Killed in Fringe Time Read online

  I made a noise. The medical technician wanted to know if I was all right. A doctor came and told me to squeeze his finger. I obliged.

  There was no problem on that score. No further problem at least, aside from scrapes and scratches, a shoulder bruised to the bone, and God knows what rearrangements inside my head. That little yelp had come out because my brain still wouldn’t let go of the money. There was something about the money, something important ...

  Then I got it. “Hah!” I said.

  “Am I hurting you?” the technician wanted to know.

  It’s hard to talk when your skull feels like it’s in the middle of the spin cycle, but I managed to tell him, no, I’d just thought of something.

  It took another hour and a half, but finally, they wheeled me to a room, gave me a shot in the ass, which had been one of the few parts of my body that didn’t hurt already, and told me that as far as their tests were concerned, if I went to sleep now, I almost certainly wouldn’t die before I woke.

  I decided to take them up on it. Whatever had been in the needle had taken all the pain away. I went to sleep.

  I woke up looking into the big brown eyes of Roxanne Schick.

  I grinned sleepily at her. “Hi, honey,” I said.

  Softly, she stroked my forehead. “I leave you alone for a little while, and look what happens to you. Are you all right, Cobb?”

  “Getting there. I’ll be sleeping on my left side for a while.”

  “You’re sure, now.”

  “Positive.”

  “Good. So maybe now you feel up to telling me why this guy wanted to burn you to death for messing with his sister.”

  I started to laugh. It hurt, but I couldn’t stop. I was gratified to see Rox was laughing, too.

  “Hyperactive imagination,” I said. “His I mean. Also, if you can stand my being psychological about it, he wanted to burn me to death because he wanted to mess with his sister.”

  “A wacko,” Rox summarized.

  “Your command of medical jargon is impressive.”

  “Shut up,” she said pleasantly. After a few seconds, she said, “Cobb, I don’t want to find you in the hospital every time I turn my back On you for a minute. You’ve got to stop hanging around with murderers.”

  “I don’t do it on purpose,” I said.

  “Well, cut it out.” Suddenly, she dropped the banter, something she only did when we were alone, and not often then. “Matt, I lost my parents and most of my childhood. If I lose you, I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

  “It comes up in the course of the job,” I told her.

  “Mmmm,” she said. “Well, I am the major stockholder in the Network. Maybe I ought to pull a few strings and get you fired.”

  “Maybe you should,” I said.

  Her eyes opened wide.

  “But not yet.”

  She tossed her head in disgust. “I should have known,” she said.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ve got to cozy up to one more killer. Then this job will be finished and we can talk.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to it:”

  I grinned at her. “You do that. There’s a lot of things I want you to hold me to.”

  Roxanne spoke in her throat, mock-vampishly. “Oh, I will, Big Boy. I’ll hold you very close, but tenderly, so as not to bend your bruises.”

  “I can hardly wait,” I said.

  I tried to sit up. I saw enough stars to have a new galaxy named after me, but with some help from my beloved, I finally made it.

  “Do I have a phone in here?”

  “What do you want a phone for?” Roxanne demanded. “I’m already here.”

  “Yes,” I said. “God is good.” I leaned out and kissed her, a maneuver easily worth the pain it caused. “Unfortunately,” I went on, “what I need to do now is to speak to Lieutenant Martin.”

  “Oh,” Roxanne said. “Forget the phone.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Stick my head out the window and yell?”

  “That will not,” she said haughtily, “be necessary. He’s here.”

  “Where, here?”

  She smiled. “My, you did get hit on the head, didn’t you? You sound like a telegram.”

  “Where is he, Rox?”

  “Down at the nurses’ station. I’ve been sort of fending him off you.”

  “Well, go on down there and fend him on me, will you?”

  “What a disgusting idea.”

  “Now, don’t be politically incorrect,” I said. Then, seriously, I added, “Come on, Rox, I need to talk to the man. It’s about time we got this straightened out.”

  She gave me a soft kiss, bending no bruises, but making Marcie’s efforts seem like soap bubbles by comparison. “Be right back,” she said.

  She was, too, but at least she had the lieutenant in tow.

  He looked me over.

  “The thing about white people,” he said, “is that they show bruises really badly.”

  I tried to adjust the wretched hospital gown to cover my shoulder.

  “And their hair,” he went on. “So untidy.” He took off his hat to show his white crop. “Now, a nice head of nappy curls like mine stands up to sweat, beatings, women, and always looks nice and neat.”

  “Does the name Don King mean anything to you?”

  “Nope,” he said, “not a thing. You had us worried, Matty. How you doing?”

  “Can’t talk about it now, I’ll be late for my rumba lesson.” I shrugged as well as I could with one shoulder. “What can I say? It hurts, I’m stiff. Doctor last night said they didn’t think I was sick enough to continue taking up a bed.”

  “You’ll go home,” Roxanne said. “Spot will protect you. I’ll take care of you.”

  “Sounds great,” I said.

  “I’ll call a taxi,” she volunteered.

  “But not yet.”

  “Fooey.”

  I turned to the lieutenant. “You don’t look like you’ve had much sleep.”

