Chapter 7
Anna pressed her ear to the night cold door. Sobs seeped through the plank as if they were being torn from her own heart. Abruptly, her cautious eyes swept down the shadowed streak of the hallway. Steam hissing from the radiator added a lonely dimension to the night's soliloquy.
She had witnessed them carry the fainted body out of the chamber and dump the naked, abused flesh onto the bed where she lay now, whimpering into her pillow. A seething hatred pounded in Anna's chest.
Defiantly, she stiffened. The ugliness of the chamber's torture could rip apart a woman's soul, forever tainting it. Anna knew; she'd been there.
Outside the chalet the winds slashed against frosted window panes and the German Shepherd, starved for the raw meat he was fed daily, howled at the thumbnail moon slivered with storm clouds.
Eight o'clock. Southworth and Myra would be in the dining room filling their licentious gullets and sipping brandy. Time to take action, time to avenge a lost soul.
Dragging her limping foot, she scuffed down the hallway to the landing to find the ring of keys hidden behind a picture frame with its placid country scene of stoic pine encircled lake and heady sunshine. With eyes peeled on the stairway for approaching shadows and ears preened for the creak of footsteps, she cradled the heavy metallic ring in her palm and stole down the hallway.
Pausing at her room next to the bathroom where the captive girls were escorted four times a day, she scribbled a note on a pad, tore it off, quartered it and slipped it into her pocket.
Work gnarled hands turned the knob to Sherrie's room. The key slipped easily into the latch.
The sobbing had stilled. A fugitive beam of moonlight splashed across the alabaster features of Sherrie's porcelain face. A red welt swelled on her left cheekbone; the auburn curls matted to her fevered forehead.
Drawing a deep breath and shooting a cautious glance over her shoulder, the maid pried open the sleeping woman's tense fingers and slipped the note into the warm palm. She closed the fingers and scuffed out the door,. . . but not before she'd shaken the robe shoulders to alertness.
Sherrie felt the presence, even in deep sleep. Ahh . . . ! " A scream died in her throat as a cold hand clamped over her gaping mouth.
"Shhhh . . . no . . . you must go . . . turn!"
"Wh-what? I . . . " Sherrie tried to shake herself alert. The intruder had to have been a nightmare vision. Struggling up to one elbow, she blinked her puffy eyes.
Who was she? Where was she? Terrified, her eye fled over the room. This was not Chicago . . . this was not her bed . . . and where was Jack?
The dull throbbing between her satiny thighs re leased the gates of memory. The ugliness of the chamber flooded back in sickening waves. A tiny trembling hand reached up to touch the reddened welt
Whiteness, like a flitting butterfly, fluttered from her hand. Puzzled, she grasped at it and unfolded the handwritten note. A long white hospital robe dragged over the floor as she darted in bare feet to the window and squinted in the moonlight to read:
"You must leave here immediately. Leave tonight Your door is unlocked. Go to the cafe at the corner and ask for Harvey. He will help you."
Fear clawed at her delicate throat. Who left the message? Someone had stolen into her room while she was asleep. Who? Why? Was this another trick to abuse her?
With a cry of alarm, her cold, bare feet fled across the scratchy carpet to the door. Apprehensively, he delicate hands closed over the cold knob and turned, was open.
Indecision tore at her heart. What awaited her on the other side? Where were her tormentors?
Rummaging in the darkness, she found her wool slacks. Someone had folded them neatly and tucked them into her night case. Lifting her aching arms, she winced and pulled her sweater over the tingling mounds of her breasts. The nubby wool scratched at her chafed nipples, reddened and swollen from the diabolical machine's tauntings. Every muscle in her legs and back ached from being strapped and pulled taut. With a grunt of discomfort, she reached for her hoots under the bed.
Indecision was melting fast. Whoever these maniacs pre, she had to get away before they murdered her with their diabolical mechanical contraptions!
The frantic captive fled to the window and pressed her perky nose against the frosted glass. Her warm breath steamed the pane, the cooling touch soothing to her bruised cheek. A trembling hand shaded her eyes against the moonlight's eerie glow. "A blanket of white . . . " she muttered to herself, staring at the pristine purity of endless snow. The snowflakes fluttered freely in windblown wisps.
To be free . . . again. Feeling strangely alienated from the world, free will frozen somewhere within her tortured soul, she struggled out of fear's grasp. Watching the snowflakes play and dance in the still night air stilled the clawing terror. To survive was her only hope. Freezing to death in the drifting snow, she decided, could be no worse than suffering the tortures of the stout maniac and his lesbian accomplice! She shivered, but not from the cold.
Tiptoeing, boots in hand, she crept toward the door and peered into the hallway's eerie shadows. Only the radiator hissed. Flinging a swirl of auburn curls over her shoulder, teeth clamped over the chafed line of her rosy lips, Sherrie stole down the hallway. The walls seemed to pulsate, breathe with threats. Step by step . . . so far so good. Stair by stair.
