I Know What You Did Last Summer (6 page)

Why, Ray asked himself. Does whoever it is really know
something, or is he just guessing? What does he know, exactly, and
who is he, and how does he know it? And most important of all-what
is he going to do next?

chapter 6

On Memorial Day, Barry Cox had dinner with his parents. The
conversation at the table was about the coming summer; his mother
wanted him to spend it at home.

"Then in August," she said, "I thought we could take a little
trip to the east coast-just you and me. I know how you love to
drive the Thunderbird, and it's been a good four years since we
visited Aunt Ruth and Uncle Harry. If Dad can get away for a week,
he could fly and meet us there. We might even take a few days in
New York and see some shows."

"Gee, Mom, I don't know," Barry told her. "I've sort of got some
other things in mind for the summer."

"You do?" Mrs. Cox looked surprised. "For heaven's sake,
what?"

"Summer school?" his father asked. "A job?"

Mr. Cox was a quiet man, a number of years older than his wife.
His hair was gray; Barry could not remember its ever having been
any other color. He was an electrical engineer who worked in
missile design for the government, and his mind and eyes often
seemed to be focused on a spot a little beyond tide reach of anyone
else.

"Lou Wheeler and one of the other guys are taking off for
Europe," said Barry. "They're going to spend the summer bumming
around over there- hiking-sleeping in hostels;-you know the whole
bit. They want to know if I'll go with them."

"That sounds like a pretty expensive three months," Mr. Cox
commented dryly.

"Not really. College kids get some sort of reduced plane fare
over, and the hostels are almost free. Food doesn't cost any more
man it does here."

"It doesn't sound like a very nice way to see Europe." Mrs. Cox
rested her salad fork on the side of her plate. "I had Europe in
mind for you as a graduation present, a very special trip where we
would stay in nice hotels and eat at famous restaurants, the
ones you always read about, and go to concerts and, oh, everything.
It was going to be a surprise."

"That's three years away," Barry said.

They'll pass quickly, dear. Too quickly. It just doesn't seem
possible that you've almost completed a whole year of college." His
mother smiled at him fondly. "You need a summer to relax and get to
know your own family again. You've been so wrapped up in your
studies lately that we've hardly even seen you."

It was the same old tune he'd heard a million times before. His
teeth were on edge and his toes were boring holes in the bottoms of
his shoes by the time he finally got back to the fraternity
house.

When he entered his room, he found a card game in progress. A
table had been hauled in from the living room and four guys were
seated around it

Lou Wheeler, his roommate, was dealing and paused long enough to
greet him.

"Hey, Cox, where've you been? Your Golden Girl's been trying to
get hold of you."

"Oh?" Barry shoved the door closed and sat down on the edge of
his bed. "I've been doing the duty call on the folks, trying to get
them to come through with some bread for the summer."

The boy on Lou's right glanced up in surprise.

"I thought your old man was loaded."

"He is, but it's Mom who dispenses it. Say, it's really worth
your neck to drive through the campus. They're having a fireworks
display over at the stadium and there's a regular traffic
jam."

"Some of the kids are going to stage an anti-Memorial Day
demonstration-black banners, the whole works. Who needs a day to
honor war?" Lou started to sort his hand. "Aren't you going to call
Helen? She sounded pretty hot to see you."

"I'll call her in the morning," Barry told him.

Lou gave a whistle. "You nuts or something?" He gestured toward
the bureau. "Get a load of that picture! Can you guys imagine
putting off a chick who looks like that?"

There was general laughter and a few crude but good-natured
remarks from the other players. Helen's picture became the subject
for general study.

"If you're tired of her," one boy said, "just pass along her
phone number."

"I just might do that," said Barry.

He too glanced at the picture and continued studying it after
the others had turned back to the game. It was Helen's Junior Class
picture, the one she had submitted to the Golden Girl contest, and
she had had it hand-tinted for him. The hair was a little too gold
and the shade of the eyes was off. Across the bottom right corner
Helen had written in her round, childish script, "With all my love-
Heller."

