KILLING TIME by Eileen Browne Page A

outcast. His stubby arms and legs were visibly too short for his torso, his dark hair trimmed in a bowl shape around his skull. Neal resembled a Neanderthal, an illustration from a poster on a science room wall; Cro-Magnon mans’ inevitable evolution to modern, with Neal McMaster constituting a living, missing link.
    “You didn’t sit together,” Womack said now, “but you left together, at three.”
    “That’s right,” said Leland. “I left with Dojcsak—Ed. He’s always good for a few smokes and I’d run out.” Leland then added, “You won’t tell his parents will you?” as if that were the most egregious of their possible transgressions. “We walked down by the band shell, looking to help. It’s usually good for a couple bucks, but the workers had left early for the day.”
    “And you didn’t see anyone while you were there?”
    “People sure, but no one we knew.”
    “Strangers?”
    “Not exactly strangers, just no one we knew.”
    “Not the girl?” Womack asked.
    “No, sir, not the girl,” Leland said. “Though I hear she was popular.”
    “Oh? Popular how?” asked Sidney.
    “I shouldn’t say, sir, speak ill of the dead and all that.” It was a remark unbecoming of a seventeen going on eighteen-year-old. A clumsy effort by Leland, Sidney thought at the time, to disparage the victim.
    “You can’t hurt her now, Leland,” Womack said, “She’s already dead. It’s not my job to protect her reputation.”
    Satisfied, Leland continued. “It’s only what people say, what I hear, not what I know first hand. Apparently, the chick was no angel.”
    “No angel? What exactly does that mean, Leland? ‘No angel’.”
    “Don’t be dense, Sid,” answered the boy’s father. “It means she put out. It means you should look to her reputation, not to the boys.”
    Womack was forced, grudgingly, to agree. It reinforced the image of Shelly Hayden emerging in the whispers and asides now circulating among her neighbors and friends, to which Sidney—regretfully—was himself, not immune. So what if Leland Junior lied about how well he knew the girl? Given her reputation and now her death, it appeared as if half the male, teenage population in town might be compelled to lie about how well they were acquainted with Shelly Hayden. Womack uttered a silent curse, and asked, “You came straight home?”
    “Uh-huh, yes, sir,” Leland said. “Straight home.”
    “And you were home by when?”
    “By seven. Ed and I came back along the river. I stopped in town to grab a Pepsi before walking home, alone. That was at six. I got home maybe half an hour later—it takes that long to walk here from town—and made myself a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten at the restaurant. Sandwich spoiled my dinner.” He smiled. “Ask, Ed, he’ll tell you.”
    “Tell him about the boy,” Leland Senior said. His emphasis caused Womack to shudder reflexively and stiffen in anticipation.
    “The boy?” Womack asked Leland Junior.
    “C’mon, Dad. It’s not important, is it?”
    “Tell him,” said the father. “Let the man decide for himself. He’s the professional.” Professional uttered more in contradiction than affirmation.
    “What boy?” Womack wanted to know.
    “Drew Bitson,” Leland Junior replied.
    “What about him?” Womack said.
    “It’s not my nature to cause trouble, sir.”
    “Tell me about the boy, Leland,” Womack said, skeptical of the young man’s claim. To him, Leland McMaster Junior was trouble.
    ”Well, it’s just that he was there, too. You know, kind of hanging around. I’m not sure the girls were okay with that, if you know what I mean.”
    “I don’t; tell me. Why shouldn’t the girls be okay with it, Leland? Was Drew pestering them?”
    “Well, I wasn’t sitting at the table you know, as I said, but I could sense they were uncomfortable. He was smiling, you know, kind of goofy-like, as if something was funny. They weren’t.”
    Despite possessing what his wife described as