A Time of Predators

Barbara Anderson made a small impatient gesture. “I know — now — who you are; I called the university after receiving your letter. But who were those men? And if they’re so important, why did the sheriff’s investigators say it was just a ‘routine investigation’?” She gestured again, again impatiently. “They didn’t molest Jimmy in any way, you know; he barely saw them as anything more than shadows. He overdramatized it because... well, because he’s good at that, Mr. Halstead.”

Curt poured tea, was pleased that it was very strong and black. Adding his usual milk and sugar, he was reminded of Alice’s mad tea party. Their polite sparring over whether he would, or would not, get to speak with Jimmy Anderson observed the social amenities — like colonial administrators dressing for dinner in the bush while their empires crashed in ruins about their ears — but did little to relax tensions.

He said mildly, “Could we make that ‘Curt’?”

After a moment’s hesitation she nodded. “All right. And Barbara. And you still haven’t answered any of my questions, Curt.”

“I’ll have to start by asking another. Do you remember, last April, when a man named Rockwell was attacked by a teen-age gang?”

“I don’t really... Oh, of course!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I wasn’t working up here at County General then, but...” A look of disquiet darkened her face. “Wasn’t he disfigured or... or blinded?”

“Blinded. By accident, I think, I’ll give them that much. Anyway, my wife had been up to the San Francisco Spring Opera and so had Rockwell. They got off the bus together and...” By the time he led her up to Matthews’ call that afternoon, Curt was sweating. The necessity of putting the whole sequence together in logical order had evoked memories more bitter than he had been prepared for. Barbara’s face was ashen when he stopped talking and reached for his teacup.

“So if Jimmy could identify those men he saw...” She shook her head. “And of course that explains the terrible phone call I got. When my husband and I were divorced, two years ago, I went back to work at the Los Feliz Med Center — just a few blocks from home. After the phone call I made Jimmy quit his paper route, and got a job up here at County General because I couldn’t get a shift at the Med Center that would let me pick Jimmy up after school. When you came around asking questions, I was afraid you were one of them, so I put the house up for sale and got this apartment right close to County General Hospital.”

“I should think I’d be pretty hard to mistake for a teen-ager.”

“The one who called sounded like a mature man, not a boy. Except for what he said...” She paused, and a shudder ran through her, raising gooseflesh on her bare arms. “My dad was a longshoreman on the San Francisco docks, and I’ve been a nurse for years — I thought I’d heard all the obscenities. But that call... It was a Tuesday — May twenty-seventh. The call was worse than obscene, it was... moronic.”

“Do you think he was serious, or just... fantasizing?”

A look of true revulsion made her face momentarily ugly. “He meant them.” She gave a rueful little laugh, half-giggle, that Curt found somehow enchanting. “That’s why, when you rang the bell here...”

Curt thought back over the long weeks of careful chipping — like a paleontologist chipping stone from the fossil of a pithecoid jawbone — that had brought him to this place at this moment in time.

“I don’t think you have to worry about the predators finding you,” he said.

“Predators?”

Curt heard his voice become slightly defensive. “It’s... just a tag I’ve used for them, the gang, in my own mind.”

“It’s a good one. It... They sound so dangerous, and sick, and totally vicious. Are you sure you want to...”

The doorbell rang. She looked at her watch, and stood up. “That’ll be Jimmy; he’s been down by the pool.”

Then her clear jade eyes sought Curt’s brown ones; their gazes, their wills met and locked. They stared at one another wordlessly. Curt cursed himself, his weakness, silently. He shouldn’t have seen her first, shouldn’t have talked it all through with her. Now he knew he really couldn’t ask her to let him question the boy; she had been through too much already, too much fear, too many sleepless nights. And Curt knew himself too soft to question the boy without telling her.

Barbara finally lowered her gaze. The bell rang again. She said, “I’d like you to stay for supper, Curt. Just pot luck, but then you can bring up that night casually, in conversation — which might make him remember something he forgot to tell the sheriff’s deputies.”

Curt released an unconsciously long-pent breath, and wondered if his silly fatuous relief and gratitude showed on his face.

The supper was indeed potluck: the end of a canned ham butt, eggs scrambled with canned mushrooms, fried potatoes. But Curt hadn’t enjoyed a meal so thoroughly in months; in fact, since...