LITMIR.BIZ

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one of the neighbors.”

      “Out here in the woods you don’t have neighbors. It was somebody sitting in a parked car. What’s happening, Manette?”

      “I don’t know,” she said hysterically. “I don’t know.” Then she wrenched away from me, opened the door and ran inside. The door slammed.

      I pressed the bell button. I waited. She didn’t open the door. I rang again, picked up the wicker basket. “Tell me,” I shouted through the door. I rattled the knob. I waited five minutes. I watched for the light in her room. It didn’t go on.

      I put the basket down near the door. I went back to my car, got in and drove slowly back to the barracks.

      CHAPTER 3 _______________

      I was getting ready for breakfast Monday morning when Sergeant Ray Beaupré poked his head into my room. “Ralph,” he said, “the skipper wants to see you before you go to chow.”

      Phil Kerrigan was knotting his black service tie in front of the mirror. He turned around to me. “What have you done wrong now, kid?”

      “I don’t know,” I said. I had always been a little afraid of the troop commander. He was a stickler on uniforms, for one thing. I made sure mine was meticulous and correct. I examined the German silver collar ornaments and the polish on my black leather puttees and belts. I gave an extra rub to my whistle, whistle chain and handcuff key and made sure they were shiny.

      “How do I look?” I asked Kerrigan.

      “Gorgeous,” Kerrigan said sardonically. “But if the skipper is going to chew you out, it won’t make no difference how pretty you look.”

      I went downstairs to the troop commander’s office. Captain Fred Walsh was sitting behind his desk, his short, muscular trunk tightly encased in the uniform blouse, the captain’s bars glinting on the darker blue of the shoulder straps. He looked up and saw me standing there. His heavy eyebrows knitted together for a moment. His mouth was tight, thin-lipped, and his tanned face was creased at the chin.

      “Where were you yesterday, Ralph?” he asked.

      “At Deer Pond, sir. I was out with a girl.”

      “All day?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Weren’t you supposed to go home and see your folks?”

      “I guess I was.”

      “If you couldn’t make it, why the hell didn’t you phone them?”

      “I’m sorry, sir. I should have.”

      “And last Wednesday, on your night pass, you didn’t go home, either.”

      “Well, I met this girl, sir–”

      “Your father phoned me,” Walsh snapped. “I don’t want your old man calling me and asking if I’ve got you on punishment duty so you can’t come home. And if you’re running around with some cookie I’m not going to lie to your old man, either. I’ve always had a heap of respect for him. He was a damn good, seasoned trooper. Not like what we have now–a bunch of young kids still wet behind the ears.”

      He looked up at me with his hard, wise, cynical eyes. His hair was wiry with flecks of gray showing around the temples. His neck was thick and ridged with muscles, and his voice had a metallic bitterness to it. He was all cop and nothing else.

      “Well?” he asked me. “When are you going to call your old man?”

      “I’ll call him now, sir.”

      “Go ahead. And you’ll switch nights off with Kerrigan this week. That means you’re off Wednesday night again. You go straight home and see your father. Lord knows he’s got little enough now in life. It’s the least you owe him. And you should know it without being told.”

      “Yes, sir,” I said.

      “Sometimes I wonder if you realize what it means for a man to be locked in a wheel chair.”

      “I realize it. I live with him, sir.”

      He bent down to his papers. “All right, Ralph,” he said wearily. “Go to chow.”

      I washed my cruiser down. Then I went on patrol, fretful and irritable. I was going to phone Manette as soon as I returned and finished my reports. But while I was at supper she phoned me instead.

      “I tried to forget you,” she said. There was a quivery catch in her voice. “I swear I did. Don’t you think I lay awake all night, seeing that red, sunburnt, peely-nosed face of yours?”

      “I didn’t sleep well, either,” I said.

      “Come and see me tonight,” she said. “Now.”

      “I want to but I can’t. I’m going on night patrol with Phil Kerrigan.”

      “When will I see you?”

      “I’m off Wednesday night, but I have to go into Cambridge. I have a sick father, Manette.”

      “When, Ralph?”

      “Next week. Monday. I don’t get a day off until then. Why can’t you tell me over the phone–?”

      “If we had the chance,” she interrupted, “if you were willing. Would you take me away from here? Away from this evil city and its evil people–all its filth and badness?”

      “Where?” I asked. “Cities are people, not names. You’ll find people the same all over.”

      “I want you to take me away,” she said. “Anywhere. To New York, where people can submerge themselves.”

      “I can’t leave the troop,” I said. “This is my life now.”

      “But you could become a city policeman somewhere. You’d have regular hours. You wouldn’t have to live in a barracks.”

      “But I’m a trooper,” I said. “It’s a lot different from being a city cop.”

      I heard the breath go out of her. “Forget it,” she said. Her voice sounded tired and defeated. “It was a crazy, frantic idea, anyhow. I kept saying to myself, I shouldn’t call you.”

      “You don’t have to run away,” I said. “There’s no trouble that can’t be straightened out. If you won’t tell me over the phone, we can talk about it when I see you next week.”

      “I think it will be too late then,” she said. “Good-by, Ralph.”

      “No, wait,” I said. “I’ll see you when I come back Thursday. I’ll try to get away for an hour–”

      “Too late, darling,” she said softly. She hung up. I stood there with the receiver in my hand. Phil Kerrigan came into the guardroom, taking a last drag on his cigarette.

      “Come on, boot,” he said. “It’s a long night patrol.”

      I put the receiver on the hook. “I don’t understand her, Phil.”

      “Girl trouble, huh?” Kerrigan said cheerfully. “Mostly, it’s the hours that spoil it for you. We all go through it.”

      “No, it’s more than that,” I said. “And I wish I knew.”

      My night pass started Wednesday, at 5:00 P.M. I should have left for Cambridge immediately. But at 5:20 I was standing beside my car across from the old house on Glen Road, waiting for Manette Venus.

      The Staleyville bus came down over the hill and stopped in front of the house with a swish of its air brakes. Manette Venus stepped out. She was wearing a blue suit, a white blouse, blue shoes and a large blue shoulder bag. Her blond hair was like finespun silk.

      She saw me standing beside my car. She ran across the road. I took off my hat.

      “What’s wrong,

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