Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

He stepped out of the cell. The other men were standing at the bars, watching him intently, carefully.

Stuart called, “Don’t break down, fella.”

Arbenz said, “You’ll be all right. Just take — take it easy.”

Radnik said intensely, “I’ll pray for you, Joss.”

The face of one of the guards flushed, for some reason. He was a thin young guy with big eyes.

Joslin walked to the middle of the cell block, his steps heavy. His features were without expression.

Suddenly he made his move. Turning, hands out, he dived for the thin guard’s throat. The other guard swore; at once, Joslin felt blackjack blows about his body.

Other guards ran toward them, those who usually stood in front of the cell block. The pain in Joslin’s body grew worse. His eyes swam. He couldn’t have seen much anyhow, because of the mass of bodies swarming over him.

The thin guard gurgled and spat, tried to use hands and knees.

Joslin no longer knew what was happening. His whole world was made up of pain. Somebody had hit him in the mouth and warm blood flowed down his throat.

“Use the blackjack!” somebody called out.

The blows around his head increased in tempo and fury. Joslin sensed power leaving his hands. His mouth opened reflexively, as his insides tried to throw up.

He now heard what was being said without making sense of the words, each standing by itself — without meaning. Then, for an instant, clarity returned.

“Schwartz is going to live...”

The guard probably, the young one with the big eyes.

“That’s more than you can say for him.”

Words were fading again into a dim consciousness.

“What else could you expect after the blackjacking he took.”

“Guess you’re right,” somebody else said.

“You got to hand it to Joslin, though: he beat the chair after all...”

College Kill by Jack Q. Lynn

The cops knew the Jackson girl had died driving her car off the bridge. But they’d never be able to prove that he helped her!

* * *

There were three of them in the office. Three cops. And they kept walking around, hammering at me. From the right, from the left, from over me, yeah, even from down under.

Finally they shut up and one of them stood in front of me, smoking a cigarette. His name was Malone, and he was a pretty decent-acting cop, older but not tough-talking like the other two.

After a long time he said, “How the hell did you get in this mess, Lane?”

I considered it. Yeah, how the hell did I?

Matt Lane, the guy who could run over the biggest tackle the opposition had, anytime, the guy who made booting field goals look as easy as tossing pennies in a sack, the guy who could out-run a horse. That was me. Big Man on Campus at Crawford College.

And five days before graduation in June, the old man came around with a contract.

“Want to try coaching here, Matt?”

“Here?”

“Sure, here. Where else? We have a good bunch of kids coming up and you know our system inside out. We want you, Matt.”

So I signed a contract and became an assistant coach at Crawford College. Then in July I married Anne Morrow, a black-haired, blue-eyed kid with a lot of body. She had her senior year at Crawford coming up, but we weren’t waiting around until she graduated. The next thing, she got pregnant. We weren’t sure in September, but by the end of October all of the doubt was gone.

We decided not to tell anybody about the baby, not then, not even Anne’s folks who lived down-state. Anne was going home for a visit the second week in November and I planned to whip down there the day before Thanksgiving. We’d spend the holiday with her folks, and we’d tell them about the baby then. It would be one of those holiday surprises.

I put Anne on a train on Monday. The first two days she was gone I was okay. I kept busy with my physical education classes, slipped downtown to Joe’s at night and had a few beers, then sacked in early enough to feel good the next day. Wednesday I was restless; it was too damn quiet around our apartment, and Wednesday night I drank as much beer as I could hold. Thursday started out the same, the beer and the grousing around, so I decided to go over to the college library to do a little research on some work I was planning for a master’s degree.

An hour later I was at a table in the large library reading room when the girl got up from another table, put a book on the shelf near her, and reached for her coat which was draped over the back of a chair next to where she had been sitting. Her impact on me was jolting. I couldn’t get my eyes off of her. She was tall; her skin was a honey-colored tan, and her hair, black as black can be, tumbled from beneath a green beret to very wide shoulders. Her high, full breasts strained against the thin fabric of her dress, and the dress was pleasantly shadowed where it caressed her thighs.

I stared hungrily, feeling excitement begin to knot my stomach muscles.