Glen Cook - Old Tin Sorrows

"Take his word for it, Garrett." Morley isn't your dedicated investigator, willing to stir fouled chamberpots in search of damning evidence. I'm not that devoted myself. Anyway, I believed Peters. He'd have come up with an alibi less dumb if he was going to toss somebody off a balcony.

I was about out of suspects.

Which meant I had to open the whole thing up and suspect everybody again. Even the unlikelies.

Shares of the legacy were worth over six hundred thousand now. If the value of the estate wasn't falling faster than the murderer could expand his share.

Peters. Cook. Wayne. Who? For no sound reason I gave Wayne top billing. And Cook was starting to look better, though she had pretty good alibis. But alibis aren't everything.

"I guess the killer knows there's a copy of the will," I told Peters. "That means the General could be in double jeopardy."

"What?"

"After last night the killer has to worry about the other copies going, too. They do, all his risks have gone for nothing. So maybe he'll want the old man to check out before the last copy of the will does. Better find out exactly how many there were and where they're at now." I tapped my shirt to make sure I had my copy.

Not that it was particularly safe with me, considering I was no more immortal than Chain, Hawkes, or Bradon.

Snake popped into mind, and after Snake, his paintings. I had to get those inside.

But it was pouring out. Maybe headed for something worse. There was the occasional flash of lightning. I said, "Getting around to the kind of weather that suits this place. All we need is something howling and ghost lights puttering around outside."

Peters snorted. "You get the next best thing. A frisky draug." He pointed.

There it was, back at the rear again, trying to get in. A lightning flash illuminated it. I got my first good look. It was more decomposed than the others.

Peters selected a few items from the stockpile in the fountain. "Shall we take care of it?"

"That's my old sergeant, Morley. Cool in the face of the enemy."

"Uhm." He went through the arsenal himself. Here was something he could get a hold on.

"All right. I guess we should take care of it. Get it out of the way." I checked their leavings. They'd taken all the best stuff already. "Hell with this." I went and disarmed a retired knight.

I had to be getting close to the end. There weren't many suits of armor left for me to vandalize.

Morley sat on the fountain surround hugging cracked ribs. Peters was curled up on the floor in a pool of vomit, clutching his groin. He did his manly best not to whimper. Me, I'd been luckier. All I'd come up with was a shin bruise and a badly stomped foot. Not on the same leg. "Maybe next time I'll save myself some grief and let whoever wants kill me."

Morley gasped, "Why didn't you say the man was a hand-to-hand specialist when he was alive?"

"Don't look at me! I didn't know anything about him. Not even who he was."

Pieces of draug were scattered all over. Some still moved.

"What now?"

"Eh?"

"You burned the other two. Right?"

"One of them, I know."

"Both," Peters groaned. He got onto his knees, his forehead on the floor. His knuckles were bone white. He'd gotten hit bad. "They dumped the other one into the stable fire when they saw there wasn't no stopping it." He didn't say that in one chunk but in little gasps, a word or two at a time. The effort cost him a spate of dry heaves.

I felt for him, though not as much as I would have if I hadn't been hurting myself.

I got up. "Better make sure we got the job done." The thing looked like it was trying to get itself back together. The pieces were trying to get to a central point. I hobbled, pitching random limbs back.

"What the hell's going on down there?"

I looked up. Wayne and Kaid had appeared for their shift, at the third-floor rail. "Come on down. We're in no shape to finish this."

Wayne beat Kaid by a floor. He looked at what was left of Chain, at the pieces of rotted corpse, at Chain again. "Man. Man, oh, man. Man." He didn't say anything else till he asked, "What happened?"

I told him. Kaid arrived in time to get it all.

"Man. Man, oh, man." Wayne was scared. For the first time since I arrived I saw one of those people convinced of his own mortality.

"Hell. You're all a hundred thousand richer now."

"Man. I don't care about that. I don't need it. It ain't worth it. I'm out of here soon as it's light enough that nothing can sneak up on me."

"But... "

"Money ain't everything. You can't live it up if you're dead. I'm gone." The man was almost hysterical.

I glanced at Peters. He was preoccupied, though he'd made it to the fountain surround. He hoisted himself up and perched with his misery. He had no attention left for anything else.

Morley was no help. But he couldn't be. He didn't know the people.

I looked at Kaid. He was as pallid as a man could get, as shaken as Wayne, equally eyeball to eyeball with death. It had come home. The field was so narrow, each knew he might be next.

He swallowed about three times, then managed, "The General. Somebody's got to take care of the General."

Wayne snarled, "Let that bastard take care of himself. I'm gone. I ain't dying for his money or for him."

Pain will distract you some, but mine wasn't so all-devouring that I couldn't spend some effort trying to figure out what the hell would happen next. I wondered which of the three was acting and how he'd gotten so good.

I wondered some about Cook, Jennifer, even the old man, and how I could figure one of them for the killer. Or more than one. That was an angle I hadn't given much thought. Maybe there was more than one killer. That would take care of alibis.

And my ivory lover. What of her? The mystery woman suddenly looked like a top bet for the villain.

Who the hell was she?

I plunked myself down on the fountain surround, as nimble as a quadraplegic dwarf. Kaid and Wayne came out of shock enough to start thinking and doing. Kaid went to the kitchen, got some big burlap sacks. He and Wayne stuffed them with pieces of draug and tied them shut. They gagged while they worked. My cold was that much of a blessing. I didn't have to take the smell.

Morley was three feet away. I asked, "How you doing?"

"Be running windsprints in the morning." He grimaced, spat on the floor, winced again as he leaned to look at it.

"What?"

"Wanted to see if I was spitting blood."

"Come on. You rolled with it."

He flashed me a down under smile. He was putting on a show. He wanted folks to think he was hurt worse than he was. Might be an edge for him later.

I shut my mouth.

Peters managed to say, "What now, Garrett?"

"I don't know."

"How do we stop this before we're all dead?"

"I don't know that, either. Unless we just scatter."

"In which case the killer wins by default. Wayne walks tomorrow, it's the same as if he got killed."

Morley said, "Makes your job easier, Garrett." He did a grimace. He was overacting.

"Eh?" I was at top form.

"Shortens the list by another name."

Black Pete grunted out, "Garrett. How're you going to catch him?"

Him? I wasn't so sure now. If Wayne walked and Peters was clean, the crowd was so small I'd have to lynch Kaid. But I thought Kaid was too old and feeble to have done all the killer had.

"I don't have a clue, Sarge. Don't press me. You people know each other better than I know you. You tell me who it is."

"Shit. It isn't anybody. Logically. One way or another you can discard everybody. Except maybe your phantom blonde, that nobody sees but you."

"I saw her," Morley said. I looked at him, puzzled. Was he lending moral support?