by Ronald Kelly
“Nate, I don’t believe that is necessary…” Upchurch began to protest.
“Well, I do!” He walked over and thrust the file, almost a little too forcefully, into the face of the red-headed girl. “Here. Let’s see if you can give us a reading on this file. Or do you need to break out the tea leaves and tarot cards?”
Cindy Ann ignored the man’s sarcasm and, laying her book aside, took the file that was handed to her. She opened the folder. Inside, were several sheets of paper bearing a few paragraphs of information. Attached at the upper left-hand corner of the first page with a paper clip was a black and white photograph of a girl around Cindy’s age. She had curly blonde hair and a defiant expression on her pretty face.
The teenager stared at the photo for a long moment and then shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Sorry.”
Moore huffed impatiently and shook his huge head. “So you can’t tell us a single helpful thing about this missing girl, can you?”
Cindy’s eyes were steady as she looked in him full in the face. “No, I can’t tell you anything about the girl in this photograph. But I can tell you about the woman who typed this report. That she is in her mid-thirties, has a nervous habit of biting her fingernails, and has miscarried two times.”
A nerve beneath Nathan Moore’s left eye twitched. He jerked the folder, almost angrily, from her grasp. “So what does it take for you to put on your fortune teller act, little sister?” he asked, his voice harsh and demanding in its tone.
“Usually she has to touch something that they touched,” Maudie said, not at all pleased with how the bigger FBI agent was acting toward her daughter. “Or touch the person themselves.”
Moore grinned. “Okay. I’m game.” He held out his right hand. “Here, grab hold of me and read my mind.”
Clay Biggs frowned around his cigarette, looking ready to stand up and intervene. “Hey now! This is getting outright ridiculous!”
Cindy Ann smiled gently. “It’s alright, Pappy.” Then she reached out and took the man’s meaty hand.
For a moment, Agent Moore stood there, tapping his foot, a look of utter disbelief on his face. Then, abruptly, he felt a bout of dizziness hit him. As he began to grow a little sick to his stomach, a thought crossed his mind. Or, rather, someone else’s thought.
Do you really want me to tell everyone what I see inside you? the voice of Cindy Ann Biggs echoed through his brain. Like, perhaps, how you like to burn your wife with cigarette butts?
The man jerked his hand from her grasp like a man flinching from contact with a live wire.
Clay chuckled. “Hit a nerve, did she?”
Nathan Moore said nothing. Frowning, he sat back down in his chair and, taking a swallow of the cold tea, said grew quiet.
Cindy looked at the other man. “Exactly what would you like me to help you with, Agent Upchurch?”
The lean man took a drink to wet his whistle and then began to speak. “Between the spring of 1928 and the autumn of 1933, a dozen young women between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, were reported missing in the states of Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. Some of them were troubled teenagers and considered to be runaways. But at least eight of them were good girls from good homes. They were almost certainly abducted, walking home from school, the store, or their local library.
“After several years of investigation, following every little lead that came our way, we discovered that the disappearances were connected. A couple of weeks ago, we finally pinpointed a suspect in the abductions, as well as a possible burial ground for the victims.”
A cold sensation suddenly filled Cindy, canceling out the stifling summer heat around her. “You’re talking about him, aren’t you?”
Maudie stared at her daughter, uneasy at the haunted expression in the girl’s hazel eyes. “Who are you talking about, baby?”
Clay’s long face hardened as he realized who she referred to. “You can’t possibly mean…”
“Yes,” she said in scarcely a whisper. “Bully Hanson.”
“Lordy have mercy!” moaned Maudie. If she had been Catholic instead of a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist she would have likely crossed herself.
Sammy suddenly looked frightened. “Was that the same guy who chased us into that barn when I was little?”
Clay and Maudie traded worried glances. “Sammy, why don’t you go on out in the back yard and play?” his mother suggested.
“Aw, I want to stay and…”
“Take your BB gun with you,” his father told him. “Shoot a blue jay or two.”
