Death Through the Looking Glass

by Forrest, Richard;

  A half-moon reflected dim shafts of silver light from behind scudding clouds as he climbed fences and walked through knee-high grass until he was behind the building. He pulled a penlight from his pocket and slowly paced the width of the field with downcast eyes.

  Near the center of the field he knelt beside a thin swatch of parted grass. It had been a dry month, and no rain had fallen since Tom Giles’s death. The impressions in the soft loam were quite distinct as he ran his fingers over the wheel indentations. The penlight’s small glare clearly outlined the tread marks.

  A powerful battery lamp cast a circle of light for a dozen feet around Lyon. He stood and shaded his eyes from the beam shining directly into his face. “Who’s there?”

  “Communing with nature, Lyon?”

  “Is that you, Damon?”

  “Sit down. That’s right. Right there. Sit down and clasp your hands behind your back. Go on!”

  Lyon did as instructed. “I know your voice, Damon. I think you should know that Rocco is out here.”

  The man behind the light laughed. “Come on, Lyon, don’t sound so dire.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Security spotted you when you crossed the field. I was working late, and when they recognized you, they called me.” He turned the light away from Lyon’s face. “Put your hands down. Now, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  “Tom Giles’s plane landed here.”

  “I’ll put up a monument.”

  “During your military service you were …”

  “In the artillery.”

  “As an observer pilot. A spotter flying fixed-wing light aircraft.”

  “If you’re interested in my military career, Lyon, I’ll send you a copy of my service record.”

  “You did fly?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if we matched the tire tracks in this field to the tires on Giles’s plane.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything. Now, what are you getting at?”

  “You were involved in the land deal with Giles and Esposito.”

  “So was Blossom.”

  “You stood to benefit by their deaths. You fly, and Giles’s plane landed here.”

  “And I was with you when Giles’s plane went down.”

  “Not with me. I was in the balloon.”

  “I could hardly have left, killed Giles, taken his plane, flown it into the sound, and been back at the house in time to help you search for him.”

  “No, you couldn’t have.”

  “You know something, Lyon? Your breath smells like you’ve been drinking. Go home and sober up.”

  14

  She stood on the porch with her feet apart. Her voice crossed the T and hit him broadside as he stepped from the car. “ALL RIGHT, WENTWORTH! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FOR TWO DAYS?”

  He fingered his ear as a gesture for her to turn up the hearing aid.

  “IT IS TURNED UP! I’M MAD! TWO DAYS, WENTWORTH!”

  “There was a lot of checking to do. Then the trip to New York for the materials, and then the practice.”

  “Where in New York?”

  “F. A. O. Schwartz.”

  Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “How much?”

  “About three hundred.”

  “I’ll double that to six.”

  “And eighty-five cents.”

  They walked into the house arm in arm. “You know, Lyon, if I hadn’t known that your paramour was in our barn all this time …”

  “Both of them, still …?”

  “No, he moved into the bedroom the other night.”

  “What bedroom?”

  “The guestroom, goose! They’ve been arguing like two old marrieds. Now, where have you been?”

  The phone rang just as Rocco’s police cruiser screeched to a halt in the drive. “No, Kim, you can’t quit until I’m back on Monday,” he heard Bea say as he went to meet Rocco.

  The police chief scowled at Lyon. “AND WHERE IN HELL HAVE YOU BEEN FOR TWO DAYS?”

  “Your hearing, too?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Come on in.”

  “I haven’t had any sleep in two days.”

  “Worrying about me?”

  “Hell, no! Sitting outside Blossom’s place waiting for the creep to make a wrong move. When he does, I’m going to crucify him.”

  “The cloth?”

  “Still negative.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Lyon said as they entered the kitchen.

  “Come the revolution, Kim,” Bea said, “they’ll need people like you in government.”

  Lyon poured three mugs of coffee and tried to hand one to Bea at the phone but was waved away. “There are airplane-tire prints in the field back of Damon’s factory. I’ve also found that he can fly. If we take plaster casts of those markings in the field, and match them against the Giles plane …”

  “Being deputy secretary is not selling out!”

  “That’s easy enough to do,” Rocco said.

  The kitchen door slammed open. Winston stood wild-eyed in the center of the room and pointed at Lyon. “I’m not ready to settle down to write children’s books. I don’t even like children! You’ve got to drive me to the recruiting office right away. The Marines want good men!”

  “Let me lay it out for you about Damon, Rocco. First …”

  “Today! I have to join today, Mr. Wentworth!”

  Lyon turned to face the agitated young man. “Why the Marines?”

  “My hair’s already short.”

  Robin had followed him through the door. “You’re love’s apostate … an adolescent.”

  “I’ve had enough of that!”

  “And I can’t stand two unrequited love affairs,” Robin said.

  Bea looked away from the phone. “With all the time you two have spent in the barn, I would have thought you would be well requited.” She turned back to the phone. “No, Kim, not relieved, requited, and I didn’t mean you.”

  “She’s bugging me to death,” Winston said.

  “That doesn’t take much!” Robin yelled.

