Chapter 50: January 29th, 1982

I have an old Elliot and a young Elliot, the power of Christ compels me. Ugh… If Melanie and Judy thought life was complicated with one time traveler in their lives, now they have two, and they absolutely do not know what to do about it. I’m not sure I do either.

Melanie hasn’t met adult Elliot yet, we just haven’t had time. But when Judy saw him as I was dropping her off at his place, I saw so much more than I would have seen if Melanie had greeted her handing back her baby. The joy, and relief, and sadness at missed time, they were all there just the same, but there was this other thing a fear. 

She knew Elliot would live into adulthood, and that was obviously its own relief, but she also knew from her friendship with me over the past two years that the life of a permanent time traveler tends to be a lonely one, and worse still tends to be one with a mission. Not a purpose, a purpose is something people look forward to and work towards while living their lives around it. A mission is a consuming purpose. A mission is life placed on the back burner.

She understood that Elliot had to help prevent further murders, and lead the authorities to the killer, but she also understood he had to be careful. Someone outside the police or journalists who happens to know where and when a serial killer is going to strike will look an awful lot like a serial killer. Add to the mix that someone is a black man in the 1980s, and things aren’t looking great.

“Can I turn in the evidence when you find it?” Judy asked desperately. We sat around his table yesterday morning after we’d all had much needed sleep, and started to hash it out, just the three of us. 

She held Elliot, feeding him a bottle, while sitting across from him. I could only imagine the surreal feeling she must have been feeling. But after a while I started to wonder if maybe she saw them as two different entities, subconsciously.

“You’re already involved…” Elliot protested.

“Exactly, it would only be natural that I would become obsessed with finding the person who I’d been wrongfully mistaken for. It’s a natural motive for me.”

Elliot thought about it for a moment, I could see that he was conflicted.

“The problem with that plan is that if you’re living with Elliot, and they start to look into him solely because you’re attached to him… it could look like he committed the murders that got you out of prison. So if you did that, you’d need to live with me, and we’d need to be really careful about letting any public connection occur between you and Elliot.”

“Oh…” It was her turn to feel conflicted. She didn’t want to sever this connection, it was written all over her face.

“Who did it?” They both looked at me, not expecting the question. I smiled and repeated the question, “just between the three of us, who did it? If we all know, we can get ahead of it a bit better.”

Elliot looked at his mother then me before asking me, “do you remember hearing about the Screen-porch stabber?”

I shook my head.

“I know it doesn’t sound like much of a name, but on the ten o’clock news, that ‘it’s ten o’clock do you know where your children are?’ kind of subtle non-subtlety sells. People freak out, because the screen porch stabber gets people at their front door right around dinner time.”

“That seems so risky,” Judy muttered.

“You would think so, because from our perspective it’s ding-dong and you get stabbed to death. How do neighbors not see, how do other housemates not hear? But from Ruby Pegg’s perspective, the person has been carefully considered, the schedule of all possible neighbors and housemates tracked, and then the victim unsuspectingly answers their door, not knowing that there is no one to see or hear their moment of need, and Ruby stabs them in the heart, ensuring a quick death with no witnesses.”

“Ok… So Ruby Pegg is our killer. Why did she pick your aunt?” I asked.

Elliot looked down, and it was clear he didn’t want to answer.

“She picks women who professed to be good upstanding citizens but allowed sin into their home.”

“She was killed because of me?” Judy mumbled while breaking into tears. Elliot told her that wasn’t really true, and I rubbed her back.

For the next hour, he told us how Ruby Pegg had been born out of wedlock, and lived with her mother and her grandmother, and her grandmother had treated her awful while telling her all about the kindness she was showing her. 

He also told us that Ruby was currently living in New Jersey, in Trenton. Along with a list of upcoming victims, locations, dates. We brainstormed how to stop more victims from occurring, and how to lead the police to Ruby. We don’t have a real plan in place, but we have some ideas.

I brought Elliot home afterwards, Judy insisted. She wants him to have some sense of normalcy, and she’s still shaken up from prison and everything else. I suspect we’re going to have him for the long haul, given that adult Elliot accidentally called me dad a few times.