The Investigations of Avram Davidson by Avram Davidson Read Free Book Online Page B

and—zing!—in she goes. See what I mean? Maybe hit her head going over. Then she wouldn’t come up or yell for help or nothing. You hadda lotta experience with incidents like that. Whadda you think?”
    It was a pleasant day, the breeze whipping the water lightly. Sea gulls swooped and skimmed low, creeing to one another. Out in the river a tug passed slowly by with a string of barges. “I think,” said Bonn, after a pause, “that it sounds very possible. I think we ought to tell the police.” Oscar’s reply to this was a short, blunt syllable. “Don’t like the police much, huh?” Oscar’s lip went psshh! “They give you a hard time? A bum rap, maybe?”
    That did it. “Boy, you can say that again!” Oscar burst out. His rather nondescript face darkened.
    Sympathetically, Bonn asked what the rap was. “Off the record, of course.”
    Oscar smirked. “Off the record? Statchatory Rape. It was a bum rap. She said she was eighteen. How was I supposed to know? She was a tramp, anyway. Everybody knew that.”
    Bonn said, gee, that was too bad. But he still thought they ought to see the cops.
    When Oscar still demurred, Bonn took out his badge. Then—in silence—they went back to his car.
    *   *   *
    â€œS HE WAS ALWAYS such a good baby,” said Mrs. Benner in a tear-choked voice to a lady reporter. “See, this picture here. When she was only eight months old…” She showed the reporter photos and locks of hair and letters and school books—her daughter’s life from infancy to womanhood.
    What did Sally like to read when she was young? the lady reporter asked.
    â€œPoetry,” said Mrs. Benner. “She always liked high-class poetry.” She blew her nose. “This little book here, now, she bought this with her own money.” Mrs. Benner belonged to a class and generation which did not buy books; that fact alone would have served to grace the small volume even if it were not hallowed by having belonged to her missing daughter. “It’s the poems of John Keats. She always used to say to me, ‘Oh, Mama, they’re so beautiful!’ She particularly liked this one—I know the name the minute I see it—Oh. Here. This one.” She moistened her lips and prepared to read, following the line with her finger.
    â€œThou still unravished bride of quietness…”
    Her voice was measured and proud. As the meaning of what she had just read penetrated her awareness, she looked up at the reporter, then over at her daughter’s picture on the piano. Then she raised her hands, and screamed, and dropped her face into her hands and cried again and again in her grief and fear and anguish.
    *   *   *
    â€œA LL RIGHT ,” SAID Steinberg, “so it was a bum rap, she was a tramp, she said she was eighteen. So let’s forget that one. What else you been sent up on? We’ll find out soon enough.”
    Oscar mumbled that he was never convicted of anything else.
    â€œSo you weren’t convicted. What were you tried for, besides this one? Nothing? Sure? Okay. Ever charged with anything else? What were you charged with?”
    The man looked around the small cubicle. He tried to smirk again, but failed. “Ah, that was a bum rap, too. Wouldn’t even press charges.”
    â€œWhat was it?”
    Oscar swallowed, took another long look around. Then, not meeting anyone’s eyes, he said loudly, “Rape. But she did’n’ even press the charge!”
    Bonn said, “What makes you so sure the girl’s in the river? Did you put her there?”
    â€œNo. Naa. I never even seen her.”
    â€œYou kept saying that the police ought to drag the river,” Steinberg hammered away. “Why? You put her in the river, didn’t you? She resisted you and you killed her. Isn’t that what happened?”
    â€œOr