Lightning

by Ed McBain

  He had the terrible feeling that this was going to be like that time in Los Angeles when he’d gone out there to extradite an armed robber, and a twenty-three-year-old television starlet had performed an elaborate striptease for him before packing him off with a peck on the cheek. “But that white streak in your hair is really very cute, honey,” she’d told him as she closed the door behind him. Back at his sleazy hotel in downtown LA that night, he had actually considered tinting the streak red, like the rest of his hair. He’d had a good time with the robber on the plane back, though; the guy had a wonderful sense of humor, even in handcuffs.

  “Now you,” Annie whispered.

  She helped him out of his jacket. She undid the knot on his tie, and then she snapped the tie out from under his collar as though she were cracking a whip. She unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. She unbuttoned all the buttons on his shirt. She kissed his chest, and then eased the shirt from his trousers. She unbuttoned the cuffs. She helped him out of the shirt, and then she tossed it across the room, where it landed on her blue dress. She took his belt out of his trouser loops. She undid the button on his pants. She lowered his zipper. She reached into his trousers and said, “Oh, my.”

  Five minutes later, they were in bed together.

  Hawes was naked. Annie was wearing nothing but the gold chain and pendant. He would have to ask her, sometime, why she refused to take off the pendant and chain. For now, he was content to know that he was making contact with another human being, and for the rest of the night he would not have to think about anything but loving her. The fact that she was a screamer unsettled him a bit. The last screamer he’d had was a court stenographer who also happened to wear eyeglasses. She’d worn her glasses to bed. But she’d screamed loud enough to wake the dead every time she achieved orgasm. Annie screamed almost as loud and equally as often. She told him not to worry about it; everybody in the building knew she was a cop. He had completely forgotten she was a cop.

  And he had also completely forgotten that the person hanging young girls from lampposts up there in the Eight-Seven might just possibly be the Deaf Man.

  Arthur Brown had already forgotten the passing thought that their lamppost murderer might be the Deaf Man. Brown had as much respect for the Deaf Man as anybody on the squad, but the way Brown figured it, a killer was a killer, and they were all the same to him; they were all bad guys, and he was the good guy, and besides he wanted to get his wife in bed.

  Brown’s daughter Connie was asleep already. Brown’s wife Caroline was in the den, watching television, Brown was in the bathroom, toweling himself after a long hot shower. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and saw the same handsome Arthur Brown staring back at him. He smiled at his mirror reflection. He was feeling good tonight. Tonight, he would take Caroline to the stars and the moon and back again. Still smiling, he walked naked into the bedroom. He draped the damp towel over the back of the chair, spotted the morning newspaper on the floor where Caroline had left it, and immediately reached down to pick it up. He folded two pages of the newspaper open, tore out a hole in the center of the now-single large page, and grinned from ear to ear.

  When Brown walked into the den, he was wearing only the morning newspaper. His penis stuck out through the hole he had torn in the page. Caroline looked up.

  “Well, well,” she said.

  In an exaggerated watermelon dialect, Brown said, “You s’pose it true what de white folk say ‘bout de size o’ de black man’s organ?”

  “Not on the evidence,” Caroline said.

  “Will you settle anyhow?” Brown said.

  Caroline went to him and tore the newspaper to shreds.

  From where he sat in the stands watching Darcy Welles, he knew at once that she had the right stuff. Even more so than the other two. He could tell just by the way she moved during the warm-up.

  It was another clear bright October day, and the sky over the university track was virtually cloudless and as piercingly blue as heat lightning. Beyond the track, he could see the huge bulk of the football stadium, and still beyond that the stone tower that dominated the school quadrangle. It was not a bad campus for a city as large as this one, where you couldn’t really expect wide areas of lawn or tree-shaded quadrangles. He had walked through it on Saturday, getting the feel of the place, making himself at home here, wanting to feel entirely at ease when he approached the girl later on. He always felt comfortable with women, anyway. Women took to him. They thought he was very offbeat, perhaps a little eccentric, but they were fond of him. Men gave him trouble. Men wouldn’t put up with his little idiosyncracies. Abruptly walking out of a restaurant when he’d had enough to eat and was feeling tired. Frequently breaking appointments. Refusing to share in ridiculous innuendoes about their sexual exploits. Men gave him a pain in the ass. He liked women.

  He watched the girl.

  The season was still several months away—January if she’d be competing in any indoor events, March for the beginning of the major outdoor races—but of course a runner trained all year round, had to if he or she hoped to stay in condition. Just as important for a woman as for a man, maybe more so. She had already taken three laps around the track—wearing the school’s track suit, maroon with a dark blue “C” over the left breast and the university name across the back of the jacket—taking the first lap very slowly (he’d timed her at three minutes), gradually increasing her speed until she’d done the third lap in two minutes. She was on the fourth lap now, jogging the first fifty yards, running the next fifty, coming all the way around and doing the last fifty at top speed. She rested for several moments, sucking in great gulps of air, and then she began doing arm swings, thirty seconds for each arm, rotating the arm from her shoulder in a full circle, her fist clenched. Trunk bends now—she knew the warm-up routine, this girl—and now hand bounces and hula hoops, a minute of wood choppers, another minute of side winders. She lay on the grass beside the track, on her back, put her hands under her hips and did thirty seconds or so of air-bicycling, and then leg overs and leg lifts and leg spreads, making the simple exercises seem somehow graceful. She was going to be one hell of a sprinter, this girl.

