Grim Tidings

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Kathleen sat on the threadbare velvet sofa counting out bills with the crisp snap of a casino teller, her puffy pink housecoat making her look like somebody had inflated her body but left her head the normal size. She barely looked up, smoke winding up from the ashtray next to her. The corpses of twenty or thirty smokes, most stained with the cheap, waxy pinks and reds the working girls favored, attested to the night’s business.

  “Rough night?” she said. Kathleen—“Miss Kate” to most everyone who worked here—looked like eight miles of hard road but she sounded like the nightclub singer she’d been twenty years ago. Her voice could give the wallpaper goose bumps.

  “That’s every night,” I said, slumping into the chair by the window, the one where Kathleen usually sat one of the younger girls to watch for cops. I wasn’t one to judge, but as brothels went Kate’s wasn’t half-bad—she didn’t turn out young girls, she didn’t let johns beat us, she didn’t tolerate people shooting dope in the bathroom or selling it out the back door. Most important, she let me be Phyllis and didn’t ask any questions about who I’d been before.

  I didn’t have to be here, unlike a lot of the girls upstairs. But I wasn’t educated enough to be a nurse or chipper enough to be a secretary. I couldn’t exactly furnish a driver’s license or a VA card to get a government job. Hard to explain why someone with my name and description had been reported missing in Louisiana almost thirty years ago. If they’d ever found my body, my fingerprints would show up as a dead woman’s.

  Aside from finding a Clyde to my Bonnie, if I wanted to stay away from Gary I had to make money any way I could. And to stay away from Gary, I’d do a lot worse than work for Kathleen.

  “Nights like this remind me of Germany,” I said. Kathleen made a sympathetic noise. She’d lost her husband the first time we did this dance with the Huns, when they’d been married for less than two years.

  “Shame what they did to you WAC girls,” Kathleen grunted. “Real damn shame. My girl back home in Skokie, she worked in a factory. Welded plane parts to other plane parts. Kicked her ass out the door the minute the boys came back from Europe. Can’t find a job for nothing now.” She grunted again, slamming the lid of her lockbox and locking it with the key she kept around her neck in place of a cross. “Real damn shame.”

  I’d told Kathleen a few half-truths, but the basic story was right. When the war was over, we all came home—Gary and the rest of us. But after that, I’d just faded away, and for some reason he’d let me. At first I wondered if it was a game, if he was waiting for me to relax so he could show up and break me down again. But I think he sensed as much as I did that I was done. What Jacob and I had seen, what I’d seen in the camp before I found Kubler . . . I didn’t think that I could break into any more pieces after Gary found me, but I was wrong.

  I poured the gin I’d come downstairs for. Enough of it and I could mostly sleep without nightmares. The stuff I saw when I was awake was bad enough. Like now, with the snow falling gently, wafting down like sugar from a sifter, I could almost see Jacob’s face and feel the last time we’d touched before he’d run off.

  He was dead. I’d fooled myself for a while after I came back, but as more and more came out, more and more photos and film reels, and those sound recordings they played from Nuremberg almost every night during the news broadcasts, I knew Jacob was dead. The Nazis had started executing everyone they could when the Red Army and the Allies closed in. One man alone in the woods hadn’t stood a chance.

  The phone in the kitchen buzzed, making me jump. A little bit of gin sloshed onto my hand. “I ain’t answering,” Kathleen said, picking up her lockbox the way some women carried small dogs. “Gonna be some housewife looking for her husband and I ain’t going to be screamed at because she can’t keep his fat ass at home.”

  I padded into the kitchen and picked up on the tenth or so ring. “Kate’s.”

  “Phyllis?” The voice was clipped and male, and I instantly went on guard. It wasn’t unheard-of for creeps to find Kathleen’s number once they’d moved on and become a pain in the ass, calling at all hours. “Phyllis Dietrich?” he said. “Is that who I’m speaking to?”

  “I’m sorry, who am I speaking to?” I said in my best vapid tone,

  which wasn’t all that hard with four glasses of gin warming the embers in my belly.

  “I’m a friend of Lady Williams,” the man said. “I’m sorry to report there’s been an accident and you’re listed as next of kin.”

