The police found her there, serene with exhaustion. Horror had spun away with the golden column, leaving a deep, gentle regret in Rosie's breast. She had never wanted to hurt anybody, much less kill someone, but the peculiar certainty that she had done well made facing the police easier. They awakened Pearl, whose sob when she saw Goode's body cut through Rosie like a blade.
"He hit her," Rosie told the police, "and came after me. I had no choice."
Even through tears, Pearl's attention sharpened at the lie. Then she dissolved again, agonizing loss in each caught breath. She didn't, though, dispute the story Rosie had told. Better to be the victim than the accomplice. Better to escape the factory and face Rosie alone later than reveal her unnatural desire for Goode's blood. A calm space in Rosie's chest told her she would mete Pearl a similar fate, if necessary, but maybe it wouldn't be. Maybe with his inhuman lure extinguished, Pearl would return to normal.
"You weren't hurt, were you, miss?" One of the officers offered her a hand up.
Rosie took it gratefully, shaking her head as she stood. "Just frightened." She recounted what had happened—how she and Pearl had been chatting, lingering in the changing rooms when the alarm sounded. How they'd heard a woman's screams and followed them instead of leaving as they were supposed to. How they'd discovered the record player, and how Goode had attacked them. How he'd confessed to killing and—Rosie shuddered, theatrical but heartfelt—eating several women who had recently been thought to have left the factory's employment.
The officer paled, muttered, "Stay here," and went to get his supervisor. A few seconds later the older man's voice shot up: "Eating them? We got a God-damned lunatic cannibal—" He broke off, glancing self-consciously toward Rosie and Pearl, and through the calm haze of survival, Rosie almost laughed. The girls at the factory said saltier things every few minutes, but she supposed admitting that to a man born in the last century would only shock him.
He strode over and towered above them, a big man with a touch of black still coloring the hair visible beneath his hat. Most of the police looked rumpled in the night's heat, but his collars were crisp and his tie straight, and his shirt wasn't yet stained with sweat. It made him that much more professional, his expression that much grimmer. "I'm Detective Johnson. I'm sorry, girls. I know you've had a rough night, and I wish I could just send you home, but you're going to have to come down to the station so we can get the whole story."
Pearl shot Rosie a panicked look, but Rosie only nodded at the detective. The other girl had heard the tale Rosie had spun. The rest was up to her to deliver. Rosie hoped the police wouldn't find any of Pearl's belongings at Goode's home for her own sake as much as Pearl's, but if they did, she would amend her own story to another version of the truth. No one would believe the full truth, not even after she heard another officer say, "What the hell?" as he found the welding torch Goode had mangled.
"Could I change my clothes and call the USO?" she wondered aloud. "My friends were expecting me there tonight. Somebody could get a message to them."
"Soon as we get to the station," Johnson promised, and Rosie went with him, grateful to leave the dead man behind.
She hadn't been inside the police station since she'd gotten her driver's license. Not much had changed. The concrete walls painted cream were yellower than they'd been, maybe. The wide-open windows were stained with tobacco smoke and dirt, and the noise, even late at night, was consistent. There were fewer young men than there had been: all the officers were past enlistment age, and some looked like they'd come out of retirement. Johnson told the receptionist to let Rosie use the phone, but she stood with its black earpiece curved in her palm and couldn't think what she would say. Jean deserved to be told about Ruby in person, and anything other than the truth would offer no excuse for Rosie's failure to show at the USO. After a minute she put the phone down. The receptionist pointed her at the restrooms so she could change clothes and wash up, then, when Rosie came out again, showed her to a seat. "Want some coffee, sweetheart?"
"Thanks, yes, please." Rosie sat watching Johnson talking to Pearl at a desk halfway across the room. She could hear the detective's questions but not Pearl's answers, which the other girl mumbled at her lap. Once she dissolved into tears, and Johnson glanced Rosie's way with a frown. She didn't pretend not to be watching, and when he finished with Pearl, Johnson beckoned Rosie over. "You look like you're holding up all right."
