Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 57, No. 3. Whole No. 328, March 1971

He Was Always a Nice Boy by John D. MacDonald[3]

A commentary on our times? Judge for yourself...

I just cannot understand how such a thing could happen. It is a nightmare and I guess we have to live with it. Or try to forget it, or something.

Why, Martha and I have known that boy ever since he was a little bit of a tyke. They moved into that house right across there — of course, you already know which one. The white one with the dark red trim and the dark red front door. What year was it, Martha? Forty-eight? That’s right. Jimmy was about three then, two years younger than our youngest. Cute little kid. Sort of shy, but nice. You know what I mean. A likable kid. Nothing fresh about him.

You’re a psychologist, you say? Well, I hope you people have some sort of an answer for a thing like this. Nobody in the neighborhood has any answer, I can tell you. This is a nice quiet neighborhood. It being a dead-end street helps out.

Well, they moved in in forty-eight like I said. A nice young couple with a three-year-old kid. Joe Bell was working at the heater company then, and Connie was home with the kid. They seemed like nice enough people, you understand, but they never did get what you’d call real friendly with anybody on the block.

They had plenty of friends all right — people they knew before they moved out here. I’m not saying anything against them, these friends of theirs, but they weren’t exactly the sort of people who would have fitted in well in this neighborhood. Martha and me, we’re not what you’d call prudes. We like a drink once in a while, and we like to go to parties. But they really had some dandies there over at the Bells’ house. Until way in the morning, whooping and hollering so you’d wonder how the kid got any sleep, but I suppose he was used to it. Joe would have a hell of a hangover some mornings, but he’d make it to work all right. He’s the sort who wants to get ahead.

Back there in forty-eight and forty-nine, that was when women used to come around about every afternoon and they’d play bridge over there. Martha heard they played for some pretty good stakes, too. I remember one time when they first moved in Connie had Jimmy in a sort of harness thing with a loop that went over a wire so he had plenty, of leeway to run up and down the side yard. He’d play out there by himself in the afternoons.

It got to raining one day. Not hard. There was the kid out there in the yard and Martha got to fretting about him. I was at work at the time. Anyway, Martha went over and unhooked him out of the harness and took him to the front door. Got sort of snippy about it, didn’t she? — Connie, I mean. It made Martha feel a little bit like she’d poked her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. But there were no hard feelings about it. They were polite after that and we were too.

Now don’t get the idea from that that Jimmy was abused. There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for that kid. They kept him dressed up fine, and they fed him well, and he was a healthy kid. You could see that. We heard sort of indirect-like that Connie couldn’t have any more kids and that was why they had just the one.

It was in 1950 that Joe Bell quit at the heater company and went over to Julliard Aircraft. They were on Air Force contracts then, and Joe put in a lot of overtime and really began to haul in the money. Jimmy was five then and going to kindergarten. About six months after Joe went to work there, Connie got a job there too. They put Jimmy in a sort of day-nursery deal that kept him all day while Connie was working.

Her hours were different than Joe’s, so she got a car of her own and when she came home she’d pick up Jimmy from the day school. That was the year they enlarged the cellar and put in the big recreation room and that was where they had their parties whenever they had a chance. Working agreed with Connie all right. She was a good-looking woman right from the start and when she began to put some of her earnings on her back she really began to look like something. And they got Jimmy a whole mess of expensive toys. When he was six he had a little car with an electric motor in it and he used to tool it up and down the block.

Jimmy played with our kids a lot. We’ve always been nuts about picnics in our family, and the kids wanted Jimmy along, so we’d ask and it was always fine with them for Jimmy to come right along with us. It got so automatic that on Sunday he’d come right along and we even stopped bothering to ask. Mostly because they slept so late on Sundays that you would have to wake them up to ask them.

Right from the beginning Jimmy was a self-reliant little kid. He’d get up on Sunday and he’d make his own breakfast over there, being careful not to make too much noise, and then he’d come over. When the weather was too bad for picnics he’d come on over anyway and he played good with our kids. No scraps and fusses. When he hurt himself that kid wouldn’t let out a peep.

Well, Joe and Connie stayed right on at Julliard right up through fifty-five. Jimmy went to the Arthur Donovan School — that’s the public grade school just five blocks away from here. Let me see. In fifty-five Jimmy was ten, and he must have been in about the fifth grade. You could tell by talking to the kid that he was bright, but he didn’t do too well in school. They said he was dreamy. He’d walk on home with our kids and he’d let himself in over there and fix his own lunch and fool around.

