The Collection (104 page)

"What about you?" I asked him. "Aren't you
staying on the case?"

He grinned a little. "I've got my orders. They're to
keep you alive until Cole is caught. The Chief told me if anything happens to
you, he'll take my badge away and shove it up my ear. From now on, pal, we're
Siamese twins."

"Then how about finishing that chess game?" I
said. "I think I can set up the men again."

He
shook his head. "Life isn't that simple. Not for a while yet, anyway.
We'll have to stick here until Cap Murdock gets here, and then I'm to take you
into the Chiefs office. Yeah, the Chiefs going down there at this time of
night."

It was after one when Jack took me into Chief Randall's
office. Randall, a big, slow-moving man, yawned and shook hands with me across
his desk.

"Sit down, Carter," he said, and yawned again.

I took the seat across from him. Jack Sebastian sat down in
a chair at the end of the desk and started doodling with the little gold knife
he wears on the end of a chain.

"This Roth is a big man," Chief Randall said.
"The papers are going to give us plenty if we don't settle this
quick."

"Right now, Chief," Jack said, "Alister Cole
is a bigger man. He's a homicidal maniac on the loose."

The Chief frowned. "We'll get him," he said.
"We've got to. We've got him on the air. We've got his description to
every railroad station and airport and bus depot. We're getting out fliers
with his picture--as soon as we get one. The state patrolmen are watching for
him. We'll have him in hours. We're doing everything."

"That's good," I told him. "But I don't
think you'll find him on his way out of town. I think he'll stay here until he
gets me--or until you get him."

"He'll know that you're under protection, Brian,"
Jack said. "Mightn't that make a difference? Wouldn't he figure the
smartest thing to do would be to blow town and hide out for a few months, then
come back for another try?"

I thought it over. "He might," I said,
doubtfully. "But I don't think so. You see, he isn't thinking normally.
He's under paranoiac compulsion, and the risks he takes aren't going to weight
the balance too strongly on the safety side. He was out to kill Dr. Roth and
then me. Now I'm no expert in abnormal psychology, but I think that if he'd
missed on his
first
killing he might do as you suggested--go away and
come back later when things had blown over. But he made his first kill. He
stepped over the line. He's going to be under terrifically strong compulsion to
finish the job right away--at any risk!"

Double Bodyguard

Jack said, "One thing I don't get. Cole was probably
standing right outside that window. We reacted quickly when that shot came, but
not instantaneously. He should have had time for a second shot before we got
the light out. Why didn't he take that second shot?"

"I can suggest a possibility," I told them.
"I was in Alister's room about a week ago. I've been there several times.
He opened a drawer to take out his chess set for our game, and I happened to
notice a pistol in the drawer. He slammed the drawer quickly when he saw me
glancing that way, but I asked him about the pistol.

"He said it had been his brother's, and that he'd had
it since his brother had died three years ago. He said it was a single-shot
twenty-two caliber target pistol, the kind really fancy marksmen use in
tournaments. I asked him if he went in for target shooting and he said no, he'd
never shot it."

"Probably telling the truth about that," Chief
Randall said, "since he missed your head a good six inches at--how far
would it have been, Jack?"

"About twelve feet, if he'd been standing just outside
the window. Farther, of course, if he'd been farther back." Jack turned
to me. "Brian, how good a look did you get at the pistol? Was it a
single-shot, the kind he described?"

"I think so," I said. "It wasn't either a
revolver nor an automatic. It had a big fancy walnut handle, silver trimmings,
and a long, slender barrel. Yes, I'd say I'm reasonably sure it was a
single-shot marksman's gun. And that would be why he didn't shoot a second time
before we got the light and the gas-grate turned out. I think he could have
shot by the light of that gas flame even after I pulled out the plug of the
floor lamp."

"It would have been maybe ten seconds, not over
fifteen," Jack said, "before we got both of them out. A pistol
expert, used to that type of gun, could have reloaded and shot again, but an
amateur probably couldn't have. Anyway, maybe he didn't even carry extra
cartridges, although I wouldn't bet on that."

"Just a second," Randall said. He picked up the
phone on his desk and said, "Laboratory." A few seconds later he
said, "That bullet Wheeler gave you, the one out of the wall at Brian
Carter's room. Got anything on it?" He listened a minute and then said,
"Okay," and hung up.

He said, "It was a twenty-two all right, a long rifle,
but it was too flattened out to get any rifling marks. Say, Jack, do you know
if they use long rifle cartridges in those target guns?"

"A single-shot will take any length--short, standard,
or long rifle. But, Brian, why would he carry as--as inefficient a gun as that?
Do you figure he planned this on the spur of the moment, and didn't have time
to get himself a gun with bigger bullets and more of them?"

"I don't think it was on the spur of the moment,"
I said. "I think he must have been planning it. But he may have stuck the
target gun in his pocket on the spur of the moment. I figure it this way: The
knife was his weapon. He intended to kill us both with the knife. But he
brought along the gun as a spare. And when he got to my place after killing Dr.
Roth and found you there, Jack, instead of finding me asleep in bed, it spoiled
his original idea of coming in my window and doing to me what he did to Roth.
He didn't want to wait around until you left because he'd already made one
kill, and maybe he remembered he'd left the ladder at the side of the house.
There might be an alarm at any time."

Randall nodded. "That makes sense, Carter. Once he'd
killed Roth, he was in a hurry to get you."

Jack quit doodling with his penknife and put it in his vest
pocket. "Anything from the M.E.?" he asked.

