She shot a glance at Rodger, who was wrestling one of the other intruders on the floor. For a brief second, I saw the dirty, tattooed face of the attacker. The barbarian’s shaved head and face was covered in alternating vertical stripes of bright red and black. A bright orange oval around the mouth snapped dangerously close to Rodger’s forearm.
Before Janae could drive a fork into this new attacker, her mother pulled her back. The ground opened up inches from the child, leaving a small chasm between them and Rodger. As her mother pulled Janae backward into another room, I caught a glimpse of two more sloats emerging from the opening of fresh dirt.
We were in what I suspected was the family’s sleeping quarters. The room was tiny, only offering enough space for a small bed and a straw-stuffed pallet on the dirt floor.
Eyes wide, Janae’s mother signaled her to be quiet and then turned to peer through the narrow crack of the door. A second later, she struggled to push the small bedframe to barricade the door. She wasn’t nearly fast enough or strong enough to withstand the attacker’s force on the other side. She shoved Janae under the bed just as a sloat broke through.
Though I couldn’t see above their ankles, the struggle between the intruder and the woman was obvious. Another sloat entered with mud-caked boots. The disappearance of the mother’s feet from view told me that she had been forced down onto the bed above us.
A lump formed in my throat. “No! No . . . Janae, I can’t . . .” I grabbed the sides of the Re-Viewer goggles to lift them off, but Janae stopped me.
“Not much longer,” she said. “I need you to see this . . . for you to understand.”
My mind flashed to Hennemann trying to have his way with Janae, which added another layer of revulsion to the scene. I wondered which she found worse: watching the rape of her mother or being faced with the same horror as an adult. I felt sick, and it wasn’t due to the motion blur of the Re-Viewer.
Janae’s words were soft but burned like hot metal. “What you’re witnessing right now has fed a part of me for over twenty years, an engine of hate that has kept me going when others give up. It’s a part of who and what I am. There is no me without it.”
Though I didn’t witness the act, I had no doubt they were brutalizing her mother. I gasped when a beaten Rodger unexpectedly crawled into the frame. Blood dripped from multiple lacerations that crisscrossed his face. Even in the low light of the room, he spotted his daughter under the bed. But of course he knew to look for her there. There was nowhere else for her to go.
With great effort, he put a quivering, bloody finger to the gash that was his lip and gestured for young Janae to remain hidden and silent. The view wobbled as the girl nodded ever so slightly.
A hot tear ran over my cheek.
The sloat’s boots turned to Rodger on the floor and kicked him without mercy until he was still before turning back to the mother.
I yanked the goggles off. “Janae, I’m sorry.”
“There’s more.”
“No, I’ve seen enough,” I said, handing them back to her. “I can’t do any more. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
She stared at me as I dried my face with my sleeve.
“She died that night.” One of her hands clutched the Re-Viewer. The other opened and closed on the ruby from her mother’s brooch. “They thought they’d killed Rodger too. So did I. They nearly did, but he was just unconscious.”
“But they didn’t find you?” I asked, biting my lip.
“No,” she said, her hand tightening around the gem. “No, they didn’t find me. That was the first time I hid to stay alive.”
“The first time?”
I tried to hand the wooden box back to her, but she refused. “I want to show you something else.”
“Janae, I can’t watch any more like—”
She twisted the goggle’s rings anyway. “This is different. I’m setting the chrono-rings to something better. I want you to see Jimmy . . . to see him the first moment I saw him.”
She passed the Re-Viewer back, but this time, it felt more like an invitation than an assault. I sighed and strapped it back on.
“I set it to Thursday, June 10th, 1880. That’s the day I came up through a food ration portal in the Wallington sector.”
After a couple of seconds, I was watching as little Janae maneuvered her way through a dense maze of metal beams, greasy supports, and enormous rubber tubes that hung like jungle vines.
“I’ve always been good at climbing,” Janae said, “so once I made it to the underside of the platform, it was fairly easy to move along until I found one of the drop stations.”
She let me watch in silence for half a minute or so. “It was Rodger’s idea to bring the Re-Viewer with us up to the platform. I think he was going to buy our freedom with it from whichever magistrate had banished him originally.”
“I don’t see him. Is he behind you?”
She ignored my question. “I can’t remember what possessed me to turn it on at that point, but I’m glad I did. Are you to the part where I wriggle into the food ration shaft?”
“Uh . . . yeah, you just did that.”
“Keep watching. You’ll see the most spectacular sunrise I’ve ever witnessed, and then you’ll see him. He’s out for an early morning stroll, James Hadfield Nelson. When the shock of seeing me wore off, this kind young man with a heart the size of Buckingham Palace took me home and cleaned me up.”
I watched a much younger Nelson in a pinstriped suit approach with a bewildered expression. I’m sure he felt he’d just witnessed the impossible.
“Back then, he worked at the Addleton Heights registry office. It was easy for him to forge the required paperwork, making it appear that I’d come up here after his mother in Maine passed away. I went to school like every other kid up here, got my trade certificate, and apprenticed to become a coggler technician, as well as performing other tink duties for the Commonwealth.”
