A Time of Predators

“Yeah. She’s dead. The kid on the bike? Great. He saw four guys getting out of a car. Okay, so we got the fingerprints. Hard evidence — of sorts. If they were made by one of the gang, and if we ever catch up with him, and if we can get him to confess and name the others.” He snorted. “So the D.A. brings ’em to trial — for assault and rape, remember, neither one of ’em capital crimes in this state — and then whadda we have? Juveniles, that’s what. When the court psychiatrists and court-watchers and newspaper sob-sisters and A.C.L.U. lawyers got through, the D.A.’d be damned lucky to get ’em on probation and remanded to the custody of their parents for a year.” He hurled his pen down in sudden culminating frustration. “Juvies, for God sake!”

Curt stood up slowly, unmoved, barely aware of Worden’s tirade. His stomach was sour and his head ached. “You’re saying that there is damned little chance that they ever will be apprehended, even less chance that they will be prosecuted, and no chance at all that they will be convicted and punished for anything.”

Worden spread his huge paws in wry deprecation, once more in control of his reactions. “I’d be a liar if I told you anything else.” He stood up, stretched a hand across the desk. “No hard feelings? It’s just the facts of life, Professor.”

Curt looked at the hand, then into Worden’s once more hooded eyes; his own hands were fisted in his pockets. He ignored Worden’s hand, very deliberately, to turn and walk from the room. Behind him, Worden shook his head, sighed, then sat down and began thoughtfully worrying his lower lip.

Chapter 9

Through the floor of his room, faintly, Rick could feel the throb of the television set. His folks, watching some stupid program. How the hell was a guy supposed to study with all that going on, and finals only three weeks away? He had to do well, otherwise he might end up in the Army. Even his old man, who had flown a desk back in World War II, stud that the service was a waste of time.

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY: 1) What were the dominant features of the program advanced by the German liberals in 1884?

Had that kid on the bike seen them well enough to identify them?

2) What Christian philosopher wrote De Consolatione Philosophiae?

The newspapers, in telling of Paula’s suicide, hadn’t said anything about the kid. Did this mean the police didn’t know about him?

3) Name the Latin history of England completed by the Venerable...

Rick slammed shut the book impatiently. If the kid hadn’t gone to the police already, why would he go now? Maybe the police didn’t even know she’d made love before she killed herself. Maybe...

Why did she have to go and do that?

Dark thoughts pattered busily through the back of his mind, like rats in a cave, but he quickly closed them away. She had, that was the only important thing now, and that kid was their only danger now. If he got really scared some way, so he’d be too scared to identify them, they’d be safe. But how to scare him?

Rick drummed his fingers on the desk. A phone call was safest, because then if he couldn’t identify them, he wouldn’t have seen them. A really rank anonymous phone call, threatening... say, make the call to his ma. That would be better. Rick knew all about how protective mothers could be when they thought their children were in jeopardy.

He slipped from the room and down the front stairs to the carpeted front hall where the phone was. Lucky both his sisters were out and his folks glued to the television; they’d blow a gasket or something if they caught him not studying. His ma was really hysterical about him maybe flunking out and having to go into the Army.

Heavy Gander’s old man, who was a sheet-metal worker in Local 272, had moved to California from Ohio right after the war and had gotten an acre, cheap then, of weedy field just off Middlefield Road. He had built the garage well back from the bungalow, with the idea of maybe doing auto repair in his spare time. But after his wife had died, he had found that fishing took up most of his leisure hours. The garage, separated from the house by a weed-choked patch of ground, gradually had become Heavy’s domain. There he did auto repair, keeping the station wagon, his beat-up Rambler, and his old man’s Dodge in running order. He had bootlegged in a phone extension, using a set he’d bought from a mail order house, and had blacked out the windows so the gang could drink beer there and make all the noise they wanted.

On Saturday morning the four of them met in the garage.

“I told you we should of left when he went by on his bike,” Heavy said nervously. His cherubic face was distressed above his can of beer.