Chapter 3
If Bull Chapman had been the kind of man to laugh easily, he certainly would have laughed at the terrified way in which the kids scrambled apart. But he was more apt to snicker than to laugh, and now he didn't even do that, though he was amused at how foolish they both looked.
The girl's scream didn't last long, a point Bull counted in his favor: He didn't want anybody to come investigating right now; he'd handle this in his own way. Both kids got to their feet, and the girl picked up her dress and held it in front of herself. Her eyes were still crazy with terror.
"Who is that?" the boy asked, his voice shaking.
"I'll ask the questions."
Bull worked his hand through the leather thong of his stick so that he could reach into his pocket and pull out his wallet. He flipped it open in front of the light, revealing his badge.
"That's who I am," he said. "Now, who are you?"
The boy licked his lips, reached for his slacks and underwear, and started putting them on. "I don't see any uniform," he said. There was a touch of bravado in his voice, but it still shook. "Are you on duty?"
Bull put his wallet away and lifted his stick, giving it a couple of threatening flips. "Kid, I'm always on duty. And if you give me a word of cheap punk talk, I'm going to crack your skull before I take you downtown for booking. I may just do that anyway for kicks-a punk like you making out with a little girl like that!" Righteous indignition boiled up in Bull's voice, and the girl began to cry: "Oh, no ... oh, no...."
"Shut up!" He snapped the phrase at her like a bullet. She stopped the words but the tears kept coming. He turned back to the boy. "Now, what's your name?"
"Richard Bristol."
"Richard Bristol." The name was familiar, and Bull turned it over in his mind. "You live out on Bordon Avenue?"
"Yes."
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, sir."
Bull knew now who the punk was. His father owned a string of supermarkets and God only knew what else. That was just fine with Bull.
He looked at the girl who had been cowering behind her dress, too shy to drop it to put her clothing back on.
"And what's your name?"
The girl tried to answer through her tears but couldn't
"Come; on, girlie, I haven't all night, what?! your name?"
"Laura Dale."
"Mason Road?"
"Yes."
"Oh, yeah...." Old man Dale was a farmer. Not a real farmer-just the owner of about thirty-five thousand acres he wouldn't dirty his hands in, a bunch of feed stores, and some kind of soybean processing plant.
Yes, he thought, this was one of the richest catches he had ever made.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Laura, a girl like you from a fine family-"
"Please!" Her weeping grew more intense.
He looked at them both for a moment as if thinking the whole thing over. Richard hurriedly pulled on his socks and shoes and yanked on his shirt.
"How old are you, Richard?"
Richard didn't answer.
"Come on, come on, kid, you'll have to answer down at the station anyway. How old?"
"Twenty-one."
"Just a kid-but of age." He looked at Laura, "And you. How old are you?"
"She's almost eighteen," Richard said angrily.
"Almost. But not quite. Too bad, kid," Bull said softly. "That makes this a statutory charge. You're going to draw about twenty years. But don't worry-if you're lucky, you'll be out of the state pen in seven. That's a long time to pay, boy. Seven long years or more to think about that. And if you didn't finish with her, that makes that all the worse, don't it?"
Richard looked frozen and Laura choked and started going "Oh, no ... oh, no...." again.
Richard at last found his voice. "Look, officer. Do you have to turn us in?"
"What do you mean, do I have to?" Maybe the kid was going to offer him a bribe. The only trouble with that was that he probably wouldn't have more than a few bucks in his pocket. Maybe he had a bank account, but the bank wouldn't be open until Monday. Maybe he had money at home, but how much? And besides, once you started delaying things so as to get some cash raised, your suckers started thinking, and there went your game-right out the window.
But the kid didn't mention money. He said, "We haven't been hurting anybody. We're going to be married, and what we do our own private business-"
"That's what all you punks say, but the law says otherwise. And I'll bet the girl's father does too."
"We are going to get married!" the girl wailed. "Honey, that's what all these punks say. If I really believed that...."
"We are, officer," Richard said. "That happens to be the truth!"
Bull made his voice sound disgusted. "I don't even see that the girl's wearing a ring."
"We-we haven't announced our engagement yet!"
Now it was time to show incredulity. "Are you trying to kid me?"
"No-"
"No, officer," Laura cried out, "Please listen to him! Please believe us!"
Bull bit his lip. He swung his stick back and forth For a full minute he said nothing. Things were moving along just fine from his standpoint, and they'd move even better if he let the two of them do some sweating. "If there's anything I hate," he said, "it's for someone to try making a fool out of me-"
"But we aren't!" Richard said, and Laura cut in, "What we've told you is true!"
