Sudden Prey

nobody knows anything is wrong until the kid’s already bent. Maybe you could set up an army of fascist social workers who’d go around to every house once a month and cross-examine every kid, but that’d probably be worse than what we’ve got. Look what happened with all these mass child-abuse things. They’re all bullshit, and it’s the social workers who’ve done it.”
    Another silence.
    Then Weather said, “I don’t believe that more violence is the way to solve the problem. I don’t think shooting these people will do it.”
    Lucas said, “That’s ’cause you’re a doctor.”
    “Hmm?”
    “Doctors think in terms of illness and cures. The problem is, when one of these guys gets sick, somebody else gets hurt. So we’ve got two problems, not one. First we’ve got to protect innocent people. Then we’ve got to do whatever we can with these guys—cure them or whatever. But first we’ve got to stop them.”
    “That doesn’t seem to be what you’re doing . . .” Then she added, hastily, “Sometimes it doesn’t, anyway.”
    “Yeah, I know. Sometimes we play it a little too much like a game. That’s just a way to deal with it . . . but that’s not the way it really is. It ain’t football, even if TV thinks so.”
    They talked a bit longer, then Weather said, “I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m working in the morning.”
    Lucas kissed her good-night again, and lay on his back, watching the outside light trace feather patterns across the ceiling, and some time later, finally fell asleep.
     
     
     
    SANDY MOVED THE window an inch at a time, and the cold air flooded in. That was a problem. Once she committed herself, she could hardly go back. The room would be cold, and if Martin or LaChaise came in, they’d know . . .
    But she pushed the window up anyway. Then leaned out, brushed snow off the ledge with her hand. The ledge didn’t seem too slippery, but she wouldn’t be able to walk it with boots. She dropped to the bed, took off her boots and socks, put the socks in the boots and the boots in her parka pockets, the heels sticking out. Couldn’t drop those . . .
    She looked down. I’m going to kill myself.
    She took a breath and stepped out on the ledge, and the shock of the cold on her feet almost pitched her off. She held to the inside of the window frame, then edged to her right. The ledge was plenty wide, almost as though it had been designed to get her to the fire escape. Probably had been, she thought.
    She slid another step, and then another, refusing to look down again. She let go of the edge of the window frame, and now was balanced on nothing but her painfully chilled feet, the outside wall pushing against her back. She looked straight out, feeling more balanced that way. Two more steps. Two more.
    Reaching out with her right hand, she groped for the steel of the fire escape. Another step. Christ, she was afraid to look to her right, another step, groping . . . and she felt it. Now she turned her head, saw it, grabbed the railing and stepped over to it.
    She stopped to check the window above the fire escape. The shade was down, but there was a crack at the bottom between the shade and window frame, and she could see down the hall. In the semidark, Martin looked like an enormous cocoon, rolled up on the floor at the end of the hall.
    She stepped over the railing onto the fire escape, breathing hard: she was excited and frightened to death. She took two steps down, onto the drop platform, and bounced gently, to see if that was enough to make it drop. It didn’t move. She tried again, harder. Nothing. Hard, this time. There was a metallic clank to the left, but the platform stayed up.
    This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work, but in the dark, she couldn’t see why the platform wasn’t dropping. Something was stuck somewhere . . .
    She thought about hanging from the bottom, and dropping. But even with a two-step platform drop, and the six feet she’d get by hanging, it’d be a twelve- or thirteen-foot drop onto an uncertain alley surface . . .
    She’d break a leg.
    But she thought about it, the cold in her feet growing to pain.
     
     
     
    THEN SHE FELT the vibration.
    She didn’t know what it was, but she went to her knees under the window, and put her eye to the crack under the shade. Martin was on his feet, walking down the hall toward her room. He stopped at LaChaise’s room, looked in, then went into the bathroom. Sandy took a breath—but Martin was back