Chase: Roman

Louise, really you do.’
        Louise coloured, twisted away from them in unconscious - for the first time that evening - display of flesh and slammed the door in their faces.
        ‘She's just a girl, after all,’ Chase said, looking sideways at her. But Glenda showed no sign of understanding his point. ‘Did you have to be like that with her?’
        ‘She doesn't act like a young girl,’ Glenda snapped. ‘Not one bit like.’
        He realized that she was jealous, and if circumstances had not been so tense, he might have taken the time to enjoy that.
        In the car again, she seemed to have calmed down. She said, ‘What's next, Detective Chase?’
        Chase sat behind the wheel, staring at the dark street and thinking about Judge. He had taken pains to be certain no one had followed them from Glenda's apartment, but he could not escape the feeling that there was a gun trained on the back of his head - or on the back of hers. The ordeal with the grenade had put him on a keen edge.
        He said, ‘Let's see if any of these boys are home.’
        ‘At eleven of a Sunday evening?’
        ‘I guess not,’ Chase said. ‘But it can't hurt to try.’ He drove away, glancing repeatedly in the rear-view mirror. There was no one following them, at least not in the physical sense.
        
        Jerry Taylor, the third boy on the list, was at home. He lived with his parents in the Braddock Heights part of the city, in a two-storey stone house set on a luxuriously planted full-acre lot. Braddock Heights provided ‘gracious’ living for professional people and their families, doctors and lawyers and the more successful businessmen. The man who answered the door, tall and greying, dressed in casual slacks, a white shirt and a tattered sweater, did not seem surprised that his son should be visited by two adults at that hour of the night. He asked if Jerry was in trouble, nodded when they said it was nothing like that, escorted them downstairs to the game room and said Jerry would be along in a few minutes. He left, and he did not return with his son.
        Jerry Taylor was a thin, intense boy with hair that fell to his somewhat stooped shoulders. He was wearing bell-bottom jeans and a workshirt, and he assumed a posture of disinterest from the moment he walked in the door, though that was clearly against his very nature. He listened to Chase, answered his questions, provided nothing new and escorted them upstairs and into the night again. They might just as well have been ghosts passing through unnoticed. As they walked to the car, the stone house stood behind them like a fortress.
        ‘I wonder if all his friends are that outgoing,’ Glenda said.
        ‘Generational preoccupation.’
        ‘Boredom?’ she asked.
        ‘No,’ Chase said. ‘ Appearing bored. They want to look as if they've seen and heard it all.’
        ‘You talk like you're forty years his senior.’
        ‘I feel like it, too.’
        She patted his shoulder. ‘What next?’
        ‘How old are you?’ he asked.
        ‘My, good God, what tact the man has!’
        ‘I'm sorry,’ he said, putting his arm around her. ‘But I'm not being nosey, and I do have a reason.’
        ‘Twenty-one,’ she said.
        ‘Older than I thought,’ he said.
        ‘So throw me out of the car.’
        He laughed. ‘I just wondered what the most popular local hang-outs for eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds were. I'm sure they changed in the years I've been away. And they probably aren't the same as they were when you were that age. A year or two is a long time for an “in” spot to stay “in”.’
        ‘The hamburger places out on Galasio are always popular. But I'd say the chances of your finding one of the two boys are phenomenally small.’
        ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘We might as well go back to your place and wait. If I can't catch either of them tonight, by phone, we'll check them out in the morning.’
        Tomorrow's Monday,’ Glenda said. ‘Work for me.’
        He said, ‘Do you have any sick leave coming?’
        ‘Seven days-’
        ‘Take one.’
        ‘But-’
        ‘Otherwise, I'll have to come to work and sit with you to know you're safe, and I won't get anything done on this.’
        She thought a moment, said, ‘Okay. Now let's go home; I feel all creepy sitting out here in the open.’
        At her apartment, he made sure the door was locked and that the