Richard Marsten - Murder in the navy

“You knew her well enough to figure that, huh?”

“What?”

“That she was a j.g.?”

“Everybody on the Sykes knew that.”

“Sure. Including Schaefer.”

“Including Schaefer.”

“He seemed like a nice kid, Schaefer. Not the kind you figure to be messing around with a broad. Not the kind who kills.”

“No?”

“No.” Greg paused. “You look more like the kind who kills to me.”

“What do you mean by that?” He was sitting upright in his chair now, staring across at Greg. Greg’s eyes had narrowed, and he looked into those eyes and realized he had responded too nervously. He would have to be careful.

“Yeah,” Greg said slowly, as if an idea were forming in his mind. “Yeah, you look just like the kind who would kill.”

“What the hell do you know about killers?” he asked calmly, watching Greg very carefully now, not liking the crafty look on the pharmacist’s mate’s face.

“Nothing. Only what I can smell. You smell like a killer to me. Yeah, you know that? You smell like a killer. You must be a real bastard in a fist fight.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Yeah, and better with women, I suppose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Must be easy to slam a dame around, huh?”

“I never hit a woman in my life.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Who hit Claire Cole?”

“Schaefer did.”

“Yeah? Is that what it said in the base newspaper?”

“Yes, that’s what it said.”

“But we know different, huh?”

He was alert now, every sense alert. He stared at Greg and wondered if the pharmacist’s mate were bluffing, how could he know, how could he possibly...

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Claire and me used to talk together a lot,” Greg said, the crafty look gleaming brightly in his eyes now.

“Yeah? Wh... what about?”

“Lots of things. Life. Liberty.” Greg paused. “Men.”

“What would she want to talk to you for, you crud?”

“I’m sympathetic. She told me all about Schaefer.”

“Yeah?” He felt relieved. Greg knew nothing.

“And you!” Greg said suddenly.

“Me?” He snorted. “Hah, that’s a laugh.”

“How you were crazy about her,” Greg said, his eyes narrowed, standing now, moving closer to the chair, his back to the huge glass area around the solarium.

“You’re nuts.”

“Real crazy about her. How you and her had a real ball here at the hospital, right under Schaefer’s nose.”

“Get out of here, will you? You’re dreaming. You never talked to her.”

“I did. Oh, yes, mate, I did.”

Was Greg telling the truth? He couldn’t be sure. Jesus, had Claire talked to him? But what was all this garbage about Schaefer? No, no, he was bluffing.

“You’re bluffing me,” he said.

“Bluffing about what?” Greg snapped.

“About... about talking to Claire. You never talked to her.”

“Why should I bluff you? What’s there to bluff you about? Why should I want to bluff you into anything?”

“You want me to say I knew Claire. You’re needling me again, that’s all.” He glanced hastily around the solarium. They were alone, and he was thankful for that. No one else was listening to this conversation, no one but the two of them, alone up here.

“You got something to hide?” Greg shouted. “You think I don’t know you knew Claire?”

“I didn’t know her!”

“You’re lying! You knew her here, and you knew her ashore, too!”

“What the hell! You’re — you’re — I didn’t know her!”

“She said you did! She told me so. She said you were real chummy.”

“She was lying, then. I didn’t know her.”

“She said you went to bed together!”

The accusation hung on the silence of the solarium. He sat watching Greg, aware of a thin sheen of sweat on his brow now, wanting to know how much else Greg knew, wanting to know if this were true, uncertain now, thinking maybe, maybe...

“When did she tell you this?”

“Just before she died,” Greg snapped, his eyes blazing. “Just before she went to the Sykes. ”

“She... about me? She mentioned me?”

Greg moved forward swiftly, his lips skinned back over his teeth, his eyes bright. “She said she was going to the Sykes to meet you! That’s what she said!”

He leaped out of his chair. “You tell this to anyone?”

Greg backed off a pace, his face suddenly pale. “You... you...” He was fighting for ideas now, and fighting for breath. “Why, you... This is all true, ain’t it?” Greg’s eyes were wide in astonishment now, and something else. Fear. He was backing away quickly, as if he expected an attack. “I–I was just making it up, trying to get a ri... But it’s true! Holy Jesus, you killed her, didn’t you? Holy Jesus, you killed Claire Cole!”

He shoved out at Greg, and Greg stumbled backward a pace, and then he shoved again, harder this time, and Greg floundered for balance, losing his footing, going back, back. He closed in on Greg, and this time he shoved with all the weight of his shoulder and arms behind the push. He saw Greg lunge backward, and then he heard the crash as Greg’s body hit the glass. The body clung there for a moment, and then the glass shattered and the body rushed out to meet the cold winter air, eyes wide, hands clawing at nothing.

He rushed out of the solarium, hearing footsteps down the corridor, ducking around a corner where he was unseen.

When Greg hit the pavement, six stories below, his eyes were still wide in astonishment, and disbelief, and his skull cracked open with an angry splash that blotted everything out of his mind and his body.

The B-26 was painted yellow, and it hung against the gray sky like an egg yolk on a city pavement. Its nose was pointed toward the New Jersey coastline, and its engines droned monotonously. Up in the cabin, the pilot and copilot damn near fell asleep.

On the island of Brigantine, off the New Jersey coast, there stood a hotel. The hotel had once been headquarters for Father Divine and his angels, but it had been taken over by the Navy for a radar school, and its roof bristled with antennae now. The Sugar Roger antenna, the large bedspring type attached to the air-search gear, revolved with methodical precision, circumscribing a 360-degree impenetrable area of electronic impulses. The impulses leaped through the air, reaching out and out, striking the metal skin of the B-26, bouncing off that skin, echoing back through the nonresisting atmosphere, were caught again by the all-seeing eyeless bedspring antenna, channeled down into the depths of the hotel via a thick cable, translated onto the circular P.P.I. scope in terms of short electronic visual spurts of brightness, and retranslated by the radar operator in terms of range and bearing.

Fred Singer depressed the button on top of his sound-powered phones. “Bogey,” he said, “three-one-zero, range thirty.”

A radarman named Rook, wearing sound-powered phones, one earpiece in place, the other shoved onto his temple so that he could hear messages on the phones and orders from Mr. Masters simultaneously, picked up a thick black crayon and applied it to the plastic surface that stretched in front of him. The plastic was etched with a large wheel, the hub of which was the hotel, the spokes of which were the relative bearings from 360 degrees, around to 090 degrees, to 180 degrees, to 270 degrees, back to 360 degrees. Circles within circles, marking off the ranges — ten miles, twenty miles, thirty miles, forty miles, and out, out, out — crossed the bearing markers. Automatically, Rook found 310, followed the range markers out to thirty miles, marked a large X on the plastic at the intersection. Writing backward, so that the writing was visible and intelligible for Mr. Masters, standing on the other side of the clear plastic, he jotted down the time in minutes and quarter minutes: 07³.