Bull bit his lip. He swung his stick back and forth and jiggled his flashlight.
"Well, under the circumstances I guess it isn't absolutely necessary to pull you in...."
The kid sucked air and his words were little more than a whisper: "Thank you, officer."
"I'll tell you what I'll do. We'll all pile into my car, and we'll go see the girl's old man. If it's okay with him, we'll forget the whole-"
Laura wailed.
"Now what's wrong!"
"It's her father, six If he ever found out-"
"He'd horsewhip you and jail you, huh? Well, can you blame him?"
"He might do that, sure, but it's worse than that. He's the kind-well, this would just about kill him. I mean, he's the kind that acts like his daughters aren't even supposed to be human beings, let alone female. I mean, he might actually have a heart attack or something!"
Bull sighed. "I know the type. You two have got a lot to put up with." The note of sympathy in his voice was almost genuine. "Well, what am I going to do with you two, then?"
Neither of them answered. Laura's tears had subsided.
"I guess I'll just have to let you go with a warning. And you, kid, if I ever find out you haven't done right by this girl, I'm going to feel responsible, which means I'm going to have to find you and brain you-"
"I plan to do right by her, officer-"
"You better just mean that, and you'd better just do that. If you don't, I hope she looks me up."
After a moment, Richard said, "We'd better go, Laura-"
"Oh no you don't! You go, Richard! You pile into that wagon of yours and get out of here. I'll see to it that this girl gets home all right." Richard looked as if he might object, so Bull turned his back to Laura, saying, "Pull on that dress-you make me nervous!" Then he addressed Richard. "Now, you take off like a big bird. If I don't hear that wagon pull out in three minutes," he glanced at his wrist watch under the light of his flash, "the whole deal's off and I go to the girl's father and I mean it."
Richard looked toward the girl.
"It's all right, Richard," she said. "Please do as he says."
"I'll be sure her old man doesn't see me deliver her home. Don't worry."
"Laura, I'll see you-"
"I said go! Double time! Three minutes-get moving!"
Richard hurried through the thicket and out of the clearing. As soon as he was gone, Bull turned his flash on the girl. She was just pulling her dress down over her upper legs, and she moved her hands up to button it. In her haste, she hadn't bothered with her underwear; it still lay on the edge of the blanket, which Richard had apparently forgotten or abandoned in his haste to follow orders.
"Wait a minute," Bull said, "and don't move. Listen."
The girl froze. She wouldn't dare do anything against orders now, Bull thought. If he told her not to move but to listen, that was exactly what she would do.
After a moment, he snapped off his flash, and for an instant could hardly see Laura. Then his eyes began to adjust to the change in light. Gradually they began to register the moonlight which was flooding the clearing. Bright, he thought. Plenty bright enough. And still the girl didn't move. He soon could see the inner circle of one high boob where the moonlight cut into the open front of her dress. She was sure a beauty, all right.
And fair game.
"There he goes," Bull said, as he heard the motor of Richard's station wagon come to life. He traced the hasty departure by the sound of the engine. The kid probably hadn't even bothered to move the tree limb aside, just driven into it and shoved it away.
The sound of the Nova faded away, and for the first time that night Bull became aware of the loud shrilling of the summer insects.
"He's gone," he said.
As if coming out of a trance, Laura began to work at her buttons.
"Wait a minute."
Bull's words stopped her again. He walked to her, dropping his stick and flash onto the blanket. His heart was pounding. God, she was small and delicate looking-he could break her like a stick. He towered over her. She looked at him, giving him an uncomprehending stare.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" he asked.
He slipped one huge paw into the front of her dress and pressed against her breast, so soft and yet firm and hard-cored. She gasped and pulled away from him, still staring at him.
"You and me got a date, you know that. Don't you, now?"
The girl didn't answer but backed away from him. He seized her arm.
"You and me got a kind of silent bargain, you know that."
The gaze she gave him was the same one, filled with a kind of horrible fascination, that a small bird is sup posed to give a snake. She pulled away from him. but he stood firm, and all she could do was circle backward around him as he kept staring at her.
"Now, look. You didn't think I was going to let you two go without getting something out of this, did you?"
Her mouth moved but no words came out.
"This isn't going to hurt you any. Hell, you're going to love this. What's the difference if you sleep with one more guy. You got plenty more left to give. You worried about your boy friend?-he'll never know. Nobody will ever know. Just you and me. And we'll both have a terrific memory of how good this was. You'll wake up in the night, crying for me again."
