The Unclaimed Victim Page 11

  “You could say that. Been here a couple of years now, I guess. You live nearby?”

  She nodded her head as she calculated the risk of going into the building with a total stranger. “Yeah, sort of.”

  “Well look at that, we’re neighbors.” He propped up the grocery bag on his hip and held out his hand. “I’m Jimmy.”

  She made a quick study of his clean hands and clear, kind eyes before offering hers back. “I’m Kris. So you, uh, really live here?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “But how does that work exactly? Doesn’t somebody own it?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the rent like?”

  “You could say we have an arrangement.”

  “An arrangement?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “If they kick me out, I’ll leave.”

  She nodded her head and looked up at the peeling paint of the window frames. “So they let you live here rent-free. Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask the owner.”

  “Who’s that?” She frowned. Dad?

  “Some old hippie chick. I don’t know her too well, but I really don’t think she minds. I’m not the only one livin’ up in here. There’s at least twenty more. Most of ’em keep to themselves.”

  Her jaw fell slack in disappointment at the word her and then at the thought of a pack of homeless people holed up inside. She’d lived across the street for nearly a year and had never seen a soul. Is my dad here too? She couldn’t picture him there. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would the owner just let people live here for free?”

  “She might be crazy,” Jimmy laughed. “What do I care? She considers this an artists’ colony. There’s a few painters hangin’ around, I guess. It’s a sweet deal for me. You wanna come in?”

  “I’ve never seen this gate open before,” she said, hoping to extend their conversation instead. “I must’ve passed by it a million times. It was always chained shut and padlocked.”

  “Jill opens the gate whenever she feels like having company.”

  “Jill?”

  “Yeah. You ever see her? Weird old lady, about so tall.” Jimmy put his hand out at his shoulder to a height at least six inches shorter than her father.

  She shook her head. Old lady. It doesn’t make sense.

  “She doesn’t like people. She’s not mean really, she just keeps to herself and does her art. She made all these gates, you know.”

  Kris stopped to look at the twisted iron bars. “Really?”

  “She’s good, right? Gotta love a girl that welds. I talked to her once or twice about it, but she doesn’t say much. She opens the gate up every once in a while. We’ve decided it’s her way of inviting us to have a little party, so that’s what we do.”

  “Maybe she’s just having something big worked on or delivered,” Kris speculated out loud, then clenched her teeth.

  “Maybe. Who cares? You comin’?” Jimmy held out his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman.

  Kris glanced up at the darkening sky. Don’t be stupid, Kritter. “I probably shouldn’t. I’m not really in the partying mood. This has been a really . . . really bad week.”

  “Hey, chin up.” Jimmy reached out and brushed her chin with his fingertips. “Come and have a beer. I promise I won’t bite.”

  You don’t know this guy, her father warned from his perch in her mind. Sure, he seems nice, but he could be a rapist. She tried to stall. “So, how do you get inside when the gate’s not unlocked?”

  “Shit. There’s a hundred ways into a building.” He waved his hand at her silly question. “Here you just have to know which fence to hop. Which window’s open.”

  She scanned the bank of windows high above the street, then eyed the wrought iron fence wrapping around the corner. “If you say so.”

  “What? You never broke a rule? You one of those good girls, does everything they’re told?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “No. I wouldn’t say that.” But every time she broke a rule, she’d be terrified her father would find out.

  Kris realized she was running out of time to decide. Jimmy would get sick of teasing her and leave her standing there in the cold. She tried to convince herself to go home, but the thought of going back to her creepy haunted house all alone was unbearable. She hated to admit it, but she’d never felt so lonely in her life. Besides, she reasoned, if her father was hiding inside somewhere, this was her best chance to find him. “Okay. Just one beer.”

  “Deal.” He flashed a sincere smile and ushered her inside.

