The Enemy at Home

The soldier in the illustration was crouched down on his knees, covering his head with one hand and clinging to his rifle with the other. YOUR BLOOD CAN SAVE HIM! read the caption for the Red Cross poster on the wall of the hospital emergency room’s waiting area.

For the last hour, Nora had been staring at the poster in front of her. She sat at the end of a long, double-sided wooden bench, the kind found in train depots—one of two benches in the big room. A nurses’ station and reception desk were to her right. The gray and maroon tiled floor looked freshly waxed. There were only four other people in the waiting area: a woman with two toddlers, who were asleep on the bench, and another woman sitting alone, quietly crying.

It looked like a slow night in the emergency room. But then, the two nurses behind the counter suddenly got up and ran toward the street entrance. From the hallway, a doctor rushed out through a pair of swinging doors to join them. Nora heard some commotion and crying. She glanced over her shoulder to see an orderly pushing a gurney that held a bloody and battered young boy. The banged-up woman who hobbled alongside the semiconscious child was bleeding, too—and weeping hysterically. It looked like they’d been in a car accident. One of the nurses was trying to reassure her and keep her out of the doctor’s way as they wheeled the boy into the hallway.

Suddenly, they were gone and it was quiet again, the double doors to the hallway swinging back and forth in their wake.

Nora sympathized with the poor, distraught mother. She’d been that woman just an hour ago when she’d arrived with Chris and the ambulance drivers. She was still covered in dirt, with scratch marks on her face and hands. She must have looked like she’d tumbled halfway down the ravine along with Chris and Joe.

She’d heard enough stories from Pete during his residency days about what a nuisance worried parents could be in the emergency room. And Chris hadn’t wanted her in there while they’d cut him out of his clothes. So, Nora did her best to sit quietly and stay out of the doctors’ and nurses’ way. She also tried not to dwell on what Joe had told her in the ravine—about Ray. She’d seen those letters in Joe’s file, and Joe had spotted Ray skulking around the house. Maybe her brother was still alive, but he couldn’t be the madman who had been murdering female war workers. It was unthinkable. Yet Nora couldn’t completely dismiss the notion. It was still there in the back of her mind, gnawing away at her as she waited for updates on how Chris and Joe were doing.

The last hour and a half were just a blur now.

But Nora remembered feeling swallowed up in the dark, damp ravine. She’d never been so panic-stricken. Fumbling around for the flashlight, she shined it on Chris—a broken, bleeding, lifeless-looking body slouched at the base of a huge evergreen. Nora wasn’t sure she’d ever get that image out of her head.

Chris had been at least halfway down the ravine, and yet Nora didn’t recall navigating through all the trees and undergrowth. She just knew that, by the time she reached him, Chris was conscious and trying in vain to get up. He had a bloody gash along his jawline and his face was riddled with scratches. Dirt and blood covered his torn clothes. From the impossibly bent angle of his right leg, Nora could tell it was broken. She told him to stay put while she got some help.

“Is Chris all right?” she heard Joe call out weakly from above them.

Nora had lost track of where Joe was. “We’re down here!” she yelled. “His leg’s broken!”

Chris clutched her arm. “Mom, I thought he was trying to kill you or something . . .”

Nora shook her head. “No, he didn’t mean any harm at all. I’ll explain later. Just don’t try to move.” Digging a handkerchief from her pants pocket, she gave it to him and guided his hand up to the cut along his jaw. “Hold that there, honey,” she said.

Then Nora headed uphill, moving around the flashlight in search for Joe. She could hear twigs snapping and bushes rustling. She finally spotted Joe making his way down the slope toward her. He was a mess, his clothes torn and filthy. His forehead was badly cut with blood running down the side of his face and neck—under his shirt collar.

“God, Joe, I’m so sorry,” Nora said, reaching out to him.

Joe put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I’m a little wobbly right now. I don’t know if I can make it back up the hill. If you take me to Chris, I’ll keep him company while you call for help.”

“Please,” Nora whispered. “Don’t tell him about Ray. I promise, we’ll figure this out. Only right now, I don’t want Chris to know.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything,” Joe replied under his breath.

