by Larry Niven
I flipped back to full shots of the bodies. They looked to be in good condition. Not much flab. You don't collect a donor by putting an armlock on him; you use a needle gun. But you still need muscle to pick up the body and move it to your car, and you have to do that damn quick. Hmmm...
Someone knocked at my door.
I shouted, “Come on in!”
Drew Porter came in. He was big enough to fill the office, and he moved with a grace he must have learned on a board. “Mr. Hamilton? I'd like to talk to you.”
“Sure. What about?”
He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. He looked grimly determined. “You're an ARM,” he said. “You're not actually investigating Uncle Ray's murder. That's right, isn't it?”
“That's right. Our concern is with the generator. Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks. But you know all about the killing. I thought I'd like to talk to you, straighten out some of my own ideas.”
“Go ahead.” I punched for two coffees.
“Ordaz thinks Janice did it, doesn't he?”
“Probably. I'm not good at reading Ordaz's mind. But it seems to narrow down to two distinct groups of possible killers: Janice and everyone else. Here's your coffee.”
“Janice didn't do it.” He took the cup from me, gulped at it, set it down on my desk, and forgot about it.
“Janice and X,” I said. “But X couldn't have left. In fact, X couldn't have left even if he'd had the machine he came for. And we still don't know why he didn't just take the elevator.”
He scowled as he thought that through. “Say he had a way to leave,” he said. “He wanted to take the machine—he had to want that, because he tried to use the machine to set up an alibi. But even if he couldn't take the machine he'd still use his alternative way out.”
“Why?”
“It'd leave Janice holding the bag if he knew Janice coming home. If he didn't know that, he'd be leaving the police with a locked room.”
“Locked room mysteries are good clean fun, but I never heard of one happening in real life. In fiction they usually happen by accident.” I waved aside his protest. “Never mind. How did he get out?”
Porter didn't answer.
“Would you care to look at the case against Janice Sinclair?”
“She's the only one who could have done it,” he said bitterly. “But she didn't. She couldn't kill anyone, not in that cold-blooded, prepackaged way, with an alibi all set up and a weird machine at the heart of it. Look, that machine is too complicated for Janice.”
“No, she isn't the type. But—no offense intended—you are.”
He grinned at that. “Me? Well, maybe I am. But why would I want to?”
“You're in love with her. I think you'd do anything for her. Aside from that, you might enjoy setting up a perfect murder. And there's the money.”
“You've got a funny idea of a perfect murder.”
“Say I was being tactful.”
He laughed at that. “All right. Say I set up a murder for the love of Janice. Damn it, if she had that much hate in her, I wouldn't love her! Why would she want to kill Uncle Ray?”
I dithered about whether to drop that on him. Decided yes. “Do you know anything about Edward Sinclair's exemption?”
“Yah. Janice told me something about...” He trailed off.
“Just what did she tell you?”
“I don't have to say.”
That was probably intelligent. “All right,” I said. “For the sake of argument, let's assume it was Raymond Sinclair who worked out the math for the new ramrobot scoops, and Edward took the credit, with Raymond's connivance. It was probably Raymond's idea. How would that sit with Edward?”
“I'd think he'd be grateful forever,” Porter said. “Janice says he is.”
“Maybe. But people are funny, aren't they? Being grateful for fifty years could get on a man's nerves. It's not a natural emotion.”
“You're so young to be so cynical,” Porter said pityingly.
“I'm trying to think this out like a prosecution lawyer. If these brothers saw each other too often, Edward might get to feeling embarrassed around Raymond. He'd have a hard time relaxing with him. The rumors wouldn't help ... Oh, yes, there are rumors. I've been told that Edward couldn't have worked out those equations because he doesn't have the ability. If that kind of thing got back to Edward, how would he like it? He might even start avoiding his brother. Then Ray might remind brother Edward of just how much he owed him ... and that's the kiss of death.”
“Janice says no.”
