by D. M. Pulley
A blast of cool air hit her in the face as Jimmy pushed a manhole cover up and out of the way. A minute later, Kris’s head popped up through the round hole and into the courtyard outside Jimmy’s stairwell. He pulled her up onto her feet. The antique bicycle was still chained to the stair railing. The windows where she’d seen the little girl with her puff of black hair wave down stood empty. Kris scanned them all while Jimmy and Mimi hoisted up the dogs and replaced the manhole cover. Looking for Ben. Looking for Troy. Looking for her father.
Jimmy led them down the empty corridors, past the kicked-in doorways left open during the raid. The sirens and pounding boots left a hollow silence in their wake. Motes of disturbed dust still hung in the air as the building settled back into a deep sleep. Jimmy stopped at an open broom closet. A familiar eight-pointed star marked the back wall. He pushed it open into a hidden room with a flowered couch and a broken window. None of the old lady’s things had been disturbed. The cops hadn’t even known the room was there. The only reason Kris found it the first time was the door had been standing open.
Kris stopped and ran her fingers over the star. It belonged to the Legion, and so did the room behind it.
“Make yourselves at home,” the crone twittered and prodded her orange cat off the plastic-covered sofa. We have several friends in the area.
Gripping the knife, Kris sank down onto one of the cushions and stared at her blood-soaked shirt now cold and clammy against her skin. Sickened, she wanted to take it off but couldn’t bear the thought of dragging it across her face and over her head.
“Here, honey. Let me help you with that.” Madame Mimi tapped her shoulder and nudged her forward, pulling the dry back of the shirt up and over the top of her head. The woman wadded up the fabric and threw it into the corner, then plopped down next to her with her giant bag, pulling wet wipes and napkins out. She wiped off Kris’s slack face and neck and said, “It’s not your fault, Kris. None of it. No one gets to choose their family.”
Kris recoiled from her. “Why are we here? This room? Is the old lady? Is she . . .” Legion?
“Heavens no!” Mimi gaped at her, catching her meaning. “Farthest thing from it. You’re safe here . . . for now.”
Grabbing the napkins herself, Kris scrubbed the red crust off her hands until the skin was raw. She held on to the knife just in case. The lady with the pink curlers had led Jimmy back into her bedroom, saying something about a telephone.
Old newspapers sat in a pile on the coffee table next to her. Kris scanned the grainy smudged print, desperate to focus on something, anything other than the hollow space between her ribs. One of the headlines was circled.
BELOVED HUSBAND AND DOCTOR FOUND DEAD, it read. She squinted her eyes at the smaller print.
Dr. Albert Dietrich was found dead in his office on August 22, 1938, due to an apparent overdose of morphine. County Coroner Samuel Gerber ruled the death a suicide despite the insistence of his family that he was not a regular user of the drug or prone to bouts of depression . . .
There were several more circled headlines in the stack below it. Kris glanced over at Mimi, then stood up with the newspapers and walked into the bedroom. Jimmy sat hunched over an outdated phone book. A loose phone wire draped over the floor and out the small window.
The old lady sat perched on the edge of her flowered bed, watching Jimmy with glazed eyes. She wasn’t all there.
“Who was Dr. Albert Dietrich?”
“Hmm?” she asked. Kris pointed to the newspaper in her hand, and the crone shrank as though the name weighed her down. “Oh, him.”
“I know that name.” Jimmy leaned over and scanned the article. “Dr. Dietrich was one of the leaders of the Cleveland Silver Shirt Legion. Being a doctor makes him a great Torso Killer suspect. The coroner’s reports pointed to a killer with some medical knowledge. They didn’t think regular folks would know how to cut up a body so well.”
Kris handed him the paper and scanned the ones below it. A Cleveland police officer named Marcus Kessler jumped off a bridge. A prominent stockyard owner died of alcohol poisoning. The president of one of the biggest railroad lines to run through Cleveland shot himself. They had all died in the late 1930s and early 1940s. “They all committed suicide,” Kris said dully. It felt like sleepwalking. Maybe I’ll wake up soon.
