by Ty Patterson
‘Let’s happen, then.’
Crossville was originally named as Lambeth’s Crossroads, the first name coming from Samuel Lambeth, a settler in eighteen hundred who opened a store on the junction of the Great Stage Road and the Kentucky Stock Road.
The Great Stage Road connected Knoxville and Nashville, while the Kentucky Stock Road was a cattle drive route that joined Middle Tennessee with Kentucky. A post office was established in the city in 1830 and by then the city had adopted the name of Crossville. The store no longer existed, in its place was a junction just south of the courthouse.
Zeb drove down Main Street, through Penfield Street and drove past the site that once housed the garage Lowell Rausch had worked in. In its place stood a strip mall, featuring a row of fast food joints, a hairdresser and an adult store.
A hard, knocking sound came from within when Zeb rang the bell to Hempel’s home and presently the door opened and a tall man stood framed by it.
Pete Hempel was taller than Zeb by a good few inches even when he stooped, as he did now. His silvery hair fell to his shoulders and blew gently in the light breeze. The wrinkles on his face couldn’t conceal bright eyes that peered at Zeb and at the women behind him.
They rested for a couple of moments on the sisters and then he wordlessly turned away from the door and signaled for them to follow him. A cane in his right hand thumped on the wooden floor. He slumped on a couch, waved at one before him and continued to look at them in silence when they were seated.
He was wearing short sleeves and on his left forearm, Zeb glimpsed numbers. He’d seen them before, in Israel, in the United States, in the United Kingdom, several other countries.
Holocaust survivor.
Hempel noticed Zeb’s gaze. ‘The name was Hempleman when I came to this country. It became Hempel. Was easier.’ His voice was strong though his hands trembled with age. ‘I survived all that. Then Lowell Rausch happened.’
He spoke to them for an hour about Lowell Rausch, of how his daughter became enamored of him. ‘The police chief said he was bad medicine. He was a good mechanic though. I told my daughter, she didn’t listen.’ A framed photograph on the mantelpiece featured father and daughter in happier times.
‘I told her she could not marry him, I was going to sack him. The next day they disappeared. She left a note. I showed it to the cops, they said she was an adult. If they’d done something, my daughter would still be here.’
He broke into a coughing fit and when it had passed, lapsed into silence.
He finally broke it by waving his hand. ‘Your theory is nonsense. They had just one child. I should know. I know where her grave is in Alabama.’
Zeb drove them back to Chatanooga where Beth and Meghan boarded the Lear back to New York. He continued on the I-59.
To Birmingham, Alabama.
It was evening by the time Zeb reached the largest city in the state, a city that had played a major role in the American Civil Rights Movement It was at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains and at one time was a manufacturing power house. Like so many other cities, when the factories shut or moved out, the city went into a decline but was now transformed into a vibrant economy.
Rausch had worked as a welder in an industrial unit in Ensley, and had drifted around the neighborhoods of Fairfield, Ensley and North Birmingham. Zeb checked into a motel in Ensley, one of those where the clerk grabbed the cash and didn’t ask any questions. He stopped chewing just once when he looked past Zeb at the SUV. ‘That yours? You’d better have it alarmed.’
The night was chilly when Zeb set out for a walk, ignored the clerk’s amazed, ‘There’s nothing out there, bro,’ and reluctantly admitted to himself that the clerk was right, an hour later. The streets were deserted and there weren’t many public places.
Ideal for crime.
His ride had a long scratch on the driver’s door when he checked out the next day. The clerk smirked but kept quiet when he looked into Zeb’s eyes.
First stop was the industrial unit in Ensley.
It repaired air conditioning and ventilation equipment and was still going all these years later. The manager shook his head. ‘Don’t remember him. I’m new though, have been here less than five years. Jake, over there, might know. He’s our oldest.’
Jake was big, tattooed and had bad teeth. ‘Rausch? Sure, we shared smokes once in a while. Can’t say I knew him well. Dude kept to himself. Brought his kid usually, kept the kid in the office. Strange, that. Never saw anyone else bringing a kid to work. It’s not like this place’s one of them deluxe workplaces.’ He laughed and shook his head at Zeb’s query. ‘Nah, man. We didn’t talk any family kinda shit. He was weird, I’m weird. We didn’t mix.’
