Redeemer

by C. E. Murphy

  "—home right now. Steven, you'll just have to ask Paul down the street if we can borrow that big Chevy truck of his to pack Rosie's things into. We—"

  "What? Wait, what, Mom? I'm not moving back home! This happened at the factory, not home, and even if it had, well, he's dead now, Mom. I'm fine."

  "How can you say that so callously?" Mom demanded. "It's not that simple, Rose Anne! You don't just kill someone and walk away from it fine. You need to be at home, where people who love you can take care of you."

  "Mom, I'm fine. Mom—Pop," Rosie said desperately, but her Pop shook his head again, lines that had never been there before appearing in his face until he looked far older and more haggard than Rosie had ever seen him.

  "I think you'd better listen to your mother, Roro. This kind of thing doesn't always hit you all at once. It's better if you're somewhere safe, with people who care."

  Rosie bit back a protest, watching the changes come over him, then shook off her mother's hands and sat down again, suddenly feeling like she had to move and speak carefully. "You killed somebody, didn't you," she asked softly. "In the war. I mean you know you killed someone, not just …" She swallowed and made a helpless motion with her hands. Soldiers killed people. That was their job. Anybody knew that someone who'd been in war might well have killed a man, but it was different, knowing for sure you'd done it, rather than just figuring one of your bullets had taken a life. But Pop had never talked about it. Most of the veterans of the Great War didn't.

  "It's not just that, Rosie," Pop said just as quietly. "It's seeing the men around you die, too. It builds up in a way you don't—you can't—understand, and I'm glad you never will."

  "He killed Ruby McAnly."

  Pop flinched back and Mom's voice shot up. "Ruby? Jean-Marie's friend Ruby? You saw him? Rose Anne Ransom, you are moving home right now—"

  "I didn't see it. She died a few days ago. He didn't just go crazy and come after me, Pop. He's been killing girls since he got back. Everybody just thought they were quitting and going back to their men, but they're dead. Ruby, and probably Carol Ann McKay, and I heard that four Negro girls went missing too. It's not the same. I know it's not the same, Poppy, but people around me did die, and I stopped him from ever doing that again. He wasn't just a man, Poppy. He was a bad man. Not like soldiers. Mostly soldiers are just … they're just like you, aren't they? Even if they're Japs or Nazis or Russians or whoever. Most of them probably aren't bad. Most of them are probably just people. PFC Goode was bad. He ate them, Poppy. He ate Ruby."

  "Oh my God." Mom's knees weakened and Pop stood to help her back to her chair. Rosie covered her face, reckoning she couldn't have found a worse way to convince her mother that she'd be safe living in the house she shared with Irene and the others.

  "I'm okay," she said again, into her palms. "I really am. It was terrible, but I'm all right. Maybe I'm still too shocked to be shaken up, Mom, but I promise I'll come home and let you take care of me if I start falling apart. I really will. But right now—see, don't you see?" She lifted her face from her hands. "If I run right home and let myself be scared to death, then even if I didn't get hurt, he still wins. Mom, what would have happened if the suffragists had just given up when they got scared? We wouldn't be able to vote. We might not even be able to work in the factories, even if all the men had gone off to war."

  "Oh, no," Mom said hoarsely. "You don't get to turn this into a suffragist movement, Rose Anne Ransom. It's not the same thing at all. Equality is one thing, Rosie. Killing someone—"

  "Kept me alive," Rosie finished.

  Mom lost all her color again and Pop put a hand over hers, gently reassuring. He never stopped watching Rosie, though. "I know you did what you had to, Roro. I know you wouldn't have gone that far if it hadn't been necessary. I won't push you to come home right now—"

  "Steven!"

  "—even though I think your mother is right. Just remember you can, sweetheart. Remember we'll be here when you need us."

  "Steven Alexander Ransom!"

  Pop said, "Beth," as quietly as he'd said everything else, and Mom's mouth closed into a thin line. Pop squeezed her hand and Mom looked away from Rosie, toward the sunrise spilling in through kitchen's front window. It caught glitters of tears in her eyes, though she kept them from falling.

  Guilt clenched Rosie's stomach. "I promise I'll be careful, Mom. I promise I'll come home if I need help. But right now I'm okay, I really am. I just wanted to see you and tell you what had happened. And … I probably shouldn't have said that stuff about him eating Ruby. I don't think the cops want that bandied around. Don't mention it, please?"

