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“Fine. I can open this back at my place.”
“I’d think you’d be in a hurry.”
“Not that much of a hurry,” I said. “I’m more anxious to get out of here. And Loren was unhappy about missing out on all this, so let’s give him a chance to see what’s in the box. I already have a pretty good idea what we’ll find.”
“And you think it’ll get you off the hook?”
“It’ll get me off,” I said, “and it’ll get somebody else on.”
We gave the place a lightning once-over to make sure we’d left everything more or less as we’d found it. The internal damage I’d done to the beautiful old desk didn’t show, and the bookshelves looked quite undisturbed. Outside, Kirschma
And, as the lock turned, the last piece fitted into place for me.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time we got back to Darla Sandoval’s little love nest, Loren Kramer was a nervous wreck. I let us in with my key and when we came through the door Loren was behind it. Since we hadn’t thought he might have chosen that spot for himself, we inadvertently hit him with the door. When he groaned Ray yanked the door forward and stared unhappily at his partner. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “I thought I told you to stay on the couch.”
“I didn’t know it was you, Ray.”
“Hiding behind doors. Jesus.”
“I got nervous, that’s all. You were gone a long time and I started worrying about it.”
“Well, Bernie here had to look for a box that wasn’t there. It was sort of fun to watch him. He took a desk apart and everything. Then the box he was looking for turned up on a bookshelf. That’s it right there. It was pretendin’ to be a book.”
“The Purloined Letter,” Loren said.
“Huh?”
“Edgar Allan Poe,” I said. “A short story. But that’s not exactly right, Loren. Now if you were to hide a book on a bookshelf, that would be like the story. Except this was a box that was disguised as a book.”
“It sounds like pretty much the same thing to me,” Loren said. He sounded sulky about it.
While we puzzled over all of this, Ray went to the kitchen and made himself a drink. He came back, took a large swallow of it, and suggested that it was time to open the box.
“And time I had my gun back,” Loren said. “And my stick and my badge and my cuffs and my cap, the whole works. Nothing against you, Bernie, but it bothers me seeing them on someone who’s not really a cop.”
“That’s understandable, Loren.”
“Plus I don’t feel dressed without them. The gun, we even have to carry them off-duty, you know. When you think of all the holdups foiled by off-duty patrolmen you understand the reason behind the regulation.”
What I mostly thought of was all the off-duty cops who tended to shoot one another in the course of serious discussions of the relative merits of the Knicks and the Nets, but I decided not to raise this point. I didn’t think it would go over too well.
“The box,” Ray said.
“Couldn’t I get my stuff back and then he opens the box?”
“Jesus,” Ray said.
I hefted the box in my hands. “Surprisingly enough,” I said, “this box isn’t all that important.”
Ray stared at me. “It was worth ten thousand dollars to you, Bernie. That sounds pretty important. And it’s supposed to get you off a murder charge, though I’ll be damned if I see how it’s go
“It must look that way,” I admitted.
“Unless the proof’s in the box.”
“The box was a personal matter,” I said. “Call it a favor for a friend. The important thing was for me to get into the apartment, Ray. I didn’t even realize it at the time, in fact I actually thought that the box was the important thing, but just being in the apartment told me what I wanted to know.”
“I don’t get it,” Loren said. He looked as though he expected a trick, as though when I opened the blue box I’d be likely to extract a white rabbit. “What did you find in the apartment, Bernie?”
“For openers, the door wasn’t locked completely. The deadbolt wasn’t on.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Ray said. “I told you some cop just shut the door and didn’t bother locking it. What’s it matter?”
“It doesn’t. What does matter is that the deadbolt was locked when I let myself into Flaxford’s apartment the other night. If it had just been the spring lock I’d have opened it faster, but that’s a good Rabson lock and I had to work the cylinder around for one and a half turns. It didn’t take me too long because I happen to be outstanding in my chosen field-”
“Jesus, what we gotta listen to.”
“-but I had to turn the bolt first, then go on to knock off the spring lock. Which I did.”
“So?”
“So either the murderer happened to take a key with him on his way out of the apartment and then happened to take the time to use the key to lock Flaxford’s corpse inside, or else Flaxford engaged that deadbolt himself by turning the knob from the inside. And I somehow can’t see the murderer having the key in the first place or bothering to use it if he did.”
I had their attention now but they didn’t know quite what to make of it. Slowly Ray said, “You’re sayin’ Flaxford locked hisself in, right?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Jesus, Bernie, all you’re puttin’ is your own neck in the noose. If he locked hisself in and the door’s locked when you get there, then the bastard was alive when you let yourself in.”
“That’s absolutely right.”
“Then you killed him.”
“Wrong.” I slapped Loren’s stick against the palm of my hand. “See, I have an advantage here,” I went on. “I happen to know for a fact that I didn’t kill Flaxford. So knowing he was alive when I got there means something different to me. It means I know who killed him.”
“Who?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I pointed with the nightstick. “Loren killed him. Who else?”
I watched Loren’s right hand. Interestingly enough, it went to where his gun would have been if I hadn’t been wearing it at the time. He dropped his hand to his side and saw me looking at him and blushed.
“You’re out of your mind,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“If that’s not typical for Gemini I don’t know what is. Just try on any kind of a wild lie and see how it goes over. Ray, I think we better take him in. This time put cuffs on him, will you? He already escaped from us once.”
Ray was silent for a moment. Then to me he said, “Are you just snowballing this one, Bernie? Puttin’ it together as you go along?”
“No, I think it’s fairly solid, Ray.”
“You want to run it by me once just for curiosity?”
“Ray, you’re not going to listen to this maniac-”
“Shut up,” Ray Kirschma
“Sure,” I said. “It’s pretty simple, actually. J. Francis Flaxford was supposed to go to the opening of a play that night. It was all set. That’s why I picked that particular time to hit his apartment. I had inside information and my source knew for a fact he’d be out.
“Well, he was all set to go. He was in his dressing gown, ready to get dressed, and then he had an accident. I don’t know if it was a stroke or a fainting spell or a minor heart attack or an accidental fall or what, but the upshot of it is he wound up passed out on his bed wearing his robe. Somewhere along the line he probably knocked the lamp off the bedside table or bumped into something and maybe that was the noise that prompted some neighbor to call the cops. It doesn’t matter. The significant thing is that he was unconscious in his bedroom with the door locked from inside when I entered the apartment.”