I watched as Nelson looked from side to side. When he was certain there was no one around, he motioned to the girl to leap from the portal station’s fence into his arms. The image froze on him with his arms open wide. A second later, the spinning discs of the goggles slowed and dimmed out.
She spoke softly while adjusting one of the arm straps of her glove. “I still can’t believe he’s gone . . . He saved my life. You understand that now, right? He should’ve turned me in, but he didn’t. He gave me a life up here. I’d probably be dead if I’d remained down there—dead or worse.”
“Yes, I understand.” I handed the goggles and the Re-Viewer box back to her and tried to steady my voice. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“He was more to me than a brother of true blood could’ve ever been. Other than Jimmy, I’ve never told or shown anyone how I made it to the platform. I’ve always offered the fabrication that Jimmy came up with about his dead mother.”
She cradled the device in her left arm as her other glove wiped more tears off her cheeks. “I can’t believe I’m telling you all of this. I never talk this much, especially about . . .” She sniffed, and then panic filled her eyes. Whether consciously or out of habit, her free hand slid across her belt to Rodger. “Wait, you’re not going to turn me in, are you?”
As placidly as possible, I answered, “No, you’re safe with me, Janae. I won’t tell your secrets. You can trust me.”
She inched away from me in the direction of the door. “But isn’t that what you do? Sell people’s secrets?”
“Yeah, well, that’s true, but I think it’s time for me to try my hand at something else for a change. The secret-selling business is not what it used to be.”
I studied her for a few seconds and realized there was no easy way to go about it. I decided to go all in. “Tell me . . . what happened to Rodger?”
The question dazed her, as if she’d forgotten that was what had started us talking in the first place.
Janae’s forehead furled as she responded slowly. “It took him a few months to
recuperate from the . . . the . . .”
“It’s all right,” I reassured her. “I know what you mean.”
“Anyway, afterward, he began to work on the crawler box night and day. He became obsessed with it, obsessed with getting us out. He told me he could build a single-rider version of the original three-passenger one he’d planned—he said he could complete it sooner because it’d be smaller. He told me he’d based it on the same principles that a spider uses to crawl along a web, only it’d be for a six-hundred-foot trip straight up.
“I was seven then, the perfect size to fit inside the box while he gripped handles he’d mounted to the side. Rodger explained that because it was wind-up tech, the journey upward would take several hours, warning me to duck down into the crawler if we saw a Charon patrol.”
There was a long pause before I asked, “Hennemann was the one on the skiff?”
Janae nodded so slightly, she barely moved. “I remember his face even without Re-Viewer memories. I remember his face like it just happened. There was a gap where the scrap metal didn’t come together all the way, and I watched as the skiff sailed up to us. My father . . . he let go of the crawler box. He just let go, dropping into the skiff.”
I swallowed hard, knowing what was coming next. Hennemann had told me how a crazed scrape had lunged at him like a berserker with a death wish and sliced into his arm.
“He stabbed him,” she said. “Stabbed him with a long piece of scrap that he’d carried in his belt.” Tears flowed again. “Looking back on it now, I realize that he knew we’d be seen. That was his plan all along: wait until a Charon skiff came by, subdue the rider, and then fly us up over the city’s edge on the air skiff.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“No, he was overpowered. I didn’t see it happen, but I heard him holler as he fell.” After another long pause, she continued, “I was so scared that I stayed in that cramped metal box for half a day, until the smell of my own urine became more than I could bear.” She held up the Re-Viewer for emphasis. “You saw what happened after that through these.”
I rose to my feet. “I understand why you say you need to see the photograph of Jimmy.”
I headed into the darkroom. For the first time since I’d met her, things made sense—the lack of resemblance between her and Nelson, why he’d donated to the orphanage at Father J.’s church, Janae’s proclivity to tinkware, her manner of dress, even her cough—the results of seven years’ exposure to air contaminated with coal dust.
I dried the prints of the murder scene and draped a blanket over my arm to cover Hennemann’s body. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next. Leaving the darkroom, I found Janae on her knees before Hennemann’s corpse.
“For most of my life,” she said as she shook her head, “my life since I was seven . . . there hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I haven’t thought of this moment.” She looked up in my direction as if signaling me to come to her side.
I slowly moved closer, lowered the blanket onto the body, and took my place beside her. The scene was surreal, both of us kneeling before Hennemann’s covered corpse and my ruined desk like an altar.
She sniffed. “Every single day since then, I’ve dreamed of killing the Charon that threw my father from that skiff . . . killing this man here . . . and when it happened . . . when I finally did it . . .” Her voice trailed off into a whisper. “I didn’t even know it was him.”
She got to her feet and pointed at Hennemann as if aiming a spear at his heart. “He’s dead because of . . . the . . . he . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, finally blurting out, “He’s dead for what he tried to do to me today, not for killing Rodger. He’ll never have to pay for taking my father from me! He’s dead without having to answer for that, and that’s very, very wrong.”
At that moment, I’d have given anything to revive Marcus Hennemann just so she could electrocute him all over again.
