by D. M. Pulley
“I heard a woman screamin’ down in the lower levels under the building. Something awful is happening over there. They have these prison cells in the basement, and I heard her screamin’ up through the drain.”
He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Prison cells?”
“Yeah. He said they were from the Civil War.” She could tell by the angle of his eyes he didn’t believe her. “Alls I know is that holy roller stripped me down and locked me in one of ’em.”
The word stripped caught his attention. The detective pressed his lips together and shook his head as though arguing with himself. “Have you looked for her today?”
“No. I—I can’t go back there.”
“Well, I can’t go chasing after a girl that ain’t even missing, now can I? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re conducting a serious homicide investigation, miss. If you’re really concerned for your friend, I suggest we go on over there and check it out.”
Grumbling his impatience under his breath, he marched up the hill and headed down West 5th Street. Ethel trailed behind, debating whether she should just run the other direction. The terrified look on Mary Alice’s face as Wenger had led Ethel away kept her walking. The stupid girl had risked everything to help a good-for-nothing whore. She owed her something in return.
The gun on the detective’s hip gave her courage as they approached the main entrance to the enormous building on West 7th. The words The Harmony Mission Press were embossed on the iron gate.
The detective walked right into the front office, with Ethel trailing in his shadow. The stone-faced schoolmarm Sister Frances was seated at the reception desk. “Welcome and God bless. Can I help you?”
“Good afternoon. I’m Detective Martin with the Cleveland Police Department. We were looking for a worker of yours. A Mary Alice?”
“Good heavens!” The woman clutched at her throat. “Is something wrong?”
“We just a have a few questions we’d like to ask if we may. It’s a technicality really. Won’t take but a moment. May we speak with her?”
“Of course.” The shriveled woman’s eyes shifted to Ethel’s face and lingered there for a moment. “I’ll go get her.”
CHAPTER 35
“This was a bad idea,” Ethel whispered more to herself than Detective Martin. She shifted her weight in her ill-fitting pumps and turned around in the cramped reception lobby of the Harmony Mission, debating whether or not to run. Sister Frances had recognized her face, she was sure of it.
The detective glanced from Ethel’s worried mug down to his pocket watch.
A minute later, the door into the factory swung back open. Sister Frances led Mary Alice through it by the hand. The younger woman startled at the sight of Ethel standing in the lobby. Surprise twisted into horror as her eyes dropped from Ethel’s face to her exposed cleavage and high heels, but she kept her mouth shut.
The relief Ethel felt at the sight of the girl standing there in one piece was short-lived. If Mary Alice wasn’t in hot water before, she certainly was now that Sister Frances could clearly see that her “cousin Hattie” wasn’t one of them at all.
“Here we are,” Sister Frances declared with a tight smile.
“Are you Mary Alice?” the detective asked the girl in the plain blue dress and work boots.
“Yes.” Her voice didn’t waver, but Ethel could hear the terror in it. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Detective Martin, I’m investigating a series of homicides.” It was clearly a rehearsed script. “Can either of you ladies tell me if any persons have gone missing from this establishment in the last six months?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Sister Frances said without missing a beat.
The detective looked up from his notepad.
The old woman’s eyes bent toward Ethel with a look of sympathy and concern. “Mary Alice’s cousin Hattie went missing last night, but I see you’ve found her.”
Detective Martin raised his eyebrows at Ethel.
“We’ve been terribly worried about her, disturbed as she is,” the old woman continued.
Ethel opened her mouth to protest, but one look at Mary Alice’s constricted face clamped it shut.
“Disturbed?” the detective asked.
“I’m afraid years of vice have bent the poor thing’s mind. For days she didn’t talk at all and then yesterday she just started cursing like a woman possessed.” The old woman put a hand to her chest. “It troubles my heart, trying to fathom what the poor girl has been through, living on the streets. You can only imagine how hard it’s been on the family. After months of looking, Mary Alice finally found her on a street corner, reeling drunk. We’ve been trying to help poor Hattie find her way back to the Lord, Officer.”
