Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

College Kill by Jack Q. Lynn

The cops knew the Jackson girl had died driving her car off the bridge. But they’d never be able to prove that he helped her!

There were three of them in the office. Three cops. And they kept walking around, hammering at me. From the right, from the left, from over me, yeah, even from down under.

Finally they shut up and one of them stood in front of me, smoking a cigarette. His name was Malone, and he was a pretty decent-acting cop, older but not tough-talking like the other two.

After a long time he said, “How the hell did you get in this mess, Lane?”

I considered it. Yeah, how the hell did I?

Matt Lane, the guy who could run over the biggest tackle the opposition had, anytime, the guy who made booting field goals look as easy as tossing pennies in a sack, the guy who could out-run a horse. That was me. Big Man on Campus at Crawford College.

And five days before graduation in June, the old man came around with a contract.

“Want to try coaching here, Matt?”

“Here?”

“Sure, here. Where else? We have a good bunch of kids coming up and you know our system inside out. We want you, Matt.”

So I signed a contract and became an assistant coach at Crawford College. Then in July I married Anne Morrow, a black-haired, blue-eyed kid with a lot of body. She had her senior year at Crawford coming up, but we weren’t waiting around until she graduated. The next thing, she got pregnant. We weren’t sure in September, but by the end of October all of the doubt was gone.

We decided not to tell anybody about the baby, not then, not even Anne’s folks who lived down-state. Anne was going home for a visit the second week in November and I planned to whip down there the day before Thanksgiving. We’d spend the holiday with her folks, and we’d tell them about the baby then. It would be one of those holiday surprises.

I put Anne on a train on Monday. The first two days she was gone I was okay. I kept busy with my physical education classes, slipped downtown to Joe’s at night and had a few beers, then sacked in early enough to feel good the next day. Wednesday I was restless; it was too damn quiet around our apartment, and Wednesday night I drank as much beer as I could hold. Thursday started out the same, the beer and the grousing around, so I decided to go over to the college library to do a little research on some work I was planning for a master’s degree.

An hour later I was at a table in the large library reading room when the girl got up from another table, put a book on the shelf near her, and reached for her coat which was draped over the back of a chair next to where she had been sitting. Her impact on me was jolting. I couldn’t get my eyes off of her. She was tall; her skin was a honey-colored tan, and her hair, black as black can be, tumbled from beneath a green beret to very wide shoulders. Her high, full breasts strained against the thin fabric of her dress, and the dress was pleasantly shadowed where it caressed her thighs.

I stared hungrily, feeling excitement begin to knot my stomach muscles.

And then suddenly I found her staring right back at me without moving. It made me feel uncomfortable. I lowered my eyes and shifted in the chair.

She moved then. Shrugging into her coat, she walked toward the front door of the library. For a moment I sat mesmerized, then I started after her, leaving the book I had been reading open on the table. Outside the front door of the library, I put on my heavy jacket and stood on the top step watching her. She was crossing the street in front of me. I went down to the sidewalk. She opened the door of a blue convertible parked at the curb on the opposite side of the street and slid under the steering wheel. I caught a flash of nyloned legs before the door closed. And then, without looking my way, she was gone in a surge of power.

I was suddenly a different guy. I wasn’t teaching physical education to a bunch of kids at a small midwest college. I didn’t have a wife named Anne. And I didn’t have a nice, warm, little apartment two blocks off the campus.

And all because that girl was burned in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

After my final class Friday afternoon, I went straight from the gymnasium to the library. But the girl wasn’t there. Nervous and sweating, I hung around for over an hour, waiting.

The girl didn’t show. My disappointment was so bitter I walked downtown to Joe’s to drown it. An icy wind seeped right through my coat and crept into my bones, and the first snow of the season was coming down. It was a lousy day. Gray, cold, snowing, and no girl. I had to get the girl out of my system, but I didn’t know how. I had another beer. Drinking didn’t help. I walked out of Joe’s at ten minutes after nine.

I saw the convertible as I hit the street. It was parked at the curb right in front of me. There was a shadow slumped behind the steering wheel and I saw a red cigarette glow in the dark. Then the shadow moved and the car door in front of me opened.

“Get in, Matt,” the soft voice of the girl said.

