“You can’t think of one of them who would commit rape?”
“Rape is one thing. Lying in wait for a girl two years older than you are just because she wouldn’t go out with you is something else. And I’ll—tell you what else is something else. The faculty. At least when students pull this kind of crap, it’s usually either alcohol or dope.”
“Is there a lot of both here?”
“Alcohol right out in the open, to hell with the Pennsylvania sale to minors laws. Dope—you probably couldn’t buy any, but if you want an ounce of crack you just let me go stand by the Minuteman for about fifteen minutes.”
“What did you mean about the faculty?” Gregor asked him. “Somehow, I can’t see Dr. Crockett jumping on some girl in his eight o’clock class. I certainly can’t see Tibor doing it.”
“Father Tibor is all right,” Jack said, smiling, “as for Dr. Crockett—” He shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on with old Ken these days. But they weren’t who I was thinking of. You ever heard of this guy Donegal Steele?”
“Vaguely.” They had reached the steepest part of the path. It was much steeper than Gregor remembered from coming down, and it made him wonder. What did they do about the students in wheelchairs, of whom there were several? What did they do about anybody and everybody, once the ice storms started in the winter? Gregor said, “He seems to have disappeared, this Donegal Steele. At least, I haven’t seen him since I got here, and Tibor says he lives right next door.”
“I haven’t seen him either,” Jack Carroll said, “not since the night before last. At the time, he was on his way to pop beers—”
“What’s popping beers?”
Jack explained. “When he didn’t show up on campus yesterday I figured he’d just gotten totally bombed and passed out at somebody’s house in the hills and was too hung over to get back. Now I think maybe he’s avoiding us. All this Halloween happiness was making him crazy. He’s supposed to have all sorts of standards.”
“You don’t sound like you think he does.”
“It depends on what you’re talking about,” Jack said. “Chessey’s got one of his classes. She says it’s pretty rough, a lot of required background knowledge, if you don’t have it you’re pretty confused. A lot of papers. He’s a real terror about grammar and punctuation.”
“But?”
“But he’s been chasing Chessey’s ass since the semester started and telling everyone on earth he got it when he didn’t—and I know he didn’t, because Chessey spends just about every spare minute of every day with either me or Evie. She’s not what you’d call a solitary person. He’s been after Dr. Elkinson, too. I heard her tell a friend of hers she nearly threw him off her balcony once, she was so pissed. She goes out with Dr. Crockett. And then he talks, you know what I mean? He philosophizes.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”
“I ran into him in this place called the Beer Cellar one night, sitting at a table full of guys, all students, giving this lecture on how we’ve all been pussy-whipped and if we want to get into some woman’s pants we ought to let her know who’s boss and just do it.”
“He sounds like a prince.”
“Yeah.”
They had reached the top of the path, the flat plain above the plain that was Minuteman Field. When Gregor looked in the direction of the campus, he could see the back of the jack-o’-lantern head of the effigy jutting up above the ridge of the Scaffold. When he looked in the other direction, he could see the shed bathed in the light from a trio of security lamps. It still looked ready to fall over.
“Here we are,” Jack said, threading his way through the parked cars, not looking back to see if Gregor was keeping up. “You’re sure this is what you want to see, huh?”
“To see and to ask you a few questions about,” Gregor said. “I don’t know very much about cars. I don’t know very much about machinery of any kind.”
“Yeah, well, I know all about cars. Where I come from, you learn it as soon as you learn to talk. Before that, I guess you just don’t know how to ask your father for the keys.”
Jack had reached the shed, a good six yards ahead of Gregor. He opened the door, snaked his hand in, and turned on the light. Then he started to take a step inside, and froze.
“Oh, Christ,” he said, “the jerk’s been back and on the job again.”
2
“THE JERK,” IT TURNED out, was someone—identity unknown—who came in, used the solderer, and departed without cleaning up after himself. Sitting at the workbench and doing the cleaning himself, Jack told Gregor all about it. In his voice was the outrage of a man who loved and trusted good machinery. In his hands were what looked like thousands of miniature solder eyelashes. They were on his hands, too, and climbing up the sleeves of his black bat suit. As soon as Gregor Demarkian had seen them, scattered thick as dust over every inch of the workbench’s surface, he had been sure he had come to the right place at the right time.