“Janice could have picked up the hate from her father. Or she might have started worrying about what would happen if Uncle Ray changed his mind one day. It could happen any time if things were getting strained between the elder Sinclairs. So one day she shut his mouth—”
Porter growled in his throat.
“I'm just trying to show you what you're up against. One more thing: the killer may have wiped the tapes in Sinclair's computer.”
“Oh?” Porter thought that over. “Yah. Janice could have done that just in case there were some notes in there, notes on Ed Sinclair's ramscoop field equations. But look: X could have wiped those tapes, too. Stealing the generator doesn't do him any good unless he wipes it out of Uncle Ray's computer.”
“Shall we get back to the case against X?”
“With pleasure.” He dropped into a chair. Watching his face smooth out, I added, and with great relief.
I said, “Let's not call him X. Call him K for killer.” We already had an Ecks involved ... and his family name probably had been X once upon a time. “We've been assuming K set up Sinclair's time compression effect as an alibi.”
Porter smiled. “It's a lovely idea. Elegant, as a mathematician would say. Remember, I never saw the actual murder scene. Just chalk marks.”
“It was—macabre. Like a piece of surrealism. A very bloody practical joke. K could have deliberately set it up that way if his mind is twisted enough.”
“If he's that twisted, he probably escaped by running himself down the garbage disposal.”
“Pauline Urthiel thought he might be a psychotic. Someone who worked with Sinclair who thought he wasn't getting enough credit.” Like Peterfi, I thought, or Pauline herself.
“I like the alibi theory.”
“It bothers me. Too many people knew about the machine. How did he expect to get away with it? Lawrence Ecks knew about it. Peterfi knew about it. Peterfi knew enough about the machine to rebuild it from scratch. Or so he says. You and Janice saw it in action.”
“Say he's crazy, then. Say he hated Uncle Ray enough to kill him and then set him up in a makeshift Dali painting. He'd still have to get out.” Porter was working his hands together. The muscles bulged and rippled in his arms. “If the elevator hadn't been locked and on Uncle Ray's floor, there wouldn't be a problem.”
“So?”
“So. Janice came home, called the elevator up, and locked it. She does that without thinking. She had a bad shock last night. This morning she didn't remember.”
“And this evening it could come back to her.”
Porter looked up sharply. “I wouldn't—”
“You'd better think long and hard before you do. If Ordaz is sixty percent sure of her now, he'll be a hundred percent sure when she lays that on him.”
Porter was working his muscles again. In a low voice he said, “It's possible, isn't it?”
“Sure. It makes things a lot simpler, too. But if Janice said it now, she'd sound like a liar.”
“But it's possible.”
“I give up. Sure, it's possible.”
“Then who's our killer?”
There wasn't any reason I shouldn't consider the question. It wasn't my case at all. I did, and presently I laughed. “Did I say it'd make things simpler? Man, it throws the case wide open! Anyone could have done it. Uh, anyone but Steeves. Steeves wouldn't have had any reason to come back this morning.”
Porter loo
ked glum. “Steeves wouldn't have done it anyway.”
“He was your suggestion.”
“Oh, in pure mechanical terms, he's the only one who didn't need a way out. But you don't know Steeves. He's a big, brawny guy with a beer belly and no brains. A nice guy, you understand, I like him, but if he ever killed anyone, it'd be with a beer bottle. And he was proud of Uncle Ray. He liked having Raymond Sinclair in his building.”
“Okay, forget Steeves. Is there anyone you'd particularly like to pin it on? Bearing in mind that now anyone could get in to do it.”
“Not anyone. Anyone in the elevator computer, plus anyone Uncle Ray might have let up.”
“Well?”
He shook his head.
“You make a hell of an amateur detective. You're afraid to accuse anyone.”
He shrugged, smiling, embarrassed.
“What about Peterfi? Now that Sinclair's dead, he can claim they were equal partners in the, uh, time machine. And he tumbled to it awfully fast. The moment Valpredo told him Sinclair was dead, Peterfi was his partner.”
“Sounds typical.”
“Could he be telling the truth?”