I got in without saying anything. It was a neat car, new, with safety belts and all the trimmings. The girl dropped her cigarette out of the wing window, kicked over the motor of the convertible and pulled away from the curb into the line of traffic. At the first stop light she said, “I’ve been waiting over an hour.”

“How did you know I was at Joe’s?”

She laughed softly. “I know plenty about you, Matt Lane — now. I’ve made inquiries.”

I twisted on the seat, opened my coat, and purposely put one knee against her thigh.

She didn’t even give me a glance. “My name is Edie Jackson,” she said. “My home is in New Orleans. I came up here to school because I wanted to be out on my own.”

The windshield wipers whisking the snow from the window made the only sound in the car.

I got out a cigarette and fired my lighter.

“Light two,” she said.

She didn’t ask me to light two cigarettes. She didn’t say please. She just said, “Light two.”

I lit two and gave one to her. She glanced at me then and smiled.

“Do you always get what you want?” I asked.

“Almost always. My father is a very wealthy man. And he dotes on me.”

“Other than your father?”

“Almost always.”

“Like now?”

I saw her frown. “What do you mean?” she said.

“You saw me looking at you in the library yesterday afternoon and for some reason you decided I was for you.”

She laughed softly.

“You’ve got it twisted, haven’t you, Matt?” she asked. “Turn it around. You want me.”

I didn’t say anything then. I couldn’t.

“Do I shock you, Matt? If I do, you’ll have to get used to it. I’m like that. I say what I think, and I do what I want to do.”

“I’m not sure I like you,” I said slowly.

“But you want me. And that’s what counts.”

She turned the car off of the main thoroughfare onto a sidestreet. We eased along another block, and then she turned into a driveway. I had a look at the house as the headlights swept over it. It was a small place with an attached single car garage. She drove the convertible into the garage and switched off the lights. A light in the back seat popped on when she opened her door.

I reached out suddenly and grabbed her wrist. She had one long leg out of the car. Twisting in the seat, she looked at me and I saw her tiny mocking smile.

“You’re taking a lot for granted, aren’t you, Miss Jackson?”

“Am I?”

We sat there a long time without moving, measuring each other with our eyes. And then she said, “I live here Matt — alone. Your wife is out of town. Now, do you want to come in for a drink?”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“You’re jailbait. I’m twenty-four.”

Her face clouded and she gently twisted her arm out of my grasp. “That’s something else you should know about me, Matt. I’m a woman. I’m eighteen in years, but I’m twice that age otherwise. I’ve had men, plenty of men. Not boys still wet behind the ears, Matt. I hate fumbling, sniveling boys. When I want somebody, he is a man!”

She got out of the car then and stood beside the open door, looking in at me. “Coming?”

We went into the house through a kitchen. She pulled the drapes across the windows in the front room before turning on a pair of lamps. I looked around. The room was expensively furnished. There was a fireplace in one wall; three logs were burning slowly. To my left was an open room that had been furnished as a study and behind me was the kitchen. To my right was a closed door.

“The bedroom,” Edie said, following the line of my eyes. She smiled then and slipped out of her fur coat. Whisking the green beret off of her head, she said, “Your coat.”

I shrugged out of it and she put it with hers in a small closet near the front door.

I looked her up and down then, making no attempt to hide the fact that I was taking a surface inventory. She was wearing slacks; they were dark green and showed off her figure.

My hands felt damp. I wiped them on my thighs.

She smiled and waved her arm toward a low sofa in front of the fireplace. “Make yourself at home, Matt. What’ll you have to drink?”

“Anything.”

She went into the kitchen. A moment later I heard the slam of a refrigerator door and then the crack of an ice cube tray being opened. I walked to the kitchen entry and stood there looking at her.

“Bourbon?” she said over her shoulder.

“With something sweet.”

She mixed the drinks and we went to the sofa in front of the fireplace. I sat down.

“Do you like music?” she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I like the classics,” she said.

There was a record player beside the sofa with a record on it. She clicked a switch on the player and music, low and soft, filled the room. Then she sat down beside me and put her leg against mine all the way up.

I looked at her.

“Why do you want me?” she asked over the rim of her glass, her eyes probing mine.

“Why does a man want any woman?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to tell me.”

I thought about it. Why did I want her? What crazy thing was it that had me sitting with her in the front room of her place? Me, a guy with a helluva sweet wife and a decent future. Why the hell was I here? Why was I jeopardizing everything I had and everything I might have? There didn’t seem to be a logical answer.

