The Enemy at Home

Sally Baumann felt someone hovering over her.

With a gasp, she opened her eyes and sat up in bed. She anxiously glanced around the darkened bedroom and, with relief, realized she was alone.

It must have been a dream, she thought.

Sighing, she sank back down and pulled the sheets up to her chin. She squinted at the clock on her nightstand. She always set the alarm for ten. How could she have slept through it? Had someone really been in her bedroom? Maybe the intruder had switched off her alarm.

Yeah, blame it on an intruder, she thought. She was still half-asleep and not thinking right. Obviously, an hour and a half ago, the damn alarm had rung, she’d turned it off, rolled over and fallen right back to sleep. She’d done it before.

Sally still didn’t want to get out of bed, but she had to be at work in two hours.

It wasn’t like she could sleep anyway, not with all the noise those stupid high school kids made outside. Even with her window shut and the shade down, she could still hear them. That was probably what had woken her up.

Sally had rented the one-bedroom apartment over a drugstore—two blocks from the high school—during the Christmas break. She’d had no idea the store would be a hangout for school kids during their lunch hour and after classes got out. Sometimes, there would be as many as fifty of them out there, gabbing away, laughing and yelling.

Wrapping her pillow around her head to cover her ears, Sally wondered if, as a teenager, she’d been as obnoxious as these kids were. Of course, she’d been. She hated to put down her own sex, but those teenage girls—with their high-pitched giggles and the way their voices carried—were the worst.

It was her own damn fault. She’d stayed up too late last night.

Sally worked the swing shift at Boeing: two thirty until ten in the evening. She told people she was a riveter, because most everyone knew what a riveter did, but they didn’t have a clue what a bucker did. Sally herself hadn’t known when she’d quit her job as an operator with Pacific Telephone and Telegraph and gone after a war job that paid better. “Big girls like you are good as buckers,” she was tactlessly told by the milquetoast clerk who had signed her up during orientation. “Bucking requires more muscle and girth than riveting. You have the build for a bucker.”

For Sally, losing weight was a constant struggle. She couldn’t help it if she was big-boned—and tall. She had a pretty, dimpled smile, a porcelain complexion and close-cropped jet-black hair. She’d always assumed she’d be married by the time she turned twenty-five, but that had been two years ago and she was still single.

She just wanted to get married and start a family. It was one reason she’d left her job at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, where she’d been surrounded by other women. She’d figured her chances of meeting some nice guy with flat feet would be better on the Boeing assembly line. But most of the guys there were married. Practically all the eligible men were away fighting the war, and her prospects were bleak. It was like the song said, “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old.” The only steady guy in her life right now was Lloyd Adalist, who was sixty-five years old. He was retired. Lloyd and his wife, Dorothy, lived down the hall from her and treated her like an adopted daughter. On the other end of the spectrum were the high school boys who swarmed the area, some of whom would whistle at her as she left for work.

After getting off work last night, she’d eaten alone at The Dog House Bar and Grill. She didn’t want to go home, so she went to one of the all-night movie theaters and came in halfway through the new Lana Turner movie, Slightly Dangerous, but it was only so-so. She finally returned home at one thirty, poured herself the first of a few scotch and sodas, and read for a couple of hours.

Now she was slightly hungover and wishing those kids outside would just shut up. How many of them were out there? It sounded like thirty or so. Throwing back the covers, Sally climbed out of bed and made her way to the window. She moved the shade and peeked down at the sidewalk below. She saw only about fifteen kids, standing in the rain like idiots. A few of them were smoking.

Sally took her robe from the foot of the bed and put it on over her nightgown. Then, barefoot, she padded through her hallway to the front door to pick up her milk delivery. She started to unlock the door, but realized it wasn’t locked. She froze for a moment. She always locked her front door before going to bed.

The chain lock had broken two nights ago. It had been the strangest thing the way the links had come apart in her hand when she’d tried to set the lock in place. She’d mentioned it to Lloyd yesterday before going off to work, and he’d said he would replace the lock for her this week. Sally wasn’t in any hurry. The building seemed safe enough.

With the chain broken, she’d have made sure the regular lock was secure before going to bed. How could she have forgotten to do that last night?

Three scotch and sodas, that was how. She might have even had four.

Sally opened the door, stooped down and grabbed the bottle of milk. It had been out there since around six this morning. She hoped it hadn’t gone sour. It was probably okay. The bottle still had a chill to it. Stepping back into the apartment, Sally closed the door and locked it.

