A Time of Predators

“You’ll live through it,” said Worden bluntly. “Somebody staged a gangbang here Friday night. I want to know who, and I want to know why. As far as why your wife killed herself, I don’t really give a damn, since the physical evidence confirms suicide. Maybe when they got done with her, she found out she’d enjoyed it, I don’t know. But—”

“Goddamn you, Worden!” Curt came erect in a rush, his sleeve catching the rim of his saucer and flipping his teacup upside down on the rug. Worden, his cup still balanced on his crossed knees, didn’t bother to move at all. Curt wanted to lash out, destroy the big detective, but twenty years of conventional living inhibited the impulse. All he could use were words. “I’m not going to take...”

His voice ran down as a sudden realization struck him. Paula, name and photo in the newspapers, returning time and again to look at police mug shots. Paula, determined to find Rockwell’s attackers. Why do you insist on words like “vicious”? Sick maybe... Well, Paula had been right. Vicious. Paula, facing them alone while he...

In a cold and deadly voice he said, “If you weren’t a sadistic incompetent who couldn’t investigate an overtime parking meter, you’d know who assaulted Paula.”

“Any facts, Professor?” Worden seemed singularly unmoved.

“A week ago Friday a man named Harold Rockwell was attacked on Brewer Street in Los Feliz. He—”

“Brewer Street ain’t in our jurisdiction,” said Worden quickly. “City cops handle it.” But his face had become thoughtful.

“Paula was the witness — the only witness — to that attack. It was carried out by four juveniles. Suggest anything to you, Sergeant?”

Worden nodded in disgust. “Yeah. Damnit, I knew there was something I should of remembered. You wouldn’t know which police sergeant is handling the Rockwell investigation, would you?”

“Why don’t you go to hell, Sergeant?” Curt asked, suddenly weary.

When he was halfway up the stairs, he heard the front door shut behind the departing detective. By turning quickly, he caught a glimpse of the tall, hard man just disappearing briskly down the front steps. Monty Worden, Curt thought hotly, was not at all like the television cops. Worden, in fact, acted as if he would be reduced in rank and would lose his seniority if he ever apologized to anyone for harboring mistaken ideas about them.

That was the trouble, of course. Curt’s reaction to Worden’s probing was at least in part a result of the secret feeling that his loss should have made him immune. He was enraged because Worden had refused to observe the proper hushed tones, the cast-down eyes, the murmured condolences. Worden had been a cop, doing a cop’s job, and no matter what his shortcomings as a human being, Curt had an idea that he probably was a damned good policeman.

Which said something very sobering about the society which Worden was hired to police.

Chapter 7

“Thank you, sir,” said Debbie Marsden gaily.

She slid into the Triumph with a quick flash of thigh, and smiled at Rick as he closed the door behind her. When he had called the dorm she had agreed to a drive immediately; Rick wasn’t a boy you could stay mad at for very long.

He got in under the wheel. “Whither away, fair lady?”

“Just someplace on El Camino for a soda. Tomorrow’s Tuesday, and I have heavy classes.”

“El Camino it is.”

The flashing red Triumph dug out of the semicircular drive in front of Forrest Hall, which had been named after the frosty-chinned old lady whose portrait hung over the fireplace in the common room.

“I was really sore at you last Friday, Rick.”

“I’m sorry, kid.” He looked sideways at her from dark, heavy-browed eyes, seeming properly shamefaced in the momentary illumination of a campus streetlight. “But I told you on the phone that night what had happened. I was up to Julio’s for some help with my Spanish, and on the way down to the Halsteads’ I had a flat on the freeway. I called you as quick as I could get to a phone...”

“I don’t like that Julio very much,” said Debbie irrelevantly.

Rick smiled to himself. Nothing to be scared of, now. Paula Halstead wouldn’t dare tell on them, especially not after the way he’d turned her on that second time. Hell, if he could get alone with her he bet she’d let him do it again, because those old chicks really dug the young studs like him. Everybody said so.

He looked over at Debbie’s clear, fresh profile. He’d like to get her into the pad, too, but after somebody like Paula Halstead she’d probably be — what was the word? — insipid. Then, on an impulse which surprised him, he reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. Old Debbie. She’d really grown up since the last time he’d dated her.

“Hi, doll,” he said softly.