by Lee Taylor
After all, the whole thing’s going to be easy. Save the taxpayers some money. Ease the pain for a couple hundred friends and family. Wipe out a piece of scum. Just like Dad used to say, “Shooting is a cinch if you know how to handle a weapon.” I knew how to handle a weapon by the time I was ten. Knew the power of it, the force. Had a respect for its purpose. Dad taught me all of that. Mom never wanted me to know. Thought it was dangerous. That I could accidentally kill myself or somebody else. She was only half right. There would be no accident.
I pull the weapon out of my bra, practicing my aim a couple times. Still have it. Still have that natural ability for a dead-on aim. Never lost it…like riding a bike. The thought makes me smile. I never learned how to ride a bike.
Dad never had the time to teach me.
My name is Gloria Jean Davy.
I was still a little woozy from the champagne when I called to check in with our housemother on the phone in the kitchen, but she didn’t notice. Actually, I felt marvelous and wanted everyone to know. The problem was, the hospital frowned on our drinking and she’d have to report it. They also frowned on us having a phone upstairs in our bedrooms, a decision that may have cost us our lives.
I tried on about a thousand outfits for that night, wanting everything to be perfect, finally settling on the purple and white slacks with the matching blouse. The collar fell a little crooked so I removed the top two buttons and sewed them on again. Everything had to be just right. I guess I was like that—always wanting things perfect. Fortunately, Bob was the same way.
It had been a lovely evening. My fiancé, Bob Stern and I (Mrs. Gloria Stern…I must have said it over a million times. I simply loved the sound of it) announced our engagement to his mother with a dinner that he and I had prepared especially for her. It was what I loved most about Bob, his kindness and love of romance. Always knowing just the right thing to say and do, going out of his way for the people he loved.
That’s what made that evening so special to me until I was surprised by Richard Speck, a boy around Bob’s age, 25 or 26, shoving a gun under my ribs as I walked into my bedroom.
Six of my roommates sat in a semicircle in the dark on the floor. A street light from Luella Park across the alley illuminated the room. He asked me to join them. I did, between Pam and Nina.
Then, everything seemed to happen in slow motion as he ripped up the sheets from our bunks with his three-inch switchblade, tied our hands and feet with the cloth and told us how he wasn’t going to kill us. I believed him. He had such kind eyes.
After I was tied up, hands behind my back, and after I had asked him why he was doing this, telling him we were student nurses, he seemed to get angry. That’s when he picked me up and tossed me on Pam’s lower bunk. I caught a glimpse of Corazon Amurao, one of my roommates, hiding under the bed. At first I thought it was a strange thing to do, but the Filipino girls were always a little skittish around some American men so it made sense that one of them would try to hide. I thought about telling her not to worry, that it would be all right, but I thought Richard might hear me and make Corazon come out. She looked terrified with her body crushed up against the wall, and I swear I could feel the bed shaking from her fear or perhaps it was my own fear. I couldn’t be sure. I tried to relax and I told myself over and over that he only wanted money.
Helpless, and severely fatigued from the day and the effects of the champagne, plus figuring that whatever money this boy wanted the other girls would give him, I closed my eyes, just to stop the world from spinning.
I must have fallen asleep for awhile because when I awoke my roommates were gone and Speck was sitting next to me on the bed. The room was completely torn up, bedding, clothing and stockings everywhere. I tried desperately to squirm away from him, but he held a gun to my throat. He asked me if I ever had sex before. I didn’t answer. He untied my legs and hands and ordered me to get out of my clothes. I obeyed, only having time to remove my pants and panties. He removed his T-shirt. Once fully awake and aware of what was about to happen I lost all control over my body. Urine seeped out in a slow, warm stream as I watched him climb on top of me. I thought about Corazon and hoped she was asleep and couldn’t see or hear any of this.
I concentrated on other things, good things as he ripped me apart attempting to gain some sexual satisfaction from his rape. I cried the whole time, thinking about Bob and what I would tell him. What he might think of me. It was as if the tears were coming from within my soul. I couldn’t control my emotions.
