Bordello Walk

by Melissa Bowersock

  Lorraine dipped a tea bag in the hot water and the smell of Earl Grey rose on the steam. “Sugar?” she asked.

  “Black is fine,” Lacey said.

  Lorraine set the mug on the table in front of Sam. He reached out both hands toward it, but they shook so, Lacey was afraid he’d spill it. She held the mug by the handle to steady it until he was able to wrap both hands around it. As his palms settled against the sides of the warm mug, he let out a relieved sigh.

  “I’ll have two more of those in just a minute,” Lorraine said. She’d already gotten two more mugs and was repeating the process.

  “Great,” Lacey said. She pulled up a chair next to Sam and sat. She watched him closely as he brought the cup to his lips and sipped the steaming liquid. The only sign of stress she could see was the tight set of his jaw.

  “I’m okay, Lace,” he said in a low voice.

  She nodded agreement. “I know.” But she still kept an eye on him as he drank more tea.

  “Here you go,” Lorraine said. She set a mug in front of Lacey and another one at her own seat. She passed a bowl of sweetener packets, and Lacey took two.

  For a few moments, they all sipped quietly, allowing the hot liquid to infuse their bodies with welcome warmth. When Sam finally began to shrug off his peacoat, Lacey helped to pull it off and tossed it on another chair.

  Sam pushed his empty cup aside.

  “Another?” Lorraine asked. She was halfway out of her chair and reaching for the cup.

  “No, that’s fine,” Sam said. He sat back in the chair and visibly flexed his shoulders.

  Lacey reached into her pack for her notebook. “You wanna talk about that?”

  Sam nodded, but first he turned to Lorraine. “Have you noticed any cold spots in the store? Or especially outside there?”

  Lorraine thought back, her gaze drifting off toward the ceiling. “Yes, as a matter of fact. In that same front corner, but inside the store. In the winter time, we could never get that area to warm up, but I just attributed it to an old, cranky heating unit.”

  “It’s not,” Sam said. “A girl died there; froze to death just outside. Anyone with any sensitivity could walk through there and feel the cold.” He rolled his shoulders, as if shaking off the last of a chill.

  “Oh.” Lorraine blinked at him in surprise. “I never thought…”

  “Most people don’t,” Sam said. “It’s not the first explanation that comes to mind.”

  “Do you know much about the history of the building?” Lacey asked. “Any stories of such an incident?”

  “Well, as I said on the phone, I know this place used to be a brothel. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, prostitution was very common, due to all the miners in the area. In 1903, Jerome was dubbed the wickedest town in the West, and a couple of years later, the mayor ordered all the brothels off Main Street.” She chuckled softly. “They moved one street down to Hull Avenue, on the back side of these buildings here. There’s even a walkway that goes between two buildings from here to there, and it got the name Husband’s Alley. Hull Avenue, by the way, was named for Mayor Hull, the same mayor who insisted the brothels move off Main.”

  Lacey smiled at the irony. “But any stories of a girl dying like that?”

  Lorraine shook her head. “Not that I’ve ever heard. There are a lot of other stories—”

  Sam held up a hand to stop her. “Let’s hold off on that,” he said. “I need to walk the rest of the building.”

  “Why?” Lacey asked.

