Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

Haven by James M. Reasoner

The park was designed to be a haven for people trapped in the steel-and-glass jungle that surrounded it, and oasis of peace and safety. It was not designed as a place within which four beautiful young women would be brutally slain.

The park was meant to be a haven. The men who designed it as a peaceful escape into nature, with its trees and flowers a counterpoint to the glass and steel of the metropolis that surrounded it. Perhaps at one time it served its intended purpose, but over the years it has become a haven for a different breed. At night, the only ones who venture into it are the sadistic, the perverse and the very unwise.

This cold winter night, flashing red and blue lights meant that someone else was there, too. The police had followed death into the park.

An unmarked car pulled up against the curb, and a short broad man got out. Lieutenant Will Macauley walked briskly towards the knot of people in front of the stone pillars that marked the entrance to the park.

He saw several uniformed officers from the black-and-whites, some white-coated ambulance personnel and the inevitable crew of curious onlookers. Macauley wondered where they all came from, especially at midnight on one of the coldest nights of the year.

Macauley was not in a good mood. He had just settled down in his comfortable chair to watch Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra on TV when the call came in. After he hung up, he had disgustedly put his shoes back on, dug his overcoat out of the closet and ventured out into the frigid air. He was in no mood for delays or foolishness.

Detective Ed Carlisle spotted Macauley coming down the street and hurred to meet him, carrying his open notebook. “Evening, Lieutenant,” he said. “Cold night to be out on something like this.”

“What do we have?”

Carlisle consulted the notebook, even though he could have recited the facts from memory. “White female, apparently strangled and/or beaten to death. Driver’s license gives her name as Elizabeth Jean Murray, age eighteen. Address out on Calmont. M.E. says she hasn’t been dead long. No sign of sexual assault.”

Macauley grunted, digesting the information. He said slowly, “I seem to have heard some of this before somewhere.”

Carlisle flipped the notebook shut. “Yes, sir, this is the fourth one. I ran it through already. Three weeks ago, then two weeks before that, then three weeks before that. All young girls, eighteen to twenty, all beaten to death here in the park. None of them were raped, and their money and valuables were intact. It looks like we’ve got a real dingaling on our hands.”

Macauley thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat. His breath made a cloud in front of his face when he spoke. “Who handled the other cases?”

“Gilmore was in charge of the other three. He’s in the hospital with double pneumonia right now.”

“Good night for it. Where is she?”

“Right where we found her.”

“Let’s take a look.”

The two men moved into the park, the taller, younger Carlisle leading the way. They walked down a cobblestone path, between starkly bare trees, until Carlisle left the cobblestones about a hundred yards into the park. Macauley followed him up the slight slope of a rolling hill. He could see flashbulbs popping on the other side of the rise as the police photographers went about their business.

The girl lay in a crumpled heap just on the other side of the hill. A portable floodlight lit the scene. Macauley stood and let his eyes move slowly, taking in the entire scene.

The girl’s skirt was hiked up over her thin legs and her coat was disheveled. Macauley could tell that she had put up a struggle. Her once-pretty face was battered and bruises were beginning to show on her neck.

Long, light blond hair was fanned out around her head. White teeth shone in the glare of the floodlight, because her lips were drawn back in a grimace that distorted her whole face.

In a hard voice, Macauley said to Carlisle, “Okay, finish up here. Who found her?”

“A drunk, looking for some place to sleep.” Carlisle tapped his notebook. “I’ve got his statement for what it’s worth. You want to talk to him?”

“No. I’m going home.”

For a moment, Carlisle forgot himself and said, “Going home?”

“She’ll still be dead in the morning.”

Macauley turned to walk away, then looked back over his shoulder and said in a voice that betrayed his weariness, “For God’s sake, put a blanket over her.”

It was still cold and overcast the next morning when Macauley entered the ugly grey building that had become his second home over the years. He went upstairs into the long, low-ceilinged room filled with desks and the clatter of typewriters. None of the men at the desks looked up from their hunt-and-pecking as Macauley crossed the room to his little cubbyhole of an office.

