by D. M. Pulley
“Yeah. It’s the name of my dad’s favorite dog.” Kris scanned through the lines of cryptic text again. “What do you think all this means?”
“These are public chat rooms. Anybody can be lurking and reading along, so there’s a few code phrases you throw if you think you’re being watched. Sayin’ your computer is glitching out is one way to warn the others that lurkers are listening. Isn’t Shirlene’s the name of that diner?”
“Yeah, it is . . .” Kris read the sequence again. “He also let him know he was near Lima. When was this posted?”
“April 2.”
“They found the body on April 6,” she whispered.
Jimmy started typing again. The words blurred on the screen.
“I’m going to try to get DHOH to meet me tonight. He’s been dark for days, but he never stays away long. He’s more addicted to this shit than I am.”
She watched as he typed, her anxiety growing. “But we don’t know a thing about this guy . . . He could be the killer. He could be fishing around to see what people know about him.”
“Or somebody was lurking and found your dad before they could meet.” Jimmy turned his soft eyes up at her. “We have to try, right? I’ll be careful.”
“You’ll be careful? People are dead, Jimmy! We need to call somebody. We need to call the police or the FBI. Somebody.”
“We can’t go to the cops just yet. Not until we know what the hell’s going on, right? Once we go to them, you and me can’t . . . I’m going to have to ghost out of here or they’ll throw me in jail.”
Kris frowned, knowing he might be right. Ben certainly wouldn’t pay the online detective work any real attention. He wouldn’t listen to her, and she wasn’t convinced he could be trusted even if he did. “But you can’t risk it. This guy went looking for my father right before he disappeared . . . I mean, isn’t the idea of a psycho who idolizes a serial killer from the 1930s more believable than some elaborate conspiracy involving Nazis? C’mon. We have to call somebody.”
“What makes you think we can trust the cops?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “There were lots of Silver Shirts on the force back in the day. Look.”
Jimmy clicked over to a different screen and pulled up a spreadsheet full of names. He scrolled through the list. There was an entire section marked “Government Officials.” Kris leaned in and scanned the list over his shoulder. “Where did you get all these?”
“Newspapers. Court records. A bunch of us have been adding to it over the years.”
A name flew past that she recognized. “Wait. Go back,” she whispered. The name Benjamin C. Weber glowed orange next to his address in Wapakoneta. She sank down onto the floor next to Jimmy, the blood draining from her head. “Why is Ben in here?”
He expanded the field next to Ben’s name. It read, Suspected recruit through Camp Kessler—Survival Camp for Boys. Arrested in 1979 in connection with the hanging of a black man. Never charged. Parents Bill and Linda Weber members of the Cleveland Bund.
She sucked in a breath. Ben used to bounce her on his knee during football games on Sundays. “Oh my God. Is this real?”
“It wouldn’t stand up in court or anything, but yeah. It’s real.” He looked over at her. “Your dad’s friend?”
She nodded and grabbed the mouse from him and started scrolling through the list. The name Reinhardt appeared more than once. Troy’s parents. She kept going until she stopped on the name Wiley.
“These are my grandparents.”
“Yeah.” Jimmy clicked on their names, expanding the cell. “Clyde and Marta Wiley owned a couple grocery stores and a butcher shop in Cleveland before the Depression. During the war, the feds were huntin’ down Nazi sympathizers, and your pop’s folks were wanted for questioning.”
Kris scanned the text and startled at seeing her own name listed. It sat below her father’s. She sat up with a jolt. “I’m in here. What the . . . Who put me in here? You?”
“But that’s before I really knew you.” He held up his hands in self-defense. “This is just a list of people with connections to the Silver Shirts, Kris. People like you and your dad. Not everyone in here is guilty.”
Kris clicked on her own name. The database expanded to show the address of her rental along with her student ID for Cleveland State University. Her heart slowed to a crawl. “Who else has seen this?”
“Just the closed group. That’s it.”