  “Because,” Sam said, “there are more ghosts out there.”

  ~~~

  FIVE

  “More?” Lacey repeated. “How many more?”

  “I’m not sure,” Sam said. “One for sure; there may be others.” He pushed back from the table, and both Lacey and Lorraine stood with him.

  “Do you want your coat?” Lacey asked. The empty building was chilly, although not anything like what Sam had experienced outside.

  “No. I won’t need it,” He said. “Come on.”

  He headed out into the main display room, and Lacey and Lorraine followed. Lacey started the video function on her phone. She thought he might start near that front corner, but instead he turned toward the back of the building.

  Twenty feet from the back wall, he stopped and scanned the area. His eyes were half closed, barely slits, and his nostrils flared.

  “Smoke,” he said. He lifted his chin and sucked in a deep breath. “I smell smoke.”

  Lorraine, standing next to Lacey, touched her arm and looked genuinely alarmed. Lacey shook her head.

  “It’s okay,” she said in a quiet voice. “It isn’t from now.”

  Lorraine nodded, but still looked worried.

  “Over here,” Sam said, turning to the right. He walked slowly and angled toward the back wall as he neared the corner.

  “Fire,” he said. He stopped a few feet from the back corner and lifted his arms up in front of his face, as if shielding it. “Everything’s on fire. The heat is unbearable. The smoke is so thick, I can’t see anything.”

  Lacey glanced up from her screen. His eyes were wide open, and of course there was nothing to obstruct his view. She noticed a sheen of sweat on his face.

  “Trapped,” he said in a raspy voice. “Can’t … get out. The smoke… choking. Too hot. Too hot. Can’t… breathe…”

  He stumbled backward. Lacey’s first impulse was to back out of his way, but when he didn’t continue moving away, she took hold of his arm and pulled him. His skin was hot and moist, and his t-shirt had damp patches. She dragged him backward until he finally began to resist.

  “Okay,” he said, turning away from the corner. “I’m okay.”

  Lacey released his arm and put a hand to his face. Sweat slicked her fingers.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Lorraine, do you have a towel somewhere?”

  Lorraine dashed back to the break room and returned with a kitchen towel. Lacey mopped Sam’s forehead before he took the towel and wiped his face and neck.

  “Jesus,” Lacey said again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Sam searched the towel for a dry spot, found one and wiped his forehead again. “Yeah.” He held onto the towel with one hand, pulled his damp t-shirt away from his body with the other. “I’ll just need to dry off before we go back outside.”

  Lacey clicked off her camera. “Okay, so are we done?” She made no bones about wanting to leave the building as soon as possible.

  “No.” Sam handed the towel to Lorraine and pointed to the stairs with his chin. “We need to go up there.”

  Lacey let out a groan. First ice, then fire; what the hell was up there? “Are those stairs safe?” she asked Lorraine. She didn’t like the looks of the rustic wooden staircase.

  “Oh, yes, they’re perfectly safe,” Lorraine said. “They look old, but they’re not.”

  “All right,” Sam said, nodding forcefully. “Let’s get this over with.”

  They trooped up the stairs to the upper floor. Lacey was glad for the reassuring feel of a composite material under her hand, rather than the desiccated barn wood that it looked like. Yes, the stairs felt solid beneath her feet. Thank God.

  Sam stepped onto the floor—more woodgrain composite—and surveyed the empty space of the second level. The only windows were at the front, and the sun had slipped below the horizon, so Lorraine flicked on the overhead lights. Again Sam headed for a back corner, but the opposite corner from the fire.

  “Small rooms,” he said. He stopped and held his hands up as if framing narrow spaces. “Room for a bed, a washstand, a chair.” He edged forward and faced the side wall. “Freedom. Away from the drudgery. The grayness. Then… he found her.” He lifted his chin and pulled in a deep breath. “Fighting. Him… knocking her down. Her screaming back, scratching, clawing. Fists against bone. Blood spattering. She won’t back down. Won’t give in. Until…”

  He closed his eyes and exhaled heavily, his shoulders sagging. He put a ha
nd to his brow and massaged the creases there. “He shot her,” he said softly. “Point blank. Right in the center of her forehead.”

  He stood quietly, head down, the fingers of one hand gently rubbing his forehead. As if he might erase the pain, the blood, the bullet hole. Finally he turned away. “That’s all,” he said.