Carlisle was waiting in the office, sitting on a hard chair with three thick manila folders and one thin one in his lap. He put them on the desk as Macauley hung up his overcoat.

“I’ve got all the information for you, Lieutenant.”

Macauley sat down behind the desk without replying and opened the thin top folder. He scanned the flimsy sheets inside, then methodically read through the other three folders. Carlisle fidgeted while Macauley read.

When Macauley closed the last folder, Carlisle asked, “Any patterns there, Lieutenant?”

Macauley considered, then said, “All four girls were between eighteen and twenty, all were single, and they were all killed in the park. Two of them lived out in the suburbs with their parents, the other two lived by themselves in apartments here in the city.

“In fact, the first one, Jennifer Warren, lived in the building right across the street from the park. None of them had a police record. They were just pretty young girls who were killed in the park.”

“You think it’s a lunatic, then?”

“It looks like it, doesn’t it? Has anyone talked to the Murray girl’s parents?”

“Not yet. We notified them last night, of course, and told them a man would be out today. You want me to go?”

Macauley almost visibly shouldered the weight as he stood up. “No, I’ll talk to them. You check through those files again, make sure they’re complete and correct.”

Carlisle said, “Will do”, picked up the files and bustled out of the office. Macauley slipped back into his big coat. He hesitated at the door, then went back to his desk. He pulled a drawer open and stared at the bottle inside for a moment. Then he shook his head, slammed the drawer shut and went on out.

Calmont Avenue was lined with old two-story houses that had once been fashionable. Now the neighborhood had fallen on bad times, and the houses had been carelessly converted into apartments. Macauley spotted the correct number on one of the houses and pulled his car over against the cub.

A ramshackle fence surrounded the yard. Macauley pushed open the creaking gate and stepped over a toy fire truck on the cement walk. He could hear a television muttering somewhere in the house.

Just before he reached the porch, the front door of the house opened and a woman came out. They met on the steps, and Macauley automatically noted that she was tall and dark-haired. He nodded to her and went on up the steps.

Elizabeth Jean Murray had lived with her parents in a four-room apartment on the second floor. Macauley went up a flight of stairs that squeaked every time he put his weight down. A long hall led away from the landing, and he went down it to the last door.

A small faded woman about fifty answered his knock. Her eyes and nose were red from crying. Macauley said, “Mrs. Murray?”

She answered in a hushed voice, “Yes. What can I do for you?”

“I’m Lieutenant Macauley.” He held up the leather folder that contained his identification. “I hate to intrude on you at a time like this, but I’d like to ask you some questions if you don’t mind.”

“Come in. I don’t see how questions can help my Beth, though.”

The whole apartment was threadbare, from the rug to the furniture to the lives of the people who lived there. Macauley could feel the depression like a tangible thing.

Mrs. Murray sat on a ragged sofa, and Macauley selected an old brown armchair. He regretted the decision almost immediately, when a broken spring poked into him, but he did not get up. He pulled out his notebook and pen and said, “Do you know what Elizabeth was doing in town?”

Mrs. Murray twisted her hands in her lap. “N-no, she didn’t say. She left about six o’clock. She didn’t tell me where she was going. She never did.”

“Did she do that often — leave without telling you her plans?”

“Nearly every night. I suppose she was bored. She didn’t have a job, you know. She never could find one after she graduated from high school last year. She finally quit looking.”

“Did she have many friends?”

“Friends? No, not really. She was a shy girl. She could have had friends, she was a pretty girl. Have you seen her picture?”

Before Macauley could say anything, she got to her feet and plucked a small, framed photograph off of a table. He took it politely when she handed it to him. The girl in it was Elizabeth Jean Murray on a happier day, a smile on her thin well-formed face. He handed the picture back to Elizabeth’s mother.

Macauley looked down at his notebook and said, “Are any of these names familiar to you? Jennifer Warren? Linda Metcalf? Wanda Ansley?”

Mrs. Murray looked bewildered and said, “No, I don’t know them. Should I?”