"I'll scream," she said.
"No, you won't. Because if you do, I'll break your neck. I'll drag you in and tell how your boy friend ran out on you after I discovered you two together. Hell, I might even really break your neck and blame that on him. That ought to draw him more than twenty years."
She tried to speak again but couldn't. He put his hand back under her dress, squeezed his fingers over her breast, and pushed her back against a tree. She was virtually pinned there, as his hand twisted and pulled.
"Oh, come on, now," he said. "Be grateful. I'm doing you a big favor. All kinds of favors. I'm not telling your folks-and I will if you don't give me what I want. I'm not squealing on your boy friend and getting him sent up-and I'll do that too, if you give me any trouble. You're up the creek, cutie, you've got to do as I say. And that's my third favor, because I'm going to give you the best time you ever had in your life."
Laura was crying again, crying softly and struggling against the hand that held her captive by the breast. "Please," she begged, "please, let me go."
Bull snickered. This was fine. He would have been disappointed if Laura had calmly acquiesced to his demands. Oh, that would have been better than nothing, of course, but he could always get the best and most responsive in that kind of loving from Lily. Here, a lot of the fun was in the struggle-forcing the unwilling female to do as he pleased. As long as he got what he wanted, the more the witch wept and struggled, the better.
He had a flash-memory of lowering a revolver to send a hot slug into a small brown and white dog.
"No," he said, "no, you're not going anywhere. Not yet. Not unless you want your father to know everything and your boy friend sent to prison. Do you want that?"
"No."
"Of course you don't. And that's not going to happen. We're not going to let that happen, are we?"
"That's a good girl."
He put his other hand inside her dress on her other breast, forcing her front completely open. The soft flesh looked good to him, squeezing up between his strong fingers in the moonlight. Her tears had run down her cheeks and fallen to her breasts, and he could actually feel them on his fingers. They gave him a kind of thrill, and he pushed her back all the harder against the tree.
"You're going to do as I tell you." He moved closer to her. "Open my clothes-"
"No, no!" She grabbed his wrists and tried to push him away but he tightened his grip on her flesh, twisting her painfully, and she cried out.
"Do as I tell you, Laura."
Sobbing, the girl sent her trembling fingers to his waist. She unbuckled his belt, unfastened the metal hook at the waist, and pulled his zipper down.
"Push 'em down, Laura."
She gave his clothes a timid push, and they fell down to his knees. She was doing just what he demanded, and she would continue to do so. Never before had he felt so powerful and so potent.
"Now the rest. Push 'em down."
Her eyes closed, she shook her head.
"Down!" he punctuated the command by giving both breasts another squeeze.
Eyes still closed, she fumbled at his waistband. Then, her weeping never stopping, she began to work his clothes down.
"Now open your eyes. Look at me...."
She opened her eyes. She was leaning. She did as she was told or she got hurt.
"Did you ever see a man like me, Laura? You know you never did. You know that you really want me, don't you, Laura?" His thumbs cut at her breasts. "Don't you?"
Her head bobbed dumbly.
"Touch me."
Yes, she was learning, all right. She reached out, and he shook as he knew her soft palm and curved fingers.
"Yon ever touched a man like that, Laura?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "Maybe you've been out with a lot of punks, but never a man like me. Now, raise your skirt."
Her hand fell away from him, and she collapsed in a fresh paroxysm of sobs. His cruel hands couldn't force her to stand, so his left hand withdrew from her breast and caught her under one buttock, and he leaned his weight against her to hold her up. He worked her skirt up on her right side so that he could grip her bare buttock and press against her soft leg. She was so damned soft and smooth!
Then he made a mistake. He removed his pain-giving right hand from her breast and put the hand under her skirt. Suddenly her small fists rained against his face and shoulders. Nails raked one side of his neck like dull blades. A thumb pressed in on one of his eyes, and lights exploded; he threw his head back, released her, staggered a step away.
In that instant, she was gone. He looked around, half blinded and hardly aware that he was howling with shock and pain-and he saw her. He took a step toward her fleeing figure, and his pants tripped him up. He went out full length, one arm cushioning the fall, the other lashing out for her.
He got her.
He barely got her ankle, and his grip went down to her foot as she fell.
She tried to pull away from him, and he felt her slipping: he had caught the foot on which she still wore a sock. He tightened his grip and reached out with the other hand. He caught her ankle again, and he had her. "You witch!"
