goddamn it was cold. The wind just went right through my coat. Fortunately, with that kind of cold, there's no one outside to see me.

Just as I was putting the burlap sacks in a basket at the back of the shop, I heard a rustling sound. I turned around to look, but I couldn't see anything in the dark. I put the one bag deep in the basket and then I heard the sound again. This time it was louder. There was someone there with me. I didn't know what to do. Should I drop the other bag and run or should I pick up the bag from the basket and run with both of the bags. All of a sudden, I heard the most blood curdling howl that I ever heard in my life. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled around and saw it less than ten feet away from me. An enormous dog.

It was up on its huge hind legs ready to lunge at me. I drew back and braced myself, still clutching one of the burlap bags in front of me. Then I saw the chain. It was tied up and couldn't reach me. The dog started to howl again. I've never heard a dog so loud.

I dumped the other bag in the basket and ran like hell until I reached the street. I had to get out of there before the dog woke up the whole neighborhood.

That really makes me mad. What the hell kind of degenerate would leave a dog out like that in sub-zero weather? The owners ought to be locked up.

I was going to leave the other sacks behind the butcher shop too, but I couldn't risk going back there and running into the dog's goddamned owner. So I drove my car down a few blocks and put the other sacks in a garbage can behind an old boarded up house.

Today, I'm just going to sit and wait. I'll keep the radio on just in case there's something on the news. If it weren't Sunday, I'd go over to Porfello's. Porfello refused to pay the bribe for a Sunday beer license.

Of course, they may not find her today. The butcher shop is closed. In fact, they may not find her at all unless that dog gets loose.

As I was cleaning up my waiting room, I came across the doll. I took it out of the bag and looked at it again. It was a nice doll with a pretty child's face and well made clothing. It looked expensive to me.

I wonder what a tired, tough old whore was doing with a doll like that, with a collection of dolls like that. What pathetic purpose did these idealized creatures have in her empty life? Maybe they were children she never had. Did they made up for a childhood she hadn't experienced? Perhaps all they represented was the timeless existence of pretty faces, clean clothes and eternal youth.

I should have thrown out the doll with the rest of her things, but I didn't. I don't quite understand why, but I propped it up on my bookcase next to the picture of my boys.

I did it! I finally made the front page! Just like Eliot Ness! A big article right up near the top with two big pictures. One of the pictures was of the dog. I'll be goddamned if that dog didn't lead some colored woman to the burlap bags. The other picture was of some guy named David Cowles, Superintendent of the Ballistics Bureau, who the paper headlined as "Torso Investigator." Not a very attractive sounding title. If I were Cowles, I'd complain about that. The colored woman went over to the baskets to see what the dog was barking at and thought she saw some hams inside. How unflattering for Flo, overweight that she was. The woman asked the butcher about the hams and he went to take a look. That's when he found Flo's arm and called the police. Quite an impressive array of detectives this time, including our new Mr. Hogan. There were six of them mentioned in the article, including this Cowles guy. Why on earth would they have a ballistics expert there? I never used a gun. Whatever respect I might have had once for Coroner Pearse went down the drain today. First of all, he estimated Flo's age at between thirty and thirty-five. He's only off by a decade. The other thing he said is that she was cut up by someone inexperienced. That really pisses me off. I may have been hasty on some of the cuts, but the decapitation was superior. Pearse said nothing about the similarities between Flo and the Lady in the Lake or the Kingsbury Run bodies. It's inconceivable that they haven't connected them by now, after all how many decapitated bodies do they find in any one year period anyway? I didn't have any patients this afternoon so I went downtown. I stopped at the May Company and went up to their toy department to look for something to send to the boys. I can only guess what boys that age would like. I finally found a couple of trucks, a drum and a toy doctor's kit and had the clerk mail them to St. Louis. While I was there, I looked at the dolls. I never realized how many different kinds there were. There were some very nice dresses that should fit the doll Flo bought, so I bought a pink lacy one and a little rose colored coat. I suppose at some point I ought to give that doll to Ann, but right now I like it where it is in my office. It has a calming effect on me.

Sic transit gloria. There's nothing at all about Flo in the Plain Dealer this morning, but there was a big article in the Press last evening. By yesterday afternoon, the cops had figured out who she was from her fingerprints. She'd been arrested several times for prostitution. That's a problem with whores, they tend to have their fingerprints on file. I would have preferred that she'd never been identified. It's much safer for me, and so much less humiliating for Flo. All those nasty details about her life being publicized. Who she slept with, how many bars fights she got into, who beat her up last week. I felt sorry for her having her life dissected that way in the press. Last night at the bar, Hanley said the whole investigation focused on who was with Flo the day she died. They found a lot of people who knew her, but so far none of them would admit to seeing her on Friday. Dennis said they've got six detectives working on the case right now. All of them are working their asses off trying to impress Hogan, their new boss. I asked Dennis if this Hogan was any good. Dennis says he's been on the force for decades. A good cop with a reputation for being fair, but nothing special. Hanley says Hogan's not the smartest guy in the world and he's stubborn as hell. He was promoted because he's honest and obedient. Like a pet bulldog, I gathered.

I found out when I stopped at Porfello's for lunch why this ballistics expert Cowles was in on the investigation. He's one of Ness's right hand men. Hanley said that Cowles was one of the most intelligent guys in the whole department. He is completely self-educated and knows more about police science than any fifty men on the force. I like that. Ness has put his top guy on the project, since it appears like there's no contest between me and Hogan.

Hanley said something that's really bothering me. One of the men who was in the bar where I met Flo told the police he saw Flo talking to a man before she left that night. He told the cops he could describe the man in some detail. He said he noticed the man especially, because he seemed so out of place in the bar. Too well dressed to be in that place, he said.

Swell. I knew I should have left that bar as soon as I saw what kind of joint it was. I had a bad feeling about it from the beginning. Hanley said he was going out there this afternoon with the police artist they were sending to help recreate the face the guy remembers.

I wonder which one of those bastards it was. I didn't talk to anybody except the bartender when I bought my drinks. Come to think of it now, one of the guys sitting at the bar stared at me every time I went up for another whiskey.

Shit. I hope that sonofabitch's memory isn't any good. All I need is a good sketch of me published in the newspapers. Someone might even remember me talking to Andrassy and the other guy from back in September.

After I left Porfello's, I went to the address the papers gave for Flo. It was a shabby rooming house on Carnegie. I told her landlady that I was a reporter for the South End News. She was very nice to me and invited me in for coffee. Then she took me up to see Flo's room.

Even though I knew that Flo collected dolls, I was in no way prepared for what I saw when I walked in. There were so very many dolls in that one small room. They were everywhere, on the floor, on the bed and chairs, and even hanging in little baskets from the ceiling.

It was a very strange experience for me, being in her room like that. Almost as though I could feel her presence there, like she was still alive somehow in that artificial fairyland. In a way, I wish she were still alive. I liked her sense of humor.

I went over to the table near the window and looked at the few photographs that she had in some small, cheap frames. One of them was a picture of Flo as a child, sitting on a man's lap. She was a beautiful child in a big lacy dress, just like one of her dolls. I asked the landlady if I could borrow the photograph of Flo. She told me to keep it since nobody else seemed to want it. I took it back with me and put in on the bookcase next to her doll.

Last night I had some real misgivings, so I didn't go back to Porfello's. What if the sketch they get from this guy is a good enough likeness that Dennis or Jack sees the similarity? I could be walking into a trap. They could even plant that guy at Porfello's who says he remembers me and have him identify me when I walk in. I'm going to stay away from there for a few nights. It's too dangerous.

If Dennis or Jack have any serious suspicions after looking at the sketch, then the police will come here to the office looking for me. There wasn't anything in yesterday's or today's papers. If they had a sketch, wouldn't they publish it right away? What's to be gained by delaying? I wish to hell I knew what was going on. This uncertainty is driving me nuts.

I knew when I walked in, from the looks on the guys' faces, that I was in the clear. They said they had been worried about me, wondering why I hadn't been in for several days. I told them I'd been sick with the flu.

Flo was completely forgotten as a subject of conversation. Now everyone was talking about the two big killings that happened a few days ago. Richard Loeb, one of the guys that killed that little boy Bobby Franks, had his throat cut by one of the convicts in prison. And then last Friday, John Kling, the big industrialist here in Cleveland, was murdered by the chauffeur he had just fired. Events like that make great bar conversation for at least one evening.