“No, ma’am, we just thought you might have heard Elizabeth mention them.” He didn’t tell her that those were the other girls who had been murdered. “By the way, is Mr. Murray here?”

Mrs. Murray was looking at the picture, her eyes wet again. “No, he went to work. He didn’t want to stay here with me today. Do you need to talk to him? He works for the gas company.”

Macauley considered the information he had gotten from Elizabeth’s mother and decided that Elizabeth’s father would probably be no more helpful. “No, perhaps later, but not now.”

He closed the notebook and stood up, thankful to be off the broken spring. “We’ll be in touch with you if we find out anything or if we need any more information. We really are very, very sorry, Mrs. Murray.”

He started to turn away and leave, when something made him pause. Without really knowing why, he said, “There was a woman downstairs, leaving just as I got here. She had dark hair, probably in her mid-thirties. Do you know her?”

A look of apprehension replaced the sorrow on Mrs. Murray’s face. She stammered, “No-no, I... I don’t think so.”

Macauley knew then that she did. “Please, Mrs. Murray. You never know when something will be important in an investigation like this.”

“I can’t. I just can’t. It’s so shameful.” She looked longingly again at the photograph. “She’ll have to tell you herself. I can’t talk about it.”

Gently, “Who is the woman, Mrs. Murray?”

“Her name is Joanne Everett. She works downtown in some welfare agency. I don’t know which one.”

“Do you have her telephone number?”

“Beth put it here somewhere.” Mrs. Murray crossed the room to an old black-and-white television set and rummaged through a clutter of papers on top of it. “Do you have to talk to her?”

“We really should.”

“Here it is.” She handed him a slip of paper. “Lieutenant, these... investigations are confidential, aren’t they?”

“We do the best we can to keep them so.”

“Good! I wouldn’t want it in the paper.”

The tennis ball traveled in a high arc through the cold air. Joanne Everett moved back easily and slapped the ball into the far corner. Her opponent lunged at it, but came up a foot short. Joanne laughed and called, “That’s game, set and match.”

Macauley shivered inside his coat and wondered how the two women could play tennis in weather like this. He watched through the high fence around the court as Joanne Everett came toward him, swinging her racquet.

He looked at her more closely now than he had earlier. He put her age at about thirty-five, but the long legs revealed by the short tennis skirt were slim and nimble, resembling those of a teenager. He could tell by the play of the muscles under the skin that she was in superb condition.

Sleek dark hair fell nearly to her shoulders, and her face was open and nicely-formed. Her mouth was a little too large for classic beauty. Macauley thought she was very attractive.

When she reached the fence and stooped to pick up her jacket and the can of tennis balls, something possessed Macauley to say, “He who lives by the lob dies by the lob.”

She looked up at him through the chain link and said, “What?”

Embarrassed, he pulled his ID folder out. “Lieutenant Macauley. Are you Joanne Everett?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Could we talk for a few minutes? It’s about Elizabeth Murray.”

Her forehead creased as she frowned. “Elizabeth’s death was a needless tragedy, Lieutenant. What more is there that I can tell you?”

A gust of wind cut through him. “Why don’t we go inside somewhere? That wind’s awfully cold.” He paused, then asked in spite of himself, “How do you stand it in no more clothes than that?”

She slung the light jacket around her shoulders. “I like to stay in shape. You get used to the cold.” She waved at the redheaded woman who had been her opponent and who was now leaving the court at the opposite end.

Joanne turned back to Macauley and said, “There’s a little cafe down the street. We could talk there.”

“Okay. I could use some hot coffee.”

She unlatched a gate in the fence and joined Macauley. He hunched down deeper in his coat as they walked, but she strode along easily.

The small coffee shop was nearly full with a good lunchtime crowd, but Macauley grabbed a booth and ushered Joanne into it. When they were both seated, he asked, “Coffee?”

“Please.”

He gave the order to a harried waitress. She came back in a moment with two cups of steaming black liquid. After one sip, Macauley decided it would be an injustice to call it coffee.

Joanne Everett looked down into her cup and said, “What exactly did you want to talk about, Lieutenant?”