Ethel’s mouth fell open and gaped at Mary Alice. The girl kept her eyes on her feet. Ethel considered correcting the old bat, but thought better of it. If that’s the story Mary Alice had to tell to survive, she wasn’t about to shoot the poor girl in the foot.
“Is this true?” The detective swung his skeptical gaze back to Ethel.
She didn’t dare answer, hoping he’d take her silence for what it was worth.
“Is this the Mary Alice you were concerned about?” the detective pressed.
“Yes, sir.” Ethel nodded.
He jotted a few more notes, then paused and glanced through a few pages. He turned his attention back to the old crone. “I understand you have some underground rooms. Rooms near the sewer lines?”
The old woman’s face screwed up into a question mark. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you mean.”
“This woman claims she was held against her will in an underground cell.”
The old woman shook her head sadly at Ethel. “Poor girl. Becoming sober can give some poor souls fits. They can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I believe some call it the DTs?”
Ethel gawked at the guileless-looking old woman standing there lying like a professional, radiating such sincerity and genuine concern it was almost believable. Ethel scanned the crone’s eyes for smug victory as the cop took his notes and found nothing there but pity. Maybe it wasn’t an act. Maybe Sister Frances didn’t know the truth. Brother Wenger had dragged her down into the bowels of the building alone, after all. Ethel turned her gaze to Mary Alice, wondering if she knew what had really happened, but the poor girl seemed afraid to even look up.
The detective nodded and threw Ethel another glance. Only this time it was full of suspicion. Still he decided to follow the lead. “If it’s all the same to you, do you mind if I take a look in your basement?”
“By all means, Officer.” Sister Frances held out her hands in welcome. “We are happy to do anything we can to help. Come with me.”
The sister paraded the odd group through the door down a long corridor toward the dining hall.
“What would you like to see first?” she called over the metallic clang and stomp of the printing presses below their feet. They walked past a team of young women scrubbing the floor. Each of the four sisters stopped brushing the boards to gawk at the detective and Ethel in her low-cut dress. “Back to work, ladies,” Sister Frances sang out. “The Lord abhors idle hands.”
They went back to scrubbing, but Ethel could see the whispers passing between them.
“I’d like the young lady here to show me where she believes she was held,” the detective announced. He turned to Ethel and said, “Lead the way.”
She bit her lip and headed out the far door where Brother Wenger had led her the night before. Down the narrow corridor they all went. The roar of the presses faded with each step along with Ethel’s memory of her march to the gallows. After three turns and one narrow courtyard, it was gone.
Ethel turned around in a circle, racking her brain for the right path, but all the doors looked the same. “This place is a maze,” she muttered and turned her helpless eyes to Mary Alice, but the girl just shook her head. She tried one door and found a staircase leading up and not d
own. Another door led to a broom closet. “I can’t remember.” She shook her head, ready to scream.
Detective Martin was losing patience. “Forgive me, Sister . . . Frances, was it? Is there a lower level near here?”
Sister Frances paused a moment to think and said, “I believe we’re over the boiler room. Follow me.”
She led them down another narrow hallway to a shortened door. It looked like the one Brother Wenger had pushed Ethel through, and her heart leapt with hope. It opened into a narrow stairwell that led down. The chill of the basement hit them all in the face as they climbed single file down into the lower level. A giant coal closet opened to their left through a cast iron door. Idle bricked-in furnaces lined the wall to their right. None of it was familiar.
A smallish door sat at the far end. Ethel walked the twenty feet over to it and pushed it open. It was another staircase leading up. Desperate, she climbed up and emerged in the loading dock where the farm workers had been dropped off the day before.
“This isn’t the place,” Ethel said as she climbed back down, shaking her head.
“Well, this is the lowest part of this wing.” Sister Frances eased the door shut and held up her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know of any other basements below this part of the building, but you are welcome to keep looking.”