  A fat candle left burning on the first landing was the only light to be had once they passed through the gate and into the shadow of the factory. Jimmy led her up the concrete steps past the candle and around a corner to the next set of stairs. They passed through another iron gate into a narrow courtyard flanked by dead potted plants. Snowflakes fell onto the floor of the garden from the narrow rectangle of sky framed by three stories of red bricks and dark windows towering overhead. Buttressed balconies looked down at them from the tallest tower. Through the black iron gate straight ahead, she could just see into a larger courtyard.

  Jimmy led her under a brick arch that formed a second-story breezeway between two separate wings of the complex and then around a tight corner. “Watch your head,” he warned and then ducked into a narrow tunnel that led out of the snow and down a corridor that ended in a half-sized door. It sat propped open, and the glow of another candle burned somewhere just inside. Jimmy crouched through the low door and jumped down onto the floor on the other side. “Here, let me give you a hand.”

  Kris took it and had to sit down on the edge of the door frame to touch the floor inside. “Who designed this place, Willy Wonka?” she asked, staring back at the half-height door set three feet above the floor.

  “We call it the hobbit door,” Jimmy laughed. “Isn’t it great? This place is a funhouse. When the old factory closed back in 1959, it never reopened. Lucky for us.” He picked up his bag of groceries and continued down a long hallway lined with dark wood panels and glazed bricks.

  The hall grew darker as they went. “How do you keep track of where you’re going?” she asked, glancing out a window onto a street she didn’t quite recognize. College Avenue? Jimmy didn’t slow down long enough for her to figure it out.

  “You get used to it.” He turned into another stairwell.

  She scrambled after him. “Why aren’t there any lights on?”

  “Jill only pays to keep part of the building running. We have electricity and running water, at least some of the time. The rest is supposed to be sealed off.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s falling apart, in case you hadn’t noticed. I doubt she can afford to keep up with all of it. You gotta just let some things go, you know?”

  “So she let this part of the building go,” Kris repeated and stared up at the cracked and missing concrete under the stairs directly above her. Chunks had fallen away, scattering gravel on the treads below her feet. Water stains dripped down the slanted ceiling. Rusting bars peeked out from the broken surfaces that resembled parts of the moon. “Is it . . . is this safe?”

  “Probably not.” He stopped and smiled up at her stricken face. “Scared?”

  She shook her head, but they both knew she was lying.

  “I like to think of myself as an urban explorer,” he continued.

  “An explorer?” she laughed awkwardly. Is that code for squatter?

  “Yeah. Like a discoverer of forgotten places. I take nothing but pictures. That’s the rule.” Jimmy opened a door that led through a narrow courtyard. “They built the Harmony Mission Press in phases, just adding on to what was there. No one has a full set of blueprints for any of it, I’ve looked. This place is full of doorways to nowhere.” He opened a door coated in cracking paint and showed her the walled-up opening directly behind it. “Nuts, right? I could spend a lifetime in here.”

  Kris stopped and gazed back out into the courtyard behind her. No
ne of the windows were lit. There was no sign of her father or anyone else. Jimmy kept walking farther and farther into the darkness as she debated turning back. Do I even remember the way?

  “Jimmy?” she turned and called after him. “Jimmy, wait.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Kris passed by a window and looked out at the piles of bricks and windows stacked above her for any sign of where they were. There was only a puzzle piece of sky. She nearly went sprawling on her ass as she stumbled down a step set in the middle of the corridor.

  There was no sign of Jimmy anywhere. Kris passed by one door and then another. Then the hallway forked in three separate directions. A dull glow fell through a bank of transom windows along the top of the wall. They were too high up to see out and get her bearings.

  The seeds of panic took root as she turned around, trying to choose a way to go or remember the way they’d come in.

  “Jimmy!” she hissed.

  Somewhere down the hall, a door clicked open.

  Kris sucked in a breath and backed herself down the adjacent corridor away from the noise. Jimmy didn’t live alone. Other people inhabited in the building. Homeless people. Footsteps padded across the floor ahead of her. With her heart pounding her ears, she inched her way farther down the hall until her back pressed up against a door. Shit.

  Reaching behind, she felt for the handle. There wasn’t one.