“Really? Yes, sir!” Sammy hopped off his chair and headed into the house to fetch his Red Ryder. Allowed to shoot his gun on the Sabbath and live birds at that! He wasn’t about to pass up such a golden opportunity.
When the boy was out of earshot, Moore spoke again, ending his brooding silence. “That’s correct. The man responsible for Johnny Biggs’ death is the one we believe is responsible for the disappearance and murders of those twelve missing girls. Maybe even a few that we aren’t aware of yet.”
“He was certainly capable of doing such a horrible thing,” Maudie said. “He was pure evil, plain and simple.”
Clay took a drag on his cigarette and looked over at Upchurch. “What about Claude Darnell? Do you think he was involved, too?”
“No. Hanson didn’t cross paths with Darnell until 1935. We believe he acted alone.” The agent regarded Cindy, who sat pensively in the swing, her feet tucked beneath her. “We were hoping that you would accompany us to the farm that Hanson rented from a man named Alex Potter in Millersville, Kentucky, and help us pinpoint the locations of the buried girls. I know this seems grisly and a tad insensitive on our part, but we would really like to close these cases and move on. Also, the families desire closure. The discovery of the remains would go far in giving these poor people some much-needed peace of mind.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to allow such a thing,” Clay declared firmly. “Cindy’s had her share of dealing with death; enough to last her a lifetime. Don’t you have other people with similar abilities in your dadblamed files that could help you with this?”
“Yes, in fact, we do,” Upchurch told him. “But Cindy has something that they lack. She has a personal connection. I believe she would be more receptive to the site of the murders for the mere fact that they were committed by Hanson. She knew the man firsthand, which gives her an advantage over a psychic who has no connection whatsoever.”
“So that’s what you call them?” asked Cindy. “Psychics?”
Upchurch nodded. “Yes. And there are more of them out there than you can imagine.”
That fact both comforted and disturbed the sixteen-year-old. In sincere hands, the gift of second sight and the quirky little talents that went with it, was a good thing; a blessing from God. But in a person of questionable character, capable of deception and spite, it might be downright dangerous… as lethal as a gun or a knife.
“Well, what do you say, Miss Cindy? Will you assist us in this investigation?”
She hesitated for a long moment. In her mind, she weighed the bad with the good. On one hand she dreaded having anything to do with Bully Hanson and his darkness again, especially if it brought back old memories of that deadly summer of 1936. But on the other hand, it would be well worth it to bring some lasting peace to a grieving mother or father somewhere.
“Mama?” she asked. “Pappy?”
“I believe it’s up to you, baby,” her mother said, although she looked terribly unsure about it all.
“You’re old enough to make up your mind, sweetheart,” her father told her. “I’m between jobs now, so I’ll be happy to go with you, if you don’t mind your old man tagging along, that is.”
That seemed to be the deciding factor that helped her make up her mind. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Early the following Wednesday morning, Cindy and her father stepped off the train at the Millersville depot. The sixteen-year-old was clad in a modest sum
mer dress that her mother had sewn by hand, worn shoes, and Maudie’s oversized straw hat that she wore while working in the garden. According to the two FBI agents, the forty acre spread of the old Potter farm was utterly shadeless. She would need something substantial to shield her from the intense August sun.
Clay wore khaki pants, a blue chambray shirt, and a light jacket. The tan fedora atop his head reminded Cindy of how her brother Johnny once wore his; tilted slightly in a cocky manner. His clothing was much better than the pair of red long handle underwear and threadbare Duckhead overalls that he had jokingly threatened to embarrass his daughter with. In his hand was a battered, old suitcase he had bought at a thrift store in Coleman, just for this occasion. Both his and Cindy’s spare clothing and toiletries were packed together in the satchel and, hopefully, were enough for the duration of their stay.
“You know, this town ain’t much bigger than Coleman,” Clay told her. “So how come I feel like some country bumpkin fresh off the turnip truck?”
