The Unclaimed Victim Read online

  “Sister Mavis distributed more pamphlets and reached more lost souls today than ever before. May we all see the glory of Christ in her mission. Praise be to God.”

  “Praise be.”

  The man called out the names of a few more needy women and praised God for working their hands like a puppeteer. Then the tone changed. “Finally, it has come to my attention that the devil has been walking among us, Sisters. Lucifer has been whispering in our ears. Complaints, idle gossip, and foul humors have been winding themselves like a serpent around us and between us.”

  The man’s reproachful gaze scanned every face in the room for emphasis. Ethel rolled her eyes. She’d met enough horrible men to know the devil didn’t whisper. Brother Milton paused an instant too long on Ethel’s bored expression, and she felt the room shrink. She dropped her head as if in prayer, but she suspected it was too late. She’d been spotted.

  The man continued with his hellfire and damnation, but now she was certain he was talking only to her. “If you dare not speak the words out loud to Sister Frances or to me, you must not utter them in dark corners. Satan is listening, my sisters. Satan hears the betrayals in your hearts and in your minds and takes root there. Would you let the serpent enter these halls?”

  “No, Brother,” the sisters chanted.

  Brother Milton looked right at Ethel and said, “I see we have a new face among us. Welcome, Sister, welcome. Come and let us meet you.”

  Shit. Ethel kept her head down but forced herself to stand. A cold hand grabbed hers. It belonged to the pale girl that stood sentry next to the only man in the room. She pulled Ethel in her bare feet with the eight dollars still stuffed in her drawers to the front of the room. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Tell us your name, Sister.”

  Ethel bit her lip and debated answering the question by giving the tiny priest in his pants a nice squeeze.

  Mary Alice sprang up and called weakly, “Forgive her, Brother Milton. She has taken a vow of silence. She won’t speak again until the Lord speaks to her.”

  “Ah.” The fat man gave her a nod of approval, his eyes bent with sympathy. “And do you speak for her, Sister Mary Alice?”

  “Yes, Brother. She is my cousin Hattie. Her family has strayed from the faith.” Mary Alice pressed her lips together and hung her head.

  Apparently that was all the explanation needed. Ethel looked out at the ten tables of women now gazing up at her as one of their own and wondered how many had run away and how many had been cast out. Most of them were too old to marry and too old for whoring. They looked like orphans, every last one of them.

  “I see.” Brother Milton put a heavy hand on Ethel’s shoulder. “Welcome to our family, Hattie.”

  Then he did the unthinkable. He pulled her into his arms and gave her a warm hug. Her own arms just hung limply in astonishment. It was far more startling than if he’d stripped her naked right there. A well of emotions she didn’t even remember rose up inside her, and it took all her strength not to shove him away and run for the door.

  He released her just in time. “There is no greater calling than a call to the Lord. Hattie, may you hear His song in your soul, and may you sing again with God in your heart. Sisters, let us pray . . .”

  The room bowed its collective head and began pleading with Jesus the Savior to rescue poor Hattie. Ethel feigned prayer and scanned the roomful of ugly dresses until they fell on a face that wasn’t bowed and praying.

  A young man stood in the far corner by the kitchen door. He wore a plain suit and wide-brimmed hat much like Brother Milton’s. He gazed right into Ethel’s eyes and gave her a smile. She’d seen that sort of smile before. The landlord had on the same smile the first time he’d caught her alone in the apartment.

  Time to pay the rent, it said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Somewhere deep inside the monstrous Harmony Mission, a pair of footsteps creaked across the ceiling above Ethel’s bed. She opened her swollen eyes and stared into the darkness of her cell. Trying to sleep was useless. Night sweats prickled her skin as the alcohol evaporated out of her pores. Her heart hammered her ribs while her brain beat against her skull in rhythm. Her trembling hands rubbed her legs to soothe the screaming nerve endings and scatter the phantom spiders crawling over her skin. The sheets were damp and shivering along with her.

  This was a horrible mistake.