I stood up and dusted the knees of my trousers, wondering if now was the best time to present her with the photographs I held. “Janae, I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine what all of this is like for you. I just want you to know that—”
She cut me off, distracted by other thoughts. “You know, I never got to say goodbye to my father . . . to tell him how much I loved him, to tell him thank you for giving me a chance at a better life.” She unhooked Rodger, which got my attention.
I caught myself taking a step backward out of reflex. Janae and I were on good terms now, but the body never forgets something like that, especially with the smell of Hennemann’s cooked flesh still in the air.
Her eyes focused on the device as if it were the first time she’d seen light gleaming off the copper cylinder. “How appropriate that the instrument I named after him avenged his death. This piece of filth killed Rodger, and my Rodger killed him. I think there’s justice in that, don’t you?”
I nodded, hoping to tread lightly. “Yes, I do. There’s a certain justice to it.”
“Jimmy also gave me a chance at a better life, and I never got to say thank you or goodbye to him either. The two most important men in my life vanished without warning. That’s gotta be enough to make anyone question things, don’t you think?”
“Janae, I honestly don’t know what to say.”
“I feel like I’m that little girl in the box again, but Jimmy’s gone and can’t save me this time.” She pointed to my hand. “Are those the photographs of him?”
“Maybe now isn’t the best time to—”
“No, it’s all right. Please, Kip.”
Reluctantly, I allowed her to take them from me.
She sat down and studied them in silence for a long time.
Twenty-Three
Through a substantial amount of debate and a measure of patience that would’ve baffled Job, I finally convinced Janae that we needed to get Hennemann’s corpse far from my office. Though she was right that he looked like he’d suffered a heart attack, I refused her request for us to simply shove him off the fire escape. I felt responsible for what would happen to Miss Talbot. I couldn’t put her through a police inquisition.
Eventually, Janae conceded, and the two of us lowered him down the fire escape one rail at a time by rope. Halfway through, the line snapped and Hennemann crashed into the back-alley snow, so in a way, Janae got her wish after all.
We climbed down, secured what was left of the rope under his armpits, and pulled with all our might. Admittedly, it was a dirty trick, but I chose to lift the side with the mechanical arm to avoid coming into contact with his flesh any more than I had to. We managed to drag the carcass through the snow to the steam carriage.
If anyone approached us, I’d prepared a story that he was drunk and going to sleep it off in the back of the vehicle. However, either the busybodies on my street didn’t see us or for the first time ever, they minded their own business. We hoisted him up Montague’s steam-chair ramp in the back and secured the doors.
Exhausted, with our backs pressed up against the cold metal of the carriage, I asked, “Did it ever bother you that your brother worked for Alton Montague, given your situation . . . you know, being from . . . down . . . below?”
She replied without hesitation. “As sure as rats are in the rafters, if you live on Addleton Heights, everybody works for him, directly or indirectly. It’s just something one comes to accept.”
“You still want to see him?”
“More than ever. You’re not welching on our deal, are you?”
“No, but we have to do it my way.”
“I agreed to the dress, didn’t I? I promise I’ll do what you say. Just get me up there.”
I motioned her off the carriage’s back door. “Hey, I forgot something.”
She slid over, letting me back into the large compartment. Feeling around in the dark, I found what I wanted in Hennemann’s vest pocket and exited the cab.
“What’s that?” Janae asked, pointing to the small burgundy book.
“I don�
�t know. Maybe nothing, but this guy had a habit of writing things down everywhere he went. Maybe it’ll tell us what we’re up against, and we won’t even need your brother’s ledgers.”
Before she could ask, I said, “And yes, I’ll still take you up to Montague’s compound.” I tucked the booklet in my pocket. “Come on, it’s cold out here. Let’s go back to the office where I can look at this in the light.”
First, I had to let Janae admire the elegant tinkage of the steam carriage, and then we climbed back up into my office.
Thumbing through the burgundy notebook, I found addresses of a haberdashery and a west side tavern called the Witches Brew Pub. The pages also contained grocery lists with items crossed through and several dirty limericks, including one about a loose woman from the Northern Union visiting General Lee’s men. On the opposite page was a drawing of a sour-looking porcupine with an inscription that read, “Reggie’s little prick.”
Other obscene doodles followed. The most notable one was of a well-endowed woman who, when the page was properly folded, appeared to perform a sex act on the naked man on the opposite side of the sheet. Yes, even in death, Hennemann possessed the ability to inspire a certain amount of revulsion.
“Find anything in there?” Janae asked.
“The usual stuff you’d expect, I guess.” I flipped the page. “Here’s a recipe for a casserole called Darby’s Delight.”
Halfway through, I spotted something that looked more official. “Wait a minute. This might be something. There’s a list of locations within the city.”
Janae leaned forward in the chair. “Locations . . . like where?”
The heading had a single word: ‘Mechanicals.’ My thumb traced over the numbers down to sixteen of twenty. It had a dash, then ‘Chinatown.’ I remembered the numbered crate of the statue I’d encountered. “I think it’s a list of statue deliveries. Remember how I told you about the statue I saw by the Under portal in Chinatown?”
Addleton Heights Page 23