“You can’t tell me?” she said softly.

I stared at my feet. “No.”

I felt her hand crawl over my thigh then. “Don’t let it bother you, Matt,” she said. “I’ve never had a satisfactory answer either.”

I gulped my drink and put the glass on the floor.

“Matt?”

Twisting, I looked up at her. She was smiling cozily.

“I want to dance for you,” she said.

“Dance?”

“You’ll like it,” she said softly.

Too puzzled to move, I sat there on the sofa watching her. She began to sway with the music coming from the record player. Her mouth was fixed in a half-smile, lips open, straight white teeth gleaming. Her eyes became slits. She whirled around the room, head high, breasts straining. I watched her, fascinated. And then she was back in front of me, her body swaying suggestively. I saw her hand go to the buttons on the front of her blouse. The buttons came open and in one swirling motion she stripped out of the blouse and flung it away from her. She wasn’t wearing a bra. The naked half of her body was a honey-colored sheen in the lamplight, breasts tip-tilted. She turned her back to me. One hand opened the slacks above her hip and the slacks inched down. Suddenly she whirled around and the slacks dropped to the floor. She stepped out of them and danced forward and into my arms.

I wrapped one hand in her hair and jerked back her head. Her hands ripped open my shirt as I mashed my lips against hers.

Finally, I picked her up and carried her across the room. She kicked open the closed door.

It was dark in the room and hot. My body was wet with sweat. Edie stirred beside me.

“Cigarette?” she said, and her voice cracked.

I felt her groping toward the table beside the bed. She sat up and a moment later a match flared. She had two cigarettes in her mouth. I watched her light them and then she flicked out the match and stretched out beside me, putting an ashtray on her flat stomach.

We smoked in silence.

After a long while she said, “Tell me all about you, Matt.”

I told her. And later, when I had finished, she sucked in a deep breath and said, “Will you stay with me all week end? We won’t even have to go out of the house.”

I put one arm around her shoulders and squeezed her. “You’ll have to blast me out to get rid of me, baby.”

She laughed softly then and sat up straight, spilling the ashtray. She reached for a lamp and turned it on, and then brushed the ashes out of the bed and looked down at me. She was smiling.

“I’ve got a secret,” she said slyly.

“Yeah?”

She turned away from me and leaned over the side of the bed. I heard metal clicking against metal and I started to shove up on one elbow.

“No,” she said without looking at me. “Just stay where you are.”

I heard a sharp click then, and a whirring noise. After that her soft laughter. Then her voice: Talk dirty to me, Matt. I love it.

A shiver went up my back as I heard my own voice. The things I said almost made me sick.

Her voice came on again. Beautiful, Matt. More. Tell me more.

My voice was hardly more than a harsh, rasping whisper, but it was clear and audible.

Edie dropped one arm over the side of the bed and I heard a click. It became ominously silent in the room. I wasn’t sure of what I was going to do. And then I was on her fast, my balled fist pounding viciously into her belly. A hard object smashed against my head, stopping me.

I flopped back on the bed as I clutched my head. Edie leaned over me; there was a glass ashtray in her hand. Her face was not a good thing to see.

“Don’t ever do that again!” she shouted.

“You dirty, rotten—” The words flowed out of my mouth. Some of them I’d never used before in my life.

“You know all of the dirty names, don’t you?”

I stared up at her. “Why, Edie? Why a tape recording?”

“It’s a hobby,” she said, grinning nastily. “A profitable hobby.”

Quite a few things drifted into place then. And all of a sudden I thought I understood why she had been waiting for me outside of Joe’s. Or did I?

“There’s no rich hither in New Orleans, is there, Edie?”

“My old man was a seaman. I never saw him in my life.”

“And I guess you never lived in New Orleans. But... but why’d you pick me. A college boy. I haven’t got a hundred bucks to my name.”

I got to her with that. She frowned down at me and shook her head. Then, “I don’t know. I don’t really know why you. I guess maybe it was the way you looked at me in the library.”

“Sweet Jesus!”

“I know you don’t have money. Not my kind of money. But—”

She let it hang there, searching for words.

“I won’t give you a dime, Edie.”

“I don’t want a dime — from you.”