  “Who’s there?” a voice whispered from the darkness ahead. “I told you mothafuckas to stay out of my hallway.”

  Smells of cigarette smoke and garbage wafted down the corridor to where she stood. Kris put a hand over her mouth and debated whether to scream or run or both.

  A flashlight clicked on and shined right in her face, blinding her. She held up her hands on instinct.

  “Who da hell is you?” the voice demanded.

  “Hey, Maurice! What’s happenin’!” Jimmy came trotting down the adjoining hallway. Kris had never been so relieved to see another person in her life. “Where’d you go, girl?”

  “I told you mothafuckers to stay out my hallway!” Maurice said again. “And she don’t even live here.”

  “Take it easy, man. This is a friend of mine. Here.” Jimmy pulled a beer out of the grocery bag and handed it to the disheveled man wielding the flashlight. “My deepest apologies.”

  Maurice snatched the beer like a hermit crab and scuttled back down the hall.

  Jimmy nudged her shoulder. “You alright?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” She wasn’t even close to all right, but she didn’t want to be rude.

  “C’mon.” He led her through the doorway into a concrete stair tower. The steady thump of music greeted them as they climbed up a set of stairs to a blank door. “You ready to have some fun?” Jimmy gave her a slow smile and looked her up and down.

  Her pulse had slowed down from fight-or-flight to a mild panic. She forced a smile and nodded.

  Jimmy swung open the door. “Welcome to my house.”

  SIXTH HACKED BODY

  FOUND IN KINGSBURY RUN

  Head, Legs and Arms Missing

  The two legs, from knee to foot, of the decapitated murder victim were found in Kingsbury Run a few yards from the spot the torso members were found. Detective Orley May ordered the run searched in a hunt for the head and the missing arms.

  —Cleveland Press, September 10, 1936, p. 1

  CHAPTER 16

  April 6, 1938

  Dinner at the Harmony Mission proceeded much as it had the night before. When the time came for Brother Milton to address the dining hall after the usual prayers, all the sisters dropped their forks in anticipation.

  “The Good Lord smiled on our work today, Sisters.”

  A low murmur of approval swept through the tables.

  The reverend lifted his eyes to silence them. “Brother Noah Wenger tells me God has smiled on our gardens this year. They survived the winter in good stead, and with hard work we should expect an abundant crop of corn, carrots, potatoes, and beets.”

  Wenger stood up next to Brother Milton and took the slightest bow as though he had anything to do with it. All he had done that afternoon was walk around and supervise the women as they slaved in the dirt. That and butcher a pig. Bloody entrails fell out again in a dark corner of Ethel’s mind.

  “And Brother Wenger also tells me we suffered a lapse of faith in the fields today.”

  Dozens of eyes turned to Ethel, and she felt a wave of blood rush to her face.

  “Sisters, be mindful as we do God’s work that we must hold on to our faith as a life raft in a stormy sea. Temptation lurks all around us.” He held up a hand as though he were some sort of wizard casting a spell on them all. “Hold fast to the Lord, Sisters, lest you give in to the lesser voices in our lives. The voices that tempt us to lay down our labors and seek out our own pleasures.”

  He opened his arms to Ethel and continued the sermon. “Voices that lure us away from the Lord to decadence, to vice, and to sin. They are all around us, Sisters. We must not listen. Only the Lord can guide us through the storm. Only the Lord can answer the questions in our hearts. Only the Lord holds the answers . . . Sister Hattie, come and join me.”

  Ethel stole a glance at Mary Alice across the table. The girl had gone pale, but she nodded back. A wave of whispers followed Ethel as she approached the front of the dining hall. The numbing effects of the laudanum had faded, and she could barely hide the tremble in her limbs.

  Brother Milton wrapped a heavy arm around her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Sisters, let us pray,” he bowed his head. “Our Lord, who art in heaven, grant us your wisdom and your grace as we seek to redeem our good sister. May your judgment and her penance cleanse her of her irreverent pride. Cleanse her of all her sins as she repents in your name. Amen.”