“First of all, what was your connection with Elizabeth Murray?”

“She was a client.”

“You’re not a lawyer — you’re a social worker.”

“She’s a friend, then — was a friend.”

“I talked to that welfare agency of yours. They told me you were playing tennis, and where. I didn’t believe them at first.”

“You should be more trusting.”

“That can get you in trouble. Your agency specializes in unwed mothers, narcotics addicts and prostitutes. Elizabeth Murray wasn’t pregnant, and there were no needlemarks on her. Was she hustling?”

Joanne Everett sipped her coffee. Macauley saw her hand shake slightly as she set the cup down carefully. “Not that I know of.”

“But she had been.” Macauley didn’t even bother to make it a question.

“She was on the streets last summer. She couldn’t find a job. Luckily, she never got busted. But she quit, Lieutenant, voluntarily. We helped her to quit, showed her that she had other paths she could follow.”

“Other avenues of escape, you mean.”

“Everyone needs to escape sometimes.”

“I guess so. Anyway, Elizabeth Murray used to be a hustler, and it’s possible she may have started up again. That gives us something, anyway.”

“What does it give you?”

“A reason for her to be on the streets at that time of night.”

Macauley drank a little more of the bitter coffee. “I guess you were out at the Murrays offering your condolences.”

“That’s right, I was.”

“They know their daughter used to be a prostitute?”

“They knew.”

“How did they react when they found out?”

Joanne Everett’s voice got harder. “Her mother wrung her hands and her father hit the roof.”

“Not very sympathetic, huh?”

“Not very. And I don’t think you are, either, Lieutenant.”

“I’m sorry the kid got killed. It’s such a waste when they’re so young.”

“Lieutenant, being a hooker is a waste no matter how old you are.”

He started to answer, but she overrode him in forceful tones. “It’s a waste of your body, a waste of your emotions, a waste of your soul. You lose all sense of dignity and pride. You become a thing instead of a human being. There’s nothing worse.”

“Not even death?”

“Not even death.”

He sat quietly for the space of several heartbeats, musing over what she had said. Then he commented, “I suppose you get to know a lot about hookers, working with them all the time.”

The smile that pulled at her mouth was mocking and sad at the same time. “I know so much about hookers, Lieutenant, because I used to be one.”

Joanne Everett produced no more information. Macauley thanked her for her cooperation, then went back to his office.

He had sandwiches sent in for lunch, spent the rest of the afternoon going over the files on the murdered girls and completing the paperwork on several other cases he was handling. The faces of Elizabeth Murray, her mother and Joanne Everett kept slipping out from the back of his mind.

Late in the afternoon, he spread out on his desk the photos that had been taken at the scene. They told him nothing more than he had seen before, and all he saw was a pretty young girl who had run out of luck.

The apartment building rose like a glass monolith across the street from the park. It was brightly lit, but the glow from it was swallowed up quickly by the darkness. It was nine o’clock, and Macauley would have bet there would be snow by morning.

Double glass doors led into the foyer of the building. Macauley put a big hand on one of them and pushed, but it didn’t give any. Neither did the other one. He rapped on them, ignoring the buzzer next to the door.

A big man hustled out of a glass-walled cubicle just to the left of the doors. Macauley saw that he wore a military-style cap and a long greatcoat with braid on the shoulders. Macauley recognized him as an old-fashioned doorman.

He pressed a button and said, “Yes?” His voice was slightly distorted by the speaker built into the wall.

Macauley held up his ID where the doorman could see it. When he saw that Macauley was a policeman, he stabbed another button and swung the doors open.

“Good evening, sir. Can I help you?”

Macauley looked around the starkly modern foyer. “Yeah, were you on duty here last night?”

“Yes, sir, I’m the regular night man.”

“Pretty security-conscious here, aren’t they?”

“You know how things are in the city, sir. We keep the doors locked at night.”

“And you let people in and out?”

“That’s right. I have to punch the buzzer to release the door.”

“Did anybody leave or come in last night between, say, eleven and eleven forty-five?”