Zeb checked out Rausch’s rented apartment in Ensley and drew a blank, the apartment block had been redeveloped. He didn’t fare any better at Fairfield. No residents on the street Rausch had lived, remembered him. Most of them had moved in the last ten years. The club where he’d worked had closed.
The trail became warm in North Birmingham.
A red bricked apartment complex that had burglar bars on those windows that weren’t broken or boarded. An old man who was glad to have company. ‘Yeah, used to see him come and go, had his son with him always.’ The man hawked and spat, narrowly missing Zeb’s shoes. ‘Wife? She died. The man was alone. He used to bring some girl once in a while, I sometimes heard screaming and shouting. I lived just across, a couple of times I knocked and said I would call the cops. Things went quiet.’
He grinned. ‘Cops knew him. They took him away several times. You checked out where he came from?’ He mentioned another apartment block a few streets away.
Dead. His wife was dead. No one had seen her. That was all that Zeb got from the few residents who remembered Rausch. Afternoon came, Zeb suppressed the hollow feeling inside. He checked out the remaining addresses the twins had come up with. Nothing.
He went to the remote farm the Rausch’s had lived on when Jane Hempel was alive. It was a good half an hour outside the city and when he approached it, he double checked his GPS. Acres of farmland disappeared in the horizon, blue sky beat down at him. No other living being was in sight.
Made for off the grid living.
He turned back to the city and tried hard to be positive.
Not getting anywhere. Somewhere out there he’s mocking me.
He went to the first food truck he found in North Birmingham, filled himself with fuel – coffee, a burger, beans – and looked around for inspiration, help, a light-bulb moment, anything.
He got it a moment later when his eyes lit on the spire of a church in the distance. He wiped his hands on his combat trousers, stuffed the wrapping in the nearest bin and hurried to his ride.
The graveyard was neat, quiet, and had about two hundred stones in it. Zeb had got the address from Hempel, it was just two miles from where he was in North Birmingham. A few people between the graves, a lot of silence. A girl laughed in the distance.
Zeb started from one corner, and read the names as he covered the yard in sections. Nothing. A couple looked at him curiously, looked away at his returned glance. Another section. Names. Lots of them, but not the one he was looking for.
He covered the entire site. No Jane Rausch. No Jane Hempel. A girl ran to a corner of the yard, laid flowers on a stone behind a tree. Zeb checked it out. There were a few more graves there hidden from the main site.
In one corner, a small stone.
Jane Rausch. No dates, just the name.
Zeb looked at it for long, fought back the blackness that came over him.
There goes my theory. She did die. I was thinking she’d survived and with her, the twin.
He swallowed his bitterness. The twin existed only in my imagination.
He trudged back to his vehicle and sat in it, stared at nothing for a while. He fired up the engine and then he was out, running, back to the grave.
Too clean. A flower.
He called the old ma
n. No, he’d never visited the grave. Lowell Rauch had given him the address, but he hadn’t bothered to visit. His daughter was dead. Seeing her grave wouldn’t change that. No, he hadn’t paid for its maintenance. He didn’t know who would.
Zeb called the twins. Meghan called back two hours later with an address.
The address was a neat home a mile away from the church. A dog barked as Zeb approached, feet shuffled and the door opened. A short woman, old. She adjusted her glasses and peered up at Zeb.
She listened in silence, looked once behind Zeb, looked back at him. She didn’t welcome him inside. Zeb was okay with that. He had that effect on some people.
She looked at the photograph on Zeb’s phone, turned away and returned with one of her own.
A blonde woman, smiling brightly.
‘That’s my daughter. I buried her forty years back.’
She listened to Zeb, an air of finality came in her eyes. ‘Young man, we didn’t have anyone else. The name isn’t common, but I know. I lost all my family long time back. she was my only one. I lost her too. Dates? Why would I need them on the stone. I knew when she was born. When she died. That’s enough for me.’
