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He switched on the light, gingerly climbed the rest of the way. Sure. The door wasn’t closed tight, actually; it merely had drifted shut by itself. But it still took a conscious act of will to gently push it open enough to edge an eye out for a quick look down to the front door.

The hall was empty, of course.

Ballard went the rest of the way out of the cellar, started down the hall and froze after two steps.

The front door was ajar.

He could see the thin line of light from the narrow crack, laid across the floor at an angle and standing a few inches up the wall.

The door had been locked when he had tried it from the outside.

But that meant...

He heard the grunt of effort and at the same instant his body arched and he yelled in pure agony as he was slammed in the kidney. The floor came up at him as his mind screamed, through the pain, He got Giselle first...

Things went away.

Twenty-five

Not entirely away: it had been the sudden intensity of the pain that had made reality go mushy. He realized he was on his hands and knees against the wall. His head hurt as well as his back; must have rammed headfirst into the wall on the way down.

“Blood,” he got out. It was the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll be pissing blood for a week.” He’d read that about kidney injuries in a detective story once.

“Not for a week,” said Rodney Elkin in an almost apologetic voice. “I want you to go into the dining room ahead of me. The light switch is to the left of the door.”

“I don’t know if I can get up,” said Ballard. His mind had started to work again, a little. The kidney pain had lessened.

“You’ll get up.”

He got up. He hiked himself upright against the wall. His eyes were coming back into focus; he could see Elkin standing well away from him, wearing a topcoat. Tall, physically strong, decisive, good-looking, kinky. Especially kinky. Use that some way? The big revolver from the kitchen drawer now in his left hand. Of course. With shells in it now.

Heslip, facing his attacker, had been struck on the right side of his head. Elkin, talking on the phone at JRS Garage, had switched the receiver to his right hand to write notes of the conversation.

“Move it!” snapped Elkin.

Ballard moved it. The gun was shaking in Elkin’s hand. Panic again. Panic might make the gun go off. He used the wall to get to the dining room, leaning against it and sliding along. Go in fast, slam the door, dive out the still-open window...

It wasn’t like TV, not at all. Away from the wall, he tottered. He hurt. Moving, he had to clench his teeth to keep from throwing up. He couldn’t have moved fast if his life depended on it. Christ, his life did depend on it!

He still couldn’t move fast. He sat down on one of the oak dining chairs, gingerly. Jeezuz, that back!

What had Elkin done to Giselle?

Elkin was sweating, holding the gun. Moisture from the fog glistened on his very black, very curly hair. His nose was too big for him to be truly handsome, Ballard thought. So why in hell hadn’t Cheri Tart mentioned that nose? Or those extra-long mod sideburns? None of this would have happened if she’d mentioned things like that.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about you, Ballard.” He chewed his lip nervously. “I really don’t.”

“Buy me off.”

Elkin gave a short tight laugh full of a sort of despair. He went around drawing the shades, closed the window through which Ballard had entered. He looked like a tennis player, a basketball player, maybe; he didn’t look like a murderer. He sat down on the edge of the big oak table, began swinging one leg. His shoes were very brightly polished. His eyes looked sick. “Buy you off with what?”

“The money you embezzled. The money you killed Charles Griffin for — so you could blame him for stealing it.”

But Elkin just shook his head, his face almost placid. Ballard suddenly realized: he had to prime himself. Work himself up, as he probably had done with Griffin. As he had done with Bart. As he would do with Larry Ballard unless... Would going down on his knees and pleading for his life do any good? Ballard knew he would do it if he thought it would save him.

“I didn’t steal any money,” said Elkin.

Ballard almost bought it, the way he said it. But if not for money, then why... “Heslip didn’t die. He’s out of the coma, he can identify you.”

That shook Elkin, visibly. He said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Odum can identify you, too. And Cheri...”

His face went pale. “That whore! Don’t talk to me about her!”

Use it. Work on it. Mr. Kink. “I saw your trophy room upstairs.”

Elkin leaped to his feet, eyes wild. Jesus! Ballard had pushed the wrong button. But now he understood. Everything. Too late he understood it. The furniture had been sold from under Cheri merely to spite her, purely and simply. And Griffin had died, here in this house on February 9, because of Cheri.

As if reading his thoughts, Elkin said, “Chuck was an accident, really.” He sank back on the edge of the table; some of the wildness left his eyes. The muzzle of the gun wavered slightly. Ballard would roll suddenly out of the chair, keep rolling, a moving target, then dive right out of the window, shade and curtains and glass and all...

Bullshit.

“It was an accident. He came over here the night after that bitch over in Concord... Anyway, he was accusing me of wild things, things she’d said. A cheap whore like that, a topless dancer showing everything she’s got to anyone, but when I... But... Anyway, he... he was standing in the living room, by the fireplace, he said... He believed what she said about me! He... he said if I ever went near her again he... he was bigger than I am, a lot heavier, he lifted weights all the time, so I picked up the poker and I hit him. Just to knock him down. But it was turned wrong and... the end of it went right into his forehead, right into his skull above his eye. He just fell down dead. An accident...”

Where in hell was Giselle? Obviously Elkin knew nothing about her. Had she for Christ sake fallen asleep or something in the goddamn car? His back was killing him... “So you had to make it look as if Griffin had been embezzling. To explain why he disappeared.”

“That’s it,” he said. His face was working. He transferred the revolver to his right hand, flexed his fingers, returned it to his left. “Since it happened, I’ve been going down to JRS after supper, some nights, to work on the tallies and receipts to make it look as if he’d been stealing for quite a while.”

“On Tuesday you took the W-2 out of Leo’s desk after he showed it to Heslip,” said Ballard.

“But it was too late. Somehow, from that California Street address, your man got to Odum. On Tuesday night he came by on his way back from the East Bay to tell us what he had learned about Griffin. I was the only one there. After he left I stayed there a while, thinking. I knew Odum had given him a description of Griffin — he kept staring at me while he was there...”

“Because the description fit you,” said Ballard. “Because you had posed as Griffin to Odum. Why did you? Why San Jose and—”

“What else was I going to do?” he demanded in an aggrieved voice. “I could hide his body in the cellar, but I couldn’t put his car down there. I couldn’t put it in a JRS Garage, either — someone would have recognized it. So I rented a house down in San Jose, as far away from the city and the East Bay as I could get, and left it in the garage. But then your company came around looking for it.”