Chapter 1
Bull Chapman was hot and sweaty and bored, and because he was bored, he was looking for something without knowing what it was. Even when he wasn't bored, Bull kept his eyes open for it, and he usually thought of it as "fair game." Whether it was or not was open to debate, though not with Bull Chapman. Where other men might have their bit of "fun," Bull had his "game" and he seldom even thought of it as "fun,"
"Prey" might have been a better word for it.
He was a big man in his middle thirties. He was well over six feet tall and had the kind of build that earned the name Bull. He was somewhat moon-faced, had thinning, slicked-down brown hair, and had the eyes of an angry steer: vacant and innocent, yet with a touch of madness in them. If he carried a pad of fat around him, he was not all fat by any means, and he hadn't lost out in a fight, single combat or brawl, in a dozen years. Perhaps he was cautious in his choice of opponents, but the fact remained that he hadn't lost.
On that Friday evening, Adamsville was burning up under the heat of mid-July. It hadn't rained in over two weeks, the braising air had sucked the top earth free of moisture, and the broad lawns of the little town were turning crisp and brown. Bull, like all the others of the town, had cursed the sun, eyed the vacant sky, and longed for the respite of evening; but when evening at last arrived, the heat remained. And Bull Chapman, rivulets of sweat running down his glistening jowls, cruised the town in his second-hand Chevy, looking for fair game.
He cursed Adamsville as a dull, dead little town and wondered why he had ever come back to it. There were reasons, of course. First of all, he had been born and brought up there, and even though his parents were dead and he had no relatives in Adamsville, he had naturally gravitated back to it after his years in the army. And, too, he had been fairly certain that he could get a job on the police force back in his home town: if he couldn't have been a cop, he wouldn't have known what to do with himself.
And then there was the fact that in a small town you can keep tabs on a lot more people, a lot more easily, than you can in a city. You don't know everybody, of course-that was the small town myth. But you can know a lot of people. More people than know you. Bull Chapman liked it that way.
Another nice thing about Adamsville was that it was close enough to St. Louis to have a lot of big money in it, a lot of big money and a lot of big reputations. Bull didn't much care for the rich and the reputable, and therefore he liked to be near them. There was always the chance that they'd open up some opportunity for him, and he wouldn't be too scrupulous to take advantage of it. Bull was the kind of man to keep his eyes open for opportunities which most men wouldn't even want to see.
He'd find something tonight if he looked hard enough and long enough. Bored to the point of anger, he crept his car through the gathering dusk, swinging his narrowed eyes from side to side. He wasn't on duty tonight-it was his own car and he was wearing a violently flowered sport shirt and shabby brown trousers-but he did have his badge pinned to his wallet just like in the movies, and he did have a pair of bracelets in his pocket: he'd never be without them.
He also had his police revolver in the glove compartment. He much preferred to carry it in a shoulder holster under a jacket when he was off duty, but there were reasons not to. For one thing, the damned thing did get awfully heavy. And in this weather a revolver and a jacket-even he wouldn't have dared to wear a shoulder holster without a jacket-would make him hotter and sweatier than ever.
There was yet another reason for not carrying the weapon on his person. One time, a crazy dame who'd never had things so good had actually yanked the thing away from him and had damned near blown his brains out. Never before in his life had Bull Chapman been quite so surprised and quite so scared at one and the same time. He didn't want that to happen again.
Still, it was good to know that he had the revolver near by. It gave him a comfortable feeling, knowing it was there; and thinking about what he could do with it gave him a kind of warm, powerful feeling. He responded in much the same way to the battered night stick he always kept in his car. As long as Bull Chapman had his badge, his gun, and his club, there was no doubt as to who was in charge.
He didn't think about his badge, his gun, and his club now, however. He didn't want to think about them: he wanted to do something with them. Something which his fellow officers, on whom he looked with quiet contempt, wouldn't have the nerve to do.
As he drove, he stared at store fronts, at apartment buildings, at private homes as if trying to pry into them with his gaze. He viewed wide rich lawns and small grubby ones, reduced by the heat to a common brown. His eyes lingered on young couples walking arm in arm along the sidewalks and gave appraising glances to older couples sitting on porches behind wilted ivy. But he saw nothing-nothing he could use, nothing he could take advantage of, nothing that was fair game. There wasn't even a stray dog in sight.
Even the destruction of a stray dog might give him same satisfaction. Lately Bull's kicks had been running thin, but last week he had picked up a dog. It had been just about dusk when he had seen this brown and white mutt waddling across Hill Street. It had looked familiar, and he had stopped his car, got out and squatted down, and whistled softly to it. The dog had lowered its head and tail and, almost wagging itself in half, had come over to Bull.
