The Enemy at Home

As she parked in front of a pawn shop down the block from the Double Header tavern, Nora wondered if the Packard would be safe in this neighborhood. She was especially worried about the tires. Rubber had become scarce since the war started. A good set of tires were like gold. She wondered if the car would even be there when she got back.

The citywide blackout took effect at eleven every evening. Nora planned on being home long before then. This section of Second Avenue was seedy enough with the lights on. There wasn’t a lot of neon, but she could hear music blaring from the various bars. The place was hopping. Nora figured if someone tried to mug her, at least there were a lot of people around—not that it guaranteed anyone would actually help her.

Although she saw plenty of normal-looking individuals strolling along the sidewalks, Nora automatically focused on the more colorful characters. Drunken servicemen staggered past drifters asleep in doorways. A hooker leaned against a lamppost. Nora noticed another lady of the evening screaming at a derelict who, apparently, was curled up in her usual spot.

Welcome to Pioneer Square, she thought.

She made sure the doors were all locked as she climbed out of the Packard. Tightly clutching her purse at her waist, she hurried down the sidewalk.

Nora had been in various cocktail lounges and hotel bars; but she’d been inside a tavern only once. When Pete had been in medical school, she and Pete and some of his friends had gone to a speakeasy. Nora remembered being nervous the entire time they were there. She’d worried the place would be raided and they’d be hauled off to jail in a paddy wagon.

Now she was worried the same thing could happen at the Double Header tonight. Nora had already put it together that the bar catered mostly to homosexuals and lesbians. And such establishments were frequently raided by the police. The customers were arrested, and their names were printed in the newspapers the following day—for their unsuspecting families and employers to see.

That was another reason Fran hadn’t wanted to accompany her tonight. They’d discussed it earlier at lunch. But mostly, Fran simply didn’t buy into Nora’s hypothesis that the police had pinned Connie’s murder on Roger as part of a cover-up.

The more Nora thought about the young Boeing worker who had been strangled just two weeks before Connie, the more certain she was that both murders had been committed by the same person. Didn’t anyone else see a connection there? Both women were assembly-line workers at the same plant, and both were strangled in their apartments at night. Was it the start of something—some kind of Jack the Ripper killing spree?

Nora remembered when she’d first moved to Seattle in 1927, she’d read about a string of strangulations—mostly up and down the West Coast: San Francisco, Portland and even one in her Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Most of the twenty-odd victims of this killer were middle-aged landladies, but there were exceptions, including a young mother and her baby strangled in their home. The newspapers called the killer The Gorilla Man because various witnesses had described seeing a swarthy man with long arms and large hands outside the apartment houses of these women shortly before they were murdered. Apparently, he talked his way into their homes on the pretext of renting a room.

Nora remembered Chris had been barely a year old at the time, and she’d been alone at home a lot because Pete had been putting in long hours at the hospital. Eventually, the killer was arrested in Canada. He was tried, found guilty of two murders there, and executed. Nora still remembered his name: Earle Nelson.

Perhaps Loretta Bryant and Connie would end up being the first two in a series of killings—like The Gorilla Man murders. Or, for all she knew, there may have been other female war workers strangled before Loretta Bryant. She remembered that apartment break-in near Chris’s high school. Wasn’t that woman a riveter? Could she have been an intended victim?

Perhaps the police weren’t merely looking to cover their own hides by saying they’d shot Connie’s killer. What if they were also trying to prevent a citywide panic—especially among female war workers?

“Honey, you’ve been giving this way too much thought,” Fran had told her during lunch. “You only knew Connie for two weeks. And you met Roger—what—twice? I knew Connie and worked with her for months and months, and I grieved her death. I’m brokenhearted about it. But I haven’t allowed myself to become obsessed with it. I don’t have all these wild theories about what really happened. I believe what Connie told me about her and Roger being a regular couple. And I believe what the police and the newspapers say about her murder.”

“Well, what if another woman riveter gets strangled?” Nora had asked pointedly. “Do you think then you’ll change your mind?”