“I’m the last one who should be asking you for any favors right now,” she said as they headed down the ravine together. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I told you—I like you, Nora. I like your family.”

Nora asked Joe for yet another favor before leaving him with Chris. She thought it would be easier if they all stuck to the story that Joe and Chris had fallen into the ravine while playing football in the backyard. Explaining anything close to the truth to the doctors might be too complicated.

She gave Joe the flashlight so that the medics or the firemen—whoever arrived first—could spot them in the darkness.

Nora glanced back at Joe and Chris as she started up the densely wooded hill.

Leaning against the tree trunk and each other, they looked like two battered, weary soldiers who had barely survived a battle. Joe directed the flashlight’s beam at her so that she could find her way up to the ravine’s edge.

It took two ambulances, a fire truck and a police car ten minutes to arrive—and then another twenty minutes for the emergency crew to bring Chris up on a stretcher. Joe made it up the ravine on foot—with the help of one of the emergency crew members. The sirens and flashing lights had attracted a few neighbors, who stood around the vehicles for a better look at what was happening. Considering how far Chris and Joe had fallen down the ravine and how banged up they were, the “football accident” cover story seemed rather feeble. But none of the medics or firemen questioned it. Nora rode in the back of the ambulance with Chris. The other ambulance crew took Joe.

According to the doctor, it was a miracle that Chris and Joe hadn’t sustained more severe injuries.

A skinny, fortyish nurse with brassy red hair had taken pity on Nora. Her name was Ida, and she’d given Nora updates on Chris and Joe. Chris had multiple cuts, three of which required stitches—including the gash along his jaw. He’d also sprained his left ankle and his right arm and wrist. But Chris’s most severe injury was a displaced fractured fibula in his right leg. The emergency room staff were moving the pieces of broken bone back into place before immobilizing the leg with a temporary splint. There was a possibility he’d require surgery.

In comparison, Joe had gotten off easily with a few bruised ribs. The doctor had also sewn up the laceration in his forehead with six stitches.

Nora glanced at her wristwatch, stood up and went to get a drink from the water fountain by the nurses’ station. She sipped her water and was patting dry her mouth with the back of her hand when she overheard one of the nurses talking.

“Ida, you’ll never guess what’s happened . . .”

“You’re right, I probably won’t,” Ida replied, sounding uninterested.

Passing the counter again, Nora spied the other nurse—young, petite and blonde. She must have come in from another doorway to the nurse’s station. She seemed out of breath. “They got the strangler!” she announced.

Nora stopped and stared at them. Neither Ida nor the other nurse seemed to notice her.

“What are you talking about?” Ida whispered.

“That maniac who’s been murdering assembly-line workers from the war plants—you know, the ‘Rosie’ killer,” the young nurse explained. “He attacked a girl in Queen Anne tonight, and she stabbed him with an ice pick—right in the ear canal. The police just brought him into the morgue downstairs.”

“Well, good riddance to bad rubbish,” Ida said.

Nora stood there, frozen. “Do they know his name?” she heard herself ask anxiously. “Do they have any idea who he was?”

Ida and the other nurse gaped at her.

Nora’s first thought was that she’d need to brace her children for the headlines in tomorrow’s newspapers—making their uncle out to be a sadistic killer.

“Please, I really need to know,” Nora said, approaching the counter. She put a hand on the edge of it to steady herself. “I . . . I was friends with one of the girls who was killed. I worked with her at Boeing. Are they sure it’s the Rosie killer? Do the police know his name?”

Ida gave her coworker a nod. “Go ahead and tell her, Jeannie. She’ll hear about it soon enough anyway.” Then she turned to Nora. “We work pretty closely with the cops around here. They let us in on everything . . .”

The younger nurse looked at Nora. “Well, the guy tried to strangle this gal with a nylon stocking, and she’s a riveter at Boeing,” said the nurse. “So Frank—he’s my friend on the force—Frank said they’re pretty sure they’ve got the right guy on the slab downstairs.”

“Do they know his name?” Nora pressed.

