Now, almost a full year later, he stood, staring again at the story, and the same cold feeling touched his heart. The clipping was yellowed from exposure. Someone had handled it often and read it many times. It was creased down the middle and had the smell of old dollar bills. Someone had kept it in a wallet, perhaps, drawing it out at odd times during the day to look at it, to dwell upon it. Someone had finally come to a decision and had addressed an envelope and mailed the clipping to an eighteen-year-old boy named Raymond Bronson.
Why? Ray asked himself. Does the person who sent this 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 Lexus, 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.”
“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 it ever having been any other color. He was an electrical engineer who worked for Sandia National Laboratories, and his mind and eyes often seemed to be focused on a spot a little beyond the 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 than 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 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 frat 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 Future Star’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. And my cell is dead.”
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. It was a nightmare to drive through the campus. They’re having a fireworks display over at the stadium and there’s a hell of a traffic jam.”
“Some of the kids are going to stage an anti–Memorial Day demonstration—black banners, the 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 dresser. “Get a load of that picture! Can you guys imagine putting off a hottie 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 TV station, enhanced by Photoshop. 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 dresser. 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 it 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 stacked. 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 gotten 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 gets around,” he had added, which had sent his 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. That hadn’t worked out. He had not been offered a football scholarship anywhere tempting, and his mother had decided that he should attend the local 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 breakup for a little while.
Then, out of the blue, came the Future Star 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 Future Star hanging onto you. 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 clingy. A girl with looks like hers wasn’t supposed to be insecure, but Helen seemed to be an except
ion. She was always asking for reassurance. “Do you like this outfit, Barry? Do you think my hair looks good this way? Does it look to you like 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.”
“Screw 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. All married women worked, at least until they had babies. Would Helen expect to have children? Yes, probably she would. A screaming, puking infant as quickly as possible.
Shuddering, 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, ditched college and 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 his parents’ rule 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 crappy 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 your parents 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 end.
* * *
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 with ill-concealed envy in his voice. “Man, 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 dresser 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 phone 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 frat brothers were coming down the hall as he reached the house phone.
“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.
“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 that was watching the fireworks display.
Barry followed the sidewalk to its end, 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 a flashlight suddenly went on right in front of him, the beam directed straight into hisface.
“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 gunshot, except he 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 paperwork in his den while listening to a ball game on the radio, went upstairs and rapped on his son’s door.
“Ray?” 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 patrolman, lying gravely wounded in the middle of the athletic field.
Students in the area were being questioned, but no one remembered hearing a shot.
“There was so much noise going on,” one girl commented, “that with all the holiday fireworks, 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 short on the phone like he was pissed off about something.”
According to the radio report, the injured man had been transported by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Ray immediately called the hospital. He was told that Barry Cox was in surgery. No information about his condition was available.
His second call was to the home of Barry’s parents. There was no answer. His third call was to Julie.
Helen Rivers learned about the shooting in a bizarre manner. She was standing in the television studio, waiting to deliver a weather report, filling in for the regular weatherman, who was sick. To her horror, she heard the newscaster, who was seated 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 descended into hysteria.
Collie Wilson was watching the news program on the big-screen TV in the common lounge of 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 god!” 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 ahold 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 brushed 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 an update.”
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 is,” Collie said. “That’s the local news station. 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. A friend of mine on there gives the weather report sometimes.”
“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. Is he the kind of person to have enemies?”
“Oh, no,” Helen said promptly. “Barry’s the best. Everybody adores him. He was voted most popular in our senior class in the yearbook. I’m the one the girls all hated because I was his girlfriend.”
“Maybe it was robbery.”
“At the college? College kids don’t carry a lot of money around with them.”