The periodical attendant was safely gray-haired, with new teeth that obviously did not fit her well. She seemed glad of a customer in the stuffy room. “Yes, sir” — she beamed — “we have the April numbers of the local papers. January through March aren’t available. They’re out being microfilmed, you see.”
“April is all I need,” Curt assured her.
He paged through the Los Feliz Daily Times for Saturday, April 26th, the day after Paula’s death. Sergeant Worden was quoted as saying that Mrs. Halstead had died of self-inflicted wounds. Period. Curt was grateful for the restrained tones. The only Monday followup was the obituary notice, for which he had supplied the material himself. The San Francisco Sunday papers carried only a very brief Woman Slays Self.
What masochistic impulse had brought him here to paw through the painful dust of memory? There was nothing he could do, damnit. But still, since he was here...
He returned to the Daily Times, checking Saturday, April 19th. The attack on Harold Rockwell, unlike Paula’s suicide, had been News. There was a front-page photo of Rockwell, obviously from a high school yearbook, a newspaper picture of Rockwell’s wife, Katherine, and one of Paula blown up from a sports section photo which had appeared when Paula and another faculty wife had won the faculty tennis doubles. On an inside page was a cut of the Brewer Street railroad crossing with an artist’s X marking the spot where Rockwell had fallen. Paula had merely been listed as “cooperating with the police” in their attempts to identify the assailants.
That didn’t really seem enough to trigger the four assailants into their second attack, a week later, on Paula. Could he be wrong? Could the assault and rape in his home be unconnected with the attack on Rockwell? Could it just after all have been random violence?
He returned to the newspaper. On Monday the editorial had been about Crime in the Streets. The police investigation, though not headlined, still had been front page. Rockwell was blind, probably permanently. This time Paula was mentioned as being sure she could identify one of the attackers if she saw him again, and was said to have gotten “a very good look” at the automobile driven by the gang.
Yes. That might have been enough. The obsession could have begun, and deepened: the need to see if she could identify the leading attacker. If she could, the necessity to silence her would loom very large in his thoughts. So it could have started as a simple assault, a beating, to assure her silence; but then, physically handling her, wrestling with her... Paula’s tennis-player’s body had been almost calculated to arouse desire...
Curt folded up the newspaper wearily. The society which had produced the predators had a good deal to answer for. Or did it? He was suddenly impatient with all the sociological muck he was used to reeling off glibly to his students. Society had not blinded Rockwell. Society had not raped Paula. No matter what pressures they may have been subject to — if any — the predators were the ones who had acted.
And what was needed was another predator, as violent as they.
Curt returned the papers, went back down the corridor and through the main library. His teen-age temptress was still at the desk; but now she was just an immature girl whose idea of being chic and daring was to sneak out of the house without wearing a bra under her blouse. As Curt went down the front steps and toward the VW, his mind was elsewhere.
What was needed was a predator, but there was none. So Paula’s agony would go unavenged, and the same thing might happen to others.
Curt wished that he hadn’t stopped at the railroad crossing, hadn’t come here to the library to burn the details of it all into his brain anew. Because of it, he was going to have a lousy time sleeping for the next couple of nights.
Chapter 13
“It’s a piece of bloody cake,” said the sergeant-major.
They were in the back of a Long Range Desert Group jeep, bouncing through the darkness toward a Jerry airdrome near the coast. It was Curt’s first mission. The jeep, key to this sort of hit-and-run operation, had no top or windscreen. On the back, on the sides, even on the hood were jerrycans of gasoline and water. Coupled twin Vickers K machine guns jutted up into the star-spattered desert night from both front and rear, their interlocking fields of fire covering the entire 360° radius about the jeep.
They were moving rapidly across open ground, without lights; whenever the jeep lurched, curses lashed the air.
“I’d rather make an effing air drop.” In the dark, faces were mere pasty smears. “A piece of bloody cake,” repeated the sergeant-major. “I’ve hit these desert airfields before, laddie. A few guards, a few patrols, a bit of wire, the odd machine-gun nest...”
They would slip through the wire in the dark, avoiding the patrols and sentries, to fix their high explosives on the planes. The nitro was mixed with incendiary material to make better fires, and would be detonated by half-hour time pencils which were designed to give them a mile or two of desert before the planes went up.
A piece of cake.
Going through the wire, Curt saw a red glow as a sentry drew on his cigarette a bare dozen yards from their entry point. All the man had to do was turn, see the moving shadows, fire his rifle or cry out...
Hand-to-Hand Manual was very firm about silencing a sentry. You went in from the rear, thrusting your knife into his right kidney while smothering any outcry; then you withdrew your knife, slashing as you did, and cut his throat. In the Manual, your opponent reacted to this silent, swift, tidy slaughter very much like a hundredweight of grain.
Curt touched the sergeant-major on the shoulder and slid away toward the sentry without further signal. He moved silently and without haste, his mind safely blank, concentrating only on the red glow as the sentry drew on his cigarette again.
Eight yards to go. In the clear desert air he could smell the burning tobacco. Five yards. The knife was in his right hand, point forward, guard against the tip of his thumb and edge of his forefinger.
The glowing dot moved erratically, then showered sparks in being snubbed out against the stock of the sentry’s rifle. Curt, motionless, now could see his dim silhouette. The sentry sighed, took his rifle from his shoulder, grounded the butt in the sand by his right boot, and muttered something under his breath in German. Curt went in fast under the cover of the man’s own movements.
His left hand closed over mouth and nose and pulled up and to the left, fingers digging into the flesh. He could feel the hard line of jawbone under his third finger; the edge of his thumb was pressed deeply against the sentry’s left eyeball, so he could feel the frantic rolling beneath the shielding lid. His legs, intertwined with the sentry’s, upset their balance so they started down.
The sentry instinctively put out his hands to break the fall, and Curt put his knife in. It went with a terrible ease, to the guard, with a slight ripping noise as it tore the shirt. All according to the Manual.
But then the sentry made a muffled grating noise, all of his scream that got through Curt’s fingers. He tried to bite, butt, jerk his face free from Curt’s terrible clutching strength. The body under Curt tensed to iron, trembled like a retriever coming from an icy lake. The sentry dug in toes, fingers, reached far above his head, dragged their coupled bodies forward even through the yielding sand.