  Lady. Sweet, round, blond Lady, who’d laugh at the dumbest joke the thickest john could pull out of his hat and make you laugh too, because she was just the type of nice girl who made you want to be nice back.

  “Is she dead?” I said, and the caller paused for a second. We both held our breath.

  “She’s in bad shape,” the caller said, his voice softening in response to mine going hard. “I’d get here fast, Mrs. Dietrich.”

  “Miss,” I said. “It’s Miss. Where are you?”

  Lady had been driving down to Texas to see her family for the week—her dad was doing poorly, and her brother had wrapped his sedan around a tree, and they needed somebody around with a set of wheels.

  “Harper, Kansas,” the caller said. “We’re a little speck off SR 14.”

  I leaned my forehead against Kathleen’s mildewed kitchen wallpaper, pressing into the center of a purple cabbage rose. Lady hadn’t even made it out of the state. “Are you her doctor?” I said.

  “Harper, Kansas,” the caller repeated. “You should come.”

  I didn’t bother asking Kathleen if I could borrow her car. She’d just grunt obscenities at me. In a strange way, it felt good to know that the skills I’d acquired before I slipped into this life hadn’t totally abandoned me. I managed to get the old Packard running in two tries and eased out onto the snowy highway. It was a little before dawn, but the sky was still all dark except for a line of flame at the horizon.

  My cash lasted me to Harper, but after two fill-ups and a steak-and-eggs special at a diner that seemed to be constructed mostly of grease and stale toast, I only had change jingling in my purse by the time I pulled in to the hospital.

  A charge nurse directed me down the hall to a quiet room. The curtain was pulled, and I stood in front of it, unwilling to pull it back. Lady and I were friends, but I wasn’t exactly sit-at-your-bedside-during-your-last-moments close to her.

  The curtain whipped back of its own accord, and another nurse, not much more than a kid, popped her head back in surprise. “This is a private room,” she snapped. “Who are you?”

  “I’m her sister,” I said reflexively, the lie we used to visit each other in the hospital, jail, wherever Kate’s girls might end up where they needed a fake family.

  The nurse darted her eyes from my slender, dark-haired, five-foot-nothing frame to Lady’s blond hair and curves that went on for days. “Right,” she said.

  I should have kept lying, but the sight of Lady stopped me. Her hair was about all I recognized—her face was wrapped in gauze, both of her arms as well. The wounds underneath were bleeding through, little half-moons all over the field of cotton. The pungent, sticky smell of iodine wafted into my nose and I choked.

  The nurse, fortunately, softened at my silence. “Five minutes, all right? The doctor won’t be around for ten so you’d better be gone by then.”

  “The doctor called me,” I murmured, flinching reflexively as Lady stirred in her sleep and her gown exposed one collarbone, deep dark purple with bruises. I’d had bruises like that left on me more than once.

  “No,” the nurse said emphatically. “He has not called anyone. This girl is an unfortunate. She doesn’t have anyone; therefore nobody called you.”

  “I did,” said a voice from the door. It was my mystery caller, and I spun. The nurse huffed in annoyance and stormed out.

  “Sorry.” The man extended his hand. “Phyllis, right?”

  “You’re not a doctor,” I said as I shook it.

  �
��No,” he replied. “But to be perfectly fair I never said I was.” He gave me a thin smile that dropped off quicker than driving off a cliff. “Hell of a thing.”

  I moved to Lady’s bed rail and leaned on it, squeezing it. “She didn’t deserve this,” I said.

  “Nobody deserves this,” the man said, standing next to me. He took his wallet out of his inside pocket and flashed a shiny gold shield. “Don Tanner. Kansas State Police.”

  I gave him another once-over at that. Don didn’t look like most of the cops I’d run into. Then again, Kate’s was rarely graced with the presence of such an august body as the state police. He was tall—almost tall enough to duck his head under door frames— and he wore his blond hair in a buzz cut that made it look almost white. He had a young face and old eyes—they were light blue, sunlight cutting through a frozen pond, and even as he looked down at Lady I could tell he was really seeing something else.

