Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

Lowenthal offered tea, and so he had accepted. Matisak looked about for the file containing the information on the patent. He didn't see it readily lying about as he had hoped. Once more he silently cursed Lowenthal.

Lowenthal reentered the room with two steaming cups of liquid.

“ How're you enjoying retirement?” he asked, taking the cup and saucer gingerly into his possession, his mind flashing snapshot-fashion on the invisible prints forming on the porcelain dishes.

“ I feared it would be a tremendous bore, and it is. But I've managed to keep busy-reading, doing some writing, even! Always wanted to do some writing.”

“ Really? About your experiences at the lab?”

“ That, yes, but I've kind of gotten off on a tangent-gone self-indulgent, I suppose-writing about myself, my innermost thoughts, that sort of thing. Asking questions that defy answer.”

“ Careful,” said Matisak, looking around, “that can prove dangerous.”

“ To the suicidal, perhaps, but I'm a survivor, Matt. Always have been, and when something comes along to excite my interest, say like our little invention-”

“ Yes, well, that's why I'm here. Where is… where are the papers you've drawn up?”

“ In a safe place, trust me.”

“ But you said we would go over them tonight.” His voice rose out of control.

Lowenthal put up his hands as if he were being held at gunpoint. He got up quickly, paced the room and grimaced, saying, “We are equal partners in this, and we can have the papers drawn up. But as for me, I trust you, Matisak, regardless of whether you trust me or not.” He reached for his tea, took a sip and sat back down all in one easy motion. He was comfortable with his place, his things.

Matisak guessed that the only reason he had gotten involved in the “patent” was to keep busy, to, as he had said, have something to do. Once involved, he was excited by the prospects of the instrument that he had designed. It had become for Lowenthal a shining example of how he could help suffering humanity, something he could leave behind so that his life might count for something.

“ So, Maurice, are we going to go over the details tonight, or not?”

“ Really, what's to go over? I've completed the technical drawings and copy, including the new materials, so that you don't get that wobbling effect, you know, when you insert the tube, so that it doesn't pull on the vessel you attach it to. You told me that was a problem; that you had to use adhesive tape, remember? All that's been worked out. And with your records, showing its usefulness, what more is there to say? Did you bring some notes?” he asked, indicating the briefcase that Matisak had brought in with him.

“ Yes, a few,” he lied.

“ I'll be happy to go over them with you.”

“ You must think I'm a fool, Lowenthal.”

“ What?”

“ You plan to take over this entire idea, gaining the patent in your name, and-”

“ I only did so because I'm no longer associated with Balue-Stork. If I used your name-”

“ Then my name is nowhere on the patent papers?”

“ Absolutely not, but that doesn't mean we can't have papers drawn up to indicate that we are equal partners.”

“ Good, all right,” he said, calming. “My sentiments exactly. So, where are the patent papers?”

“ My safety-deposit box.”

“ I thought so.”

“ There's no safer place for them.”

Matisak nodded, got to his feet and snapped open the briefcase, snatching forth a manila file folder, handing it to Lowenthal, who began to scan the typed words, flipping through. All of the information was bogus, but Lowenthal didn't know that.

“ This is remarkable. It can be used then for water on the knee, fluid on the brain, fluid in the lungs. This news is wonderful! Wonderful!”

“ While Lowenthal read, Matisak removed the surgical gloves, the chloroform and the scalpel from his briefcase and slowly moved around to the other side of the couch where Lowenthal sat hunched over the papers.

With Lowenthal's back to him, he poured some of the pungent liquid into a handkerchief and suddenly pressed this to Lowenthal's eyes, nose and mouth. The other man struggled and kicked, the manila folder and its contents flying like loose pigeons before his feet until he fell unconscious on the sofa.

All was going as planned. Matisak slipped on his surgical gloves and remained behind the man now under his power. He felt a great elation come welling up from within him, and he pitied the fact he could not take Lowenthal's blood, but he quickly rationalized this away because it was an old man's blood; besides, he needed the blood to be spilt.

Holding the slumping figure up, leaning in over his shoulder, Matisak lifted the man's left forearm, and with his own right hand and scalpel, Teach Matisak taught Lowenthal a valuable lesson. He severed the arteries of the left wrist. The blood gushed from the deep wound. And now Teach lifted Lowenthal's right forearm and, using his left hand and the scalpel in it, he carved the right wrist. In so doing, no one, not even Jessica Coran, could tell that someone other than Lowenthal himself had done the cutting.

The hard part was watching the sad waste of the red fluid as it made wine stains in the man's clothing and spread over the weave of his flowered couch. The blood odor made him pant.

Matisak had some additional details to take care of. He pressed the dying man's right index finger and thumb around the handle of the scalpel, and then he repeated the process with the other hand. Some blood had smeared on the scalpel, but the dead man's prints ought to be clear.

Matisak, keeping the gloves on, retrieved his teacup and saucer as Lowenthal continued to bleed to death on the sofa where he now slumped over. In the kitchen he washed the cup and saucer, dried them and put them away. The dishwater also cleaned his gloves of blood, so he wouldn't be leaving any telltale bloody finger marks on a doorknob or door facing.

Lowenthal lived in a silent little neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago where the houses were older than Matisak. There were no children or dogs or young people strolling about, only an occasional old man with a cane. The street was tree-lined. Trash cans had been put out on the street for the next day's pickup. Matisak's van in Lowenthal's driveway drew no attention, and most windows were lit with the shimmery blue light of TV screens. Teach stepped back out into the night and surveyed the neighborhood from the front porch, where Lowenthal had hung a little swing. He cautiously went down to his van and unloaded what he had brought with him, evidence for the authorities. He had left the cutting tools dirty in his sink the night before without reason or good cause, but now he found good cause.

He returned to the house with the box of instruments he had used on successive victims. Inside the house again, he found that Lowenthal had moved, or had fallen, his body slumped over the suicide note, his remaining tea dripping over the edge, mingling with his blood.

Still using the gloves, careful to leave no prints, he located the other man's basement door, found a light switch and calmly moved down the steps. They creaked below his weight.

He located matching tools where he could for the ones that he had brought, exchanging these, hanging his on nails and placing his on shelves where he found replaceable ones. Lowenthal's stuff was top quality, like his own. The man knew machinery. But now Lowenthal's would be caked with the blood of the Indiana boy, Fowler, still nasty with chewed flesh. And when the authorities found the old man's body, they'd also find his sketches of the spigot and the patent application papers in his safe-deposit box, and they'd find his suicide note, a note that Matisak had written in Renee's blood from the inkwell with his quill pen, all of which he had brought with him.