“Of course, I will,” Fran had answered. Then she’d shrugged. “But is it okay with you if I hope that doesn’t happen?”

Nora didn’t know what to think anymore. Perhaps her so-called wild theories about the murder were her way of dealing with the loss she felt. If she seemed fixated about Roger’s innocence, it was because that was what Connie would have wanted. Yet Nora had so many questions.

Maybe one of Roger’s friends could give her some answers. She hoped his policeman buddy, Phil, would be there tonight.

Stepping into the small, cozy tavern, Nora was greeted by the voice of Carmen Miranda on a jukebox, singing “South American Way.” The chirpy music didn’t seem to go with the dark, smoky, wood-paneled room and those deer heads on the wall. Except for a WAVE on a barstool, surrounded by a bunch of men, there weren’t any women seated at the bar. Down at the far end, someone dressed like Carmen Miranda twitched and danced. But the impostor was so tall and burly that, even at this distance, Nora could tell it was a man. As “Carmen” performed, some men sang along with the record: “Ai, ai, ai, ai, have you ever danced in the tropics?” Nora didn’t see any other women in the saloon.

A fiftyish man with a thin mustache and even thinner hair seemed to emerge from the shadows to meet her at the door. He was nicely dressed in a brown suit. “May I help you?” he asked. “Are you meeting someone?” Despite his polite tone, he was definitely blocking her way.

Nora hesitated. She remembered Connie once mentioning that some taverns didn’t allow unaccompanied women. Nora figured that was doubly true for a bar like this. “I was a friend of Roger Tallant,” she said.

He smiled and nodded toward the other end of the bar, where the Carmen impersonator was still dancing. “They’re all down there. Welcome.”

“Thank you,” Nora said.

Heading in that direction, she noticed several uniformed servicemen among the patrons. And once she got closer to the WAVE, Nora noticed her five-o’clock shadow and realized the woman was actually a man. Nora felt conspicuous, but invisible. She didn’t belong in here, and yet hardly anyone seemed to pay attention to her. But then she passed a booth with three women in it, and one of them nodded and smiled. Nora politely nodded back and moved on.

As Nora approached the end of the bar, Carmen Miranda stopped shaking his maracas for a moment and glared at her. Past the lipstick and heavy eyeshadow—and under the tutti-frutti hat—Nora recognized Wendell from the plant, the engineer who had shown her the photo of his wife and two sons and insisted he didn’t associate with “perverts.”

Nora also spotted the two men who wouldn’t talk to her the other day in the cafeteria. Now seated at the bar, they noticed her and then did their damnedest to ignore her.

“Nora? Hello . . .”

She turned to see Richard seated at a table with another man. They both stood up. Richard wore a jazzy orange silk shirt. The other man was more conservatively dressed in a blue blazer and tie. He was handsome with a solid build and slicked-back blond hair. “You made it to Fairyville, I see,” Richard said, waving her over. “I’m glad your visa was in order.”

She smiled nervously. “Thanks for inviting me.”

Richard pulled out a chair for her. Their table was directly under a mounted stag head on the wall. Richard nodded toward his friend. “This is Phil, and he’s a cop, so no funny business.”

Phil reached out and shook her hand. “Roger mentioned you. He liked you a lot, Nora. And all of us here, we were big fans of Connie. She was a sweetheart.”

Nora sat down. “Thank you. I was a big fan of hers, too.” Richard sank down in his chair, but Phil remained standing for a moment. “Have you told anyone that you were coming here, Mrs. Kinney?” he asked.

“My kids think I’m out with my work friend, Fran. She knows where I am.”

“Did you tell her about me?” he asked warily.

“No, but Roger did—over dinner at my house a couple of weeks ago.”

“He didn’t use my last name, did he?”

Nora shook her head. “And Fran doesn’t know I’m meeting you now.”

He looked relieved and finally sat down. “Good. I’m sorry, but I have to be really careful. I could lose my job if they found out that I travel in the same circles that Roger did. Thank you for not talking about me to anyone.”

Nora shifted in the chair. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but if you’re so worried about losing your job, aren’t you taking an awfully big risk being here?” She turned to Richard. “Aren’t you afraid the bar might get raided?”

