“Is this a sample of how you’re going to run things?” McCall asked. He was astounded to hear his own voice. “The only difference I can see between you and the Klan crowd is you’ve exchanged white sheets for exhibitionism.”
“Everybody does his thing his own way,” the man-boy said. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson, McCall. Report it. Maybe the freaky heads’ll wise up.”
“Did you and your friends beat up Laura Thornton? And kill Dean Gunther?”
An angry growl came from the crowd.
“Hold it!” the leader shouted; and the growl stopped.
“Did you?” McCall said.
“You’re the fuzz, you figure it out. Just remember, we could have killed you tonight.” The voice sounded bitter under the hideous mask. “Now you can rot here for all I care. When you work yourself loose you’d better take the advice I gave you and clear out of Tisquanto. All right, gang: Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Whooping, they ran to the two cars. The wild revving of the engines roared against the night. Headlights sliced trees. Then they were gone, and he was left in a silence.
He began to work on the ropes. The pain he had not been feeling began to invade his nervous system. He felt nausea...
Who had they been?
Katie Cohan... waiting for him...
The ropes bit into his flesh. He stopped, feeling exposed and violated in the darkness. After a while he resumed the straining and stretching. The rope around his chest began to loosen. He writhed and thrust against the bonds, finding new strength. He worked up and down, rubbing his flesh raw against the tree trunk. That girl who had pressed the cigarette butt against his groin... it burned like the hell it had come from.
His clothes... if he got free, could he find them?
He struggled in the tight embrace of the ropes, felt them loosening, redoubled his struggles.
After a while he stopped for a breather, peering around in the moonlight. To his right he saw a building, at the edge of the clearing. Their shack, he decided. Their playground off campus... get your hands free...
He worked his wrists against the tree. One wrist was freer than it had been. He strained, perspiring in the night air. Abruptly the hand tore loose.
Two minutes later he was free.
Three minutes later he was jogging back along the dirt road which he knew led to the highway to Tisquanto. He had found all his clothes except his tie and T-shirt. He had considered taking the ropes with him as evidence and decided against it. The cold-voiced young general wasn’t fool enough to use anything that could be traced back to him or his naked troops.
McCall reached the macadam road and turned toward town. He ran at a steady pace along the shoulder of the road, marveling at the response of his body after the punishment. His head felt light but the after-aches had not really yet begun and all in all he was in pretty fair shape.
He knew he was not very far from where he had been abducted.
When a car came along heading for town he ducked behind a tree until it passed. He was in no mood for explanations. Or lies, for that matter.
At last the streetlights began, strings of diamonds along the road.
It could have been a lot worse. They hadn’t hurt him badly. All but that damned cigarette-happy blonde.
McCall jogged on through the evening. After a while he slowed to a walk, breathing through his mouth.
15
The inside of the rented Ford was crammed with last winter’s mulch, a malodorous mess of damp and rotting leaves. The exterior had been used as a wall for the advertisement of graffiti, a display of obscenities deriding Governor Holland, McCall, President Wade, and authority generally. Perhaps significantly the graffiti had been written in soap.
McCall reamed out the interior as best he could and drove to an all-night garage. He was beginning to stiffen up from the beating, and he kept squirming behind the wheel.
“You’d better wash the car as well as clean the inside,” he told the attendant. “I’ll pick it up in an hour or so.”
“We don’t do car washes at night, mister.”
“I can’t run this thing in its present condition.”
“That’s your problem.”
“You don’t seem swamped with work. How about it?”
The man grinned. “What am I bid?”
“Does everybody in this town have the morals of a grave robber?” McCall growled. “All right, double the usual. But I want a good job.”
“You got the best, mister. What happened?”
“You tell me. Parked my car and when I got back it was like this.”
“These goddam college bums,” the garage attendant said. “You want a cab, use the office phone. I’ll put it on the bill.”
McCall gave the taxi driver Kathryn Cohan’s address. He was deposited at the foot of a meandering flight of steps that led up a hillside to the house perched at the top in a broad nest of trees and shrubbery. The front-door lights were on and he could dimly make out an unconventional redwood house all angles and ells.
Apparently she had heard the taxi. She was waiting in the doorway.
“For God’s sake, Mike, where have you been? I was beginning to get worried.”
“Here and there. Sorry I was delayed.”
“You could have phoned.”
“Not really,” McCall said.
She pulled him inside and inspected him in her foyer. “What happened, Mike? You look awful. Look at your clothes! You’ve been in a fight!”
“If I was, it was pretty one-sided. They don’t grow many sportsmen in old ’Squanto, do they? I mean, whatever happened to fair play?”
“Mike, will you tell me what happened!”
She clung to his arm. In the soft lighting her hair shimmered red gold. She was all in brown — bell bottoms in crushed velvet, velvet shirt, suede vest, and square-toed reptile shoes.
“You look delicious.”
“Mike.”
“Let’s go in there and sit down,” McCall said. “I’ve been running.”
It was a beautiful living room of naked hand-hewn beams, bright rugs, slapdash furniture, everything a bit oversized and comfortable-looking and surprisingly unfeminine. The walls were crowded with books and pictures.
McCall sank into a leather armchair.
“Bourbon?”
“I’m a weak-gin man.”
“How weak?”
“I hate the stuff, to tell you the truth. All right, this once make it bourbon. One jolt. Old grandma’s remedy.”
She brought him the shot and he gulped it down. She sipped hers, nestled at his feet. “Now tell me,” she said.
He told her.
“You poor, poor darling,” Kathryn whispered. “Those monsters! Oh, Mike, I don’t know what’s happening to people! Rebellion is one thing, but... I’m no prude, but this is — is indecency! Don’t you think you ought to see a doctor? At least let me run you over to the emergency room of the hospital.”
McCall shook his head. “I’m all right. They were careful not to hurt me badly.” At the last moment he had decided to omit the part about the lighted cigarette and his groin.
“You’re sure?”
He nodded. “I think I could use one more drink.”
She jumped up and refilled his shot glass. This time he nursed the stuff. It burned its way down, and he made a face. She watched him with her head cocked.
“You’re a strange guy, Mike... It’s a known group, by the way. I mean, nobody can ever prove anything, and from what you say you can’t actually accuse individuals because you wouldn’t be able to identify anybody. They’ve been in trouble before with all their running-around-naked activities. They call themselves Nature’s Children.”