A Time of Predators

“Oh, Curt!” Barbara exclaimed. “Right in your own back yard! If you only had known. All those weeks of looking...”

“Until I talked with Jimmy, remember, I had no idea that a girl might be involved.”

“Is she involved?”

Curt grimaced, and signaled the waitress for refills. “That’s where it starts to get sticky,” he said.

He told of checking the school records, finding which class the girl was in, what dorm she lived in, what classes she was attending, and of leaving his number for her to call. The setting up of the meeting for the following Monday, because the girl was busy on the weekend.

Barbara sampled her drink. “If you ever want to quit teaching, Curt, you could get a job as a private investigator.”

“Maybe I ought to. This past summer I’ve learned more about people, and human nature, than I learned in twenty years of university life. But” — he shook his head — “I still don’t have the predators.”

“Debbie didn’t show up on Monday?”

“Oh, she showed up, all right.” He described the encounter with the girl, ending up with his impulsive handing to her of Paula’s suicide note as Debbie went out the door. “I was hoping it would break her down. You see, I believe her, Barbara. She knew nothing of what went on that night, and just thought she was there to help the one — I call him X — who’s supposed to have had an affair with Paula.”

“Do you think he did?” Seeing Curt’s blank look, Barbara added, “Have an affair with Paula, I mean.”

Curt felt his face coloring up.

Barbara laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Curt,” she said simply. “That was really a sort of rotten question to ask.”

“It doesn’t bother me, Barbara — really.” As he said it, Curt was surprised to realize that it didn’t. Paula was gone: how could it affect, one way or the other, what their relationship had been? He went on, rather pleased with the discovery, “The hell of it is that Paula could have, I suppose. We each lived our own lives, after all. I don’t believe it for a minute, but... this Debbie was very persuasive in her belief in her boyfriend’s innocence of any violence.”

“But she won’t give you his name. You know, Curt, kids — even kids who are nearly adults — can delude themselves so completely when they think they’re in love. If... if it’s so important to you to... go on with this, give Debbie my phone number. Tell her to call me, I’ll tell her just what was threatened on that phone call to me.”

The same thought had occurred to Curt: using Jimmy and Barbara as a lever to pry information from Debbie. But now he realized that he didn’t want to do that. Barbara seemed somehow to identify his problem as her own, but he found it distasteful to think of putting her or her son into possible further jeopardy from the predators.

“I couldn’t let you do that, Barbara,” he said flatly.

“But, Curt, my number is unlisted; even if they got it from her, they couldn’t get my address. And I want to help you if—”

“I said no, Barbara.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost ten o’clock. We’d better be going.”

She looked at the stubborn set of his face. “All right, Curt.”

He drove north toward the Arroyo Towers. When he parked the VW in an empty slot just two stalls from the apartment building’s front door, Barbara turned toward him on the seat. “What will you do now, Curt?”

“I suppose I’ll have to start asking questions again — of her folks, her teachers, her house mother, her friends. Find out some way who her boyfriend is — or boyfriends are. Then, check them out.”

“No police, anywhere along the line?”

Curt’s lip curled. “So they can tell me to be a good boy and go home and do nothing? No police.”

“What if classes start before you find your... predators, Curt?”

“Then they start without me. I’m committed to this, Barbara.”

Her eyes were troubled in the dimness of the car. “Have you ever thought what’s going to happen if you find them, Curt? You’re a college professor, not a... a professional fighter or anything. They’re a vicious gang, probably sick or disturbed. They—”

“I wasn’t always a teacher,” Curt began tightly, then was disgusted by the cheap dramatic overtones of his own remark. He turned to face her, talking intently. “All right, sure, Barbara, the world is full of people today who maim and destroy, who get their locks doing it. Old traditions are breaking down, and the new ones haven’t filled the gaps. In some ways our society seems to be falling to pieces — there seem to be predators all over, striking indiscriminately. I’ve heard all the arguments, that we have police to cope with them, that it is an inescapable product of swiftly changing mores. But these predators struck at me. My home, my wife. Maybe I’m weaker than other people, maybe I feel frightened or... or threatened because this could happen to me without some punishment coming to those who did it. I don’t know. But I do know that I have to try and find this particular gang. Find them, and break them, so they don’t ever do it to anyone else.”