Once again, sweaty palms. Personnel transport belt again, but this time to the Investigation Section, Metro Police. Waiting in the interrogation cubicle with nerves screaming. For Delia, it had to go right. For us both.
“Mr. Andrech?” The voice jerked my thoughts back. “I’m Inspector Ngaio. No, that’s all right, please remain seated.”
He was a big, solid man with probing eyes and a square chin. My voice came out almost falsetto. “I...” I stopped to clear my throat. “I came about... the Roguls.”
“Right,” he said easily. His manner was relaxed, and I felt my tensions ease a bit. “I have gone over the facts of your statement.”
He stopped there. Sweat started up under my arms, the seconds began stretching as they had before I’d put the blade in Rogul’s back.
Finally I blurted, “Inspector, the fingerprints alone—”
“—could have been made at an earlier date. None in the blood, remember, Andrech; just on the figurine and on the desk top.”
“His secretarial robot will confirm that I was never there before...”
“You thought of that, did you?” Ngaio had a deep voice and deep masculine laugh. He was a good interrogator. “You’re right, of course. Your photo elicits no response from the secretary’s memory banks, yet your name is on Rogul’s calendar. And your fingerprints are in his office. You were there that night, all right, after the robot had been closed down. But the killing could have occurred after your departure.”
“What about his wife, strangled the next day? Surely—”
“Coincidence, perhaps. Or even you, trying to cash in on the husband’s death.” He leaned forward. “Where’s the murder weapon?”
My months of practice paid off. A single fluid movement and the stiletto lay gleaming on my palm. Ngaio sat up abruptly with a look of genuine pleasure on his face, as I said, “I didn’t clean the blade.”
“I’ll be damned. A sleeve knife. Haven’t seen one in years.” He held out his hand for the knife. “That was very good. And the blade uncleaned. I begin to believe you are a very determined man, Andrech.”
His robot, which had been tuned to monitor the conversation, came in. He handed it the knife. “Lab.”
“It isn’t just me, Inspector,” I said earnestly. “Both Delia and I want this Certificate very much. We knew this method of meeting the quota would be difficult, perhaps self-destructive, but we—”
“Why didn’t you just buy a pair of emigrations? With new planets opening up all the time—”
“We can’t afford to purchase someone’s passage, Inspector. Not on the pay of a clerk in telemetry.”
He switched the conversation abruptly. “How about blood from Rogul? Any get on anything except the knife?”
“The jacket sleeve. I wore the same one for Mrs. Rogul.”
“Indeed? We found cloth fibers clutched in her hand...”
“The pocket. I took the liberty of leaving the garment with your laboratory on my way in. Also, since she scratched my forehead, I asked them to take blood samples.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said again. He was impressed, I could see that; behind the detached official manner was a warm, genuine human being. He turned to punch into the laboratory. “The Andrech samples?”
“Positive,” said the white-coated technician. “Victim’s blood on knife and jacket sleeve; subject’s blood and epidermis under second victim’s fingernails; one-hundred percent match on the jacket fibers.”
“Good. Thanks.”
Ngaio blanked the screen and opened the folder on his desk. I felt the old clamminess start as he bent to write. What would a negative report do to Delia? But when Ngaio closed the file and stood up with two slips in his left hand, there was a wide grin on his face. My heart gave a leap of more than joy: of emotion too pure, too ethereal for mere words. He stuck out his right hand.
“Congratulations, Andrech. To you and your wife.”
I felt I was beaming fatuously; it was all I could do to take his hand. “Thank... thank you, Inspector. For everything. I don’t think we could have gone through it again.”
“Now you won’t have to.” He handed me the slips. “The first is a regular pro forma misdemeanor citation, even though my investigation shows the killings were justified. You can pay the fine at the front desk on your way out. And this other one...”
I was beaming idiotically again. “Our Certificate.”
“Right. Give it to your wife’s gynecologist; it orders him not to abort her pregnancy as usual. Since you successfully have removed from the population rolls one couple, childless, you have met the quota requirements. As per law, you can have one child. And I hope it’s a boy.”
“So do I. Then we can name him after you, Inspector.”
That pleased him; as I said, he was a genuinely decent human being. Then I was on the personnel transport belt again, descending to my waiting, beautifully pregnant Delia. As I watched the joy spring into her face at the sight of my own obvious elation, there was only one small cloud to darken the rosy glow on my mental horizon.
What if she were carrying twins?
Killer Man
The stewardess came by checking reservations.
“Your name please, sir.”
“Simmons,” said Falkoner. He was lean and dark, with long-fingered hands shaped like a piano player’s and cool gray eyes that observed almost everything. A thin white scar running across his chin made his otherwise pleasant face sullen. In his shoulder holster was a .357 Magnum on a cut-down frame and in his bleak heart was death. Falkoner was a professional murderer.
During the thirty-five minute flight from Los Angeles the lone woman huddled across the aisle aroused his melancholy contempt. She wore a cheap brown hat and had an old straw purse on the seat next to her. Updrafts over the rim of the desert made her tight fists whiten with strain and her eyes bum with fear. She was disgusting: he knew dying was swift and easy.
A slight sandy-haired man took his arm as he left the plane at Palm Springs and said: “Did Mr. David send you down?” His voice was soft and intimate and he wore a red and green sports shirt, khaki pants, and open sandals.
Looking him over, Falkoner nodded coolly. Little men who did not deal in the two great realities of life and death held scant interest for him.
“Fine. I’m Langly. My car’s over here in the lot.”
It was a blue and white 1957 Chrysler. On the blacktop road beyond the airport the sun was warm but the air dry and fresh; scraggly clumps of dusty green vegetation spotted the flat desert like regimented billiard balls on a giant yellow table. They passed a man and woman on horseback, wearing riding breeches, who waved gaily. A Cadillac Eldorado roared by like an escaped rocket, manned by two bleached blondes goggled with bright-rimmed sunglasses.
“Where’s the woman?” asked Falkoner.
“She’s got a shack in a date grove near Rancho Mirage — it’s a new section this side of Palm Desert.”
“Works?”
“Mex place in Palm Desert. She tells fortunes, goes to work at five — she’ll be home now.” Langly’s voice tingled and his bright eyes sparkled ripely. “I guess Mr. David wants her pretty bad, huh? I just notified Los Angeles last night, and you’re here from ’Frisco today to—”
“Let’s go out to her place.”
Langly drove swiftly as if stung by Falkoner’s abruptness. They passed the plush Thunderbird Club and turned left onto a dirt road before the Shadow Mountain Club. Dry clouds of tan dust swirled out behind them.
“When word came she’d left Scottsdale I thought she might try it here — the country’s a lot the same. Then I spotted her at the Mex place from her photo and—”