  The faint glow of the moon trickled in through the window high above her pillow, casting a ghostly patch of light on the far wall. Her room in the ladies’ dormitory was only slightly wider than the narrow bed they’d given her. The dark wood wall panels and ceiling seemed to draw closer as the unseen stranger walked overhead.

  Ethel sat up and listened.

  All the women had gone to bed directly after dinner. They’d cleared the table and done the dishes in short order, then filed down the hallway two by two. Mary Alice had grabbed her arm and led her down one corridor and then another. A right turn, then a left, then down a set of stairs so narrow they had to walk single file, then several more turns, through a door, across a breezeway, down another narrow brick tunnel, then up three flights of stairs. There were so many twists and turns Ethel was thoroughly lost by the time they’d reached the dormitory.

  The long narrow hallway just outside her cell was lined on both sides with identical dark wood doors. It reminded her of the Mansfield workhouse. She rolled over onto her side at the thought.

  “This will be your room, Hattie. Mine is just across the hall.” Mary Alice had grinned as though this was some great relief.

  The tiny room was only big enough for a bed, a bedside table, and two hooks on the wall where she could hang her ugly blue dress. A Bible had leaned against the stiff straw pillow as a welcome. It was now lying somewhere on the floor.

  “Good night, Hattie. I’m so glad you decided to join us,” Mary Alice had beamed at her before closing the door. She didn’t bother to wait for an answer. Hattie’s vow of silence wouldn’t allow a single word, but Ethel felt a dozen choice ones boiling up in her chest.

  Glancing out the one window set high above the thin mattress, she’d seen that the sun hadn’t even set yet. I’m getting myself the hell out of here. Thanks for the grub, but I ain’t joining the likes of you Bible-thump—

  The sound of a dead bolt sliding home had snapped her head back around to the door. She’d gone over to the door and tried the handle. It didn’t budge. The little bitch had actually locked her in there.

  Ethel had knocked on the wood. Her sweaty eyes fell on the bolted door looming there in the dark.

  There was no answer.

  “Mary Alice!” she’d hissed. “This wasn’t the deal!”

  Nothing.

  Ethel had pounded her fist. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  The door had swung open on the fourth punch, and Ethel had found herself face to face with a stern-looking schoolmarm.

  “Can we help you with something, dear?” the stone-faced woman demanded. Her thin lips and wrinkled skin were set in a permanent frown, her gray hair pulled tight into a knot. Her tone had made it clear she was not in the business of helping anyone.

  Ethel’s eyes had darted past the old crone into the empty hallway. Mary Alice was nowhere to be seen.

  “If you’re looking for a privy, you’ll find a chamber pot under your bed. Next time, I suggest you finish your toilet before the nightly reading begins. You have twenty minutes to commune with the Lord before lights out. Good evening, Sister.”

  With that, schoolmarm had closed the door in Ethel’s face and thrown the bolt before she could think to knock the old broad on her ass and make a run for it. She was trapped.

  Ethel climbed up onto the thin mattress with shaking legs and gazed out the window, pressing her nose to the cold glass. The window looked out into a narrow courtyard. A bank of identical windows gazed back at her twenty feet away. A few hours earlier, yellow lights had glowed in each one. In the lower windows across the light well she’d seen the backs of five head
s all sitting in bed, bent over their Bibles before bed. Now they were empty.

  Ethel counted thirty lined up in three rows. Hers was on the third floor. Cold air hissed through the window seams in urgent whispers. A light rain was falling from the piece of sky above. The setting sun had cast a golden glow onto the walls at the far end, leaving long shadows over everything else. Down in the courtyard, she’d seen four bicycles lined up against the far wall. A small potted garden sat somewhere on the stone floor. Now it was all hidden in the dark.

  A flicker of light down at the far end caught her eye. Two figures were walking with a flashlight and bowed heads. They were both men. I see how it is. The women stay locked up in their prison cells while the men are free to wander.

  What she wouldn’t give for a drink and a smoke. She studied the windows across the courtyard. They were all small and set high above the ground. There were no ladders or drainpipes to shimmy down. The Mansfield workhouse wasn’t this secure, she mused. The only things missing were the armed guards.