“No shit?” Jimmy stood up to get a better look at the headlines now covering the old woman’s bed.
“Who were all these people?” Kris asked, eyes drifting from one paper to the next. ADELA RAE WULF MISSES TRIAL DATE, ASSUMED MISSING. She turned to the old lady at the edge of the mattress. “Why do you have all these?”
The woman didn’t answer.
Jimmy took another newspaper from Kris and flipped through the pages. “I recognize a lot of these names from the Torso Database. They’re all suspected members of the Silver Shirt Legion. All except this guy.”
He showed Kris a small obituary that read, Called Home: Unitarian Minister William R. Milton, age 64, suffered an apparent heart attack yesterday while walking near West Side Market. His body was found behind one of the butcher stands . . .
The crone just sat there staring at her hands.
Jimmy was too engrossed in this new cache of evidence to notice. “This can’t be a coincidence. Maybe somebody figured out who was doing the killing. Or maybe someone inside the Silver Shirts decided they were a risk and silenced them all. Man, they must’ve done something to really piss somebody off because suicide’s the worst death there is . . . you know, if you’re one of them.”
Kris turned to him. “It is?”
“Suicide’s a mortal sin, if you believe in that kind of thing. You couldn’t even get buried in a proper cemetery back then. You’d just be damned straight to hell. It’s also more convenient for any police officers that wanted to avoid an embarrassing investigation. They’re open and shut cases.”
The old lady nodded in agreement.
Kris studied the woman’s empty expression. “Who are you?”
“I’m not anybody anymore.” The lady chuckled. “When you get this old, you just disappear.”
Jimmy wasn’t amused. “What’s your name?”
“Oh, it’s changed so many times over the years it doesn’t really matter.” The lady waved her hand like a name was a trifle.
“What do your friends call you?” he pressed.
“Nothin’. I haven’t had a friend in ages.” The old woman’s eyes drooped, water pooling in her sagging lower lids.
Kris stared blankly at the newspapers piled on the bed. BELOVED HUSBAND AND DOCTOR FOUND DEAD, she read again and wondered what the newspapers would say tomorrow. Beloved Father Gunned Down, Daughter Missing. She shook the thought from her head and turned to the old woman. “What about Johnnie?”
“Have you seen her?” The crone grabbed her arm, eyes lit with hope. Or madness. “Dark skin, beautiful eyes? She’d be older now. Not as old as me, but old. She might be using a different name—Norma?”
Being touched sent shudders through Kris. She could still feel his hand squeezing her throat. She recoiled her arm and reflexively felt for the knife she’d left in the other room. The woman didn’t seem to notice.
“We haven’t seen Norma or Johnnie,” Jimmy answered for her. “How long has she been gone?”
The crone shriveled with disappointment. “Years. I lost her years ago. She’d gotten herself another man, and one day she’d just . . . I did my best by her, I really did, but a girl needs a proper mother . . . needs so much more than what I could do.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s tough . . . But you did okay. Some part of her made it out. It did . . . I think Johnnie was my grandmother.” He patted the woman’s hand.
She turned to him and studied his face as though for the first time. “You have her eyes! Those sad, haunted eyes. Oh, honey.” She cupped his swollen face in her gnarled hands. “What happened to you?”
“I’ve had worse.” Jimmy closed his heavy lids and nodded a moment
. When he looked up, there were tears in them. “What did Johnnie call you?”
“Ethel.” She bent her head as though she owed him an apology. “She used to call me Ethel.”
“Why do you have all these old newspapers, Ethel?” Kris lifted a stack of yellowing newsprint.
Ethel looked up with a mournful grin, a pink curler dangling from five strands of hair. “Because I killed them, dear.”
The answer should’ve been a shock, but Kris just felt herself nod. Her eyes dropped to her buzzing hands, her broken lifelines stained red with blood.
“We were right.” Jimmy scanned the headlines again. “The Legion were the Torso Killers, weren’t they?”
Ethel gave a faint smile. “Among other things.”
“How’d you do it?”
“It wasn’t so hard. No one ever expects to be killed, you know. They just go about their business, never suspecting that death might be waiting for them in their office or at the end of the bar.” She folded her frail hands. “You just have to be patient.”