It had meant something when she had given it to him, but now it
had become just another item on the bureau, along with a stud box
and a comb and some other stuff. He seldom looked at it, but he had
to admit that it made a nice showpiece.

Helen herself was a good showpiece, which was one reason he had
not dropped her. He had never expected their relationship to
continue on past high school. In fact, in the beginning, he had
never anticipated its becoming a "relationship" at all.

He had been driving home from school and had seen her there,
walking along the sidewalk, swinging her hips a little in that way
she had. She was built. Even from the back he had been able to tell
that. When he pulled up beside her, he had seen that she was even
better from the front.

That first date had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. She was
a looker-she was available-and he didn't have any other plans for
the evening.

Then his mother had got into the act

"A girl with a shape like that," she had said, "might at least
wear a bra. And that hair color can't be natural. Nobody has hair
that gold. Barry, dear, with all the really nice girls around-Ann
Stanton, for instance, and the Webers' pretty little daughter -do
you really want to spend your time and money on someone like
this?"

That, of course, had cinched it

"Sure," Barry had said. "I like her." Until that moment he had
not really thought much about it. "She's a swinger," he had added
which had sent bis mother into a spin. After that, he was publicly
committed. Helen Rivers was his girl.

He had meant to wind the thing up before he started college. His
original hope was that it would happen naturally when he left to
attend an out-of-state school. This hadn't worked out He had not
been offered a football scholarship anywhere tempting, and
his mother had decided that he should attend the University.

"Then you'll be close," she had told him. "You can even live at
home if you want to, and if you pledge a fraternity you can at
least come home on the weekends."

So he had planned to make the break with Helen at the end of the
summer.

Then two things had happened. First there was that damned
accident. Helen had come to his defense then like a real
trooper; he knew it was doubtful that Ray and Julie would
have agreed to the pact if Helen hadn't been there pushing it. He
owed her something for that, and he knew it, so he decided to
postpone the break-up for a little while.

Then, out of the blue, came the Golden Girl bit He had to admit
that had impressed him-all the publicity and the glamour of having
a girlfriend who was suddenly on television and known to everybody
in town. It looked good to be seen around with the Channel Five
Golden Girl hanging onto you, that was for sure. People were always
pointing her out and coming up to ask if she was really Helen
Rivers.

But enough was enough. The whole thing was getting far too
sticky. A girl with looks like hers wasn't supposed to be insecure,
but Helen seemed to be an exception. She was always asking for
reassurance-"Do you like this dress, Barry? Do you think my
hair looks good this way? Does it look to you as though I've put on
weight since last summer?"

And even worse, she was beginning to talk about getting married.
Married, and here he was, barely nineteen, and had never done
anything, never been anywhere.

"No dice, Heller," he had told her. "I've got another three
years of school before I can even think about it."

"That wouldn't matter," she kept insisting. "A lot of people get
married while they're in college. I wouldn't mind working. In fact,
I'd like it."

"Nuts to that. I wouldn't want a wife of mine working."

It was the first response he could think of, and even to his own
ears the statement had sounded ridiculous.

Silently, he had chided himself for his lack of guts. He should
simply have told her, "I've got a lot of living to do before I put
down roots, and even when I do it's not going to be with you."
Sometimes Helen reminded him of his mother, which was crazy because
you could look through the world and never find two people with
less in common. Still, when he was with them, he had the same
feeling of near suffocation.

Ray Bronson had taken off for a year, thrown over a college and
just gone bumming up and down the coast of California, hardly
keeping in touch with anybody. There had been times over the past
months when the thought of Ray had filled Barry with a raging envy.
Just the idea of being out from under with no pressure! And then
the rational part of his mind would come to the fore; sure it
sounded romantic, but who would really want to work at one
cruddy little job after another, waiting tables and washing cars
and crewing on fishing boats, just to put food in your mouth and
pay for a place to sleep?

The fact had to be faced, if you wanted the folks to pay the
bills, you lived the way they wanted you to. But Helen-that was
something else. He didn't have to stick it out with Helen. It had
been a good thing for awhile, but when a good thing became a drag,
it was time for it to be over.

