Night Shift

He lit his cigarette with a hand that trembled slightly. He didn't speak for perhaps as long as a minute. It seemed that he couldn't. His lips twitched, his hands came together, and his eyes slitted, as if some inner self was struggling to find expression.

He suddenly burst out: 'If they do it, I want you to know I wasn't in on it! I don't like those guys! They're creeps!'

'What guys, Chip?'

'Lawson and that Garcia creep.'

'Are they planning to get me?' The old dreamy terror was on him, and he knew the answer.

'I liked them at first,' Chip said. 'We went out and had a few beers. I started bitchin' about you and that test. About how I was gonna get you. But that was just talk! I swear it!'

'What happened?'

'They took me right up on it. Asked what time you left school, what kind of car you drove, all that stuff. I said what have you got against him and Garcia said they knew you a long time ago. . . hey, are you all right?'

'The cigarette,' he said thickly. 'Haven't ever got used to the smoke.'

Chip ground it out. 'I asked them when they knew you and Bob Lawson said I was still pissin' my didies then. But they're seventeen, the same as me.'

'Then what?'

'Well, Garcia leans over the table and says you can't want to get him very bad if you don't even know when he leaves the fuckin' school. What was you gonna do? So I says I was gonna matchstick your tyres and leave you with four flats.' He looked at Jim with pleading eyes. 'I wasn't even gonna do that. I said it because

'You were scared?' Jim asked quietly.

'Yeah, and I'm still scared.'

'What did they think of your idea?'

Chip shuddered. 'Bob Lawson says, is that what you was gonna do, you cheap prick? And I said, tryin' to be tough, what was you gonna do, off him? And Garcia - his eyelids starts to go up and down - he takes something out of his pocket and clicked it open and it's a switchknife. That's when I took off.'

'When was this, Chip?'

'Yesterday. I'm scared to sit with those guys now, Mr Norman.'

'Okay,' Jim said. 'Okay.' He looked down at the papers he had been correcting without seeing them.

'What are you going to do?'

'I don't know,' Jim said. 'I really don't.'

On Monday morning he still didn't know. His first thought had been to tell Sally everything, starting with his brother's murder sixteen years ago. But it was impossible. She would be sympathetic but frightened and unbelieving.

Simmons? Also impossible. Simmons would think he was mad. And maybe he was. A man in a group encounter session he had attended had said having a breakdown was like breaking a vase and then gluing it back together. You could never trust yourself to handle that vase again with any surety. You couldn't put a flower in it because flowers need water and water might dissolve the glue.

Am I crazy, then?

If he was, Chip Osway was, too. That thought came to him as he was getting into his car, and a bolt of excitement went through him.

Of course! Lawson and Garcia had threatened him in Chip Osway's presence. That might not stand up in court, but it would get the two of them suspended if he could get Chip to repeat his story in Fenton's office. And he was almost sure he could get Chip to do that. Chip had his own reasons for wanting them far away.

He was driving into the parking lot when he thought about what had happened to Billy Stearns and Katy Slavin.

During his free period, he went up to the office and leaned over the registration secretary's desk. She was doing the absence list.

'Chip Osway here today?' he asked casually.

'Chip . . . ?' She looked at him doubtfully.

'Charles Osway,' Jim amended. 'Chip's a nickname.'

She leafed through a pile of slips, glanced at one, and pulled it out., 'He's absent, Mr Norman.'

'Can you get me his phone number?'

She pushed her pencil into her hair and said. 'Certainly.' She dug it out of the 0 file and handed it to him. Jim dialled the number on an office phone.

The phone rang a dozen times and he was about to' hang up when a rough, sleep-blurred voice said, 'Yeah?'

'Mr Osway?'

'Barry Osway's been dead six years. I'm Gary Denkinger.'

'Are you Chip Osway's stepfather?'

'What'd he do?' 'Pardon?'

'He's run off. I want to know what he did.'

'So far as I know, nothing. I just wanted to talk with him. Do you have any idea where he might be?'

'Naw, I work nights. I don't know none of his friends.'

'Any idea at a-'

'Nope. He took the old suitcase and fifty bucks he saved up from stealin' car parts or sellin' dope or whatever these kids do for money. Gone to San Francisco to be a hippie for all I know.'

'If you hear from him, will you call me at school? Jim Norman, English wing.'

'Sure will.'

Jim put the phone down. The registration secretary looked up and offered a quick meaningless smile. Jim didn't smile back.

Two days later, the words 'left school' appeared after Chip Osway's name on the morning attendance slip. Jim began to yvait for Simmons to show up with a new folder. A week later he did.