Chase (2 page)

Chase stepped forward the last few feet, slammed the man against the window post. He slipped his arm around and brought it up beneath the man's neck, drew his head back and forced him out onto the grass.

The girl was still screaming.

The stranger swung his arm down and back, trying to catch Chase's thigh with the point of the blade. He was an amateur. Chase twisted, moving out of the arc of the weapon, simultaneously drawing his arm more tightly across the other's windpipe.

Around them, cars were starting up. Trouble in lovers’ lane brought guilt aflowering in every teenage mind nearby. No one wanted to stay to see what the problem was.

‘Drop it,’ Chase said.

The stranger, though he must have been desperate for breath, stabbed backward and missed again.

Chase, suddenly furious, jerked the man onto his toes and applied the last bit of effort necessary to choke him unconscious. In the same instant, the wet grass betrayed him. His feet slithered, twisted, and he went down with the stranger on top. This time the knife took Chase in the meaty part of his thigh, just below the hip, and it was torn from the other man's hand as Chase bucked up, tossing him aside.

The man rolled and got to his feet. He took a few steps toward Chase, looking for the knife, seemed suddenly to realize the formidable nature of his opponent, turned and ran.

‘Stop him!’ Chase shouted.

But most of the cars had gone. Those still parked along the cliffside reacted to this last uproar just as their more timid comrades had acted to the first cries: lights flicked on, engines started, tyres squealed as they reached the pavement. In a moment the only cars in lovers’ lane were the Chevrolet and Chase's Mustang.

The pain in his leg was bad, though not any worse than a hundred others he had endured. In the light from the Chevrolet, he could see that the bleeding was slow, not ugly and rhythmic like the spurt from a torn artery. When he tried, he could stand and walk with little trouble.

He went to the car and looked in, then wished he had not. The body of a young man, perhaps nineteen or twenty, was sprawled half on the seat and half on the floor. In the generous splashes of blood that covered him, streaming from what looked like two dozen knife wounds, there was proof that he could not be alive. Beyond him, curled in the corner by the far door, a petite brunette, a year or two younger than her lover, was moaning softly, her hands gripped so tightly on her knees that they looked more like claws latched about a piece of game. She was wearing a pink miniskirt but no blouse or bra. Her small breasts were spotted with blood, and the nipples were erect.

Chase wondered why he noticed this last detail more plainly than anything else about the grisly scene.

‘Stay there,’ Chase said. ‘I'll come around for you.’

She did not respond, though she continued to moan.

Chase almost closed the door on the driver's side, then realized that he would thereby shut off the light and let the brunette alone in the car with the corpse. He walked around the car, leaning on it so that he could favour his right leg, and opened her door. Apparently these kids had not believed in locks. That was, he supposed, part of their generation's optimism, part and parcel with their theories on free love, mutual trust and brotherhood. It was the same generation that was supposed to live life so fully that they all but denied the existence of death. The expression on the brunette's face, however, indicated that she was no longer trying to deny anything.

‘Where's your blouse?’ Chase asked.

She was no longer looking at the corpse, but she was not looking at him either. She stared at her knees, at her whitened knuckles, and she mumbled.

Chase groped around on the floor under her legs and found the balled-up garment. ‘You better put this on,’ he said.

She would not take it from him. She continued to mumble.

‘Come on, now,’ he said as gently as he could. He was perfectly aware that the killer might not have gone very far.

She seemed to be saying something, though her voice was lower than before. When he bent closer to listen, he discovered that she was saying, ‘Please don't hurt me. Please don't.’

‘I'm not going to hurt you,’ Chase said, straightening up. ‘I didn't do that to your boyfriend. But the man who did might still be hanging around. My car's up along the road. Will you please come with me?’

She looked up at him then, blinked, shook her head and got out of the car. He handed her the blouse, which she unrolled and shook out but could not seem to get on. She was still in a state of shock

‘You can put it on in my car,’ Chase said. ‘It's safer there.’ All around, the shadows under the trees seemed deeper than before.