The doorman thought for a minute before answering. “No, sir, I don’t believe so. I think all of the tenants were in before then. It was awfully cold, you know.”

“Everybody in tonight, too?” Macauley asked.

“Yes, sir. They say it may snow tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“This is about the deaths in the park, isn’t it, sir?”

“Maybe. I don’t suppose you saw anything, did you?”

The doorman indicated his cubicle with a wave of his hand. “I’m afraid not. I stay in the office most of the time, and as you can see, the angle is such that I can’t see the entrance to the park.”

Macauley nodded his agreement. “Do you remember Jennifer Warren?”

“Of course. She had lived here for six months when she was killed.”

“Did you know her well?”

“I knew her only slightly, sir. She often came in very late, and she usually spoke to me. That was the extent of our acquaintance.”

“Do you know what she did for a living?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid not.”

Macauley turned and looked out the doors. “If you think about it, step out here every now and then and take a glance across the way.”

“I’ll be glad to. I’ll certainly call the police immediately if I see anything suspicious.”

Macauley grunted and pushed on out the doors.

When Macauley got up the next morning, he went to the window and looked out, expecting to see the city blanketed in white. Instead, the cold grey sky was still just a threat. He wished it would go ahead and get it over with.

Carlisle was waiting for him when he got to the precinct house. The young detective was holding a sheet of paper in his hand. Macauley settled down behind his desk and took the paper from Carlisle.

It was headed Employment Histories and had a paragraph for each of the slain girls. Jennifer Warren was listed as a model and actress. Linda Metcalf had been unemployed, as had Elizabeth Murray. Wanda Ansley had worked in the Public Library.

Macauley looked up at Carlisle and said, “Okay, what do you think?”

“Murray and Metcalf lived with their parents, had no jobs and no prospects. Ansley had a cheap room and was still having trouble making ends meet. Jennifer Warren called herself a model and actress, but she listed only two TV commercials for a local station last year. Yet she lived in that fancy apartment house.”

“They were all hustling,” Macauley said in a flat voice. “But that still doesn’t get us anywhere. We know why they were out on the streets late at night, but that’s all.”

“You think it’s a psycho with a thing for prostitutes, then?”

“And how will we ever find him in a city like this?”

“So what do we do, Lieutenant?”

Macauley got up heavily. “I’ll check back on the other three girls, make sure they were hookers, then put a report in the file. All we can do after that is recommend increased patrols in the park.”

Macauley spent the day doing the necessary leg-work. He wondered briefly why he was putting so much effort into a seemingly pointless case, but he could come up with no answer.

Wanda Ansley had been dead less than two months, but she was already well on her way to being forgotten. Her landlady remembered her vaguely, as did her supervisor at the library. Both agreed that she had been a fairly pretty girl, shy and not overly bright. Her parents were both dead, and she seemed to have no living relatives.

Jennifer Warren had already been well checked out by Carlisle, so Macauley drove up into the northern fringes of the city to see Linda Metcalf’s parents.

Mrs. Metcalf was glad to answer Macauley’s questions. She was too obese to do much more than sit on a sofa and talk. Macauley tried to sift some grains of real information out of her endless prattle.

Mr. Metcalf was a thin, bony man who sat silently smoking a pipe, evidently used to the fact that he would get to speak only occasionally. Any questions Macauley put to him were answered at great length by his wife.

Macauley had about concluded that his trip had been a waste of the city’s time and gas, and he was ready to shut his notebook and interrupt Mrs. Metcalf’s endless flow of words, when she said, “Then there was that social worker Linda met somewhere, what was her name?”

Before anyone had a chance to speak, she answered her own question. “Oh, yes, Miss Everett. She tried to help Linda find a job. Lord, things might have turned out entirely different if Linda had found a good honest job. Miss Everett used to get so frustrated and angry with her when she couldn’t find work.”

Macauley managed to get in, “Do you remember her first name?”

“Whose first name? Oh, the social worker! Why, I don’t know that I ever heard her first name. Linda just called her Miss Everett.”

“Could you describe her?”

