Free Death Trap by John D. MacDonald Page A

thought that. My father explained—”
    “Don’t kid me, Nancy. This is a small town. You don’t want to be unpopular. You don’t want to be different. You want to believe just what everybody else believes. So it was too expensive for you to be loyal.”
    “It wasn’t that way!”
    “This is a good picture, Nancy. The photographer made you look very honest and very brave. So I made a mistake. I’m wasting my time. You’re a good-looking kid but you’re another gutless wonder. There’s no point in asking you for any help. You’re too concerned about what people might think.”
    I flipped the picture at her. It scaled through the air, struck her shoulder, fell to the sidewalk. She snatched it up. Her face was red. Her eyes were narrow and angry. I watched her walk away. It was a calculated risk. The young want desperately to conform, yet at the same time. each one wants to feel unique and unswayed by public opinion. I counted twelve briskly indignant steps and thought I had lost. Then I saw the hesitation, saw her turn and look back at me. I looked away, snapped my cigarette into the road and opened the door of the wagon.
    She came back slowly, stopped her usual wary distance away.
    “What kind of help?”
    “Don’t waste my time, Nancy. Run off and play. Go sew up some doll clothes. This is business for grownups.”
    She stamped her foot. “What do you want me to do?”
    “Something you haven’t got the courage to do. Something very minor. Just meet me and talk to me with frankness and honesty and answer every question I care to ask you.”
    “But why?”
    “We’ve got a very ridiculous idea, Nancy. We’d like to find out who really killed your sister.”
    “That’s crazy talk! Al did it. It’s all over now.”
    I looked directly at her and I waited until a woman carrying a shopping bag walked by us. “I’ll tell you something not very many people know, Nancy. When a person is electrocuted, there’s a problem of timing. Once when a notorious kidnaper was executed, they made a mistake.”
    “What are you—”
    “Shut up and listen. They pulled the switch when his lungs were full of air. When that happens and the current hits, it makes a sound you can hear for four city blocks, a sound you can’t ever forget. So they watch the chest and pull the switch at the end of an exhalation. When they do that to Alister a week from today, then it will be over, Nancy. And until they do that it isn’t over.”
    Her eyes closed and she swayed, her face chalky. I moved toward her and caught her arm. She opened her eyes and moistened her lips and swallowed with an effort. She did not try to move away from me.
    “There’s—nothing I can tell you that will help.”
    “You can’t know that. But if you can make yourself believe that, it will be a lot easier for you.” I released her arm. “You can still run along with your friends. After next Monday you can start wondering if by talking to me you might have changed things. And you can wonder about that for all the rest of your life.”
    “I—can’t talk to you now.”
    “Why not?”
    “I have to go right home. I’ll be a little late now. Mother gets frantic if I don’t go right home. She’s been that way ever since—it happened.”
    “But you can get out again?”
    “Yes. But I have to be back by five-thirty.”
    “Can I pick you up somewhere?”
    “No. No, I couldn’t go anywhere in your car with you. I couldn’t have anybody seeing me in a car with somebody.”
    “Where do you usually go?” I asked.
    “Most of the time to Dockerty’s Drugstore where all the kids go. Maybe I could talk to you in the park there, on one of the benches in the square.”
    “I’ll wait for you.”
    She acted nervous and furtive. She started to turn away and turned back. “I don’t care what people think, but my father—”
    “You act scared of him.”
    “He’s different than he was before.”
    “Will this make you feel better? Nobody has to know what