Cindy self-consciously tugged at the brim of the floppy sun hat. “I feel like Anne of Green Gables.”
Her daddy raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“Just a book I read once,” she said smiling.
Clay nodded. His daughter had spent a lot of time with her books lately. He had known her to walk the long stretch to town and back just to trade in one book for another. In his opinion, she would likely grow up to be a writer or a librarian.
They stood awkwardly on the train platform, until a familiar voice called out from behind them. “Mr. Biggs! Cindy Ann!”
They turned to find Agent Upchurch heading from the direction of the train station. Behind him were Nathan Moore and a pretty woman with dark auburn hair.
“How was your trip?” he asked, taking the battered suitcase as they started through the depot, toward the black sedan parked out front.
“The Nashville-Louisville Railroad needs to fix a few uneven tracks, but other than that, it was tolerable,” Clay told him.
Cindy studied the woman curiously. Her hair was styled like the USO girls she had seen on some of the recruitment posters in the Bedloe County courthouse; rolled into broad curls on top and hanging long and luxuriant in the back and sides. Her face was pretty and embellished with only a touch of lipstick and rouge. Her eyes were brilliant blue – the color of her mother’s Blue Willow dishes at home – but they held a sadness that seemed unflattering and wrong on such a beautiful person. She wore a dark gray jacket with skirt with a delicate white silk blouse underneath.
“Oh, pardon my lack of manners,” Upchurch said. “This is Sandra. She will be transcribing and photographing every step of this investigation, as well as anything we uncover.”
“Mr. Biggs,” she greeted with a respectful nod. Her eyes brightened somewhat when she regarded the red-headed girl. “Hi, Cindy Ann. I’m glad to finally meet you.”
“It’s nice meeting you, too, Miss Sandra,” Cindy replied. Something nagged at her – a peculiar sense of déjà vu – but she simply couldn’t figure it out.
The woman laid a delicate hand on Cindy’s shoulder. “Are you nervous, dear? About what we want you to do?”
The girl nodded. “A little, I reckon.”
Agent Moore looked sternly at his wristwatch. “We had better get on to the farm and get to work. Uncle Sam isn’t paying us to stand around and chew the fat.”
As the burly agent climbed into the driver’s seat of the sedan, Upchurch rolled his eyes and opened the rear door for Clay, Cindy, and Sandra.
“I take it he’s one of them ‘by-the-book’ fellas,” Clay said, loud enough for Moore to hear.
“That’s something of an understatement, Mr. Biggs,” the lanky agent replied with an apologetic grin.
In several ways, the Potter farm ten miles north of Millersville was eerily similar to the tobacco farm of Harvey Brewer back in Coleman.
An acre from the road stood a lone, two-story farmhouse. It had seen better days. Its white coat of paint had pretty much flaked away due to harsh weather and its roof sagged visibly in the middle, with more than a few shingles missing or damaged. There was a long front porch and a screened in back porch. Around the house stood a cluster of outbuildings; a chicken coop, a tool shed, and an outhouse – a two-seater from the size of it. The thought of someone sitting next to you while you did your business both disgusted and amused Cindy.
To the far left of the house stood the ruins of a barn that had burnt down long ago and had never been rebuilt. Behind that stretched thirty-nine acres of open land. The only trees in sight were a stand of tall pines and cedars at the rear of the property. One thing about the earth that was nothing like Brewer’s farm, was the absence of vegetation. No weeds, no bramble… nothing. Just acres of uneven soil, textured with clods of earth and exposed rock.
It’s almost like everything on top died because of what’s buried underneath, she thought to herself and shivered.
“What’s the matter, Cindy?” her father asked at her apparent unease. “Did a possum walk over your grave?”
She said nothing in reply; simply stared at the sun-baked stretch of unmarked graveyard.
