The Unclaimed Victim

by D. M. Pulley

  “This is crazy.” She backed away from both of them as if their mania might be contagious. “I mean, what if this whole theory of yours about the killers is bullshit? What if the paint on my door was a just prank like the police officer said? What if . . . what if my father is sitting in his easy chair right now back home, wondering why I haven’t called? Isn’t that the most likely scenario here? I mean, stuff like this doesn’t happen except for in bad movies. What if you’re just obsessed with this killer because . . . because you’re bored?”

  “What if? Shit, that’d be great!” Jimmy grinned. “Let’s just treat this whole thing like a road trip, alright? I been stuck in this town without a car for fuckin’ ever. So you gonna take me for a ride or what?”

  CHAPTER 33

  Three hours later, Kris pulled her Jeep into her father’s driveway. Jimmy let out a low whistle. “So this is where you grew up?”

  “Yep, right smack in the middle of BFE, surrounded by rednecks. Impressed?” Kris hated the defensive bite of her voice, but the long drive had done nothing to settle her nerves.

  The sun had set over the cornfields, leaving nothing but a pale gray sky. There weren’t any streetlights, and the nearest neighbor’s house sat dark near the horizon a quarter mile away. She had grown up assuming her father just enjoyed the small-town quiet, but the house at the edge of the field looked like a deserted island. He’d been all alone.

  A train blew its whistle in the distance, and the rumble of the freight cars hummed through the chill over the fields. She cranked open the car door and wondered if it would’ve been smarter to park it farther down the road. She dismissed the idea as utter paranoia and grabbed her bags. The softball bag swung from her shoulder as she walked up to the front door, her shotgun like a bone inside it.

  The windows were dark.

  “Anybody home?” Jimmy whispered behind her.

  She held her breath as she slid her key into the knob, but the door wasn’t locked. The police tape was gone. She glanced up at Jimmy and took a step back. Paranoid or not, it didn’t feel right. She set her bags down and pulled the shotgun from its case and double-checked the shells in the barrel. It was loaded. She snapped it closed and pointed it at the door.

  Jimmy lifted his eyebrows in a manner both amused and impressed. He pushed the door open for her with a flourish that belied the worry hidden in his eyes.

  Inside, the house was exactly as she had left it two days before. The smell of the dirty dishes had grown slightly stronger, but that was it. Jimmy flipped on the light switch. It was all still there. The flannel couch. The deer heads. The rifle laid out in pieces on the coffee table.

  “Damn. Who decorated this place? The NRA?” He motioned up to her awkward thirteen-year-old portrait. “Nice picture!”

  Kris didn’t smile. She scanned the living room and kitchen for any sign her father had been back. Not even his half-burnt cigar had moved from its perch in the ashtray. The clock on the stove blinked 8:18 p.m. as she moved past the kitchen toward the bedrooms. His bed was still rumpled from the police search. His boots hadn’t budged from their spot on the floor. The photograph of her mother still sat on the bedside table, her dark eyes and dark curly hair framed in silver.

  The bathroom was empty.

  Her bedroom was just as she had left it. Except for the window. It stood open a half inch, with its broken lock dangling. Troy. Her ex-fiancé had climbed in the window, looking for her again. He’d stormed out the front door and forgotten to lock it. She set the gun down and closed the window. Damn it.

  “Everything alright?” Jimmy asked.

  “It’s fine. Nobody was here. Nobody to worry about anyway.” She sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Her father hadn’t been there.

  Jimmy sat down next to her and slung an arm around her shoulders. “What now?”

  “I don’t know,” she said into her palms. “I need to see the body . . . or whatever they found of it. It’s going to be horrible, but I need to see it. I just . . .” She sat up and looked at the clock next to her bed. “It’s too late. They won’t let us in tonight.”

  Jimmy didn’t say a word, but she felt the question hanging in the air. Do you still think it isn’t him?

  She picked up the phone by her bedside and dialed.

  “Auglaize County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Yes. Hi. Can I please speak with Deputy Ben Weber?”