  “Ha,” he said. “I spent the night with Mr. Peter Nast. With him, and supervising the search of his apartment.”

  “And?”

  “What, and?”

  “He gets it from you,” Roxanne said.

  “Gets what from me?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’ll tell you. Peter is under arrest for attempted murder on me, and possibly attempted arson. You are also holding him jointly for the Connecticut cops and the Feds for attempted murder on Vivian Pike, because you found his apartment lousy with bomb-making materials.”

  “Yeah. How do you know this?”

  “I had a near-death experience, and a voice came out of the Great Light and told me. Let me finish. You are holding him on that stuff, but you have not booked him for the murder of Richard Bentyne, because there is not a shred of evidence that he had anything to do with it. How am I doing so far?”

  “You should be wearing a turban. But it’s worse than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He kept a diary.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “What, ah?” Roxanne said. I raised my eyebrows at her, and she realized she’d caught it from us and covered her mouth.

  The lieutenant ignored the byplay.

  “Matty,” he said. “I love Cornelius’s mother. I don’t regret a day of our married life. But I must admit that from time to time, I am thinking about my job, or a basketball game, or what I’m going to have for dinner, rather than about the woman I love.”

  “Well, we knew he had it bad.”

  “Son, bad is not the word. Obsession is hardly the word. There is literally not a sentence in that diary that doesn’t refer to his sister, how he wants her, how he can’t stop thinking about her, blessing God for letting him spend his life close to her, cursing Him for making it a sin to do anything about it.”

  He shuddered. “In a way, I’m sorry I read it. I don’t know—feels lik
e it sort of soiled my mind. I’ve been a cop for a long time, and I’ve seen some gruesome things, but this is too weird and too different. I mean, the sister is a quiet, charming gal, and all, God knows how she fell for that Bentyne character—you all right, Matty?”

  I stopped choking, smiled, and told him I was fine.

  “Anyway, it’s all in there. Why Bentyne had to die, why it had to be a bomb, why he had to send it to the Connecticut address—”

  “It had to be the Connecticut address,” I said, “because Marcie never went there. If he sent it to the studio, Marcie might get hurt.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But in the whole diary, the words arsenic and chicken do not appear, right?”

  “Right again. Only in astonishment after the death. He was glad Marcie’s honor had been avenged, but peeved he wasn’t the one who’d done it. But how do you know all this, Matty?”

  “Because I know who the other killer, the one who actually did for Bentyne, has to be.”

  “Ahhh,” the lieutenant said.

  “I even,” I said, “know that we’re going to catch him.”

  “How nice of you to include me,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it. Of course, we are going to need some outside help.”

  “Your mission, should

  you decide to accept it ...”

  —BOB JOHNSON

  Mission Impossible, CBS

  22

  “COME ON IN,” CLEMENT Bates beamed at me as he opened the door to his room at the New York Hilton. “Nice to see you. What the hell happened to you, fall downstairs? I’m just about done packing. You gonna drive me to the airport?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly? How can you drive me ‘not exactly’ to the airport? Don’t do me any good if you drive me partway there, does it? I’m gonna be standing there in the middle of the BQE, hitchhiking the rest of the way.”

  “I mean, I’ll drive you to the airport, if you still need me to, but not now.”

  “Plane leaves in two hours, boy.”

  “Look, Clem.” This time, I didn’t even mind saying it. “We need your help. The police and I. To close the Bentyne case.”

  “Thought that was closed. Thought that was why I heard from the New York cops that I’d been sprung. I don’t want to be hanging around. I’m going back to the grizzly bears. Too dangerous around here.”

  “Clem.” There, I thought, I said it again. It was getting easier all the time. “We can’t do this without you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you were at the studio on Monday. But you’re not connected with the Network.”

  “That’s important, is it?”

  “Vital,” I told him.

  “But I thought they got him.”

  “They got somebody,” I acknowledged, “and he’s guilty enough, but there are complications, as I’m sure you can figure. There’s somebody else.”

  “Why don’t your police pals arrest him, then?”

  “They will, if they can. But there’s a big difference between knowing who the killer is and proving it.”

  “Can’t do it without me, huh?”

  “The lieutenant is damned if he can think of a way. I can’t either.”

  He scratched his beard. “I’d feel a lot better about helping you with a killer if you coulda gotten me my gun back. Can you get a gun in New York?”

  I ignored his naïveté. I didn’t believe in it, anyway.

  “Oh, there’s no risk,” I said. “All you have to do is write a note—copy it out, actually. I’ve got the wording in my pocket.”

  “That’s all, huh?” He scowled at me. “Is it one of those things where you try to fool the killer into giving evidence against himself? I mean, lead you to it?”

  “That’s what it is, all right.”

  He shook his head. “Only an idjit would fall for something like that. Where’s the goddamn paper?”

  I pulled an envelope out of my vest pocket. The contents had been carefully composed that morning by the lieutenant and me, with Roxanne and a late-arriving Rivetz kibbitzing.

  My companion opened the envelope and read. “Dear Tom Falzet.” He looked up at me. “Who the hell is Tom Falzet?”

