The Unclaimed Victim

by D. M. Pulley

  The door closed a minute later. She listened as the footsteps went back through the house and out the front. A car engine started up at the end of the long driveway and finally pulled away.

  Kris hauled herself up against the carcass of the Mustang and took a breath. I’ve got to get the hell out of here. As she grabbed her bag off the ground, one of her father’s library books fell out. A crude painting of a severed head stared up at her from the dusty garage floor.

  We’re still looking for the rest of him.

  CHAPTER 3

  Kris wished she’d remembered to bring a coat. The wind still had the bite of winter, and she hugged her backpack to her side as she made her way down the train tracks toward Shirlene’s. Why the hell did I leave the car in Wapakoneta? It was sweet of Ben to drive her, but damn!

  The cornfields on either side of the tracks lay dormant, spiked with dried stalks, littered with dead leaves. The land flattened out for miles all around her, stretching to the horizon, lined by ditches and two-lane roads. A half mile ahead, a semi rumbled down the South Dixie Highway.

  Thoughts she hadn’t been able to articulate in the interrogation room stole through her head one by one. The evidence bags, the flashes of blood in the photographs, the grim set in the sheriff’s eyes. Nobody said it, but the word homicide hung in the air like the stink of rotting leaves.

  Did he mention anything to you? Anything he was worried about?

  Kris shook her head at the thought. Her father had been fishing the Auglaize River for years. He knew just about every person in the county and seemed to get along with every single one of them just fine. He always carried a rifle in the truck. He’d been in the air force. He knew how to defend himself. The dogs wouldn’t have left his side. It wasn’t him they found floating down the river. But then who the hell was it? And where is he?

  Kris shut her eyes and was six years old again, waking up in the middle of the night, toddling into her parents’ bedroom after a bad dream. The bed was empty. The sheets and blankets were mussed, but both her parents were gone. She found her father in the hallway with his chin to his chest and the telephone dangling from its cord.

  Where’s Mommy?

  Stop it, her father snapped at her from a deeper part of her mind.

  Shirlene’s sat next to the train tracks right before they crossed under the South Dixie Highway, looking more like a gas station than a diner. The parking lot was half-full with a scattered assortment of pickup trucks and eighteen-wheelers, as usual. Mel was behind the counter when she walked in.

  “Hey there, Kritter!”

  She waved back and tried to smile. Obviously, he hadn’t heard the buzz around town. She glanced at the truckers seated at the counter and the booths lining the three walls. None of the Auglaize County Sheriff’s Department cruisers sat in the parking lot.

  She found an empty stool at the counter.

  “What you doin’ here? In town visiting your pop?” he asked, setting a glass of ice water in front of her.

  She nodded, not trusting her voice.

  “What can I get ya?”

  The beer she’d pounded gurgled in her empty stomach. Food sounded awful, but Mel was standing there with his pad. “Chicken soup?” she asked with a forced smile.

  He clipped her order slip onto the kitchen wheel but not without giving her a thorough once-over first. She never just ordered soup. She was a cheeseburger and fries with extra ketchup, and they both knew it.

  She turned to the window and scanned the road for Ben’s cruiser.

  Not a minute later, Mel set a steaming bowl in front of her and put his elbows on the counter. “Everything alright?”

  Every friend of her father’s treated her like a surrogate daughter. Every one of them had an opinion about where she should go to college, where she should live, whom she should marry. Not one of them approved of her moving to Cleveland.

  “I’m fine,” she said in a voice that wouldn’t convince a stranger, let alone Mel.

  He eased his elbows off the counter but kept talking. “I thought your pop was taking a fishing trip, said he planned to canoe all the way up to Cloverdale. When’d he get back?”

  Kris swallowed hard. She couldn’t bear to tell him that they thought he was lying in pieces in the morgue. The man would be heartbroken. It wasn’t the sort of thing you just said. “I’m not sure. Say, Mel, can I use your phone?”

  He frowned at her but said, “Sure. You know where it is.”