Standing several yards from the eastern wall of the house was an Airstream travel trailer, gleaming in the sun like a silvery egg. Lounging in the shade of that corner of the porch was a short, bearded man with thick spectacles. He wasn’t particularly old – about the same age as her father – but the way he carried himself and his general expression told of hardships far beyond those experienced by a man approaching fifty. He wore a crumpled shirt with its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and dark trousers held up with suspenders. With him were three younger men in work clothes; common working men in comparison to his grizzled college professor.
“That’s Dr. Abraham Polyak,” Upchurch told them as they strolled toward the house. “He recently came to the United States from Europe. He’s a forensic anthropologist and will be helping us confirm the identities of the remains we find.”
As they reached the porch, Polyak stepped down, smiling. He shook hands with Clay and then turned to Cindy Ann. “Ah, Fräulein! It is so good to finally meet you!” he said enthusiastically.
As he extended his hand, the girl noticed a long line of blue numbers tattooed along the skin on inside of his forearm. She had no idea what they were… until his hand met hers.
Sezierraum! Leichen-Raum! Exekutions Statte! Gaskammer! Ziereis! Kommandeur Ziereis!!
The next thing Cindy knew, she was sitting on the edge of the porch with everyone huddled around her. Miss Sandra crouched in front of her. The woman’s pretty face was full of concern. “Are you alright, Cindy? What happened? You gave us quite a fright.”
Agent Moore eyed her suspiciously. “Were you speaking… German?”
Dr. Polyak nodded grimly. “Yes, she was.” He sat down next to the sixteen-year-old, careful not to make contact with her again. His bearded face was pale and shaken. “You were speaking of Mauthausen, were you not?”
Cindy nodded as she turned to him. “How did you escape such a horrible place?”
Polyak shrugged his shoulders. “It was a fluke… one chance in a million that presented itself and I took it. I was laboring at the edge of the rock quarry and, when the guards were busy beating a fellow inmate, I fled into the forest. I feared that the SS soldiers would hunt me down, but they did not.” He chuckled humorlessly. “I suppose they thought I was too weak to survive in the wilderness, but I fooled them with my tenacity.”
“All those poor people.” Tears bloomed in the girl’s eyes. “And your family.”
“Long dead before my escape,” the Hungarian said, wiping a few tears of his own away with a handkerchief. “Boundless evil exists upon this earth, Fräulein… and it goes on still.”
She looked at him, questioning. “Who is Ziereis?”
Polyak’s hands clenched in rage, the knuckles whitening, as he remembered the arrogant commander of the Austrian concentration camp, but his face re
mained gentle. “The Devil, Cindy Ann… like your Bully Hanson. Yet a thousand times worse.”
For the first time, Cindy noticed a flatbed trailer parked a short distance from the silver trailer. There were a dozen long, pinewood boxes stacked upon it.
“What are those?” she asked.
“Receptacles for the remains once they are located and exhumed,” Polyak explained.
“They look like coffins to me.”
The Hungarian’s eyes were sad behind the lenses of his spectacles. “Until their families give them a proper farewell, I suppose that they will serve as such.”
The girl seemed embarrassed by all the attention. “Please… I’m okay.” She looked up at Agent Upchurch. “Can we go ahead and begin?”
“Are you sure… after what just happened?” he asked with a frown.
“Yes,” she said, leaving her seat on the porch. “I feel particularly…” She searched for the right word and then found it. “Receptive right now.”
“Okay. Then let’s get to work.”
Cindy wanted to see the house first.
The moment she stepped across the threshold, goose bumps prickled the flesh of her arms. Dirty, snickering laughter echoed distantly in the back of her mind, followed by low, feminine moans of anguish and pain.
“He has been here,” she told them.
They didn’t have to ask who she was talking about.
Silently, she roamed the bottom floor, past the side parlor, down a narrow hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house. Then she returned to the staircase that faced the front door. Cindy stared at the shadowy landing of the second floor for a long moment, her breath shallow.
“You don’t have to go up there, pumpkin,” her father told her.
“Yes, I do.” Then she mounted the stairs a riser at a time with the others following a yard or so behind her.
