The Enemy at Home

As she left the restaurant, twenty-three-year-old Dolores Oberlin—Dolly to her friends—buttoned up her coat. She’d hoped to get home before dark, but it was already too late for that. In the parking lot, Dolly hesitated before unlocking the driver’s door of her parents’ DeSoto. She glanced inside the car to make sure no one was hiding in the back seat.

Dolly was a riveter at Boeing. And like nearly every woman working an assembly-line war job in Seattle, she was on edge. The “Rosie” killer had murdered three women within the past month—and he was still out there.

No one was in the back seat of the car, thank goodness.

For the last couple of days, Dolly couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody was watching her. This was based on nothing. It was just a feeling she’d gotten on the bus from work and late at night alone at home before she closed the blackout curtains. She’d admitted as much to her friend, Grace, over their shrimp cocktails during dinner.

Grace confessed she was scared, too—and she didn’t even have a war job.

If Dolly didn’t need to be up at four fifteen tomorrow morning, she would have asked her friend to sleep over tonight.

Unlocking the car door, she climbed into the front seat, started up the DeSoto and headed for home—more specifically, her parents’ home. Dolly had grown up in that house—along with her older sister, Adele, who was now married and living in Wenatchee, and an older brother, Bill, now in the army, stationed in Biloxi. Dolly had moved back in with her parents last year.

She’d had one of those whirlwind wartime romances. Dolly had met Jim a week before Thanksgiving 1941, and she’d known right away he was the one. He’d enlisted in the Marines shortly after Pearl Harbor, and they’d decided to get married. They’d had exactly three weeks together as husband and wife before Jim left for basic training. Then Dolly had found out she was pregnant. Buying baby supplies had been a welcome distraction when she’d gotten the news that Jim was shipping out for active duty in the Philippines. But Dolly had lost the baby—a girl—after five months.

Not long after that, she’d moved back in with her parents. So much had changed for her in the brief period she’d been out of the house. But suddenly, everything was the same again. She was back in her old room, living with her mom and dad—except now she had a husband risking his life every day somewhere in the Pacific and she still ached over the loss of her child.

Dolly would have gone crazy if she hadn’t gotten the riveter job at Boeing. It gave her a sense of purpose. She was doing something to help the war effort—and her husband.

Dolly didn’t know any of the women who had been murdered. But her parents’ house in Queen Anne was only a few blocks from where a riveter had been stabbed and strangled in her duplex almost three weeks ago. The police had claimed they’d shot and killed the man who had murdered her.

On Saturday, Dolly’s parents had gone to Wenatchee to visit her sister. She’d driven them to the train station.

Then on Sunday afternoon, another war worker had been strangled. Obviously, the police hadn’t shot and killed the strangler after all. Dolly had heard all about it at work on Monday. Her coworkers talked about stashing knives or knitting needles in their purses to defend themselves against this lunatic.

Neither Dolly nor her mother knitted, so Dolly carried an ice pick in her purse. But every time she reached into her bag, she worried she might stab herself. After she ended up poking a hole through her purse, Dolly put a cork over the ice pick’s sharp tip. Then it dawned on her. What was she supposed to do if some maniac attacked her? Ask him to wait a minute while she took the cork off the ice pick? The cork kept falling off anyway—every time she jostled her purse.

Dolly turned into her parents’ driveway and watched the headlights sweep over the large Tudor house, set back from the street, surrounded by trees and bushes. She’d left a few lights on inside the house.

Her parents were coming back tomorrow night—and not a minute too soon. She didn’t feel safe by herself in the old house at night. She’d always felt that way. The house was too big for one person to be comfortable there. The unfinished cellar was a maze of rooms, all of them gloomy and foreboding. Growing up, her brother had a habit of forgetting his house keys, but he’d easily climb in through a basement window. For the past few nights alone in the house, Dolly kept remembering that. And because the house was set apart from their neighbors for privacy, Dolly figured she could scream and scream, and no one outside would ever hear her.

She’d admitted to Grace tonight that, since her parents’ departure, she’d been sleeping with her brother’s baseball bat at her bedside. What she hadn’t told her friend was that she’d also belted back a couple of bourbon and waters each night before bed so she could relax and fall asleep. This morning, she’d gone to work with a slight hangover.

Dolly pulled up to the garage, which was attached to the house through a corridor off the kitchen. Her garage door key was on the same ring as the car keys, so Dolly had to turn off the ignition before she climbed out of the DeSoto to open the garage’s carriage doors. She left the headlights on. It wasn’t until she was outside that she noticed the light above the doors was out. She was certain she’d turned it on when she’d left the house earlier. A chill raced through her.

Nervously glancing around, she unlocked the carriage doors and swung them open. Then she hurried back into the DeSoto and started it up again. She steered the car into the garage. On either side of the parking area, they stored yard equipment, tools, bikes, boxes and various castoff junk—all of it briefly illuminated by the headlights. Then as she pulled in closer to the far wall, a large shadow swept over everything again.

Dolly switched off the headlights and the ignition. She was swallowed up in darkness only for a moment. Then she grabbed her purse and opened the car door. The DeSoto’s interior light went on. A pull string to the garage light on the ceiling was directly overhead—just outside the driver’s door. Dolly automatically reached up to pull it. But her hand grasped at the air.

Baffled, she glanced up. The pull string was out of reach, looped over a pipe that ran across the garage ceiling.

Dolly looked over at the light switch by the door into the house. That was when she noticed the door was open a crack. Something was wrong. She’d definitely locked that door before leaving for the restaurant tonight.

Her first instinct was to duck back into the car, lock herself inside and get out of there. The car door was still open. She shoved her purse straps up her arm and was about to climb behind the wheel.

But then one of the garage’s carriage doors slammed shut.

Dolly froze. She saw a man in silhouette dart across the opening.

She let out a scream—just as he pulled shut the other door and rushed toward her.

His face was a blur. But Dolly saw something dangling from his hand. It was a nylon stocking.

Already halfway inside the car, she pressed the car horn on the steering wheel. The ear-splitting blare seemed to reverberate within the confines of the garage. He barely paused in his assault.

Lunging at her, he grabbed Dolly by the arm and threw her against the car, knocking the wind out of her. He pinned her against the DeSoto, his pelvis grinding against hers.

Dolly could smell alcohol on his breath. She screamed out again and desperately tried to fight him off.

But all at once he had the stocking around her neck. His movements were so fast and frantic that Dolly didn’t even realize what was happening until he started choking her. She clawed at his hands—to no avail.

Then she remembered the ice pick in her purse.

With the stocking crushing her windpipe, she managed to push him away—just a few inches, but it was enough room for her to thrust her hand inside her bag. She prayed the cork had fallen off the sharp end of the ice pick. She felt the wooden handle and grasped it.

Everything started going black. All the nerves in her body felt on fire.

Dolly pulled the ice pick out of her purse and stabbed him in the stomach.

Her attacker let out a gasp. Spittle sprayed her face. He took a step back and made a grab for her hand.

But Dolly pivoted to one side, raised the ice pick and plunged it into the side of his head.

Blood spurted across the car windows as he staggered back and fell to the cement floor.

In shock, Dolly pried the nylon stocking from around her throat. She could breathe again, but she was hardly aware of it. She didn’t even realize that she’d let go of her weapon.

All she could do was stare at the man, twitching and convulsing at her feet. The ice pick handle stuck out of his ear. A pool of blood bloomed under his head.

Dolly accidentally dropped her purse, and several items spilled out. Among them was a cork, which rolled across the dirty garage floor.