He had patted it and scratched its ears and noted with satisfaction that it had no collar, no identification, no license. That was fine. Bull did recognize the dog, as a great many other people in town would have: its name was Jupiter, Jupe for short, and it belonged to old Oscar Mills, the high school janitor, who regarded it as friend and family.
Well, old Oscar was just shot out of luck.
For one thing, there was a town ordinance that strays with identification were to be taken to the little pound behind the fire house, to be destroyed if they weren't called for. In practice, they were generally returned to the owner.
For another thing, there was a town ordinance that strays without identification were to be destroyed immediately if the owner weren't known or wouldn't pay a fee. This had been ignored since the rabies scare a couple of years ago had worn off.
And for yet another, Bull Chapman had picked the dog up and looked around very carefully to see that no one was watching, and had slipped the mutt into his car.
This would teach old Oscar a lesson. Bull had talked soothingly to the dog and scratched its ears all the way to the town dump. There he had taken his revolver from the glove compartment, inspected it, and sat quietly, savoring the moment. The dog, he had noted with satisfaction, had begun to whine and act nervous.
He had gotten out of his car, the gun in his right hand, the dog under his left arm, its legs half-heartedly waggling in the air for freedom. He had walked slowly toward the miniature mountains of ashes and smoldering garbage, the stink rich in his nostrils, and again he had looked around carefully to see that he was unobserved.
Then he had tossed the brown and white dog down, hissing, "Skat!" For half a minute Jupe had merely looked up at him resentfully. Then the mutt had tried to walk around Bull, but Bull had blocked it and given it a kick which had sent it trotting toward the ashes and garbage.
The dog had started to run, not too fast, fading into the evening haze.
Bull had squared off, raised the revolver high, lowered it until the dog was in his sights, and fired.
The dog's scream had frightened him even more than the gun's surprisingly loud report, thundering through the silent evening. With a cry of stark pain and terror, Jupe had flipped through the air and landed on the belly; and, with delicious horror, Bull had watched it rise onto its front legs to drag its mutilated hind quarters up over a mound of ashes and out of sight, howling all the way.
At last the howling had faded and stopped. Bull had thought about going after the dog and putting it out of its misery, but decided against it. He wasn't going to wade through all that garbage for a damned dog. Anyway, if it wasn't already dead, it soon would be.
He had gone back to his car and had sat there, gun in hand, trembling, for a long time ... wondering if the dog was dead, wondering if anyone would find out, thinking about what a great going over he was going to give Lily later that night.
He could use Lily right now, he thought, as the streets at last settled into ripe summer darkness circling street lamps and broken by lighted windows. He could use Lily right now, but her slob husband would either be in bed or around the comer at Brownie's tavern, getting a load on before reporting to the night shift at the foundry. In either case, Lily would be scared to put out. Bull would have to wait for a while yet tonight to get that kick, but he didn't feel like waiting. A man could go crazy waiting when he was as bored as Bull Chapman was.
Thoughts of Lily did give him an idea, however. It had been a couple of weeks since he had been down any of the local lovers' lanes. It had been that long for several reasons. First of all, the local cops tended to leave them alone to a great extent. Unmarried people, including some young cops, had to have a place to do their courting, and there were young-marrieds living with their folks who liked to get away from the house. A squad car now and then to see that things didn't run wild was sufficient.
But this reason didn't hold much weight with Bull.
More important to him, if you hit the Lanes too often, you'd scare people away from them, and there went your kicks. A third reason was simply that he hadn't had any luck in the Lanes for quite some time.
But, what the hell, they were worth a try.
He swung his car around and headed for the west side of town. He had hardly arrived there when he saw what he should have realized already. A new development was going up and within the last week or to the 'dozers had practically ruined the Lane. His luck was sure running thin.
He wheeled toward mid-town and then out north. There was a wooded area up there which had been marked out for a town park. Thus far, nobody had done anything about it, and it was still in a pretty natural state. It was within the town limits, which gave Bull authority, but he wouldn't have been overly concerned even if it hadn't been.
The town lights thinned behind him, and Bull slowed the Chevy. He made a right turn off the blacktop onto a rutted country road and slowed further, dimming his lights. On either side of him, the brush thickened and grew up wall-like, and the overhanging trees all but shut out the light of the brilliant moon. The car bumped and stumbled over the ruts, and Bull cursed it and the road and the prize he was looking for until he sighted the first possibility, a parked Falcon convertible.