  Another girl was coming over to her now. Possibly a member of the team, possibly just a friend who had come to watch her work out. The other girl wasn’t wearing a track suit. Plaid skirt and kneesocks, blue cardigan sweater. He hoped she would not hang around when he approached Darcy. Today was a Wednesday, the third day of a normal workout week. On Monday, she’d undoubtedly practiced short sprints from the blocks, sixty yards, a hundred and twenty yards, something like that, it varied in different training programs. Yesterday, she’d probably done nine runs halfway around the track, walking back for recovery after each of the first two 220-yard sprints, walking the full length of the track after the third, sixth, and ninth runs. In most programs, the training got more exacting as you moved deeper into the week, peaking on Friday, tapering off on Saturday with weight lifting, and then allowing a day of rest on Sunday (even God rested on Sunday) before the cycle resumed again on Monday. None of the preseason training was as severe or as concentrated as when the competitive season began, of course. Darcy Welles was just getting back into running trim again after a summer and early fall of off-season training. He visualized her running along country roads back in Ohio, where she made her home. The newspaper accounts of her ability had been very encouraging. Her best high school time for the hundred-yard dash had been twelve-three, which wasn’t at all bad when you considered that Evelyn Ashford’s recent record was ten seventy-nine. “I wasn’t thinking about anything, I just ran,” Ashford said at Colorado Springs. “I didn’t seem to wake up until the last twenty meters. When I crossed the line, I thought ‘That was nothing special. Maybe eleven-one.’” Ten seventy-nine! When they told her the time, she said, “I’m stunned. Just stunned. Stunned.” Well, your Evelyn Ashfords were few and far between. Even someone like Jeanette Bolden, when she was in high school her personal best was eleven s
ixty-eight, whittled that down to eleven-eighteen when she ran second to Ashford at Pepsi. That eleven-second barrier, that was the thing. You could thank Wilma Rudolph for that. But Darcy Welles was still young, a freshman here at Converse, and she had the right stuff. Olympics caliber, Darcy Welles was. It was a shame he had to kill her.

  She was obviously impatient talking to the other girl, eager to get back to the workout. The other girl went on for what seemed like forever, and then smiled and waved and walked off. A visible look of relief crossed Darcy’s face. She took off the warm-up suit and folded it neatly on the bench bordering the track. She was wearing track jersey and pants, no number on the jersey, the shorts slit partially up the side to allow easier movement of her muscular legs and thighs. She stood at the starting line for a moment, surveying the track, and then she placed her left foot just behind the line, stooped over it, right foot and left arm back, right arm up, took a deep breath, and was off from a standing start.

  He clicked his stopwatch again, timing her as she went through her longer third-day sprints, adding to yesterday’s distance by half now, running 330 yards in forty-five seconds, walking for five minutes after each of the three runs. She was beginning to sweat through her jersey and pants. He watched her carefully as she zippered open her carry bag, took out her blocks, and placed the lead block some fifteen inches behind the starting line. She measured the distance for the rear block, adjusting both blocks carefully. She stood up, sniffed of the brisk autumn air, put her hands on her hips, hesitated a moment, and then knelt into the blocks. She was such a pretty girl, black-haired and blue-eyed, nineteen years old—it was a pity she had to die.

  Her form was excellent.

  Some coach back there in Ohio had taught her well.

  He could almost hear the silent command in her head: On your marks!

  Left leg reaching back for the rear block. Right leg moving back to touch the front block with her toes. Hands behind the line now, not quite touching it, thumbs pointing inward. Weight on the left knee, the right foot, and both hands. Head level. Eyes looking out some three feet ahead of the line.

  Set!

  Hips rising. Body rocking forward to move the shoulders ahead of the line. Soles of both feet pressed hard against the blocks. Eyes still fixed on that imaginary spot three feet ahead. A spring tensed for sudden release.

  Bang!

  The sound of an imaginary gun in her head and in his, and her arms were suddenly pumping, the right arm pistoning forward, the left arm thrusting back, the legs pushing simultaneously at both blocks, left leg reaching out to take that first long important step, right leg thrusting hard against the block, and she was off!

  God, what a glorious runner!

  He timed her at nine seconds, give or take, for each of the half-dozen sixty-yard sprints, watching as she walked back for recovery after each one. She was drenched with sweat when finally she came back to the bench to take a towel from her carry bag and to wipe her face and arms with it. She put on the jacket of her warm-up suit. There was a chill on the late afternoon air.

  He smiled, and put the stopwatch back into his pocket.

  She was walking away from the track, head bent in seeming thought, even her jacket soaked through with perspiration, a high sheen of sweat on her long legs, when he approached her.

  “Miss Welles?” he said.

  She stopped, looked up in surprise. Her blue eyes searched his face.

  “Corey McIntyre,” he said. “Sports USA.”

  She kept studying him.

  “You’re putting me on,” she said.