I really wanted to pump Jack and Dennis about what the police had found out about Flo, but I didn't want to call attention to the subject, unless they brought it up first. Since they never brought it up, I'm assuming that nothing much is happening. I hope I'm right.

It looks as though I've gotten away with it again. Not that I had any real doubts about my ability to do it. If they haven't found me with that sketch, they'll never find me. It looks like Mr. Ness and his Mr. Cowles aren't all they're cracked up to be, not when they're up against a mind like mine.

The weather was just too glorious to stay inside today, so I put on some old clothes, put a pint in my pocket and went for a walk. It's been a long time since I'd been over to Kingsbury Run. I climbed down the slope to where I'd left the two men last September.

A couple hundred yards away were four hobos fixing something to eat over a small fire. They watched me as I approached them, but none of them said a word.

I smiled and said hello and still they didn't answer. Nevertheless, I walked right up to them and introduced myself as Frank. One of them nodded to me, but the others just stared at me as if I had just come down from another planet.

I pulled the pint out of my pocket and took a drink. Still not a sound. I handed it to the guy on my right and asked him if he wanted a drink. He hesitated a second as though it were some kind of trick, but then he took the bottle and had a big gulp.

He was a small, thin fellow, no more than five-foot-four with a scraggly beard and light brown hair. He hadn't had a haircut in quite some time. He smiled and thanked me for the drink and handed me back the pint. Anyone else want some? I asked. They passed it around and each of them took a healthy swig. That seemed to break the ice.

The small guy on my right told me his name was Johnny. He introduced me to the others. The two big guys in their early twenties were brothers, Orville and Rich. I could tell from their accents that they were either from the southern part of the state or West Virginia.

The fourth one was Jim. He was a few inches taller than Johnny, but almost as thin. I guessed him to be in his mid-twenties. He was the only one that didn't act friendly after I started passing around my whiskey. He was sizing me up, wondering what the hell I was doing in Kingsbury Run talking to hobos.

Johnny had cooked up some kind of vegetable stew which they ate out of tin cups. They offered me some, but I told them I wasn't hungry. I asked them if it was okay if I sat down with them while they ate. They seemed to be more than happy, especially since I was sharing my whiskey and cigarettes.

As we talked, I learned that the two brothers had just come into the city a few days ago from someplace in West Virginia. They heard there were jobs in the mills here and were looking to get some work.

Johnny said that he'd been looking for a job for more than a year and couldn't find anything steady. Just odd jobs. He said that even now with business picking up, the mills weren't doing much new hiring. Mostly they were just going to full time shifts with the workers they had.

Jim hadn't said a word yet. All the time the three others were talking about looking for work, he just looked at them with contempt. Finally, he talked. He said that he hadn't had a job since 1932 and he hoped that he'd never have another one.

He'd learned to live off the fat of the land, he said with some pride. Johnny interrupted and said he meant steal the fat off the land. He gave Johnny a threatening look. Hey, shithead, he said to Johnny. Look at you and then look at me. The difference is I use my brains.

There was some truth in what he said. Jim was by far the least unkempt of the four. His wavy brown hair was worn a bit long, but he didn't need a haircut. He was clean shaven and looked like he'd found some way to get a shower now and then.

He was wearing a pair of trousers that looked fairly new. The red and blue plaid flannel shirt was a bit rumpled, but didn't have any tears or worn spots. He didn't have that down-at-the-heels look the others had.

I asked him what was the secret of living off the fat of the land. He said there was no big mystery to it. When the weather gets cold, he takes a train to Miami or southern California. And as for food and drink, as long as there were lonely women in this world, he'd always have his fill.

And tell him how you get your clothes and money, Johnny blurted out. Jim's cocky expression twisted instantly into a cruel teeth-clenching grimace. He lunged at Johnny and grabbed him by the throat. He told him to shut his fucking mouth or he'd pull out his tongue.

What a temper. I told him to calm down. I didn't give a rat's ass how he got his money or his clothes. I wasn't a cop or anything.

He threw Johnny back down and grabbed what was left of my pint of whiskey, drinking most of it in one gulp. He said I wouldn't be sitting there if he thought I was a bull, the word they use for railroad detectives and cops.

Jim said that sometimes the bulls think they're real smart and dress like hobos. He came across one of them in Pittsburgh last summer. The bull, dressed like a hobo, hung around a bunch of them who were waiting to ride the train to Chicago. Jim said he can smell a bull a mile away, no matter how he's dressed or what he says. He came up behind the bull, disarmed him and beat the shit out of him.

I could tell how much Jim must have enjoyed that. It was the only time I'd seen him smile. He was a lot different than the other three.

The two brothers didn't really belong there. In spite of several days growth of beard, they looked pretty clean cut and well fed. They were just passing through looking for temporary shelter and companionship until they could find some work.

Johnny, even though he looked like he'd been a vagrant all his life, seemed to me to be just another sign of the times. A guy, like so many in the past few years that's been out of work and thrown into the streets. But I could tell he hated living like that. Once things pick up, as everyone says they will, he'll find some kind of job. Just listening to him talk about what was going on at the mills meant that he was looking for work.

Jim, on the other hand, even though he didn't look like a vagrant, was a true hobo. A man who could find work but didn't want to. He seemed to have consciously traded the comfort of a home for the freedom to go anywhere and do anything he wished. At least, on the surface of it, he did well living by his wits.

There was something about Jim I find attractive in a very perverse way, surly as he is. I think it's his dominance I admire. I wish I had more of that in my own personality.

Jim completely controls his life. He makes up his own rules and doesn't have to count on anybody else for his survival. I've always lived by someone else's rules. Even when I break the rules, it's someone else's rules. I'm too dependent on people around me for my survival.

If Jim doesn't like someone, he walks away from him. I can't do that or else I won't have any business. Not only can I not walk away, I have to be very nice to patients even if I despise them.

I wonder what Jim's kind of life is really like. Traveling all over the country. Coming and going whenever he pleases. Stealing or conning someone to get the few things he needs. If I were Jim's age, I think I might try that life for a year or two. I'm too old now to even consider living like that, and too used to my creature comforts and my whiskey.

My last patient left at four-thirty this afternoon. I put my old clothes back on, bought another pint of whiskey and went back down to Kingsbury Run. It didn't take long to find Johnny and the two brothers, but Jim wasn't with them. I was really disappointed because Jim was the only one I wanted to see.

Johnny suggested I walk down the Run toward town and I might see him. He pulled me aside out of earshot of the brothers and gave me some advice. He told me I'd better watch myself with Jim or I'd find myself without my wallet and a lot of ugly bruises instead.

As I walked toward town, the hobo population increased. I passed two small encampments within a mile of each other, but there was no sign of Jim. The smell of their food cooking reminded me I hadn't eaten that afternoon.

Once the sun set, the air got much chillier. The sweater I wore wasn't heavy enough to keep the cold wind from going right through it. I saw another encampment ahead of me with its fire in full blaze. If Jim wasn't there, I was going to warm myself at that fire and start back to the office.

Luck was with me. As I came closer, I spotted Jim's wavy brown hair and red plaid shirt. He was sitting by himself several yards from the fire, drinking some coffee and smoking a cigarette.

He watched me, his face expressionless, as I came over to where he was sitting. I asked him if I could join him. He answered me with a question. Did I bring any whiskey with me? I wonder what he would have said if I hadn't brought any. I think I know. His rudeness amuses me.

I sat down a couple feet away and brought out my pint from my pocket. He took it out of my hand and drank thirstily from it. Then he took one of my cigarettes and lighted it, not reciprocating with any thanks or conversation. I was being tolerated as long as I supplied him with booze and smokes.

For several minutes we sat without talking, watching the other hobos as they talked and ate whatever it was they had cooked. God knows what it was, but it smelled damned good. I think what they do is bring what they can buy or steal and then throw it all together in a big pot and cook it. That way, everyone who contributes gets something to eat.

It was pretty clear to me that if there was going to be any conversation, it was I who was going to have to initiate it. I told him that I found his philosophy and his way of life very intriguing and I wanted to hear more about it.

