A Knife in the Back

by Bill Crider

  “The pistol seems like a good idea right now,” Jack said. “Have you ever shot anyone?”

  “No. Only targets. That’s what the instructor in the concealed handgun class liked to talk about—the difference between shooting a target and shooting a person. As Mark Twain said, it’s like the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

  “Twain was talking about choosing the right word when you’re writing,” Jack said. “Not shooting somebody.”

  “I think the analogy still works.”

  “We’re only talking hypothetically here, though,” Jack said. “We both know that you’re not going to have to shoot anyone.”

  “I know that,” Sally said. “And you know that.” She looked into the kitchen at the telephone. “But does he know that?”

  Jack looked worried.

  “You sound almost as if you’d like to shoot him,” he said.

  “I don’t want to shoot anyone. I’m not even sure I could. The instructor in the handgun class wasn’t happy with me.”

  “It’s a good thing there was no final exam.”

  “True. Anyway, now you know the situation. What are we going to do about it?”

  “I’m not sure I do know the situation,” Jack said. “You didn’t come over here so I could protect you, did you?”

  Sally smiled. “No. I’m the one with the pistol, remember? I think I just wanted some company.”

  “I’m glad you picked me, but maybe you picked the wrong guy. Now the man in the iron mask is calling me. If he’s really the one who called. We don’t really know that.”

  “We don’t know that he called me, either, but it’s interesting that we both got phone calls from someone who wouldn’t identify himself, don’t you think?”

  Jack nodded. “I guess so. I wonder why he called here. I didn’t see him. Do you think he knows you’re here?”

  “He might. It would have been easy enough for him to follow me if he was keeping an eye on my house. But speaking of phone calls, you still haven’t told me why you called me.”

  “Never mind that now,” Jack said. He looked uneasy. “It’s not important at all, considering everything else that’s going on. Let’s just forget about it. Now that you’re here, maybe we can figure out something that will get us out of this mess. Let me get my list.”

  “List?” Sally said, but Jack was already on his way out of the room.

  When he returned, he was holding a piece of paper in his hand. He walked to the couch and handed it to Sally.

  “This is the list,” he said. “I tried to write down all the people who knew about the knife in my office and who might have had a motive to kill Bostic.”

  Sally looked over the names Jack had written and said, “I don’t see your name on here anywhere.”

  Jack sat on the couch. “You’re getting as bad as Weems. I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “I know, but you did have a motive. That spat you had with Bostic at the board meeting even made the newspaper.”

  “If you can call what we have here a newspaper,” Jack said.

  Sally thought he was being a bit unfair to the Hughes Daily News, though she had to admit that the paper’s true reason for existence wasn’t to publish the news but to sell advertising space. Perhaps for that reason, the paper’s single reporter didn’t lavish a great deal of attention on local events, or any events for that matter, with the result that stories were sometimes so difficult to decipher that many readers simply gave up in despair.

  “You’re just resentful because the story about your run-in was clearly understandable,” she said.

  Jack opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and remained silent.

  “Well?” Sally said.

  “You could be right. Even Weems had read the article. He mentioned it to me. I’ve often wondered why every sentence in that story was so amazingly clear and to the point. You have to admit that it’s uncharacteristic.”

  “We have enough to worry about without taking on the prose style in the Hughes Daily News. Everyone in town, including Weems, knows that you more or less accused Bostic of being a crook.”

  “All right,” Jack said, pulling a ballpoint pen from his pocket. “Let me have that list.”

  “There are some other things you should know before you write your name down,” Sally said, and she told him about Mae Wilkins.

  “She certainly gets around,” Jack said. “I didn’t even know that she was going with Thomas, much less Jorge.”

  “Me either,” Sally said, trying not to sound bitter. “And there’s another thing. Jorge used to work as an auto mechanic.”

  “I’d heard that. So what?”

  “Think about it. Everything’s connected. Bostic repairs cars. Thomas taught auto repair. Jorge worked as a mechanic.”

  “That’s really stretching a point.”

  “Roy Don Talon,” Sally said. “He’s on your motive list. He sells cars. He’s the one who got A. B. D. upset about Bostic in the first place. A. B. D. went to the faculty senate, which is why you went before the board in the first place. If you look at it that way, Talon is the one to blame for all your troubles.”

  “When it comes to stretching a point,” Jack said, “you’re an expert.”

  “I think we should talk to him,” Sally said. “Point stretching or not. There are too many automobile connections here for us to ignore them. He must know something about this.”

  “What about Fieldstone?”

  “If we have to, we’ll talk to him. Bostic was trying to get him fired, after all. And nobody seemed able to locate him this afternoon.

  “All right. When do we start?”

  “How about now?”

  “It’s Friday night,” Jack said.

  “Don’t give me any more of that ‘I don’t like to bother people at home on the weekends’ stuff. This is too important for us to worry about something as petty as that.”

  “You’re right. It’s just that I really don’t like to bother people—”

  “I told you not to start that.”

  “Sorry. I can’t seem to control myself. I must have some kind of phobia.”

