College-Cut Kill

“The slug had caught him under the chin and gone up through the roof of his mouth, exploding out of the top of his head to lodge in the ceiling. He had fallen to his left between the chair and the window. The gun was under his desk. The ejected cartridge case was on the window sill. A full clip was on the desk blotter beside the oil bottle. It was the standard mistake. Ejecting the case and forgetting the one in the chamber.

“As I see it, he was holding it pointing up toward him, and he pulled the slide down so he could look through the barrel. His hand was oily and the slide got away from him. When it snapped up, it fired the shell in the chamber.”

“Were you complety satisfied with the verdict of accidental death, Lieutenant?”

He smiled humorlessly. “Now what kind of a fool question is that, Arlin? If it wasn’t accident it would screw up this psychology report, wouldn’t it?”

I tried again. “Did you investigate to see if anyone said he was depressed?”

“Sure. Lots of guys are cagey enough to do a hell of a good job of faking an accident when they want to knock themselves off. But in that case there is an insurance angle, usually, and the guy himself is older. No, this Sherman was apparently a pretty popular guy in the house. He wasn’t depressed. He’d busted up with his girl, but he had a new one pretty well lined up. He had enough dough, a good job after graduation, and his health.”

“You’ve been very kind, Lieutenant.” I stood up.

“Any time,” he said.

I went to the door. As I turned the knob he said, “Just a minute.” I looked back at him. He smiled. “Do me a favor, Arlin. Come around some time and tell me what the hell it was you really wanted.”

“I don’t think I know what you mean.”

“See you around, Arlin.”

I went out and sat in the car. There was a coldness at the nape of my neck. Up until the talk with Cord, I had been willing to go along with the theory of a chain of accidents. I had tried to be thorough for the sake of the pay I was getting. Mr. Flynn had just been a man pathetically anxious to prove his son was not a suicide. Tilly had been a girl who had not been able to understand how Ted Flynn’s mind may have been unstable, along with his undeniable brilliance.

But now everything had a new flavor. It was something that Cord had said, and yet, going over his words again and again, I could not pick it out.

I knew, sitting there in the sun, as well as I knew my own name that the odds were in favor of someone else’s finger pulling that trigger. I was sweating and yet I felt cold.

For the first time I realized that my operations were a bit transparent. If someone had killed Sherman — and I didn’t know why I was so sure they had — then that someone might still be in the house. If so, he was watching me. It would be natural for him to watch me. I was a stranger. I was an unknown factor.

I sensed a quiet and devious intelligence at work. A mind that could plan carefully and then move boldly.

I drove away. My hands were too tight on the wheel and my foot was shaky on the gas pedal.

Chapter Five

Accidentally — On Purpose

I cut the History class. Tilly cut her class at the same hour and we drove down Route 19 through Clearwater to Largo and then turned left to Indian Rocks Beach. I found a place where we could park in the shade and watch the placid gulf. On the way I had told her of the talk with Cord.

She look my hand, looked into my eyes and said, “For the first time it’s real to you, isn’t it, Joe?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“It’s been real to me all along. You know how when people go with each other, they talk about everything under the sun. Once Ted and Step were arguing about suicide. It was after Sherman had died. Step couldn’t see that it was wrong — but Ted told us that the only time he could see the remotest justification was when a person was painfully and incurably ill — that the world is too wide and wonderful a place to leave before the time you have is up. He wasn’t just talking, Joe.”

“I think I would have liked him, Till.”

“You would have. I know it. When they told me he’d hung himself, I found out later that I’d screamed that he didn’t do it, that someone had done it to him. I’m still just as certain of that as I was during the first moments. He was incapable of it. They were holding the last meeting of the year, the election of officers for the next year it was. They waited and waited and then they went looking for him.

“Brad cried like a baby. They cut him down and then he was shipped north for the funeral. I couldn’t go to that. I couldn’t even go to the memorial service for him in the chapel at school. I was too sick. They had me in the infirmary. When I got out I went north and took that job.”

“Up until now,” I said, “I’ve been playing an intellectual game. Mental musical chairs. Now it isn’t a game any more.”

“For me it never has been.” She bit her lip. “Joe, you’d better not let anything happen to you. You’d just better not.”