Out in the hall the telephone was ringing. After a few rings it
stopped.

There was a knock on the door.

"Cox in there?" somebody called. "Phone call."

"Probably another female," Lou said kiddingly. "Boy, what is it
you've got? Will you sell me the formula?"

"Charm-just charm."

Barry got up off the bed. As he passed the bureau he reached out
and flipped the picture onto its face. Tomorrow he'd get rid of it
and wipe the slate clean. Meanwhile, he'd get the hard part over
with, and by telephone was better than face-to-face. He had told
Helen he'd call her, and he hadn't, so she'd be starting out the
conversation with a chip on her shoulder. He could react to that,
get mad at her for being unreasonable when she knew he was bogged
down with studies. It wouldn't be a bad way to handle it

Two of his fraternity brothers were coming down the hall as he
reached the telephone.

"Make it a quick one, Cox," one of them said good-naturedly.
"I've got a hot night to set up."

"I won't be long," Barry told him. "I can guarantee that.
But there might be an explosion."

The phone receiver was dangling at the end of the cord. He
fished it up and clapped it to his ear.

"Hello-Cox here."

A few moments later he placed the receiver back on the hook and
turned to the boys behind him.

"It's all yours."

"Man," the first of the boys looked at him with a combination of
admiration and amazement, "if I talked to my girl like that she'd
shoot me." He reached for the telephone and began to dial.

Barry walked down the hall and out the side door into the
parking area. The sky in the west, over the stadium, was aglow with
tiny red stars. They flew wide apart and faded and disappeared like
drops of water on a hot griddle. A muffled cheer went up from the
crowd which was watching the fireworks display.

Barry followed the sidewalk to its end and crossed the street
and entered the athletic field. At the far end of it, the bleachers
loomed a dark mass against the sky. They were thrown into abrupt
silhouette as another rocket went up at the stadium, and the
audience burst into a roar of approval.

Barry stood still, trying to accustom his eyes to the sudden
changes from light to dark. Then suddenly a flashlight went
on immediately in front of him, the beam directed straight into his
face.

"Hey, what the hell-" He raised his hands to protect his
eyes.

There was enough noise from the fireworks so that he would not
have known that the next sound was a shot if he had not felt the
bullet tear through his stomach and into his spine.

chapter 7

They all learned about it that night

Ray heard from his father. The Booter, who had been doing some
paper work in his den while listening to a ball game on a
small transistor radio, went upstairs and rapped on his son's
door.

"Peewee?" he boomed. "A rotten thing has happened to a
buddy of yours."

When Ray opened the door, his father told him about the news
bulletin that had broken into the program, how Barry William Cox,
nineteen, a University freshman, had been found by a campus
patrol car, lying gravely wounded in the middle of the school
athletic field.

Students in the area were being questioned, but no one
remembered hearing a shot.

"There was so much racket going on," one girl commented, "with
all the holiday fireworks that one more bang would hardly have been
noticed by anybody."

Another student, a fraternity brother of the Cox boy, reported
having overheard a phone conversation only a short time
before the shooting occurred.

"He was making arrangements to meet somebody," the student
stated. "Knowing Barry, it was probably a girl. He was real crisp
on the phone like he was teed-off about something."

According to the radio report, the injured man had been
transported by ambulance to St. Joseph's Hospital.

Ray immediately phoned the hospital. He was told that Barry Cox
was in surgery. No information about his condition was
available.

His second phone call was to the home of Barry's parents. There
was no answer.

His third call was to Julie.

Helen River learned about the shooting in a bizarre manner. She
was standing in the television studio, waiting to deliver the
weather report, when to her horror she heard the
newscaster,
who was standing some six feet away from her,
present the bulletin as part of the ten o'clock news.

Luckily the camera was not on her face at the time.

A few moments later, to her own amazement, she calmly informed
viewers that the high that day had been eighty-two, the low that
night was expected to be sixty-eight, and there had been some rain
in the northern part of the state.