  “No, no,” he said, and smiled, and reached into his pocket for his wallet. From the wallet, he took a small Lucite-enclosed card. He handed it to her. She looked at it.

  “Gee,” she said, and handed the card back to him.

  “You are Darcy Welles, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, and nodded.

  She was, he guessed, five-feet-eight or-nine inches tall. Her eyes were almost level with his. She was studying him, waiting.

  “We’re preparing an article for our February issue,” he said.

  “I’ll bet,” she said. She was still skeptical. He was still holding the card in his hands. He was tempted to show it to her again. Instead, he put it back in his wallet.

  “On young female athletes,” he said. “We won’t be concentrating exclusively on track stars, of course…”

  “Oh, sure, stars,” she said, and rolled her eyes.

  “Well, you have attracted some attention, Miss Welles.”

  “That’s news to me,” she said.

  “I have your complete file. Your record in Ohio was an impressive one.”

  “It was okay, I guess,” Darcy said.

  She was glowing from the workout. Her skin looked fresh, her eyes sparkling. There was that about athletes. All of them, men or women, all looked so goddamn healthy. He envied her youth. He envied her daily regimen.

  “Much more than just okay,” he said.

  “Right now, if I can break twelve, I’ll go dancing in the streets.”

  “You looked good out there today.”

  “You were watching, huh?”

  “Timed those last sprints at about nine seconds each.”

  “Sixty yards at nine isn’t worth much.”

  “For practice, it’s not bad.”

  “If I’m going to do the hundred in twelve, I’ve got to shave that down to seven.”

  “Is that what you’re aiming for? Twelve?”

  “Eleven would be better, huh?” she said, and grinned. “But this isn’t the Olympics.”

  “Not yet,” he said, and returned the smile.

  “Oh, sure. Maybe not ever,” she said.

  “Your personal best in Ohio was twelve-three, am I right?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and pulled a face. “Pretty shitty, huh?”

  “No, pretty good. You should see some of the high school records.”

  “I’ve seen them. Last year, a girl in California ran it in eleven-eight.”

  “Eloise Blair.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ll be interviewing her as well. She’s at UCLA now.”

  “What do you mean, interviewing?” Darcy said.

  “I thought I mentioned…”

  “Yeah, but what do you mean?”

  “Well, we’d like to do an interview with you.”

  “What do you mean? For Sports USA?”

  “For Sports USA, yes.”

  “Come on,” she said, and pulled a face that made her look twelve years old. “Me? In Sports USA? Come on.”

  “Well, not you alone. But we’ll be concentrating on female athletes…”

  “College athletes?”

  “Not all of them. And not all of them track stars.”

  “Here we go with the stars again,” she said, and again rolled her eyes.

  “We’ll be covering swimming, basketball, gymnastics…well, we’re trying to make it as comprehensive as we can. And forgive me if I use the word again, but we’re trying to zero in on the young American women of today who may very well become the stars of tomorrow.”

  “Twelve-three for the hundred-yard dash is a star of tomorrow, huh?” Darcy said.

  “At Sports USA,” he said solemnly, “we’re not entirely unaware of what’s happening in the sports world.”

  She studied his face again, nodding, digesting all that he’d told her. “I wish you hadn’t seen me today,” she said at last. “I was really rotten today.”

  “I thought you had great style.”

  “Yeah, some style. Sixty yards in nine seconds, that’s really terrific style.”

  “Did you do much running this summer?”

  “Every day. Well, not Sundays.”

  “What sort of a routine did you follow?”

  “You really interested in this?” she asked.

  “I am. In fact…if I could have a little of your time later this evening, perhaps we
can go into it at greater length. I’m primarily interested in your goals and aspirations, but anything you can tell me about your early interest in running, or your training habits…”

  “Listen, are you for real?” she said.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I mean, is this Candid Camera or something?”

  She looked around suddenly, as though searching for a hidden camera. They were standing quite alone on the edge of the track. She studied an oak in the near distance as a possible place for Allen Funt to be hiding. She shrugged, shook her head, and turned back to him again.

  “This isn’t Candid Camera,” he said, and smiled. “This is Corey McIntyre of Sports USA, and I’m interviewing young female athletes for an article we plan to run in our February issue. We’ll be concentrating somewhat heavily on track in order to take advantage of the season’s start, but we’ll also be covering—”

  “Okay, okay, I believe you,” she said, and shook her head again, and grinned. “Sheeesh,” she said, “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So you want to interview me, okay, I believe it.”

  “Do you think you can spare some time tonight?”

  “I’ve got a heavy test coming up in Psych tomorrow.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” he said. “How about…?”

  “But I think I know the stuff already,” she said. “Tonight’ll be fine, provided I get to bed early.”

  “Why don’t we have dinner together?” he suggested. “I’m pretty sure I can do the interview in one meeting, and then—if you don’t mind, that is—I’d like to set up a convenient time for a photographer to—”

  “A photographer, sheesh,” she said, grinning.

  “If that’s all right with you.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “I can’t believe this, I’ve got to tell you.”

  “Would eight o’clock be all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, fine. Boy.”

  “If you can start thinking about some of the things I mentioned…”