The odd company climbed the staircase back out of the boiler room and into the loading dock. Detective Martin brushed the coal dust off of his suit and straightened his hat. He scanned the plump, healthy faces of the young women sunning themselves on the benches out in the courtyard. “I’m afraid this is all I have time for today. I may take you up on the offer, though, when things settle down a bit, if that’s alright.”
“Of course, Officer. We’re happy to help.” Sister Frances gave him a little bow and led them all back to the reception desk.
Standing at the door, the detective tipped his hat at Sisters Mary Alice and Frances. “Thank you kindly for your cooperation. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
“There was no inconvenience, Officer. We are all God’s servants here. We’ll be praying for you and your investigation this evening.”
“Thank you. We’ll take all the help we can get.” With that he headed out the door.
“Wait!” Ethel called after him and ran to catch up. “That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna do?”
The detective put his notebook in his pocket and rubbed his forehead. “Do you know how many crank leads we get each day on this case? Over a hundred. Do you think I have time to chase down a hundred dead ends each day?”
“This isn’t a crank lead!” She slammed her shoe into the brick pavement. “I heard a woman screaming like a stuck pig last night. I heard two drunks dump a body.”
He straightened his hat to leave. “I’m sorry, but those ladies in there aren’t wrong. I can spot a drunk at ten paces, Ethel or Hattie or whatever your name is. Your lips are stained red, for Christ’s sake. Now I’m not gonna go around chasing the phantoms in your head.”
Useless words tumbled through her brain as she grasped at anything that might make him change his mind. The drainpipe, the door, the honeycombs full of old bones, the little girl’s voice in the dark, the root cellar . . .
“There’s a house! An abandoned house around the corner. It connects to the room I saw. Through the root cellar. I swear. I’ll show you.”
The detective held up a hand. “I got to go find a couple more divers and a half dozen men so we can track down leads on the actual dead body we found today. You do yourself a favor and go sober up. There’s some good women in there that just want to help you. I suggest you let them.”
Tears of frustration burned the corners of her eyes. “You can’t just leave.”
The detective shook his head. “I catch you walkin’ the streets again, I’ll run you in. Understand? I don’t want to have to go fishin’ you out of the river too.”
CHAPTER 36
“Ambrosia! Wait!” Mary Alice shouted after her as Ethel turned down College Avenue.
Ethel kept walking. “Go away, Mary Alice. Go back to your sisters and tell ’em your drunk cousin is a lost cause.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.” She jogged up beside Ethel and put a hand on her arm.
Ethel shrugged it off and turned her fury on the nitwit. “I thought they killed you! I thought they chopped you up into pieces and threw you in the Goddamn river!”
“What?” Mary Alice’s eyes grew wide.
The frightened doe routine didn’t work on Ethel. She stepped right up into her pathetic little face. “You knew where he took me, didn’t you? You knew all along and you didn’t say a word. You let me stand in there like a lost drunk, and now the detective doesn’t believe a word I say. Thanks to you, I’m some crazed wino who imagined the whole damned thing!”
“No!” Mary Alice shook her head. “I swear I didn’t know a thing.”
“Are you telling me Brother Wenger never dragged you down into his little dungeon to exorcise your demons?”
She shook her head vehemently.
“How’d you get the scars, Mary Alice?”
The girl shrank away. “Scars?”
“The scars on your back? Did Brother Wenger do that to you?”
“No.” Mary Alice’s eyes circled the street as though searching for a way out of the conversation.
“Who did that to you then? The reverend? Sister Frances? Who?” Ethel grabbed the girl’s arm to keep her from running back to the factory and lowered her voice. “You can tell me. If they’re hurting you, you don’t have to go back.”
“No. It’s not what you think. Brother Milton is a kind man. They took me in and gave me a home and a life. All they want is for me to do God’s work. I knew when I heard the call, I knew I would have to answer.”