He took another gulp of the whiskey and appeared to be thinking about what I said. He asked me if I could see the locomotive on the tracks several hundred yards away. I said yes. He said in twenty minutes or so that train was leaving and he was going to be on it. He was going over to the West Side near the airport. If I wanted to talk to him, I could come along for the ride.

The idea of hopping a freight train, even if it was just to ride across town, was pretty heady stuff to me. Then I wondered if I could do it. I'm really out of shape for that kind of activity. But, shit, how would I have ever known if I could or couldn't unless I gave it a try.

I said I'd go with him, but that I'd never hopped a train before and needed him to give me some pointers. He grunted, which I took to mean that he would.

A few minutes later, he stood up and I followed him as he walked along the tracks away from the train. We had to hop on the train when it was still moving slowly, but when the train was far enough away from the yard so the bulls didn't see us.

It was very dark as we walked along the tracks. There was hardly any moonlight and I couldn't see well at all. Some twenty yards away, we stopped and he told me what to do when the train came by.

Suddenly, there was a blinding glare as the light on the locomotive shone down the tracks. The train was getting ready to leave the yard. Next, I heard the sound of the whistle and then the clacking of the wheels getting closer and closer. My heart was beating wildly as I anticipated what I had to do in the next couple minutes.

Jim must have seen the terror on my face in the white glare of the train. He told me not to worry, just to do what he said. That didn't give me much comfort. Jim is not the kind of person a thinking man puts a lot of trust in. Were I to fall to my death under the wheels of the train, Jim wouldn't give a shit. But I had no other mentor and too much pride to back out, having already come that far.

We stood back from the tracks in the shadows until the locomotive and first few cars went by us. Then Jim saw his opportunity and sprung into motion. We started to run along side of the train.

He grabbed the side of the door of an open boxcar and swung his body up into the car in one graceful motion. As I ran, he held out one of his hands to me. I grabbed it and the side of the boxcar and made the jump. I never could have done it if he hadn't been pulling me up. Thank god, he was strong. It couldn't have been easy for him to pull up someone my size.

Once I made it into the boxcar, I sat there for a few minutes trying to catch my breath. Jim just laughed at me. I thought to myself, enjoy this, Frank, it's something you're only going to do once in your life.

After a few minutes, I got to my feet and stood near Jim at the open door of the car. The train started to pick up some speed. It was really quite beautiful watching the lights of the city as we passed them by. The cold breeze blew steadily in my face and I felt a wonderful sense of freedom. I could see where it could become addictive.

Jim sat down at the far end of the boxcar, while I stood at the door and watched until the lights of the city gave way to the dark woods of the Cuyahoga River Valley. We had turned south from Kingsbury Run, following the river. Eventually we turned west and Jim got up briefly to see where we were. He pointed out the zoo to me and told me the train was going to slow down soon.

As the train slowed, he motioned to me. That's where we would get off. This time it wasn't so easy. The train wasn't going as slowly as when we got on. It was very dark and I could barely see the ground. He jumped and left me to decide for myself. I hesitated. There are times when being a doctor is a disadvantage. I've already treated the results of people jumping off things they shouldn't.

I made a hard landing, twisting my ankle in the process. I limped over to Jim who was some thirty yards away. He said there was a camp real close by. We walked about a quarter of a mile along the tracks. My ankle was killing me.

I didn't see any camp fires ahead and wondered if Jim really knew where he was going. Maybe Johnny was right. This was where Jim would hit me on the head and take my wallet. Eventually, we reached the place he was talking about, except that no one else was there. We're on our own, he said. The two of us had to gather up some sticks for a fire.

Once we had the fire going, Jim unrolled his pack, took out some beef jerky and a good sized knife to cut pieces of beef for the two of us.

I asked him if he was going to spend the night here. He said he was going to sleep with a woman he found last week who lives close by. He just had to wait until later when her husband left for the night shift at the mill. Then tomorrow, he'd hop the train to Chicago.

I asked him about the woman he was going to see tonight. Was she good looking? He said he doesn't care if a woman's attractive as long as she gives him a place to sleep.

Good looking women expect to get something from a man, he explained to me, as though I had just fallen off the turnip truck. Whereas plainer women are very generous if you give them some attention. Jim said when he wants a place to stay for the night, he goes into a bar and looks around for a woman that's plain or overweight. Then he finds out if she has someplace where he can stay. If she doesn't, he talks to her for another minute or two and tries another girl.

He said every once in awhile, he gets real lucky and finds a woman with a lot of cash on her. Then he makes sure that he gets up real early, takes her cash and slips out before she knows he's gone.

Women are so easy to put things over on, he told me with his cocky smile. He said he could get anything they had just by pretending he's attracted to them.

As he talked, I watched his face in the firelight. When he spoke about something he liked, his face was so different than the sullen expression I'd seen before. His large eyes could be very expressive, and his smile, when it wasn't curled into a sneer, was quite attractive. I could see where he would be very successful with women when he wanted to be.

The heat from the fire was becoming very intense. Jim stood up and took off his jacket. His slim, muscular body was accented by his tight fitting denim pants. A body conditioned to fighting and fucking, the ultimate expression of his strong will.

In retrospect, it may have been my subconscious intention all along to possess him. I guess I only realized it then as he stood in front of me before the fire. My mind started to grasp at the thread of opportunity and the stark practicalities of execution.

This man presented more challenge to me than any of the others. He was strong and quick. Even though I am larger and heavier, his strength was probably equal to mine. It had to be with my wits that I took him.

When he sat down, I handed him my whiskey and told him to take what he wanted while I gathered up some more wood for the fire. My biggest advantage was that he was not on his guard around me. Ironically, he may have even been looking at me as his prey.

I picked up some wood and put some of it on the fire. The rest I stacked next to him. When out of the corner of my eye I saw that he was reaching again for the whiskey, I knew the opportunity had come. I started to walk slowly around in back of him to the place where I had been sitting before.

As he cocked his head back to take a swig of the whiskey, I threw my whole weight into my arm choke, reaching down and grabbing his knife with my other hand.

He struggled like a son of a bitch, trying to pull my arm from his throat. He clawed at me and knocked the knife out of my hand. We rolled around on the ground. Finally my weight worked in my favor and I pinned him face down on the ground, my knee firmly in his back. I pulled his head back by the hair and pressed my arm tight against his windpipe. I felt him weakening against me. Then gradually he stopped fighting me. He was mine.

While he lay there unconscious, I stripped off my shirt. I still had to get back to my office and I couldn't do that safely if I had blood all over me.

I found his knife on the ground. It was much smaller than the one I was used to. It wouldn't do the job as neatly as I liked, but it was all I had.

There was something in the setting there, perhaps the firelight, that made it so much more intimate than my surgery. My hands trembled with excitement as I made the long, clean cut. Once again I felt the rush of power as his life flowed out in front of me. Everything that he was is now taken into me.

I was exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. All I wanted to do was to sleep and dream, but I put my shirt and sweater back on and sat for awhile enjoying the last glowing vestiges of the fire. I still had a long night ahead of me.

Finally, I summoned up all my strength and dragged him by the feet into the wooded area some fifty yards away. I covered him with his jacket and wool blanket and hoped that it would be at least a few days before someone found him. Too many people had seen me with him at the hobo camp.

I took one last look around and started walking toward the nearest lights of civilization. It took me the rest of the evening to get back to my office, waiting for buses, transferring to other buses.

But in all the time it took me to get back, I had my second wind. I walked over to the small diner on 55th Street and went in. I was ravenously hungry.

After what happened this morning, I've got to stop drinking so damned much. As I lay blissfully sleeping on my couch, I felt the wonderful sensation of my penis being stroked by some unknown hand. What a marvelous dream I thought as I gradually awakened. For a few moments, I just lay there reveling in the exquisite feeling, slowly realizing that it was not a dream after all.

I was horrified when I opened my eyes to find a naked young man kneeling next to the couch with his hand upon me. Worse, he was grinning as though I should be pleased!

I yanked his hand off me, almost breaking it in the process, and demanded to know how the hell he had gotten in my office. Lying faggot tried to make me believe I owed him twenty bucks for a blow job last night. Now I might have offered him a place to sleep, I was so plastered I don't remember, but I wouldn't have if I'd known he was queer.

