This time I’d work at the problem from the other direction and let Grant stew for a while. The hypothesis was simple—if Debbie had been killed by a karate blow and Dan hadn’t done it, who had? Where else could we find a karate expert, preferably one who would be willing to kill an heiress for hire? If we could find him, in this theory, we could learn everything.
It was an intriguing idea. Symmetrical. With Grant, we’d—okay, I’d—picked a suspect and worked inward toward the crime. Now, I’d take the crime and work outward.
Okay then, where’s the best place to look for a karate expert? In a karate school, of course. The only problem with that was Sewanka didn’t have a karate school. I’d have to find the nearest one.
Like a good Boy Scout, I used the resources at hand. I was in a town with a great institution of higher learning in it. The greatest thing about it at the moment was the fact that the library was open on Sundays. It was nice to be on campus anyway. Made me feel young. I went out there again.
Land in that part of New York State is plentiful, but a lot of it is vertical or at least on a slope. That’s certainly true of the land Whitten College is built on. Over the years, the campus has expanded over the edges of the plateau it originally occupied, around the bottom, and up all the neighboring hills. This has led to two unchangeable facts of life on campus. There is no place to park closer than a quarter-mile away from your destination; and at least half of that quarter-mile will be up or down stairs built into hillsides.
Alumni are notoriously conservative where the alma mater is concerned, and I was grinning despite my shin splints when I reached the top of the flight of one hundred three concrete steps that ran up the side of Heart Attack Hill, at the bottom of which I had parked the Network car. I was glad the young whippersnappers had to go through this ordeal on the way to class in the morning. It would build character.
As I walked across the quad toward the library, it was driven home to me again just how young these whippersnappers were. It was discouraging. How had these infants gotten into college, for crying out loud? I’d never been that young, not even in high school. I was beginning to think this trip had been a mistake.
Spot fit right in, though. He’d caught his breath after the great climb, and he was prancing around the cool green grass of he quad, sizing up the other dogs and allowing the coeds to coo over him and stroke his white fur.
After a while, he decided that was too tame, so he leaped into the middle of a Frisbee game, got position on an Irish setter, timed his jump perfectly, and intercepted the disk. He ran over to me with it, with an expression on his face that said, “Look what I found.”
The setter had chased him, and the two dogs pretended to fight for a second, then began sniffing each other, which has always struck me as a hell of a way to make friends. I looked up to see a pretty dark-haired girl in a tee shirt and gym shorts looking on the dogs with an indulgent smile.
I held up he Frisbee and said, “Yours?” She nodded and clapped her hands, so I flipped her a soft little forehand throw that she snatched out of the air with a little jump that did great things for the tee shirt.
Then she waved to me and said, “Thank you, sir.”
Sir. I felt like running over to her and showing her my driver’s license. Hell, I wasn’t thirty years old yet. I don’t even like it when little kids call me sir.
I knew I wouldn’t be long, so I told Spot to wait for me outside the library. The Frank Humphrey Fish Memorial Library was still standing, which was by no means a foregone conclusion. It had been one of the great scandals ten years ago when, with the construction half completed, some unnamed hero at the architecture firm discovered that the original plans had neglected to allow for the weight of the five million or so books this thing was being built to house. They’d had to reinforce floors and walls with cables to make it safe.
Other than that, it was a lovely place. My alumni card got me in, and a quick look at the directory confirmed my memory of where the phone books were. I went to the desk and asked for the Yellow Pages for the area codes 607 (where I was now), 716 (Buffalo), and 315 in case they (whoever “they” was) had gone as far away as Syracuse to get the hypothetical karate killer. Of course, as long as I was being hypothetical about it, there was nothing to say they hadn’t flown somebody in from New York or even Yokohama, but I figured I might as well play my highest percentages first.
The nearest place was in Elmira, and there was another in Binghamton, a few in Buffalo, a couple in Syracuse. I’d start phoning them tomorrow.