  “My boss, for one thing.”

  A grin spit the beard. “I can see why you want to get him, then.”

  “I won’t deny a little personal satisfaction in what I’m doing.”

  “Good. Then I’ll help you. I can’t abide a hypocrite, but I can admire a little honest ambition.”

  He took a piece of hotel stationery and wrote. His handwriting was large and angular, not as old-fashioned as one might expect from a hermit.

  I checked it over when he finished.

  Dear Tom Falzet (it read)

  Having decided that my being a man who minds his own business outweighs anything that might keep me here in this dirty city, I’m writing this note to tell you I saw you at the studio that day putting something in your boy Bentyne’s picnic basket. I don’t know if I’m the only one who saw you, or if everybody else is keeping his mouth shut because you’re the big boss, and they figure to try some private blackmail, and I don’t care. Frankly, I don’t want a damn thing from you. I got all the money anybody could ever need, and I don’t need any. For all I know, you had good reason to do him in. The only reason I’m writing you is because I know that if I saw you, you might have seen me.

  Don’t try to do anything about me. I am no threat to you. I’m going back to the mountains, and I hope nobody ever thinks of me again. And remember this: If you did think you’d be safer with the witness out of the way, I know the mountains, and I am a crack shot.

  —Clement Bates

  “Perfect,” I said. I stuck the note in a Hilton envelope, walked to the door, and gave it to the hotel employee who had been entrusted with seeing it got to the right place.

  “What happens now?”

  “We wait until Lieutenant Martin tells us we can go.”

  “By which time, my plane is long gone.”

  I told him to relax. “I promise you a booking before the day is out.”

  We didn’t have long to wait. We conversed.

  At one point, my companion said, “You know. I’m still a mountain man, but I don’t know as I’ll be quite the hermit I was, anymore. Despite the poison and the bombs, I think it did me good to get out and mingle some.”

  I smiled. “That bomb was a genuine surprise, wasn’t it? Anyway, I knew you were going to say that, something about coming back.”

  He was about to ask me how, when the knock came at the door.

  “’Bout time,” he said. “Should I get it, or is it likely to be this Falzet fella with a shotgun?”

  “You can get it,” I said. “Code knock. It’s Lieutenant Martin.”

  The bearded man opened the door.

  It was indeed Lieutenant Martin, accompanied by Rivetz. Roxanne wasn’t with them; I wondered if they’d had to stuff her in a closet or something.

  Bates had just noticed that Rivetz had a scowl on his face and a service revolver in his hand. He backed up a step.

  As he did so, Martin grabbed his wrist, spun him around, and put the cuffs on him.

  “It all checks out, Matty,” he said. To the prisoner, he said, “Frank Harlan, alias Clement Bates, you are under arrest for the murder of Richard Bentyne, and suspicion of the murder of the real Clement Bates. You have the right to remain silent ...”

  “We’ll validate the final scores and be back

  to announce our winner in just a moment.”

  —ROBERT EARLE

  G.E. College Bowl, NBC

  23

  YOU COULD TELL IT was a special occasion. For one thing, it was the first time Roxanne Schick had been inside the Tower of Babble since she was a little girl, let alone in the office of Tom Falzet, the man who had succeeded her late father as Network president.

  For another thing, there was Falzet himself. Ordinarily,
he would have allowed himself to show the full extent of his displeasure at my having used him as a red herring to get the false-Bates to give us a nice juicy handwriting sample.

  As it was, he kept himself under control (the presence of the largest single stockholder may have had a restraining effect), and expressed detached, almost academic interest.

  It was only fair, in the face of such an effort, to give him an explanation, so I did.

  “There really wasn’t time to consult you,” I began, “or, of course, I would have.”

  “Naturally,” Roxanne said earnestly.

  “I mean, the man was packing to leave, and there was really no way to stop him, without manufacturing evidence. I had realized that even if he’d been a hermit for thirty years and more, Clement Bates had once run a very successful company. There had to be plenty of authentic copies of his signatures in the files at headquarters out in Montana.

  “Frank Harlan was easy—he had done a book for Austin, Stoddard & Trapp, the publishing arm of the Network. His handwriting was on file in the contracts department. A couple of faxes in and out—the lieutenant had the department’s top handwriting man right there at the hotel—and bingo! Evidence. Bates wasn’t Bates—he was Frank Harlan, who had killed Bates and taken his place about three months before he came to New York.”

  “Yes, but I still don’t understand why you had to use my name.”

  “To make it work, we had to have a credible reason for ‘Bates’ to think we needed him for the trap. The idea of an executive as important as you, on a level with him as the owner of the mining and sugar company, made the most sense. And it had to be you, because it had to be someone connected with the Network—someone with an imaginable motive for killing Bentyne.”

  Also, I thought, it was fun to involve Falzet directly in one of these cases for a change.

  Roxanne was enjoying it, too. “That was Bates’s—Harlan’s, rather—secret weapon. He had no imaginable motive.”

  She was superb. Kinsey Millhone could not have said it better. I would have been even more enthusiastic if I hadn’t said exactly the same thing to her about an hour ago.