College-Cut Kill

“Hell no! I insist on being trapped. I want to be trapped. I am a guy who believed in a multiplicity of women. I still do. You’re all of them. You’ll keep well. You’ll last. How will you look at sixty?”

“At you.”

“I’ll be six years older. I’ll sit in the corner and crack my knuckles.”

“With me on your lap it’ll be tough.”

“We’ll manage.”

“Is it good enough to hand in, my story?”

“Too good. We won’t hand it in. We’ll whip up something else for the class. This one we keep. Maybe someday we’ll sell it.” Something stirred at the back of my mind. She saw then the change in my expression.

“What is it, Joe? What are you thinking about?”

“Let me get organized.” I got up and paced around. She watched me. I came back and sat beside her. “Look. I can’t power Arthur into trying anything. It won’t work. I can’t become dangerous. But there’s another way.”

“How?”

I tapped her story with one finger. “This way.”

“How do you mean?”

“I write it up. Other names, other places, but the same method of death in each case. I’ll twist it a little. I’ll make it a small business concern. The similarity will be like a slap in the face.”

“You’ll have to write an ending to it. How does it end, Joe?”

“I won’t end it. I’ll take it right up to a certain spot.”

“Then what are you going to do with it?”

“Easy, my love. I’m going to leave it in Arthur’s room and wait and see what happens. I am going to have it look like an accident. I am going to do it in such a way that he’s going to have to give some thought to eliminating one Joe Arlin.”

“No, Joe. Please, no!”

“I’ve got to finish it off. One way or another.”

She looked at me for a long time. “I suppose you do,” she said quietly.

“Be a good girl. Play in the sand. Build castles. I want to bang this out while it’s hot.”

Dust clouded the page in the type-writer and I put the desk lamp on. Tilly sat across the room reading a magazine. I could feel her eyes on the back of my head from time to time.

I had brought my bad guy up to the Sherman death.

“...stood for a moment and took the risk of looking to see that nothing had been forgotten. The gun had slid under the desk. The body was utterly still. He sew the full clip on the desk beside the bottle of gun oil and...”

“Hey!” I said.

“What, darling?”

“I’ve got a slow leak in my head. So has Lieutenant Cord. So had the murderer.”

She came up behind me and put her hand lightly on my shoulder. “How do you mean?” I pointed at the sentence I had partially finished. “I don’t see anything.”

“Angel,” I said, “Lieutenant Cord spoke of a full clip. I do not think he meant seven or six. I think he meant eight. A clip will not hold nine. There was one shell in the chamber. So how did it get there? To load a .45 with nine you put in a full clip, jack one into the chamber, remove clip, add one more to the clip and slap it back into the grip. A guy loading with nine is not likely to forget he has done so. Let us go calling...”

Lieutenant Cord was about to leave. He frowned at me, looked appreciatively at Tilly. I put the question to him.

“Yes, the clip was full, but what does that prove? Maybe that one had been in the chamber for months. It even makes the case stronger my way. The guy takes out the clip, counts eight through the holes, and forgets the nine load.”

“Or somebody else palms another shell out of the box he had and puts it in the chamber.”

“What kind of tea do you drink, Arlin?”

“Be frank with me, Lieutenant. Doesn’t this make the whole thing just a little more dubious to you?”

“No,” he said flatly.

“You,” I said, “look at life through a peashooter. You can focus on one incident at a time. Don’t you ever try to relate each incident to a whole series?”

“Not this time.”

“Miss Owen and I know who did it, Lieutenant.”

“She drinks tea too, eh?”

“You don’t want to know?”

“Not interested. Go play games. Go play cop. Maybe it’s a part of your education.”

We left. “For a time there he seemed brighter than that,” I said.

We got into the car. “Joe,” she said. “Joe, why don’t you go back to New York? Why don’t you tell Mr. Flynn that in your opinion Arthur Marris did it? Why don’t you let him take over? He could build a fire under the lieutenant. Why don’t you go to New York and take me with you?”

“Shameless!”

“Determined. You’re not getting out of my sight again, Joe.”

“I propose and what do I get? A bloodhound yet.”

“Take us home, Joe.”

“Home! Haven’t you ever heard the old adage about street cars?”

“Yes, but you have a season ticket. Home, Joe.”

What can you do?...

I finished the unfinished yarn, folded one copy carelessly and shoved it into my pocket. I finished it Saturday. Tilly, who’d driven down early, was singing in the small kitchen, banging the dishes around.

“I go to leave the epic,” I said.