“The owner pays off the cops not to raid the place or harass the customers,” Richard explained over his cocktail. “This is the safest bar in Seattle—along with the Casino, a dance club in the basement of this building. It’s kind of quiet right now. But in an hour, the joint will be jumping. The boys call it ‘Madame Peabody’s Dancing Academy for Young Ladies’—for short.”

Phil laughed. “The funny thing is he’s not kidding.”

“The place is big with the drag queens, too,” Richard explained. “Wendell will be down there shaking his maracas pretty soon. I have a feeling you recognized him.”

Nora glanced over her shoulder. The record on the jukebox had switched to a far more mellow tune: the Mills Brothers singing “Paper Doll.” Wendell had stopped performing. He leaned on the bar, smoked a cigarette and nursed his cocktail. His tall tutti-frutti hat was slightly askew.

Nora looked at Richard. “So . . . is he really married with two sons?”

“Yeah, it’s one for Ripley’s, isn’t it?” Richard answered. “Going on twenty years now. But that doesn’t mean Wendell hasn’t picked up more drunken sailors than the shore patrol. His poor, pathetic wife.”

“Roger tolerated him,” Phil explained. “But he was never a fan. Can we buy you a drink, Mrs. Kinney?”

“As long as we’re avoiding last names, why don’t you call me Nora?” she said. “And thank you, yes. I’d love a bourbon and water.”

“I’ll fetch it,” Richard volunteered, getting to his feet. “You two get acquainted.” He headed toward the bar.

Nora took another glance at Wendell and his group and then turned to Phil. “So . . . I hear this is sort of an informal memorial service for Roger . . .”

Nodding, he gave her a sad smile. “Very informal.” His smile faded. “Actually, this is the closest thing to a funeral Roger will get. Once his parents found out he was a homosexual, they were quick to believe he was a murderer, too. They aren’t claiming the body. I think Roger will end up in a potter’s field or God knows where.” Phil took a last swallow of his drink, draining the glass. “Listen, I want to thank you again for being discreet about my friendship with Roger. And by the way, that’s all we were, friends. Anyway, I hope you’ll go on being discreet, Nora. Otherwise, I can’t take any chances talking with you.”

“I understand,” she said. “After approaching Richard, Wendell and their friends at work, I learned pretty quickly that a great deal of discretion is necessary.”

He nodded. “There’s a lot at stake for us—our jobs, families, everything. To be honest, I wouldn’t have wanted to talk with you. Only Richard said you already knew about me, and you were asking some pretty on-target questions about Connie’s murder.”

“Well, in an unguarded moment, Connie told me she and Roger were just friends. Yet she led most of the other girls at work to believe she and Roger were dating.”

Phil nodded. “Yes, some of that was wishful thinking on Connie’s part, but mostly, she was helping Roger maintain a ‘straight’ reputation at work. They were good friends. Connie knew the truth about Roger. He even brought her here a few times.”

“So . . . there’s no way Roger could have killed her in some kind of lovers’ quarrel or a . . . a sick, sexual rage. And he wouldn’t have killed her because she’d discovered his secret.”

“No, that’s garbage the police and the newspapers want people to believe.” With a sigh, he leaned back in his chair. “In fact, a lot of information has been suppressed that would exonerate Roger. For example, Connie’s downstairs neighbor became the police’s best witness. She heard Connie and Roger arguing outside her door at eleven o’clock last Thursday night. Fifteen minutes later, Roger’s landlady chewed him out because he was using the phone in their lobby, right outside her apartment. She said Roger claimed it was an emergency. Both ladies are certain of the time because it was late and they were peeved about the noise. So we know Roger walked home after this ‘heated argument’ with Connie at her front door. And then he must have run back to Connie’s, because he’d been on the phone with her, and he knew she was in trouble. Connie’s downstairs neighbor telephoned the police at eleven seventeen, and she reported hearing a fracas upstairs. I think she called it a ‘scuffle.’ She’d figured Roger was up there with Connie. She didn’t know he’d left Connie at her front door and gone home. This same neighbor had already called the police about Connie on two separate occasions, and both times it had turned out to be nothing. So the cops took their sweet time responding to her call. Roger got there before the police . . .”

