Free One Monday We Killed Them All by John D. MacDonald Page A

patient.”
    “I’ve been trying so hard.”
    “You’re doing fine. You’re doing all you can do.”
    “But what does he want ?” she cried. The phone rang. I guess it was a partial answer to the question she had asked. I took the call.
    It was a girl’s voice, young, husky, hesitant. “Is Dwight McAran there?”
    “Who is calling?”
    “Just a friend.”
    “I’d better have him call you back. If you’ll give me your num—”
    McAran appeared beside me, saying, “For me? Let me have it.”
    He was tense when he spoke into the phone. “Who?” he said. “Oh, it’s you.” He seemed let down. “Well, it’s nice to be out. Sure. What else can I say about it? What? No. Not so soon. Later on, kid. Give me a few days. Let me get used to being loose. Sure.” He hung up and looked at me. “You want a transcript of the call, cop? You want me to ask permission to use the phone?”
    “Who is she?”
    “A girl I’ve never seen, Lieutenant. But she’s written me letters. A lot of letters. And she sent me pictures of herself.” I was aware of Meg standing nearby. “She’s just a little girlwhose been cheering me in my darkest hours, Lieutenant. She was only seventeen when they tucked me away in Harpersburg, but she’s a full grown girl now.”
    “Who is she, dear?” Meg asked. “Do we know her?”
    He shrugged. “You might. You might not. Cathie Perkins, a blonde kid. Stacked.”
    “There’s a history teacher at the high school named Ted Perkins,” Meg said. “They have five daughters.”
    “This is the middle one of the five,” Dwight said. He smiled like a cat in a fish market. “I’m her hero.”
    “She’s not showing much judgment,” I said.
    Meg turned on me. “What kind of a remark is that? They’re a nice family. I think one of the Perkins girls would be good for Dwight, better for him than that Hanaman girl was, certainly. Because he’s been in jail, are decent people too good for him? What kind of an attitude is that, Fenn? Really!”
    Later on, I drove down to the station. We’re in a sandstone wing added to the original pseudo-Grecian City Hall in the early twenties. It backs up against the block containing the Brook County Courthouse, a gray, cheerless, Federalist structure. I parked in back of our wing. As I pushed the door open I heard warning shouts and saw a girl running toward me, as fast as she could run. Even though I had a moment to brace myself, she knocked me back against the doors. She yelled and squirmed. I trapped her wrists. She kicked me twice before I could immobilize her against the wall, and then she tried to bite. Detective Raglin and the jail matron we call Iron Kate hurried up and took her off my hands. I was glad to get a little farther away from the fetid, grainy smell of the girl. She wore black jeans, an ornate motorcycle belt, a soiled pale green sweater with nothing under it. Re-caught, she stood quietly enough, breathing hard, staring down at the floor. Her parched blonde hair had long black roots.
    “Sorry, Fenn. She just took off like a rabbit,” Raglin said. His bald head was pink with anger.
    “What is she?” I asked.
    “New girl in town, trying to work a drunk in the bus station. Chuck West made the collar. He followed them over to Alderman Street, back to one of those empty garages. When he went in to break it up, her boy friend who waswaiting right there had already coldcocked the drunk and they were checking his pockets.”
    “Tryna fine idennafacation,” the girl said in a raspy voice. “Some drunk follows me and falls on his head, see, and so Tommy and I, we’re tryna be decent, see, but we get arrested on a crummy rap.”
    “Off we go to the fish tank, dearie, where you’ll make a lot of new friends,” Iron Kate said and put a come-along hold on the girl’s wrist. Before they got to the stairs the girl started to resist. She gave a thin squeak of pain and went along with a new docility.
    “Drifting through,” Raglin said.