“Was DHOH in that group?” The red painted star on her door blazed in her eyes. “Jesus, did you give him my fucking address?”
His chin dropped and he shook his head. “No. I don’t think he’d—”
“How the hell do you know? Huh? You don’t know a thing about him. I can’t . . . I can’t do this. I’m calling the police.” She stood up and staggered out of the room in a daze. Troy, Ben, her father, all the names on the list spun through her head. Everyone was a suspect. Even her.
She stumbled out into the hallway, nearly running into Madame Mimi in her caftan.
“The police?” the old fortune-teller asked with a small shake of her head. Poor thing, it said. “I really don’t think they’ll be able to help. Do you?”
Kris could feel her studying the bruises on her face and turned away.
Mimi looked past her to Jimmy. He had stood up from the offending database. “How did it go in Cridersville?”
“Not so good.”
Madame Mimi shot Kris a scolding look. “We’re not here to hurt you, dear. The police out there have no idea what they’re dealing with, and the ones who do can’t be trusted.”
“That’s it!” Kris threw her hands up at the leaking ceiling and crumbling walls. “I can’t stay here. I have to go talk to Ben.”
Mimi put a thick hand on Kris’s arm. “What do you even know about Benjamin Weber?”
“I know that he was my dad’s best friend and he—he . . . God, I don’t know anymore.” It was the truth. Kris dropped her bags and staggered back to Jimmy’s futon.
“Give us a chance to help, hon,” Mimi said softly and turned to Jimmy. “Try to find out what you can. You were going to send a message to someone?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy sat back down at his terminal and began typing.
Mimi settled her bulk onto the bed next to Kris and picked up her hand. “I know this has been hard on you. Coming to grips with the truth always is.” She turned Kris’s hand over and studied her palm, tracing the creases. “There are so many broken lines in your life. The biggest is still to come.”
“Thanks, but I’ll keep my broken lines to myself.” Kris pulled her hand back and stood up. Jimmy was opening another screen. Her mouth fell open as she crept up behind him, watching him click the keys.
LOWJACK: DHOH you there? What happened in Cridersville?
Lowjack? “You’re Lowjack?”
Jimmy stopped typing.
“You stole my father’s police report.” Kris gaped at him. “You broadcast it all over the Internet. Oh my God. I’ve told you everything and you . . .” She didn’t finish. Instead, she grabbed her bags and ran.
CHAPTER 45
“Hey, Kris!” Jimmy called after her.
“Leave me alone!” she shouted, running down the stairs into the gallery.
He caught up to her in the hall outside, grabbing her by the shoulder. She spun and whacked him in the ribs with her softball bag and the shotgun buried inside it. He held up his hands. “Whoa! Easy with that thing.”
“I can’t. I can’t trust you anymore. How could you keep something like that from me? I’ve got to get the hell out of this place.” Tears streamed down her face.
He held out his arms to her. “I’m sorry, Kris. I tried to tell you. I swear. I just knew if I did, you’d never let me help you. I’m not the enemy here.”
“Then who is? Huh?” She wiped her tears, sending a shot of pain through the bruise on her cheek. “I have to go to the police. I have to talk to Ben.”
“You can’t go to him. Do you know who filled out the
police report for your mom’s accident?” Jimmy grabbed her arm. “Do you?”
“What?” The hallway seemed to flip over. What?
“It was him. I looked into it after I met you, and I wasn’t sure how you fit into all of this.” Her mother’s burning car clouded her field of vision. “I’m sorry, but I liked you. I wanted to know.”
“What did you find?” she heard herself ask.
“Officer Benjamin Weber signed off on the police report after the accident. And there’s some stuff that just don’t look right on it. He left half the fields blank.”
“So? What does that matter?” But she knew what he was saying. Ben was involved somehow. She had seen it written all over the deputy’s face as he sat across from her at the table. Ben was hiding something.
Sirens wailed outside the building somewhere in the distance. Jimmy ignored them. “All I know is that someone put that mark on your door, and it wasn’t me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “But you lied to me. How the hell can I trust you now?”
