tantaliz

by Isaac Asimov ed.

  "Could she have hated you that much, Captain?" Fletcher asked. "To frame you for her murder?"

  "She could have. I think she was a very sick woman. If I did that to her—if I was the one who made her sick—I suppose I deserve what's happening to me now."

  "The hell you do," Fletcher growled. "If you say you're innocent, Captain, I'm sticking by you." He began pacing again, and finally turned to the Commissioner. "How about giving him a paraffin test, to see if he's fired a gun recently?"

  The Commissioner shook his head. "We haven't used that in years. You know how unreliable it is, Fletcher. Many people have nitrates or nitrites on their hands. They can pick them up from dirt, or fertilizers, or fireworks, or urine, or even from simply handling peas or beans. Anyone who smokes tobacco can have deposits on his hands. There are some newer tests for the presence of barium or lead, but we don't have the necessary chemicals for those."

  Leopold nodded. The Commissioner had risen through the ranks. He wasn't simply a political appointee, and the men had always respected him. Leopold respected him. "Wait for the ballistics report," he said. "That'll clear me."

  So they waited. It was another 45 minutes before the phone rang and the Commissioner spoke to the ballistics man. He listened, and grunted, and asked one or two questions. Then he hung up and faced Leopold across the desk.

  "The bullet was fired from your gun," he said simply. "There's no possibility of error. I'm afraid well have to charge you with homicide."

  The routines he knew so well went on into Saturday evening, and when they were finished Leopold was escorted from the courtroom to find young Ted Moore waiting for him. "You should be on your honeymoon," Leopold told him.

  "Vicki couldn't leave till I'd seen you and tried to help. I don't know much about criminal law, but perhaps I could arrange bail."

  "That's already been taken care of," Leopold said. "The grand jury will get the case next week."

  "I—I don't know what to say. Vicki and I are both terribly sorry."

  "So am I." He started to walk away, then turned back. "Enjoy your honeymoon."

  "Well be in town overnight, at the Towers, if there's anything I can do."

  Leopold nodded and kept on walking. He could see the reflection of his guilt in young Moore's eyes. As he got to his car, one of the patrolmen he knew glanced his way and then quickly in the other direction. On a Saturday night no one talked to wife murderers. Even Fletcher had disappeared.

  Leopold decided he couldn't face the drab walls of his office, not with people avoiding him. Besides, the Commissioner had been forced to suspend him from active duty pending grand jury action and the possible trial. The office didn't even belong to him anymore. He cursed silently and drove home to his little apartment, weaving through the dark streets with one eye out for a patrol car. He wondered if they'd be watching him, to prevent his jumping bail He wondered what he'd have done in the Commissioner's shoes.

  The eleven o'clock news on television had it as the lead item, illustrated with a black-and-white photo of him taken during a case last year. He shut off the television without listening to their comments and went back outside, walking down to the corner for an early edition of the Sunday paper. The front-page headline was as bad as he'd expected: Detective Captain Held in Slaying of Ex-Wife.

  On the way back to his apartment, walking slowly, he tried to remember what she'd been like—not that afternoon, but before the divorce. He tried to remember her face on their wedding day, her soft laughter on their honeymoon. But all he could remember were those mad vengeful eyes. And the bullet ripping into her chest

  Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps the gun had come into his hand so easily he never realized it was there.

  "Hello, Captain."

  "I—Fletcher! What are you doing here?"

  "Waiting for you. Can I come in?"

  "Weil.. r

  "I've got a six-pack of beer. I thought you might want to talk about it."

  Leopold unlocked his apartment door. "What's there to talk about?"

  "If you say you didn't kill her, Captain, I'm willing to listen to you.

  Fletcher followed him into the tiny kitchen and popped open two of the beer cans. Leopold accepted one of them and dropped into the nearest chair. He felt utterly exhausted, drained of even the strength to fight back.

  "She framed me, Fletcher," he said quietly. "She framed me as neatly as anything I've ever seen. The thing's impossible, but she did it."