  She left her soup untouched and headed back behind the counter, past the kitchen, to Mel’s storeroom. The short-order cook waved at her from the fryer. She gave him a nod, then rushed inside the back room and shut the door.

  The oversized closet was lined with giant vats of ketchup and mustard and enormous bags of hamburger buns. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Auglaize County Sheriff’s Office,” the receptionist said in her flat robot voice.

  “Hi, Mary. Is Ben there?”

  “Is this Kristin? Oh, my. You sweet, sweet girl. Are you alright? I just can’t believe w—”

  “Thanks,” Kris interrupted. “I really need to talk with Ben.”

  “Of course, dear. I’ll buzz him. I just want you to know if there is anything you need, anything at all—”

  “Thanks, Mary. I really appreciate that, but . . .” What she needed was for everyone to just leave her the hell alone and find her father. “Can I just talk to him?”

  “I’ll go get him.”

  A minute later, Ben’s voice came on the line. “Kris? Where are you? I just got a call from Troy.”

  “Did you tell him to come see me?” she asked, knowing full well the answer. Of course he did. All her father’s friends liked Troy Reinhardt. All of them were upset when she broke off the engagement. He was a small-town football star. He came from money. None of them noticed how he’d hold on to the back of her neck when they went places like she was his dog. None of them knew about him sneaking through her window every night, pushing her further and further past her limits until they’d all been stripped away. No one said no to Troy, not even her, not even when she’d wanted to. No one knew about her lonely trips to the free clinic up in Lima to get birth control pills. Not even Troy.

  “He’s worried about you. We all are. Where are you?”

  “I took a walk down to Shirlene’s. I was hungry and . . . Listen, Ben. I need to get back to Cleveland.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Kritter.”

  “You said it’s going to take a few days for the lab to run the tests, right? What am I supposed to do until then? I can’t just sit around the house and wait to find out the truth. I’ll go crazy, Ben!”

  “You’re gonna go crazy in that city. That’s what you’re gonna do. It’s not safe, Kris! You need your family around you right now.”

  Kris stiffened at the word family. Without her father, she didn’t have a family. No brothers. No sisters. No mother. No grandparents. The air went out of the storeroom. She grabbed the edge of a shelf to keep from crumpling to the ground.

  “I have finals,” she croaked, forcing air in and out. “I have . . . work. I have friends. I have a life, Ben. I can’t just let this eat me alive for the rest of the week. We don’t even know if it’s really . . .”

  “Kris, honey, let us help you. This isn’t healthy.”

  The thought of casseroles and concerned “friends” and Troy all pounding on her door was too much to stomach. More importantly, she needed to get to the Cleveland Public Library and see if anyone remembered her father. She needed to figure out why he’d left the books for her to find. She thought about saying as much to Ben, but it sounded ridiculous even to her. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and dug deep. “He wouldn’t want me trapped in the house, Ben. He would want me to take my finals and finish out the semester. The semester he paid for, for Christ’s sake . . . You know I’m right.”

  Dead air buzzed on the other end of the line.

  She softened her
voice. “It’s only two hours away. I can always come back. I will come back as soon as we know something for sure. I promise.”

  “Putting this off isn’t going to make it any easier, Kritter. You know that, right? You’re going to have to deal with this one way or another.”

  “I know. And I will. I just need . . . I need to go for a little while. I need to think. And get my things in order and decide what to do next. I can’t do that here. Do you understand? This isn’t my home anymore.”

  “You know this will always be your home.” Ben let out a sigh. “Alright, kiddo. You’re a grown woman now and I can’t stop you, but you have to promise me you’ll stay in touch. Let us know how you’re doing. You hear? We should have the DNA results back early next week.”

  She nodded at the phone. “Okay. Will you come pick me up?”

  A minute later, Kris left the storeroom and returned to her bowl of soup.

  “Everything alright?” Mel asked again. He took his time refilling her glass to study her face.