  “Kris Wiley? That you?”

  “Hi, Mary,” Kris muttered reluctantly.

  “Ah, sweetie, I’m so sorry . . .” A heavy pause buzzed over the line.

  “Thanks, can I talk to Ben?” Kris tried hard not to sound annoyed but didn’t really succeed.

  “I think he’s gone home for the day. Can I leave him a message?”

  “Yeah. Please tell him I called, and I want to go down to the morgue tomorrow.”

  “Oh, hon. To see your father? Are you sure? I don’t think you oughtta do that to yourself. You have no idea wh—”

  Kris cut her off. “Thanks, Mary. Just tell him I’ll meet him there.” She slammed the phone down before the woman could say another word and muttered, “I don’t know what I was thinking coming back here.”

  She stormed out of her bedroom and down the hall to her father’s room and stopped in the doorway. The walls were bare except for a picture she’d drawn of a baby deer back in junior high school. The dresser and nightstand held only the barest essentials. There wasn’t a swastika or a red L to be found.

  Jimmy looked in over her shoulder at the only photograph in the room. “That your mom?”

  Kris crossed the threshold and pulled the picture from its spot on the nightstand. Holding it, she sank down onto her father’s bed. “Yeah.”

  “She looks a lot like you.” Jimmy sat next to her on the narrow mattress. “Mind if I ask what happened to her?”

  Kris ignored the question. Rachael Wiley’s ears and nose and chin were all subtle variations of her own. They could’ve been sisters except for the curls. She looked back at the blank spot on the nightstand and picked up his wristwatch. It was still ticking. She turned it over to check for any strange markings before holding it to her ear. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  “You okay?” Jimmy’s voice sounded like it was coming through a tunnel.

  No! I’m not okay! she wanted to scream. Instead, she threw the watch against the wall. Its metal links went jingling to the floor. Jimmy shot her a look and went to retrieve it. She bolted up from the bed and stormed over to her father’s closet and began pulling shirts and pants from the hangers, checking the pockets as she went. Loose change and scraps of receipts scattered across the floor as the clothes piled up next to her. There wasn’t one strange thing in the lot. She pushed the piles of clothes out of the way and squatted down to check all the shoes lined up on the floor of the closet. They were all empty.

  She spun around and tore the blanket from the bed, then lifted the mattress. Crouching down, she checked under the bed and didn’t find so much as a dust bunny. Next she checked the drawers, tossing undershirts and boxers and socks and handkerchiefs and running shorts and T-shirts all onto the ground. By the time she’d reached the last drawer, she realized she was crying.

  Kris sank to her knees and surveyed the mess she’d just made. Oh, God. He’s going to kill me. The thought only made her cry harder because she knew it wasn’t true. He’d never yell at her or shake her by the shoulders or give her the silent treatment again.

  Jimmy hunkered down beside her, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey. We’ll figure it out. It’s gonna be okay,” his voice cooed softly, not because it was true but because there was nothing else to say.

  “No. It’s not,” she muttered, wiping her face dry. She brushed off his arm and pulled herself up. “There has to be something here, right? Some clue or piece of evidence he was hiding.”

  “Did he have a place in the house? You know, besides in here, where he kept things? Like a place where he’d hide a porno tape or a
dirty magazine?”

  “No. He didn’t have stuff like that.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Girl, all dudes got stuff like that.”

  “Wait.” Kris lurched up and staggered out into the hall toward the basement, with Jimmy close behind.

  The door to her father’s workroom sat behind an avalanche of duck decoys and other hunting equipment that lay piled against the cinder-block walls. She pushed her way through the barricade and opened it. A full collection of tools hung from the cobwebbed pegboards lining two walls. She flipped on the two long fluorescent lights. The dusty workbench sat crowded with cardboard boxes of ammo and neatly wound extension cords. The entire room smelled of mildew and gunstock oil.

  “Jesus,” Jimmy said, flipping the top of one of the boxes of rifle rounds. “Your dad prepping for a war?”