  "Let's go over it step by step, Captain. Look, the way I see it there are only three possibilities: either you shot her, she shot herself, or someone else shot her. I think we can rule out the last one. The three windows were locked on the outside and unbroken, the room was bare of any hiding place, and the only entrance was through the accordion doors. These were closed and locked, and although they could have been opened from the other side you certainly would have seen or heard it happen. Besides, there were one hundred and fifty wedding guests on the other side of those doors. No one could have unlocked and opened them and then fired the shot, all without being seen."

  Leopold shook his head. "But it's just as impossible that she could have shot herself. I was watching her every minute. I never looked away once. There was nothing in her hands, not even a purse. And the gun that shot her was in my holster, on my belt. I never drew it till after the shot was fired."

  Fletcher finished his beer and reached for another can. "I didn't look at her close, Captain, but the size of the hole in her dress and the powder burns point to a contact wound. The Medical Examiner agrees, too. She was shot from no more than an inch or two away. There were grains of powder in the wound itself, though the bleeding had washed most of them away."

  "But she had nothing in her hand," Leopold repeated. "And there was nobody standing in front of her with a gun. Even I was twenty feet away."

  "The thing's impossible, Captain."

  Leopold grunted. "Impossible—unless I killed her."

  Fletcher stared at his beer. "How much time do we have?"

  "If the grand jury indicts me for first-degree murder, I'll be in a cell by next week."

  Fletcher frowned at him. "What's with you, Captain? You almost act resigned to it! Hell, I've seen more fight in you on a routine holdup!"

  "I guess that's it, Fletcher. The fight is gone out of me. She's drained every drop of it She's had her revenge."

  Fletcher sighed and stood up. "Then I guess there's really nothing I can do for you, Captain. Good night"

  Leopold didn't see him to the door. He simply sat there, hunched over the table. For the first time in his life he felt like an old man.

  Leopold slept late Sunday morning, and awakened with the odd sensation that it had all been a dream. He remembered feeling the same way when he'd broken his wrist chasing a burglar. In the morning, on just awakening, the memory of the heavy cast had always been a dream, until he moved his arm. Now, rolling over in his narrow bed, he saw the Sunday paper where he'd tossed it the night before. The headline was still the same. The dream was a reality.

  He got up and showered and dressed, reaching for his holster out of habit before he remembered he no longer had a gun. Then he sat at the kitchen table staring at the empty beer cans, wondering what he would do with his day. With his life.

  The doorbell rang and it was Fletcher. "I didn't think I'd be seeing you again," Leopold mumbled, letting him in.

  Fletcher was excited, and the words tumbled out of him almost before he was through the door. "I think I've got something, Captain! It's not much, but it's a start I was down at headquarters first thing this morning, and I got hold of the dress Monica was wearing when she was shot"

  Leopold looked blank. "The dress?"

  Fletcher was busy unwrapping the package he'd brought "The Commissioner would have my neck if he knew I brought this to you, but look at this hole!"

  Leopold studied the jagged, blood-caked rent in the fabric. "It's large," he observed, "but with a near-contact
wound the powder burns would cause that."

  "Captain, I've seen plenty of entrance wounds made by a .38 slug. I've even caused a few of them. But I never saw one that looked like this. Hell, it's not even round!"

  "What are you trying to tell me, Fletcher?" Suddenly something stirred inside him. The juices were beginning to flow again.

  "The hole in her dress is much larger and more jagged than the corresponding wound in her chest, Captain. That's what I'm telling you. The bullet that killed her couldn't have made this hole. No way! And that means maybe she wasn't killed when we thought she was."

  Leopold grabbed the phone and dialed the familiar number of the Towers Hotel. "I hope they slept late this morning."

  "Who?"

  "The honeymooners." He spoke sharply into the phone, giving the switchboard operator the name he wanted, and then waited. It was a full minute before he heard Ted Moore's sleepy voice answering on the other end. Ted, this is Leopold. Sorry to bother you."

