The Bad Sister. Kevin O'Brien
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taken. But at least she could sleep in tomorrow. Maybe she’d take the train to Chicago. She could have her picture taken another day. It couldn’t be the only day they were making ID cards.
While Eden ate her burger, the waitress asked if she was a student at the college. Eden told her yes, she was a freshman—from Seattle. “I just arrived today,” she said. She glanced around. “You must get a lot of students in here, being open twenty-four hours.”
“Yep, keeps us in business,” Roseann replied. She was behind the counter, making a fresh pot of coffee.
“Have you worked here long?”
“Only since 1992. I’ve lived in Delmar practically my whole life, born and raised here.”
Eden felt a bit sorry for her, but didn’t let on. “Did you go to the college?”
“Nope, no college degree. Guess you could say I graduated from the school of hard knocks.” She started wiping down the counter.
Eden wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Were you living here when those murders happened on the campus?”
“I certainly was.” Roseann nodded. “Boy, do I remember that. Y’know, I don’t get many kids asking about the strangler, not anymore. The college has kept that chapter of their history under wraps. Where did you hear about the murders?”
“My new roommate’s boyfriend told me,” she explained. “What was it like back then—I mean, suddenly having all these murders happening right here in your neighborhood?”
The waitress set down her dishcloth. “I was seventeen at the time, in high school. I know it’s hard to imagine me at seventeen, but believe me, I was once. Me and my friends, we were terrified. Our parents were terrified. This used to be one of those towns where no one locked their doors at night. But all that changed. None of us went out after dark. We were all so scared. And when we did go out—during the day—we took all sorts of precautions. I carried my grandfather’s old straight razor in my purse. And my best friend kept one of her mother’s knitting needles in her bag. I remember walking by the park with her after school. No one dared walk alone, not with that maniac loose. I remember not being able to figure out what was so different, and then it dawned on me. It was the silence. There wasn’t any laughing and singing, because the kids weren’t there. The swing set, jungle gym, and the slide—they were all empty. It was eerie.”
She leaned in close to Eden. “But you know, it didn’t happen all of a sudden. It sounds weird, but I was sort of braced for something awful. Before the first girl was strangled, some strange, disturbing things were going on at the college . . .”
Eden stopped eating and pushed her plate away. “Like what kind of things?”
“Like a freshman girl in one of the cottages in Saint Agnes Village,” Roseann whispered. “The school was all-girls back in 1970. The girl had managed to keep it secret that she was pregnant. The story goes even she didn’t know. She just thought she was sick and getting fat—right up until she went into labor. Can you believe it? She had the baby right there in one of the cottages. She didn’t want anyone to know about it, so she choked the baby to death with the umbilical cord.”
“Oh my God,” Eden murmured, wincing.
Roseann nodded glumly. “It was a boy, the poor little thing. The mother, the girl—I guess she was out of her mind—she tossed it in a laundry basket with all her bloodstained sheets and things. Then she tried to set it on fire. I guess she wanted to destroy all the evidence, but she didn’t do a very good job. The fire alarm went off . . .”
Eden kept shaking her head.
“The school did its best to cover up the whole incident. I hear the archdiocese even got the local newspapers to play it down. But everyone knew.”
“What happened to the girl?” Eden whispered.
“They locked her up in Elgin, the state asylum for the insane.”
“Is she still there? Do you know?”
“That’s not very likely, since they tore down the hospital in 1993,” Roseann answered. “Maybe they transferred her to another place. Or maybe she’s out. Chances are pretty good she’s still alive. She was only a couple of years older than me, and I ain’t dead yet.” She glanced over toward some customers at a table on the other side of the restaurant. “Excuse me, hon . . .” She came out from behind the counter and hurried to the table.
Slightly dazed, Eden couldn’t help wondering about this baby-murder from fifty years ago. In which bungalow did the girl give birth and kill her baby? How could she have not known she was pregnant? She imagined the girl now, seventy years old and still locked up in an insane asylum.
She heard a rumble outside—like a big truck passing by, or maybe it was thunder. When she turned to glance out the window, Eden noticed a man sitting alone in the booth closest to her. He had a half-eaten sandwich on the plate in front of him. He was about thirty and sinewy-looking with a deep tan, receding brown hair, and a thin mustache. Eden couldn’t decide if he was borderline handsome or kind of slimy. He winked at her, then reached around and showed her a crinkly paper bag that obviously held one of those twenty-four-ounce cans of beer. She wasn’t sure if he was offering her a sip or just letting her in on his little secret.
Slimy, she decided, turning forward again.
As the waitress swung by the man’s table carrying a tray of dirty dishes, Eden noticed him hide his contraband beer.
Roseann ducked into the kitchen and then emerged again empty-handed. “Did you save room for dessert?” she asked, taking away Eden’s plate.
“Just coffee,” she said. “Earlier, you mentioned some things that happened before the first girl was strangled. Was there something else?”
Roseann set a cup in front of her and poured the coffee. “A few days after the girl killed her baby, another girl at the college disappeared. People weren’t sure if she’d been abducted or if she’d run away or what. But a couple of days later, her sister got a letter from her saying she was okay. And people stopped worrying for a while—until they found the strangler’s first victim in a ravine by the college library.”
“Was it the missing girl?” Eden asked.
Roseann shook her head. “A different girl entirely. The missing girl was actually being held prisoner by the strangler. He and his mother lived in an old farmhouse outside Waukegan. The girl was locked up in a little shack in their backyard.” Roseann’s voice dropped to a whisper again. “I guess he was torturing her and doing all sorts of nasty things to her. She was the last one he killed. He strangled four or five girls, the last two together on the same night.”
Eden nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that. It happened in a bungalow that they later tore down. I moved in right next door today. You said the killer lived with his mother? How did he keep everything he was doing a secret from her?”
“He didn’t,” Roseann answered under her breath. “The old bitch was behind a lot of it, pushing him to kill those girls. At the trial, she said it was her son’s ‘sacred mission’ to kill the ‘holy sluts.’ Talk about crazy. I guess she and her lunatic son were pushed over the edge when that girl had the baby and killed it.”
“Was there a trial?”
Roseann nodded. “After he killed the last two girls, he left a witness. The police caught up with him pretty quickly. At the trial, he and Mama were found guilty as sin, of course. She was an accessory. She died in prison less than a year after they locked her up, cancer or something. Sonny Boy got the electric chair a few months after she went. That’s what she kept calling him during the trial: Sonny Boy.”
Eden grimaced.
“Say, you’re pretty good with all these questions,” Roseann said. “Are you studying to be a reporter or something?”
Working up a smile, Eden nodded. “As a matter of fact, I’ve