A Time of Predators

“Not... return your call?” Debbie asked faintly. Professor Halstead? Whose wife had slept with Ricky and then had killed herself when Ricky didn’t show up that Friday night? But he couldn’t want to talk to her about that. He just couldn’t. She’d just die if he said anything...

He didn’t. “Why, yes, Miss Marsden, you don’t know me, never had me for a class, I was afraid you would just ignore the call.” The voice seemed heavy, faintly sarcastic, not at all like the man she vaguely remembered from the faculty-freshman tea as big and loosely built and with a lice smile. “You see. I recently lost my wife...”

“I... yes, I heard, I...” Debbie clung to the receiver, pressing her shoulder hard against the wall to keep from sitting down suddenly. Her face felt chalky.

“Well, then,” said the voice, with heavy joviality that was somehow menacing, “can I expect you at my house this afternoon? I checked your schedule, your last exam is finished—”

To his house? Why? How? This afternoon? “But I... Professor, I... this weekend, I...”

“Tied up? All right then, Miss Marsden, I’ll expect you for tea on Monday afternoon. But... let’s make it early, say... two P. M.?”

“But I... I don’t...”

“That’s fine, Miss Marsden. I expect you know the way.”

She leaned against the wall, thankful for the cold steel of the partition against her forehead, idiotically clutching the dead receiver to her ear as if it would tell her more. Her heart was pounding. What in God’s name could he want? She made herself straighten up. More pertinently, what was the matter with her? What had she to feel guilty about? Granted, it had been an odd conversation, but... not a conversation where phone booths, or Friday nights, or even suicide had come up. The trouble, of course, was that she knew of Paula Halstead’s infidelity and Professor Halstead didn’t. And now that Paula was dead, wouldn’t he be happier with his memories of his wife intact?

Up in her room, Debbie sat down on her bed to await Rick’s arrival. She would tell him of the phone call; he would know what she should do. He... but no. This was her problem, she wouldn’t say anything until after she had seen the professor. She would feel really silly if she got there on Monday and it was something about the newspaper or fall classes or something like that. She wasn’t going to let it ruin her weekend with Rick. Not this weekend, when everything belonged just to the two of them. Nothing must intrude, and most especially nothing which might remind Ricky of Paula Halstead.

She realized the red Triumph was stopped at the end of the walk, horn tootling. She picked up her train case and went out. Downstairs, she tossed it into the back of the car, hopped in beside Rick, and shyly stretched over to kiss him. The butterflies were back in her stomach. As they pulled out, neither noticed the green Rambler, parked a short block down Dormitory Row, which started up behind them.

At the wheel, grim-faced, was Julio Escobar.

The cabin was perched at the bottom V of a deep wooded ravine, enclosed by jagged coastal bluffs and backed by a thick stand of Douglas fir and tideland spruce. There were two small bedrooms, a living room dominated by a cast-iron wood stove, and a tiny kitchen with a butane cook stove. On the roof was a rain-filled water tank to gravity-feed the kitchen sink, toilet, and shower. The front of the cabin, the living room, looked out over the beach, and the front door opened on a flight of fifteen rough wooden steps terminating on the sand dunes which rimmed the beach. This was a V of white sand, not over a hundred yards wide at the water’s edge, which faced a mirror-image V of water. It foamed in from the open sea between enclosing black blades of granite which dropped down from the bluffs flanking the ravine.

Debbie clapped her hands in excitement. “Oh, Ricky, we’ve got our own private beach!”

Rick came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. She turned in the circle of his arms and kissed him briefly, then broke loose with a nervous little laugh.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed. For an instant she had felt a giddy touch of near-terror: in a few hours, when darkness came, she was committed to surrender everything to him. “Can... we go swimming, Ricky?”

“Sure, nude if you want to!” he mock-leered. But she heard his voice quaver a little, and then it was all right. He was nervous too! “They can’t even see this cove from the highway; in all the years my old man’s had this place, nobody’s ever come down here.”

“I’ll wear my suit, thanks. What if your folks came down?”

“I told you, Deb, they won’t. Hell, they think the other guys are down here with me. They know we wouldn’t want ’em hanging around.”

His slap across her backside made her yelp. “Let’s get our suits.”