“Yeah, sure, Frank told me . . .” The nurse made a face, wincing as if she couldn’t remember. “It’s on the tip of my tongue . . .”

Was it Raymond Shannon? Nora wanted to ask. But she bit her lip and remained silent.

“Ronald Lapp!” the nurse exclaimed, obviously proud of herself for recalling his name. “Frank said this Lapp fella was about as low as they go. He was a real bad guy, a drifter—in and out of jail most of his life. The police were already looking for him. He was wanted for murder. He strangled a woman in Portland last year, a clerk at a five-and-dime.”

“The woman he tried to strangle tonight, is she okay?” Nora needed to know before she could feel relieved that it was all over.

“She’s shook up, but she’ll be okay—according to my friend,” the nurse answered.

Nora let out a long sigh and nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

But when she returned to her spot on the bench, she really didn’t feel any better. She was still uncertain about her son’s injuries.

And this news about the Rosie killer didn’t explain away what Joe had told her about her brother. Ray was still alive, lurking around the house at night. And Ray had given Jane that wind-up toy that had belonged to a murdered riveter down in San Diego.

Nora wondered about the drifter on the slab down in the morgue. Could it be that the police had the wrong “killer” again?

* * *

Overwhelmed and depleted, Nora came home from the hospital by taxi.

As the cab backed out of the driveway, she stood and stared at the dark, empty house. Instead of heading inside, she walked slowly down the driveway.

She glanced toward the ravine and noticed a pink patch by the edge. The pink gingham apron had been left behind in all the chaos. Walking across the lawn, she picked up the apron and then stared down at the shadowy, wooded ravine for a moment.

She would be alone in the house tonight. She still didn’t know for sure how serious Chris’s leg injury was.

“We’ll know more in the morning, after the orthopedic specialist examines him,” the doctor had told her. “We’re going to keep Chris overnight to make sure he’s stable and hasn’t suffered a concussion. In fact, you can count on him being here for at least two or three more days. The best thing you can do right now is to go home and get some sleep. Visiting hours are almost over.”

Nora had gotten a quick “good night” in to Chris before they’d wheeled him into his semiprivate room. But he’d been groggy from the pain medication they’d given him and barely responded.

She’d also caught a few minutes alone with Joe in the examining room. The doctor wanted to keep him under observation for at least another hour—to make certain he hadn’t suffered a concussion. Nora had found Joe sitting on the examining table, buttoning up his shirt. The attending nurse had gone to fetch something. Joe had had a big adhesive bandage on one side of his forehead.

“The nurses here thought it was pretty bizarre we were playing football when we took that half-gainer down the ravine,” Joe had whispered to her. “After all, I’d just brought Chris in here a couple of hours ago, claiming his appendix was about to burst. Then again, teenage boys have a way of bouncing back, don’t they?”

Nora had thanked him again and apologized. She’d told him about Ronald Lapp, down in the morgue. But Joe had already heard the story from one of the nurses. Apparently, word about it had gotten around the hospital pretty quickly.

“You and I know they don’t have the right guy,” Joe had said under his breath. “Yeah, he tried to attack a riveter, and was wanted for another murder last year. The police figure they’ve hit the jackpot this time. But I think he was a copycat. The cops will figure it out when another assembly-line worker gets strangled. And I’m afraid it’ll be on our conscience when that happens. We need to talk to the cops about your brother . . .”

Nora had just nodded. She hadn’t even tried to argue with him. In her gut, she’d had a feeling he was right. Ronald Lapp hadn’t stolen her lipstick and her nylons. And Ronald Lapp hadn’t tried to steal her apron last night.

Nora had volunteered to stay with Joe at the hospital until they released him, but Joe had insisted she go home, lock her doors and get some rest. “See you in a couple of hours,” he’d said with a tired smile. “Or maybe not. If you’re sleeping, I’ll try to be quiet.”

Now, as she stared down into the ravine, Nora clutched the apron her brother had stolen from her kitchen.

It had been awful enough thinking Ray had caused that deadly explosion in an effort to avoid combat duty. She was almost relieved to hear from Joe that the navy investigators had already figured out Ray had been responsible for the blast. And she was grateful they’d decided to keep it a secret. No one needed to know. She might have been able to forgive Ray, assuming he’d died when his plan had gone horribly wrong.