“Well, she was a very good-looking young woman. She had dark hair and such a pretty, wholesome face. Just like Linda.”

“How old would you say she was?”

“In her thirties, I’d say. Mature, but still young.”

Macauley was certain that the woman had been Joanne Everett. He felt a little stupid for not making the connection earlier. He suspected all four girls of prostitution, and Joanne Everett’s speciality was counseling prostitutes and exprostitutes.

He left the Metcalfs and headed back to the downtown area, wondering if it would be worth his while to get a picture of Joanne Everett and show it to Wanda Ansley’s landlady and employer, and to the personnel in the building where Jennifer Warren had lived.

He asked himself what the point would be, and he didn’t have an answer for that question, either.

By the middle of the afternoon, Carlisle had dug up a newspaper photograph of Joanne Everett taken two years earlier. She had been a speaker at a Mayor’s Seminar on Inner City Crime, and since she was the prettiest member of the panel, her picture had been featured in the paper.

Macauley paid a return visit to Wanda Ansley’s landlady, armed this time with the picture. The woman had a dim recollection of someone resembling Joanne who had visited Wanda. At the library, though, he had better luck.

“Oh, yes, that’s Miss Everett,” the supervisor of library clerks told him. “It was on her recommendation that we hired Miss Ansley.”

A different doorman was on duty at the building where Jennifer Warren had lived. The doors were not locked during the day, but the man was there to screen visitors to the building.

When Macauley showed him the picture, he pondered for a moment, then said, “Hey, yeah, I know where I seen her. She had a fight one day with Four C.”

“Four C?” Macauley asked.

“Yeah. The Warren girl, you know, the one that got killed. She lived there then.” He tapped the picture. “This lady went up to see her one afternoon. About a half-hour later, she came back down, and the Warren gal was right on her heels, yapping away.”

“What was she saying?”

“She was telling this lady to stop playing God, that she would live her life her own way, and to stay out of her business. She was really hot.”

“How about Miss Everett?”

“That her name? She was mad, too, but in a different way. She kept her cool and went on, left Warren here yelling at her. But she sure had fire in her eyes when she left. I tell ya, it was kind of embarrassing, there was people around, you know.”

Macauley knew.

Carlisle came into Macauley’s office an hour later and found his superior sitting behind the desk, head down, eyes staring blindly at the scarred wooden finish. His big, rough hands were cupped around a small glass half full of amber liquid.

Softly, Carlisle said, “What’s up, Will? You shouldn’t be doing that, you know.”

Bleak eyes rose to meet Carlisle’s. “Get the hell out of here, Ed. I’ve got work to do.”

Macauley felt the first flakes of snow on his face as he walked across the parking lot toward the building where Joanne Everett worked. It was five o’clock and he hoped to catch her before she left for the day.

She came out the door while he was still ten feet away. At the sight of him, she came to a stop and said, “Hello, Lieutenant.”

His tongue felt thick. “Hi. It’s snowing.” He felt like a fool as soon as he said it and wondered if he was destined always to say inane things to her.

She smiled slightly. “I can see that. No tennis today.” Her expression sobered. “What’s the matter, Lieutenant? Did you want to talk to me about something?”

Macauley looked at her before answering. He noticed for the first time that her eyes were a deep rich brown, almost the color of her hair. As he watched, a snowflake landed on her right eyelash.

“Will you have dinner with me?” he heard himself saying.

She looked surprised, but she said, “I think I’d like that. I don’t know your first name, Lieutenant.”

“It’s Will,” he said, smiling at her.

“All right, Will, I’d be happy to have dinner with you.”

My God, Macauley thought, My God!

He asked her if she liked pizza, and she said she did, so they ate pizza in a little Italian restaurant with red-and-white checked tablecloths on the tables. The pizza was made to their order, with a thick crust and plenty of cheese. Macauley wondered how anyone could eat pizza and look as graceful doing it as Joanne did.

“This is wonderful, Will,” she told him. “So much better than what you get in the franchise pizza places. Do you eat here often?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes. Most of the time it’s easier just to throw a TV dinner in the oven.”