I gave the phone books back to the attendant, then turned to go. That was when I decided somebody was following me. A middle-aged guy on the tough side of nondescript, whom I’d first spotted puffing along after me up the stairs. We’d even exchanged a few words. I remembered he’d said, “These stairs can kill you.” Now he was waiting just outside the phone-book room, reading a magazine. He got up just after I’d walked by.
It could have been a cop, of course. It would be sort of encouraging if it was, in fact—it would mean that Chief Cooper wasn’t 100 per cent satisfied with the case against Dan, that his men were still looking for evidence. If they were, they might even turn up something that could help.
Of course, if it wasn’t a cop, that was even more encouraging. It meant I had somebody worried. I had stirred something up. I was overcome with an urge to have a talk with this guy.
I had it all planned by the time I’d pushed my way through the revolving doors and out onto the campus. I wouldn’t even make him suspicious; I’d just walk back to my car. At the bottom of the stairs, the path zigzags around the corner of the geology building. All I had to do was duck into a doorway after the first zag, then tap him on the shoulder as he went by.
I told Spot to come along, and took off briskly across the quad. I was going briskly because if you want to pull something like this on a tail, you want to have him moving fast. He has less time to react that way, less time to think.
Of course, it also gives you less time to think. I was so busy making a list of questions I wanted to ask this guy, I neglected to ask myself the most important question of all: Why was he following me in the first place?
I didn’t think of that question until I already had the answer to it, after my tail had closed the distance between us, then run up to me and given me a stiff push from behind at the top of the stairs.
It was an especially effective move, because I had to turn it into a clumsy dive to avoid landing full on Spot (who was preceding me down the steps) and smashing him into a furry disk. I remember thinking, as I flew head first toward the concrete, that I had wanted to be moving fast down these stairs, but that this was ridiculous. Then I asked and answered the question—he was following me because he wanted to kill me. I just had time to curse myself for having made it so easy for him before I hit.
My left knee hit Spot a fairly solid blow in the flank (he’d turned to see what I was yelling about), and he let out a yip that had quite a lot of “What’s the big idea?” in it.
Still, he got off lightly. Instinctively, I put my hands out to break my fall. I also nearly broke my wrists. I did flay the palms of both hands, but I had enough brains to let my elbows give with the shock. This resulted in my smacking my forehead on the edge of a step, but it was a lot better than the broken neck or the fractured skull the pusher had planned for me. “These stairs can kill you,” I thought grimly.
The way I landed enabled me to turn the momentum of my fall into a sort of sideways roll, which let me absorb most of the impacts on my elbows, knees, and upper back. I could feel a little more skin being scraped away every time I hit.
Spot was yipping as he ran along behind me. He probably thought I was having fun. Some fun. With the pain, and the way the hillside was spinning in my vision, I was beginning to get a good idea of what a piece of glass in a kaleidoscope feels like.
I must have fallen over sixty of those hundred plus steps before I stopped, sprawled drunkenly against a
railing. The world kept spinning.
Spot caught up with me, sniffed me for a second to see if this battered wreck in torn clothing was the same guy he’d been with at the top of the stairs, then started to lick the scraped places on my face. Not only did it burn like fire, it started me speculating on the dire results of subcutaneous applications of dog spit on the healing process.
The world stopped spinning, and I pushed Spot away. He took it good-naturedly enough; he was glad to see I was able to move. I sat up, winced, made a cry of pain, then forced myself to look back up the stairs at the place I’d fallen from. There were little double splotches of blood soaking into the concrete, marking every place my hands had touched the stairs. I squinted up into the afternoon sun, trying to see if my pal had hung around to see the results of his handiwork, but I couldn’t spot him. He either had a lot of confidence in himself, or he had decided during the early part of my trip that I was going to survive and split so I wouldn’t be able to identify him.