“They said he was covered in blood,” Nora interjected, remembering the newspaper account. “I’m guessing he’d discovered Connie dead and had been trying to resuscitate her when the police arrived . . .”

Phil nodded. “Yeah, it looked bad. Then Roger reached for his wallet, and the rookie cop thought he was going for a gun. So he shot Roger. It all seemed pretty cut and dry—until they discovered Roger wasn’t armed. But when detectives searched his apartment for clues and found Roger’s stash of racy material—that was enough to convict him in their eyes.”

“The newspapers made a big deal out of what the police found—like it was something vile and disgusting.”

Richard appeared at her side balancing three drinks. “Oh, please, some sketches of male nudes and a collection of French postcards—only with men posing instead of women.” He set the drinks on the table and sat down. “Roger showed them to me once. They were in a shoebox hidden under his bed. He had postcard photos of Eugen Sandow, for God’s sake. You know, the strong man who posed with a fig leaf—back at the turn of the century? Talk about corny. Harmless stuff. Yet the way the newspapers reported it, the cops might as well have uncovered the private library of the Marquis de Sade.”

“But it was all the police needed to convince the general public that he was guilty,” Phil said. “After they found Roger’s stash, it was easy to ignore the testimony of his landlady. The powers that be on the force figured the public would easily buy into the theory that most homosexuals hate women. So as far as the press was concerned, the police caught a deviant killer moments after he’d committed his crime and shot him on the spot. Under those circumstances, the little misunderstanding about the absence of a gun can easily be written off. We cops end up looking like heroes—a lot better than we’d look if it ever got out that we shot an innocent man. It was actually a brilliant move my superiors made. And in time, if Roger is proven innocent, well, no one will raise too much of a fuss because it’s all old news.”

“And he was just a queer anyway,” Richard added cynically. He sipped his cocktail.

Nora looked at the two of them. “But you were his friends—both of you were. How could you let that happen and not say anything?”

“Because we like our jobs and our families,” Phil said. “We don’t want our lives ruined.”

“At this point,” Richard explained, “anyone sticking up for Roger or claiming to be his friend might as well wave a big pink flag that says I’m One of Nature’s Mistakes.”

Nora winced at the phrase.

“We’re powerless here,” Phil explained. “Richard’s absolutely right. If I defied the department’s official stance on this and tried to get the truth out there, it wouldn’t do Roger or Connie any good. I’d just end up exposing myself.”

“I keep asking Phil to expose himself to me, but he won’t,” Richard quipped.

Phil let out a weary laugh. “Oh, shut up.” He took a swig of his drink.

Richard looked at Nora. “You haven’t touched your bourbon and water.”

Nora sipped it. The drink was strong, but she really needed it at the moment. “Very good, thank you.” She turned to Phil. “When he and Connie were at my house for dinner, Roger told us that you were working on the other murder case—the one from almost three weeks ago. Loretta Bryant. I think her murder is still unsolved.”

“Actually, a friend of mine in Homicide is investigating the case. But you’re right. It’s still unsolved. Maybe you noticed some similarities to Connie’s case.”

Nora nodded emphatically. “Two women, both assembly-line workers at the same plant, both strangled in their homes within two weeks of each other.”

“And that’s not all. In both murders, there was no sign of rape. But the victims had been somewhat mauled. Here’s the really strange part. It looked like the killer had stripped off their slacks. With Loretta, her work pants were found in the hallway outside her bedroom—where the body was. In Connie’s case, her slacks were left hanging outside—on the front doorknob of her apartment . . .” He glanced up at the stag head on the wall. “Almost as if the killer wanted people to see the slacks hanging there, like a trophy.”

Wide-eyed, Nora stared at him. She felt a shudder pass through her.

“That’s another thing that gets my goat with this ‘Let’s Blame the Queer’ tactic,” Richard said, frowning. “They want us to think Roger killed Connie, took off her pants, and then went downstairs and hung them on her front door—and after all that, he went back upstairs again.”