Randall nodded. "Says the stroke across the jugular
was probably the first one, and was definitely fatal. The rest of
the--uh--carving was just trimming. The ladder, by the way, belonged to a
painting contractor who was going to start on the house the next day. He
painted the garage first--finished that today. The ladder was lying on its side
against a tree in the yard, not far from where Cole used it. Cole could have
seen it there from the front walk, if he'd gone by during the day or during the
early evening while it was still light."

"Did the medical examiner say about when he was
killed?" I asked.

"Roughly half an hour to an hour before he was
found," Randall said. He sighed. "Carter, have you told us everything
about Cole that you think of?"

"Everything."

"Wish I could talk you into sleeping here, under
protective custody. What are your plans for the next few days?"

"Nothing very startling," I told him. "This
is Friday night--Saturday morning, now. I have to teach a class Monday
afternoon at two. Nothing special to do until then, except some work of my own
which I can do at home. As for the work I was doing with Dr. Roth, that's off
for the time being. I'll have to see what the Board of Regents has to say about
that."

"Then we'll worry about Monday when Monday
comes," Randall said. "If, as you think, Cole is going to stay around
town, we'll probably have him before then. Do you mind Sebastian staying with
you?"

"Not at all."

"And I'm going to assign two men to watch the outside
of your place--at least for the next forty-eight hours. We won't plan beyond
that until we see what happens. Right now, every policeman in town is looking
for Cole, and every state policeman is getting his description. Tomorrow's
newspapers and the Sunday papers will carry his photograph, and then the whole
city will be on the lookout for him. You have your gun, Sebastian?"

Jack shook his head. "Just this twenty-two I borrowed
from Winton."

"You better run home and get it, and whatever clothes
and stuff you'll need for a couple of days."

"I'll go with him," I said.

"You'll wait here," Jack told me. "It's only
a few blocks. I'll be right back." He went out.

"While he's gone, Carter," Randall said, "I
want to ask a few things he already knows, but I don't. About the set-up at the
university, the exact relationship between you and Roth and between Roth and
Alister Cole, what kind of work you do--things like that."

"Dr. Roth was head of the Department of
Psychology," I said. "It's not a big department, here at Hudson U. He
had only two full professors under him. Winton, who stays where I do, is one of
them. Dr. Winton specializes in social psychology.

"Then there are two instructors. I'm one of them. An
instructor is somewhere between a student and a professor. He's taking
post-graduate courses leading to further degrees which will qualify him to be a
professor. In my own case, I'm within weeks of getting my master's. After that,
I start working for a doctorate. Meanwhile, I work my way by teaching and by
helping in the research lab, grading papers, monitoring exams--well, you get
the idea.

"Alister Cole was--I suppose we can consider him fired
now--a lab assistant. That isn't a job that leads to anything. It's just a job
doing physical work. I don't think Cole had even completed high school."

"What sort of work did he do?"

"Any physical work around the laboratory. Feeding the
menagerie--we work with rats and white mice mostly, but there are also Rhesus
monkeys and guinea pigs--cleaning cages, sweeping--"

"Doesn't the university have regular cleaning
women?"

"Yes, but not in the lab. With experiments going on
there, we don't want people who don't know the apparatus working around it,
possibly moving things that shouldn't be moved. The lab assistants know what
can be touched and what can't."

"Then, in a way, Dr. Roth was over both of you?"

"More than in a way. He didn't exactly hire us--the
Board of Regents does all the hiring--but we both worked under him. In
different capacities, of course."

"I understand that," Randall said. "Then you
could say Dr. Roth's job was something like mine, head of a department. Your
relationship to him would be about that of your friend, Sebastian, to me, and
Alister Cole would be--umm--a mess attendant over on the jail side, or maybe a
turnkey."

"That's a reasonably good comparison," I agreed.
"Of course I was the only instructor who worked directly under Dr. Roth,
so I was a lot closer to him than Jack would be to you. You have quite a few detectives
under you, I'd guess."

He sighed. "Never quite enough, when anything
important happens."

There was a knock on the door and he called out,
"Yeah?" The detective named Wheeler stuck his head in. "Miss
Roth's here," he announced. "You said you wanted to talk to her.
Shall I send her in?"

Chief Randall nodded, and I stood up. "You might as
well stay, Carter," he told me.

Jeanette came in. I held the chair I'd been sitting in for
her, and moved around to the one Jack had vacated. Wheeler had stayed outside,
so I introduced Jeanette and Randall.

"I won't want to keep you long, Miss Roth,"
Randall said, "so I'll get right down to the few questions I want to ask.
When did you see Alister Cole last?"

"This afternoon, around three o'clock."

"At
your house?"

"Yes. He came then and asked if Dad was home. I told
him Dad was downtown, but that I expected him any minute. I asked him to come
in and wait."

"Did he and you talk about anything?"

"Nothing much. As it happened, I'd been drinking some
coffee, and I gave him a cup of it. But we talked only a few minutes--not over
ten--before Dad came home."

"Do you know what he wanted to see your father
about?"

"No. Dad took him into the library and I went out to
the kitchen. Mr. Cole stayed only a few minutes, and then I heard him
leaving."

"Did it sound as though he and your father were
quarreling? Did you hear their voices?"

"No, I didn't hear. And Dad didn't say, afterwards,
what Mr. Cole had wanted to see him about. But he did say something about Mr. Cole.
He said he wondered if the boy was--how did he put it?--if he was all right.
Said he wondered if maybe there wasn't a tendency toward schizophrenia, and
that he was going to keep an eye on him for a while."

"Had you noticed anything strange about Cole's actions
or manner when you talked to him before he saw your father?"

"He seemed a little excited about something and--well,
trying to hide his excitement. And then there's one thing I'd always noticed
about him--that he was unusually reticent and secretive about himself. He never
volunteered any information about his--about anything concerning himself. He
could talk all right about other things."