Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

Now that it was over, I expected to find it increasingly difficult to keep the secret. I had learned too much. I wanted to tell people what I’d done. Who I’d talked to. So we were sitting over doughnuts and coffee on St. Helena, and I said to Napoleon—

There was a thin layer of snow on the ground when I got home. Ray White, a retired tennis player who lives alone on the other side of Carmichael Drive, was out walking. He waved me down to tell me how sorry he was to hear about Shel’s death. I thanked him and pulled into the driveway. A black car that I didn’t recognize was parked in front of the house. Two people, a man and a woman, were sitting inside. They opened their doors and got out as I drifted to a stop. I turned off the engine without putting the car away.

The woman was taller, and more substantial, than the man. She held out a set of credentials. “Dr. Dryden?” she said. “I’m Sgt. Lake, Carroll County Police.” She smiled, an expressionless mechanical gesture lacking any warmth. “This is Sgt. Howard. Could we have a few minutes of your time?”

Her voice was low key. She would have been attractive had she been a trifle less official. She was in her late thirties, with cold dark eyes and a cynical expression that looked considerably older than she was.

“Sure,” I said, wondering what it was about.

Sgt. Howard made no secret of the fact that he was bored. His eyes glided over me, and he dismissed me as a lowlife whose only conceivable interest to him might lie in my criminal past. We stepped up onto the deck and went in through the sliding glass panels. Lake sat down on the sofa, while Howard undid a lumpy gray scarf, and took to wandering around the room, inspecting books, prints, stereo, whatever. I offered coffee.

“No, thanks,” said Lake. Howard just looked as if I hadn’t meant him. Lake crossed her legs. “I wanted first to offer my condolences on the death of Dr. Shelborne. I understand he was a close friend of yours?”

“That’s correct,” I said. “We’ve known each other for a long time.”

She nodded, produced a leather-bound notebook, opened it, and wrote something down. “Did you have a professional relationship?” she asked.

“No,” I said slowly. “We were just friends.”

“I understand.” She paused. “Dr. Dryden,” she said, “I’m sorry to tell you this: Dr. Shelborne was murdered.”

My first reaction was simply to disbelieve the statement. “You’re not serious,” I said.

“I never joke, Doctor. We believe someone attacked the victim in bed, struck him hard enough to fracture his skull, and set fire to the house.”

Behind me, the floor creaked. Howard was moving around. “I don’t believe it,” I said.

Her eyes never left me. “The fire happened between 2:15 and 2:30 a.m., on the twelfth. Friday night, Saturday morning. I wonder if you’d mind telling me where you were at that time?”

“At home in bed,” I said. There had been rumors that the fire was deliberately set, but I hadn’t taken any of it seriously. “Asleep,” I added unnecessarily. “I thought lightning hit the place?”

“No. There’s really no question that it was arson.”

“Hard to believe,” I said.

“Why?”

“Nobody would want to kill Shel. He had no enemies. At least, none that I know of.”

I was beginning to feel guilty. Authority figures always make me feel guilty. “You can’t think of anyone who’d want him dead?”

“No,” I said. But he had a lot of money. And there were relatives.

She looked down at her notebook. “Do you know if he kept any jewelry in the house?”

“No. He didn’t wear jewelry. As far as I know, there was nothing like that around.”

“How about cash?”

“I don’t know.” I started thinking about the gold coins that we always took with us when we went upstream. A stack of them had been locked in a desk drawer. (I had some of them upstairs in the wardrobe.) Could anyone have known about them? I considered mentioning them, but decided it would be prudent to keep quiet, since I couldn’t explain how they were used. And it would make no sense that I knew about a lot of gold coins in his desk and had never asked about them. “Do you think it was burglars?” I said.

Her eyes wandered to one of the bookcases. It was filled with biographies and histories of the Renaissance. My favorite period. The eyes were black pools that seemed to be waiting for something to happen. “That’s possible, I suppose.” She canted her head to read a title. It was Ledesma’s biography of Cervantes, in the original Spanish. “Although burglars don’t usually burn the house down.” Howard had got tired poking around, so he circled back and lowered himself into a chair. “Dr. Dryden,” she continued, “is there anyone who can substantiate the fact that you were here asleep on the morning of the twelfth?”

“No,” I said. “I was alone.” The question surprised me. “You don’t think I did it, do you?”

“We don’t really think anybody did it, yet.”

Howard caught her attention and directed it toward the wall. There was a photograph of the three of us, Shel and Helen and me, gathered around a table at the Beach Club. A mustard-colored umbrella shielded the table, and we were laughing and holding tall, cool drinks. She studied it, and turned back to me. “What exactly,” she said, “is your relationship with Dr. Suchenko?”

I swallowed, and felt the color draining out of my face. I love her. I’ve loved her from the moment I met her. “We’re friends,” I said.

“Is that all?” I caught a hint of a smile. But nobody knew. I had kept my distance all this time. I’d told no one. Even Helen didn’t know. Well, she knew, but neither of us had ever admitted to it.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s all.”

She glanced around the room. “Nice house.”

It was. I had treated myself pretty well, installing leather furniture and thick pile carpets and a stow-away bar and some original art. “Not bad for a teacher,” she added.

“I don’t teach anymore.”

She closed her book. “So I understand.”

I knew what was in her mind. “I did pretty well on the stock market,” I said. I must have sounded defensive.

“As did Dr. Shelborne.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s so.”

“Same investments?”

Yes, they were the same. With only slight variations, we’d parlayed the same companies into our respective fortunes. “By and large, yes,” I said. “We did our research together. An investment club, you might say.”

Her eyes lingered on me a moment too long. She began to button her jacket. “Well, I think that’ll do it, Dr. Dryden,” she said.

I was still numb with the idea that someone might have murdered Shelborne. He had never flaunted his money, had never even moved out of that jerkwater townhouse over in River Park. But someone had found out. And they’d robbed him. Possibly he’d come home and they were already in the house. He might even have been upstream. Damn, what a jolt that would have been: return from an evening in Babylon and get attacked by burglars. I opened the sliding door for them. “You will be in the area if we need you?” Lake asked. I assured her I would be, and that I would do whatever I could to help find Shel’s killer. I watched them drive away and went back inside and locked the door. It had been painful enough believing that Shel had died through some arbitrary act of nature. But that a thug who had nothing whatever to contribute to the species would dare to take his life filled me with rage.

I poured a brandy and stared out the window. The snow was coming harder now. I couldn’t believe anyone would think for a moment that I could be capable of such an act. It chilled me.