  “Get over it,” Sally said.

  “I already have,” Jack said, but Sally didn’t believe him. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready. I’ll make the first call.”

  “Call? I thought we were going to see people.”

  “Why is it that men never like to use the telephone?” Sally asked. “Do they just like to do everything the hard way?”

  “I like to look at people when I’m talking to them,” Jack said. He sounded a bit defensive.

  “In this case, we don’t have to. It’s the kind of investigation we can do on the telephone. It won’t take as long that way.”

  “I’m willing to wait.”

  Sally went into the kitchen and looked around.

  “Where’s the phone book?” she called.

  Jack came into the kitchen holding their glasses and napkins, which he set on the countertop.

  “In here.”

  He pulled open a drawer and pulled out the very thin book, which he handed to Sally.

  “Thanks,” she said, flipping through it.

  When she’d located the number, she handed the book back to Jack, who replaced it in the drawer as she was punching the number on the phone. It didn’t take long for her to get a response.

  “Eva?” she said. “This is Sally Good.”

  After the “I’m fine, and you?” small talk and some oohing and ahhing over the awful events of the afternoon, Sally got to the point.

  “Can you tell me where the president was this afternoon? No one could find him to tell him what happened.”

  Eva was hesitant. “I really don’t think I should say anything.”

  “It’s okay,” Sally assured her. “I’m not going to tell anyone else.”

  Jack waved at her and pointed at himself, but Sally ignored him.

  “I’d just lik
e to know for my own satisfaction,” Sally said.

  “All right,” Eva said. “I’ll tell you, but if Dr. Fieldstone ever finds out, he’ll throttle me.”

  “I hope you don’t mean that literally.”

  Eva laughed. “Of course not. But it’s supposed to be a big secret. He only does it every now and then.”

  “Does what?”

  “Slips away to a movie. You know how quiet it is here on Friday afternoons. Nothing ever happens. I’ve worked in this office for over fifteen years, and I can’t remember a single important thing that’s happened on a Friday afternoon.”

  “Not counting today,” Sally said.

  “Oh. I forgot. That was about the biggest thing that’s ever happened here, period. And nobody was around.”

  Sally decided not to remind Eva that she and Jack had been around. Not to mention Ray Thomas.

  She said, “You mentioned that Dr. Fieldstone slips away fairly often.”

  “No, not often. If I said that, I didn’t mean it. He hardly ever does. More like once a semester. And then only if there’s something he really, really wants to see. He always documents the time away from campus and counts it against his vacation days, too, so there’s nothing at all wrong with it. It’s just that he doesn’t think it would look good if people knew he was going to a movie. He always drives into Houston, where nobody knows him.”

  “And that’s where he was today.”

  “Yes. He always calls at least once to check in with me and make sure things are going smoothly.”

  “Did he call today?”

  “Yes, but that was before I heard that Mr. Thomas was dead, so I couldn’t tell him about it.”

  “I’m sure he knows by now,” Sally said. “Thanks, Eva.”

  She hung up the phone and looked at Jack.

  “That pretty much eliminates Fieldstone,” she said. “He was at a movie.”

  “It could be a cover-up.”

  “I doubt it. Eva talked to him, and it seems to be something he does from time to time. We can forget about him for now, I think. Are you ready for Hal Kaul?”

  “Are you going to phone him?”

  “I think he’s a much more likely suspect than Fieldstone. We’d better see him in person. Are you ready?”

  “I’ve been ready ever since you suggested it.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Sally said, picking up her purse and pistol. “I’ll drive.”

  24

  They were almost at the front door when Sally stopped and said, “Did you hear a noise outside?”

  “Probably just Hector,” Jack said.

  “Hector?”

  “The cat I was telling you about. When he came here, I thought he looked a little like Hector must have looked after Achilles finished dragging him around the walls of Troy behind his chariot. So I named him Hector.”

  “And now he makes noises outside your house?”

  “Sometimes. He sneaks around in the bushes hoping he can find a bird to pounce on. Or maybe a lizard. I have some kind of lizards around here. They’re all over the place. They even get inside the house.”

  Sally didn’t think the noise had been a cat chasing a lizard, but she couldn’t be sure. Lola was strictly a house cat.

  “Your car’s in the garage,” she said. “Maybe we should use it instead of mine.”

  “You think there’s someone out there?”

  “Maybe that’s what the calls were about. Maybe he was checking up on us. Now that he knows we’re together, he can get us both at once.”

  “You really have an odd way of looking at things,” Jack said. “It’s just the cat.”

  “All right, then, we’ll go in my car. Hold my purse.”

  Sally handed her purse to Jack, who took it awkwardly. Men never seemed to have any idea of how to hold a purse. She took her pistol out of its case, then closed the case and handed that to Jack, too.

  “I hope you’re not going to shoot my cat,” Jack said, eyeing the pistol.

  “I’m not going to shoot anyone, I hope. But you know the Girl Scout motto: Be prepared.”

  “That’s the Boy Scout motto.”

  “Whatever. It’s a good motto, no matter who thought of it.”