But his plan hadn’t gone wrong. Everything had gone off as Ray had wanted it to. He’d set up Joe’s poor brother, killing him. And Jackson Slattery hadn’t even been the first person he’d murdered. There had been the two war workers in San Diego. Then later, the three women who worked on the war plant assembly lines here in Seattle. Nora felt sick when she thought of all the dead—and the ripple effect with Roger and the friends and families of all the victims.

Joe had been right. If or when Ray murdered again, the police would realize they had the wrong killer with Ronald Lapp. She would have to tell the authorities about her brother.

She couldn’t help thinking about the ripple effect again—and her own family. Chris and Jane would die of shame. Their beloved uncle was a gutless saboteur and a murderer. It would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

More than anything, Nora wished her brother really were dead.

She felt responsible. After all, she’d raised him. It was because of her that Ray had become the monster he was. He’d have been the first one to say so, too. She’d abandoned him when he was eleven years old. He’d never forgiven her for that. Maybe things would have been different if he’d come to live with her and Pete. She should have tried harder to make that work.

How Ray must have loathed her—long before she’d refused to help him in his scheme to avoid shipping out to the Pacific. He’d started killing before showing up at her door. And his victims were women like her, one of them even a friend of hers. He’d stolen Nora’s nylons and lipstick while staying with her. He wanted to involve her in his killings. Hell, he wanted to rub her nose in what he was doing.

She remembered Ray telling her that Chris might have resented her taking a wartime job. But Ray was the one who had resented it. He’d gone to such great lengths to avoid combat duty. Who else but a coward would take out his frustrations on women doing their part for the war effort? Who else would want to put these “heroines of the home front” back into the kitchen—with their aprons and permanent smiles painted on their faces?

Nora turned and walked across the lawn to the house. Slinging the apron over her arm, she dug the housekey out of her purse and started to unlock the back door. But then she realized the door was already unlocked. Had she left it that way? Probably.

She stepped inside the kitchen and set the apron on the counter. She switched on the light and stood there for a moment, listening. The house was so quiet. Yet Nora couldn’t help feeling as if she weren’t alone.

“Ray?” she called out warily. But there was no answer.

She looked over at the basement door, open a crack.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped over to the door, pulled it open farther and switched on the light at the top of the basement stairs. Nora crept halfway down the steps and glanced around the shadowy cellar—the clothes hanging on the wash line, the washing machine, Pete’s workbench and the octopus-style furnace. “Ray?” she called out again, breaking the silence.

No answer.

Nora retreated upstairs and headed into the front hallway. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, switched on the second-floor hallway light and gazed up the steps. She almost expected to hear the floorboards creaking—or perhaps Jane’s Scottie dog’s cymbals going ding, ding, ding. Maybe Ray would announce his presence by snickering. That had been how she’d usually found him when they’d played hide-and-seek as kids. He’d always had a tough time stifling his laughter whenever he’d fooled her.

She wasn’t scared so much as tormented—and disgusted at the notion that her brother was alive and watching her.

After setting up Joe’s brother to perish in that explosion, Ray could have gone anywhere—maybe to the East Coast or to the South, someplace where no one would recognize him. But he’d risked coming back to Seattle, so he could kill again.

Nora had a feeling the San Diego murders were unplanned, the result of rage. But he must have come to Seattle last month intending to kill more female assembly-line workers. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kept her in the dark about when he’d first arrived in town in April. And after “dying,” he’d come back to Seattle. For the murders to really matter, Ray needed her to feel their full impact. He murdered women in Seattle because she was there.

And he was going to keep killing until she stopped him.

The phone rang, giving her a start.

Her first thought was that something had happened to Chris, and the hospital was calling. Maybe he’d had a concussion after all, and now they couldn’t wake him up.

She grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Nora? Oh, thank God. Honey, where have you been?”

“Fran?”

“I’ve been calling all night,” her friend said. “I was about to phone the police and ask them to check the house. Is everything okay?”