“Richard has a point,” Phil sighed again. “It makes a lot more sense that the killer would have hung the pants outside as he was leaving the crime scene.”

“I was talking to my friend Fran about the similarities between the two murders,” Nora said. She took another sip of her drink. “I thought it was pretty odd that none of the newspapers reporting Connie’s murder even bothered to mention the Loretta Bryant case. But I’m guessing the police couldn’t connect Roger to it, and that’s why it never came up in any of the articles.”

“You’re a smart lady,” Phil said, raising his glass to her. “On the night Loretta Bryant was strangled in her apartment near downtown Seattle, Roger was three hundred miles away, visiting his parents in Colfax. He came home by train late Monday afternoon. The police couldn’t link Roger to the earlier murder, so why bring it up? Why raise any doubts or speculation?”

Staring at him in disbelief, Nora shook her head. “How can they do that? The killer of two women is still out there. He could kill again . . .”

Phil nodded glumly. “I know. But to be fair to my fellow police officers, there were enough differences in the two crime scenes to indicate that it might not have been the same killer. Loretta was strangled with a lamp cord, while Connie was strangled with a nylon stocking. Connie was also stabbed in the chest, but Loretta was only strangled. The killer put an apron on Connie and drew a wide smile on her mouth with lipstick . . .”

Nora cringed. “They didn’t say anything about that in the newspapers.”

“I know. Loretta’s corpse didn’t have those perverse little flourishes. Those were exclusive to Connie.”

“Well, maybe the killer simply didn’t have time to do that to Loretta,” Nora argued. “Didn’t her sister practically walk in on him?”

“Yeah, after killing Loretta, he’d stopped to have a snack in the kitchen, the sick bastard. The sister and some sailor missed him by seconds. They heard him run out the back door.”

“He could have originally gone to the kitchen for an apron and a knife,” Richard offered. “Only he got distracted and decided to raid the icebox.”

“Those are good theories,” Phil said. “But the cops deal in facts and evidence. There were just enough differences between the two murders to conclude it wasn’t the same killer. They made a big deal about his choice of weapons, too. There’s usually a consistency with these repeat offenders. The belief is, he wouldn’t have used a lamp cord on one victim and a nylon stocking on the other.”

“Did they look into any other strangulations or similar cases before Loretta?” Nora asked.

“The last one that went unsolved was over a year ago, a sixty-two-year-old widow who was robbed and strangled in her Mount Baker home. The police didn’t see any similarities at all.”

Frustrated, Nora took another swallow of her drink. The jukebox was playing Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” The bouncy tune did nothing to lift her spirits. She glanced over her shoulder at Roger’s other friends. Someone must have made a joke, because they were all laughing. Wendell’s cackle was louder than the others’.

Nora shook her head over and over. “You’ve explained it to me, and I completely understand why you can’t say or do anything. But Roger was your friend. How can you just accept what the police have done?”

Richard put down his glass—almost banging it on the table. “Please, don’t tell us that you plan to raise a big stink about this . . .”

Leaning forward, Phil eyed her intensely. “If you’re compelled to do something like that—maybe tell The Seattle Times or The Star that you were friends with Connie and she told you about her ‘special friendship’ with Roger—that’s fine, do that, Mrs. Kinney. It might clear his name of her murder, but I doubt it. His parents and most of the people who knew him—his friends outside of this bar—they’ll still want nothing to do with him or the memory of him. You go ahead and do that if you want. But don’t drag any of us into it. And if you do, I’ll deny everything I’ve just told you.”

Nora squirmed in her chair, but she wouldn’t stop looking at him. “I don’t have any plans of betraying your confidence,” she said with certainty. “I told you, I completely understand the spot you’re in. It’s just that I was at Connie’s wake two nights ago, and I met her grieving parents. I can’t help wondering what would happen if someone told them what you’ve just told me. If they knew the truth, don’t you think they’d pressure the police to start looking for other suspects and maybe find their daughter’s killer?”