He put his arm around her and half carried her back to the Mustang. The door on the passenger's side was locked. By the time he got her around and through the other door and had followed her inside, she seemed to have recovered some of her senses. She slipped one arm in the blouse, then the other, and slowly buttoned it. Apparently she had not been wearing a bra. When he closed and locked his door and started the engine, she said, ‘Who are you?’

‘Passer-by,’ he said, ‘I saw the fellow and thought something was wrong.’

‘He killed Mike,’ she said.

‘Your boyfriend?’

She did not respond to that but leaned back against the seat, chewing her lip and wiping absent-mindedly at the few spots of blood on her face.

Chase swung the car around and started down Kanackaway Ridge Road at the same pace he had come up, took the turn at the bottom so fast that she was thrown painfully against the door.

‘Buckle your seatbelt,’ he said.

She did as he directed, but she appeared to be in the same unresponsive mood, staring straight ahead at the streets that unrolled before them.

‘Who was he?’ Chase asked as they reached the intersection at Galasio Boulevard and took it with the light this time.

‘Mike,’ she said.

‘Not your boyfriend. The other one.’

‘I don't know,’ she said.

‘Did you see his face?’

She nodded.

‘You didn't recognize him?’

‘No.’

‘I thought it might be an old lover, a rejected suitor, something like that.’

She said nothing.

Her reluctance to talk about it gave Chase time to consider the affair. He began to wonder, as he recalled the killer's approach from the top of the ridge, whether the man had known which car he was after or whether any car would have done, whether this had been an act of revenge directed against Mike specifically or if it was only the work of a madman. The papers, even before he had been sent overseas, had been filled with stories of meaningless slaughter. He had not read any papers since his discharge, but he suspected the same brand of senselessness still flourished. That possibility made him uncomfortable. It was so similar to Nam, to Operation Jules Verne and his part in it, that very bad old memories were stirred . . .

Fifteen minutes after they left the ridge top, Chase parked in front of police headquarters on Kensington Avenue.

‘Are you feeling well enough to talk with them?’ Chase asked.

‘The police?’

‘Yes.’

She shrugged. ‘I guess so.’ She had recovered remarkably fast. She even thought, now, to take Chase's pocket comb and run it through her dark hair several times. ‘How do I look?’

‘Fine,’ he said, wondering if it were not better to go without a woman than to leave behind one who grieved so brief a time as this.

‘Let's go,’ she said. She opened her door and stepped out, her lovely, trim legs flashing in a rustle of brief cloth.

The door of the small grey room opened, admitting an equally small and grey man. His face was lined, his eyes sunken as if he had not had any sleep in a day or two. His light brown hair was uncombed and in need of a trim. He crossed to the table behind which Chase and the girl sat, took the only chair left and folded into it as if he would never get up again. He said, ‘I'm Detective Wallace.’

‘Glad to meet you,’ Chase said, though he was not glad at all.

The girl was quiet, looking at her nails.

‘Now, what's this all about?’ Wallace asked, folding his hands on the top of the scarred table and looking at each of them, much like a priest or counsellor.

‘I already told the desk sergeant most of it,’ Chase said.

‘He isn't in homicide. I am,’ Wallace said. ‘Who was murdered and how?’

Chase said, ‘Her boyfriend, stabbed.’

‘Can't she speak?’

‘I can speak,’ the girl said.

‘What's your name?’

‘Louise.’

‘Louise what?’

‘Allenby. Louise Allenby,’ she said.

Wallace said, ‘You live in the city?’

‘In Ashside.’

‘How old?’

She looked at him as if she would flare up, then turned her gaze back at her nails again. ‘Seventeen.’

‘In high school?’

‘I graduated in June,’ she said. ‘I'm going to college in the fall, to Penn State.’

Wallace said. ‘Who was the boy?’

‘Mike. Michael Karnes.’

‘Just a boyfriend, or you engaged?’

‘Boyfriend,’ she said. ‘We'd been going together for about a year, kind of steady.’

‘What were you doing on Kanackaway Ridge Road?’ Wallace asked.

She looked at him, levelly this time. ‘What do you think?’

‘Look,’ Chase interjected, ‘is this really necessary? The girl wasn't involved in it. I think the man with the knife might have tried for her next if I - hadn't stopped him.’