  Ethel drew the knife out of the hem of her dress and slid it between the door and the jamb to see if she could move the bolt. It didn’t budge.

  Feeling the familiar itch crawling under her skin, Ethel unlocked the latch of her window and slid open the sash. Raindrops hit her face as she stuck her head out. Looking up, she could see two more stories of windows sitting over her room. They’d put her in a taller tower than the gals across the courtyard. Her path up to the roof looked hopeless. Freedom was a forty-foot drop down onto hard stone.

  Defeated, Ethel closed the window and plopped down onto the shivering mattress. Like it or not, she was stuck there for the night. The naked lightbulb over her head was out without a string or a switch on any of the walls. Just like prison.

  She’d been in worse places, she told herself. At least she was out of the rain. She was safe. She was fed. There had been nights she might’ve killed someone for a dry room and a warm bed. It had been days since Ma had thrown her out onto the street. How many?

  Night was too dangerous and busy for her to sleep, and there weren’t too many places she could curl up in the light of day. The empty buildings she drifted between had been badly burned in insurance schemes or vandalized, and they housed nothing but jittery vagrants and gangs of street toughs. It was hard to tell which was worse, the arson-scorched buildings or the hobo jungles lining the shores of the river.

  The casualties of the Depression littered the banks of the Cuyahoga with their shanties. Starving children huddled with battered women alongside homeless men in the grips of a blackout. Fear hung over the river shantytown in a hushed silence that had ridden the rails in from Kingsbury Run.

  How many bodies had they found in the Run? Four? Five? Ethel scratched at her clammy skin and couldn’t remember. All she could see were the detective’s photographs of what the killer had done.

  Ethel pulled the ugly sack of a dress over her head and hung it on a nail. I should take Mary Alice down to the jungles. Show her what hell really looks like.

  As she curled up on the thin mattress, the thought of Rose’s little girl drifted unbidden into her head. Ethel couldn’t bear to imagine where the poor thing might be, helpless and alone. Willie had asked her to keep an eye out, but she didn’t even know the girl’s name. There was no saving her. There was no saving anyone. Now more footsteps creaked across the ceiling.

  In the thin light of the moon, Ethel got up out of bed and felt around blindly under it until she found the edge of the bucket she’d been promised. She hauled it out and crouched over it, gazing up at the sliver of sky out her window.

  A muffled voice came from somewhere outside her room. The hallway? The room next door? Somewhere upstairs?

  A softer voice answered, but Ethel strained to make out the words. Was that a laugh? It sounded like a woman’s voice.

  She climbed back into bed, wondering what woman was allowed to laugh at that hour. Frankly, she hadn’t heard any of the sisters laugh once all evening.

  The lower voice said something else. Or was that a grunt? The next sound left no doubt about it, and under it was the familiar squeak of bedsprings. The softer voice was laughing again. Or crying?

  Ethel sat up as the squeaking grew louder. Somewhere upstairs one of the sisters was getting the business, and from what she’d seen of the sisters, it was a good bet it wasn’t her idea. She hugged her trembling knees to her chest.

  Every creak of the bed was a reminder of the first time it had happened to her. She held the sides of her pounding head and shut her eyes. Every man was the same man. Breathing hot breath in her ear. Sweating his stink into her. Grunting faster and faster. Until he finished with her.

  The squeaking over her head finally stopped. A few more muffled words filtered down through the wood slats of her ceiling, followed by the click of a door.

  Ethel listened to the light tap of the raindrops against her window, waiting for the footsteps to return. Waiting for the knock to fall on her door. She pulled her knife out from under her pillow and gripped it tightly in the dark.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sometime after dawn, Mary Alice opened her door with a cheery smile. “Good morning, Sister Hattie! It’s going to be a beautiful day!”

  Breakfast assaulted Ethel’s senses with the steaming smell of meat, the jarring clang of forks, the screeching scrape of knives. The food made her nauseous, lying on her plate like the arms and thighs in one of the detective’s autopsy pictures. She pushed it away and gripped the edge of the table to steady her head. Faces of the girls came in and out of focus with wet chewing sounds and whispered prayers. She searched their eyes for telltale tears or buried shame. It could have been any of them and none of them at the same time.