“Seriously?” Richard asked. “How do you think Connie’s parents would act if they were approached by a friend of the degenerate who supposedly strangled their daughter? Do you think they’d listen to anything I’d have to tell them?”

Nora said nothing because she knew he was right. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

Phil took a sip of his drink. “Connie’s parents probably want to believe the police explanation even more than the police do,” he said. “For them, the case is solved, and the pervert who murdered their daughter is dead.”

“So we don’t do anything,” Nora said.

Both men just nodded.

Nora felt defeated. She wanted to scream. Instead, she took a last swallow of her drink and gave a helpless shrug. “It’s just all so wrong. How can you stand it? How can you sit there and put up with this awful injustice?”

Phil gave her a sad smile and patted her hand. “You’re not used to it.” He glanced around the bar for a moment. “Injustice, lies and keeping your mouth shut . . . that’s just another day for guys like us.”

* * *

As she drove home, Nora thought of what she’d asked Fran earlier in the day: “What if another woman riveter gets strangled? Do you think then you’ll change your mind?”

That was all she could do right now—just wait for someone else to die before people realized that Connie’s killer was still out there. It was maddening. But when Phil and Richard had walked her to her car, she’d promised them once again that she wouldn’t raise a stink—as Richard so eloquently put it.

Earlier in the week, Jane had wondered out loud—with a bit of frustration—why the newspapers hadn’t contacted them. After all, both Connie and her accused killer had been to dinner at their house just a few nights before the murder. Why didn’t the newspapers want to talk to any of them? Jane reveled in the sensationalism of the case—and her small association with it.

Nora hadn’t shared her daughter’s desire to be in the spotlight. But now, she wished the newspapers had asked her for a statement a few days ago. Her knowledge of the case had been limited. Still, with what she’d known then about Roger and Connie’s friendship, she might have been able to convince the newspapers that Roger had no reason whatsoever to murder his dear friend. But now, she felt stymied. Fran was the only person she could talk to about this, and even then, Nora couldn’t implicate any of Roger’s friends.

She thought of the letter she’d written to Pete about what had happened—a soft-peddled version of the truth. As usual, the last thing she’d wanted was for him to worry about them. Nora had tried to play down how much the murder had distressed her. But she knew Pete would read about it in gory detail in a letter from Jane—and perhaps less so in a letter from Chris, who didn’t write as often as Jane did.

“Just let it go,” she whispered to herself as she turned down her block. The police had deliberately ignored vital information that would have exonerated Roger. There was nothing she could tell them that they didn’t already know. And there was nothing she could do to help Connie or Roger.

Until the real killer was caught, she would make sure the doors and windows were all locked at night when she went to bed. And she’d keep the fireplace poker at her bedside.

Turning the Packard into the driveway, Nora noticed the curtains open and the lights on in the front windows of the house. She glanced at her wristwatch: ten twenty-five; still thirty-five minutes until the blackout. The kids would still be up because tomorrow was Good Friday, so neither one of them had school.

Pulling up to the garage, Nora climbed out of the car to open the big door.

The back lights went on, one by the kitchen door and another light just above her—on the garage. One of the kids must have noticed the car. Glancing toward the house, she saw the kitchen door open.

Chris came down the five steps of the back stoop. He had a piece of paper in his hand. Jane followed him, but she suddenly stopped on the bottom step and clutched the wrought iron railing. She was crying.

Nora felt a sickening dread sweep through her. Even at this distance, she could see Chris was holding a telegram from the War Department. Nora put a hand on the front hood of the car to brace herself.

“We called your friend Fran,” Chris said in a broken voice as he came toward her. “She told us you were on your way home. That was almost an hour ago . . .”

“What happened?” she asked, hardly able to get the words out.

This close, she could see the tears in Chris’s eyes.

“This telegram arrived at around nine thirty. We . . . we opened it, Mom. We couldn’t wait. We had to know . . .”

Nora held out her hand for it. She was shaking.

“There was a-an accident at Uncle Ray’s base in San Diego,” Chris said. He held on to the note and started to sob. “It was an explosion. I’m so sorry, Mom. He’s dead . . .”