  Pop, dryly, said, "I don't think we were planning on talking about any of it much, Ro," and in spite of her upset, Mom looked at him disbelievingly.

  "The whole block will be over before lunch, Steve. They'll hear it on the radio and want to know what really happened."

  "What the radio says will be true," Rosie said. "John Goode attacked me and I defended myself and another girl. Tell them I used a rivet gun. That should be enough to keep them going for weeks." She gulped her coffee, suddenly tired.

  "There was another girl?" Mom and Pop both sharpened, like that somehow made it all closer to okay. Rosie stared at them over the edge of her cup, then lowered it enough to speak.

  "Didn't I say that? Yes, there was. But I'm not even going to tell you her name, because if they don't mention it on the news she sure as heck doesn't need to have people asking her about it, and if I don't tell you, you can't tell anybody else."

  The tears in Mom's eyes faded as she took offense. "Rosie, you don't think we'd spread gossip like that, do you?"

  "I think it'd be really easy to let it slip." Rosie stood to rinse her cup and put it in the rack beside the sink. "I also think if I'm here when the neighbors start showing up I'll never get home, so I'm going to go before it gets any later. I'll call tonight, okay? I swear I'll keep safe."

  Her parents rose and came to hug her, their warmth and scent so comforting and familiar that Rosie wished, just for a moment, that she could stay and hide away from the whole world for a while. But she couldn't, not with Pearl Daly half-crazy with vampire blood and Hank's secret Ex Libris society to learn about and probably a million other things waiting on her. Rosie unwound reluctantly, kissed both her parents' cheeks, and slipped back out the kitchen door into the muggy morning.

  Mr Raymond across the street lifted his hand in greeting as Rosie came out the door. She waved back and put on a burst of speed before he picked up his morning paper. Even so, he called after her when he read the headlines, but she pretended she hadn't heard and scurried down the block. Past old Mrs O'Donnell's house at a crisp walk, like the old lady would appear, leaning on her cane and shouting questions that the whole block would hear, because she never cottoned on to the idea that her deafness didn't affect other peoples' hearing. At least Milly Jane Jones lived at the other end of the street. She and Rosie had played together ever since they were babies without ever being friends. Milly would be stopping by the Ransoms' house later, just to look down her pointy nose and say of course that's the kind of thing that could happen to a girl who worked in a factory. Worst of all would be Rich's parents, whose worry might even outstrip Rosie's own folks', because who would want their son marrying a killer? Rosie couldn't imagine Rich letting them put the kibosh on their relationship, but then, that was a whole 'nother can of worms.

  Imagining what everybody on the block would have to say got Rosie all the way to her own front door. The girls were still sleeping after their late Friday night, and Rosie tiptoed through the house and fell onto her bed without even undressing.

  Whispers woke her up what felt like two minutes later. She rolled over, pressing the pillow aside, to see all her housemates crowded into her doorway like an assortment of wildflowers stuffed into a small vase. One of them, Dorothy, shrieked when Rosie moved, then stuffed her knuckles against her mouth. "Oh my gosh. Don't kill me!"

  Al
l of them burst into nervous laughter, Barb elbowing Dorothy hard enough to make her wince, and Wanda's tall blond head poking above the others. "Did you really kill somebody, Rosie? It's splashed all over the papers. Did you really?"

  "He was trying to kill me." Rosie put her head under her pillow, trying to remember if she'd closed the bedroom door before she collapsed into sleep. Marge, her calm voice deep enough to be distinguishable from the others even from under a pillow, asked something, and Rosie loosened the pillow enough to listen.

  "I said, were you scared? What's it feel like to kill somebody?"

  "Is it awful?" Wanda asked hopefully. "Do you hate yourself? Were you covered in blood? Are you going to jail?"

  "I don't see how you could've done it," Barb said loudly. "I don't care what the papers say. You're just a girl."

  "I'm a riveter," Rosie said into the bedclothes, "and there was a rivet gun. I used it. It was awful and scary and I don't hate myself and I didn't get covered in blood, and the cops know I was protecting myself, so they sent me home."