  The voice came alert at once. That's all right, Captain. I told you to call if there was anything—"

  "I think there is. You and Vicki between you must have a pretty good idea of who was invited to the wedding. Check with her and tell me how many doctors were on the invitation list."

  Ted Moore was gone for a few moments and then he returned. "Vicki says you're the second person who asked her that?"

  "Oh? Who was the first?"

  "Monica. The night before the wedding, when she arrived in town with Dr. Thursby. She casually asked if he'd get to meet any other doctors at the reception. But Vicki told her he was the only one. Of course we hadn't invited him, but as a courtesy to Monica we urged him to come."

  "Then after the shooting, it was Thursby who examined her? No one else?"

  "He was the only doctor. He told us to call an ambulance and rode to the hospital with her."

  "Thank you, Ted. You've been a big help."

  "I hope so, Captain."

  Leopold hung up and faced Fletcher. That's it She worked it with this guy Thursby. Can you put out an alarm for him?"

  "Sure can," Fletcher said. He took the telephone and dialed the unlisted squadroom number. "Dr. Felix Thursby? Is that his name?"

  That's it. The only doctor there, the only one who could help Monica with her crazy plan of revenge."

  Fletcher completed issuing orders and hung up the phone. They'll check his hotel and call me back."

  "Get the Commissioner on the phone, too. Tell him what we've got"

  Fletcher started to dial and then stopped, his finger in mid-air. "What have we got, Captain?"

  The Commissioner sat behind his desk, openly unhappy at being called to headquarters on a Sunday afternoon, and listened bleakly to what Leopold and Fletcher had to tell him. Finally he spread his fingers on the desktop and said, The mere fact that this Dr. Thursby seems to have left town is hardly proof of his guilt, Captain. What you're saying is that the woman wasn't killed until later —that Thursby killed her in the ambulance. But how could he have done that with a pistol that was already in Lieutenant Fletcher's possession, tagged as evidence? And how could he have fired the fatal shot without the ambulance attendants hearing it?"

  "I don't know," Leopold admitted.

  "Heaven knows, Captain, I'm willing to give you every reasonable chance to prove your innocence. But you have to bring me more than a dress with a hole in it"

  "All right," Leopold said. "I'll bring you more."

  The grand jury gets the case this week, Captain."

  "I know," Leopold said. He turned and left the office, with Fletcher tailing behind.

  "What now?" Fletcher asked.

  "We go to talk to Immy Fontaine, my ex-wife's stepbrother."

  Though he'd never been friendly with Fontaine, Leopold knew where to find him. The tired man with the gold tooth lived in a big old house overlooking the Sound, where on this summer Sunday they found him in the back yard, cooking hot dogs over a charcoal fire.

  He squinted into the sun and said, "I thought you d be in jail, after what happened."

  "I didn't kill her," Leopold said quietly.

  "Sure you didn't."

  "For a stepbrother you seem to be taking her death right in stride," Leopold observed, motioning toward the fire.

  "I stopped worrying about Monica fifteen years ago."

  "What about this man she was with? Dr. Thursby?"

  Immy Fontaine chuckled. "If he's a doctor I'm a plumber! He has the fingers of a surgeon, I'll admit, but when I asked him about my son's radius that he broke skiing, Thursby thought it was a leg bone. What the hell, though, I was never one to judge Monica's love life. Remember, I didn't even object when she married you."

  "Nice of you. Where's Thursby staying while he's in town?"

  "He was at the Towers with Monica."

  "He's not there anymore."

  "Then I don't know where he's at. Maybe he's not even staying for her funeral."

  "What if I told you Thursby killed Monica?"

  He shrugged. "I wouldn't believe you, but then I wouldn't particularly care. If you were smart you'd have killed her fifteen years ago when she walked out on you. That's what I'd have done."

  Leopold drove slowly back downtown, with Fletcher grumbling beside him. "Where are we, Captain? It seems we're just going in circles."

  "Perhaps we are, Fletcher, but right now there are still too many questions to be answered. If we can't find Thursby I'll have to tackle it from another direction. The bullet, for instance."

  "What about the bullet?"