“I'd say he's lying. Doesn't make him a killer, though.”
“No. What about Ecks? If he didn't know Peterfi was involved, he might have tried the same thing. Does he need money?”
“Not hardly. And he's been with Uncle Ray for longer than I've been alive.”
“Maybe he was after the exemption. He's had kids, but not by his present wife. He may not know she can't have children.”
“Pauline likes children. I've seen her with them.” Porter looked at me curiously. “I don't see having children as that big a motive.”
“You're young. Then there's Pauline herself. Sinclair knew something about her. Or Sinclair might have told Ecks, and Ecks blew up and killed him for it.”
Porter shook his head. “In red rage? I can't think of anything that'd make Larry do that. Pauline, maybe. Larry, no.”
But, I thought, there are men who would kill if they learned that their wives had gone through a sex change. I said, “Whoever killed Sinclair, if he wasn't crazy, he had to want to take the machine. One way might have been to lower it by rope...” I trailed off. Fifty pounds or so, lowered two stories by nylon line. Ecks's steel and plastic arm ... or the muscles now rolling like boulders in Porter's arms. I thought Porter could have managed it.
Or maybe he'd thought he could. He hadn't actually had to go through with it.
My phone rang.
It was Ordaz. “Have you made any progress on the time machine? I'm told that Dr. Sinclair's computer—”
“Was wiped, yah. But that's all right. We're learning quite a lot about it. If we run into trouble, Bernath Peterfi can help us. He helped build it. Where are you now?”
“At Dr. Sinclair's apartment. We had some further questions for Janice Sinclair.”
Porter twitched. I said, “All right, we'll be right over. Andrew Porter's with me.” I hung up and turned to Porter. “Does Janice know she's a suspect?”
“No. Please don't tell her unless you have to. I'm not sure she could take it.”
* * * *
I had the taxi drop us at the lobby level of the Rodewald Building. When I told Porter I wanted a ride in the elevator, he just nodded.
The elevator to Raymond Sinclair's penthouse was a box with a seat in it. It would have been comfortable for one, cozy for two good friends. With me and Porter in it, it was crowded. Porter hunched his knees and tried to fold into himself. He seemed used to it
He probably was. Most apartment elevators are like that. Why waste room on an elevator shaft when the same space can go into apartments?
It was a fast ride. The seat was necessary; it was two gees going up and a longer period at half a gee slowing down while lighted numbers flickered past. Numbers but no doors.
“Hey, Porter. If this elevator jammed, would there be a door to let us out?”
He gave me a funny look and said he didn't know. “Why worry about it? If it jammed at this speed, it'd come apart like a handful of shredded lettuce.”
It was just claustrophobic enough to make me wonder. K hadn't left by elevator. Why not? Because the ride up had terrified him? Brain to memory: dig into the medical records of that list of suspects. Claustrophobia. Too bad the elevator brain didn't keep records. We could find out which of them had used the boxlike elevator once or not at all.
In which case we'd be looking for K2. By now I was thinking in terms of three groups. K1 killed Sinclair, then tried to use the low-inertia field as both loot and alibi. K2 was crazy; he hadn't wanted the generator at all, except as a way to set up his macabre tableau. K3 was Janice and Drew Porter.
Janice was there when the doors slid open. She was wan, and her shoulders slumped. But when she saw Porter, she smiled like sunlight and ran to him. Her run was wobbly, thrown off by the missing weight of her arm.
The wide brown circle was still there in the grass, marked with white chalk and the yellow chemical that picks up bloodstains. White outlines to mark the vanished body, the generator, the poker.
Something knocked at the back door of my mind. I looked from the chalk outlines, to the open elevator, to the chalk ... and a third of the puzzle fell into place.
So simple. We were looking for K1 ... and I had a pretty good idea who he was.
Ordaz was asking me, “How did you happen to arrive with Mr. Porter?”
“He came to my office. We were talking about a hypothetical killer—” I lowered my voice slightly. “—a killer who isn't Janice.”