That boy's sucked his last cock! I was so angry that I dragged him into the surgery, grabbed the first knife I found and cut his goddammed throat, letting him bleed into the sink. There was no pleasure in it. He made my skin crawl. I felt sick inside and dirty just from touching him. I finished the job and wrapped his head in his trousers so I wouldn't have to look at his face anymore.

That's when I noticed his clothes. New cashmere trousers and an expensive white shirt. Jesus Christ, he was better dressed than I was. I wonder who the hell this guy was. It's strange. Those good clothes don't fit with the rest of him, particularly the tattoos. I don't understand why a pretty boy queer would get six tattoos.

Yesterday evening I was drinking in this bar on Scovill when in comes this colored whore. She was just a little bit of a thing, no more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. It's not often I go for whores, especially colored ones, but this one I just had to have.

It was still daylight when we left the bar. She wanted to take me back to her place where I'm sure some big nigger pimp was ready to slit my throat and take my wallet, but I insisted that we go back to my office. I had completely forgotten about the queer's body in my surgery.

Things started to go wrong when I took her up to the office. Who do we run into but Louie, the janitor. His jaw dropped a mile when he saw her, but at least he knows that I'm not queer.

I must have fucked her for an hour straight. She was begging for mercy so I decided to give her a rest and had her lay down next to me on the couch. I'd been drinking quite a bit and needed to shut my eyes for a few minutes. I don't remember waking up when she slipped off the couch, although I have a dim recollection of hearing the drawers to my desk open and shut.

That one loud scream had me off the couch and into the surgery in two seconds flat. There could be no second scream. That one was enough to do me in. My hands tightened around her throat when I heard the loud knock on the door to my waiting room.

Everything all right in there, Dr. Sullivan? I heard Louie call. I told him we were just having a little party. I waited and listened closely, praying he wouldn't use his key to come in and check for himself. He probably would have come in if he hadn't seen me with the whore.

After I was sure he was gone, I looked down at my little whore, who had died on me by that time. She slumped to the floor in a heap. I was really annoyed. Now I have two bodies to get rid of.

The only thing that I accomplished was to create an enormous amount of work for myself which produced no enjoyment whatsoever. I knew I had to get both of them out of the office quickly so that when Louie inevitably came nosing around, there wouldn't be a trace.

I was able to get the whore into two burlap bags I had in my office, but the kid I had to wrap up in a blanket and jam him into the trunk of my car. I drove down to the Lorain-Carnegie bridge and pulled the car over to the side. I quickly opened the trunk and threw the two burlap bags over the side. With any luck at all, the Cuyahoga River will carry them out to the lake in a day or so.

I didn't want to risk being seen dumping the kid's body off the bridge, so I looked for a quieter place. Why not Kingsbury Run. Things had quieted down considerably. I took the head, still wrapped up in his fancy cashmere trousers and put them in the bushes near the Kinsman Road bridge.

I drove down a way and parked the car near the tracks. The area looked deserted, but there was a small building with the lights on inside. I got out of the car and walked over to the building which was the office for the Nickel Plate Railroad police. Inside I could see two men having a great time drinking beer and playing cards. This was almost too good to be true. Maybe I would get some enjoyment out of this after all.

I looked around again and went to get his body out of the trunk, still wrapped in the dark wool blanket. I carried him to the bushes just in front of the building, unwrapped him and ran like the devil back to my car.

God, how I wish I could be there when they find him.

It's great to be back in the news again. I'd forgotten how much pleasure it gives me. Lots of front page stuff.

I went back to Porfello's tonight, but only Hanley was there. Both Jack and Dennis had this Saturday night off. Hanley said Hogan sees no connection between this latest death and any of the others. I find that absolutely incredible. I can understand where Hogan might not necessarily see the connection between the bodies in Kingsbury Run and Flo or the Lady in the Lake, but you'd have to be a real idiot not to figure out that I did Andrassy and the young queer, who Hanley has christened the Tattooed Man.

Hogan is all excited because he's sure they can identify the kid because of the good condition of his body and the distinctive tattoos. I'm not so sure. If this boy was a male prostitute, nobody's going to step forward to associate themselves with him. Then, maybe he's from out of town and just came in for the Republican Convention to make some influential friends.

Hanley says Ness wants the body on display at the morgue the next few days for anybody to come in and look at it. I guess I am flattered that Ness is paying so much attention to my work, but it sounds so ghoulish to put the dead on public display.

I've never seen anything like it. There must have been a thousand people crowding into the morgue just to get a glimpse of him. They had both the head and body displayed to show all the tattoos.

It was an eerie experience, looking at his young face. His huge blue eyes had been closed of course, and it looked like he was sleeping peacefully. It made me sad that things had turned out that way. I really have to control my temper.

I was appalled at the way people were pushing and shoving to get a better look at him. And some of the comments they made. How would they feel is this was their son or brother? This is the same crowd that would come to public executions if they still had them. Whatever happened to good taste?

I'm sorry now that I dumped the colored whore where I did. Her body may never be found. I should have put her out in Kingsbury Run, minus her head which Louie could identify. Then maybe these fools would understand it's all my work and not a series of isolated events.

I suppose to make my point once and for all, I could kill someone else and stick the body down in the Run, but it would be much too dangerous so soon after this last one. The Run is just crawling with cops and railroad detectives. I think I'll just wait a few weeks until things cool off.

I'm hoping enough time has passed so it really is safe now for me to indulge myself again. Now that they found Jim the hobo's body, the intellectual Mr. Hogan deduced that one person is responsible. It's taken me more than a year and seven deaths to make that one point. They've all been so clever that I've decided to reward these forensic giants with my latest plaything.

They found part of him late this morning. I could hear the police sirens from my office around noon, so I turned on the radio to hear the news. I desperately wanted to go over to Kingsbury Run, but I had two patients coming in the early afternoon.

I wasn't able to get over there until almost four-thirty and when I did, I was astonished. I've never seen that area so jammed. I suppose I shouldn't complain. After all, they were all there because I brought them there.

I do believe that there were more cops in Kingsbury Run than Mr. Ness had assembled for his famous raid on the Harvard Club earlier this year. The whole ravine was alive with photographers, newspapermen, cops and spectators. Taking pictures of everything in sight, the Run, the hobos, the police. I think I have put that sorry place on the map.

Hanley was there, talking to one of the cops. I asked him what was going on and he told me that some hobo had stumbled over half of the torso when he was running to catch a train. The police had found the other half of the torso nearby. The body must have washed down from the sewers that drained the pool I dumped him in.

I saw Jack there working. I waved to him, but he didn't see me. I didn't go any closer, not wanting to disturb him while he was right there under Hogan's nose. He was fishing around with a grappling hook in the pool underneath the bridge. Poor guy. He had to stand balanced on a board they had placed across the pool and search for the missing pieces. One wrong step and he would have fallen into the awful smelling sewer water. Not a very nice way to spend the afternoon.

Hanley wanted to do a special story on how these murders were affecting the people in the area, both the residents and the hobos. I followed him around as he talked to people. First, we walked over to a small group of hobos and asked them what they thought of the latest killing. Two of them said they were going to catch a freight out of the city tonight. It wasn't safe for them in the city anymore.

One of the hobos confided to us that he knows who the killer is. He whispered that there's a big hobo named Vince who lives in the Flats. All the hobos are afraid of him. Vince carries a knife and has threatened some of the hobos he was going to cut them up.

I asked the hobo if he'd ever seen Vince. He told me that everyone there had seen Vince. He was big, real big, with long dark brown hair and a long beard. I said that description fit hundreds of hobos. How would I ever know this Vince if I ran into him. He told me it was Vince's eyes I should look for. Big crazy eyes, like a madman. Hanley was enthralled by Vince. He said he was going to tell Jack about him, so he could go along when Jack picked him up.

Another hobo told us he was going to stay in the city. He heard that the killings were all faked as part of a plot by the mayor and the railroads to scare all the hobos out of town. But, he showed us a pretty good sized knife he was carrying for protection just in case the railroad detectives were killing hobos, instead of getting the dead bodies from the morgue.

For the most part, they're really frightened, these hobos are. Sleeping out there in the open every night, so vulnerable and exposed. The ones that stay here will probably huddle closer together now. Go places in groups instead of walking around alone.

We talked to some of the other spectators, the ones that live and work at the top of the ravine. One woman who had just arrived, scurried back home when she heard what had happened to make sure her children were safe in the house. The man next to her was talking about the dog he was going to buy tomorrow so that no maniac got near his house.

