A Time of Predators

Julio led the way around the cabin to the kitchen door. Remembering how they done Debbie. He shuddered in the dark, felt an urge to cross himself. He would never forget that. That terrible mistake. He envied Champ, in a way. Champ would probably get as much fun out of using a knothole, except that a knothole couldn’t feel pain.

He knocked at the door; after a moment Heavy’s fat, frightened face looked out. Grease gleamed in the corners of his mouth; bread, mayonnaise, processed cheese, and canned corned beef were laid out for sandwiches. “Oh, it’s you guys.” His voice was relieved. “Guess he ain’t coming, huh?”

“That ought to make you happy,” said Julio wearily.

He went through the doorway into the living room, sickened by the remembered image of Heavy’s white balloon buttocks flexing sluggishly between Debbie’s knees. Rick was standing up against the wall beside the door, the automatic clubbed in his hand. Smash the butt down on Halstead’s head, then carry him unconscious down to the cove and drown him. Better than shooting. Rick and Heavy, the good swimmers, would then carry the body out to the mouth of the cove and let it go. If he was ever found, he’d be accepted as someone who’d fallen off the bluffs, or something, like you read about all the time in the newspapers. So simple. Except Halstead hadn’t come, and it all had been wasted.

“Why did you both come in?” demanded Rick in a thin sharp voice.

Maybe, Julio thought, giving him Paula Halstead’s suicide note after finding it in Debbie’s handbag had been a mistake. “Hell, Rick, he isn’t coming. Not now. And if he does, we—”

“He’s got to come!” cried Rick almost petulantly. “It’s all set up for him to come.”

Julio shrugged wearily. “So he’s chicken. We can get him some other way, Rick.”

“He’s got to come tonight!” Rick raised his voice. “Champ! Go back outside where you were.”

Champ stuck a head and massive shoulder around the doorjamb. “Okay, Rick. I’ll just get me a sammidge, and then—”

“Right now! Heavy can bring you out a sandwich later.”

“Okay.” Champ didn’t mind being ordered around by Rick; he knew that Rick was a lot smarter than he was.

Julio, in the doorway, watched Rick sit down on the couch and put the .32 Colt automatic on the cushion beside him. Rick brought out the suicide note Paula had written, unfolded it, and began reading it again. An intense worm of fear wriggled in Julio’s stomach: why hadn’t he just left it alone with Debbie? Or why had the others listened to him? What if she went nuts or something, all tied up and gagged and everything, her eyes like in one of those horror movies where they wall somebody up alive in a chimney or something?

He cleared his throat. “Ah, Rick, ah, if this Halstead doesn’t show up pretty soon, hadn’t one of us maybe drive back up to Los Feliz and let Debbie loose? I mean, she won’t tell anybody, and—”

“Debbie?” Rick seemed to have walled his knowledge of Debbie away, not in a chimney, but in a corner of his mind which he did not intend to enter again. “We made a mistake about Debbie.”

“That’s what I was saying, Rick, we ought to—”

One of Rick’s legs had begun jiggling nervously. He said, “It was a mistake to leave her in the garage. We should have brought her down here and drowned her, along with Halstead.”

“Drow...” Julio realized he was shaking his head dazedly. “Wow, man, what... what are we turning into? I mean, everything we do seems to shove us along further, instead of—”

The lights went out.

The sudden blackness behind him jerked Champ’s head around, brought him erect in the screening bushes. What the hell? How come they had killed the lights all of a sudden? Should he wait here? But if Halstead somehow had gotten by him, was at the house, Champ didn’t want to miss all the fun. Maybe...

A dark shape flitted past the corner of the cabin and ran swiftly and silently out across the open area toward the Triumph, quite visible under the wan light of the rising half-moon. Just short of the car he seemed to tumble over, sort of, and disappeared into the black shadow.

“Rick?” Champ called softly. No response. “Julio? Hey...”

Still no response. He flexed his powerful hands with indecision, like a cat yawning when it doesn’t know what to do. It sure as hell hadn’t been Heavy; Heavy couldn’t run that fast. Not Rick, or Julio.

That left Halstead. He flexed his hands again, then walked out into the vague moonlight toward the car, not rushing, not trying to be quiet, moving stolidly forward like a tank across open terrain. If it was Halstead, Champ would do him. Do him good.

But when he got to the car, nobody was there. Couldn’t nobody have got inside with him watching, anyway, but he checked to be sure. Then he bent to look underneath, and his mouth dropped open in surprise. All four tires were flat. What the hell... And where the hell...