  “I’m Phyllis,” I said. “What do the state police want with this?”

  He sighed and rubbed a palm over his head, disturbing the severe brush of his crew cut. “It’s a long story.”

  I looked down at Lady’s body again. I didn’t know who’d done this, but I’d gladly get back in the saddle with Gary if it meant the means to track them down. “I’ve got time.”

  Detective Tanner shot me a look. “You’re not really her sister.”

  I didn’t look away. I was past worrying about what some human thought of me or my temporary profession. “You’re very perceptive.”

  “Well,” Tanner smiled. “I am a detective.” He took my arm and I jerked reflexively, pulling it back to my side.

  Tanner held up his hands. “I’m not trying to give you trouble. I just want to buy you a cup of coffee and a slice of pie.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I snapped.

  “Everyone’s hungry after a scene like that,” he said, taking my arm again. He escorted me across the street to an Automat, and I forced myself not to break his wrist and run.

  He bought us each coffee and pie, and took a sip and bite before he talked again. “So how do you know Miss Williams?”

  I stayed quiet, pushing my pie around my plate. Tanner sighed, tapping sugar into his coffee until it was fairly swamped. “Look, kid, I don’t care what the two of you did together. I know what goes on with young ladies who can’t make ends meet any other way. Trust me, I have bigger fish to fry than a couple of working girls.”

  The sugar ran out, and he frowned at the empty jar. I started laughing, and he looked up. “What?”

  “You calling me kid,” I said. “How old are you?” He couldn’t have been much past thirty.

  “Old enough,” he said sternly. “And I ask again—how are you two friends?”

  “My name’s not Phyllis,” I said impulsively. “It’s Ava. But I want to be called Phyllis.”

  “Fair enough,” Tanner said. “You read the papers much, Phyllis?”

  “I have enough bad news,” I said. I figured if the pie was free I might as well take a bite. It wasn’t half-bad.

  “About a year ago I got a call about a dead girl on the highway west of Topeka,” said Tanner. “She’d been beaten and mutilated like your friend Lady. Not a fighter like Lady, though—she died without ever waking up.” He sipped his coffee. “Two more like that before your friend. The last one managed to tell me she pulled over to give him a ride. He was hitching after his car broke down. I start hearing from Nebraska and Oklahoma—they got a couple dead people apiece, two men and three women.” Tanner’s cup clunked against the chipped tabletop. “After the last girl papers started calling him the Walking Man.”

  The door of the Automat swung open, letting in two hospital orderlies and a cold gust, and I shivered. Even wrapped around the hot coffee, my hands felt like they’d frozen in place.

  “Your friend was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Tanner continued. “Trying to be a Good Samaritan.”

  “That sounds like her,” I murmured. Tanner took out a couple of crumpled ones and some change and scattered them on the table.

  “I should get back. I figured if there was somebody she really wanted to see, you needed to get the call.”

  “You talkin’ about that blonde who came in all tore up?” one of the orderlies said, hooking his arm over the divider between our booths.

  “What about her?” Tanner cocked his head.

  “She’s gone, man,” said the other, floppy locks almost falling in his coffee. “Croaked right after you left. Doc came in and she was—” He made a slicing gesture across his neck.

  Tanner slumped back down in the booth. “Great,” he muttered into his hand. “That’s just fantastic.”

  I stayed quiet, not moving. Tanner rubbed the spot between his eyes, the first hint of a furrow that would just get deeper the longer he did this job sprouting there. “I’m going to request an autopsy in the morning,” he said. “Not that we’ll find anything. We didn’t on any of the others.”

  He started to leave and turned back. “You want to stick around? Make sure her remains get back home?”

  I swiped at my eyes. Ava wouldn’t cry over a hooker she’d barely known but I figured Phyllis might. “She wasn’t some unfortunate,” I said quietly. “She had a family. They’ll want her back.”

  Tanner went to go out again, then sighed, his big shoulders heaving. He looked back at me again. “You got someplace to stay?”

  “I’m not that hard up,” I said softly, looking at the greasy surface of my coffee.