Another woman we talked to told me she was going to tell the police about the strange man who had moved in several houses away from her. A couple of nights ago, she saw him carrying suspicious packages out of his house to his car. Also, she was going to have her husband put another bolt on the door before he went to work tonight.

I'm fascinated at the fear that has seized these solid, practical working class types who live around here. They're not exposed like the hobos. They have locks on their doors and neighbors around them, yet there is a clearly a feeling of panic. I have touched the lives of each of them.

And the police. I can't forget about them. At least for now, their lives are the most directly affected by my work. The poor stupid slobs are still obsessed with trying to identify the dead man. As though it would do them any good. They still haven't learned yet that I deliberately don't get to know the people I kill.

So, on they go, blindly following the same paths that led to failure before. Tracking down every clue to his identity. I swear to god, I'd call up the police department with his name and address if I knew it, just so they could realize that it doesn't make any difference who he was, anymore than it did with Andrassy or Flo.

It's very clear to me that the collective IQ of the cops working on this case doesn't match up to the intelligence I have in my little toe. And their illustrious leader Eliot Ness, on whose intellect I will reserve judgement, is too damn busy closing down gambling joints to match wits with me.

We stayed around for several hours. The police were starting to leave and the crowd of spectators was dwindling rapidly. Nobody wants to be in Kingsbury Run after dark anymore.

I felt pretty good and wanted to share my high spirits with someone else. I told Hanley I'd buy him a drink, so we went over to Porfello's. I looked around for Dennis and Jack, but neither was there. In fact, Porfello's was almost empty. I asked Tony why and he said Eliot Ness had everyone in the Third Precinct working overtime on the new murder case. How ironic, there I was, ready to celebrate my fame, and everybody I wanted to celebrate with was busy working on the case. At least I had Hanley for an hour or so before he had to leave.

Hanley is fascinated by what I've done. He feels that there is some special significance that all the people I killed were from the lowest levels of society. Hanley thinks the killer is some wealthy psychopath who kills the lower classes just for sport. I had to laugh. I just couldn't help it. It sounded so feudal.

I told him I didn't buy his theory. I said that the killer's way of selecting people was probably a practical matter. He may live among the prostitutes and drifters and find them the most accessible.

We stayed there for another hour or so until Hanley had to go work on his story. After I came back to the office, I got to thinking about our conversation I wish I understood why I get such a feeling of power when I kill those people. I can't imagine why it seems like such a victory to me. How can killing such losers be a victory over anything?

I suppose the psychologists would say the answer is somewhere in my childhood. And what a miserable childhood it was, living in terror of my father. But I've overcome that now. I'm no longer the powerless victim I was when I was young.

How I hated that man. Even in the poor neighborhood where we lived, I was so ashamed of him. Everybody made fun of him as he stumbled home drunk. Maybe it's he that I'm killing over and over. No, that's ridiculous.

The answer could be that I simply need power. It started out with craving that ultimate life and death power over a person. Now that I have experienced it to the fullest, it's not nearly as exciting as having power over an entire city like I have right now.

One result, although I hadn't really thought about it until now, of killing the kind of people that I do, is that the attention stays focused on the killing and not on the person killed. I must make sure that no one else in the future can be identified. That way, my audience won't be distracted by an ocean of sordid biographical trivia like they printed about Andrassy and Flo. I want the newspapers to stay focused on what I did, not the people I killed.

I think that's fair. None of those pathetic creatures could have ever hoped to receive the level of public attention that I have fashioned for them with my knife. Like an artist, I have taken human trash nobody cares about, or should care about for that matter, and created an excitement, mystery and drama which has captivated this entire city.

I have finally arrived. Not only have I made the front page again, but I have completely taken it over. At last, I am somebody in this city.

I can't say that I'm real pleased about the name Hanley has given me in his article. The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. It is kind of funny though when I think of them looking for a wild-eyed maniac in a long white apron, brandishing a butcher knife. Whatever happened to that dramatic flair of Hanley's when he named my first whore the Lady in the Lake?

The paper said the police department switchboards have been jammed with calls from people reporting suspicious behavior of their relatives and neighbors. Eliot Ness has ordered a special telephone number just for people to call in with tips.

After I read the paper this morning, I turned on the radio. The police told people to stay away from Kingsbury Run since the traffic was so jammed up. There were already over a thousand people watching the police drag that pool. I'll be damned. A thousand people would come just to watch them fishing in a pool of stagnant water.

I don't often do this, write more than once in a day, but today was so wonderful, I wanted to capture my feelings before they slipped away.

When I walked over to Kingsbury Run, it was mobbed. If there were a thousand people there this morning, the number had easily doubled by this afternoon. I'm drawing larger crowds than the Great Lakes Exposition.

This afternoon's Press gave three pages of coverage to me. There were pictures of where all the bodies had been found and photos of Andrassy and Flo. The article said that reporters were coming in from New York, Chicago, Washington and even London, England, to write stories about the murders. There has never been anything like this case in the whole country.

The papers are comparing me to Jack the Ripper and somebody named Henri Landru, who killed eleven women in France in the 1920's. I didn't realize that Jack the Ripper had only killed five prostitutes. How did he get so famous killing only five whores?

I'm sure it's the mystery of it that fascinates everyone. The unknown phantom that kills in the night. It strikes a cord in all of us. That's why Jack the Ripper is so famous and that Landru guy isn't. Jack the Ripper lives as a frightening legend, undiminished by facts and photographs of him. Whereas Landru, even though he killed twice as many people as the Ripper, was caught and the mystery was solved. His life was dissected, analyzed and put into a file somewhere. Case closed. I had never even heard of the guy.

It's thrilling to think that soon the whole world may be reading about what I've accomplished. If only Hanley had come up with some better name than The Mad Butcher. It has no style to it. Maybe I can suggest some other phrase to Hanley before this Mad Butcher idea gets too entrenched in people's minds.

I went to Dugan's tonight. Everybody in there was talking about Kingsbury Run. Bertie and Driscoll had walked over there this morning to watch the police, but they left when they saw Mullens there. So even Mullens couldn't stay away. That really makes me happy. Wouldn't he be terrified if he knew it was me behind all this excitement. He's damn lucky it's not his body in the pool.

Driscoll said the nurses are scared to death to wait for buses in the dark, so the hospital is going to put in some more lighting all around the grounds. They're going to have orderlies escort the nurses out to the bus stops and wait there with them.

Mullens told Driscoll that he was worried that all the publicity about the Kingsbury Run would scare away new patients. Already, the patients were complaining that nobody would visit them because they were afraid to go anywhere near the area.

It gives me so much pleasure to sit among my friends and listen to them talk about all the excitement I have created. The irony of it just tickles me. They postulate their half-baked theories about the killer when I sit there in the midst of them. It would never occur to them that it was Frank, the person they think they know so well.

Kingsbury Run was like a circus today. There must have been five thousand people. Street vendors were selling peanuts and hot dogs, and young boys were charging twenty five cents for a guided tour of where the bodies had been found.

The police had hired a diver who spent the day looking for the missing parts. Early today, they found the thighs and lower legs. That's all they are going to find, no matter how long they look, because I dumped the head and the arms into the lake, way east of the city, wrapped in a burlap bag, weighted down with rocks.

We stopped to talk to one of the railroad cops that Hanley knew. He said the hobos were leaving Kingsbury Run by the dozens. The railroad police had spread the word that they had relaxed their usual searches of the cars going out of the city. They wanted to encourage as many of them as possible to leave.

When it started to get dark, we went back to Porfello's and found Dennis finishing his supper. He was really pissed that he had to work on his day off. He said that the station was a complete madhouse. It seemed to him that everybody in the city knew who the killer might be. The phone hadn't stopped ringing all day and it was driving him nuts. Eliot Ness ordered every lead to be followed up, no matter how stupid or trivial.

Hanley and I went back with Dennis to take a look. On the first floor, there was a huge crowd of people waiting to give the police their tips. These people had tried unsuccessfully to get through to the station on the phone, and when that didn't work, they came in person. We pushed our way through the crowd and followed Dennis to the steps leading to the basement. There was a patrolman there on guard making sure that only authorized people passed.

