A Time of Predators

Curt tried to keep the elation from his voice. “I’ve never laid eyes on the boy, Sergeant. It’s just that I heard a rumor...”

“You heard wrong,” Worden snapped. “Nothing happened to him and nothing will happen, because he doesn’t know anything. Get me, Professor? Nothing. We could stand those four up in front of him with name tags on and he wouldn’t be able to identify ’em.” He paused, as if shaking his head almost sadly. “Leave it to the professionals, Professor. Like I said before, you start pokin’ around teen-age hangouts and you’re liable to wake up in a garbage pail some morning.”

Curt hung up gently. Anderson. That was it, all right. It seems a Mrs. Anderson called about her kid. He could remember Worden saying it. Then his elation began draining away. The boy already was a dead lead as far as Worden and Matthews — the professionals — were concerned. And besides that, how did one go about finding a boy named Anderson?

Curt got out the telephone directory. A whole page, four columns, of ANDERSON listings for the county. So now what? Rehire Archie Matthews? Hell, if there was a handle in that file, Worden would have used it. All right, then, contact that hundred Andersons himself?

There had to be a way to narrow it down. State the problem.

Fine. Sears Lake was five miles away. The boy was late. He spotted the predators on Longacres Avenue Extension; at the Linda Vista T-junction, he would have had to turn either north or south.

South, he would have passed Curt’s house, and south the university lay as a large block before the subdivisions beyond it. Unless the boy was a son of some member of the university faculty who lived on the campus itself or, like Curt, on its fringes. Curt could check that himself that afternoon at the Personnel Office.

North, he would be going toward the maze of small residential streets twined around Entrada Way. North seemed more logical. More houses closer to Curt’s house. The boy had passed the predators at 8:00 P.M., the time he was supposed to be home. So, unless he had been very late, his home could not lie too far from that T-junction.

As Curt pulled on his shoes to head toward the university, he had to fight a sort of exhilaration. He had to keep telling himself that he had little hope either of finding the boy or of learning anything of value even if by some fluke he did find him.

But Curt also knew this was better than an endless, sterile, frustrating count of days marked only by inactivity.

The next day in training, Curt was successful for the first time in putting Preston on the mat with an over-the-shoulder throw. In the locker room, he found his weight was under 190 for the first time.

Preston, as they walked together down to the creamery for lunch, shook his head in mock wonderment. “You’re getting too tough for an old man like me, tiger. You been into the wheat-germ oil again?”

“I’m back on the hunt.” Curt was not aware of the strangeness in his image. “I have the name of the boy on the bicycle — tricked it out of Worden — and now...” Over sandwiches and milk, he outlined what he had done, finishing, “...and I think he went north, because the university lies between my place and any significant residential areas to the south.”

“I disagree. Remember, Curt, she called the sheriff’s office, not the city cops; but there’s no built-up county land north of you.”

“Maybe she called them because Sears Lake is on county land.”

“Would you? If you were worried about your kid, you wouldn’t sit down and figure out who has jurisdiction; you’d just call the law enforcement agency that serviced your home.” Preston thought of something else. “Unless the kid’s old man is on the university staff—”

“I spent yesterday checking that out. He isn’t.”

Preston nodded, and stood up. “That figures; on the campus she would have called the campus cops anyway. C’mon, I’ve got a big-scale county map up at the gym.”

Two hours later Curt had his initial list of most likely Andersons. They had estimated the maximum distance that the boy should logically be living from Curt’s house as five miles — unless he had been very late. So the list contained those Andersons in the phone book who lived south of Curt’s home on comity land.

There were four names.

Chapter 17

It was Friday, July 18th. Curt stopped in front of 5202 Seville Drive in Los Feliz county. It was the usual California ranch-style subdivision house: a curving drive flanked by shrubbery not watered enough, the surge, swish, and gurgle of a washing machine from the garage. A tricycle missing a wheel leaned in grumpy abandonment against the front of the house. Curt rang the bell.

After nearly a minute a very black woman who was a good two inches taller than Curt appeared. She wore bedroom slippers and a print dress stretched tight across her yard-wide hips.