“Very good. Did you reason out how he must have left?”
“Not yet. But play the game with me. Say there was a way.”
Porter and Janice joined us, their arms about each other's waists. Ordaz said, “Very well. We assume there was a way out. Did he improvise it? And why did he not use the elevator?”
“He must have had it in mind when he got here. He didn't use the elevator because he was planning to take the machine. It wouldn't have fit.”
They all stared at the chalk outline of the generator. So simple. Porter said, “Yah! Then he used it anyway and left you a locked room mystery!”
“That may have been his mistake,” Ordaz said grimly. “When we know his escape route, we may find that only one man could have used it. But of course we do not even know that the route exists.”
I changed the subject. “Have you got everyone on the elevator tape identified?”
Valpredo dug out his spiral notebook and flipped to the jotted names of the people permitted to use Sinclair's elevator. He showed it to Porter. “Have you seen this?”
Porter studied it. “No, but I can guess what it is. Let's see ... Hans Drucker was Janice's lover before I came along. We still see him. In fact, he was at that beach party last night at the Randalls'.”
“He flopped on the Randalls’ rug last night,” Valpredo said. “Him and four others. One of the better alibis.”
“Oh, Hans wouldn't have anything to do with this!” Janice exclaimed. The idea horrified her.
Porter was still looking at the list. “You know about most of these people already. Bertha Hall and Muriel Sandusky were lady friends of Uncle Ray's. Bertha goes backpacking with him.”
“We interviewed them, too,” Valpredo told me. “You can hear the tapes if you like.”
“No, just give me the gist. I already know who the killer is.”
Ordaz raised his eyebrows at that, and Janice said, “Oh, good! Who?” which question I answered with a secretive smile. Nobody actually called me a liar.
Valpredo said, “Muriel Sandusky's been living in England for almost a year. Married. Hasn't seen Sinclair in years. Big, beautiful redhead.”
“She had a crush on Uncle Ray once,” Janice said. “And vice versa. I think his lasted longer.”
“Bertha Hall is something else again,” Valpredo continued. “Sinclair's age and in good shape. Wiry. She says that when
Sinclair was on the home stretch on a project, he gave up everything: friends, social life, exercise. Afterward he'd call Bertha and go backpacking with her to catch up with himself. He called her two nights ago and set a date for next Monday.”
I said, “Alibi?”
“Nope.”
“Really!” Janice said indignantly. “Why, we've known Bertha since I was that high! If you know who killed Uncle Ray, why don't you just say so?”
“Out of this list, I sure do, given certain assumptions. But I don't know how he got out, or how he expected to, or whether we can prove it on him. I can't accuse anyone now. It's a damn shame he didn't lose his arm reaching for that poker.”
Porter looked frustrated. So did Janice.
“You would not want to face a lawsuit,” Ordaz suggested delicately. “What of Sinclair's machine?”
“It's an inertialess drive, sort of. Lower the inertia, time speeds up. Bera's already learned a lot about it, but it'll be a while before he can really...”
“You were saying?” Ordaz asked when I trailed off.
“Sinclair was finished with the damn thing.”
“Sure he was,” Porter said. “He wouldn't have been showing it around otherwise.”
“Or calling Bertha for a backpacking expedition. Or spreading rumors about what he had. Yeah. Sure, he knew everything he could learn about that machine. Julio, you were cheated. It all depends on the machine. And the bastard did wrack up his arm, and we can prove it on him.”
We piled into Ordaz's commandeered taxi: me and Ordaz and Valpredo and Porter. Valpredo set the thing for conventional speeds so he wouldn't have to worry about driving. We'd turned the interior chairs to face each other.
“This is the part I won't guarantee,” I said, sketching rapidly in Valpredo's borrowed notebook. “But remember, he had a length of line with him. He must have expected to use it. Here's how he planned to get out.”
I sketched in a box to represent Sinclair's generator, a stick figure clinging to the frame. A circle around them to represent the field. A bowknot tied to the machine, with one end trailing up through the field.