  “EVERYONE SHUT UP!” Lyon ordered. He took the phone from Bea. “Kim, this is Lyon. We’ll see you later tonight.” He hung up and turned to Robin. “Call your father and make arrangements to go home. Now! Rocco and I will drop you off at the bus station, Winston. Where’s your home?”

  “Larchmont, but I took a vow of poverty.”

  “I’ll advance you the money. Get in the car.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Rocco, we need to make a cast of the tire print in the field.”

  “For a moment I thought you were going to send me home, too.”

  As Rocco parked in the toy factory lot, Lyon looked toward the rear of the building in astonishment. A tractor had almost finished plowing the long field. Long parallel rows of earth had been freshly turned by the massive blade.

  “I should have come back the next morning,” Lyon said softly. “Like a fool, I wanted to put the whole thing together.”

  “A little late in the season to be planting,” Rocco said. “Let’s ask Mr. Snow about his agricultural plans.”

  “Winter wheat,” Damon said with a bemused look and swiveled his chair. “Or is it summer wheat? I always get them mixed up.”

  “In Connecticut?” Rocco asked.

  “Maybe some corn, then.”

  “There’s a charge called willful destruction of evidence,” Rocco said.

  “What evidence?”

  “Those airplane tracks in the field,” Lyon said. “I saw them, and you saw them with me.”

  “I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about, and I’m getting damn mad about this whole matter. All I know, Lyon, is that you’ve been seeing things for the past couple of weeks. Seeing and hearing things that no one else sees or hears. I know artists are unstable, but these delusions of yours are becoming psychopathic.”

  “You deny
there were any tracks in that field?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You work two shifts here, don’t you?” Lyon asked.

  “During the week.”

  “Then a worker or one of your security people would have seen and heard that plane land and take off.”

  “At least your delusions take logical form. We don’t work any shifts on the weekend. The plant is buttoned up; we have a fine alarm system and teams of guard dogs. As I recall, the Giles plane went down on your birthday, Sunday.”

  “And there would have been no one here that day?”

  “Except the dogs we use for those occasions.”

  “I’m afraid they make very poor witnesses, Lyon,” Rocco said.

  “Then you have a choice, Chief,” Damon said. “Either Lyon is a good witness or he was seeing things.”

  “He’s usually right.”

  “In that case, he knows we were all together when he saw that plane go down.”

  Rocco turned to Lyon. “Two planes, but of similar color and make.”

  “Not exactly,” Lyon said. “But I think I can show what happened that day. Perhaps you’d both like to join me at sunrise tomorrow morning at Damon’s place in Lantern City?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Damon said.

  Lyon arrived at Lantern City Point before dawn. Working quickly, he laid out the balloon, went through the inflation process until the balloon bobbed off the ground, and moored it to the pickup’s bumper. He began to arrange the other items as quickly as he could.

  As red sun streaked the eastern sky, Rocco’s cruiser, followed by Damon’s Lincoln, turned off the main road toward the house at the far end of the point. Rocco’s car pulled ahead and stopped parallel to the pickup. The police chief slammed out of the car and strode toward Lyon, now standing by the erect balloon.

  “I’m playing along, Lyon. But I’d like to know what you intend to prove.”

  Lyon checked the level on the propane tank. “I’m going to show you how it was done.”

  “By Dr. Blossom?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Blossom could have used Damon’s field to land and hide the plane. He had a motive, he was a flyer during the war, and the cloth we found in your house after the fire is similar to the disciples’ robes. Finally, his alibi doesn’t hold up.”

  “You never could match the cloth.”

  “He could have destroyed that bolt; he had the time.”

  “There may be another source for that cloth.”

  Damon Snow parked next to the cruiser and ambled toward them with his usual bemused look. “Morning, gentlemen. I assume the demonstration is nearly ready?”

  “It is.”

  “I’ve already seen how your balloon works,” Damon said as he plunked into a lawn chair.

  Lyon reached into the balloon basket and gave the propane burner a flick. The long flame streamed into the envelope with a small roar that stabilized the position of the balloon. “Rocco, please get into the basket.”

  “You’re out of your mind! I’m not going up in that thing.”

  “Get in. There’re things I have to do on the ground.”

  “I don’t know how to operate it.”

  “Do exactly as I tell you.”

  “Hell, I could blow over Long Island Sound and go down in the drink!”

  “I’m not letting you off the mooring line. You’ll go up about a hundred feet, and I’ll keep the line attached to the bumper of the pickup. Come on, in the basket.”

  Rocco shook his head but nevertheless swung his legs into the gondola. The added weight made the basket sink toward the ground. “Now what?”

  “The propane burner on the control panel was broken when I crashed on the beach, so you’ll have to operate the lever over your head. Put on the asbestos glove, and when I give a swinging motion with my hand, give it a three-second burn. O.K., now!”

  Rocco reached gingerly over his head and flipped the small lever. More flame shot into the envelope. “Like this?”

  “Now, if I cut my hand across my throat, immediately let go of the lever. Give it five more seconds.”

  Rocco flicked the lever for the required interval. “Nothing’s happening.”

  “How much do you weigh?”

  “Two eighty-five.”

  “Give it a ten-second burn.”