Then, when the camera left her, she went into
the
ladies' room and had hysterics.

Collie Wilson was watching the news program on the large color
TV set in the recreation room of the Four Seasons Apartments. When
he heard the report of the shooting, he got into his car and drove
to the television studio.

"I've come for Helen Rivers," he said to the first person he met
after walking through the door.

"Thank the Lord," the man said. "We've got her lying down in the
lounge. We didn't know what to do about her. She wants to go down
to St Joseph's."

"I'm here to take her," Collie said.

"Well, come on then. Just get her out of here."

The man led the way down a hall and through a door and down
another hall. Collie could hear Helen long before he reached
her.

When he came into the room he wondered for a moment if he had
found the right person. The girl before him was a mess. Her eyes
were red and swollen and her mascara had run down her cheeks
in long black streaks. Her face was contorted with weeping.

"Hey," Collie said. "Remember me-your friend by the pool?" He
sat down beside her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Look,
you'd better cut this out. It's not getting you anywhere. You want
a ride to the hospital?"

Helen nodded, choking down the sobs.

"Then get hold of yourself. Go wash your face or something. You
can't go anywhere looking like this. I'll be waiting for you out in
the lobby."

He went out into the front room, and a few moments later Helen
came out to meet him. She had obeyed his command. Her face was
clean and she had combed her hair.

Collie took her arm and steered her out to the car and deposited
her in the front seat. Then he went around to the driver's side and
got in beside her.

"Why don't you turn on the radio?" he suggested. "There might be
a bulletin."

Obediently Helen reached over and pushed the button that
controlled the radio. Immediately soft music filled the car. She
started to turn the dial.

"Leave it where it was," Collie said. "That's CBS. If there are
going to be any reports, that's where we'll get them."

Helen sat back in the seat and spoke to him for the first time.
Her voice was thin, like a lost child's.

"How did you know?"

"I was watching the Channel Five News. I do that a lot lately.
Friend of mine on there gives the weather reports."

"I can't believe it," Helen said. "Things like this just don't
happen. Why would anybody shoot Barry?"

"You tell me," Collie said. "You know the guy- I don't. Is he
the kind of person to have enemies?"

"Oh, no," Helen said promptly. "Barry's just wonderful.
Everybody adores him. He was voted most popular boy in our senior
class in the yearbook. Am the one the girls all hated because I was
his steady."

"Maybe it was a robbery."

"At the college? College kids don't carry a lot of money around
with them."

"Dope?"

"Barry doesn't use it. Oh, he smokes a little grass now and
then, but nothing hard. You don't shoot somebody to get grass." Her
voice was shaking. "I love him, Collie. He loves me too. Someday
we're going to get married. When he gets out of college, or even
before! I don't mind working...."

"Of course, you don't"

"He thinks I'd mind. It's old-fashioned of him, isn't it? But
nice. He thinks it wouldn't be right to marry somebody and have her
work. He's just so marvelous! When I first met him-it was two years
ago. He picked me up one day, when I was walking home from school.
He said I was pretty. . .."

"He was right," Collie said. At the moment the statement was not
true, but this he discounted.

He took his right hand from the wheel and reached out to give
her an awkward pat on the shoulder.

"You hang on now, okay? Going to pieces like you did back there
in the studio wont help anything. You don't seem like the
kind of girl who falls apart in an emergency."

"I'm usually not," Helen said. "It's just that this is
Barry."

"Well, hang in there. We'll be at the hospital in a few minutes,
and then you'll know more about what happened. Whatever it is, you
take it square. Okay?"

Helen reached up to touch the hand on her shoulder.

"You'll come in with me, won't you?"

"Sure."

They drove the rest of the way in silence, except for the music
which stopped at last when Collie turned the key in the ignition to
shut the motor off.

The hospital lobby was all but deserted. The gray-uniformed
woman at the admitting desk sent them to the second floor, and a
nurse there directed them down the hall to a small waiting
room.

There were several people there already.

"Mrs. Cox!" Helen cried, breaking away from Collie's side to
rush over to a thin-faced blonde woman in a beige pantsuit.