Richard kept trying to have an orgasm, concentrating on it, breathing heavy with each movement, working hard at it, even ordering me to wrap my legs around him, but nothing worked. That’s when he went crazy.
He grabbed my hair and dragged me off the bunk, out of the bedroom and down the stairs. When I saw two of my roommates lying on top of each other on the stairs I didn’t understand what was wrong, until I saw the blood. I screamed to them and tried to get away from his grasp, but he caught my blouse and ripped it off my body. Silly things raced through my mind about my blouse and how he was ripping so much of it I wouldn’t be able to sew it back together again. How Bob had told me how beautiful I was wearing it. Would I ever be beautiful to him again?
Richard pulled me the rest of the way down the stairs and threw me on the sofa. I landed face down. I tried to scream but he pushed my head into the cushions, yelling that I was just like his ex.
My nose started bleeding against the rough tan-colored surface. He tied my hands behind me again. Too tight this time. Then he tied a strip of my blouse around my neck so tight that I could no longer scream. He started calling me names and swore at me for some past deeds. As if he was yelling at some other girl. A girl named Shirley, his ex-wife. I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight or tell him that I wasn’t Shirley.
As he thrust himself into my anus, I tried to squirm away from the pain, but his strong hands were holding me down, forcing me to remain still while he pushed his now firm penis inside me. I could no longer breathe or move my body from under his weight. I struggled for air, for freedom but the noose just kept getting tighter and tighter as he moved up and down, up and down.
Finally, I let it all go, and when I did, my body released me from its agony. I found myself drifting above the room, above the world. Somewhere beautiful. Somewhere safe, away from the horror.
I drifted into Bob’s love.
Thirty-five
July 14, 1966
“I’m tired. Let’s go to bed,” Lisa said as she slipped off the swing. We had walked back to Luella Park, through the alley behind the townhouses—our new short-cut. “I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.”
“Me either,” Sharon said, yawning.
The three of us finally gave into fatigue sometime around one-thirty. I wasn’t very upset about not meeting up with Wolf, because if the letter wasn’t from Ringo I didn’t want to know. For a while, at least, I wanted to hold onto my dreams.
When we got to my house we quietly slipped in through the open front door. My parents rarely ever locked it and if they did, it was by accident.
• • •
The phone rang around 6:15 the next morning. I knew because that’s what time my clock said when I knocked it over and it hit Sharon right in the head. She was asleep on the floor on a pile of blankets, next to my bed. I thought the ringing was my alarm and I wanted to stop it before it woke up the whole house. I could hear my dad mumble something and then say something else to my mom. He ran out of the house about ten minutes later. Then, a few minutes after he left I could hear sirens. The noise woke us.
“What’s going on?” Sharon asked, all sleepy-eyed, rubbing the side of her head. I didn’t want to tell her about my alarm clock.
“I don’t know,” I answered and looked out of the window next to my bed. It faced the street. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear another siren. This one came from the police car that passed right by my window.
Lisa opened her eyes, looked around, gr
abbed another pillow and wrapped it around her head as she plopped back down on the bed next to me.
I slipped out of bed, climbed over Sharon, who had put her own pillow over her head, and walked out of the bedroom to find my mom. When I got to her room, she was gone. I called out for her, but she wasn’t anywhere in the house.
In the meantime, I could hear voices coming from the sidewalk out front, and people running past our door.
Sharon, wrapped in a blanket, came out of the bedroom, “What’s going on out there? Where’s your mom? Did she leave for work? I thought she only worked in the afternoons.”
“She’s not here. I’m going to get dressed,” I told her and went back to my room.
Lisa never moved an inch while I hurried to get dressed. The noise outside kept getting louder as more and more people came out of their houses and rushed down the street. I sat on the bed to put on my shoes, thinking Lisa would wake up and want to join me, but she never budged.