I pushed her away and sat up. “Okay, it’s been fun. You’ve had your kicks. Now give me that tape.”

She sat up on the edge of the bed and reached toward the floor. I turned my back to her and started to scoot out of the bed.

“Matt?”

I twisted around. She was up on one knee on the bed, leaning toward me. Her arm was raised high above her head. There was a spike-heeled shoe in her hand. I wasn’t fast enough. The heel crashed down on my head. Blackness hit me fast. I didn’t even have the sensation of sinking into the bed.

I wasn’t sure how long I was out. When I came around I was only sure of the sharp pains, like shooting needles, stabbing my mind. I opened my eyes, blinked, and closed them.

“Headache, Matt?”

Her voice came from above me. I opened my eyes again. She was sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, smoking a cigarette. She had put on a white gown. It was diaphanous and under it every flowing curve of her tanned body was visible and beautiful.

“I’m sorry I had to do that,” she said. “But I had to hide the tape.”

“You bitch!”

She smiled. Calmly, she butted her cigarette in an ashtray on her lap and put the ashtray on the floor. Turning slightly, she leaned over me. The front of her gown parted and the ring dropped on my chest. I looked down at it. It was a plain gold ring, no stones, just a gold band. And it was looped in a heavy gold chain around her neck.

It was my wedding ring.

I reached for it and started to jerk the chain from her neck, but her hand covered mine, stopping me.

“I want it, Matt. At least for this week end.” Her eyes bored into mine.

“For God’s sake, why?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a tiny smile curving her mouth. “I don’t really know.”

My hand with the ring in it flinched and her grip tightened. “I said I want it, Matt. Now please be a good boy. Don’t be difficult. Don’t force me to mail our little tape to Morgansville.”

“Morgansville?” I said in surprise.

“That’s where your wife is, isn’t it? Mrs. Matt Lane, care of T. M. Morrow, Morgansville, Illinois.”

I loosened my grip on the ring gradually. Then, “Has it ever occurred to you, baby, that I might be quite capable of killing you?”

“Yes. Yes, it has. But if you stop and think about it, Matt, killing me will only make things worse for you. You’d be wanted for murder then. As it is, you’re not wanted for anything — by the police. Right now all you have to do is be a real nice boy for one week end. Real nice to me. And then you get your ring back and a tape recording and a nice neat return to a dull life.”

I heard it, but I couldn’t believe it. People like Edie just didn’t exist.

I said, “You’re crazy, Edie.”

She shook her head slowly, her face tight. “No, not crazy. Maybe sick, but not crazy.”

“Sick?”

“Some doctors say nymphomania is a sickness. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. All I know is, I’ve had it as long as I can remember. Even when I was a little girl...”

There was a long silence and I didn’t break it.

Finally, she said, “The only difference between me and most of the other girls like me, I’m cashing in on it.”

“Okay,” I said wearily. “I might have sixty-eight bucks in the bank. I’m not sure. But whatever is there, you can have. Just give me my ring and that tape and—”

She was shaking her head. “No. I told you, Matt, I don’t want a dime from you.”

“Well, my God, what do you want?”

“Just you, for the next two days and nights.”

I could hardly believe what my ears had heard.

“You’re a big man, Matt.” Her hands rubbed my chest. “Muscular. Strong. I need you.”

I stared up at her. And then suddenly it was all very funny. I began to laugh and I said, “I’ve been a lot of things in my twenty-four years, baby. But a stud for a week-end? Never.”

She didn’t say anything. She just put her head on my chest and stroked me slowly with one hand, as the full length of her was pressed tight against me. That changed my mind faster than anything she could have said.

We didn’t leave the house until Sunday night. We didn’t eat much, we didn’t drink much, and we didn’t sleep much. It was a crazy, unbelievable week end for me.

I tried to find the tape, of course, but without luck.

Early Sunday evening, Edie wanted to go for a drive. It was to be my last night with her. Monday morning she was to turn me loose with the tape and my ring.

The night was clear and cold. It was early. There was no moon, but the stars were out and the night was light. Edie drove the convertible north past the Crawford campus and out of town. There wasn’t much traffic on the highway. We eased along comfortable at forty miles an hour. Our conversation was idle and inconsequential. About ten miles north of town, we arrived at the river bridge. Edie slowed the convertible. We crossed the bridge, and then she turned off the highway onto a rutted lane. We topped a rise and dropped onto a deserted stretch of sand along the river. She stopped the car and switched off the lights. The only sounds were night sounds and the soft slapping of the slow-moving river.