“If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it already. Right?” He took a step toward her and cupped her face with his gentle hands. He’d had plenty of chances. He’d lain next to her in bed the night before and hadn’t laid a hand on her. “Maybe they noticed you poking around and asking questions about your dad. A lot of people got killed for less. Whoever it is, they sent you a message, Kris. I don’t want you to be next.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but the sirens outside were getting louder and rapidly multiplying.
Alarm shot through Jimmy’s eyes as he pushed through a doorway into another room across the hall. She followed him to a window looking out over West 7th Street. Eight police cars were lined up outside the Harmony Mission Press. Two more blocked either end of the street. Ben’s Auglaize County cruiser pulled up next to the Cleveland Police Department’s. A paddy wagon sat at the far end of the block. Policemen in riot gear assembled outside the locked gate.
Jimmy pulled her away from the window. “Shit! Someone must’ve seen us.”
An old man with a cane was standing across the street with two uniformed police officers. They were taking his statement.
A voice over a loudspeaker blared. “This is a police action. You are trespassing on private property. Come out with your hands up. Failure to cooperate will be seen as an act of aggression.”
“See what happens when a white girl goes missin’? They bring a whole fucking army. C’mon. We gotta get out of here. Mimi? Let’s go!”
Ben’s voice came on the loudspeaker. “Kris, if you’re in there, hold tight. We’ll get you out!”
“Jimmy!” Kris planted her feet. “This is out of control. I should just go out there.”
“And do what? Surrender?”
“What about the little girl and her mother? What about the old lady? Somebody might get hurt.”
“Yeah. And it could be you. Now c’mon!”
Kris protested as he dragged her down the hall behind Mimi. “But the little girl!”
“They know the drill. We’ll find ’em.” Jimmy led them down the flight of stairs at the end of the hall and into another corridor.
Maurice the drunk poked his head out of his door. “We havin’ a party?” he growled as they ran past.
“Yep. CPD’s brought the wagon and everything,” Jimmy called back.
“Shit.” The drunk stumbled out into the hall after them.
Jimmy turned the corner and stopped at a narrow doorway. He flung it open. It was a broom closet complete with mop bucket.
“What are you doing?” Kris asked, short of breath from running. “We can’t all fit in there.”
“Nope.” Jimmy pushed the mop bucket aside and pressed against the wood beadboard behind it. An eight-pointed star had been carved into the wood just like the one on the old lady’s door. Kris’s eyes widened as the wall panel popped open. “Everybody in.”
Kris, Mimi, and Maurice all filed through the narrow opening and into a two-foot-wide corridor lined from floor to ceiling with strips of wood and plaster drippings. Jimmy followed them, closing both doors behind him. Pitch-black swallowed them whole until he clicked on his flashlight.
“Where are we?” Kris whispered.
“The people that built this place carved out all sorts of back entrances and private corridors. Even whole rooms you can’t find unless you know where to look. C’mon. This way.”
“But why would they do that?”
“Smuggling, storage, you name it. I found a stash of rifles and canned food in one of these rabbit holes once. I think some of the later architects had ties to the Legion. Did you see the star? It’s the perfect plan really, hiding out in a Bible factory where no one even knows you’re there.”
“Won’t they find us in here?”
“I don’t see how. Not even the folks that ran the mission knew about these places. They’re not on any of the blueprints. Shh!”
Everyone froze. On the other side of the wall, three pairs of boots stormed past.
“Did you hear that, Jenson?” a muffled voice asked. A second later the sound of a door being kicked in somewhere on the other side of the wall shook the dust from the air. “Police! If you’re in there, come out slowly with your hands on your head!”
Kris tightened her grip on her shotgun and waited. The closet door slammed open four feet behind them.
A second voice barked, “Clear! You boys got anything down there?”
“All clear,” came the muffled reply.
The first voice came back, “East wing, third floor clear, sir.”
A crackled response answered through a radio. “Proceed to the fourth.”