No go. There was a couple in it, all right-sitting there, smoking cigarettes as if they didn't know what a lovers' lane was for. Bull crept by the Falcon and kept going. Then he sighted another car, a Pontiac.
But this one proved to be no good either. There appeared to be some light necking going on in it, but there were two other cars just ahead and one of them was even pointing this way. Bull was wary of such situations when he was traveling alone, as he always preferred to do. He remembered once when he had stepped up to a car in this very lane and there had been three other cars near by. When he had started to give the kid hell, the latter had stepped out from behind the wheel with a hard, angry look in his eye, and Bull had suddenly become aware that there were two, then three, then five other youths surrounding him with the same look. He had been reduced to stuttering a grumpy warning in spite of the stick in his hand, and he had walked away, fear and humiliation thick in his throat. If he'd had another cop with him, it might have been different. And if one of the kids had laughed, he'd have gone back and killed them if he died doing it. But there had been no laughter, jeer, or snicker behind his back-only cold anger and contempt. Bull sickened every time he thought of the incident, and he wished to God he could meet each of those damned punks alone.
He was having no luck at all. He spotted cars: it would have been surprising if he hadn't on a night like this. Hell, on a night like this, even a lonely preacher might bring his girl out here to talk Bible. But Bull's meat was the lonely car, the pair unmarried or married to other parties, the pants down and the dress up or off, the petting heavy or the lovin' heavier. That, he didn't find.
He emerged onto the blacktop at the other end of the lane, and he wondered where to head for next. Well, there was another place which he had almost forgotten back the way he had come. He might as well run through this lane one more time on the chance that there had been new arrivals. He U-turned and headed back up the furrowed road.
The lane climbed slightly; it crossed a gentle hill to the south of which lay the town. Perhaps because of this rise and because he was driving faster and because the ruts bounced the car a certain number of degrees to the right, Bull saw the turn-off. Even as a boy, he hadn't known that it was there, and he could have driven by it a hundred times in broad daylight without noticing it. But a strange trick of light and shadow and he saw it as clearly as if he had been looking at a map.
And Bull Chapman was jarred by the instant intuition that he had scored.
He eased the Chevy a hundred feet along the lane without meeting another car. He pulled as far to the right as he could, turned off his motor and his lights, and wiped his palms on his pants. It might be nothing, he told himself; it was probably nothing. Yet he did have the scent of game. What should he take with him? His revolver? No, better not. His stick would be enough. His badge, his stick, and the cuffs, just in case, and his flashlight.
He rolled up the windows and locked the glove compartment as well as the doors. He walked back the hundred feet and, for a bad three minutes, he couldn't find the turn-off. It wasn't really a turn-off at all, though once it had been. It was overgrown by weeds, though he could see by his light where some had been pressed down; overhanging brush blocked and tended to hide it; and a broken tree limb, long dead and dry, lay across it. But the limb could be moved and a car driven through, and with the limb and brush back in place, no one would be the wiser. No one but a pair of lovers-and Bull Chapman.
He tested the weight of the limb to be sure that it could be moved, and then stepped over it. With his stick in his right hand and a dead flashlight in his left, he pushed through the brush, making as little noise as possible. Once through the barrier, a grassy passage was discernible in the moonlight. But nowhere along it could Bull see a car.
Well lovers might come here without a car, but it seemed un-likely, didn't it? Bull worried the question. He looked off to his right but could make out nothing in the shadows. He looked to the left and saw a squarish shape and a metallic glint of light. He took a few quiet steps toward it, and it became a small station wagon.
That was more like it. His hunch had been correct. And not just a car, it was a wagon, and the bed of a wagon could be put to good use. He had sometimes wished he'd bought a wagon himself. He worked his way toward it, slowly, soundlessly, his heart beating harder in anticipation. He hunched over, keeping his head low so that he wouldn't be sighted. Then, when he could touch the wagon, he raised up and flashed his light into it. Nothing.
The wind went out of him and he was hollow with disappointment. He felt like cutting the tires and shooting a couple of holes in the radiator. His luck wasn't thin-it was gone. Disgusted, he turned back toward the vestigial path and lovers' lane.
Then he brought himself up sharply, clicking off the flash. He must be losing his grip! Here was a new wagon, it had appeared to be a Nova, hidden away in the brush. Old or new, why should a good wagon be left in such a place by its driver-unless the driver was nearby?
