I said, “You must have been awfully afraid of Zaremba.”
“Very afraid,” he said, his eyes on his safe images on the screen. “I’m a sane man. I-”
My words must have suddenly struck him, the tense-“You must have been awfully afraid…” He turned, stared around the room, aware that I wasn’t supposed to be here, and that if I was… He saw Abram Zaremba dead in the chair.
“You killed him?” he said. “You killed-”
“No,” I said. “I had no reason. I want answers, and dead men don’t help me. I might have defended myself, but Zaremba had no weapon, he must have been alone. But you were scared of him, and you just used your key to get in. You must have locked the door again when you went out, so who else could have come in and killed him except you, Tabor?”
“Me?” He still stared at the dead and bloody Zaremba as if afraid the dead man would rise up and hurt him. “Locked? The door? I don’t know. Did I lock it? I-”
He stopped, blinked again as if my words were taking minutes to reach his brain. “Me? I didn’t kill him! I just came back! I wasn’t here!”
“Back from where?”
“Where? Walking. A drink. I stopped for a drink. Some tavern. I don’t remember which one. A few blocks.”
I said, “You had to know more about Mark Leland and what he was doing than you say you do. Zaremba believed you knew more or he wouldn’t have paid you off. But men like Zaremba know that a more permanent solution is better than a payoff in the end, and maybe you guessed that, too.”
Tabor stared at the dead businessman, and then at his TV screen where some smiling man was giving violent news. There was a longing in his eyes for the haven of the TV. The haven of a man whom life has burned, whose woman is asleep alone in the bedroom indifferent to him and without passion for him, whose friends have been buried. The TV is better than brooding in some dark corner and going insane with fear, or love, or despair. A peaceful illusion of reality.
“You better talk to me,” I said. “Unless you want to wait for Zaremba’s ‘friends’ who might think what I think.”
Tabor collapsed inside, and came to life at the same time. He sat down, his back to the TV. Zaremba had had a lot of bad friends, and Tabor shivered. He had been afraid of Zaremba, and he was more afraid of Zaremba’s friends. Sometimes fear brings a man to life better than joy or love.
“I didn’t kill him, Fortune. I swear it. He gave me his work, I was no danger to him. I knew that Mark was investigating Black Mountain Lake, but he hadn’t gotten anywhere as far as I knew. It was all legal. Mark said that it favored Zaremba, and smelled, and if he could stir up enough trouble, maybe Albany would have to suspend it, start a real investigation. But that was all he had. Maybe he could rock the boat enough to get the project suspended.”
“Why did he go to Francesca Crawford?”
“She was Mayor Crawford’s daughter, Mark smelled good publicity in her. She already opposed the project. He was going to try to show her that her father was at least unethical in the deal. And he knew something from Crawford’s past, some legal shadiness, he hoped to use to make the girl help him by working against her father from inside.”
“What did he know from Crawford’s past?”
“I don’t know. Neither did he, not for sure. Just a hint that Crawford had hidden something in the past.”
I said, “Let me see your hands.”
There was no blood on them, and they were grimy, unwashed. There was no blood on his clothes. Still, it didn’t prove much.
“You just walked around, stopped for a drink?”
Tabor nodded. “Then I came back and waited down outside for a while. You or Zaremba didn’t come out. No one came out, except… A woman,” he looked up at me from his chair. “A woman came out about ten minutes before I came up. I didn’t see much-just a woman, a tweed coat, maybe young. She walked off fast, with a swing, you know? A young walk… maybe.”
A woman, maybe young. Athletic. Or who seemed young. Felicia? Celia Bazer? They were young. Katje Crawford? Mrs. Grace Dunstan? They could look young in the dark.
I went to the telephone now and called the police. With Tabor here, I couldn’t just walk away this time, no. I gave the police my name, the address, and told them Abram Zaremba had been murdered. They would come fast. I hung up.
George Tabor was back at his TV set. He still had his coat on, but he wasn’t in the room now. He was on the screen with some tall cowboy riding into a western town just after the Civil War. I joined him in that safe, distant town.
12
I sat alone, fighting sleep from Zaremba’s drug, in the office of Lieutenant Oster, Dresden Police Homicide Division. I had been there since they’d brought me and Tabor in from the apartment. It was past 1:00 A.M. before Lieutenant Oster, and Sergeant Jonas from the New York police, got back to me. Oster sat behind his desk, Jonas leaned on a wall.
“Let’s hear your story again,” Lieutenant Oster said.
I told him. “Whoever killed Zaremba thought I was dead, or didn’t care about me.”
“Or maybe your story is all phony,” Oster said.
Jonas said, “No knife in the apartment, Lieutenant.”
“Knives can be dumped,” Oster said.
“Zaremba was stabbed?” I said, my brain fuzzy.
Oster nodded. “Once in the heart. M.E. says he died instantly, a good hit. Never got out of that chair.”
“The same M.O. as Francesca Crawford,” I said.
Oster said, “You were alone with Zaremba.”
“What’s my motive?”
“Fear could be enough,” Oster said. “We don’t know you up here. Maybe you’re working for the killer. Who’s the client?”
I’d promised to let John Andera know before I named him, but if we could keep all our promises this would be a different world. I had no way of knowing if Andera had an alibi this time. I’d gone as far as I could go in protecting him.
“His name’s John Andera, a sales representative for Marvel Office Equipment in New York. All I have is his office number.”
I gave them Andera’s number, and Sergeant Jonas got on the telephone to New York. I told Oster what Andera had told me as his reason for hiring me-just a man who’d liked a girl. Oster thought about it.
“Tabor’s sticking to his story,” he said. “You have any ideas about that woman he says he saw?”
My stump had that gnawing pain. Maybe it was only the effects of the drug, or maybe it was that uneasy feeling I have when I’m thinking what I don’t want to think.
“Felicia Crawford,” I said, and told Oster about her coming to me in New York. “Maybe she’s back in Dresden on her own.”
“She had a gun? No one reported her missing,” he said. “Why would she kill Abram Zaremba?”
“Maybe she thought, or knew, that he killed Francesca.”
Jonas came back and leaned against his wall again. My client was being checked on now in New York.
“Or,” I said, “there’s Celia Bazer. She and Francesca were mixed with the same man. Women have killed each other for that before. Or men have had to eliminate one of the two women. Maybe Zaremba just knew who had killed Francesca, and was putting on some pressure.”
“What man were they both mixed with?” Oster asked.
“Frank Keefer.”
“We’ll check,” Oster said. “Anyone else, Fortune?”
“Mrs. Katje Crawford. Her daughter was killed.”
“We’re back to maybe Zaremba killed Francesca Crawford?”
“He was knifed for some reason, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll work on all three women,” Oster said.
“Make it four,” I said, glanced at Sergeant Jonas. “There’s a Mrs. Grace Dunstan in New York. I can’t tie her to Zaremba, but she was tied to Francesca Crawford.”