  “Good morning, Sisters,” a familiar voice boomed from the front of the room. The reverend walked across the floor with the stern schoolmarm who had slammed the door in Ethel’s face the night before.

  “Good morning, Brother Milton,” they all answered at once like a multiheaded beast. Another wave of nausea swept through Ethel, and she buried her face in her hands. I have to get out of here. But her legs felt too jittery to stand.

  “Today may God’s grace be with you as we go about His work. Let us pray.”

  Was it him? Was he the one that violated a girl the night before? There he was, standing like a king before a hundred spinsters, all ready to get down on their knees at his command. He had them all locked up in a tower at his disposal every night. His voice washed its deep bass over her into a drowning ocean.

  The answering chorus faded away. Then Mary Alice was pulling her down the hallway to God knows where.

  What happened next happened in pieces. Riding on a rattling bench in some sort of railcar. The sisters singing hymns like a spinning carousel. Heaving her stomach up onto the frozen dirt. A barn reeling against the ice gray sky. Cold water down her throat, on her face. The cool hard edge of a sink against her forehead. A thin cot at the end of a long hall. Lace curtains fluttering near the window. Crackers dry as sawdust. A couple of drops of sharp bitter oil on her tongue, burning her mouth, poisoning her throat. Mary Alice’s hushed whisper, “A little laudanum should calm the shaking.”

  Then the frantic bees swarming under her skin went still.

  A squealing sound snapped Ethel out of her stupor. She was standing in a barn stall. She dropped the shovel in her hand and made her way across the dirt and straw toward the sound. Dread bled into her gut as the brutal screams grew louder.

  Outside the barn, two men were wrestling a writhing naked body onto the ground with ropes in their hands. Ethel’s mouth gaped in horror at the sight until she realized the creature was a large pig and not one of the sisters.

  They strung the screaming animal up by its hind feet, hanging it from a giant iron hook where it thrashed and spun. One of them placed a metal bucket under the pig’s furious snout. The taller one pulled a large knife from the black apron he was wearing and without warning stuck it right in the p
ig’s jugular. Ethel recognized him from the dining hall the night before, standing in the back with the landlord’s grin. The short one held the beast as it bucked and fought. Hot blood steamed in the frigid air, splashing into the bucket and out over the dirt.

  “Hattie. Are you alright?” Mary Alice came up behind her and nudged her shoulder. “I’ve finished five stalls in the time you’ve taken to do one.”

  Ignoring her, Ethel stared as the fight bled out of the pig.

  Mary Alice gazed up at the two men and waved. “Good morning, Brother Bertram, Brother Wenger.”

  The man holding the pig steady waved. “Good morning, Sisters.” He was maybe twenty-five years old with a spotty beard.

  The tall one took a step toward them, bloody knife still in his hand. There was that smile again. “Do you need something, Sister Hattie?”

  Ethel shook her head, keeping her eyes on the limp animal. It was dead. Brother Bertram slid the blood bucket aside and positioned a larger trough below the carcass.

  “No, we’re just fine, Brother Wenger. Thank you,” Mary Alice sang and pulled Ethel away from the slaughter and back toward the barn.

  Wenger went back to the carcass. With one clean motion, his knife split the pig’s stomach from neck to tail, and its entrails came spilling out.

  Ethel’s jaw dropped.

  “Good Lord, Hattie!” Mary Alice scolded, dragging her back to her stall. “You act as though you’ve never seen meat before.”

  Ethel picked her shovel back up with the image of steaming intestines and entrails still fresh in her mind. She’d seen lots of things, but she’d never seen anything get disemboweled before. The terrible photographs the detective had shown her rifled through her head again. They called the killer a butcher, she thought, sick to her stomach. The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.

  “The Lord frowns upon the idle, Hattie.”

  Ethel managed to choke down lunch, watching Brothers Wenger and Bertram out of the corner of her eye. No policeman would ever question them, she realized. Not Bible lovers like them. They could be cutting people to pieces out here and no one would ever know.