I ran past Sharon, who apparently had fallen back to sleep on the couch and I joined the rest of my neighborhood as we raced to the corner.
Once there, it was hard to get through the crush of people. The police were trying their best to keep the crowd under control, but no one was listening.
There was something wrong at one of the townhouses. The end one: 2319. Policemen were going in and out of the front door. My dad was one of them.
A man sat on a curb, with tears in his eyes, talking to the woman who squatted next to him. He pointed to the townhouse and said, “That’s where she was. Up there on that ledge, screaming ‘they’re all dead in the sampan. All dead in the sampan. My friends are all dead.’ I’ll never forget it. Never.”
He was pointing to the second-floor window where the screen had been bent back, the window open with a white curtain hanging out. A small ledge protruded from under the window. I wondered why anyone would want to stand up there?
More sirens.
This time it was the fire department. But there didn’t seem to be any fire.
As I squeezed my way through the crowd, I heard someone say, “They’re all dead in there. Mutilated. Blood everywhere.”
I somehow felt as if I were dreaming. The people. The sirens. My legs became heavy as I walked closer and closer to the townhouse. There were other kids out there. Younger kids. Kids I’d seen in the neighborhood were now sneaking through the mob of adults. Trying to see. But to see what? Who was dead?
I looked around for my dad. I knew he had to be there. I had seen him only a moment ago, but I couldn’t find him. There were so many blue uniforms that everybody looked the same.
“Stabbed in the neck,” a tall man with glasses said.
“Spread-eagle on the floor. Naked,” a woman, still wearing her apron, yelled. “Strangled with their own silk stockings.”
“Some kind of sex maniac got ‘em,” someone behind me mumbled. “Butchered, like pigs.”
I couldn’t grasp all that they were saying. I tried to push some of them out of my way, trying to find my father, my mother. All at once, I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be back in my house with Sharon and Lisa. But I pushed on anyway.
“Watch where you’re stepping,” an old man said. His hands all twisted with arthritis. He went to touch me and I squirmed away.
Some people in the crowd took pictures and asked questions. They must have been reporters because they were all dressed up and wore plastic name tags. I’d never seen a real reporter before. Not in person, anyway. I guess they looked normal enough. But they were very pushy, screaming out their questions.
A helicopter circled overhead.
Finally, I was out in the open standing next to a small sidewalk which led up to the front door of the townhouse. A policeman kept telling everyone to move back. Everyone tried to oblige without giving up our spot.
Some time went by while we all waited outside. A lot of people came in and out of the townhouse. More rumors about what went on in there spread through the crowd. “Pajamas ripped off.”
“Pulled off her sanitary pad and shoved it—”
“Stabbed in the eye.”
“In the back.”
“In the stomach.”
“In the heart.”
“Chopped off her breast.”
“I think those girls invited whoever did it, in. They must have known him. I heard they were wild.”
“Stacked up, like cordwood.”
And still no sign of my dad.
Then, the police started bringing in wooden-handled stretchers. Not five minutes after one went in, two policemen carried somebody out on a stretcher, loosely covered in a white sheet. The crowd went quiet. No one said a word as the first stretcher passed about a foot in front of me. The sheet, so sheer that I could almost make out a face. I wanted to run, but I stayed.
Three kids stood next to me, the youngest about six, the other two somewhere around nine and ten. The boy was probably the oldest and in charge of the two girls. He stood with his hands on his hips as the stretcher passed. Staring down at it. Looking. Watching. Waiting. The kids had been planted there by their parents almost as if they were waiting for a parade to pass by and the parents had pushed the kids up front so they could get a better look. I guess it was a parade of sorts. A parade of the dead.
One by one, body after body was carried out of that townhouse. Some with blood-stained-sheets or blankets. Those were the worst. I heard one woman say something about why couldn’t the police have covered that up? Why did we have to see it? I thought I would ask my dad that question whenever I saw him.
The police set the stretchers down on the ground beside the curb. All in a row. All seven of the them.