  "We're agreed it could not have been fired by my gun, either while it was in my holster or later, while Thursby was in the ambulance with Monica. Therefore, it must have been fired earlier. The last time I fired it was at target practice. Is there any possibility— any chance at all—that Thursby or Monica could have gotten one of the slugs I fired into that target?"

  Fletcher put a damper on it. "Captain, we were both firing at the same target. No one could sort out those bullets and say which came from your pistol and which from mine. Besides, how would either of them gain access to the basement target range at police headquarters?"

  "I could have an enemy in the department," Leopold said.

  "Nuts! We've all got enemies, but the thing is still impossible. If you believe people in the department are plotting against you, you might as well believe that the entire ballistics evidence was faked."

  It was, somehow. Do you have the comparison photos?"

  "They're back at the office. But with the narrow depth of field you can probably tell more from looking through the microscope yourself."

  Fletcher drove him to the lab, where they persuaded the Sunday-duty officer to let them have a look at the bullets. While Fletcher and the officer stood by in the interests of propriety, Leopold squinted through the microscope at the twin chunks of lead.

  "The death bullet is pretty battered," he observed, but he had to admit that the rifling marks were the same. He glanced at the identification tag attached to the test bullet: Test slug fired from Smith & Wesson .38 Revolver, serial number 2420547.

  Leopold turned away with a sigh, then turned back.

  2420547.

  He fished into his wallet and found his pistol permit Smith & Wesson 2421622.

  "I remembered those two's on the end," he told Fletcher. "That's not my gun."

  "It's the one I took from you, Captain. I'll swear to it!"

  "And I believe you, Fletcher. But it's the one fact I needed. It tells me how Dr. Thursby managed to kill Monica in a locked room before my very eyes, with a gun that was in my holster at the time. And it just might tell us where to find the elusive Dr. Thursby."

  By Monday morning Leopold had made six long-distance calls to California, working from his desk telephone while Fletcher used the squadroom phone. Then, a little before noon, Leopold, Fletcher, the Commissioner, and a man from the District Attorney's office took a car and drove up to Boston.

  "You're sur
e you've got it figured?" the Commissioner asked Leopold for the third time. "You know we shouldn't allow you to cross the state line while awaiting grand jury action."

  "Look, either you trust me or you don't," Leopold snapped. Behind the wheel Fletcher allowed himself a slight smile, but the man from the D.A.'s office was deadly serious.

  "The whole thing is so damned complicated," the Commissioner grumbled.

  "My ex-wife was a complicated woman. And remember, she had fifteen years to plan it."

  "Run over it for us again," the D.A/s man said.

  Leopold sighed and started talking. "The murder gun wasn't mine. The gun I pulled after the shot was fired, the one Fletcher took from me, had been planted on me some time before."

  "How?"

  "I'll get to that. Monica was the key to it all, of course. She hated me so much that her twisted brain planned her own murder in order to get revenge on me. She planned it in such a way that it would have been impossible for anyone but me to have killed her."

  "Only a crazy woman would do such a thing."

  "I'm afraid she was crazy—crazy for vengeance. She set up the entire plan for the afternoon of the wedding reception, but I'm sure they had an alternate in case I hadn't gone to it. She wanted some place where there'd be lots of witnesses."

  "Tell them how she worked the bullet hitting her," Fletcher urged.

  "Well, that was the toughest part for me. I actually saw her shot before my eyes. I saw the bullet hit her and I saw the blood. Yet I was alone in a locked room with her. There was no hiding place, no opening from which a person or even a mechanical device could have fired the bullet at her. To you people it seemed I must be guilty, especially when the bullet came from the gun I was carrying.

  "But I looked at it from a different angle—once Fletcher forced me to look at it all! I knew I hadn't shot her, and since no one else physically could have, I knew no one did! If Monica was killed by a .38 slug, it must have been fired after she was taken from that locked room. Since she was dead on arrival at the hospital, the most likely time for her murder—to me, at least—became the time of the ambulance ride, when Dr. Thursby must have hunched over her with careful solicitousness."