I think about then he was making those airplane models. He’d do good work on them, but he’d never completely finish one. Never get it finished to the point where he could take it out and see if it would fly. That may mean something to you. I don’t know. Joe and Connie bought him good kits. The kind with regular little gasoline engines that go in them.

Every summer they’d send him to what I guess is just about one of the best camps for kids in the country. He’d go for the full ten weeks. When I got interested in having our kids go to a camp — you know, just for a couple of weeks because we figure it’s good for them — I sent for the catalogue from that camp Jimmy went to. It certainly had everything. Swimming, riding, rifle range, archery, water skiing. But the price would curl your hair. We sent ours to the Y camp, and they seemed to like it fine after they got over being homesick.

Jimmy never had very much to say about the camp. I guess he liked it all right.

Connie quit working in fifty-five. I guess she was laid off along with a lot of the others. She spent some time at home but I guess she was bored. She went out a lot in the afternoon. After a while it got so she was going out just about every day and not getting back until pretty late.

Then we heard about the trouble. I guess it nearly broke up their marriage. It was some guy she had worked with at Julliard. But somehow Joe and Connie settled their differences and things were all right between them again.

They were never stingy with Jimmy. He always got a big allowance. More than I could afford to give mine. Jimmy didn’t throw it around. He’d save it up and buy stuff for himself and then sort of lose interest in what he bought. Then he’d give it away. Usually to my kids. I couldn’t see any harm in their accepting.

By the time he was twelve he was a real self-reliant boy. They let him do just about as he pleased. He roamed all over the city on that bike of his. A top-grade English bike with a gear shift and all. He’d go to the movies whenever he felt like it. I tell you it gave me a time with mine because he was younger and he had more freedom than I’d give mine. Jimmy could come back home at any time he pleased, and if he was hungry he always knew where to find food, plenty of it, and he knew how to fix it himself.

Having him so reliant gave Joe and Connie more freedom than we had with ours. When Joe and Connie got a chance to take off for a few days they could go right ahead, and Jimmy was okay to stay home alone and look after himself.

He was always a good kid and a pleasant kid, and nice to be around, but he never did seem to have very much of a sense of fun. You know what I mean? He never acted silly the way kids do. I guess because he was so self-reliant.

There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for that kid. He had the best clothes they could buy him. When he was sixteen — that was in sixty-one — they bought him an almost new convertible for his own. He wasn’t careless and reckless with it. He was a good driver for a kid. A good safe driver.

I think it was about then he started seeing less of my kids. He spent a lot more time alone. I don’t know where he’d go off to, but sometimes he’d stay away overnight. It didn’t seem to worry Joe and Connie too much.

They sent him off to school when he was eighteen, and three months later he was back home. That was the damnedest thing. I don’t know what kind of people they have at that college, but they were certainly way off the mark when they said that Jimmy wasn’t emotionally mature enough for college. Jimmy had all his emotions under control. Why, he could talk to you just like you were talking to another grownup. It was a pleasure to talk to that kid.

It seemed to me like a kind of a waste when he got that job at the drive-in. A good-looking, bright kid like that. I suppose it means something to you people’ that he never had a girl, and never had very much to do with girls. I suppose that’s what you call significant. He didn’t have anything to do with girls until... I can’t say it and I even hate to think about it.

You take a kid like that. Hard-working parents who did everything in the world for him. Nothing was too good for Jimmy. It makes you wonder.

I see you keep writing things down. I don’t see what good I can do you. He was a good kid from a good neighborhood.

Last night Martha and I stayed up a long time, talking about it. What can you say? Even if you could have asked Jimmy about it before he died, I don’t think he could have told you why.

What Martha and I said, we said it seems as if there is kind of... of an evil thing loose in the world these days. Something terrible and full of hate. Like maybe it lands here from those UFO’s. And then it takes over somebody, some ordinary person like Jimmy Bell.

I don’t know what Joe and Connie are going to do. They won’t answer the door or the phone. Can’t blame them, with those reporters and all hanging around. I talked to some of them at first, yesterday, but then they made me mad the questions they asked, like they wanted me to say the kid was a monster or something, wanting to know if I ever noticed him hurting animals or anything like that when he was little.

Well, that third waitress died this morning, but I guess you can say it’s a blessing. The other one will recover, they say. Just thinking about it turns my stomach. A knife is a terrible thing.

You know something funny? Peculiar, I mean — sure God not funny. I swear to you as sure as I’m sitting here that if Jimmy heard of anybody killing women like that it would turn his stomach, too.

He was always a good boy.