A Time of Predators

“The paper boy has identified you, Debbie. You must recall him.”

Debbie realized that she had half risen, made herself sit back down. Then she realized she was staring at her fingers, intertwined in her lap, so she quickly dropped her hands to the sofa. The paper boy! She remembered him, all right. But how had the professor found out about him? And... And... She mustn’t admit being there; she had promised Ricky she would never tell about him and Paula Halstead and...

She heard her own voice, like the voice of a stranger speaking from a great distance, saying, “I... about nine-thirty. I...”

“Paula killed herself just a few minutes before my return at about eleven forty-live. If I had returned directly following the end of my seminar, she still would be alive.” He said it entirely without visible emotion. The teapot began whistling thinly, and Curt stood up. He started for the kitchen, then whirled abruptly: Worden had taught him the value of shock tactics. “What were you doing in the phone booth?”

Startled, Debbie tried to counter weakly with, “What... does one usually do in a phone booth?”

“One usually makes a phone call — which you didn’t.”

Then he was gone, leaving her staring numbly after him. She fought an urge to bolt out the front door. She mustn’t tell. Mustn’t mustn’t mustn’t. Remember: if his old wife had left Ricky alone, none of this would have happened. It was her fault, not Debbie’s or Rick’s.

Curt returned, poured tea, added milk and sugar to his as Debbie added lemon and sugar to hers. Was it possible, just barely possible, that she had been there innocently? But her hands, holding the cup, were shaking slightly, and her eyes would not meet his.

He snapped at her, “Well? What were you doing in that booth?”

Debbie’s hands jerked, spilling tea; she felt her control slipping, knew she would start sniveling in a moment like a high school kid. He was watching her as if she were something from under a stone.

“I... Ri... a friend asked me to... to... Please, don’t look at me like that, I... it was... your wife’s fault. If she’d left... left him alone...”

Curt dropped, “Indeed?” into the silence. He moved over to the fireplace, leaned an elbow on the mantle. From here he could see the clean even line of her hair parting. “Left whom alone?”

Debbie just shook her head, eyes squeezed tight shut to keep the tears inside. She mustn’t tell.

Curt, sensing the resistance in that direction, swung off at right angles. “Here. Use my handkerchief. What did Paula do to him?”

“All right!” she flared, red-eyed and hating it, but now able to hide her face behind his handkerchief, at least. “All right! Your precious wife picked him up in a motel bar and took him to her room and... seduced him! He’s not even twenty yet and she was... was...”

“Thirty-six.” All right, old, to nineteen. He said, “What motel was it? What month? What day?”

“I don’t know any of that.” Debbie found herself a little put out, through her tears, that she didn’t. Ricky had left her woefully unprepared to defend herself against this hateful accusing man who hadn’t really accused anyone of anything yet; but then, she thought, it wasn’t Ricky’s fault. She hadn’t told him about Professor Halstead’s call. She went on, controlling her tears now, “But that wasn’t all. She kept calling him at home, waiting around for him outside Jay... outside where he... works. She wouldn’t leave him alone. She was... was insatiable.”

As she used the damning word she watched his face, waiting for it to crumble under the impact of his wife’s infidelity; but he just stood there quietly, gravely attentive. None of the wrenching pain that she would feel if Ricky were to... But maybe when you got old, your emotions didn’t touch you anymore. Or maybe it was no surprise to him.

“You were in the phone booth because of your friend?”

Now that the bad part was past, Debbie didn’t mind talking. She nodded almost eagerly. “Ri... he planned to see her that Friday night and tell her to leave him alone, but then he had a flat tire and...”

“And so Paula, in despair, killed herself.”

Curt supplied the ending almost absently. Unless this girl was a consummate actress, she knew nothing at all about the vicious attack on Paula. Her boyfriend, call him X, had been damned clever, using Debbie’s love — whatever love meant at nineteen — by telling her a story she would want to believe, a tragic story that would give him stature in her eyes. Too sophisticated for nineteen? No. Not if you assume a doting mother, say, to spend a boyhood practicing on, a sister or two, perhaps, to study and observe as he grew up.

“You were his lookout, right, Debbie? So he wouldn’t be surprised here with her, and be... compromised?”

She nodded eagerly. “Except he was worried about her reputation, not his own.”