“You live alone, then?”

“Yeah. I’ve got an apartment not too far from the precinct house.”

“Have you always lived by yourself?”

“For a long time.” Macauley never talked of it, even with people he considered friends, but something about this woman was different. After a pause, he said, “There was a girl once. We weren’t married, and it wasn’t fashionable in those days to just live together. We were young enough not to give a damn, though.”

Her brown eyes locked with his grey ones as she looked up. “A bridge fell down one day,” he continued. “She was one of the people on it. That was nearly thirty years ago.”

She started to say something into the silence that followed, but he broke it himself, saying, “Hey, you’ve still got some pizza left. C’mon, eat up!”

She finished the pizza with a smile.

It was dark when they left the restaurant. Light snow was still falling, big flakes drifting lazily down in the glow of the streetlights, forming an occasional white patch on the sidewalk.

They walked down the street to one of the new shopping malls, built in an effort to restore business to the downtown area. Inside, they walked through a boutique and then a sporting goods store, each enjoying the other’s enthusiasm.

With a cry of joy, Joanne spotted an arcade filled with pinball machines and other coin-operated games. They went inside, seemingly unaware that their presence was two-ply anachronism in this den of t-shirted and sneaker-clad teens and adolescents.

For the first time in his life, Macauley played a game called air hockey, and although the fast-moving puck baffled him and Joanne won the game seven to nothing, he laughed more than he had in a long time. He got more than his own back at pinball, his thick fingers manipulating the flippers with amazing dexterity as he won free game after free game.

When they left the arcade, Joanne’s hand was resting easily and naturally in his.

Macauley knew it was a magic spell, and he placed no faith at all in magic. He was going to enjoy himself while it lasted, though, even as he cursed himself for letting it happen.

They walked back down the street and got into his car parked at the curb in front of the restaurant. He said, “I guess I ought to take you home now. Where do you live?”

She said in a soft voice, “We could go to your apartment if you like, Will. I’d like to see it.”

The magic spell was over just like that. Macauley already hated himself for falling in love with this beautiful woman who, he knew, had committed murder. He was not going to compound his sin by going to bed with her.

He answered, “Let’s just drive around a little.”

She looked puzzled but replied, “Okay, that’s fine with me.”

Macauley went to the park, guided there by some inexorable automatic pilot inside him. As he drove, he heard himself saying inside his head, “You killed those four girls, killed them because they were prostitutes and wouldn’t quit. I know you argued with Jennifer Warren and Linda Metcalf. I think you did with the others, too.

“Your motives were good; you just wanted to save them from themselves. I pulled your file, saw the arrests starting when you were fifteen, saw the drug charges. I remember you saying that death was better than living like that. I saw you play tennis, I remember the muscles of your body and that fact that you’re a very strong woman. You could have done it easily.

“I can’t prove it. I just want to help you, Joanne. I want you to help me help you.”

When he brought the car to a halt in front on the park entrance, Joanne asked, “Why have you brought me here, Will?”

He opened his mouth to tell her what he had explained earlier to himself.

A car door slamming made him look around. Across the street, a taxi had just let a passenger out, and the man went up to the apartment building doors and pressed the button. A minute went by and the doorman did not appear, so with a shrug the man gave a tentative push to one of the doors and, when it swung open, went on in.

Macauley wondered where the doorman could be and why the doors were unlocked. The doorman must have gone out somewhere and left them open.

Then, suddenly, Macauley knew where.

The snow began to fall thicker and heavier. Macauley stared at the flakes and cursed himself again, this time for his stupidity, and then thanked God for the slamming of that taxi door.

Joanne was looking at him, puzzled by his silence. She asked, “Will, what’s the matter?”

He turned to her sharply, breaking out of his reverie, said, “Listen, I want you to go across the street into that building and find a phone. Call the police and get them here on the double. Then you stay inside there.”

Before she could reply, he leaned over and kissed her quickly on the lips. Then he had the door open and was out of the car, moving at a quick trot through the snow, into the darkness of the park.