“Is it God’s work to beat you? Was that your call? That’s crazy, Mary Alice. You don’t deserve that. No one does.”
“You don’t understand. I swear they didn’t hurt me.”
“Then who did? Some of those marks were fresh.”
Mary Alice’s eyes fell to her feet.
“Fine. Don’t tell me. But something’s goin’ on in there. I heard the screaming, dammit. Brother Wenger is up to somethin’, and I’m going to find out what it is.” Ethel dropped the girl’s arm and headed up the street toward the abandoned house.
“No one has seen him,” Mary Alice called after her.
Ethel stopped walking and turned around.
“He never came back after he reported you missing. He wasn’t at lunch this afternoon. Please. What happened?”
“He stripped me naked and pressed a Bible to my head for starters. Sound familiar? Isn’t that the sort of thing your ‘brothers’ in the Lord like to do as penance?”
“No.” Mary Alice shook her head. “They make us kneel on sticks and pray for forgiveness . . . or fast until we can see clearly.”
“What exactly do you know about Brother Wenger?” Ethel leaned in. “How long has he been working with the dear reverend?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a year, I guess. He came over from the Brethren in Lancaster. At least . . . that’s what he said.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know. The rumor among the sisters is that Brother Milton broke from the Brethren and the Mennonite Conference years ago. He didn’t like having to ask permission to do God’s will. It’s not so unusual. People break away for all sorts of reasons. My reverend back home felt that the elders were getting too lenient, so he decided to go back to the Old World traditions. They didn’t approve of women answering a call to services. Especially not to a city mission like this.”
“So you broke away from them?” Ethel raised an eyebrow.
“Everyone has to find their own way to serve God. This is the road I was called to.”
Ethel shook her head a little. “So if he broke away, why did the reverend accept Brother Wenger?”
Mary Alice just threw up
her hands. “He didn’t explain it to me. That’s Brother Milton’s prerogative.”
“You must know something. The devil whispers among us, remember?” Ethel hissed, recalling Milton’s scolding that first night. “What does the devil say?”
“Just that . . .” Mary Alice tried to seal her lips as though against a flood.
Ethel rattled her arm. “Just what?”
“He had a wife a while back, and she died.”
“How?” Ethel glared at her until the dam burst.
“I heard she got sick. Sister Dagna knows the family back in Lancaster. Folks thought the wife was bewitched. She’d have horrible fits. The devil himself was shaking her like a leaf. Dagna heard tell that one of the fits killed her.”
“That’s awful.” Ethel could picture Wenger pinning his poor wife to the floor and attempting to exorcise her devils. She could see his hands around her neck.
“Truly . . . rumor has it he was so desperate he even tried an old powwow to save her.”
“A what?”
“A powwow. Old country folk magic. People over on the farms relied on it for years. They brought it across the ocean along with the songs. My grannie used to work a spell to cure most anything. Croup. Turned milk. Gangrene. That was before the Brethren decided it was the devil’s work.”
Oh, for the love of God. “So Brother Wenger believes in folk magic?”
Mary Alice nodded emphatically. “Lots of folks still do. You ever have a lucky rabbit’s foot or hung a horseshoe over a door? Ever knock on wood?”
Wenger’s hot breath had steamed her face as he had tried to work some sort of magic spell on her, pinning her shoulders down with his knees. “So people say he does the devil’s work?”
“Maybe some do.”
“And that’s how he ended up here.” Ethel was losing patience. “Does he like to strip all the girls naked and try to work his magic?”
Mary Alice flushed at this. “No. I’m sure I would’ve heard about that.”
“Is he the one I heard having his fun with one of you girls? Banging the floorboards over my head the other night?”
“No. I—uh.” Her eyes darted down the street as though someone might be watching. “I think one of the girls might be courting Brother Bertram. At least that’s the rumor . . . but we’d never say anything. Not until Brother Milton blessed the wedding.”