Strange Highways

drink?"
     "No, thanks."
     "Mind if I have something?"
     "Go ahead."
     He stared at her trim legs as she went to the wet bar in the wall of bookcases. "Sicilian Stinger. Sure you wouldn't like one? They're delicious."
     "I'm fine."
     As she mixed the drink with professional expertise, she stood with her back to him, her hips artfully canted, her round butt thrust toward him. It might have been the unconscious stance of a girl not yet fully aware of her womanliness, with only a partial understanding of the effect her pneumatic body could have on men. Or it might have been completely contrived.
     When she returned to the sofa with her drink, Chase said, "Are you old enough to drink?"
     "Seventeen," she said. "Almost eighteen. No longer a child, right? Maybe I'm not of legal age yet, but this is my own home, so who's going to stop me?"
     "Of course."
     Only seven years ago, when he'd been her age, seventeen-year-old girls seemed seventeen. They grew up faster now - or thought that they did.
     Sipping her drink, she leaned back against the couch and crossed her bare legs.
     He saw the hard tips of her breasts against the thin halter.
     He said, "It's just occurred to me that your mother may be in bed, if she gets up early for work. I didn't mean-"
     "Mother's working now," Louise said. She looked at him coyly, her lashes lowered and her head tilted to one side. "She's a cocktail waitress. She goes on duty at seven, off at three, home about three-thirty in the morning."
     "I see."
     "Are you frightened?"
     "Excuse me?"
     She smiled mischievously. "Of being here alone with me?"
     "No."
     "Good. So ... where do we begin?" With another coy look, she tried to make the question seductive.
     For the following half hour, he guided her through her memories of Monday night, augmenting them with his own, questioning her on details, urging her to question him, looking for some small thing that might be the key. They remembered nothing new, however, though the girl genuinely tried to help him. She was able to talk about Mike Karnes's murder with complete detachment, as though she had not been there when it happened but had only read about it in the papers.
     "Mind if I have another one?" she asked, raising her glass.
     "Go ahead."
     "I'm feeling good. Want one this time?"
     "No, thank you," he said, recognizing the need to keep his head clear.
     She stood at the wet bar in the same provocative pose as before, and when she returned to the couch, she sat much closer to him than she had previously. "One thing I just thought of - he was wearing a special ring."
     "Special in what way?"
     "Silver, squarish, with a double lightning bolt. A guy Mom dated for a while wore one. I asked him about it once, and he told me it was a brotherhood ring, from this club he belonged to."
     "What club?"
     "Just for white guys. No blacks, Japs, Jews, or anybody else welcome, just white guys."
     Chase waited as she sipped her drink.
     "Bunch of guys who're willing to stand up for themselves, if it ever comes to that, guys who aren't going to let the nappy-heads or the Jew bankers or anybody else push them around and take what they have." She clearly approved of any such organization. Then she frowned. "Did I just screw up my chances?"
     "Chances?"
     "Are you maybe a Jew?"
     "No."
     "You don't look like a Jew."
     "I'm not."
     "Listen, even if you were a Jew, it wouldn't matter much to me. I find you real attractive. You know?"
     "So the killer might be a white supremacist?"
     "They're just guys who won't take any crap the way everyone else will. That's all. You have to admire that."
     "This guy who dated your mother - did he tell you the name of this club?"
     "The Aryan Alliance."
     "You remember his name?"
     "Vic. Victor. Don't remember his last name."
     "Could you ask your mom for me?"
     "Okay. When she gets home. Listen, you're absolutely sure you're not a Jew?"
     "I'm sure."
     "Because ever since I said it, you've been looking at me sort of funny."
     As he might have looked at something pale and squirming that he'd discovered under an overturned rock.
     He said,