He drew back the heavy bar in his hand. The figure appeared and seemed to hesitate, balanced on the very edge of the roof. With all his strength, Brock threw the bar, leading the figure outlined against the glow in the sky by a few feet.
There was a thud as the figure jumped into midair. A hoarse cry. It fell against the barbed wire, clawed for a moment, and then dropped inside the fence. There was a small bubbling noise, and then silence.
Maclaren squatted beside the body of Hodge Oliver and lit a match. Brock looked down.
“Hitting him in midair like that put him off balance, I guess,” Maclaren said calmly. “Or maybe he wouldn’t have made it anyway. That barbed wire caught him right in the throat and ripped it wide open. He was probably dead ten seconds after he hit the ground.”
Captain Davis, lean, gray, and quiet, shoved the pack of cigarettes across the desk to Jud Brock. Horowitz sat by the window. Maclaren leaned against the closed door, his face relaxed.
“Better tell me the whole thing from the beginning, Brock,” Davis said.
“I got onto it because a lot of little things all of a sudden added up. She was shot by one of the people we narrowed it down to. Oliver was working in the rear end of the shop. He could go outside and shoot her and go back in in seconds. Her roommate said that Stella was trying to remember something long ago and far away. That pointed to Washington. Oliver was in Washington. But the disposal of the gun had me licked. Also the motive. Oliver came and told me his private difficulties with Brasher. Oliver was a gambler. He was afraid I might have overheard the argument, and he wanted to kill off my suspicions by telling me himself. He was too eager. Also he was too nice about it when I slapped him around in his room.
“Stella was shot with a forty-five. He wanted the girl dead. He notched the slug to make certain of it, knowing that if he missed a vital spot when he fired, the slug would spread and smash her all to hell inside. The problem began to shape itself up. The motive had some connection with Washington.
“I pulled the cornball play, the old gimmick about her recovering, and Maclaren covered all the angles. Karkoff started to run. We grabbed him. I knew that he couldn’t have done it, but he must have started to run because he had helped somehow. I remember his baler. It looked as though maybe Karkoff had been paid off for not noticing when Oliver came back into the shop and tossed the gun into the scrap that Karkoff was baling. That tied in with Karkoff’s telling Lavery to go get a smoke. He couldn’t chance having Lavery, up on the crane, see Oliver toss the gun into the scrap, see Karkoff compress the batch of scrap into a neat little bundle with the gun in the middle.
“Even if it had happened that way, I couldn’t see how Karkoff had been paid off for his help. It didn’t make sense. Then Karkoff wanted to drop his stuff off at his room. That indicated that maybe Horowitz hadn’t seen something of value in the stuff.
“As I looked down at the suitcase, a lot of things popped into place in my mind. Both Oliver and Stella Galloway worked in a procurement section. Oliver had told me that he had bought some war-surplus stuff that Brasher couldn’t see any value in. Maybe that war surplus was the angle.
“I went out into the shop and got the contract number and company name off the cases. Oliver was out there working. I realized that he was out there because he had heard that on the next day Stella would be able to talk and she would point the finger right at him. It didn’t make sense to have Oliver opening all of the cases. Hell, if the things were all alike, he could just unpack one. He was filling a bag with wire. Karkoff had wire in his suitcase. I went back and phoned the company who made the stuff and found out that Oliver was stripping a thousand bucks’ worth of platinum wire off each one. I guess he intended to get as much as he could and try to clear out of town at dawn before Stella could pop off about him.
“Karkoff heard the phone call and knew that was the end of the road because he was carrying five thousand bucks’ worth of the wire in his suitcase. He made a break, tipped off Oliver, and they tried to go over the fence. Maclaren smashed Karkoff’s knee, and Oliver killed himself when he jumped short and hit the barbed wire.”
Captain Davis sat in thoughtful silence for a time and then said, nodding, “I can see how it was. A civil servant in military procurement, a man with some mechanical and electronic engineering background, discovered that these computer gadgets with two millions’ worth of platinum wire in them had become surplus. Maybe Miss Galloway happened to mention it to Oliver, in an ironic way. It would intrigue anyone, that much platinum in an obsolete device. Oliver quit and found work with a scrap company which could bid on the devices, because he didn’t have the forty thousand. It was his rotten luck that he picked a scrap outfit in the city of Louisavale, Miss Galloway’s home town. Maybe she said nice things about our city. His terrible luck was compounded when she came back and went to work at the same place.
“He must have prayed she would never remember what had probably been a very casual conversation over coffee, after Brasher made such a loud stink over the waste of forty thousand dollars. But she did. She must have confronted him, then foolishly gave him time to think it over. He knew that she brought your orders out into the yard, Brock. He bribed Karkoff, shot her, and tossed the weapon into the baler. He must have felt pretty safe. In the vast, confusing picture of military procurement, he must have thought that his motive would be hidden.” He paused. “Two million dollars is a great deal of money, gentlemen.”
Brock stood up, stubbed out his cigarette. The weariness was fogging his brain and he knew that at last he could sleep. “Do you need me for anything?” he asked.
Davis looked at Maclaren and then at Horowitz. Both men nodded briefly. “Yes, Jud. We need you for something. We need you to walk a beat for six months or a year. At the end of that time, if you’re still in line, we need you back in here.”
Brock couldn’t answer. His mouth was dry and his eyes stung. He said, hoarsely, “Thanks,” turned, and left the small room.
The intern said, “We can’t tell yet, Mr. Brock. She’s done well lasting until now. Respiration is a little deeper, but”
With one hand, Brock smoothed the dry, dead hair back from her damp forehead. Her eyelids fluttered and opened, and she stared up at the ceiling, unseeing.
He leaned close to her and said thickly, “Don’t go away! I need you.”
She turned her head the barest fraction of an inch, and he caught the flicker of recognition in her eyes before they closed once more.
He got up and slid the chair back. The intern said, “That’s what they need. They need to be given the will to fight. I hope she heard you.”
“She heard me.”
The intern said wistfully, “She must have been a lovely girl.”
Brock looked at him, staring heavily. “Just for the hell of it, son, let’s say that she is a lovely girl.”
The intern stood outside the door to the private room and watched Judson Brock walk down the corridor toward the exit. Something of almost frightening intensity had looked out of the big man’s eyes when he had spoken. The intern noticed that he walked with a step of infinite, dogged weariness.
As Brock stepped out into the dawn, the intern turned and looked back into the room. He said softly, “Something tells me, lady, that you better get well. I don’t want to have to face that guy if you don’t.”
Dead on the Pin
My name is Joe Desmon, and I’m manager of the Wonderland Bowling Alleys on the turnpike three miles out of town. I’ve held the job ever since I got back from Vietnam. The hours are long, but I’m not kicking. I’ve got a little stashed away and I’m getting the experience, and someday I’m going to have my own layout and hire some stupid guy to keep the crazy hours I keep.