I still wasn’t sure I was going to survive. I steeled myself, then took a look at the palms of my hands. And immediately wished I hadn’t. Blood, and dirt, and torn skin, and little pieces of rock embedded in them. There was one particular pebble stuck in my left palm. I couldn’t stand the thought of its staying there. I forced the fingers of my right hand to bend enough to pick it out. The effort left me sweating and short of breath.
Even as I sat there, I could feel my battered muscles beginning to tighten up on me. Rigor mortis of the living. I was hoping somebody would come by and help me down the rest of the way, but no such luck. This was Sunday. Few students would get down past the main quad today.
With a curse and a groan, I fought my way to my feet and made my way to the bottom of the stairs. It took maybe twenty minutes, the worst twenty minutes of my life.
It was slightly less terrible on level ground, and I staggered toward the Network car with one thought on my mind: home. Someplace where I didn’t have to move. Someplace where I’d be safe.
There was just one problem. I couldn’t open the car door, couldn’t close my fingers around the handle. As it was, it was hell trying to get the keys out of my pocket. The only way I could do it was to turn the pocket inside out and get everything out, change and all.
Then I stood there, trying to balance the stuff on the small undamaged portion of my hand, until I finally realized that even if I managed to get inside the goddam car, there was no way I was going to be able to grab the steering wheel to drive it.
I staggered on some more, looking for a telephone. I finally found one, after a painful trek of what seemed like six light years but was probably more like sixty yards. I had dimes among the change that was still sitting on my hand, but I decided to use a quarter—easier to handle.
If that had been a rotary-dial phone, I don’t know what I would have done. I had enough trouble pushing the buttons. The pain kept filling up my mind and making me forget how many numbers I had dialed.
Finally, though, I hit enough, and somebody’s phone started to ring. I counted along, praying I’d gotten the right number, praying that she was home. Four. Five. I refused to panic. The phone company asks you to let the phone ring ten times, for a full minute. Seven. Eight. Ni—
“Hello?” I allowed myself to breathe when I heard Eve’s voice.
“Thank God,” I said. It came out more like a croak. “Eve, this is Matt. I need you. Now.”
She chuckled low in her throat. “Why, Matt. This is so sudden.”
“Not like that, goddammit! I’m beat up and bleeding, and I can’t move. Come and get me before he comes back and tries to kill me again.”
“Before he what?”
“Kills me. Eve, hurry up, all right?”
“You’d better not be joking Matt. I was in the shower.”
“No joke. Eve, I mean it.”
“All right, then. Where are you?”
Wonderful. I’d been about to hang up when I heard her say all right. I put the phone back to my ear and gave her directions. Then, as a character-building exercise, I tried to stay on my feet until she showed up.
CHAPTER 20
“Of all the happenings of eevolution, Oi reckon this comes closest to a miracle!”
–David Bellamy, “The Botanic Man” (Thames TV and CBS Cable)
ABOUT TWO HOURS LATER, I met the district attorney, Mr. R. John Wernick, known in newspaper stories and on ballots as Jack. Ever since Jimmy Carter became President, politicians have gone for nicknames in a big way. I expect someday to see an election between somebody named Ace and somebody named Fatso.
Jack Wernick wasn’t the type to qualify for either of those appellations. He was the platonic ideal of a politician. He was tall; handsome, but not too handsome; young, with just enough wrinkles to imply wisdom; and well dressed without looking as if he’d spent too much money on his clothes. He had a great smile, and a great voice. Les Tilman had said he was the best criminal lawyer in this part of the state. Everybody said he was ambitious. It took about nine seconds in his presence to see everybody was right.
I didn’t dislike him for his ambition. Disliking a man like District Attorney Wernick for his ambition would be like disliking a tiger for his hunger. I disliked him because he was so damned smug he made me want to push him down a flight of stairs. He was going to ride to power on the back of Dan Morris, and he didn’t care who knew it.
“Well, of course, Mr. Cobb,” he was saying, “all we have is your word that you were attacked. It’s a pity your dog can’t testify.”