  “No. He just likes to hunt,” Kris muttered and turned her attention to the locked cabinets above and below the shotgun shell press to her left. It was where he kept his gunpowder and lead pellets.

  “Is that why he’s got all the knives?” Jimmy waved to the display shelves her father had mounted next to the door. Over twenty blades of various lengths and styles were lovingly arranged in orderly rows.

  “I dunno. He just collects them from swap meets and things.” She pulled at the steel padlock holding the upper cabinets shut, then opened the metal drawers below the press, searching for a key.

  “It’s not a fancy lock. I got it.” Jimmy nudged past her and pulled his metal picks out of the thrift-store army jacket he was wearing. The name stitched over the breast pocket read, Smith. After a minute of rattling and jiggling, the shackle popped open. Jimmy set the lock on the counter next to the press. “What the hell is this thing anyway?”

  The shell press looked like a filthy juicer.

  “It fills shotgun shells.” She didn’t listen to his next question. Her heart thudded in her ears as she unfastened the clasp and opened the cupboard doors.

  HUNT FOR MORE TORSO EVIDENCE

  Police Seek Clews From Severed Leg

  Following the discovery of a human leg in the Cuyahoga River at Superior Avenue N.W., believed to be part of the tenth and latest victim of Cleveland’s mad torso slayer, six detectives under Detective Lieutenant Albert Smith last night searched both banks of the swollen river in hopes of finding other parts that might lead to identification of the victim.

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 9, 1938, p. 1

  CHAPTER 34

  April 8, 1938

  The late-afternoon sun shocked her eyes as Ethel stepped out of McGinty’s and onto West 25th Street. The road hummed with street traffic as men in caps headed back down to the river to fill the second shift. Women dragged screaming children in and out of the West Side Market, and derelicts shuffled between them, begging for work, for bread, and most of all for booze. The smell of rotting vegetables mixed with the smoke from the mills. She followed the stink down Lorain Avenue back to the river.

  A small crowd had gathered at the water’s edge. Idle kids mixed with businessmen and housewives straining to catch a peek of the collection of uniformed police officers milling about at the water’s edge.

  “I heard it was a woman’s leg they found,” one well-kept woman murmured to another. They each had a toddler on their hip.

  “I can’t believe they haven’t caught him yet. Ness should be run out on a rail! How are we supposed to let our children out to play with a madman running around this city with a knife?”

  “I’m sure they’re doing all they can,” the first one whispered. Ethel glimpsed a pair of divers jumping into the frigid water. “How are they supposed to catch the man when they can’t even figure out who the victims are?”

  “I wonder if they’ll find a head this time.”

  Both women seemed to hold their breath as the divers disappeared below the polluted brown muck of the Cuyahoga River. Ethel scanned the base of the bridge for her shoe-collecting friend. There was no sign of Rickey or his trunks of clothes. She pushed her way through the packed shoulders to the edge of the bluff.

  Two plainclothes policemen were standing ten feet away in deep discussion. “Two divers aren’t gonna be enough. We need to drag the river again.”

  “Yeah, but Merylo got a tip earlier today about some sacks being dumped here last night.”

  “Excuse me, Detective?” Ethel approached the men.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” A uniformed officer intercepted her before she reached the detectives. “This isn’t a cocktail party. You’re gonna have to stay back with the others right now.”

  “I have some information about the murders,” she insisted, raising her voice louder, hoping to catch the detective’s attention. “Please. I’m the one that filed the report this morning.”

  A stocky detective looked up from his notes. “It’s alright, Charlie. Let her through. Fellas! Let’s finish the perimeter sweep like before. Got it?”

  Several heads down by the river nodded up at the detective, and the clump of officers dispersed.

  “Now. How can I help you, miss?” The man adjusted his hat and studied her face. She didn’t recognize him, but she could tell by the flush of his cheeks that he’d started the day with a belt of whiskey.

