A Time of Predators

Next, posting a reward notice in the all-night laundromat a short half-block from the railroad crossing. One woman had come forward; she had left the laundromat a bare five minutes before the attack had occurred. See nothing, hear nothing, left laundromat deserted.

Matthews had talked with the night people at the all-night restaurants and gas stations for ten miles north along El Camino: had four boys in a two-tone green Chevy stopped for food and/or gas that night? Nothing. Two months later, who remembered?

The night of Paula’s death had offered even less to go on. He had repeated with the police, Highway Patrol, drive-ins and gas stations for that night, also, although there was no certainty about the direction from which they had come to Curt’s isolated house. Negative. For those five evenings Matthews had drifted through the drive-ins, soda fountains, record stores, gas stations, and bars and beer halls which he knew were not too careful about checking ID’s. All the places where kids congregated. Looking (three station wagons observed that fit in color and age were unsuccessfully checked out), listening, talking, dropping the word which nobody, but nobody, had picked up.

When Curt had received, near the end of June, the detective’s bill for services and cover letter withdrawing from the case, Curt had driven over to Matthews’ office to talk to the man. It was a second floor suite of rooms in a new anonymous glass and aluminum and cement building four blocks from the Los Feliz Civic Center. Through his windows they could see traffic on University beyond a municipal parking lot. Matthews had no secretary, merely an answering service.

“I’d like to see you catch up with those bastards myself, Mr. Halstead.” He was a tall, well-built man with a stubby nose, cheerful blue eyes, curly hair, and a round face with a heavily cleft chin. He shrugged expressively. “But...”

“Then why are you quitting now? I’m willing to pay—”

“I’ve already cost you nearly three hundred dollars, counting expenses, and all I really did was go over what the police already have covered. I like a buck as well as the next man, but I not only can’t guarantee results in this case — I can almost guarantee no results.”

“Because Worden refuses to let us look into that file?”

Matthews took a turn around the room, oddly out of place in the starkly modem setting; he was an outdoorsy sort of person, with the weathered skin associated with yachtsmen. Perhaps, Curt thought, his six-two frame and guilelessly masculine good looks carried with them their own sort of anonymity.

“You’ve got Worden on the brain. There’ll be nothing in that file we don’t have, except for the name of that kid on the bicycle. Sure, I wish you could remember his name, and sure, I’d like to talk with him. But he was just a kid, ten years old or so, going by on his bike at night, in the dark, scared as hell and worried about a spanking from his ma for being late getting home.” He turned from the window. “Hell, Mr. Halstead, if there was a handle in that file, Worden would have used it — no matter what he said to you about the D.A. not being able to prosecute even if they did turn up the gang. He’s too good a cop not to use it.”

Curt stood up with a deep sense of frustration. “Then... that’s it? There’s nothing else we can do?”

“Not unless or until we turn up a new witness, introduce a new factor, shift the equation around some way so we can see it from a different direction. Otherwise you’re just wasting money and emotion.”

Remembering it now, three weeks later, Curt experienced again the sense of baffled helplessness he had carried from Matthews’ office. Turn up a new witness, introduce a new factor, shift the equation around...

What in the devil had that kid’s name been? He had been through his memory of the meeting in Worden’s office a thousand times, could see Worden as he said the kid’s mother had called — but he could not see the name. It was gone, totally.

With an abrupt convulsive movement, Curt skidded back his chair by standing up, and went downstairs to the phone. It was the only thing he hadn’t tried: going directly to the source. Well, indirectly, really.

He dialed, by chance caught Worden in the office and free.

“Curt Halstead here, Sergeant. I wondered if—”

“Curt who? Do I... oh. Yeah.” Curt could almost see the disgust on the square, tough face. “What can I do for you, Professor?”

Curt’s hand gripped the receiver, hard. “I was just wondering if you had heard anything about an accident happening to the boy on the bicycle.” His stress on “accident” altered the word’s meaning.

“Boy on the bicycle? I don’t—”

“The witness who saw the station wagon by the golf course.”

“Listen, Halstead,” the sergeant burst out angrily, “I thought that you would have quit when that trained seal you hired gave up. If you’ve been messing around with that Anderson kid, I’ll—”