Chapter III
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.”