We followed Dennis downstairs to a big double door where there were two other patrolmen standing guard. Dennis opened the door and let us take a look inside.

I guess I wasn't prepared to see a whole rag-tag army wall to wall inside the room. The room was not nearly large enough to hold the hundred or more people enclosed in there. I saw a couple of them urinating over in the corner of the room. No wonder it smelled so bad. And the cigarette smoke was so thick, I could hardly see the back of the room. There weren't more than a handful of chairs, so practically everybody was either standing up against the walls or sitting on the floor. A few of them had found enough room to stretch out and go to sleep.

It would take them days to question all those men. Dennis said there were even more down at the central station downtown. And the detectives just kept bringing them in. Now I could see now how Hogan was using his twenty five detectives on this case.

Hanley and I went back over to Porfello's and drank for another hour. Then he had to leave and get started on his article for the morning paper. I was in such good spirits that I went over to Dugan's and spent the rest of the evening with my friends over there.

As I read through the newspaper today, it started to look as though Eliot Ness has upstaged me with my own publicity. He's taken the public interest in the case and tried to turn it to his own advantage. I think it may have backfired on him though.

Just after dark last night, he sent down a bunch of cops to arrest all the hobos in that whole section of Kingsbury Run where the bodies had been found. The cops loaded dozens of them in paddy wagons, took them all down to Central Station, and arrested them. Bless my soul, if my dear cousin didn't get in on the act too. Somebody called up Michael on the phone last night and asked him to comment on what Ness did. Michael did more than that. He got in his car and went down to the station to see for himself.

In the interview, Michael really blasted Ness. He called the raid a blatant disregard for the rights of the poor and disadvantaged. Ness was creating a police state atmosphere by a senseless mass arrest of a group of wretched souls. Worse than that, Michael said, the poor vagrants were being held in a detention room without any sanitary facilities. Michael charged Ness with using the arrests to draw attention from the fact that he had allowed a mad killer to roam the streets for over a year.

Eliot and I made the papers again today. He denied the rumor that he had taken control of the Kingsbury Run case. He said that he's put his Assistant Safety Director in charge. That's odd. I had been given the impression that Ness was pulling all of the strings himself.

I went over to Porfello's tonight. Jack was there for a change, looking completely exhausted. He told me that this was the first free evening he's had since they found that recent body in Kingsbury Run.

I asked him if they had any good leads yet. He said he sure didn't know of any. They didn't have much to go on unless they were able to find the dead man's hands and head. Without some way to identify the man, they would strike out once again.

Jack said they were still chasing down hundreds of tips that people had given them. Then they had to question and fingerprint all the characters they'd picked up. It would take them another week or two just to finish up what they had.

Jack was hiding out in Porfello's so that his new partner, a guy named Pete, didn't find him. He told me that none of the other detectives would work with Pete because he was such a nut. Jack got the honors since he was the low man on the totem pole.

He said that this Pete was completely obsessed with these murders. He worked from real early in the morning until after midnight every night chasing down weirdos, even on his night off. Jack told him to go out tonight by himself, because he was going to rest.

Jack's partner must be a real pain in the ass. The night before they had worked until one o'clock in the morning. Then, when Jack finally got to sleep around one thirty, Pete called him and told him to get dressed because he needed help in bringing in some big hobo for questioning.

Hanley asked Jack what he thought about the meeting last night with Eliot Ness. Apparently, there had been some big powwow at Central Station. All the key people working on the case were there to compare what they knew about the killings. Jack said that after they reviewed all the information they had on the murders, they didn't have any more to go on than they did a year ago, when the murders first started.

I asked Jack what Eliot Ness thought of the case. Had he really turned it over to his assistant? Jack didn't know for sure, but Ness seemed to be annoyed by the whole thing. He told all of them that he wanted the case wrapped up right away so the department could get on to more important things.

Hanley said he'd heard the same thing. Rumor was the mayor told Ness he better get the case solved because it was an embarrassment to the administration, but Ness didn't want to shelve his pet project, the police department investigation, to work on some murder case.

So the newspaper was right. Eliot Ness is too busy to give me any more of his time. That's a decision he'll live to regret. I ought to put them next goddamn body right on his front steps. Although, I'm not so sure that it would make a difference.

He must have an odd set of values. Here is a murder case of national interest right here in his backyard. Instead of throwing himself into it, he prefers to spend all his time cleaning up his dirty little police department.

For someone who is such a publicity hound, I find his behavior most unusual. Those reporters from New York and London must be writing stories for their papers. Ness's police department investigation will never get that kind of coverage.

Maybe he's the kind of person who only gets involved with things he can control, like the investigation of the police department. He knows he can't control me. He doesn't even have a clue about how to catch me. In fact, I'm the one that's in control, not him. He and the police department only respond to what I do. I set their pace.

I think I'm beginning to understand why Ness is putting some distance between himself and this case. From everything I seen and heard about him, he wants to see quick, tangible results from what he does.

I think Jack may have summed it up. The police have no more to go on now than they did after they found the first body. They have nothing to show for all of the thousands of hours they've put into this investigation. All these silly little clues and vague suspicions, all the hundreds of weirdos they have locked up, all of it will lead nowhere. That must drive Eliot Ness nuts.

I was quite surprised to see the Plain Dealer this morning. I had been getting the feeling this investigation was starting to wind down again. I was dead wrong. The major headline on the front page was the coroner calling me a new insane type. That certainly got my attention.

The article went all the way to the bottom of the first page and was continued beyond that on another page. What generated it was the meeting the coroner called Monday night to review the facts of the case. I didn't realize last night when Jack and Hanley were talking just what a big meeting it was.

The coroner had called in the county pathologist, two anatomy professors, the court psychiatrist, the head guy in an insane asylum, Eliot Ness, Hogan, Cullitan and some of the cops working on the case. After several hours, they came to seven conclusions, some of which are idiotically obvious.

The best one was that they finally realized that the killings are the work of one man. The article didn't say anything about how long it took them to figure that out. Another startling conclusion was that the victims were all from the lower classes. Excellent police deductive powers. Next, they concluded that I was big and strong. That's pretty clear, considering that I carried those bodies down the hill into Kingsbury Run. Ness said I have the strength of an ox, a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one. They also decided that even though I am obviously demented that I may not be recognizably insane. I am apparently a new kind of unique nut. Very good. I wonder what they would think if they knew I spent my evenings conversing with cops and a newspaperman. I'm not any more obviously demented than they are.

Then they really pissed me off. They saw no evidence that I had any medical training! I find that absolutely unbelievable. They decided the knowledge of anatomy indicated I was a butcher or a hunter, not a physician.

I was furious and threw the paper across the room. Eventually, I calmed down and thought about it. Their ignorance really works in my favor. The worst thing that could happen right now is that the coroner decides the killer is a surgeon. Boy, would that put the heat on me. So, I guess, I am somewhat grateful for their stupidity. It helps keep me out of the electric chair.

The more I think about it, the more I can see why they would suspect a butcher rather than a doctor. Doctors, even surgeons, don't have any real experience in cutting people into pieces. They don't do that in the normal course of their work. Once in awhile, I had an amputation, but that was uncommon. There would be no reason to assume that a surgeon would be proficient in decapitating someone.

Whereas a butcher cuts bodies apart for a living. Even though he isn't familiar with human anatomy, he could become reasonably expert in cutting apart a human body in a short period of time just based on his experience with animal carcasses. Maybe it's not as dumb as I first thought.

Their last two conclusions make me more than a little nervous. They believe I live in or near Kingsbury Run and I have a workshop where I could kill without being discovered.

Damn. I should never have put four of them in that one spot. I should have known that putting so many of them in Kingsbury Run would draw too much attention to this neighborhood. For someone that's supposed to be so smart, I sure do some stupid things. One thing for sure, that's the last body I'm going to put in Kingsbury Run.

I stopped over to see Kathleen this morning. I had a couple of hours free before my first patient. It had been almost two weeks since I'd seen her.

There were some things weighing heavily on my mind that I just had to talk over with her. Things we both experienced when we were growing up.

As close as Kathleen and I have always been, we never really talked much about our childhood. How it affected us. I don't quite know why we never talked about it. Perhaps until now, it didn't seem important to discuss. Or maybe it's a holdover from what Maureen drilled into us as kids.