He managed to get to his hands and knees, and he forced her to crawl backward toward him. When she was to him, he raised her skirt onto her back, and the moonlight caught her squarely. He passed his left arm around the front of her to hold her captive, and he had a wild impulse to sink his teeth into a hip as hard as he could, but that was replaced by another impulse which he immediately gave in to.
"You witch!"
He hit her. She screamed and fell forward, flat on the ground.
He struggled (o his feet. He took a couple of steps bent down, and grabbed her raven hair and pulled. She came painfully to her feet, he guided her back to the blanket, and he threw her to the ground again.
"You listen to me. Laura? Can you hear me?"
She nodded.
"You better think of that old man of yours. You better think about your stud rotting away in jail. Because if there's any more screaming or trying to get away, the whole deal is off, see? You try to cross me up just once again, and I won't give you a break, see? Do you understand me, Laura?"
She nodded again.
"All right. Get up."
She did as she was told. "Think of your old man and your boy friend and take off that dress."
When she hesitated, he grabbed the collar of the dress and pulled at it. Slowly she slipped the dress over her head and off.
He grabbed a handful of hair and put his other hand on her throat. "Now you're going to give me some, and if you try any tricks, so help me, I'll kill you! Understand?"
Her head scarcely bobbed.
He forced her to kiss him. He felt god-like with power, the power of his will. Nothing and nobody in the world could stand up to him and refuse him what he wanted. He shoved himself at the girl. Suddenly she gagged, twisted away from him, and began to be ill.
Surprised and uneasy, he stared at her as she emptied her stomach. "Don't kid me, witch-you love that and you know you love that."
"Please, please...."
Her begging gave him a perverse reassurance. That was almost as if she were begging for what would come next. Snickering, he unbuttoned his shirt and disposed of that. He wore nothing beneath. He took her hair and her arm, lifted her, and tossed her so that she fell like a limp sack flat on her back. Stepping out of his clothes, he went to her.
As he fell to his knees, he grinned. He slipped a hand out and stroked her. She whimpered and twisted over onto her side.
"Come on, Laura. You know you want me."
He rolled her onto her back again, gripped her, and forced her with little difficulty. Her hands came up and pressed on his face.
"Don't do that, baby. Think of your old man. Think of Richard."
Her hands dropped away. Her head was turned to one side, her eyes were closed, and she was still weeping. That was fine, just fine. Her smooth, deep-naveled, moon-whitened middle and her high full mountainous breasts jerked with every sob. He put his hands to her breasts and flexed the tips. They thickened from his pinches, and he told himself that he knew damned good and well that she was really aching for what she was about to get.
Her hands pushed on his shoulders, her heels dug in, and she tried to get away from him.
"Think of Richard, baby. Think of the scandal and your old man and twenty years in prison for Richard."
Her efforts subsided. Her legs went down flat on the ground. As he tried again, she once more attempted to twist away.
"Look, if I have to clobber you, I will. Not enough to knock you out, because you're going to enjoy this, baby, but that's going to hurt."
He reached down to grab her. Carefully, with a long sigh of pleasure, he took her.
"There, now you love that, don't you, Miss Rich Witch. You never knew anyone like me, did you? He moved a couple of times. "And I'll tell you the truth, you're pretty good yourself."
"Richard, Richard...." The words came out in the faintest of wails.
"This isn't Richard, you know, this is me. Your punk Richard ran out on you. You said he should go because you wanted this, witch. You wanted a real man. Now you got one. And how do you like him, Miss Rich Witch?"
He kept working, his voice growing lower and huskier, his breathing growing harsher.
"God you're good! And how you do love this! You always love this, no matter how you fight. You rich alley cats are all the same. But not all this good. Your Richard was never like this, was he. None of the punks you know are like this. You're going to dream about this, baby. You're going to dream about this over and over. You're going to cry for me. None of your punks can thrill you the way I can."
And then he thought he found a response from her. That might have been his imagination; it was impossible for him to conceive that a beaten and humiliated female's response might be given not in pleasure but in pain and horror and anguish, a terrible cramping of the body and soul. He wouldn't have minded such a response; he would have enjoyed that. But he believed that in the long run, unless something was wrong with a woman, she could receive nothing but the most exquisite pleasure from his beatings.
So he cried, "You see, you love this! You can't get enough of this! You're going crazy with this! Take this! And this!"
And babbling away, he was at the end, mad with pleasure. m