Spot snarled at him, a sentiment I heartily approved. We were in Wernick’s house, in a book-lined study that would make a perfect setting for a campaign ad. Chief Cooper had brought Eve, Spot, and me there after we’d shown up at headquarters to deliver the news. The chief had seemed impressed; at least he’d felt it was important enough to share with the DA.
I’d already been to the emergency room at Sewanka General. My hands had been bandaged like a boxer’s, my back painted like a brick wall. I had thick gauze pads taped to my left elbow and both knees, and I had a Band-Aid stuck at a jaunty angle on my forehead.
They’d given me some Darvon tablets for pain, but I hadn’t taken them yet; they make me drowsy, and I wanted my wits unimpaired when I spoke to the law.
Fat lot of good it did me.
I held up my bandaged hands. “How’d I get these, then?” I asked. “Reaching into a Cuisinart?”
“Please,” he said, holding up a hand of his own. “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Cobb.” The expression on his face said that was his cross to bear in this world. People kept getting him wrong. “I’m not saying you didn’t take a nasty tumble down those stairs. And, believe me, I sympathize with your injuries—”
“But I’m still a liar, right?” I tried to sit back, decided that was a mistake when seventeen million nerve ends screamed in protest, and went back to the edge of my chair.
“Now, Mr. Cobb,” he said sadly. I’d gone ahead and gotten him wrong, anyway. “You’ve had a very upsetting experience—”
“Lots of them. Including this one.”
He ignored me. “—and that experience has come after you’ve been exhausting yourself in a hopeless cause. It’s no wonder you might wish to read something into your accident that would help your friend.”
I stood up with a sudden effort. If I’d tried to do it slowly, my body would have rebelled. This way, I tricked it into submission. I groaned, I don’t know whether from pain or from frustration.
“Look, Mr. Wernick—”
“No, Mr. Cobb, you look.” The great smile was gone now. Apparently, he’d given up on my vote. He leaned forward in his chair and placed his hands on the desk. “The penalties for giving false information to the police can be severe. I am giving you your only chance. Ask Ms. Bowen, why don’t you? She will tell you that what I’ve said is true. And she’ll also tell you my case against Morris is cast in steel.”
Eve spoke up for the first time. “The
penalties, Mr. Wernick, for a district attorney who fails to do his duty are also severe. As I’m sure I don’t have to tell you.” Her long red hair danced around her face like flames of anger.
“Mr. Cobb has filed an official complaint,” she went on. “Unless and until he decides to withdraw it, you, Chief, are obligated to investigate it, and you, Mr. Wernick”—the word “Wernick” sounded like a new species of insect, the way Eve said it—“are obligated to bring charges and prosecute if the chief’s investigation so warrants. Shall I cite statutes?”
I like a good, honest fight. I like to see enmity out in the open. Things are much healthier that way. That’s why I was delighted to see the look of cold fury on Jack Wernick’s face. Battle lines were now firmly drawn, and I had another reason to try to get Dan off. I owed the district attorney a pie in the face.
That, apparently, was a common sentiment. Outside, Chief Cooper came over to us. A frown was folded in among the usual creases.
“I’m sorry, folks. I just wanted you to speak to Wernick so you’d know what you were up against. He’s making a crusade out of this case, and he won’t take any back talk.”
“Has he been getting any?” I said I was glad now I hadn’t taken the Darvon.
“How’s that?” the chief said.
“If this is such an open-and-shut case,” Eve said, picking up on my thought, “and my client’s guilt is so manifest—that’s the official position, isn’t it?—well, if that’s the case, why should Wernick be getting any back talk at all? Who has other ideas? Based on what evidence?”
Cooper grinned at us. “I think I’ve said all that’s wise. You two are sharp, aren’t you? But I should tell you this—there’s no serious opposition to Wernick’s ideas; it’s just that he won’t listen to any opposition.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Like Ms. Bowen says, I’m a public servant. I know my duty. You want to come in tomorrow, look at some mug shots, try to find the guy who pushed you?”
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