Somebody said, “Here comes another one.”
I looked up the walkway as stretcher number eight was being carried out. It looked like all the others. Perhaps a little more blood on the top of the gray blanket. As the body passed before me, I noticed that it wasn’t covered very well. Something was hanging out on my side of the stretcher. One of the little girls standing next to me actually reached for it, gently poking at it with her finger. “Look,” she said. I did, just as another policeman, walking alongside the stretcher, gently moved the little girl away and covered the exposed flesh with the blanket.
But I had seen it. A girl’s hand. Fingers curled. Nails chipped and broken. Dried blood splashed across her wrist and palm. She wore pink nail polish and a diamond ring. A diamond ring that I recognized. That I yearned for just two days before in a hot little apartment, where a group of young women made plans for a wedding and to go to the beach, Rainbow Beach, because we would be safe there.
Panic swept over me. I had trouble breathing. Trouble thinking. My stomach pitched as I turned and pressed through the crowd. Everything started spinning. Voices seemed louder. People seemed meaner. I pushed and shoved everyone out of my way. I kept hearing someone call out my name. I didn’t look up. Wouldn’t look up. Someone grabbed my arm and called to me. I couldn’t understand. I tried to pull away, but it was my mother. Her face was red. Her eyes, swollen. I leaped into her arms. She held me tight while I sobbed on her chest. “It can’t be true,” I mumbled over and over. “It just can’t be.”
Mom stroked my hair and said, “Let’s go home, baby.”
Thirty-six
September, 1987
“I heard you play the piano,” I tell guard Henrietta just as she picks up her magic wand to run it along my body. The alarm goes off like it always does from my underwire bra. “I wanted to give you a little gift before we left for putting up with us for the past couple weeks. I have an aunt who used to play the organ at the Chicago Theater during the silent film days. I thought you might be interested in this.” I hand her the sheet music. She puts the wand down on the table. The alarm stops. Her whole face lights up.
“I love silent movies. My gawd, look at this! You say she used to play at the Chicago Theater? I love that old theater. It’s one of my favorites.”
“Mi
ne too. She was there from 1913 to sometime in the late twenties when talkies came in—every Friday and Saturday night and Sunday afternoons. Got her family through the Depression.”
“Look at this. Tillie’s Punctured Romance.” Henrietta beams as she opens the yellowed booklet. “Oh, I know this movie. Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler from 1914. There’s a small theater on the North Side that shows silent movies every Tuesday night and I must have seen this old flick five or six times. Of course, the music is part of the movie now, but this is the original sheet music!” She carefully turns the pages. “Gawd. This is incredible. But I couldn’t accept this. It’s too much.”
“I want you to have it. My aunt gave me so much of this stuff that it just collects dust.”
“Oh no…I could never…this must be worth…I couldn’t.”
“Please, take it. Really, I know my aunt would want you to have it. She was a sweet, giving woman. Please.”
Henrietta smiles from ear to ear and lets me walk right through with a nod and a wink and not one grope.
As easy as that.
“Let me call Vivian up to escort you through,” she says as I head out the back of the Visitor’s Center.
“That’s all right, I’ll be fine,” I tell her, anxious to get away from her.
“No, it’ll just take a minute.”
I walk away. She calls after me, but I don’t turn around. Can’t stop. Heart pounding. Hands clammy. Have to move fast. Have to find Speck. No time for Vivian or anybody else. Need to stay on course. I walk through the tunnel. Follow the yellow line, the yellow brick road. Need to find the Wizard. Speck’s playing the Wizard today. The evil Wizard and I have a present for him. A trip to the Emerald City. A one-way ticket. Only this city’s not green. It’s red. Bright red.
The noise from the inmates helps guide me to my target, F-house. Need to get to F-house. He’s got to be there. Watching. Waiting. He loves to stand around and joke with his buddies. His lovers. He’s got to be there now. Maybe he knows I’m coming for him. Maybe one of my nurses whispered into his ear. Told him to wait for me.
