I is for Innocent

I don't presume to understand how the human brain works. I do know that the left brain is verbal, linear, and analytical, solving life's little problems by virtue of sound reasoning. The right brain on the other hand tends to be intuitive, imaginative, whimsical, and spontaneous, coming up with the inexplicable Ah-ha! answer to some question you may have asked yourself three days before. There's no accounting for this. As I huddled in the blackness, gun in hand, with my lips pressed together to keep from shrieking like a girl, I knew with perfect certainty who was shooting at me. And to tell you the truth, it really pissed me off. When the next shot was fired, I flattened myself, braced the gun in both hands, and fired back. Maybe it was time to declare myself. "Hey, David?"

Silence.

"I know it's you," I said.

He laughed. "I was wondering if you'd figure it out."

"It took me a while, but I got it," I said. It was weird talking to him in the dark like this. I could barely visualize his face and that bothered me.

"How'd you guess?"

"I realized there was a gap between the time Tippy hit the pedestrian and the time she bumped into you."

"So?"

"So I called her and asked where she was for that thirty minutes. Turns out she went up to Isabelle's."

There was a silence.

I went on, "You must have just killed Isabelle when you saw Tippy coming up the drive. While she was knocking at the door, you hopped in the truck bed. She drove you away from the house when she left. All you had to do then was wait till she slowed down. Out you hop on the driver's side, giving the truck a thump with your fist as you jump. Tippy turns left and you're sprawled on the pavement in plain view of the work crew across the street."

"Yeah, with Mr. Average Citizen ready to testify in my behalf," he chimed in at last.

"What about Morley? Why'd you have to kill him?"

"Are you kidding? That old buzzard was really breathing down my neck. When I talked to him on Wednesday, he'd just about made the leap. I knew if I didn't take him down quick, I'd be in the soup. Raiding his files was a snap after that. He's kind of a slob when it came down to his paperwork."

"Where'd you get the death caps?"

"The Weidma

"I gotta hand it to you. You are one clever chap," I said, thinking hard. Behind me, the corridor made a left-hand turn into a cul-de-sac with the copy room on one side and the new kitchenette on the other. If I rounded the corner, I'd be out of the line of fire, but I'd have a couple of problems I wasn't sure I could solve. One, I'd no longer have a straight line of fire myself. And two, I'd be trapped. On the other hand, I was trapped where I was. The kitchen had a small window. With luck, if I got there, I could bust out the glass and holler real loud for help. Like maybe nobody'd heard the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in here. If I could persuade him to keep talking, he might not hear me shift locations. "I'm surprised you didn't slip up somewhere along the line," I said. As long as I was stuck, I might as well fish for information.

Reluctantly, he said, "I did slip once."

"Really? When was that?"

"I got drunk one night with Curtis and flapped my big mouth. I still can't believe I did that. The minute it was out I knew I'd have to get rid of him one day."

"God," I said. "You mean to tell me he was telling the truth for once?"

Barney laughed in the dark. "Oh, sure. He figured it was worth some money to someone so he went straight to Ken Voigt and tattled. Sure enough, Voigt started paying Curtis to ensure his testimony. Fool."

I closed my eyes. Voigt was a fool. So eager to win he'd risked his own credibility. "What about me? Is there some scheme in the works or you just doing this for yucks?"

"Actually, I'd like to run you out of ammunition so I can finish you off. I killed Curtis with an H amp;K, like the one you've got. I'm going to shoot you with the thirty-eight I used on Isabelle and put that gun in his hand. That way, it'll look like he killed her-"

"And I killed him," I said, completing the sentence. "You ever hear about ballistics? They're going to know the gun wasn't mine."

"I'll be gone by then."

"Smart."

"Very smart," he said, "which is more than you can say of most people. Human beings are like ants. So busy, so involved in their little world. Watch an anthill sometime. Such activity. You can tell everything looks so important from the ant's point of view. But it's not. In reality, it doesn't amount to anything. Haven't you ever stepped on an ant? Rubbed one out with your thumb? You don't suffer any great pangs of conscience. You think, There. I gotcha. Same thing here."

"Jesus. This is really profound. I'm taking notes over here."

That made him mad and he fired twice, slugs plowing into the carpet to my right. I matched him shot for shot just for the hell of it.

"You're so i

"Let's not jump to conclusions," I said. I thought I saw his head appear in Lo

He disappeared. "You missed."

"Sorry to hear that." I slipped out the magazine and counted cartridges by feel. All that nice ammo in the other room.

"You have a problem over there?"

"I broke a fingernail."

He was silent for a moment. "Be careful with your ammo. You only have one shot left."

"Bullshit. I have two."

He laughed in the dark. "Oh, right. Uh-hunh."

I was quiet and then I said, "What makes you so sure?"

"I can count."

I put my head down briefly, gathering my strength. Time to move along, I thought. I slipped my left shoe off and placed it on the floor in front of me. I slipped my right shoe off, my eyes crossing at the heat in my right hip. I could feel a numbness spreading and I couldn't quite compute how pain and nothing could share the same nerve path. "That was only seven," I said.

"It was eight."

"I have a ten-shot," I said piously. I began to ease back toward the point at which the corridor made a left.

"A ten-shot. What crap. You're such a liar," he said.

"Oh, really? What kind of gun do you have?"

"A Walther. An eight-shot. I have two shots left."

"No, you don't. You have one. I can count, too, bird-breath." I was moving by degrees, nearing the corner, feeling backward with my foot. David Barney didn't seem to notice the change in my location.

"You can't fool me. I did my homework on you."

"Like what?" I said. I reached the corner and angled myself around until only the upper portion of my body was in the corridor. David Barney was now about twenty-five feet away. I was resting on my right side, my blue jeans wet with blood. I looked down at myself. My hip had started to glow. I lifted myself on one elbow. I'd put my weight on my keychain, activating the little plastic flashlight that was shaped like a flattened oval and turned on when you pinched it. I eased the keys out of my jeans pocket and took the flash off the key ring. I pushed the keys to one side, uneasy about their jangling.

"Like this business about your lying. You take a lot of pride in the fact."

"Who'd you hear that from?"

"I get around. It's amazing how much information you can pick up in jail."

"I bet you tell a lot of lies yourself," I said. "You probably have a nine-shot."

He actually sounded flattered. "You never know," he said.

"What made you so sure I'd come down here tonight?" I pulled myself up onto my hands and knees.