  He headed unerringly for the stairs, and Lacey was just as glad. She and Lorraine followed him down. He veered into the break room and got his peacoat, shrugged into it and headed for the front door.

  Lacey ran to grab her pack.

  “Um, we’re leaving?” Lorraine asked.

  “Yes. If you don’t mind, we’ll talk more at your house.” She turned to explain. “It’s difficult for him to be here.”

  “Oh. All right.” Lorraine pulled her keys from her purse, her confusion evident on her face. Once they’d all exited the building, she locked it up. Sam had already taken his seat in the car, and Lacey climbed into the back. Lorraine piloted the car back to her place in thoughtful silence.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” she told them inside. “Would you like coffee or tea?” She stood poised at the kitchen door while they went to the living room.

  “I’d love a cup of tea,” Lacey said.

  “Just water for me, please.” Sam sat at one end of the couch and Lacey settled next to him. She set her pack on the floor but got out her notebook and a pen.

  Lorraine brought Sam’s water, and went back for the two cups of tea. She served Lacey, then sat in the chair across from them. Each of them took sips of the restorative liquid and relaxed into the cushions.

  Lacey was the first to return to business. She jotted notes to herself about what they’d witnessed, what Sam had reported. After a moment, she asked him, “So there’s three spirits there? Or are there more?”

  Sam set his water glass on the end table beside him. “No. Just the three,” he said. “That’s enough.”

  Lacey heard the rueful tone and nodded. Three ghosts in one building. But a building like this, that had seen so much human history, was bound to have its stories.

  “All right,” she said, angling toward Lorraine. “What experiences have people had there? What is it about the ghosts that presents a problem for you?”

  Lorraine set her tea cup aside. “Let’s see. It started when I opened my store four years ago. I had all kinds of crystals, wind chimes, Christmas ornaments. You know—fragile things. Breakable things. It wasn’t long before the ghost began to show up.” She lifted her eyebrows. “I thought it was only one. She would appear suddenly, scaring customers. I can’t tell you how many people dropped things they were holding. It wasn’t their fault; they were startled by this woman grinning in their faces. But the breakage began to add up, and of course it cut into my profits.”

  She shifted in her chair, signaling an uptick in developments. “One time, a man said a woman grabbed him—by the privates. He half jumped, half fell backward, right into a large display of glass shelves. Luckily he wasn’t cut, only scraped and bruised, and of course I paid the medical bills. The breakage was substantial. After that, I worried constantly about liability, not to mention damage to the store. I just felt like it wasn’t if another disaster happened, but when. If another customer were hurt, and hurt badly, I stood to be sued. I could lose everything.”

  She sighed. “So I closed the store and put the building up for sale. But by then, the stories had spread. No one would buy it.”

  Lacey had set her phone to record, but jotted notes as well. She drew a quick sketch of the building floorplan, just two squares with the stairs to one side.

  “Do you know where these events took place?” she asked. “What areas of the building?”

  Lorraine tipped her head up, accessing her memories. “The man’s fall into the display was upstairs. I remember that. The rest, I believe, were just here or there, upstairs and down. I never noticed a pattern, but then I never looked for one, either.”

  “Did you ever notice heat in the back of the building, in that back corner?” Sam asked.

  Lorraine shrugged. “Yes, but old buildings like this are hard to regulate. Just like the cold in that front corner. I just chalked it up to the inefficiency of the heat pump.”

  “Did you ever see the woman’s face yourself?” Lacey asked. “Or did anyone describe it to you?”

  “Not up close,” Lorraine said. “I saw her once, across the room, but she just kind of drifted by and disappeared. One of the girls that worked for me said she saw her. She said she’d seen a woman standing in the middle of the store with her back to the sales clerk. When the clerk approached her, to see if she could help, the woman turned around, grinned at her, and faded away. The girl said the woman was short, and had curly brown hair. But that’s all she saw.”

  “I think that’s the one from upstairs,” Sam said to Lacey. He’d noticed her drawings of the layout and pointed to the left side of the second floor. “Put her here. Short, with curly brown hair.”

  Lacey made quick notes. “Any description for the other two?”