Edie reached for me.

I looked at her in surprise. “Here?”

Thirty minutes later we were driving back into town.

“It’s almost ended, Matt,” she said softly.

“If I said that grieves me, I’d be a liar.”

She looked at me. “Really, Matt? Don’t you feel anything towards me?”

“If I told you how I really felt, baby—” It was then that I saw the figure of the man in our headlights. He was facing us in a half-crouched position, his arms thrown above his head as if to ward off the onslaught of the powerful body of steel almost on him.

“Edie, Edie, look out!”

I felt the violent swerve of the convertible as she jerked the wheel. The loud thump that I heard brought horror rushing up inside me. And then terror gripped me, for instead of stopping, Edie had tromped on the accelerator. I looked back through the rear window and was just able to distinguish a dark form sprawled in a circle of lamplight on the street.

“Stop, Edie! Good God, stop! You hit a man!”

“Shut up!”

She turned into a sidestreet at the first corner, raced two blocks, and then turned again. I sat in stunned silence all the way to her house. I guess I really didn’t want to go back to the man she’d hit, not any more than she did. Inside the garage, she got out of the car quickly and pulled down the garage door.

I slid across the front seat slowly and got out.

Edie was in front of the convertible, examining it. “Smashed the fender a little on your side,” she said, coming to me.

We walked into the house together. When we reached the kitchen, she moved up close to me and hooked her hands behind my shoulders. “I couldn’t stop, Matt. I couldn’t stop because of you.”

“Because of me?” I said.

“What would it look like in the newspapers tomorrow? Your name and mine. Your wife—”

“But we might have been able to help that man, Edie.”

“Sure. And then again, maybe he just got up and walked on home.”

“Not him. I saw him. He was flat on the street and—”

She fastened her mouth on mine, stopping my words. I jerked my head away from her and shoved her away from me.

She straightened. The surprised look of realization appeared in her eyes.

“Matt, you’re frightened!”

“You’re damn right I am!”

“Don’t be,” she said, coming close to me again. “Please don’t be. When a man’s frightened he’s no good — for anything.”

I grasped her shoulders and threw her away from me. She hit a wall hard and slid down to the floor. Staring down at her, I was suddenly sick to my stomach. I thought I was going to vomit. I drew back my foot.

“No, Matt! Don’t!”

The toe of my shoe sinking deep into her stomach was the best feeling I’d had in three days.

I went into the front room then and sat down on the low sofa in front of the fireplace. My thoughts were scrambled and I tried to get them in order.

A long time later I heard Edie crossing the front room behind me. She was sobbing softly. I didn’t look around at her, and she didn’t say anything. She went into the bedroom and closed the door.

That night I cat-napped on the sofa.

I was up early. The paper boy came up the front walk about six-thirty. I had to force myself to wait until he was out of sight. Then I got the paper off of the small front porch.

The story was right there on page one, a full column.

“Well?”

I looked up. Edie was standing in the bedroom doorway, staring at me. She was barefooted and in a robe that she held tight to her throat.

“He’s dead,” I said. “He died in the hospital about an hour after we hit him. He had three kids.”

In a sudden flare of anger, I threw the newspaper at her. She came into the room and picked it up off the floor. I watched her read the story. Her face didn’t reveal how she felt. When she had finished, she dropped the paper in a chair and went back into the bedroom.

I knew then what I had to do.

I stirred up the fire in the fireplace and put on another log. The story said there had been no witnesses, but the police had found some particles of paint on the dead man’s clothing. They expected to be able to match the paint with that on the car that was involved.

Expected to match it!

I knew they would match it — eventually. And when they did, I’d be just as guilty as Edie.

There was only one thing for me to do. Only one out. I had to get rid of Edie and the convertible.

When she came back into the front room a long time later, she was wearing a red turtleneck sweater, tight-fitting white slacks, and moccasins. And in her hand was a tape recording. She walked right up to where I was sitting on the sofa and held the tape out to me.

“Good-by, Matt.”

I took the tape without saying anything and threw it in the fireplace and watched it burn. Facing her then, I said, “My ring.”