All the time we were growing up, Maureen impressed on us that we were never to talk to anybody about Father's drinking or his violence. Not to our friends, our teachers, not even our cousins. I don't think that Kathleen or I ever questioned Maureen's Rule of Silence, we just obeyed it as best we could.

As I look back on it, I think Maureen was trying to protect our family from the shame his drinking brought down on us. It was so embarrassing to have all the neighbors talking about the things he did in public, like pissing in the front yard one summer evening when everybody was outside to see it. At least we could be quiet about the things he did in private.

After all those years of silence, I just had to talk to Kathleen about it. I had to know how it affected her. Then perhaps, I can understand better how it has affected me.

It wasn't easy getting Kathleen to talk. Forget it, she told me. It's in the past. It's over and done with, she insisted. Besides, she said, it was wrong to speak ill of the dead.

I told her I didn't want to talk about Father. There was no point in it. I wanted to talk about us. I promised her that if she talked to me just this once, I'd never bring it up again.

I told her I was trying to remember exactly how I felt when Father got so violent. When he'd beat us over the slightest little thing. I wanted to know how she felt when that happened. Was she angry? Was she sad? Did she feel guilty?

Kathleen said she remembers that Father used to hit her, but she couldn't remember the details much. She said she had done as much as she could to block it out of her memory. All she could tell me was she felt numb, like she'd just shut herself down emotionally.

I told her I often felt that way too. I said it was almost like an emotional state of shock, like the physical shock that happens when a person is severely injured. Except that our emotional shock was chronic. It was an everyday part of our lives when we were in that house.

I remembered how happy I was when I was fourteen and got a job loading boxes at the plant a few blocks away. It was a difficult job and every cent I made went right to Maureen for essentials, but it gave me a reason for not coming home after school. It was my only release from the tension of living there.

But Kathleen had to come home right after school and help Maureen. The two of them had to deal with Father for much of the day. And then, when Maureen got married, Kathleen had to take care of Father all by herself while I worked. It must have been awful for her, spending so much time in that house with him.

I asked her if she felt that we were different from other people because of what we'd gone through as kids. I expected her to say no, but she didn't say anything. She got up from the table and made some more coffee. I could tell by the look on her face that she was thinking hard about my question.

Kathleen came back to the table and sat down again. She sat there for a few minutes in silence. Then she sighed. I could tell she didn't like these soul searching conversations.

She started out by saying that she didn't know how the rest of us were affected, but she felt she was different from other people. She wasn't sure whether to blame Father for it or not.

Kathleen said it was difficult to describe, this difference that she felt. She had never really tried to put it into words before, but she didn't think she was normal emotionally. She said it wasn't anything other people would notice, but she was very aware of it.

She said that she didn't have the same depth of feelings other people had. When people around her cried at funerals, she didn't feel any grief. When others were happy at weddings and birthday parties, she felt nothing. It was as though she was completely covered with a hard shell. Emotions didn't get in and emotions didn't get out.

She said the craziest thing about it was that it was different with animals. She told me she cried for days when the dog next door got killed by a car. She said she felt worse about the dog than when Uncle Dominic died. She begged me never to tell that to anyone.

She said she wished she could make herself be like everyone else, but she couldn't. She just wasn't normal. It was like there was something dead in her soul.

Kathleen said there was something else that made her feel different from other people, something inside her that kept her from getting too close to anybody. Even Billy, she said. She didn't get real angry when he treated her badly and she didn't feel anything when he treated her well. She didn't love him and she didn't hate him. She just lived with him.

And it wasn't just Billy either, she said. She felt that way about most everybody, even Maureen. Then she started to get all teary and reached across the table and held my hand. She said that I was the only person in the world she felt close to. And the only people she felt she really loved were me and Ann.

I held on to her hand and told her I understood more than she realized. I said she was the only person I'd ever felt love for, except for Mama, and my boys.

As painful as it was for her to look into herself, I think she was relieved to finally talk to someone about it. A relief I will never have. How strange it is that we who are so close have kept so many important secrets from each other.

Last night was one of the most enjoyable nights I have had in a long time. It started at Porfello's with a terrific plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Jack and Dennis were there with me too, eating their dinners.

Jack was very tired. He had deep circles under his eyes. He sat there quietly and ate his sandwich, while Dennis and I talked about what to do with Dennis's bad shoulder.

I told Jack I didn't see him in Porfello's much any more. Which was it that kept him away, his partner or his girlfriend? He sighed and said he wished it was his girlfriend.

Dennis laughed and teased him about his partner. Dennis said Pete was becoming the laughing stock of the department. He urged Jack to tell me the latest Pete story, but Jack didn't want to talk about it anymore. Dennis kept egging him on, saying he couldn't do the story justice himself.

Finally, Jack agreed, but only if I bought him another beer, which I did. This was obviously a story Jack had told a number of times recently and he had to get himself geared up to tell it right. He took a couple of swigs of his beer and a big smile spread across his face.

Jack said it had all started with the big meeting Eliot Ness had with the coroner and a number of the detectives, right after they found the last body in Kingsbury Run. During that meeting, while they were theorizing on how to catch the killer, Coroner Pearse had come up with an idea. Why not have the police dress up as hobos and mingle among them in Kingsbury Run late at night? Maybe they could bait the killer into attacking one of them.

Everybody in the room laughed at the coroner's suggestion, except Pete, who thought it was a great idea. Fortunately, Pete and Jack had been so busy chasing down leads people had called in, that Pete didn't have time to try out the idea.

Last night, Pete told Jack to dress himself as a hobo and they would go down to Kingsbury Run around eleven o'clock. Pete picked him up and they drove down to the area where the latest body was found.

Jack said it was fairly quiet down there, with only a few hobo fires burning. Pete searched around and found a spot by the railroad tracks, a distance away from the nearest hobo camp. He pointed to some big sumac bushes and told Jack to hide behind them. Jack was to keep an eye on him while Pete walked up and down the railroad tracks.

Then his partner started to take off his clothes. Jack asked him what the hell he was doing taking his clothes off in Kingsbury Run. As he stripped down to his underwear, Pete explained that since the killer was a sex pervert, the way to attract him was to walk around in his underwear.

Jack wished he had a picture of the short fat man with his big stomach protruding, as he paraded up and down the tracks in his long johns. After this had been going on for about twenty minutes, he heard two hobos coming toward them. When the hobos saw the eerie figure in long white underwear walking in the moonlight, they were scared and ran off.

Dennis and I started to laugh, but Jack stopped us. Wait, he said, it gets better. He said that Pete walked along the tracks for another half hour when he saw several flashlights coming toward Pete. Then all of a sudden, about twelve men converged on Pete with their guns drawn. The hobos had called the railroad detectives who had moved in to capture the nut who was walking around in his underwear. Jack watched as Pete struggled and tried to break free. The railroad police had wrestled him down to the ground. By then, a couple dozen hobos had gathered around closer to watch the arrest.

Jack was absolutely mortified when he had to explain to the railroad police that this was his partner. He said that the railroad detectives just hooted at Pete when they found out who he was. Even the hobos were whistling and making cute little noises at him. It should have been a very humbling experience for Pete, but apparently it wasn't. Jack said Pete is so hard headed that he wanted to try it again in another part of Kingsbury Run tonight. Only this time, he'd let the railroad detectives know first what he was going to do.

Are you going with him tonight? I asked Jack. Hell no, he said. He didn't care if the department fired him, he was never going to get drawn into such a dumb idea again. Besides, this was supposed to be his day off and he'd already worked nine hours. He wasn't going to work another minute until he got some sleep. He said he was hiding in Porfello's, hoping his partner didn't know where to find him.

We drank for another half hour when, all of sudden, Jack ducked down and tried to avoid being seen by the man who had just come into the bar. I knew at once who it must be.

The short, heavy man sauntered over to the table. His suit looked like something I'd expect to find thirty years ago in a rummage sale. He had on a wide cabbage leaf tie with brilliant red and yellow flowers. He wore his black hat with the brim partially down over the right eye, like a movie version of a private detective.

If anything, his physical attributes were a good match for his clothes. Together, they produced an outstandingly unattractive figure. He had a round, beefy face with a long broad nose, thick lips and little slit eyes. His hair was almost shaved on the sides, making his large ears stick out all the more.