Kris clasped her own stained palms together to steady the tremor in them and whispered, “But how could you do it? How could you live with yourself?”
“Someone had to stop them, Kris,” Jimmy protested. “Merylo, Ness, the sheriff—none of them could build a case. These people were murderers . . .”
“Heh. So what does that make me? The hand of God?” Ethel shot Jimmy an amused glance and patted his arm like a grandmother. “The devil needs hands too, you know . . . Anyway, it don’t matter much. I decided I don’t believe in God. The devil, I’m not so sure, but I wasn’t going to wait around for him to show up. That was my choice . . . and I’ve had to live with it every day since.”
“Is that why you stayed here . . . like this?” Kris asked, scanning the water-stained walls. Beloved Father Gunned Down, Daughter Missing.
“I tried other cities, other names, other lives . . . but none of them fit worth a damn. I was never part of this ‘society’ of yours. Besides, all that killing takes something from you . . .” The woman let out a heavy sigh and turned her glassy eyes to the cracked window. “They never stopped, you know. Just when I thought I got ’em all, another body’d show up somewhere. Headless. Naked. Cut up. It made me crazy. Truly . . . They even locked me up for a bunch of years until the politicians closed the asylum. I got too old for anybody to care what I’d done. Got good dental for a while there, though . . .”
Kris gazed down her blood-splattered bra. “Are you sorry you did it?”
“I’m sorry about all sorts of things, but . . .” The old lady shrugged and patted Kris on the knee as though she understood the girl’s pain. “Killin’s just a part a human nature. I don’t care what the preachers say. Push anyone far enough, take enough from ’em and . . . Don’t matter anyway. I was damned from the start. If I had to go back, I’m sure I’d do it all again. I can’t help what I am.”
Kris wiped a stray tear. “What are you?”
“I’m a ghost, dear. Always been a ghost . . . just been waitin’ here for one of ’em to come back to their altar and start up again. If I could just get one more, maybe . . .” Ethel’s watery eyes circled her stark room, reeking of cat urine and mold. “I ain’t afraid of ’em. Whatever’s gonna be done to me got done years ago.”
“But that can’t be it! Can’t you . . .” Kris felt a pang for the old woman. For herself. She grasped at the air. “I don’t know, make it right somehow?”
“Right by who? God? Jesus? Santa Claus? Don’t think I haven’t tried, but none of that nonsense works if you don’t believe in it . . . just a child tryin’ to cast a magic spell. Nah. I’m biding my time here until hell or whatever you want to call it comes for me. Until then, I’m free.” Ethel leveled her watery eyes at her.
Free. Gravity failed her. All the things that had tethered Kris to the earth fell away at the thought, and she began to drift. He’s gone. He’s really gone.
“Maybe you could make it right if you did something really good.” Jimmy knelt on the ground next to the old woman, but he was staring at Kris.
Ethel shook her head. “The path to good was always closed to the likes of me, even when I went lookin’ for it.”
“I get you, I do.” Jimmy nodded, reaching for Kris’s hand, holding on to it, keeping her from hurtling off into space. “But maybe we’ve got a chance here to do somethin’ . . . I don’t know, worthy of redemption.”
“Redemption?” Ethel laughed. “Oh, he’s good, ladies. Isn’t he . . . And I imagine this redemption’s got somethin’ to do with you?”
HEADLESS BODY OF MAN IS FOUND
The headless body of a man, almost beyond the possibility of identification, was found yesterday afternoon on the westerly edge of the yards of the Norris Bros. Co. movers and erectors, 2139 Davenport Avenue N.E.
The torso, both arms and one leg were beneath a high pile of steel girders and hoisting machinery beams near the Lakeside Avenue side of the yards.
—Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 23, 1950, p. 1
CHAPTER 52
August 22, 1938
Dr. Dietrich came into the examination room with his head behind a clipboard, not even bothering to look up. “And how can we help you today, Miss—uh—can you please tell me your name?”