“Yes—well, no,” she said. “I was at the hospital. Chris had an accident—”

“Oh, no, what happened? Is he going to be okay?”

Leaning against the wall, Nora rubbed her forehead. “He’s in stable condition, but he broke his leg and got banged up pretty badly. They’re keeping him at the hospital for another couple of nights. He and our new tenant were playing football in the backyard and . . . well, they started roughhousing, and both of them fell into the ravine.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. What about the other fella? Is he all right?”

“Some cuts and bruises, but he should be okay. I expect him back in an hour or so.”

“Good, you won’t be alone there too much longer,” Fran said soberly.

Nora glanced at her wristwatch. “Shouldn’t you be in bed? What’s going on? Why were you trying to get ahold of me?”

“Well, I had a little scare here, too,” Fran explained. “Someone broke in earlier tonight, while I was alone in the house, taking a shower.”

“Oh, no,” Nora whispered. “Oh, God—”

“I’m okay,” Fran assured her. “A neighbor came by and scared the guy away. The police were here. And Marty’s here now . . .”

“Oh, Fran, I’m so sorry.” Just as she said it, Nora realized it sounded more like an apology than an expression of sympathy.

Fran let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, it’s not your fault.”

But it was her fault. She couldn’t believe that Ray had gone after Fran. And yet, why was she surprised?

She listened as Fran told her about someone slashing the tires when Marty had taken the car to town to buy flowers. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not. Whoever had broken into the house had draped Fran’s work pants on the newel post and left behind an apron on her kitchen counter. “I couldn’t help thinking he was getting everything ready so he could wrap up quickly after he’d finished me off,” Fran said. “But the thing is—and I don’t want to alarm you—”

“As if I weren’t already alarmed,” Nora said. “Fran, this is horrible . . .”

“Well, it’s about to get worse. The apron he left on the counter wasn’t mine. I think it’s yours, honey. It has a daisy pattern on it. I remembered, you put it on to wash the dishes at the dinner party. I’m almost certain it’s the same one . . .”

Nora swallowed hard. Stretching the phone cord nearly to its limit, she stepped into the kitchen and checked the drawer where she kept her aprons. They were all missing from the drawer—except, of course, for the dirt-stained pink gingham apron her brother had dropped when he’d made his escape down the ravine last night.

“Nora? Honey, are you there?”

She kept staring at the empty drawer. “Are you sure you’re all right, Fran? You’re safe?”

“Yes, like I said, Marty’s here. But I don’t think the police took me very seriously. I can’t say I blame them. I’m sure they’re getting a dozen calls like mine every night now. Everyone’s in a panic. And I’m pretty long in the tooth compared to the other strangler victims. So, why would he be going after me, right? But that pair of work pants didn’t magically move itself—and then there’s this apron. Am I crazy? Is this your apron with the daisies on it?”

Nora hesitated.

“I asked the police if they wanted to take it as evidence, and the cop told me to hold on to it. Like I said, he didn’t seem to take me too seriously . . .”

Nora closed the drawer. “Well, that . . . that must be another apron,” she said, cringing at her lie, “because I’m looking at my daisy-patterned apron right now. It’s here. But—I think the police are right, Fran. You should hold on to that apron just in case . . .”

She’d never told Fran about her missing nylons and lipstick because she’d been worried Chris might have taken them. Now she was protecting her brother—even after he’d broken into Fran’s house and tried to murder her. Nora had always been Ray’s “little mother” and his protector. And old habits die hard.

She remembered Fran mentioning that Ray had asked for her address at the dinner party—supposedly so that he could keep in touch with Marty. Even as far back as the party, Ray had been planning to kill her. He’d sat at the dinner table with Nora’s two friends, plotting how he would strangle them.

Nora was pretty certain Fran would be safe tonight. Ray wasn’t about to make another attempt on her life, not when Marty was there. Ray was too much of a coward for that.

He was far more likely to come here tonight—if it was true what Joe had said about Ray watching the house.

After saying goodbye to Fran and hanging up, Nora got a pencil and a piece of paper. She sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a note:

Ray, I know it’s you.

Then Nora set down the pencil and started to cry.