Zeb sat in the vehicle for what felt like hours. A cop cruiser went past slowly, he ignored it.
The beast inside him was thrumming
Smart. Very smart. Lowell Rausch saw the gravestone and a story unfolded. Maybe he didn’t want to be burdened with two kids. One kid he could look after. He deserted her and the second child and spun a tale to the old man. He gambled on the dad not visiting the site. Even if Hempel had visited the site, Rausch would’ve long disappeared.
So where did Jane Rausch go?
He punched out more numbers on the phone, Meghan came on, Beth listened in, excitement crackled in their voices.
Half an hour later, addresses came up on his phone.
The first one didn’t know Jane Rausch. No Jane of any kind. No Hempels. Didn’t recognize the photo. They didn’t have records for that long back. Computers? They’d just started using them.
Neither did the second one, or the third or the fourth.
Zeb drove downtown. Three more addresses remaining.
All of them drew blank.
He parked illegally near a sidewalk, ignored stares, turned around and started again.
Go by probable dates around the birth.
Some of the people were patient when they same him again, some irate. All of the places came back blank.
He made one more call. Meghan picked up. He heard a keyboard in the background, a voice on a phone.
Half an hour his phone buzzed. An address.
It was a home, white, calm, on the outside, nothing special about it. Hundreds of such homes in the neighborhood.
No, it’s different in one respect. It’s bigger than most other homes. Three stories.
An elderly lady with spectacles dangling around her neck opened the door, listened to Zeb silently, read his identification carefully. She looked at him up and down and then stood aside and led him inside.
‘We’ve been going for more than a hundred years. In those days, very few people knew what we did, what we offered. Those who needed to know found us.’
She placed her glasses on her nose, patted her pockets and came out with a key. The key went into a desk and it opened to reveal a modern laptop.
‘We were different from many other such establishments in this respect. We maintained records. The founder, she was a stickler for records, for neatness, for keeping books. She took photographs, in those days, she made sketches. She was an artist herself. She took names, dates, identities where available. Not because she wanted to report anything to anyone. She was just inclined that way. She knew most of the names and identities would be fake. It didn’t matter to her. A well-maintained record book was like Heaven for her.’
‘When computers came, we converted those paper records to electronic, scanned the photographs and in a year, all our history was on hard disks. We’ve kept the tradition of maintaining records, it’s easier now. We still don’t share those with anyone.’
Zeb listened to her in silence as she punched keys and a printer whirred. She brought several sheets, photographs, to Zeb.
‘Those are the ones who came, in that date range.’
Zeb flipped through the photographs rapidly.
He stopped on the second last one.
Jane Rausch stared back at him, a boy by her side.
Chapter 18
The woman came closer, looked at the photo Zeb had paused at, went back to her computer and read aloud. ‘Marge Pelling. Boy was five years old when she first came. She was intoxicated and had bruises on her arms and face.’
She frowned. ‘She gave her address as some farm outside the city. Her husband had deserted her, she didn’t want anything to do with him. He’d abused her and her son.’
‘She mentioned any name for her husband?
The spectacles went up over her eyes and she peered at the screen. ‘No.’
‘You called the cops when she mentioned abuse?’
Another peek at the screen. ‘Nope. I’m not surprised. She probably would have been adamant about not involving cops. It’s not uncommon.’
‘That’s....’ Zeb searched for the right words. ‘You’d fall foul of the law wouldn’t you? By not calling them?’
‘Yes.’ The reply was flat. ‘We’re here to protect women.’ Her eyes challenged Zeb.
He backed down and asked another question.
‘The boy’s name?’
‘Joshua Pelling.’
‘What became of them.’
She went back to her notes, read to herself, something crossed her face. ‘She came frequently. Left whenever we had a shortage of beds. Our problem is beds. We never have enough of them, so when we find women are able to fend for themselves, we ask them to leave. Marge was a regular for five years.’