The normally noisy city had become quieter as the snow increased. It was an eerie feeling, moving along in silence and darkness. Macauley reached inside his overcoat and found his revolver, but its cold presence in his hand made him feel no better.

His feet kicked up the thin film of snow at every step. He hoped he wouldn’t be top late. It was not a large park, but it was big enough so that it would take him a while to cover all of it.

A sudden scream told him he wasn’t too late not yet, anyway. The moisture-laden air muffled the sound, made its location difficult to determine. Macauley veered in what he hoped was the right direction.

He found himself going up a slight rise. When he topped it, he found himself looking down into a small bowl in the earth. At the bottom, he could make out a dark, writhing shape against the lightness of the snow. He fired a shot into the air.

Part of the shape detached itself with a strangled cry and broke away at a run, vanishing into the snow and darkness. Macauley pounded down the hill and knelt by the girl who lay sprawled on the cold ground.

She was breathing raggedly but deeply, and Macauley thought she would probably be all right. He took his overcoat off and wrapped it around her, knowing that she could be in shock and that she had to be kept warm.

He had just gotten to his feet, holding the girl up in his strong arms, when a great weight slammed into his back. He fell, dropping the girl, and a foot crashed against his ribs.

A twisted voice screamed, “She’s mine! If I can’t have her, no one can!”

Macauley rolled over onto his back and grabbed the foot as it came at him again. He twisted and heaved, and his attacker went over backwards. Macauley rolled away and struggled to his feet. He was surprised to find his gun still in his hand.

The man came to his feet and crouched, ready to spring again. As he began his lunge, Macauley brought his arm up deliberately and squeezed the trigger gently, just as he did on the police firing range once a month.

The force of the bullet brought the attacker up short, and he staggered backwards with a howl. He flopped down on the snow, rolling and whimpering in pain. Macauley kept the gun lined up on him. His heart was pounding faster than it had in years.

Sirens were screaming somewhere in the snowy night.

Much later, in the early hours of the next morning, Macauley and Joanne Everett and several other people listened as the night doorman said, “Miss Warren liked me, I know she did. I saw her going with men all the time, and sometimes they came in with her.

“She was nice to me, but she didn’t want to go with me the way she did with them. I have a great deal of time to think at night, and when I thought too much about her, I got angry, very angry.

“One night when she came in, I tried to get her to let me go up with her. She wouldn’t let me, and she got angry when I insisted. I got angry, too, and she ran away from me. I caught her in the park.

“It’s boring at night. I look outside a lot, and I see other girls like Miss Warren. Sometimes I get angry when I see them going with men like they do, and I know they won’t go with me. I go outside to stop them from acting like that.

“When it’s real late, no one is coming or going, and I don’t feel so bad about leaving the building. That building is my responsibility at night, you know.”

He looked smaller, huddled in a hospital bed without his cap and greatcoat. His right leg was in a cast, the bone shattered just above the knee by Macauley’s bullet.

Macauley, Joanne and Ed Carlisle went out into the hall, leaving the District Attorney’s men to continue the questioning. Carlisle said, “The doctors told me that girl will be all right. She’s pretty shook up, but the bruises will go away. I’ll bet she gives up hustling.”

Quietly, Joanne said, “I wish there was an easier way.”

Macauley gently put an arm around her. “Come on. I’ll take you home now. You need some rest.”

“So do you.”

“Don’t we all.” He waved at Carlisle as they went down the hall.

The snow had stopped falling. They crunched through it as they walked across the hospital parking lot to his car. It felt right to have his arm around her.

As he paused to brush snow off the windshield, she said, “Why did you take me to the park?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “I thought something. I was wrong, and I’m very damned glad that I was.”

He looked at her, put his hands on her shoulders, drew her closer to him. He said, “You told me two days ago that everyone needs to escape sometimes. I’ve been doing it for years in my work. I don’t think it’s enough any more. I think I need your help now.”

“I think I need your help, too. Please hold me, Will.”

He held her very tightly as they stood in the snow. They were warm despite the cold, and for a time, the entire city was their haven.