Free Death Trap by John D. MacDonald

market to take a look at Richard Paulson. I had taken my time over a small purchase. I had guessed that he was the man behind the meat counter and it was confirmed when I heard a customer call him by name.
    He was a tall man with a long face and high color in his cheeks. His no-color hair was carefully and intricately combed so that it lay across the baldness of his head. His shoulders were narrow, his hands large and red. He was surprisingly thick in the middle, considering the gauntness of his cheeks. He wore his white apron with dignity, and as he worked his hands were deft. His eyes and his mouth were too small, and his nose was fleshy. He looked to be a coldly methodical man, and when he talked to customers his affability seemed forced and insincere. Watching him I thought I could understand a little more easily the reasons for Jane Ann’s rebellion. He would be too harsh and too logical. And I wondered if Nancy’s conformity was the result of a broken spirit. I could hear rigid moral platitudes coming from that coin slot mouth. It was odd to hear customers call him Dick. An equal number called him Mr. Paulson.
    As I drove by the house I could see, in the geometric placement of the red maples, in the rigid clipping of the box hedge, in the unhappy squareness of the house itself, reflections of his personality.
    It was a reasonable premise that Nancy would walk home from the high school. And the route she would take was obvious. I parked a block from the school. When the kids started coming out, I got out of the car and leaned against it. All the young girls looked alarmingly alike. Several times I was on the verge of speaking when I saw that I was mistaken. I glanced at the picture again to refresh my mind.
    Finally I saw her and I was certain. She was with two other girls. They were talking animatedly and, like the others who had passed, they gave me sidelong glances as they came abreast and the other two changed their walks in subtle ways, making an instinctive offer of young bodies, a subconscious response to maleness that is as old as the race.
    “Nancy?”
    She was nearly by me. She stopped and turned sharply, frowning, head tilted slightly, then pretty face becoming bland and cool as she realized she did not know me.
    “What do you want?” Her voice was pitched too high and it was slightly nasal.
    “I want to talk to you for a minute.”
    The three of them stood there speculating, staring at me. “What about?”
    “Is this yours?” I held the picture so she could see it.
    “Where did you get that?” Indignation, tempered by the slight coyness of a young girl talking of her own photograph.
    “I want to talk to you alone for a minute.”
    She spoke to her friends. “Wait up for me.” They moved slowly down the block, looking back. Nancy came hesitantly toward me and stopped a cautious distance away.
    “Where did you get that?”
    “It was his.”
    “I know. There were only two. I’ve got the other one.”
    “I want to talk to you.”
    “I’m not allowed to talk to newspaper people.”
    “I’m not one of those.”
    “Then what do you want? Who are you?”
    “I’m a friend of Vicky’s.”
    Her face changed and she backed away. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
    “Wait a minute. You don’t want to talk to any friend of hers—or his?”
    She backed further, lips compressed, shaking her head.
    “You’re going to run now, aren’t you, Nancy? You’ll run because you’re afraid you’ll find out he didn’t do it.”
    That stopped her retreat. She looked dazed for a moment and then curiously indignant. “Everybody knows he did it!”
    “Three of us know he didn’t. Vicky, Mr. Tennant and myself. Four when you count Al.”
    She moved back toward me, not knowing she was doing so. “That’s crazy. How could anybody know? He did it. Everybody knows he did it.”
    I took a chance. “Nancy, for a long time you knew he didn’t do it. What changed you?”
    “I was being silly when I