Cool & Lam 15 - Beware the Curves

you, you could have caught that carload of hoodlums going toward Susanville. But not you! You were so damned intent on giving orders that you wouldn’t listen.”
    He cocked his head to one side.
    “What’s this you’re talkin ’ about?” he asked.
    “About a carload of hoodlums that crowded this girl off the road and tried to assault her. Heaven knows what would have happened if I hadn’t come along! Take a look at her. Look at her clothes.”
    The officer said, “What are you giving me? She’s drunk. She was driving all over the road. You were trying to pass her and she was swinging out in front of you. You were chasing her and—”
    “She’s emotionally upset,” I said. “She’s hysterical. She was trying to get to someplace where she could telephone the road patrol.”
    “I had my siren on,” he said, “and she didn’t pay a damn bit of attention.”
    I moved up to the car. “Did you hear his siren, miss?” I asked.
    She started to cry. “I guess I heard it but I was too afraid to stop. I thought it was those boys coming back.” I said to the officer by way of explanation, “That’s the way they got her to stop in the first place. One of the kids made a sound like a siren. It was a pretty good imitation. She pulled off to the side of the road and stopped and they dragged her out of the car.”
    “Where were you?” he asked.
    “I must have been just about five miles behind,” I said. “They crowded me off the road as they went by .“
    “What kind of a car?”
    “A ’52 Buick, black sedan.”
    “How many people?”
    “Four,” I said. “All kids. One had a T-shirt and tan leather jacket, another a suede blazer, a third a buttoned sweater and the fourth had a sport coat and shirt with no tie, the collar on the outside of the sport coat.”
    “Get their license number?”
    “I did,” I admitted sheepishly, “and then in the excitement I forgot it. I didn’t have a chance to write it down. I was trying to keep this young woman in sight and see that nothing happened to her.”
    The officer was undecided for a moment. He said, “That sounds like a gang we’ve been having trouble with. One of the kids a tall blond?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “The one in the blazer. Looked like a basketball player.”
    “About nineteen or twenty? Something over six feet?” he asked.
    “I’m not too certain,” I said. “They got out of there in a hurry when I brought my car to a stop.”
    “Just you by yourself, and you were going to take on these four hoodlums?” he asked.
    “They didn’t know I was alone in the car,” I said. “I have a gun that I could have used if I had to.”
    “ You’ve got a gun?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Let’s take a look at your permit.”
    I showed him my credentials.
    He thought things over for a while, then turned to the woman. “Let’s see your driving license.”
    She gave it to him.
    “Stella Karis , eh? Okay, what do you want to do? Do you want to make a complaint?”
    She said, “I did, but I don’t. Why should I get my name in the papers, after all I’ve been through?”
    The officer said, “That’s not going to help the next girl who gets waylaid on the road, Miss Karis .”
    I said, “If they interview you, Miss Karis , you don’t need to tell them anything about the officer chasing you instead of the carload of juveniles.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Nineteen-fifty-two Buick, you say?”
    “ Uh-huh .”
    “Black sedan?”
    “Either black or such a dark color that it looked black. As I get the story, they passed her once, then dropped behind her and let her pass them. Then they passed her again, studying the car, then dropped way behind and the third time they made a noise like a siren. When she slowed to a stop they dragged her out of the car, and—”
    “Okay, okay,” the officer said. “But you should have remembered the license number.”
    “If you’d listened to me when I was yelling at you,” I told him, “there was still time for you to have overtaken this car.”
    “Maybe,” he mumbled, “but that didn’t give her an excuse to be driving all over the road.”
    “She’s emotionally upset.”
    “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll go on in to the checking station and telephone for a roadblock. Those hoodlums probably turned off, but there’s a chance we may catch them. We’ve been having trouble with that gang. Could you identify the car, Lam ?”
    “I didn’t see any distinctive marks but I know there were