She stood in front of me. “Get it,” she said, arching her back.

I don’t know what she expected. Maybe she figured I couldn’t touch her without wanting her. If that was it, she knew different right away. I slid my hand under the red sweater, at her waistline, and up until my fingers found the ring. Then I jerked. The chain cut into her neck all right, because she flinched. I pulled the chain out of the ring and threw it toward the fireplace. Then I put the ring on my finger where it belonged and sat down on the sofa.

“I thought you wanted to leave,” she said.

“Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

I didn’t answer her.

I thought the day would never end. I killed most of it with a bottle in my hand. I didn’t get drunk; I couldn’t afford to do that. I just got a sharp edge and held it. Edie made a couple of stabs at quizzing me, but finally gave up. She prowled the house, restlessly. But I didn’t let her bother me. I had just one worry. Would the cops somehow trace the murder car to Edie’s place before dark? If they did...

I wouldn’t let myself think about that.

At eight o’clock, straight up, I smashed an empty bourbon bottle on Edie’s head. She had been sitting in a wing-chair with her back to me, reading a magazine. When I walked up behind her and hit her, she slid out of the chair and sank to the carpet without a sound. I dropped what remained of the bottle.

If the blow had killed her, it would have saved me further trouble. But it hadn’t. I found her heartbeat, when I put my hand to her body.

I moved quickly. I got Edie into her fur coat and then shrugged into my own coat. I turned off all of the lights. Edie wasn’t heavy. I carried her out to the garage and put her in the front seat of her convertible.

This was the risky part. If the cops were scouting around for a dark blue convertible, I was going to be in trouble.

I backed out of the garage and turned north. I stayed off of the main thoroughfare as long as I could and watched my speed and all of the neighborhood stop signs. My route took me behind the Crawford campus, but just two blocks beyond the college I had to swing out to the highway. I headed north again and drove at a moderate speed. I slowed at the river bridge, crossed the bridge, and turned off of the highway onto the same rutted lane Edie and I had been down Sunday night. On the sandy stretch of ground at the edge of the river I swung the convertible in a wide U turn, switched off the headlights, and drove back onto the rutted lane and stopped.

Dragging Edie out of the car, I stretched her out on the lane in front of the right wheel of the convertible, I had to be sure she died. And I had to be sure she died the right way. Then, before I could think about it too much, I jumped in the car and drove it over her body. I didn’t hear a sound from her. I drove the car back and forth over her three times and then I got out again and stuck my hand inside her coat over her heart. Her chest felt like it had slipped a little to one side. There was no heartbeat.

Lifting her, I carried her around to the driver’s side of the car and, finally, managed to shove her under the steering wheel. I hooked the safety belt around her middle, to make sure she didn’t slip out of the car before I wanted her to, rolled down the window beside her, and kept the door open. Pushing against her, I was able to squeeze part way under the steering wheel. Then I drove to within a few yards of the highway, where I braked. I got out and walked up to the highway.

There were no headlights in either direction. I ran back to the convertible and squeezed in beside Edie again, drove the car onto the highway, and backed down the road several hundred yards. Switching on the headlights, I gunned the motor. The car rolled smooth. I hit thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour — and I was on the bridge. I swung the front door wide, whipped the steering wheel to the right and bailed out. The last thing I remembered was the crash as the convertible ripped through the bridge railing and plunged into the river.

I wasn’t sure how long I was out. When I came around, all I knew was that I was flat on my face on the concrete. I rolled over and sat up. My hands burned smartly. My knees were cut open and there was a gash on my head just below my hairline. Blood dribbled down into my left eye, blinding me.

I finally got to my feet and staggered over to the hole in the bridge railing. It was too dark to see anything down below, but the bubbling sound coming up to me was loud. I turned then and that’s when I saw the figure of the man walking across the bridge toward me.

“Hey, mister,” the figure said, “were you in—”

That was all I heard. I ran as fast as I could off of the bridge, went down through a ditch and over a fence into a field.

One hundred yards into the field I stopped running and turned toward town. It was slow going, but it was the only way. I couldn’t risk being seen, and I had to get to my apartment before daylight.

I walked at a steady pace, vaulting the fences as I came to them. The highway was to my left and I kept it in sight. I hadn’t covered too much ground when I saw the winking red light winging along the highway. I stopped and watched it until it was out of sight. If that was the highway patrol or an ambulance heading for the bridge, it meant somebody had already found the convertible.