  As the propane burn continued, the balloon began to bounce gently from the ground, and then it quickly rose. “Cut!” Lyon yelled, and the whoosh of the burner immediately ceased. The bag ascended majestically and silently in the early light. “Every thirty seconds, give it a burn of three.”

  “Now what?” Damon Snow asked, with an edge to his voice.

  “In a minute,” Lyon replied as he looked upward to watch the balloon rise to the length of the mooring line. “Look to the east, Rocco. To the east!”

  When he was satisfied that the balloon was safely leveled at the end of the line, Lyon went to the cab of the truck, turned the ignition key, and began to twirl several dials of a radio set held on his lap. “Watch to the east, Rocco,” he said under his breath, and hoped the trial runs had been sufficient to enable him to operate everything properly.

  Rocco Herbert’s hands clutched the guy line running to the envelope ring. His knuckles turned white as he braced his feet against the three-quarter-inch plywood that formed the floor of the basket. He heard Lyon yell for him to look to the east, and he realized that in order to accomplish this, he would have to open his eyes. He blinked as the balloon reached the end of the mooring line.

  The year before, perched on a swaying ladder over the second story of his house, he had realized that the added years had brought him vertigo. He had laughed at himself as an ex-ranger, once used to scrambling down sheer cliffs and parachuting from aircraft, now developing such an unreasonable fear of heights.

  How in the hell had he been talked into taking a ride in this ridiculous vehicle?

  The plane came directly from the east, and he shaded his eyes to look toward the rising sun. Intermittently he could see it clearly—a brightly painted craft. It waggled its wings and then changed course to head out over the sound.

  A small plume of black smoke came from the engine cowling, and the plane nosed down in a power dive toward the water.

  My God! It was going to hit! As he leaned toward the diving plane he felt the basket tip precariously under his shifting weight.

  The plane dove into the water and was immediately lost from sight under the whitecaps of the sound.

  “Get me down from here! I saw it! I saw it!”

  He saw Lyon leave the cab of the truck and look toward him. “Pull the white line. And for God’s sake not the red one!”

  He carefully avoided the red line as he reached gingerly toward the other rope. He gave it a hesitant tug and then looked up at the apex of the envelope to see the panel move aside. As hot air escaped into the atmosphere, the balloon settled gently to the ground.

  “So, what did you see?” Damon asked.

  The balloon bobbed on the ground as Rocco dropped over the side. “I saw an airplane that looked like Giles’s fly out of the sun and then dive into the water.” He turned to Lyon. “How did you arrange it?”

  Lyon gestured toward the rear of the truck. “We can do it again, if you’d like.”

  Rocco swept back the tarpaulin from the truck bed to reveal another exact replica of the Giles plane—with a three-foot wingspan. “It’s a God damn toy.”

  “The radio control’s in the cab.”

  “We’ve begun to experiment with them at the factory,” Damon said. “But I would imagine that Lyon already knows that.”

  Rocco held the radio-controlled plane in one hand. “Damn it! I saw an airplane up there!”

  “You saw what you expected to see.”

  “Cut the riddles.”

  “What an object appears to be and where it is seen depend on each other. You and I, Rocco, saw a plane in the air over the water, wit
h no reference point of known size. We perceived an aircraft of familiar size. Let me ask you how far away you thought the plane was when it went down.”

  “A couple of thousand yards.”

  “Closer to a couple of hundred feet.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Elementary laws of the relationship between object, image and visual experience,” Damon said didactically. “If the object is of giant size, it will appear nearer; if it’s a miniature, it will seem farther away.”

  “An optical illusion?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Lyon said. “And it worked. On the morning of my birthday, Bea gave me the new gondola. It was a surprise to no one except me. Everyone knew that I couldn’t resist an early-morning flight.”

  “It is the best time to launch, isn’t it?” Damon asked.

  “When I saw a uniquely painted plane come out of the sun, I assumed it was Tom Giles, and I kept that assumption.”

  “The engine was on fire; I saw the smoke.”

  “So did I. It’s easy enough to rig. Two pellets placed under the engine cowling that melt after sufficient heat application.”

  “Then Tom Giles was murdered that night?”

  “And the body was taken to the real plane, parked in back of Damon’s toy company.”

  “Flown into the water, and the killer swam ashore.”

  “An inflatable raft, actually,” Damon said. Rocco and Lyon turned toward the tall, thin man holding the automatic. He quickly screwed a silencer onto the end of the barrel.

  “And I was your alibi,” Lyon said. “You knew that I’d swear to the time the plane went down.”

  “As you were to be my alibi for the Esposito killing, but you saw through that one rather quickly.”

  “You were the only one who could have put it together. You knew we’d be at your house that day, and knew of Bea’s gift.”

  “Give me the gun, Damon.” Rocco’s voice was steady, almost gentle, as he walked slowly toward the man with the pistol.

  “Stop right there.”

  “The gun, Damon.”

  The weapon thumped, and Rocco fell with one leg bent to the side. He raised himself to his knees and began to crawl forward. “Drop it.”

  The weapon thumped again. Rocco’s other leg twitched, and he fell face forward into the sand. Damon walked over to the fallen police officer and slipped the magnum from its holster.