Samuel Holt - The Fourth Dimension is Death

“But then ,” she went on, “under questioning from the other side, and you know this is gonna happen, I’ll say we don’t have a prime suspect at all, that we don’t know anybody with sufficient motive, that there isn’t physical evidence pointing in any particular direction, and that yes, you did have opportunity, since the crime occurred in front of your house.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I see that.”

“I don’t think I’ll hurt your case much,” she said, “but to be honest, Mr. Holt, I’m not gonna help it a whole hell of a lot either.”

“I doped that out,” I told her.

“Maybe we’ll get a break between now and then,” she said. “You’re right, the case is open, but that means if anything new turns up, anything new at all, we’ll notice it and we’ll be ready to do something about it.”

I said, “But up till now, there’s no arrows pointing anywhere.”

“Just at the files,” she said. “Sorry.”

What else was there to ask her? Nothing. I thanked her, said I expected I’d see her in court, and hung up.

Behind the house, a clear trail of packed earth and strategically placed stones led farther up the mountain to a huge flat boulder, windswept clear of drifting snow, with a view of what appeared to be the entire North American continent. I was feeling restless and edgy, naturally, so Bly and I climbed up there before lunch, not speaking, just concentrating on the movement of muscles and the crisp coolness of the air we pulled into our lungs. At the boulder, we stood hand in hand, looking out, the steeply slanted A-roof of Zack’s lodge a short way below us down the slope, not another sign of humankind anywhere except for the insect-looking march of powerline poles across the shoulder of a hill far away.

“You know,” I said, “how everybody, at one time or another, dreams about escaping from it all, going somewhere new, getting a new name, starting a new life? This is one of those moments for me.”

Smiling in understanding, Bly said, “So here we are on Mount Cristo.”

“I suppose.”

“But you aren’t Eddie Dantes,” she said. “You know who you are, and you know what you’re going to do.”

“Oh, Christ,” I said, feeling the weight of it landing like an Inverness cape on my shoulders. “It’s so stupid.”

“You don’t have any choice,” she told me. “This time, Sam, there’s nobody else to do it.”

She was right, dammit. I could feel the old stance come back, the set of the head, position of the elbows, placement of the feet. I looked down at Bly, the old smile on my face, calm and superior but friendly, the assurance in the very lift of my eyebrows. “Packard’s the name, Ma’am,” I said. “Jack Packard.”

After lunch, when we were both sure the list was complete, I phoned Robinson and read it to him; everything I wanted him to bring up here from the house. “The press has been quite intrusive,” he said. “Despite the best efforts of your public relations person.”

“Babs, you mean.”

“That is what she would prefer me to call her, oddly enough,” he agreed. “In any event, she has failed to satisfy them. They are not precisely here, but they are very much in the neighborhood.”

“Take the Volvo,” I told him, “and go out the back way.” There’s another driveway out from my place, down the slope of land behind the house and out between two houses on Thurston Avenue, closer to the San Diego Freeway. “And bring an overnight bag for yourself,” I said.

“And the dogs?”

“Leave out a bunch of food. You’ll be back there tomorrow some time.”

“But not you,” he asked.

“That’s right,” I said, not satisfying his curiosity.

Having made the decision, having accepted the absurdity of my situation — “Hello; I’m not a crime solver, but I played one on TV” — I became more relaxed, able to think more clearly about my problems and plans, and to go over my ideas with Bly, whose worst regret was that she couldn’t come along. “You know I want to,” she said, “and I know why I can’t. So that’s that.”

So we didn’t discuss it, which was probably just as well. The fact is, although Bly and Anita are well aware of each other’s existence, they’ve never met, and there’s no desire on anybody’s part that such a meeting should ever happen. I am part of two pairs, each complete, each in its own world. For Bly to come with me to New York and not meet Anita would be artificial and straining and awkward, but for her to come along and meet Anita would be chaos.

Which was more than usually unfair, given the situation. Bly would love a chance to play gumshoe, Robin the Girl Wonder to my Packard, the capeless crusader, whereas Anita — however concerned and interested she might be — would never even consider taking an active role in the case. If something like this had to happen to me, it should have been on the west coast, not the east. All of this we both knew and neither said; some knots can only get more tangled if you fuss with them.

I made some phone calls east, to set up a few meetings, but without quite explaining to anybody the mad scheme I had in mind, and then there was nothing to do but hang around and get beaten at Scrabble and wait for Robinson, who arrived in late afternoon, brimming with — sloshing over with — unasked questions. I volunteered nothing, and his portrayal of the crusty old servant prohibited him from admitting curiosity, so that was that. He took over the kitchen immediately upon arrival, to everybody’s relief, while Bly and I carried all the new gear into the master bedroom and considered my disguise.

Which was going to be necessary, if I meant to accomplish anything. Unfortunately, when you’re six foot six it’s not that easy to adjust yourself to become less noticeable, and this problem is compounded if you’ve been the star of a recent popular television series for five years. But Packard wasn’t going to get a chance to strut his stuff at all in a spotlight of avid attention, so some alternative would have to be found, even if only to get me east without heralding my arrival. Fortunately, I’d kept a lot of stuff from the show, and Packard himself had not been above the occasional disguise; mostly moustaches and wigs and now and then a neat submarine-captain beard. These were good quality items, made specifically for me at the studio, so when I wore one of them it was impossible to tell it wasn’t natural, no matter how close you got. Also, when thinking or otherwise displaying intelligence, Packard often used to wear clear-lensed dark-framed glasses; alone, those did for me about what they do for Christopher Reeve when he’s being Clark Kent, but in conjunction with some facial hair and a graying-at-the-temples wig, a surprising difference could be obtained.

For the facial hair, I chose a slender Errol Flynn moustache that made me look somehow untrustworthy, as though I might try to get you into a card game or into bed or into a land deal; into trouble of some sort. “Why on earth do you want to look like that? ” Bly asked me, and I said, “Because if somebody looks like a con man or a sleaze nobody studies him very closely. You don’t want to catch his eye, because then he could catch you .”

“Holmes, you amaze me,” Bly said, and shook her head.

For the same reason, I chose the most worn clothing in the batch; a baggy tan tweed jacket with shiny leather elbow patches, a patterned shirt with frayed collar, gray slacks in need of a pressing, and tasseled brown loafers I’ve always hated and can’t remember why I ever bought in the first place. Without the seducer’s moustache, and with Packard’s old pipe, I could have been an associate professor in a small two-year college, but that wouldn’t have given me the added protection of this slightly raffish appearance. “I’ll buy a Racing Form at the airport tomorrow,” I said, studying myself in the full-length bedroom mirror with no little satisfaction, “and carry it under my arm. That’ll complete the picture.”