“You want to give me the names and addresses of the poker players?”
“Sure.” I listed them for him.
“I’ll see it gets checked out,” he said. “If it does, it sounds like you’re off the hook for the homicide at least. You couldn’t drive up here, murder Hazelton, and drive back inside five hours.”
“I’m glad you appreciate that, Lieutenant,” I said sincerely.
“You got a long way to go yet, boy!” he grunted. “The blood and cloth fiber fragments on your front bumper belong to Tolvar all right.”
“What else have you got?”
“The eye-witness, Peter Rinkman.”
“That’s Pete, the strong-arm?”
“The handyman,” Greer said patiently. “He was walking back to the farm along the roadside around 3:30 a.m. when he saw a car coming toward him stop a couple of hundred yards away, and a guy got out and lifted the hood, obviously trying to fix some kind of motor trouble. Then he saw another car coming down the road at high speed. The first guy got out in the center of the road, waving his arms for the second car to stop, but it didn’t. Didn’t even slow down, he said, but the driver must’ve seen Tolvar out there in the center of the road. He heard the sound of the impact and saw Tolvar tossed into air; he managed to get the license number of the car as it went past him.”
“A bright boy, that Pete!” I said. “He estimate the speed of the second car?”
“Over seventy,” Greer said coldly.
“The first car stops two hundred yards away from him,” I repeated. “He sees the guy climb out, lift the hood, start fooling around with the works. He sees the second car coming—the guy run out into the center of the road and wave his arms—and then get hit. From the time the first car stopped until the time of impact would have been how long, Lieutenant?”
Greer shrugged. “Fifteen seconds maybe.”
“And Pete’s walking toward the car, getting closer all the time,” I said. “After the impact, he’s got time to watch Tolvar tossed into the air before he picks up the license number of the second car. He must have narrowed the distance by twenty-five yards anyway. The second car’s doing seventy, he figures—that would mean 76 somewhere about four seconds elapsed from the time Tolvar was hit until the time the second car would have passed Pete.”
“You can’t put a stopwatch on human reactions,” Greer grunted. “A split-second glance could be enough for him to memorize the license plate.”
“O.K.,” I said sourly. “What else?”
“Sylvia West checks your story of dinner at Newport, then back through Providence to the farm. She says you left her just after 2:00 a.m.”
“Sure,” I said. “And found Tolvar waiting in the back seat of my car for me. I told you that.”
He nodded coolly. “So you did—you also told me how she wanted you to check on the pigpens because the boar had been moved and that was why the troopers never found the body when they looked for it.”
“Check,” I said.
“Miss West doesn’t remember anything about that,” he said softly. “She blushingly remembers being in the hayloft with you, but the pigpens—no!
“Neither of the Hazelton girls think they’re being kept on the farm against their will. According to them, their father, Houston, their attorney, and Rinkman, the handyman, you’ve been annoying them consistently over the last few days. So much so, that Houston hired a private detective to protect the Hazelton family against your intrusions. The private detective was Tolvar, of course.”
I was too beat to argue any more. “O.K.,” I said. “I dreamed up the whole thing—that Martha Hazelton hired me in the first place—I even dreamed up that two thousand dollar check I banked yesterday. Ah, what’s the use!”
“We’re holding you on the hit-and-run, for the time being,” he said. “The homicide can wait until we see how your alibi checks out. Do you want to call a lawyer?” “Not now,” I said. “It’s too late to reach my secretary at the office and—I just don’t have the energy. How about the morning?”
“Sure,” he said. “Right now you’ve got nothing but time to play with—so what’s your hurry?”
I spent the night in a cell. The bunk was hard but I slept too soundly to worry. In the morning I got a shave before breakfast. It would have been nice to get a toothbrush, shower, and a clean shirt, but I figured I had to get used to a drastically altered standard of living.
Around eight-thirty, Lieutenant Greer appeared in front of the cell. He gestured impatiently at the key-keeper to unlock the door and then beckoned me to step out.
“I want you to come with me, Boyd,” he said, and headed down the corridor at a galloping pace.
“What’s the deal?” I asked when I caught up with him. “Did the revolution happen last night and they made an amnesty for all the guys in jail this morning?”
“Save it till we get into the car,” he said tersely.
We walked out into the beautiful free air and slid into the back seat of a prowl car. Tighe was sitting in front, with Kamak driving. As soon as we were in, the car pulled away from the curb at a fast clip.
I lit a cigarette and looked at the Lieutenant. “So now can you tell me?” I asked him.
“You see that lake at the back of the Hazel tons’ farmhouse?” he asked abruptly.
“Sure,” I said. “Sylvia showed it to me the first time I was there—part of a general tour around the place. Why?”
“Houston called in ten minutes ago,” he said. “They just found Clemmie Hazelton floating in the lake—face down.”
Nine
KARNAK PARKED THE CAR OUT FRONT OF THE FARM-
house and the four of us climbed out. Houston came walking quickly out of the house to meet us.
“Lieutenant,” he said. A flicker of interest showed in his dead eyes for a moment as he looked at me. “Where’s the body?” Greer asked him.
“At the side of the lake,” Houston said. “Pete found her and brought her in. He knew she was dead then, so he thought he’d better not bring her body into the house. He’s still down there, making sure no one touches her.” “Good,” Greer said. “Where are the others?”
“In the house,” Houston said. “They’ve taken it pretty badly as you can imagine. Coming straight on top of Philip’s body being found yesterday.”
“Yeah,” Greer nodded. “Maybe you’d better stay with them until we can move the body.”
“Whatever you say, Lieutenant,” Houston agreed quietly and walked back slowly into the house.
Two more cars pulled up behind us, and the area was suddenly swarming with cops. The medical examiner walked over, swinging his bag briskly.
“We’ve got a sudden homicide boom, Lieutenant?” he said cheerfully. “Old Judge Lindsay offering a discount on murder for a limited season?”
Greer just looked at him and the examiner paled slightly, “So I wisecrack because I’m nervous!” he said defensively. “I still get sick in the stomach every time I see a corpse.”
“Go get sick again,” Greer said bleakly. “It’s down by the lake.”
I tagged along in the middle of the bunch, but by the time we got near the lake, the bunch had thinned out
into a straggling line of walking men. Greer strode alongside me, his hands thrust into his pockets, his face remote.
The last fifty yards down to the lake was through a mess of swampland underfoot and overgrown rushes with slimy stems that left a green smear on the cuffs and legs of my pants.
There were two guys waiting beside the body, not one. Pete had been joined by Galbraith Hazelton. The two of them stood motionless, not looking at the white bundle that lay at their feet.
I lagged behind Greer a couple of paces as we came up to them, figuring it was strictly the Lieutenant’s party and I was only along for the ride. Clemmie Hazelton lay on her back, on top of a dirty slicker I guessed belonged to Pete.