"It's the coffee." Rosie smiled wanly and smoothed her skirt under her thighs as she sat. "Good thing it's Friday, though. I'd never be awake enough to work tomorrow."
Johnson looked toward the wall clock, ticking past one in the morning, and nodded. "Saturday morning, now. I meant considering you just killed a man."
The coffee turned acid in Rosie's stomach. She folded her hands over it, pressing. "He was trying to kill us."
Johnson shifted in his chair, sitting back. It creaked, both springs and leather needing attention. "Well, Miss Ransom, I must say you're a better liar than Miss Daly is."
Rosie's gaze jerked up again, so surprised she didn't even feel guilty. "I am? I mean, what? I haven't lied."
"Haven't you? Why don't you start at the beginning, Miss Ransom. I'll tell you where you're going wrong."
She stared at him, heat flaming in her cheeks. Anybody would blush, she thought, being accused of lying to a policeman. Her mouth dried up and it took two tries to speak. "Pearl and I were lingering in the changing room—"
"Right there," Johnson said, and Rosie broke off with another stare. Johnson waited a few seconds, then, gently, said, "She was his accomplice, wasn't she, Rosie? She as much as said so. You've got a good heart, trying to protect her, but it won't do her any good. My boys will find evidence they've been living together back at Goode's apartment. Why don't you tell me what really happened?"
"It happened like I told you," Rosie said after a long moment. "Except Pearl followed me through the factory, we didn't go together. And she tried to grab me so PFC Goode could—I don't know what. I hit her with the riveting gun, and he came after me anyways, and I shot him."
"That's it?"
"Isn't that enough? I shot somebody, Detective. I killed a man." Rosie's voice rose and broke, emotion surging up from a buried place within her. "And my friends are dead, girls I've known since school, and that monster ate them, and—!"
"Monster," Johnson murmured under her tirade. "Why do you use that word?"
The image of Goode's unnerving teeth retreating into his skull made Rosie snap her jaw shut. Breathing hard, voice still high, she said, "What else would you call someone who kills and eats girls?"
Johnson's shoulders sank a fraction of an inch. "Monster's good enough for me. Miss Ransom, you lied to protect Miss Daly. Why?"
Rosie slumped in her chair. The station was too hot, even in the middle of the night with buzzing floor fans pushing a thick breeze through the big room. The heat dulled her thoughts as badly as emotion draining away did. All she had as an answer was the truth, and it couldn't be good if the truth seemed like a last resort. She offered it anyways. "Because I heard my friends talking about how he seemed to hypnotize girls. I thought maybe Pearl didn't have any choice, that she was stuck under his thumb and didn't know how to get out. I wanted to give her a chance, I guess. She didn't seem bad, just … scared."
"That's mighty noble of you, Miss Ransom. Foolish, maybe, but mighty noble." Johnson opened a pack of cigarettes and offered Rosie one. She shook her head. He shrugged, tapped one out for himself, and lit it before going on. "I'd like you to press charges against her. A lot of girls are dead and she had a part in all of it. We can probably make it stick without your help, but it'd be a lot easier if you were on the prosecution's side."
"I don't think it's a good idea." Pearl's visible hunger came back to Rosie, and she shivered. "I don't think you should hold her, Detective. I think you should let her go and …"
And let me deal with her. Rosie couldn't say the words if she wanted to. They were too absurd. She'd been lucky facing Goode: she'd had a weapon on hand, one that she understood, and she had been willing to use it. His strength, his resistance to fire, his horrifying teeth, they had all been enough to push her beyond the edge of civilized behavior. Rationally, she could never expect herself to do something like that again.
