There was a crucial moment when McCullough got in and closed the door, but he failed to notice he was seeing the garage not as it actually was that night—and Sola was careful to stay underneath the vehicle the whole time. The truck’s front wheels were in pools of thick oil which enabled them to be turned easily, and Sola—who had carefully timed the drive along a simple, crossing-free route out of the city—was able to get McCullough to twist the steering wheel according to the prearranged programme.
With the slow glass panels suitably charged with images of McCullough, Sola slowed their emission rate down to almost zero and put them away for future use. On another night, working under cover of the tarpaulin, he removed the windows from his garage door, replaced them with Retardite panels and spent an hour pottering about doing small jobs. These panels, too, he removed, slowed down almost to a standstill and put into storage for when they would be required. He was now ready to commit the foolproof murder.
On the evening he received the coded message to proceed he began by slipping Matt McCullough a strong sedative which would keep him away from the windows of the duplex at a time when he was supposed to be out driving. Sala then made certain the garage doors were covered from the outside, and put the assembled laser cannon into the truck. He clipped the Retardite panels into the garage door and into the frames of the Burro, increased their emissions to normal rate, and drove out of town towards Bingham.
It was at this stage that the unique design of the Burro played a vital role, because in a normal vehicle Sala would have had no vision of the road as it was that night. He tilted the windshield back until there was a hairline crack between the glass and the frame, through which he could see forward. The sharply restricted view made the trip fairly difficult, and there was an unexpected hazard in that the sound of the engine and the sense of movement contrasted with the static view of the interior of his own garage in a way which produced disorientation and nausea.
Out in the country, however, beyond the view of slow glass monitors he was able to tilt the windshield back a little further and drive in comparative comfort. He also slowed the Retardite emissions down almost to zero, preserving the stored images of McCullough for the journey back through the city. The telltales on any car he met on the way would yield images of a motionless McCullough at the wheel, but this would be acceptable for highway conditions in which virtually no control movements were required of the driver. In any case, all these precautions were unlikely to be necessary because the murder would not be traced to the point where Sala would be involved. It was simply part of the plan that an entire back-up line of defence was included.
At the site chosen for the assassination Sala set up his cannon. A short time later a close-range personal radio message told him the Senator’s car was near—and when it reached the bottom of the hollow he burned it and the driver into a heap of glowing, crackling slag.
On the trip back, he stopped several miles along the road and buried the cannon. He drove the rest of the way without incident and got back into his gara>ge well before dawn. The hanging strand device he had carefully but unobtrusively rigged up drew the tarpaulin down over the windows as the garage doors closed behind him. Sala took the Retardite panels out of the door and truck and replaced them with ordinary glass. He then used a tickler on the slow glass to disturb its crystalline structure, blanking out the mute evidence for ever. As a further precaution he broke the panels into small fragments and fed them into the furnace in the basement.
Only the final step in the plan remained. He went upstairs to McCullough’s bedroom, took off the other man’s hat and hung it in its usual place on the back of the door. He then took out a phial of specially prepared thrombogenic poison which had been sent to him by the organization. McCullough was still in a drugged sleep and he did not waken up while Sala was rubbing the traceless poison into the skin of his left arm. The position of the site on which Sala had chosen to apply the poison meant that McCullough would die of a massive embolism approximately four hours later.
Well satisfied with his night’s work, Sala had a glass of milk and a sandwich before joining his wife in bed.
“When you concoct a theory,” Remmert said slowly, “you really do it in a big way.”
Garrod shrugged. “I used to be in the theory-concocting business. Actually this is a good one in that it explains all the observed facts, but it falls down on one major respect.” “Too complicated. Occam’s Razor.”
“No—in these days all murder plans have to be complicated. It’s just that I can’t think of any way to demonstrate its truth. I’ll bet you’ll find fresh scratches on the window frames in the truck and on the garage door—but that proves nothing.”
“We might pick up traces of Retardite in the furnace.” “Possibly. But there’s no law against incinerating slow glass, is there?”
“Isn’t there?” Remmert bumped his forehead with the heel of his hand as if trying to jar his memory into action. Visual sarcasm. “Would you like to drive out to the Sala place? Have a look at the real thing?”
“Okay.” Accompanied by another detective called Agnew they drove out to the west side of the city. The morning sky was now well advanced, with clouds fleeing across the blue ceramic of the sky, changing the quality of the light which reflected from the neat houses. The car climbed into a hilly suburb and stopped outside a white-painted house. Garrod experienced a peculiar thrill as he recognized the Sala place, his eyes picking out all the familiar details of the structure, garden and garage.
“It looks quiet,” he said. “Is anybody likely to be at home?”
“I don’t think so. We allow Sala to attend his business but we have keys and he told us to go in anytime. He’s co-operating like hell.”
“In his position he has to do all he can to help you pin the blame on McCullough.”
“I guess you’ll be more interested in the garage than anywhere else,”
They walked down the short drive and Remmert used a key to open the garage door manually. The interior smelled of paint, gasoline and dust. Watched by the two officers, Garrod walked round the garage self-consciously lifting odd objects, empty cans and old magazines, and setting them down again. He had a conviction he was making a fool of himself, but was reluctant to leave the garage.
“I don’t see any oil patches on the floor,” Remmert said. “How did he turn the wheels?”
“With these.” Garrod’s memory came to his aid. He pointed at two glossy magazines which had tyre marks on the covers and heavily creased pages inside. “It’s an old DIY trick—you run the front wheels on to slick magazines and they turn easily.”
“It doesn’t prove anything, does it?”
“It does to me,” Garrod said stubbornly.
Remmert lit a cigarette and Agnew a pipe, and the two detectives wandered out into the nervously buffeting air. They stood smoking for a good ten minutes, conversing in low voices, then began glancing at their watches to indicate they were ready for lunch. Garrod felt the same way—he had arranged to eat with Jane—yet he had a feeling that if he did not make a breakthrough on this visit, when he was seeing the interior of the garage with that special clarity which is present only when something is viewed for the first time, he would never get anywhere.