  “I—uh—filed a report today at the Second District station. I was worried no one would get it, but then I saw the crowd here. Where did you find the body?”

  He led her closer to the river and away from the ears of the crowd. “We didn’t find a body. We found a leg.”

  She felt his eyes on her as she digested the news.

  “Alright. So what was in this report?”

  Ethel recounted what she’d seen the night before. The detective took notes the entire time, hardly registering any emotion whatsoever.

  “Could you take me to the spot you found the bodies?”

  “I think so.”

  “Let’s go take a look.” He then shouted over her shoulder, “Grotowski! I got a bit of a leader. Take charge of the search for a bit.”

  A taller man in a gray suit gave the detective a nod.

  He turned back to Ethel and said, “Lead the way.”

  The unlikely pair passed a hundred curious spectators and headed toward the West 3rd Street Bridge. Ethel scanned the crowd for a familiar face. None of the nuns from the Harmony Mission would be allowed to gawk at such a scene, but she looked anyway. There was no sign of Mary Alice or Brother Wenger among the morbidly curious faces. “I think I see something,” one shouted.

  Ethel turned away from them in disgust. Some poor girl was dead and these folks treated it like the oddities tent at the world’s fair.

  “You live around here?” the detective asked, eyeing her dress and the state of her hands. No doubt he’d pegged her for a working girl the instant she walked up.

  “No. I got thrown out of my house after talkin’ with one of you coppers about the Butcher.”

  “Don’t that just beat all?” He shook his head. “It’s the reason we haven’t caught this son of a bitch, you know. Everybody’s lookin’ to protect their own little enterprises, meanwhile a killer’s runnin’ free.”

  “I guess folks are worried they’ll get hauled in for somethin’ silly,” Ethel said, testing the waters.

  “I ain’t vice. Your business down at the river is your own, but if you have something that can help us catch this bastard, I won’t forget it. I promise you that.”

  They rounded the top of the bluff, and Ethel struggled to regain her bearings. The three glasses of wine didn’t help. She sighted up the hill to the end of West 5th Street where she’d run naked in nothing but a sheet. She trudged into the tall grass where she’d met up with “Papa.”

  The detective fell silent as she retraced her steps back to “Papa’s” shanty. The old fool was still passed out cold in his tin hut.

  “This is where I was when I heard them,” she told him in a quiet voice.

  The detective peeked in at the passed-out vagrant and then into the
other empty huts along the river.

  “The voices came from over there, and I heard four splashes as they threw something into the water.”

  The detective walked a few hundred feet to the north toward where she was pointing. He crouched down onto his haunches and scanned the ground. He took several more notes, then stood back up. “So where did you say the two of them fell?”

  Ethel scanned the hill above them and did her best to pick the path that would lead to the bodies. Step by agonizing step, she felt the detective’s interest in her story waning and began to worry she’d imagined the whole thing. She wove her way up and down the hill, searching the tall grass for two corpses.

  She finally stopped when she found the bottle one of them had been holding. The bodies were nowhere to be seen. “They were right here!” she protested out loud.

  The detective picked up the bottle with a handkerchief.

  “That was the bottle they got for dumpin’ the body,” she insisted, sounding more and more like a crackpot.

  The detective sniffed the bottle and recoiled. “We’ll take this back and see if we can’t get an analysis. Anything else?”

  Ethel bit her lip and debated explaining how she came to be in the field in the first place. She finally settled on “I think my friend might be missin’.”

  The detective flipped over another page in his notebook. “Name?”

  “Mary Alice.”

  “Age?”

  “I dunno. Eighteen?”

  “Race?”

  “She’s white.”

  “Last seen?”

  “Yesterday. Around five o’clock.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at her but kept writing. “Family?”

  “None that I know of. She lives over in the Harmony Mission building. At least she did.”

  He stopped writing. “With the missionaries? The ones that run the Sunday schools for the children down in Public Square? Huh. This friend of yours doesn’t exactly sound like our killer’s taste. What makes you suspect she’s missing?”