  Sally held the pistol close to her chest, her finger alongside the trigger guard.

  “Open the door,” she said.

  “I thought you were supposed to jump through the door, stick the gun straight out in front of you, and hold it with both hands,” Jack said. “That’s the way they do it on Nash Bridges.”

  “This isn’t TV,” Sally said. “The firearms instructor for the handgun class told us that if you tried something like that in real life, the bad guy, assuming there’s one out there, would just grab your arm and take your gun away from you. And probably break your finger if you have it stuck through the trigger guard. If you hold the pistol close like this, with your finger along the side, it’s a lot harder for anyone to get hold of it, and the gun is a lot less likely to go off by accident.”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “Well, I admire your professionalism, but I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

  “We’ll find out, won’t we,” Sally said. “Open the door.”

  Jack opened the door and gave it a push. Sally stepped through, and the warm, humid night air fit itself around her like a damp glove. It was very dark.

  “What happened to your streetlight?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “It goes off all the time. I’ll turn on the porch light.”

  “No!” Sally said. “If you do, we’ll be silhouetted. Perfect targets.”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re taking this seriously.”

  “Of course I am. Bostic and Thomas are dead, aren’t they? You can’t get much more serious than that.”

  “Maybe we should go in my car,” Jack said.

  “Too late. We’re already out here. Close the door.”

  Jack closed the door and stepped out onto the front walk with Sally.

  “Now what?” he said.

  “We get in my car and drive away,” Sally said. “Come on.”

  Jack followed her toward the little Integra.

  “Remember those stories that came out around Christmas last year?” he said. “The ones about the guy who was supposedly going around to shopping malls and hiding under cars? When you got to your car, he’d slide out from under it and slice your Achilles tendon with a razor blade.”

  “Jack! Stop that!”

  “It wasn’t true,” Jack said. “It was just some stupid urban legend. There’s not room under a car for anyone to hide these days. They’re too close to the ground.”

  “It makes me uncomfortable to hear that kind of story. Just for that you’ll have to look under the car.”

  “I have broken ribs.”

  “Don’t argue.”

  Jack, moving very slowly and carefully, got down on one knee and looked beneath Sally’s car.

  “I can’t see anything under there. It’s too dark.”

  “Then you’ll just have to get in first. But be careful when you open the door. The interior light will come on, and you’ll be—”

  “Silhouetted,” Jack said, slowly getting to his feet. “A perfect target.”

  “You catch on fast. But there’s an upside.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Maybe you’ll be falling down because someone’s cut your Achilles tendon. That way whoever shoots at you will miss.”

  “Some see the glass as half full,” Jack said. “Others see it as half empty.”

  “Right. Now get in.”

  Jack reached out for the door handle, and something reached out from under the car and grabbed his ankle.

  “Arrgghhh!” Jack said, jumping up and then falling backward as the sharp pain stabbed him in the vicinity of his Achilles tendon.

  When he hit the ground, his head bumped the grass, aggravating the knot that was already there, and the pain from his rib
s shot through him. He screamed even louder.

  “Where is he?” Sally yelled. “I can’t see him!”

  “Don’t shoot!” Jack said as Hector ran across his chest and streaked across the lawn. “It’s only the cat!”

  Sally walked over to where Jack lay in the damp grass beside the driveway with her purse and pistol case nearby.

  “You scared me half to death,” she said.

  “You think you were scared?” Jack said. “I thought for a second someone had severed my Achilles tendon.”

  “Serves you right. Can you get up?”

  “I’m not sure. I think I’ll just lie here for a while. Look up at the stars.”

  “You can’t see any stars. It’s too cloudy and there’s too much light from Houston anyway.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m sure. If you’re seeing anything at all, it’s those little white lights you told me about.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I think the back of my head hit the ground. It doesn’t feel so good.”

  “No wonder.” Sally reached down with her left hand. “Let me help you up.”

  “Are you supposed to move an injured person?”

  “I don’t think you’re injured, not any more than you were before. I know your ribs must hurt, but you can’t lie there all night.”

  “It’s my lawn. I can lie here if I want to.”

  “True, but the neighbors would probably complain.” She thrust her hand at him. “Grab hold.”

  Jack gripped her hand, and she pulled him into a sitting position.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she said.

  Jack moaned. “I think a dentist said that to me once.”

  Sally still had hold of his hand, and she gave an easy pull.

  “Come on up,” she said.

  Jack got his feet under him and rose up off the ground with only a little bit of whimpering.

  “If you hadn’t told me that story about the shopping mall slicer, this would never have happened,” Sally said.

  “Sure, blame me. It was that stupid cat’s fault.”

  “There’s always a scapegoat handy,” Sally said.

  “Scapecat, in this case.”

  “Whatever. Do you think you can get in my car?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Sally opened the door, and Jack twisted himself into the seat without crying out. When he had his legs inside, Sally helped him with the seat belt, which was admittedly a bit hard to grab from the front seat without a great deal of bending. Jack clicked the belt closed, and Sally shut the door.