But that cool certainty sat inside her chest, calm and steady and born, Rosie thought, from the purity of light that had risen from Goode's body. She knew she could pull the trigger a second time, or that some other weapon would come to hand, if she again faced something like Goode had been and Pearl was becoming. That knowledge was nearly as frightening as Goode himself had been. Rosie pressed her eyes shut and after a long few seconds whispered, "I can't press charges. I'm sorry, Detective, I really am, but I just don't think it's a good idea."
She opened her eyes again to find Johnson watching her through a cloud of smoke, fiery end of his cigarette glowing and dimming. "What really happened at the factory tonight, Rosie?"
"Just what I told you," she answered quietly. "I'm lucky to be alive."
"That," Johnson said with a certain amount of force, "is true. What I do know is that Miss Daly's story corroborates yours, at least as far as you acting in self-defense, and I guess that means you can go. I'll get one of the boys to drive you home. Hank?" His voice rose in an impatient snap.
A man not too much older than Rosie stuck his head out of a side office. His yellow hair was cropped soldier-short and he looked fit. Rosie stared at him curiously as he called, "Yeah, boss?"
"This young woman needs a lift home. Get your coat, call it a night when you've dropped her off."
"It's too hot for a coat, boss." The man—Hank—disappeared back into the office anyways and came out a minute later with a fedora clamped against his head, a coat over his arm, and car keys jangling in one hand. "All right, doll, let's go."
He favored his left leg, limping as he headed for the door. Rosie watched him a few seconds, then stood, shook her skirt smooth, and followed him. Johnson's voice came after them both: "Don't leave town, Rosie Ransom. We're going to need to talk to you again."
"Where would I go," she said under her breath, and didn't say, Pearl is here, and she'll need me—or I'll have to take care of her, aloud at all. The door opened easily, creating a breath of slightly cooler air that faded as quickly as it had come. Rosie caught up to Hank in a step or two, glancing at his legs.
"Monsters." Hank didn't so much as look at her, just threw the word out. "Tore my damn knee out over in France. Got any other questions?"
Rosie's eyebrows lifted. "I didn't ask."
"You would have."
"I suppose everyone does."
He looked at her that time, eyebrows drawn down in appraisal. "Yeah. Unless I'm sitting on my ass when they meet me, then they ask why a strapping young fellow like myself isn't on the front lines. That's my car."
That was a long-nosed, narrow, curvaceous red two-seater with its top down. Rosie slowed, then stopped and wet her lips. "What is it?"
A smile crept over one corner of Hank's mouth. "SS Jaguar 100. She's a beaut, isn't she?"
Rosie swallowed, then put her hands over her cheeks, feeling the heat of a blush. She'd have to be dead to be from Detroit and not enchanted with the vehicle's low, lean lines. "It's beautiful. It's not American. The steering's on the wrong side."
"British. Hardly made any of 'em but my old man bought one. I brought it back when I came home."
"Your father's British?"
"Mom is. Proper romantic love-in-combat story there. She was a nurse in the Great War and followed him to Detroit afterward. Get in." Hank threw his coat into the back, waving Rosie around the car as he climbed in himself with no evidence of his knee bothering him.
Rosie hesitated at the door, which was scooped so low she might have stepped from the runner board into the car without risking her modesty. Hank, watching her, quirked a grin over the same corner of his mouth. It was attractive. He was attractive, in a clear-eyed Captain America kind of way. But he looked like he knew what Rosie was considering and betting she didn't have the nerve.
Swiftly, before she thought about it more, Rosie stepped over the door and into the car, tucking her skirt as she sat, and gave Hank a defiant look. His smile twisted further and he keyed the car on. "Where's home?"
She gave him the address over the engine's rumble. The Jaguar's seats were soft leather and still retained warmth from the day, even at two in the morning. Rosie glanced over her shoulder at its folded-down canopy, then eyed the hat smashed on Hank's head. "Won't that come off?"
"Hasn't yet. So you're a factory girl. Where's your husband, Europe or Japan?"
"My boyfriend is in Europe," Rosie said primly, then wished she hadn't sounded so stuck-up.