“Wallace. My name is Miss Wallace.” Ethel’s voice shook with adrenaline. Just being in the room with the doctor sent two thousand volts through her. I should’ve taken another shot of whiskey. She kept her head down below the brim of her hat. I never forget a face, he’d said. . . . As much as I might like to.
“Yes. Miss Wallace. What seems to be the trouble?”
“I’m afraid I might be . . .” She cleared her throat and gripped the gun hidden under the folds of her skirt in her sweating palm, afraid it might slip and go off. “In a family way.”
“I see.” Dr. Dietrich lowered himself onto a stool at the end of the exam table and flipped to a new page on his clipboard. He still hadn’t looked at her. “And how late are we?”
“Two months.” Her heart rate slowed to a slightly less suicidal pace. He didn’t suspect a thing. The doctor sat in a white coat with nothing but a pen in his hand. In the cabinet behind him, there were only jars of cotton balls and swabs. None of the drawers held a knife or gun. She’d checked.
“And the father?”
“I—uh—I don’t . . .” Ethel let her head sink lower and feigned tears. She remembered how much the doctor liked seeing his patients squirm. He liked shaming them, and Ethel was an expert at giving men what they liked. “I’m not looking to make anyone a father . . . I can’t. I’m sorry, Doctor, I just . . . I don’t know how this happened.”
The doctor stopped writing and chuckled, quite pleased with his position in the matter. “I think we all know how this happened. Are you a mistress or a whore? Not that there’s a significant difference between the two in my opinion, except for your ability to pay of course.”
“He said he’d pay whatever you want.” Ethel let her voice break. She felt the polished wood grip of the gun, wondering when the right moment would present itself. Part of her wanted to just shoot him in his smug face right then and there, but she needed to find out more about the Legion. She needed him to talk. “Please, Doctor . . . can you help me? I don’t know what to do.”
Her plea seemed to pique his interest. His tone changed ever so slightly, but Ethel could hear the predator in it. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen,” she lied. The younger the better for men like Dietrich.
“Have you ever been diagnosed with a social disease?”
“I—I don’t think so.” She had him. She could see his posture shift with his intent. He stood and locked the examination room door. So it is going to be that kind of exam.
“Any sores? Discomfort urinating?” He set his clipboard and pen down on the counter.
Ethel forced herself to shrink and squirm for his amusement. “No.”
“We’re going to need you to remove yo
ur clothes, Miss Wallace.” The doctor pulled the metal stirrups out of the exam table beneath her with two menacing clanks. “Let’s see what sort of shape we’re in.”
“All of them?” she whimpered, debating whether to wait until his pants were around his ankles and he was hobbled.
“It’s the only way to do a proper examination of your condition.” His voice turned hard and impatient, perfectly practiced at frightening a desperate girl. “If you’d rather go see another physician, I’ll bid you good day.”
“No.” She stood up from the table and made a show of her shame, head hung low. “Could you please . . . turn around?”
“Of course.” He turned toward the wall, the power of his position thrilling him, his entire body taut with anticipation. Ethel stood up from the exam table and rustled her skirt as the doctor tapped his hard-soled shoes against the tiles. She trained the gun on the back of his head, hands trembling. “Will it hurt, Doctor? I’m awfully afraid of the pain.”
He cocked his head to the side, and she could hear the amusement in his voice. “Of course not, Miss Wallace. If you’d like, I can administer morphine . . . or ether. It will just cost a little more.”
Ethel pressed the cold barrel of her pistol to the nape of his neck and pulled back the hammer. The image of Johnnie drugged and bound in a basement nearly blinded her. “Did you charge the other girls for the morphine, you sick son of a bitch?”
He turned his head toward the sound and got a good look at her face. Recognition registered in his pale blue eyes. “What is this? How the hell did you get in h—?”
Ethel fired the gun over his shoulder. The bullet barely missed his nose before lodging itself in the bricks behind the plaster. The kick of it jumped up her arm, but she held steady. It felt good. Shooting a raping bastard like her landlord had been one of the most satisfying moments of her life.
Dietrich froze, bent in a half crouch, eyes stunned, his cheek flamed red with a gunpowder burn. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. She held the gun to his head and considered pulling the trigger.