'Where'd you…?'
'I was coming to that,' Grundy said. 'There's a pond about six miles from where we found the girl's body. Truck was half submerged there. Guess they thought it was deeper than it actually is.'
'What time…?'
'Found it a little after noon. Mailman driving by spotted the back of it sticking out of the water.'
'Anything else?'
'That's it. Will you tell Carella?'
'Sure thing.'
'If he's got any questions, I'll be here till about six tonight.'
'I'll leave the message.'
'Thanks,' Grundy said, and hung up.
Meyer wrote out the note for Carella, glanced at the wall clock, and wondered if the lieutenant had chosen him for this lecture only because he was bald, and therefore presumably looked fatherly, and therefore capable of inspiring confidence in clean-scrubbed college girls. Meyer did not think he looked fatherly. Meyer thought he looked quite handsome and dashing - which he would have to be if he was to get to Amberson by three o'clock.
He was buttoning his coat and going through the gate in the railing, when he heard Kling and Carella coming up the iron-runged steps to the second floor. They came into the corridor just as he reached the stairway. 'Call from Turman,' he said. They found the truck. Note's on your desk.' Racing down the steps, he shouted over his shoulder, 'I'll be going home straight from the college. See you Monday.'
'What college?' Carella shouted after him. 'What are you talking about?'
But Meyer was gone.
Carella read the note on his desk, and called Grundy back at once. It was now almost two-thirty, and there wasn't a moment to lose. A state trooper answered the telephone, and then switched Carella over to Grundy's office.
'Yeah?' Grundy said.
'I got your message. We've been doing some work on this end, talking to the suspect's girl friend, and later his aunt. We've got a house we want you to check out.'
'Here in Turman?'
'Right. Here's the address, have you got a pencil?'
'Shoot,' Grundy said.
'304 West Scovil Lane. Ring a bell?'
'I know the area. Whose house is it?'
'Belongs to the suspect's aunt, woman named Martha Walsh. She told us she keeps it closed during the winter, but the suspect has a key.'
'You still haven't told me his name,' Grundy said.
'Big Anthony Sutherland.'
'That would be "Pig," huh? And the second kid?'
'No help.'
'I'm on my way,' Grundy said.
While Meyer Meyer told an assorted collection of not-so-virginal college girls that a rapist was a seriously disturbed individual who was incapable of enjoying a normal sex relationship with a woman, Detective Al Grundy drove along tree-shaded Scovil Lane, and located a yellow house with white shutters bearing the number 304 on the mailbox outside. And while Meyer told his audience that a rapist expects his victim to be terrified, and that this terror-reaction adds to his own excitement, Grundy went up the front walk past the tarpaper-covered fig tree, and knocked on the front door and got no answer, and forced the lock.
'Now some of you may feel that rape is not such a terrible thing. It is penetration by force, true, it is a violation of your body, true - but if you submit to this violation, perhaps you will not be hurt. Perhaps. But remember that part of the psychological interplay that makes rape appealing and exciting to this man is the very taking-by-force aspect of what he's doing. And where there is force involved, there is the attendant danger of being severely beaten or even killed.'
There was a sleeping bag on the floor of the living room, and bedclothes on the living-room couch. An empty pizza carton and two empty cans of beer were on the floor. An ashtray brimming with butts rested on the end table alongside the couch. Grundy sniffed the butts on the off chance they might be marijuana roaches. They were not. He went into the kitchen.
'I don't want you to become neurotic about rape, I don't want you to start screaming if a panhandler taps you on the shoulder. He may only want a quarter for a drink, and you'll start screaming, and he'll try to shut you up, and the next thing you know he's broken your neck. That's as bad as being assaulted by a real rapist. I do want to frighten you a bit, however, and the first thing I want to frighten you about is hitchhiking. If you'd like to get raped, the best way to accomplish your goal is to go outside and start hitchhiking. I can't guarantee that if you hitch a ride tonight, you'll positively be raped. But I can guarantee that if you hitch from the same spot at the same time each night, someone will try to rape you. It might take a week, it might take longer. But someone will try. And it will have nothing whatever to do with how you look. You can be standing on that corner wearing a potato sack, with your hair in curlers, and a fever sore on your lip, and that won't discourage the rapist. He is a sick man; you are presumably a healthy individual. Don't, for God's sake, foolishly place yourself in hazardous or vulnerable situations.'
There were two six-packs of beer in the refrigerator, a carton of milk, some cold cuts, and a package of sliced bread with half the loaf gone. Used paper plates were on the kitchen table, and the trash can was full of empty cans - baked beans, soup, vegetables, hash. Cups, silverware, soup plates, and knives were piled in the sink, unwashed. Grundy went into the bedroom.
'Like in the song from The Fantasticks, there are many different kinds of rape. If you're out on a date with a man you know, and you're necking in his automobile, and he decides to take you by force, against your wishes, that's rape - even if you've known him since he was six years old. In a situation like that, I would advise that you stop necking for a moment, stick your finger down your throat, and vomit into his lap. The more serious rape, if rapes can be classified as to seriousness, is the one that can lead to bodily injury or death. A man jumps out at you, he threatens you at knife point. Don't begin telling him what a disgusting animal he is, don't start cutting him down to size, because he may decide to cut you down to size - literally. He is emotionally unstable, he does not need his ego further bruised. I've known victims who have talked themselves out of being raped by treating their attacker with human kindness, understanding, sympathy, and humility. This doesn't always work, but it may at least buy you some time until either help comes or you can effect an escape. One girl bought time by telling the rapist she knew he'd been following her, and thought she was the luckiest girl alive, because here she was just a plain, dumpy little thing, and he was such a big handsome man. She put her arms around his neck and got very affectionate - something totally unexpected by the rapist -and he lost his erection and was momentarily incapable of performing. By the time he got back to the business at hand, which was taking this girl by force, don't forget that, some people wandered up the street, and the girl was saved from attack.
'But let's suppose a man begins hitting you the moment he drags you into the bushes. Your natural reaction, even if you plan not to resist, even if you plan to go limp - which may cause the same thing to happen to him - is to turn your head away from the blows, or bring up your hands to protect your face, or in some way involuntarily show resistance or fear, which will only provoke him more. Let's say nothing you've said or done has worked, you are on the ground, he is still striking you, he is going to rape you. The question now is whether you want to be raped, and maybe killed, or whether you want to hurt this man. Only you can decide that. If you choose not to be a victim, I can tell you how to hurt him, and how to get away from him.'