She started toward the kitchen, but then stopped. Under her bare feet, she felt traces of water on her hallway’s hardwood floor—like someone had just come in from the rain.

Sally glanced over toward the living room, which had green curtains on each side of the entryway. She didn’t see anyone there. But what if somebody was hiding behind the curtains? She looked down at the floor, thinking she might spot the intruder’s shoes sticking out at the bottom of the drapery—the same shoes that had tracked in the rain.

But no one was there. Sally reminded herself that it had been raining last night, too. She could have tracked in the rain herself. It was probably just taking a long time to dry.

She was fine, for God’s sake. No one had broken into her place—not in the middle of the day, and not with all those high school kids just below her window.

Still, she warily walked through her living room to the kitchen. From the dry rack by the sink, she took the all-glass vacuum coffee maker and filled the bottom chamber with water. While it began to heat on the stove, she attached the top chamber. She was just starting to spoon in the coffee when she heard a strange noise from the bedroom. It sounded like hangers rattling.

Sally paused again and listened. What was with her this morning? She was so on edge. It was probably just those kids outside making noise.

But then she swore she heard the floorboards creak.

Taking a deep breath, Sally quickly finished spooning the Chase & Sanborn into the top of the coffee maker. Then she headed back toward her bedroom, determined to set her mind to rest that everything was fine.

She didn’t even get as far as the bedroom door.

She stopped to stare at her work pants, hanging on the bedroom doorknob. She hadn’t put them there. She remembered hanging them in her closet last night.

Again, she felt the wet floor under her bare feet. From where she stood, she couldn’t see anyone in her bedroom.

Sally turned her gaze to the darkened bathroom at the end of the hallway. She noticed her reflection in the mirror over the sink. And she saw something else in the mirror—a man in a blue jacket, hiding behind the open bathroom door. His back was against the wall, and he seemed to be studying her through the hinge crack. She couldn’t make out his face.

Horrorstruck, Sally couldn’t move. She wanted to scream, but she could barely breathe.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, but Sally finally got enough air in her lungs to yell out: “Help!”

She turned and rushed to her front door. She’d forgotten she’d just locked it and struggled with the doorknob for a few moments before fumbling for the lock. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see down the hallway. The bathroom door swung halfway closed as he came out of his hiding place. Sally didn’t stop to look at the intruder, but she could still feel him closing in on her. She flung open her front door and screamed for Lloyd.

Sally kept screaming as she raced down the corridor to Lloyd and Dorothy’s apartment. Frantic, she pounded on their door. All she could think was that they weren’t home—and she was going to be murdered there in the hallway. Sally kept banging on the door until—at last—it opened.

She almost collapsed in Lloyd’s arms. “There’s . . . there’s somebody in my apartment!” she cried.

The older man took hold of her hand and stepped out to the hallway. Sally glanced back toward her apartment in time to see the intruder in his blue jacket at the far end of the corridor. He ducked into the back stairwell. She still hadn’t gotten a look at his face.

After that, everything was all a blur for a while. Lloyd told his wife to call the police. Then he and Sally hurried to the end of the hallway. From the window at the end of the corridor, they spotted the culprit in the blue jacket darting into the bushes along the side of the building. He was heading toward the high school when he disappeared from view.

Lloyd told his wife to stay inside their unit until the police came. He took Sally back into her apartment to check if the prowler had stolen anything. That was when Sally smelled something burning. Frazzled, she ran into the kitchen and found the coffee boiling over the top chamber of the glass coffee maker. She took it off the burner and turned off the stove.

Sally’s heart was still racing as she and Lloyd checked the bedroom. Her purse was on the dresser, where she’d left it last night—along with a few dollars and some change. Her jewelry box—full of costume baubles—seemed untouched. Nothing was out of place except for her work pants.

“Those were hanging in my closet earlier,” Sally said, pointing to her slacks, draped over the doorknob. She clutched the top of her robe near her neck. She was having a hard time getting her breath. “He must have moved them while I was in the kitchen making coffee. I heard the hangers rattling. I thought it was just my imagination.”

“Do you have anything valuable in the pockets?” Lloyd asked.

“Of my work pants?” Baffled, Sally shook her head.

“What do you suppose he was after?”

Sally just shook her head again. She heard the police siren in the distance.

She wasn’t sure what she would tell them. But she was certain now that this stranger had been watching her while she’d slept.