When Jack introduced me to him, Pete was wearing a broad, almost idiotic, grin. Dennis made a big fuss over his tie, complimenting him profusely on the colors, and winking at Jack and me on the side. Pete was very pleased with the compliment and thanked Dennis. I could sense that Jack's partner was not overly gifted intellectually.

Pete was very excited. He had a tip from a prostitute about a guy who cuts the heads off animals to get his kicks. That was just the kind of pervert they were looking for, he told me.

He looked over at Jack and told him they had some work to do. Jack groaned and tried to convince Pete that this lead could wait until tomorrow, but Pete wouldn't hear of it. It had to be tonight.

I told Pete that if Jack wouldn't go with him, I'd be happy to take his place. At first, Pete wasn't particularly warm to the idea, but when Jack continued to refuse, he looked over at me again. I imagine Pete was thinking that it might not hurt to have someone my size along with him in case there was any trouble.

He made one last effort to convince Jack to go with him, but Jack held his ground. Okay, he told me, you can come along. Dennis winked at me as we got up from the table to leave.

As out of shape as the fat little man was, he walked fast, almost bursting with energy. In a couple of minutes we were in the police station parking lot where he had parked his car.

He asked me if I knew how to use a gun and I told him I did. He pulled out a pistol from under the front seat and told me to put it in my pocket. If there was any trouble, I was never to tell anybody the gun was his. I agreed and we got in the car.

Pete said the guy lived just off Cedar around 39th Street. He handed me a scrap of paper with the address and told me to hang onto it.

Then he took off like a bat out of hell. The man drove like a maniac. I commented on it diplomatically and he just laughed. He said he was an ambulance driver years ago before he joined the police force. Now I've seen some ambulance drivers in my time, but never one that drove as recklessly as Pete.

The address was an old apartment building in a sad state of disrepair. I could barely make out the names of the tenants next to the mailboxes. John Derman, the man we came to see, lived on the third floor. The front door to the building wasn't locked, so we walked up the two flights of stairs and knocked on Derman's door. From the hallway, we could hear loud classical music playing inside. It was Wagner, I think.

Pete banged on the door and told him to open up. The door opened on a chain and a face peered out. Pete told him it was the police. He repeated the word police in a surprised voice and undid the chain.

The door opened to an enormous mountain of a man. He was at least three inches taller than me and a good seventy pounds heavier. John Derman was about forty-five with a thick head of prematurely gray hair and a mustache to match. He was nicely dressed in a white shirt with the collar open at the top. With his neatly combed hair and horn-rimmed glasses, I thought he looked like a businessman who had just come home from work.

Pete flashed his badge and barged into the apartment. I followed him in and closed the door behind us. The apartment really surprised me. It reminded me of a professor's apartment that I had visited when I was in school. While there wasn't a lot of furniture, what there was of it was good quality. On every wall was a painting, mostly framed prints of French Impressionists. There were hundreds of books, neatly shelved in the bookcases that lined several walls.

Pete looked uncouth and out of place in this refined living room, but that didn't bother Pete at all.. He ordered Derman to turn off the music and sit down at the dining room table. Derman did what he was told and sat down at the table in the small dining room that adjoined the living room. Not knowing whether I should sit or stand, I decided to do whatever Pete did. Pete remained standing, pacing around now and then, while he talked to Derman. I stood farther back, leaning up against the dining room wall.

Well, he said to Derman accusingly, I hear you're fond of chickens. Derman looked frightened, but said nothing. I know all about it, Derman, Pete said, so don't play dumb with me. Why don't you just tell me and my pal here just what it is you do with chickens.

I had trouble keeping a straight face. I couldn't understand why the police were interested in a guy who had a thing for chickens. In the bar when Pete said the man cut the heads off animals, I had imagined dogs or cats, not poultry.

Derman started to talk. For a man his size, he was remarkably timid and soft spoken. Pete had told me on the way over that Derman was a truck driver, but he must have been mistaken. Derman wasn't like any truck driver I knew.

It's not illegal, he whined. What I do isn't against the law. I don't even kill the chickens. It's the prostitutes who do it. Derman looked like he was going to cry. His bottom lip quivered noticeably.

I don't give two farts in hell if you kill the chickens or not, Pete bellowed at him. I just want to hear about how you do it. I'll decide what's against the law and what isn't.

Derman didn't respond and Pete was getting angry. Look, pal, he told him, if you don't tell me here, we'll take you down to the station and lock you up for a few days.

No, don't do that, Derman begged. I have to go to work tomorrow. I'll tell you what you want to know. He propped up his head with his elbows resting on the table and started to rub his temples with his fingers. In a low voice, he mumbled his story to us.

Every couple of months, he'd have this real strong urge and he'd buy some live chickens. He'd take the chickens and a big butcher knife to this whorehouse off Central. They knew him there and were used to doing what he asked. He'd have two prostitutes undress. One of them would rub his penis, while the other one beheaded the chickens. Sometimes, he'd have one of the prostitutes rub the knife against his throat, but that was all.

That's not all! Pete roared at him. What about when you have sex with the chickens? I want to know about that.

I couldn't believe my ears. What a weird guy. I tried so hard not to laugh. Fortunately, Pete didn't see the grin on my face. He was so serious. And so was Derman.

Derman turned in his chair to face us. He explained that he couldn't really have sex with the chickens, although he had tried once. He said that its orifice, as he called it, was too small. He'd just have the prostitute hold the chicken while he rubbed his penis between the chicken's wing and its body, until he climaxed.

Was that before or after it was beheaded? Pete wanted to know. Derman looked at Pete with pronounced distaste. Before, Derman said firmly, always before. It would be disgusting afterwards, he said. Pete agreed somberly.

So you started out with chickens and moved up to humans, Pete said matter-of-factly. Derman looked puzzled. Then Pete took some photographs out of his coat pocket and spread them out on the table in front of Derman. They were morgue photos of the body parts pulled out of the lake and Kingsbury Run.

Our poor chicken lover was horrified by what he saw. He turned them over, unable to look at them any longer. Pete turned them face up again. Come on, he said roughly. It didn't bother you when you cut them up. Why should it bother you now?

Derman gasped. You don't think I did this, he cried, jumping to his feet. Pete pushed him back down in the chair again and told him to stay put.

We've got witnesses who saw you, Pete lied, thrusting one of the pictures in his face. Derman mumbled that wasn't possible. He could never hurt anybody. Then he started to gag. It looked to me like he was going to vomit.

Pete kept at him though, oblivious to the man's distress. He laid out all the pictures again in front of him on the table. Then it happened and, boy, did it happen. Derman threw up all over the table and the pictures and Pete's coat sleeve. What a stinking mess it was.

I think you ought to let him alone for a few minutes, I suggested to Pete. I went into the kitchen to find some towels for Pete to clean himself off.

Let's get out of here, Pete said in disgust, wiping off his sleeve with the wet towel I gave him. So we left Derman and the pictures and went back out to the car. Pete couldn't stand the smell of his coat, so he took it off and put it in the trunk.

He dropped me off at Porfello's and went home. Dennis had already left, but Jack was there drinking with Hanley. I told Jack I really liked his partner, except that I thought he was wasted on the police force. With the right gag writer, he could put Laurel and Hardy out of business.

I have been away from this too long. I need it, like a medicine, to keep me well. It fills the dark empty space inside me, which stays just beyond the reach of my reason and understanding.

Tonight was almost as good as it has ever been. She was lovely, small and childlike, like the Lady in the Lake. Her long, silky brown hair smelled so good while I held her to me. Her skin was soft and smooth as I ran my hands over her body.

I don't know what got into me tonight, but I took her twice before it was all over. She got me so excited, I just couldn't get enough. So pliant and yielding, and so very vulnerable.

And at the end, she scarcely made any struggle. She surrendered completely to me. It was just glorious. What a rare and wonderful pleasure. I'm sorry now it has come to an end.

I have been particularly cautious tonight, waiting until quite late to take her down to the car. I put her head and arms in a burlap sack with a couple of heavy rocks to keep it at the bottom of the lake. The two pieces of her torso I just threw into the water. At least one of them will float to the surface and wash up on the shore as they have before. The torso will be enough for Dr. Gerber, the new coroner, to tell that I have been busy again.

I hate to do this to Jack just when his goofy partner was starting to leave him alone at night. Sometimes I feel like one of