She tapped a few keys and scrolled down. ‘No record of where she went, when she left this place. Maybe to the farm. She gradually became an alcoholic, had frequent attacks of depression. The boy was off the grid, and was homeschooled. When she was here, she taught him herself. It was not uncommon in those days.’ A sad look crossed her face. ‘Marge committed suicide one day. Hanged herself. It happens more frequently than people think, in such places.’
‘She gave an exact address for where she came from?’’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘You’d take walk-ins like that?’
Her eyes shredded Zeb. ‘The majority of those who come in are walk-ins. We don’t turn anyone away. We exist for all those for whom the system has failed.’
Of course. Want to ask anymore stupid questions?
‘The boy?’
She mentioned a name, an agency. ‘State custody.’ She printed the file and thrust it at Zeb who read it rapidly.
No doubt. The same person. Same build, same birthmark on face. Timelines match. He skimmed through the photographs on his phone, selected one and laid the phone beside one photograph in the file.
Joshua Pelling. Ivan Rausch. Identical. Rausch waited for Ivan to turn five and then abandoned Jane and his second son. Easier to travel with a five-year-old than with a toddler.
‘Oh my!’ The woman exclaimed. Her eyes grew large and her resistance crumbled when Zeb ran through an edited version of the story.
Zeb thanked her and left with one last look at the white walls of the women’s’ homeless shelter. Weather, age, and neglect had taken their toll, but they still stood strong and welcomed all those who came. It didn’t advertise itself and few knew what lay behind its walls, but those who sought its sanctuary, knew where to find it.
Joshua Pelling. Now to connect the dots that lead to you.
‘Got him.’ Zeb’s voice came over the phone as Meghan turned on the speaker and signaled frantically at Beth. ‘He and his mother surfaced at a homeless shelter when he was five years old. I think Lowell Rausch probably regarded the second ch
ild as baggage and fled with one boy.’
‘So what’s his name now?’ Beth asked impatiently.
‘Went by Joshua Pelling at the shelter. No idea if that’s still the name. However it’s the same guy, same looks, same birthmark. I’ve sent you the photographs and file. Run them through Werner, through the aging program and compare-–’
‘Yeah.’ Meghan cut in. ‘We know the drill. You hang in there; we’ll make some calls, get you names from the state agency, and find Joshua Pelling’s foster family. You go talk to them.’ She hung up.
Zeb looked at his phone. They’ve got the scent now.
Zeb was in the foster family’s home on his second day in Birmingham.
The thin hair on John Korda’s head was neatly brushed as he sat comfortably in his home in Vestavia. A German Shepherd had barked when Zeb had arrived, had bristled when he’d entered, and had gone quiet when Zeb had looked at him.
John laughed, a laughed that started deep in his belly. ‘What’re you man? A dog whisperer? Franz doesn’t like strangers, this is the first them I’ve seen him go meek.’
‘We understand each other.’ Zeb didn’t elaborate and brought Korda back to topic. ‘Joshua Pelling.’
‘Yeah, that guy. My folks died a few years back and I’m their only biological son. I was a late birth though and before me, they’d taken Pelling as a foster kid. Dad worked in the Department of Commerce, Mom was a homemaker, they fit the criteria and Pelling came to our home when he was five-six years old. He was with us till he was ten, by then I was born.’
‘You remember him?’
‘Nope, not much. There was a six-year difference between us. Hold on.’ He heaved himself up from the couch, went inside and returned with an album. He flipped through the pictures rapidly and presented one to Zeb.
‘The four of us.’
Pelling, dark haired and handsome, smiled at the camera as he held a young boy in his arms. The crescent was visible.
‘Why did he leave?’
Korda shifted uncomfortably. ‘He ran away.’ He hesitated, licked his lips and then continued. ‘He wasn’t the best adjusted kid. He frequently got in trouble at school, fights, bullying, that kind of stuff. We used to keep cats at one point; he tortured and killed a couple of them. Fought with my folks all the time. My folks got him in front of shrinks, but that had no effect. One day he just disappeared. The cops found him at the Amtrak station. He refused to come back to us and went back to state care.’