  Sam stared at the crude map, but Lacey sensed he wasn’t really seeing it. His eyes were only half open, barely slits.

  “I keep thinking of flaming red hair here”—and he pointed at the back corner of the lower floor—“but I’m not sure if that’s really a hair color or… the fire.” He went silent again, his breathing shallow. “I… I can’t tell. Put a question mark on that.”

  Lacey did. “Speaking of the fire,” she said to Lorraine, “do you know when the fire happened there?”

  Lorraine snorted. “Which fire? Jerome’s had numerous fires in its history. My building was destroyed and rebuilt twice. One fire was in 1894, and the second was in 1898. That one destroyed all of the commercial area of town. The good news for the brothels was that they were often the first businesses to be rebuilt. One madam even gave lifetime passes to any men who helped her rebuild, and as you can imagine, she got all the workers she needed.”

  Lacey nodded as she wrote. “Okay, so the girl that died in the fire would have been 1898 or earlier.” She glanced at Sam. “Did you have a sense if all the girls were there around the same time? In the same iteration of the building?”

  Sam was already shaking his head. “No. The girl in the fire was the earliest. I think the other two were in the building as it stands today. I don’t know if they were contemporaries, but they could have been.”

  Lacey scanned her notes, remembering something Lorraine had said earlier. “Before, when we were in the break room, you said the mayor shut down the prostitution on Main Street and it all moved to… Hull Avenue. When was that?”

  Lorraine thought back. “I believe it was 1905. It’d be easy to find out. The Jerome Historical Society has detailed records.”

  Lacey looked up at Sam. “So that means all three girls were there between 1894 and 1905, just over ten years.” She tapped her notes with a finger. “We ought to be able to find them pretty easily if there are lots of historical records.”

  “There are,” Lorraine said. “It’s such a small town, and everything’s been really well documented, even the prostitution.” She glanced over at a small bookshelf against one wall. “I have a book here you might find useful…” She got up and pulled the slim volume from the bookshelf, then handed it to Lacey. “It’s primarily old photos, but there are some short accounts of the history, as well.”

  “Great,” Lacey said, flipping through the pages. “Can we borrow this?”

  “Sure. You might check at the Mine Museum and ask about the archives. That’s all run by the Historical Society. I think you should be able to find everything you need.”

  Lacey jotted those down. “Perfect.” She looked to Sam. “What else?”

  He was thoughtful for a few seconds, then nodded once. “I think that’s all for now.” He turned to Lorraine. “We’ll work on it. From what you’ve told us, I don’t think this will take too long.”

  “Oh, good,” she sighed. “Maybe then
I’ll be able to sell that building. And the ghost tours will just have to skip that one from now on.”

  “Ghost tours?” Lacey echoed.

  “Yes.” Lorraine chuckled. “There are several outfits that do ghost tours here. They’re out every night.” She looked to Sam. “You could probably make a fortune clearing all the ghosts in this town, but the tour people wouldn’t be happy about that.”

  “Not to worry,” Sam said with a wry smile. “I have no intention of clearing all the ghosts.” He shivered. “There are way too many of them.”

  Lacey began putting her things away in her pack. “All right, Lorraine. Let us work on this. We’ll keep you posted.” She stood and slung her pack over her shoulder.

  “Thank you so much.” Lorraine shook both their hands and walked them to the door. “I’ll look forward to hearing what you find.”

  Lacey drove carefully, matching her speed to the twenty mile per hour limit and the narrow, twisting roads. Once they got down on the flat again, she felt better.

  “So,” she asked as they cruised down the highway toward Cottonwood, “how bad was it?” She glanced at Sam quickly before returning her attention to the road.

  “It was bad,” he said, “but I got it done. It took a lot of energy to block out everything else. Do you remember our first case? All those young girls?”

  “Yes.” How could she forget? All those poor girls raped, murdered. Buried in a back yard.

  “That was like this, but on a much smaller scale,” Sam said. “There, I only had about ten of them all trying to get through to me at once. Here, there are hundreds.”

  Lacey imagined hundreds of ghosts crowding around Sam, whispering to him, reaching out to him, touching him. A chill crawled up her spine.

  She pulled into the motel and parked the car, thinking this was a good time to change the subject. “There’s a Mexican place next door,” she noticed. “Wanna have dinner there?”