  “Neither am I,” Tanner said. “Staties give me a room and meal allowance. I never sleep through the night anyway.” He put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Come on. I’ll take the chair and you can take the bed.”

  I was tired, so tired I could barely keep one foot in front of the other. I’d been up for over a day, with the drive and Lady and every other awful thing. I followed Tanner out and to his car, an unmarked Ford that rattled when he made the left turn into the motel a few blocks from the hospital.

  “Your timing belt’s on the way out,” I murmured, after he parked. Tanner shot me a grin—uncalculated, boyish, his teeth gleaming in the neon light of the VACANCY sign.

  “You a mechanic on your nights off?”

  I returned his smile, just a little. “I pick things up here and there.”

  Tanner stepped out of the car and got a battered cardboard suitcase from the trunk, along with a green army duffle holding a long rifle and a couple of boxes of shells and bullets. “I never could fix anything worth a damn. Much better at breaking things up, least that’s what my ex-wife would say.”

  I flinched when he brought up his wife, and told myself that sometimes humans just did want to help. They were the only ones who did things just because it was a compassionate, human thing to do. Demons would as soon pick their teeth with your finger bones as look at you. Reapers would never invite a girl into a motel room for anything as innocent as sleep.

  “Oh, hey,” Tanner said, stopping when he saw my look. “Listen, if it makes it better she’s the one that ended things. Ended them right on our kitchen table with my sergeant from back in Easy Company. Said I was no fun anymore.” He turned the lock on the door and jiggled, then kicked until the door gave way. “Guess she was right.”

  I hesitated at the threshold and he sighed. “I’d sleep in the car if it wasn’t colder’n a snowman’s balls out there. I’m not going to hurt you, Phyllis. I don’t pretend to know what’s been done to you but I’m not interested in anything but a beer and sitting in my underwear until I pass out. Probably why Edith left me like she did.”

  I followed him inside, shutting the door. After a second’s thought I put the chain lock on. Tanner didn’t want to hurt me, that much was true. He was being way too rude, too familiar to want that. The ones who did treated you like you were special, like you were a princess, so you’d feel like you owed them something when they turned ugly. Besides, if he did get fresh I wasn’t above smashing his head into t
he mirror in the tacky gold frame stuck up opposite the bed.

  “I’m not afraid of what you’ll do to me,” I said to Tanner. Really, he should have the sense to be afraid of me, but that was the other heartbreaking thing about humans—they never did.

  “Good,” he said, stripping out of his jacket, tie, and pants in record time. His shirt landed on top of the pile right in the middle of the floor and he grabbed one of the folded towels, then headed toward the shower. The scar across his back radiated from one of the arm holes in his undershirt, tracing all the way down the back of his arm to his elbow. It wasn’t raw and red any longer, just white, but I could still pick out every rough stitch from whatever field hospital had saved Tanner’s life.

  “Where’d you pick that up?” I asked, sitting gingerly on the bed. The bedspread itched the backs of my legs.

  “France,” he said. He lifted his shirt on the other side, displaying twin puckers just over his kidney. “Belgium.” He turned around, lifting his leg and showing me a slim pale oval over a healed gash.

  “Germany?” I guessed. He laughed.

  “Tulsa, Oklahoma. My little brother hit me with a broken bicycle chain.”

  “You two sound close,” I said. Tanner’s smile dropped.

  “We were,” he said, and shut the bathroom door.

  Tanner wasn’t kidding about the beer and the sleeping. He pulled a bunch of case files from his floppy leather satchel, but he’d barely paged through the first one before the beer drew his interest. “Don’t look at those,” he said as he tossed them to the floor. “They’ll just give you bad dreams.”

  I took off my dress and stockings and got under the covers, lying there until Tanner started snoring and the last fuzzy TV station had signed off for the night. My foot slithered over one of the photos when I stepped out of bed, and I avoided them as I went over to Tanner’s satchel, easing the rope tie off and sifting through the layer of shirts and underpants. Spare tie, gun-cleaning kit, shaving bag. A banged-up metal first aid box. A little black dirt trickled onto my bare foot from the seam of the box and I opened it, wincing as the springs creaked.