  She nodded and ate a spoonful of sickly warm soup to prove it.

  “Well, I don’t know what’s goin’ on, but you tell your father that a fella from the city was in here lookin’ for him the other day.”

  A piece of chicken caught in her throat. She coughed it out. “What man?”

  “Looked like some sort of cop to me. He left me his card. Let me see if I can go find it.” Mel lumbered back to the storeroom, limping to the right as he always did. The poor guy had a bum hip and had to stand there pouring coffee all day. He kept a bottle of whiskey under the counter. He’d sneak a pour into his coffee mug whenever he thought no one was looking.

  A minute later, he hobbled back with a small rectangle of paper in his hand. “Here. Make sure he gets this and tell him the guy didn’t seem all that friendly.”

  Photographs of blood and bone flashed in her head as she took the card. It read, David Hohman—Private Investigator. She frowned at the street address in Cleveland. Below it www.torsokillers.com was handwritten in blue pen. With numb hands, she stuffed the card in her pocket. “Thanks, Mel.”

  He nodded, then waved at something over her shoulder. Ben’s cruiser had pulled up just outside the front window.

  “I should get going.” Kris stood up on buzzing legs. Torso Killers. “What do I owe you?”

  Mel just waved at her. “Your money’s no good here. Just tell your pop I said hello. Haven’t seen him in a while.”

  Kris pressed her lips together and nodded.

  She stared out the window the entire ride back to her car, debating whether to tell Ben about the card. His clenched teeth and hard grip on the wheel left no doubt that he was angry she was leaving. He’d be even angrier when he saw the card. He wouldn’t let her leave. She could hear her father’s voice yelling at her from inside her head.

  Have you lost your Goddamned mind, Krit! You don’t know this Hohman guy! He might’ve tried to kill me! No way in hell are you going back to your precious Cleveland! You’re gonna march your butt home and do exactly what Ben tells you to do. Understand?

  Ben stopped the cruiser alongside her Jeep. “So. You sure you wanna do this?”

  She forced a thin smile. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. It’s just for a few days. Just so I can get my head together. Okay?”

  “If you say so,” Ben said, shaking his head in resignation. “Call me when you get there.”

  Kris nodded and got out of the car before she changed her mind. Keeping secrets wasn’t a new thing to her. She’d hidden everything about herself that might incur her father’s wrath or disapproval—tampons, makeup, dirty books, R-rated movies, beer bashes in the woods, Troy sneaking in through the window, birth control—all of it. Lying felt almost as natural as telling the truth. Besides, it was sort of the truth, wasn’t it? She would come back soon, and she’d tell Ben about the card then. What can he do? Ground me?

  It was a foolish and selfish and childish thought, she knew that and wasn’t proud of it, but she just wanted to go home. She got into her car and headed east, not stopping until she’d reached the county line.

  Once she was out of Ben’s jurisdiction, she pulled the Jeep to the side of the highway and slid the piece of cardboard out of her pocket. The words Torso Killers sent her rifling through her father’s library books at the bottom of her backpack, scanning the titles until she found it. Torso: The Story of Eliot Ness and the Search for a Psychopathic Killer. The image of a headless body floated on the cover of the book beneath it, and for a moment, the torso was her father’s. Her eyes focused on the word killer, then flitted back to David Hohman’s card.

  Swallowing the lump lodged somewhere between her heart and her head, she opened the book.

  FINDING OF TORSOS

  REVEALS SLAYINGS

  Headless and otherwise mutilated, the nude bodies of two men were found late yesterday afternoon in thick brush in a small ravine at the foot of Praha Avenue S.E. and E. 49th Street by two boys who summoned police to investigate the most bizarre double murder here in recent years.

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 24, 1935, p. 13

  CHAPTER 4

  March 27, 1938

  “Do you know this woman?” The detective held up a black-and-white photograph.