  Four voices chorused, "You got arrested?!" in horrified glee. Rosie groaned and rolled away from them, pulling the pillow over her ears again. "I was taken in for questioning. I wasn't arrested. C'mon, girls, I haven't had any sleep. Can't you let it go?"

  "No!" echoed into her room from all four of them, and then Wanda offered, "I'll make you breakfast if you get up and tell us all about it. C'mon, Ro. Heck, you're dressed already."

  "What time is it?" Rosie edged her head out far enough to see the clock, which read a quarter after eleven. That meant about six hours of sleep, in bits and pieces. Not enough, but judging from the bevy of girls in the door, she wouldn't be getting more any time soon. "All right, fine, but there better be coffee."

  She crawled out of bed and her housemates scattered back, giving her more distance to pass through the door than she could ever need. Barb even clutched her hands over her heart and curved her shoulders in, as if fearing Rosie's touch. Rosie looked at her own hands, wondering if the Redeemer magic would do anything to normal people. "I'm not dangerous, Barb. I'm the same person I was yesterday."

  "Yesterday I didn't know you were a killer." The phone rang and Barb bolted for it, leaving Rosie without a response. She hadn't been a killer yesterday. She hadn't known she could be. Dorothy watched her like she'd become some kind of celebrity, but Wanda edged back too. Marge didn't seem too bothered, but then, as long as her paycheck made it to the bank on time, not much bothered Marge. Even so, she eyed Rosie with interest, no doubt counting on the gossip currency that the inside scoop would buy her. They trooped out behind her to the living room, spreading out in a half-circle as Barb extended the phone toward Rosie as if it had gotten dirty. "It's Irene. She says the cops are at Jean-Marie's house, and they're looking for you."

  SEVEN

  They'd found Ruby's things in Goode's apartment, Irene said. They'd come to Jean's house to ask her to identify them: dungarees and shirt and the red-checkered kerchief Ruby had worn around her hair on Monday. Irene hadn't said more before Rosie asked Marge, the only girl in the house with a car of her own—a blue Ford Standard sedan, years older than Jean-Marie's Oldsmobile and not nearly as expensive to start with, but still her very own—for a lift to Jean's house, and hurried out the door.

  Jean's thin wailing could be heard from the street, and a black-and-white sat in her driveway. Rosie jumped out of Marge's sedan, thanked her for the ride, and ran into the house to find Irene sitting on the floor with her arms around Jean, for all the good it did. An uncomfortable police officer stood across the room, looking like he hoped the crying woman would forget he was there. Jean clutched Ruby's shirt, rubbing tear-soaked bloodstains against her cheeks and hands. She looked up when Rosie came in. "I have to tell her Nan. How am I going to tell her Nan?"

  "Oh, honey." Rosie crouched beside her, stroking her hair. Jean curled over the shirt, sobbing anew, and Rosie met Irene's eyes over Jean's head. Irene wore one of Jean's shirts and a borrowed skirt, both of which were too big for her and neither of which did the gold undertones of her skin any favors. In fact, she looked yellow from exhaustion, and her eyes were dull with worry. "Did either of you sleep at all?"

  Irene shook her head. Rosie tilted her head toward one of the bedrooms. "Go rest."

  "Where? Jean is going to need her bed and I don't want to take Ruby's."

  "Ruby and I shared a room," Jean whispered in a choked voice. "The other one's a guest room. They said there wasn't anything left, Rosie. There wasn't any body to identify. Just some bones, in her clothes. That was all that was left of anybody. Carol Ann McKay doesn't even have bones left. I hate him. I wish he wasn't dead, so I could kill him and kill him and kill him."

  "I know. I know. I'm sorry, Jeannie. I'm sorry."

  "Ro," Irene said in a low voice, "the cops were asking a lot of questions about what you'd said happened last night."

  Rosie's hands turned cold against Jean-Marie's hair. "What did you tell them?"

  Irene gave her a withering look. "That the supe attacked you and you shot him with a riveting gun and you were rattled and sick about it all and that I thought that creep Hank wanted to take advantage of you. I didn't tell them you'd gone crazy."

  "Gosh, thanks."

  "Here you go, Miss Diaz." Detective Johnson came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee, crouching to offer it to Jean. "My wife says I make a mean cup."