The man next to her was portly and gray-haired with tired eyes.
Automatically, as though from force of habit, he began to rise to
his feet, and the woman put out a hand to gesture him down
again.

"Hello, Helen," she said. "I'm surprised to see you here."

"Surprised!" Helen exclaimed. "How could I
not
be here!
Oh, Mrs. Cox, I can't believe it-I just can't!"

Her eyes filled and she reached out as though to embrace the
woman. Mrs. Cox drew back slightly and gestured toward the other
people who were with them.

"Myrna-Bob-this is Helen Rivers, a classmate of Barry's last
year. These are the Crawfords, our dear friends and next-door
neighbors."

"How do you do," Helen said dutifully. The stony faces of
Barry's parents seemed to bewilder her. She turned to Collie. "This
is Collingsworth Wilson. He's a friend. He lives in the same
apartment house I do."

"Barry has lots of friends," Mrs. Cox said. "I'm glad to see
that most of them had the good taste not to come trooping down
here. This isn't a circus show, Helen. There's nothing
to
see. It's my boy in there-my boy-terribly hurt-maybe dying."

Abruptly she raised her hands and covered her face. The rings on
her fingers twinkled under the overhead light. Watching her, Collie
found himself wondering how she ever managed to use her hands, as
encumbered as they were.

Mr. Cox put an arm around his wife's shoulders.

"Now, Celia," he said gruffly. "Chin up, dear." He turned to
Helen. "You'll have to forgive her. She's very upset. We all are.
It was thoughtful for you and your friend to come down here, but I
do think it might be better if we kept it to close friends and
family. Right at this point anyway."

Helen's face was white.

"She said-he might be
dying!"

"He has the best care-the best doctors."

"What are they doing to him in there?"

"Send her away," Mrs. Cox cried. " My God, how much of this do
we have to be put through? If she hadn't phoned him-if she hadn't
insisted on dragging him out to meet her-this wouldn't have
happened."

"What do you mean?" Helen asked. She turned to Mr. Cox. "What is
she talking about?"

"We're not blaming you, Helen," Barry's father said. "We know
the last thing on your mind was bringing harm to Barry.
Nevertheless, it
was
your phone call that brought him out
onto the playing field in the dark. Of course, you were not
directly responsible for this tragedy, but if you had left him
alone, let him stay home and study, which is what he should have
been doing-"

"But I didn't talk to him tonight," Helen said in confusion. "I
called him once early this evening. I wanted to tell him-something
somebody had done -a thing on my door-" She brought herself under
control with an effort. "He was supposed to call me this weekend.
He promised. And when he didn't-I
had
to tell him. But he
wasn't there. I called about five, and he was out, and I left word
for him to call me back, but he didn't"

"We're set for a long wait here, dear." Mrs. Crawford spoke up
quietly and her voice was not unkind. "The Coxes have your number,
I'm sure. We'll see that you are called when there is something
definite to report. In the meanwhile, I think you'd better go. I
really do."

"But, Barry and I-I'm not just a school friends- I'm more, a lot
more-" Helen's voice was rising sharply.

"Come on," Collie said softly. "I think we'd better go somewhere
else to wait. People here are upset enough. Okay?"

"But," Helen began, "I don't understand-"

Gently he took her arm and turned her around. "Come on."

Nobody spoke to call them back. Still holding her arm, he
steered her down the hall to the elevator.

"There are other waiting rooms. Well sit in the lobby. We'll
have that whole darned place to ourselves. You can yell or
cry or anything you want to, and it won't bother anybody."

"I don't want to yell," Helen said. "I want to wait here,
outside of surgery. This is where the news will come when there is
any. I'm not just
anybody,
Collie-I'm Barry's girl! I'm
the one he's going to marry someday!"

"Maybe so," Collie said, "but his mother doesn't seem to be in
on the secret."

He rang for the elevator, and as they rode down he did not loose
his hold on her arm.

Julie James placed the receiver back on the hook and went into
the living room.

"Mom," she said, "somebody's shot Barry Cox."