  Ethel blinked at the image, trying to clear the thick cloud of cheap wine and reefer and God knows what else from her head. It wasn’t a woman at all. A nipple. A breast. A thigh. Parts and pieces were laid out on a metal table, all of them crusted in black at the edges. “What the hell is that?” Her words slurred despite her best efforts.

  “Do you recognize her? The scar?” He pointed to the jagged mark puckering the pale skin stretched over blood and bone. “Any of your friends go missing in the last six months?”

  Ethel shook her head and went to close her bedroom door.

  The cop stuck his foot in the jamb and brandished another grisly photograph. This one was simply the head of a young man with a black collar of dried blood where a neck should be. The rest of him was gone. “What about him? You know him?”

  Ethel nervously glanced over her shoulder at the naked man sprawled out on the bed behind her. Ma Pratchett would be furious if one of her customers got hauled down to Central Station. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell.”

  “Take another look.” The detective pressed and held up another picture showing the rest of the decapitated body and then an enlarged photograph of a tattoo. It was some sort of cartoon character.

  Something twitched in the back of her mind that told her she’d seen it before. One of Eddie’s boys? She tried to force her eyes to focus. “I’m not sure. I doubt it.”

  The detective gave her a hard look. She didn’t catch his name, but his stocky body and thick fists told her he packed a hell of a punch. The cheap suit and porkpie hat said the rest. He wasn’t crooked. He only drank on weekends. He liked his sex straight and Christian, and his poor wife would never even think to complain. He’d never bought a girl, and dropping to her knees wouldn’t make him go away. He felt sorry for her standing there in her cheap stockings and flimsy robe. Repulsed even. If he had the energy to care, he’d probably try to help her, but he’d take hauling her off to the workhouse as a consolation prize.

  “Think real hard,” he warned and shot a look over her shoulder toward her occupied bed.

  She’d have to give him something. “I might’ve seen him once or twice around here.”

  The detective raised an eyebrow. “Buying or selling?”

  “Young kid like that? What do you think?”

  The detective looked down at the severed head for a moment. “Anybody pimp for him?”

  Ethel shifted her weight uncomfortably. Her eyes darted down the red painted hallway, scanning the row of shut doors. “I don’t know the swish trade. Different customers, you know?”

  “What about Eddie Andrassy?” The detective held up the mug shot that had circulated around all the papers three years earlier. Eddie’s hauntingly beautiful face hover
ed in front of her like a warning. “He pimp for him?”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about him.” It was a lie and they both knew it.

  “We can discuss this here or back at the station. I’m sure your friend on the bed there should be getting home to his wife anyway.”

  “I don’t know, alright?” she hissed under her breath. “Eddie knew a lot of boys.”

  “Did he know him?” The detective brandished the severed head at her again. Long lashes. Clear skin. Sad, really. “Were they romantically involved?”

  The wine turned in her gut, bringing a wave of sickness with it. She’d managed to avoid the shakedowns the first time the cops came tossing beds in the vice district they all called the Roaring Third, but the detective had her cornered. The clock at her bedside pointed to 5:15 a.m. She should’ve kicked the john out hours ago, but she’d passed out instead. Morphine? She couldn’t remember. “What was the question?”

  “Were they lovers?”

  “I doubt it, but that never stopped Eddie.”

  “Never stopped him from what?” The cop narrowed his eyes.

  “From takin’ a blind sale.” Ethel waited a moment for the dumb dick to catch her meaning, but the look on his freshly shaved face told her he wouldn’t. She rolled her eyes and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Pimps like to slip mickeys in a boy’s drink, then sell him out to the highest bidder.”

  The detective didn’t speak for a moment. “And then what?”

  “And then nothin’. A boy might wake up in a gutter somewhere. He might never be seen again. You take your chances when you take a free drink.” The grimace on the cop’s face made her feel a bit calmer, more in control. In truth, she couldn’t prove a thing about Eddie’s habits, they were all just drunk rumors, but churchgoers were fun to shock. She tapped the photograph of the unfortunate young man’s face. “This one looks a bit old for it, though.”