  Jean accepted it with shaking hands and took a swallow that left her coughing. "That's not standard-issue."

  "Put a shot of whiskey in," Johnson confessed. "Might be why the old lady thinks I make a mean cup." A smile ghosted across Jean's face and Johnson jerked his chin in Rosie's direction, inviting her to stand. More like ordering her to stand, since she bet he wouldn't take it kindly if she refused. She squeezed Jean's shoulder and rose. Johnson gestured toward the kitchen and beckoned the other officer along.

  Only a single cup's worth was missing from the coffee pot, and the whiskey Johnson had laced Jean's coffee with was nowhere to be seen. Rosie poured herself some coffee and opened Jean's fridge, looking for milk, as Johnson, behind her, said, "I wouldn't mind a cup of that myself, if you don't mind."

  Rosie smiled. "Milk? Sure thing, Detective. Glad you take such good care of yourself."

  Johnson chuckled and Rosie poured him a cup too. The crispness she'd noticed about him earlier had long since faded. His collar was rumpled and sweat-stained now, and his graying hair, though ringed where his hat usually sat, also looked like he'd been shoving his hands through it all night. The other officer looked fresher, although he wasn't any younger than Johnson. "Officer Moran," Johnson said. "He came on just before we got to Miss Diaz's place, so he's sharper than I am. Coffee, Moran? This is the young lady who defended herself and Pearl Daly last night."

  "It's not right I should say congratulations, but I might anyway." Moran's tenor sounded like it belonged on a fourteen-year-old boy, not a man in his fifties. "Glad you got out of there safe last night, Miss Ransom."

  "Me too." Rosie got Moran a cup of coffee, too, and sat at the table, feeling her limited sleep and thinking how much worse it was for Johnson, who hadn't gotten any at all. "Don't get me wrong, Detective, I'm glad somebody's here with Jean-Marie, but why are you still here? It can't take that long to check that those were Ruby's clothes."

  "You're right. I wanted to talk to you again, Miss Ransom, and I thought it might be more comfortable outside of the station." Johnson sat across from her. Moran leaned against the kitchen sink, holding his coffee mug like he didn't know what to do with it.

  Rosie sank her head over her own cup and sipped. "You're right. You do make a mean cup of coffee. What did you want to talk about?"

  "Pearl Daly had a lot to say last night, once she showed us the mess at Goode's place. I wondered what you might say about it."

  The coffee turned to hot lead in Rosie's belly. She swallowed carefully. "I guess that depends on what she said. I know I shouldn't have tri
ed to protect her, but she seemed so lost."

  "She said Goode had her in …" Johnson dug a notebook out and flipped it open, finding a page of scribbled notes in handwriting so awful, Rosie couldn't make out a word of it, upside-down. "‘Thrall'. That was the word she used, thrall. Know what that means, Miss Ransom?"

  "Like a slave?"

  "That's right. Only she said it was magical." He emphasized the word. "Said Goode wasn't crazy at all, just a—" He consulted his notes again. "A vampire. And that's why he had to kill all those girls, to eat them to stay alive. She said she got splashed with some of his blood, and it made her have to do what he said."

  Rosie's jaw fell open. "She said what?" Irene hadn't believed Rosie, not even with Hank there to back her up. She couldn't imagine what Pearl had been thinking, trying to tell the cops the truth.

  "You called him a monster last night, Miss Ransom." Johnson's laborious note-checking and word-finding suddenly vanished into a keen look. "Why did you use that word?"

  "I told you last night, Detective. He was killing girls and eating them. I don't know what else you'd call somebody like that, except a monster. Did she think you'd believe her?"

  "She thought you would corroborate her story."

  Rosie put her coffee cup down and stared straight at Johnson in a good show of offense and disbelief. "If I'd been involved with somebody killing and eating people I'd probably make up a crazy story about why I hadn't left, too, Detective. I'd probably do just about anything to make it look like I hadn't had any choice." Her shoulders slumped and she looked into her cream-colored coffee. "She was awful scared, Detective. I don't think she felt like she did have a choice. Sometimes girls get like that, you know? They get in over their heads with some jerk who's bad business and they can't get out again. She probably thought she was next if she didn't help him. In some ways she might even be worse hurt than the dead girls. She's gotta live with what she's done."