Hank noticed too, a grin in his reply. "Boyfriend, sorry. I knew you weren't married, anyway. No ring. You like the work or are you counting days 'til your soldier comes home?"
"Can't I do both?"
He gave her another look, more appraising, as they left the station parking lot for quiet Detroit streets. The Jaguar announced its presence for blocks to come, a big purr that would awaken light sleepers. Rosie closed her eyes against wind that slipped around the screen. It felt good in her hair, speed finally offering respite from the heat. If the car were hers, she might drive for what remained of the night, escaping not just the warm air but the memories of the past several hours. Maybe go down to the river and find a breeze, or head to some relatively high point to look over the city from, and try to make sense of the day.
Hank's question came as a surprise: "You in a hurry to get home?"
A thrill of cold ran through Rosie's hands. Smart girls—good girls—didn't go off on nighttime jaunts with boys they'd just met, but the question ran so close to her own thoughts that she said, "Not really," without hesitation.
"Great. I know a place on the waterfront." Hank changed lanes and sped up. Rosie turned her head away and bit her knuckles at her own boldness. No one knew where she was, though Detective Johnson knew who she was with, which might be close enough to the same. Besides, somebody working for the police oughta be trustworthy. Rosie tried the thought on for size and accepted it, but her heartbeat ran quick anyways.
"It's right next to a refrigerated shipping center and they're always leaving the doors open so it's usually about ten degrees cooler than anywhere else in the city," Hank yelled over the wind. "My favorite place in the summer. How fast do you want to get there?"
Rosie's smile split from behind her knuckles. "How fast can we get there?"
Fast enough that it seemed like the headlamp light pooling ahead of them should be overtaken by the Jaguar's smooth speed, it turned out. Hank handed her his hat and Rosie clutched it, tears and shrieks of laughter spilling from her as they raced through the empty streets. She hadn't thought she felt bottled up, but the chance to let so much emotion spill out felt like the cork coming off the bottle anyways.
Hank braked hard outside a tall set of gates, the car's tires squealing as it whipped around. Rosie caught a glimpse of company logos as the gates swung open, and pushed against the foot well, straightening up in her seat. "Hank, we can't come through, this is private property, it belongs to Vaughn Enterprises. They say Harrison Vaughn's a beast about security. I just got out of jail," she said with a weak laugh. "I don't want to go straight back in."
"You were at the police station, not in jail. Big difference. Anyway, don't worry. They know me here." Hank put the car back in gear and eased it through the gates, waving at the security guards who scurried to close it behind him. The Jaguar's engine echoed off steel-sided warehouses as they crept closer to the river, and the silence when Hank killed it echoed louder.
The air, as promised, was significantly cooler. Rosie took a few deep breaths, enjoying it, before giving Hank a curious look. "But you work with the police, not on the docks. Or is that how they know you, from the police?"
"These days, sure." Hank got out of the car, limped to a locked door, opened it, and took a bottle of amber liquid from within. "Want some? You've had a rough night."
"Not rough enough to drink with a strange man."
Hank's eyebrows shot up as he came back to the car and leaned against the driver's side door. "Then you are one tough broad, Miss Ransom. I'm impressed. I think my mother would like you."
"An Army nurse? No, she must be much braver than I am."
"Maybe. Don't think she's ever killed a man, though."
"I did—" Rosie broke off with a swallow. I didn't kill a man, she'd been going to say, but that sounded nonsensical. "I didn't have a choice," she said instead.
"That doesn't make it easier for most people. Did you see his soul?"
"I think so. It was stained with blo—" Rosie choked off her answer, gawking ashen-faced at Hank.
"Stained with blood," he said conversationally. "Stained with death and horror, and when you killed him, all the blackness siphoned away and his redeemed soul rose up free."
Rosie, staring at him, worked her mouth and made no sound.
"You thought I meant Nazis, when I said they'd torn my knee up," Hank said softly. "But I meant what I said, Rosie Ransom. I meant monsters."