Then her foot froze in mid-air. She sucked in her breath, melonous breasts rising in gut wrenching terror. The step had creaked beneath the weight of her lissome body. Eyes bugged wildly, she waited.
Anna pressed her body against the cold hallway wall, watching the captive make her getaway. Go now . . . hit re faith . . . you must . . . the door is open . . . " Still Sherrie halted. The older woman pressed her bony weight against the wall, clenched her eyes shut and concentrated: "Go . . . THE DOOR IS OPEN'
Auburn curls swung in mid-air. Sherrie's green eyes shot up over the landing toward the hallway. A force, a strangely goading force, was pushing her out the door.
Her hand froze on the banister. One step more, another . . . another . . . another. Now she stood at the foot of the stairway, adrenalin pounding in her ears. Ten feet away a wooden plank stood between nightmares and freedom. Wildly she glanced around. A smoldering fire was dying in the hearth, the deer's head hanging above it grinning lecherously at her.
Frantically, her trembling hands grasped the cold metal knob and twisted. She grimaced, winced, blood singing in her ears. It turned. Slowly, she opened it, stepped into the frozen night. She ran until exhausted, collapsing in the snow.
From the upstairs window, a dark shadow watched her escape. Then, stealing down the hallway, paused to pluck something from the carpet, and disappeared.
Chicago's police station can be a most entertaining nightspot, if one possesses a sadistic sense of humor.
Jack Turner came to that decision as he slumped in a straight backed wooden chair, torturing the Styrofoam coffee cup whose contents gurgled in his stomach. To his right, a handcuffed, toothless Cuban refugee sat muttering damning epitaphs about American freedom; and to his left, a weeping mother blew her nose and fingered a photograph of her runaway daughter.
Jack drew a depressive breath and bracing his elbows on his knees, shot to his feet the second a paunch-bellied policeman called his name and beckoned him with a crooked finger to the desk at the far back. The officer was in charge of missing persons . . . his desk littered with everything from Woolworth photo booth pictures to mug shots and hand drawn sketches, attested to that.
A form was thrust in Jack's face. Jack glowered at it. "I don't want to fill out any forms, Goddam it. I want to find my wife!"
The policeman belched enchilada breath and cupping his hand to his mouth, grumbled apathetically at the distraught young husband. "Look. . . "He shuffled a deck of written reports before Jack's unblinking eyes.". . . we need a report. One hundred and fifty-two people are reported missing in Chicago every day . . . I don't know your wife," he mocked leaning on his elbows, fat fingers entwined and shaking jowled cheeks. He leaned back in his creaking chair and pushed back the bill of his hat.
Humanity . . . was a mess, he recanted, on second thought. It was too easy to become a hard ass in this occupation. His heart softened. "Alright, let's have a description . . . maybe we have a coroner's report. . . . "
Coroner's report! Jack's eyes bugged wildly; he craved a drink. Sherrie . . . dead? Suicide? Would she dare? No, not Sherrie. She couldn't take an aspirin without throwing up!
"Listen . . . " Jack's voice tingled with conspiracy. He leaned over the policeman's desk and braced his elbow on the stack of reports. "You help me find my wife, and I'll help you put a criminal behind bars."
The officer's upper lip curled in amusement. "Dillinger died in a shootout in Wisconsin, and Capone died of syphilis. We don't need no help," he belched.
"What about Kurt Bailey? You got anything on him?"
The officer rolled his eyes at the ceiling and scratched his neck. "Jesus, kid, let's be realistic." He spread his hands expressively. "This city is crawling with vice.. . " He poked his finger at a photograph of a three year-old girl who's bruised, bloodied body had been found in a closet by an inquisitive neighbor. "Kids are being murdered by their parents, men are shooting their wives, wives are knifing their husbands . . . ! " He surveyed the wild eyed man as being one more kook wasting his time. "Evidence.. . " Another poke at the incriminating photograph. "Evidence.. . . "
Jack scraped back his chair, slammed his hand on the desk and jumped to his feet. "You want evidence?" He drew in a breath that added three inches to his height. "I'll swear I'll get that sonofabitch locked behind bars . . . and then I'll get my wife back. You understand? You get one and you lose one, that's the way life works."
Jack's jaws were so tight, a crowbar couldn't have wedged them open as he threw himself behind the wheel of his rented car, revved the motor and skidded out of the parking space of the police department parking lot. A scuffle between paddy wagon police and a handcuffed black man erupted, but his attention couldn't be rattled.
I am going to find Sherrie and she's going to understand for once and for all what an asshole tier father is. She'll find out he fired me for what I knew, not for being a goddamned lousy used car salesman!
Tires spinning and burning, he slid down the ice slickened street toward his house, screeched to a halt before 1897 Garfield, and ran into his garage.
Grabbing tools from his workbench like a frugal housewife at a department store sale, he loaded up his arms and threw himself back behind the wheel. Paying no heed to traffic cops, stop signs, or precarious pedestrians, he sped toward the Auto Fair.