Wallace turned more toward Chase. He said, ‘How'd you happen to be there in the first place?’

‘Just out driving,’ Chase said.

Wallace looked at him a long moment, then said, ‘What's your name?’

‘Benjamin Chase.’

‘I
thought
I'd seen you before,’ the detective said. His manner softened immediately. ‘Your picture was in the papers today.’

Chase nodded.

‘That-was really something you did over there,’ Wallace said. ‘That really took guts.’

‘It wasn't as much as they make out,’ Chase said.

‘I'll bet it wasn't!’ Wallace said, though it was clear that he thought it must even have been more than the papers had made it. He turned to the girl, who had taken a new interest in Chase, studying him from the corners of her eyes. His tone toward her had changed too. He said, ‘You want to tell me about it, just how it happened?’

She did, losing some of her composure in the process. Twice Chase thought that she was going to cry, and he wished that she would have. Her cold manner, so soon afterward, made him uneasy. Maybe she
was
still trying to deny the existence of death. She held the tears back, and by the time she had finished she was herself again.

‘You saw his face?’ Wallace asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘He had brown eyes, I think.’

‘No moustache or beard?’

‘I don't think so.’

‘Long sideburns or short?’

‘Short, I think.’

‘Any scars?’

‘No.’

‘Anything at all memorable about him, the shape of his face, whether his hair was receding or full, anything?’

‘I can't remember,’ she said.

Chase said, ‘When I got to her, she was in a state of shock. I doubt that she was seeing anything and registering it properly.’

Instead of a grateful agreement, Louise turned an angry look at him. He remembered, too late, that the worst thing for someone Louise's age was to lose your cool, to fail to cope. He had betrayed her momentary lapse to, of all people, a policeman. She would have little gratitude for him now, whether or not he saved her life.

Wallace got up. ‘Come on,’ he said.

‘Where?’ Chase asked.

‘We'll go out there, with some of the lab boys.’

‘Is that really necessary?’ Chase asked.

‘Well, I have to take statements from you, both of you, in more detail than this. It would help, Mr Chase, to be on the scene when you're describing it again.’ He smiled, as if again impressed with Chase's identity, and said, ‘It'll only take a short while. We'll need the girl longer than we will you.’

Chase was sitting in the rear of Wallace's squad car, thirty feet from the scene of the murder, answering questions, when the staff car from the
Press-Dispatch
arrived. Two photographers and a reporter got out. For the first time Chase realized what they were going to do with the story. They were going to make him a hero. Again.

‘Please,’ he said to Wallace, ‘can we keep the reporters from knowing who helped the girl?’

‘Why?’

‘I'm tired of reporters,’ Chase said.

Wallace said, ‘But you did save her life. You ought to be proud of that.’

‘I don't want to talk to them,’ Chase said.

‘That's up to you,’ Wallace said. ‘But I'm afraid they'll have to know who interrupted the killer. It'll be in the report, and the report is open to the press.’

Later, when Wallace was finished with him and he was getting out of the car to join another officer who would take him back to town, the girl put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

At the same instant a photographer snapped a picture, the flashbulb spraying light that lasted for what seemed an eternity.

In the car, on the way back to town, the uniformed officer behind the wheel said his name was Don Jones, that he had read about Chase and that he would like to have Chase's autograph for his kids. Chase signed his name on the back of a homicide report blank, and at Jones's urging, prefaced it with To Rick and Judy Jones.’ The officer asked a lot of questions about Nam which Chase answered as shortly as courtesy would allow.

In his Mustang, he drove more sedately than he had before. There was no anger in him now, nothing but an infinite weariness.

At a quarter past one in the morning he parked in front of Mrs Fiedling's house, relieved that there were no lights burning. He unlocked the front door as quietly as the ancient lock would permit, stepped knowingly around most of the loose boards in the staircase, and finally made his way to his attic apartment - one large room which served as a kitchen, bedroom and living room, a walk-in closet and a private bath. He locked his door. He felt safe now. He did not have to talk to Mrs Fiedling or, against his will, look down her perpetually unbuttoned housedress at the fish-belly curves of her sagging and altogether unerotic breasts, wondering why she had to be so casually immodest at her age.