The boots and voices moved on.
Jimmy turned the flashlight back on the rest of them. “We have to get to the lower level.”
“Y’all go ahead,” Maurice rasped, blowing out a cloud of stale whiskey that nearly knocked Kris off her feet. “I’m gonna take a nap right here.”
“Just keep it down, Moe.” Jimmy stepped over him and pushed past the rest of them. “Follow me.”
Kris and Mimi followed Jimmy down the narrow space between two walls about fifty feet into a bricked-in air shaft. A narrow steel stair cut through the landing. Kris stared up three stories through the dim light of a window high overhead. “Where are we now?”
“We’re in the chimney chase. College Avenue is that way.” Jimmy pointed at the brick wall below the window.
Outside, the police repeated their earlier announcement over a loudspeaker a block away. “This is the police. Come out with your hands up . . .”
Kris turned her worried eyes to Jimmy. “I should go. This is just . . .”
Mimi held up a hand to silence her. “Someone’s coming.”
A few moments later a door clicked open overhead followed by the beam of a flashlight. Kris’s muscles tensed to run the other way as footsteps shook the narrow stairway. She took a step back into the wall chase and dropped her bags.
“Jimmy? That you?” a voice whispered from the floor above.
“Hey, Jill,” Jimmy whispered back.
The little girl from the window appeared coming down the steps. A white woman with a gash on her forehead and bruises on her neck stayed close behind.
“You know Arlene and her girl, Starr?” Jill motioned to her companions.
Jimmy nodded at them. “Hey.”
Kris gave the little girl a wave, wondering if she’d remember seeing her down in the courtyard. Starr didn’t wave back, she just stared at her with flat eyes, waiting for something bad to happen. Up close, Arlene’s pale face was a map of scars and bruises held taut by a ponytail of greasy blond hair.
On the floor above, a door crashed open a wall away. “You got anything down there?” a muffled voice shouted.
“All clear” came a response.
“Scattered like roaches, sir,” a third voice answered.
“The exits are blocked, dammit! Where’d they all go?
”
“Maybe there’s another way out?”
“No shit, Jenson. You think that up all by yourself? . . . Looks like we got a real detective on our hands, fellas!”
No one laughed. More doors crashed open. The crackle of a radio scratched on and off. The angry sergeant barked more orders. “We’re lookin’ for rat holes, boys! Watch the roofs. Head to the lower levels.”
Jimmy shot Jill a warning look. “We have to move. Now.”
Jill led the way down the stair tower with Starr and Arlene behind her. Jimmy gave Kris a nudge toward the stairs. She stumbled down the steep steps after Arlene. The frazzled companions followed one another in single file down three flights of stairs. They’d gone down two levels before Kris realized she’d left her bags behind.
As the air around her grew thicker with damp and darkness, Kris wondered where the old woman with her pink curlers had gone. Lost. Fallen. Arrested. At the bottom of the steps, Jill’s flashlight stopped moving for a moment, then disappeared around a corner. Kris nearly lost her footing in her own long shadow cast by Jimmy’s light five steps up.
“Jill?” she whispered, feeling her way off the last step onto a dirt floor.
There was no answer.
“This way,” Jimmy hissed, motioning with his light in the opposite direction.
“But . . . Jill went over there.” In the yellow glow of the flashlight, Jimmy looked more and more like a criminal. Lowjack.
“I know you’re conflicted, but you have to trust us, Kris,” Madame Mimi whispered and then shut her eyes and listened. “We can’t linger here. He’s coming.”
As Kris’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see they were at a T-shaped junction with the route to the left leading farther into the building and the right leading away from it toward College Avenue. Jill and her group had headed left. Kris bit her lip.
Jimmy put a hand on her shoulder. “This is the way out.”
“So why did Jill go the other way?” Kris ignored Madame Mimi standing with her arms out like a third-rate witch and searched Jimmy’s dark eyes for reassurance. The yellow flashlight in his hand left them in unreadable shadows.