He turned up the path again, keeping to one Side, moving silently. He peered deeply into every shadow as he went, inspecting every hollow. The land rose and he came to the crest of the hill, and still he found nothing. He began to think that he'd tried the wrong direction or had been heard, but he pressed on. The land fell away and he came to a thicket that looked impenetrable, but on an off-chance he pushed most of the way through it-easily.
And there he saw them.
As nearly as Bull could tell in the moonlight and it was so bright that it was almost like day-they were little more than kids. Not that they weren't old enough: the boy looked like a real stud and the little girl had a figure like a dream. They had spread a blanket out in the clearing, and both of them were as naked as the day they were born.
He was too far away to hear what they were whispering to one another but close enough to see the action clearly. The girl-small and slim but with enough breastwork to satisfy two men-was flat on her back, her face turned toward the kid. He was lying on his side, kissing her. Then, still kissing, the girl rose up on one elbow and rolled toward the kid, and he went over onto his back. He was about as passionately ready to take a woman, Bull imagined, as he had ever been in his life. Yeah, the younger generation was pretty knowledgeable in that department.
The girl shifted her body, bringing her boobs to the kid's chest, her long dark hair falling over their faces. As she continued to kiss, she moved her breasts slowly from side to side in long sweep. Each sweep made her pull at a buttock, first one then the other, so that they had a sensuous rolling, caressing motion. They were as lushly round as the girl's breasts, a deep smile of a crease on each. And Bull, excitement flooding him, thought, God, what he'd like to do to a rear like that!
The motion of the girl's shoulders and breasts and hips slowed, came almost to a halt. One of her hands came down from the kid's shoulders. Her fingertips passed over his ribs and Bull could see him shudder with ecstasy as the hand groped. Her shoulders and breasts and hip began to sweep and roll again, and she kissed and stroked and tugged at her lover, and Bull sensed his own desire growing rapidly. Then the kid suddenly shoved the girl away from him as if he could no longer bear her touch.
They weren't apart for long. This time it was the kid's turn to bend to the girl and kiss her. As he did so. Bull could clearly see his fingers sink deeply at one full young breast: there was almost more than a single hand could hold. The kid massaged and pulled and drew at her. He moved the peaked tip and teased with his thumb and forefinger. Then, after a time, his hand moved to the other breast and his mouth moved to the first one, and Bull could almost feel that himself, as the kid rolling his head around, moved the girl's boob over her ribs.
When the kid's mouth went to the second boob, his hand moved, just as hers had. And her body trembled too-as did Bull's. Still the kid kept after her, and when he moved his mouth back to hers, one bare foot shifted out.
Then it was her turn to shove him away, and she struggled to sit up. The kid sat up beside her, and she curled to his arm. For a few moments, they rocked back on one arm. She kissed and then paused, looking at him. She caressed him for an instant, then brought her mouth closer for a long kiss. His throat as dry as sand, Bull waited.
The pair was whispering, and Bull would have given a couple of teeth to know what they were saying. But it soon became evident what that was all about. The girl pulled back from the kid, lying flat out. The kid made a couple of tentative moves, and then apparently they had accomplished their purpose, because he made about three more and they stopped, the girl's arms coming up to his shoulders.
They lay like that, absolutely quiet, for quite some time-until Bull began to wonder what the hell. Then he noticed that they were moving slightly. For the first time Bull realized that, ridiculously enough, the girl was still wearing one white bobby sock, and somehow this made his passion all the more intense.
Bull had thought that the final action was starting; in his book it was sure as hell past time for that. But once again the pair became absolutely immobile. There in the moonlight, they might very well be mistaken for a statue, if anybody ever made statues of that kind. The babe certainly had everything that Bull ever wanted to see in a statue or a painting or a bed, for that matter, and he supposed the kid wasn't bad looking in his way. He was one of these slim, wiry types you had to look for: they don't pack much weight, but when they get mad they may do something silly and do it so damned fast you hardly know it until it's all over.
They finally got started. The girl's feet moved cautiously. Just as cautiously, the kid's body moved, and for a moment Bull thought they were going to quit. But no, he moved again, and Bull could hear the girl sigh with pleasure. When the kid did that again, the girl strained to him. Then they were in the rhythm of that together and working faster.
Bull sighed. That was enough for this kick. He might let them finish, of course, since they'd gone this far-but why? The next kick would be the look on their faces when he nailed them.
So he stepped out into the clearing, and the girl screamed as his flashlight beam and his smooth low voice hit them: "All right, you two, break that up."
Opinions would vary, but some might say that Bull Chapman had just made the worst mistake of his entire life.