A Hole In Space

So. It might still be here. Be

Be

The closet that had always been locked. A closet like a cylinder with a rounded top, the curve continued on the inside of the door. And nothing at all inside.

It was a displacement booth.

Be

Of course Be

Be

Light flashed in his eyes, and the floor opened beneath him. Be

Central Riot Control was crowded today. Citizens milled about the floor of the great bowl, making angry noises, hampered by the attempts of Club members to look inconspicuous among them. There were too many Club members and not enough citizens. It took Be

Lou was in a clump of people to one side of the big central platform where the cops waited. He was trying to hold onto a sizeable metal attaché case, and four members of the Permanent Floating Riot Club were trying to take it from him. The cops on the platform watched with interest.

Be

A Kind of Murder

"You are constantly coming to my home!" he shouted.

"You never think of calling first. Whatever I'm doing, suddenly you're there. And where the hell do you keep getting keys to my door?"

Alicia didn't answer. Her face, which in recent years had taken on a faint resemblance to a bulldog's, was set in infinite patience as she relaxed at the other end of the couch. She had been through this before, and she waited for Jeff to get it over with.

He saw this, and the di

She said, "We've been divorced six years. What do you care who I sleep with?"

"I don't like looking like your pimp!"

She laughed.

The acid was rising in his throat. "Listen," he said, "why don't you give up one of the clubs? We, we belong to four. Give one up. Any of them." Give me a place of refuge, he prayed.

"They're my clubs too," she said with composure. "You change clubs."

He'd joined the Lucifer Club four years ago, for just that reason. She'd joined too. And now the words clogged in his throat, so that he gaped like a fish.

There were no words left. He hit her.

He'd never done that before. It was a full-arm swing, but awkward because they were trying to face each other on the couch. She rode with the slap, then sat facing him, waiting.

It was as if he could read her mind. We've been through this before, and it never changes anything. But it's your tantrum. He remembered later that she'd said that to him once, those same words, and she'd looked just like that: patient, implacable.

The call reached Homicide at 8:36 P.M., July 20, 2019. The caller was a round-faced man with straight black hair and a stutter. "My ex-wife," he told the desk man. "She's dead. I just got home and f-found her like this. S-someone seems to have hit her with a c-c-cigarette box."

He

"That's right. C-c-could you come right away?"

"We'll be there in ten seconds. Have you touched anything?"

"No. Not her, and not the box."

"Have you called a hospital?"

His voice rose. "No. She's dead."

He

They went through the displacement booth one at a time, dialing and vanishing. For He

Jeffrey Walters was waiting in the house. He was medium sized, a bit overweight, his light brown hair going thin on top. His paper business suit was wrinkled. He wore an anxious, fearful look-which figured, either way, He

And he'd been right. Alicia Walters was dead. From her attitude she had been sitting sideways on the couch when something crashed into her head, and she had sprawled forward. A green cigarette box was sitting on the glass coffee table. It was bloody along one edge, and the blood had marked the glass.

The small, bloody, beautifully marked green malachite box could have done it. It would have been held in the right hand, swung full-armed. One of the detectives used chalk to mark its position on the table, then nudged it into a plastic bag and tied the neck.

Walters had sagged into a reading chair as If worn out. He

"That's right. She didn't give up using her married name."

"What was she doing here, then?"

"I don't know. We had a fight earlier this evening. I finally threw her out and went back to the Sirius Club. I was half afraid she'd just follow me back, but she didn't. I guess she let herself back in and waited for me here."

"She had a key?"

Walters' laugh was feeble. "She always had a key. I've had the lock changed twice. It didn't work. I'd come home and find her here. 'I just wanted to talk,' she'd say." He stopped abruptly.

"That doesn't explain why she'd let someone else in."

"No. She must have, though, mustn't she? I don't know why she did that."

The ambulance helicopter landed in the street outside. Two men entered with a stretcher. They shifted Alicia Walters' dead body to the stretcher, leaving a chalk outline Fisher had drawn earlier.

Walters watched through the picture window as they walked the Stretcher into the portable JumpShift unit in the side of the 'copter. They closed the hatch, tapped buttons in a learned rhythm on a phone dial set in the hatch. When they opened the hatch to check, it was empty. They closed it again and boarded the 'copter.

Walters said, "You'll do an autopsy immediately, won't you?"

"Of course. Why do you ask?"

'Well...it's possible I might have an alibi for the time of the murder."

He

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