A Time of Predators

Rick Dean had inherited his mother’s dark good looks and his father’s nervous energy. Waiting for Debbie Marsden in the Jaycee cafeteria, he realized that he was tapping rhythmically on the tile floor with his right foot. Relax. Last Friday was over, couldn’t be changed. By the newspaper reports, there was no way they ever could be tied in with what had happened to that Harold Rockwell.

No way, that is, except one.

He wiped a hand across his forehead. Where in hell was Debbie? Of course, she had to get a ride up from the university after her nine o’clock, but he had told her ten-thirty sharp in the caf, had cut his Survey of Western Civ to meet her. He shouldn’t be cutting even gut courses, not today. Not the Monday after...

Could that Paula Halstead have gotten their license? Hell, it had been dark, she’d been running... He wouldn’t have panicked and tromped that Rockwell if she hadn’t come running up that way. Who could have known he was married, for Christ sake, with a kid and everything? And then that crap in the papers about him being blinded. You couldn’t blind a guy just by pushing him around a little, could you?

Rick’s leg was jiggling again, his foot tapping the tiles. In sudden vivid recall, his heel was against the yielding neck muscles, he could feel the face being ground into the gravel. He shredded the glowing tip of his cigarette in the ashtray; what sleep he had lost over the weekend had been from fear, not remorse.

Rick stood up suddenly and waved, sloshing coffee across his tray. The girl was just his age, with long toffee-colored hair worn absolutely straight and framing a heart-shaped face. She moved like a filly.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I had to wait for a ride, and—”

“That’s okay, Deb.” Rick made his voice nonchalant so she would not know it was important. After all, Paula Halstead could identify him: maybe not the car, maybe not the others, but him. They sat down.

Debbie Marsden had expressive blue eyes, wide-set. Her nose turned up too much and she had a long upper lip, and though her mouth was accented with too much lipstick she still looked younger than her nineteen years. All except her figure. Her body really had filled out in the nine months since he last had seen her.

“You made it sound important on the phone, Rick.” There was vague petulance in her voice. “After not hearing from you for months—”

“The folks have really kept me hitting the books this year. Ma’s afraid I’ll get drafted.”

What did she expect, for Christ sake, a hot-line to her dorm? He’d taken her to the high school senior prom, then dated her a couple of more times before last July, when they’d gone swimming out at Sears Lake. She’d let him get all steamed up afterwards, on a blanket up from the beach, and then had left him hanging. Still, she was the only person he knew going to the university. He made his voice casual.

“Say, Deb, do you know a prof at the U named Halstead?”

“Curtis Halstead?” She was not a beautiful girl, but when she smiled her face came vibrantly alive. “Know of him. He’s a full prof in the anthropology department. One of my girl friends, Cynthia, has him for a course. I met his wife at a faculty tea last September.”

Rick made himself stir the cold coffee left in his cup. Talk about blind luck! “Could you... ah... get his home address?”

“Why, I suppose so, Rick. Wouldn’t it just be in the phone book?”

Wow. That woman, that Paula, must have shaken him up worse than he’d thought. He should have come up with the phone-book idea. The woman was frozen in his memory like a fly in amber, that was the trouble: her gleaming blond hair, her startling blue eyes, her high cheekbones, the thin parted lips with the teeth gleaming between them like...

“Is anything wrong, Rick? You look so funny...”

Good old Deb. He stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Man, she’d really grown up during those months. He hadn’t meant Paula to be mentioned, just Halstead himself, since Debbie might have read about that Rockwell creep in the newspapers and seen Paula’s name, as Rick had. But he remembered from high school that she had only been interested in international affairs, all that crap, like his Dad was in the stock-market reports. She thought he looked bothered, huh? He raised his head to give her the look that worked on his Ma even when she was sore about something.

“Well, you see, Deb, there’s this sort of mix-up...”

“Rick, are you in trouble?” Her eyes shone; she took his hand in both of hers as if it were a fragile treasure. Her lips were parted. Hell, he should have thought of this right away; she’d lived just two streets away when they’d been kids, had always acted a little gone on him.

“Not really in trouble, Deb, just...” His facile imagination took over then, as it always did when he was conning some chick, even his Ma. “You remember the Triumph that Dad gave me for graduation? And remember what he said about having an accident with it if I’d been drinking?”

“Rick, you didn’t smash up your car!”