10
I found Mike Boyle on the practice football field at the west end of the campus. The first team was scrimmaging a group of substitutes who were running through the plays of one of the schools on the weekend's double-header. I saw Boyle roving wide to defend against an attempted end run, saw him follow the play, not moving fast, until suddenly he was charging forward, bouncing off the interference in such a way that he kept his feet and sliced through to the halfback who was caught open and hemmed in near the sidelines, a sitting duck for the tackle that slammed him to the ground. And then Boyle was on his feet, amazingly nimble and springy for such a big man, trotting away without glancing back at the runner, who rose slowly and stiffly.
The deceptive ease of the play showed why Boyle was an All-American candidate. It also revealed something I had heard about the big roving tackle—whose position was one added to football's original eleven-man team in order to give the defense some needed help in the increasingly wide-open style of the game. Boyle showed an uncanny ability to divine what the opponent was going to do. Somehow, wherever a play went, he was there in front of it, anticipating it almost as if he knew precisely where it was going. The fact was an innocent one, but now it made me wonder as I watched him in action. Everything was suspect now, I thought. Nothing was innocent.
The scrimmaging continued for twenty minutes while I watched. Then the first team was called off the field for a rest and the second unit went in against the same tired group of subs. Some of the first team limbered up after the bruising workout by running up and down the sidelines. Others flipped a football or just stood watching.
I walked toward Mike Boyle. As I neared him he gulped water from a ladle dipped into a pail and spewed it out in a great gusher. Then he drank, his throat working visibly, sweat pouring down his face to mix with the water that spilled around his mouth and ran down his throat. He seemed to do everything in a big, robust way. In the padded uniform, he appeared immense, twice as broad as I and towering over me. He had not seemed nearly as big in street clothes.
I stood waiting while he drank. I was sure that he had not noticed my approach but he spoke as he dropped the ladle into the pail.
"Hi, Prof. Been running into any more cars?"
"I manage to keep out of the way of most of them."
He grinned. His mouth was full lipped and wide, matching the proportions of a prominent nose that had once been broken and an unruly mass of black hair. Only the eyes were too small for the face, but that might have been due to the habitual squint against the sun of a young man who spent a great deal of his time outdoors.
"You professors kill me," Boyle said. "What was on your mind, Prof? A poem or something?"
"Something I heard."
"Yeah? It must have been good," he said offhandedly, "to make you walk in front of the only damn car on the street."
"It was," I said.
The small brown eyes regarded me curiously and I wondered if their glint held amusement or something deeper.
"Well, you better be careful," Boyle said. "Hearing things like that won't do you any good if you're dead."
I read menace into the words, but it was belied by the faintly contemptuous grin on his face. He had the habitual cockiness which I had often seen in the professional campus athlete to whom public adulation has come too soon, before the mind is mature enough to discount it. The attitude was always irritating.
"That's a nice looking girlfriend of yours," I said, perhaps too casually. "Isn't she a physics major?"
"Helen? Yeah, she's a brain," he agreed. "A cute kid, though," he added, as if the combination of cuteness and intelligence was cause for surprise. "We have a ball."
"Miss Hendricks said you were going steady."
"Yeah? You might say that, Prof. But I'm not the kind of guy that likes to be tied down. You know?"
I was groping, trying to find a way to ask him where he had been the night before without seeming to be probing. I found myself disliking the youthful arrogance and it was an effort to keep the amiably stupid smile on my lips. I stood for a moment in silence, watching the scrimmage. The subs executed an intricate play that caught the defense completely out of position for the pass. Boyle cursed vehemently.
"They should have smelled that one a mile off," he growled.
"Doesn't the coach object when you go out on dates during the week?" I asked suddenly. "Or do you have a curfew?"
He spat vigorously. "Nuts," he said. "I'm his bread and butter. I go out when I want to."
I hesitated. "I thought I saw you and Helen again last night," I said. "Pretty late, too. I was on my way home from a movie."
He swung around slowly and the small brown eyes caught mine in a fixed stare. The indefinable trace of contempt marked the expression of his eyes and mouth.
"Prof," he said softly, "you didn't see me and Helen out last night. You got something on your mind. Maybe you should tell me what it is."
"I guess I was mistaken," I said, glad at that moment that I had had the sense to pick this time and place to sound him out, with a hundred people in clear view and within shouting distance. I was not sure what the hint of ugliness in his voice and manner signified. The thickly-muscled chest and arms didn't frighten me. Rather it was the thought of this brutal strength directed by a supremely powerful intelligence.
"Yeah, you made a mistake, Prof. Helen was with me last night but you didn't see us. I tell you what. You want to know if Helen was with me last night, you just go ask her, huh? And don't bother me with your nosy questions."
"I can assure you I wasn't being nosy," I said in my best and huffiest imitation of professorial dignity. "I was merely making conversation."
"Sure you were. Well, you just go talk to yourself, Prof. Only watch out for those cars. We'd miss you around here."
He turned his back on me and began to do a series of leg exercises, squatting and jumping erect, thick thighs stretching the pants of his uniform each time he dropped into the crouch.
I walked away slowly. The momentary irritation I felt over the open contempt shown by a muscle-headed athlete was not important. But if his statement about being with Helen Darrow could be believed, it was highly significant. It meant that they could vouch for each other, providing that they were together at the time Lois Worthington was killed. Boyle was the one suspect I knew who could easily have broken the girl's neck without even breathing hard. But I was convinced that Lois' death was linked to the aliens and I knew there were not three of them. There was the man who had been in the back booth and one student. Not two. Helen Darrow could prove that both she and Mike Boyle were innocent. In one stroke the possible number of suspects would be cut in half.