  “Amen,” murmured the crowd.

  Ethel caught sight of Brother Wenger out of the corner of her eye. He said “amen” the loudest.

  The reverend turned to her and grabbed her by both shoulders and said, “Sister Hattie, do you take Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”

  She wiped all expression from her face, forcing herself to lower her eyes in deference and nod.

  “Do you reject Satan in all his forms from within and without?”

  She nodded again.

  “Do you agree to repent your sins to the Lord until you are able to bring Him freely into your heart?”

  She bit her lips and nodded. The angry welts on Mary Alice’s back flashed their warning in her mind. Run, they said, but her feet wouldn’t move.

  The reverend released her and turned to the congregation. “Sisters, let us pray that through penance and prayer, our lost sister Hattie finds her home.”

  “Amen,” they agreed.

  “Brother Wenger, please show Sister Hattie the way,” the reverend said and put Ethel’s hand in his. The naked pig thrashed and spun on its hook somewhere deep inside her.

  In the sea of staring faces, all Ethel could see was Mary Alice. She looked terrified.

  Brother Wenger led Ethel away from the dining hall and down a corridor she hadn’t seen before. He released her hand to open a narrow door. It led outside into a rectangular courtyard. Brick walls and heavy stones towered overhead, framing the gray sky. A cold dusting of rain fell on her shoulders as he pulled her down a narrow stairway and through another door.

  As he led her down a maze of hallways and through unmarked doors, Ethel mused that whoever had constructed the building couldn’t seem to make up their minds—up, down, inside, outside. Then a more sinister thought occurred to her as they passed a bank of windows looking out into another hidden light well. Maybe it was deliberately built to trap people like her.

  She wanted to ask where they were going and what would happen to her when they got there, but she’d promised Mary Alice her silence. Her fingers itched for her knife, buried in the mattress of her room somewhere above them.

  Wenger didn’t speak. His firm grip on her arm left no d
oubt—she was his prisoner. The instinct to kick him in the groin and run gathered its springs inside her, but he kept moving them onward, deeper into the building until she lost all sense of where they were.

  He pushed open a door only tall enough for a dwarf and pulled her inside. The stair landing behind the door wasn’t wide enough to fit them both, and he pushed her off balance onto the first step down.

  “After you, Sister,” he said in a low voice.

  She strained to hear in his tone what would happen next. He didn’t sound angry or violent. There was no whip in his hand. It was too dark in the stairwell to check his face for that smug grin of his, but she could hear a sense of satisfaction in his voice. He enjoyed his role as disciplinarian and the power he held over her. She wondered again as he manhandled her down the stairs if it was his voice she’d heard grunting and panting in the room above hers the night before. It would work in her favor, she decided, if that was the sort of punishment he had in mind.

  Better me than poor little Mary Alice.

  Ethel decided to play the part of the terrified virgin for him as though he were a proper paying customer. Rapists wanted to hear their girls whimper and cry and cower. They liked the taking more than the sex. If she cried and pleaded for him to stop, he might not hurt her much. She let him push her down the steps one at a time in front of him. The glow of a window somewhere far overhead left only enough light to see a few feet in front of her as they went. Twenty-two steep concrete steps wound down deeper into the dark. She gripped the cold stone wall to her right and the thin metal-plated guardrail to her left while Wenger stayed close behind her, gripping her shoulder, steering her forward.

  The bottom of the stairs ended in another door. He nudged her to the side and unlocked it with a key. Cold, damp air wafted up from the dirt floor on the other side as he swung the door open. It was some sort of cellar. He flipped on a light switch, and a single bulb flickered to life down a long, narrow corridor. Wooden doors set into the damp stone walls lined either side.

  He picked up her hand in his and led her down the hallway to the third door on the left. She counted twelve in all as he fumbled with another key, his hands trembling in his excitement. Finally, the thick wood swung open. This is it. She peeked into the tiny dark closet on the other side. This is our destination.