The first red-gray streaks of dawn edged the horizon, when I hit the city limits. I followed the alleys to my apartment. I cleaned up. Much as I felt like it, I couldn’t chance going to bed. It was imperative I be on schedule all day. So I sat in a deep chair in the front room and chain-smoked cigarettes until the paper boy arrived.

It was all there, right on page one.

A girl, identified as Edie Jackson, 18, of New Orleans, had apparently driven her car off of the river bridge ten miles north of town. The county sheriff tentatively had identified her convertible as the car that had struck and killed a Crawford man on Sunday evening. The paint on the car matched the particles found on the victim’s clothing.

I read the rest of the story fast.

Miss Jackson, a freshman student at Crawford College, was found strapped in a safety belt when sheriff’s officers pulled the car from the river. She was dead.

The sheriff speculated that the girl may have become depressed after fleeing from the Sunday night accident scene and committed suicide.

However, an air of mystery surrounded the discovery of the car in the river.

Harold Stribling, an itinerant, was asleep under the river bridge when the car plunged off about eight forty-five last night. Stribling said he ran up to the highway to secure aid as soon as he realized what had happened.

On the highway, he claims to have seen a man who ran from the scene when he called to him. Stribling then went to a nearby farm house and called the sheriff’s office.

Stribling told authorities he would not be able to positively identify the man, but...

I couldn’t read any more.

I had a full schedule of classes that day. They were pure hell. I managed to get through the morning sessions; then shortly after one o’clock that afternoon a man walked into the gymnasium. I watched him with some apprehension as he talked to a student, and then the student pointed to me. The man came toward me.

“You’re Matt Lane?” he said.

“Yes,” I said huskily.

He showed me a badge. “You’ll have to come downtown with me, Mr. Lane.”

I’d never been inside a police station before...

Now the soft-talking cop named Malone was standing in front of me, smoking a cigarette.

“Let’s start all over again, Lane,” he said. “Did you know this Jackson girl?”

I got a grip on myself. “If you mean the girl,” I said, “who drove her car off of the river bridge last night, no, I didn’t know her.”

“How come you know she drove her car off the bridge?”

“I read about it in the paper this morning.”

“She was a freshman student at the college.”

“I teach physical education and coach. There are no girls in my classes.”

“You’re positive then that you didn’t know the Jackson girl?”

“Positive.”

He sucked in a deep breath and looked at one of the other cops. “Play it, Simpson.”

The cop pushed away from a wall and walked toward a record player. I leveled my eyes on him. What the hell was going on? The cop snapped a switch and the next voice I heard was Edie’s!

Then my own!

I couldn’t move. I tried to swallow. It was a frame!

I was being framed by someone who was dead!

The cop snapped the switch, cutting off the recorder.

“Now, Mr. Lane...” Malone said. He let it hang there.

I knew, of course, what Edie had done to me. The tape I had burned at her place the previous day — I hadn’t played it to be sure that it was my own!

“We found several other tapes, Lane, but this particular one—”

“Okay,” I said, interrupting Malone, “so I lied about knowing her. I just didn’t want to get involved. I got a wife. You know how those things are. That’s all—”

He cut me off. “There’s a couple of things mighty peculiar about the Jackson girl’s death. Medical examination turned up a large bump on her head. Too, her chest was crushed and the lungs punctured. She could have received these injuries in the crash, but — well, we found the girl strapped into the car by a safety belt. And we don’t figure it’s too likely she hit the steering wheel hard enough to crush her chest seeing as the belt wasn’t broken.”

He paused and looked at me steadily.

I wanted to run. But where?

“The truth of it is, Lane, we found tire marks on the girl’s clothing, glass in her hair, and this in the front room of her house.”

He opened a desk drawer and held up the top quarter of a broken bourbon bottle. He held it gingerly by the jagged edge.

“There are fingerprints on this, Lane. Are they yours?”

Hang on, boy, I told myself. Hang on tight. They still haven’t got you cold.

But I knew they’d get me eventually. They always did. And before I knew it, I was talking, telling them everything.

They put it on tape. And later they had it on paper and the paper in front of me. They wanted me to sign my name.

I did.