“Well... oh hell, okay.”
He climbed into the front seat of the car. He fiddled around with the call box under the middle part of the dashboard like a kid in a toy shop. I began to think he’d had a little to drink or something, the way he fooled with things and the way his mouth was slack. But I couldn’t tell for sure. Anyway, I got in and started the car.
“I’m staying at the Carleton, officer.”
“My name’s Harry. Wish you’d call me Harry.”
“Sure, Harry. Mine’s Joe, Joe Comstock. Salesman. Never been here before.”
“We got a nice little town here. Friendly.”
“Say, uh, Harry, I’m at the Carleton.”
“Yeah, Joe, I know that.”
“Well, uh, that’s the other way... down the street that way...”
“I thought maybe we’d go riding for a while, Joe. I sure could use a little spot of company. Nothing wrong with a little ride is there, Joe?”
“Oh... no. Okay. Sure. Hell, I got nothing else to do.”
He lit a cigarette and we drove in silence for a while. Then he came up with the best yet:
“You know, Harry, I been thinking. About this low pay for cops bit? Why, hell, Harry, what with the low pay luring the kooks and sadist-types, these eight rapes you’ve had here over the past few months? Guy in a bar told me about them this afternoon, you know. Those eight rapes?”
I kept my eyes on the road. “Yeah?”
“What with the low salaries and all, the rapist, don’t you think he... well, hell, he could even be a cop.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I don’t mean anything against cops, mind you, Harry, you know that, I explained that... But don’t you think that could be possible?”
I braked the car.
“What are you stopping for?”
“Get out of the car, Joe.”
He opened the door and climbed out; I got out and walked around the car and motioned him over toward the bushes. He started looking around but he didn’t see nothing but trees and bushes and empty highway and night. I went over and clutched him by the arm.
“Now, Joe,” I said, nice and friendly like, walking him along, “let me tell you the real reason I brung you out here. You look like a fella I saw on a wanted circular at the station the other day. Now since you seem like a right guy, I brung you out here where you ain’t likely to be embarrassed. So now talk to me like a brother and tell me who you really are.”
His mouth dropped open. “Hell, Harry, I’m just a salesman.”
“The truth...”
“Harry... hell, Harry...”
“Put your hands in the air.”
He shrugged and put them up. I swung a hard right to his groin. He rolled up into a little ball and made crying sounds. Then I got him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him behind the clump of bushes, where we wouldn’t be seen if a car happened by on the highway. He kept on crying as I’d hit him pretty hard and I proceeded in to kicking him a few times while I fished out my big revolver. I spent a good five minutes whipping him with the gun butt. He made some sounds but didn’t say anything, except “Jesus,” once, just before he died.
The rest of the night was quiet.
That was my last shift of night duty before the weekend, which I got free. I’d be back to days starting Monday, always got a free weekend after working seven nights straight.
I stopped in at the station to see the chief. It’s not much as stations go, really, just one room in the city hall basement. It’s a white-walled room with lots of dirt rubbed in; only part that doesn’t show the dirty white walls is the part covered by the big bulletin board with the wanted posters and the like plastered to it. The chief sits in one corner behind a desk piled high with papers and a file cabinet on each end like two big bookends holding him in. That’s about it for our station, except for our traffic officer who’s got a real small office all to himself and the tons of unpaid tickets. Also there are a few cells adjoining the one main room. Otherwise, there’s only Jim Oliver, a guy who is a technician of some kind out at the hospital and tries to help with our “scientific methods” since our force ain’t exactly crime lab size. Mostly Ollie has been a joke with us.
Anyway, I stopped in to see the chief.
“Hiya, Ralph,” I said, both rows of white on parade.
“Hi, Harry.” Ralph didn’t look up from the paper he was reading. He was in his TV cop mood today, I could tell right off. Chewing on a cigar and not smiling. Rubbing a hand over his bald spot and tweaking his bulbous nose once in a while. Maybe he pictured himself like a TV cop, since he had an actual case on his hands for the first time. The rapes, I mean.
“Got anything on the raper yet?” I asked him.
“Nope. Not a damn thing. Ollie tried looking around that place the other night but, hell, he doesn’t do any good. I wish some of the state cops’d help out.”
“Ain’t their affair. ’Sides, Ralph, they wouldn’t do much better than old Ollie.”
“Sure they would. The bastard’d get his if there was some kind of responsible-type investigation made. But there’s not much chance of that in this town.”
I shook my head in concern. “It’s an outright shame a nut like that runs loose. A damn shame. Too bad the feds ain’t in on it.”
Ralph smiled around the cigar. “Damn right. They’d crack this thing in a hurry, wouldn’t they? But how the hell would the FBI get in on a local deal like this? Rape’s no federal offense.”
I shrugged, said, “No chance of the feds coming in, I guess. But this lad’d get caught real soon if somebody who knew what they was doing was after him, ’stead of us.”
Ralph shook his head. “Sometimes I wish I would have stayed over at the cigar store, but I thought this job’d prove easier.”
With a grin, I lit up a cigarette and said, “It would have if this sex nut hadn’t’ve turned up.”
“He’s not so nuts, Harry.”
“Oh, no, he’s not nuts, he just rapes and kills.”
“Kills?”
“Well, damn near kills. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t think he’s a nut all the way, you know. After all, he picked a town where he’ll like as not get away with all of it.”
“Maybe, Ralph. How about pouring me some of that coffee?”
There was a pitcher of hot coffee on his desk, from which he kindly poured me a cup.
“You know, Ralph,” I said, taking the cup from him, “there’s a joke been going around town lately.”
“That a fact?”
“Uh-huh. It’s about this girl who was married three times and was still a virgin. Know how she managed that? First she married a midget, see, and he was too small. Next she married a preacher, and he was too religious. Then she married a small-town cop, and he couldn’t find it.”
Ralph laughed and said, “There’s more truth than poetry in that one, Harry.”
“Got sugar?” I asked. “And cream? I always take sugar’n cream. Coffee’s way too bitter without ’em.”
It was a pity what happened with Molly.
It was a couple weeks later, I was back on the night shift and the night before I’d pulled off number nine, a plump blonde bitch whose hubby was off at reserve camp. It had been awful quiet on the day shift, no one had found the salesman’s body. They were all too busy worrying about rape number eight. Now that rape number nine’d come along, I figured that would give everybody something else to worry about for a while.
But I was wrong.
Because that night when we were sitting together down on the beach, Molly dropped a bombshell and told me she figured me for the raper.
“You’re wrong, Molly, dead wrong. I didn’t ever lay a hand on any woman but you.”
“You’re lying to me, Harry, I know you are.” Her eyes looked green in the light of the quarter moon. I smoothed a hand over her arm as gentle as I could, but she jerked away and looked out toward the water. The lake was smooth, with only a few easy waves.