A Hole In Space

Fisher spoke, interrupting his train of thought. "You've been talking about impulse murders, haven't you? Six years of not being able to stand his ex-wife and not being able to get away from her. So finally he hits her with a cigarette box."

"Most of them are impulse murders, yes."

"Well, this wasn't any impulse murder. Look at what h~ had to do to bring it about. He'd have had to ask her to wait at home for him. Then make some excuse to get away from Larimer, shift home, kill her fast and get back to the 'Sirius Club before Larimer wonders where he's gone. Then he's got to hope Larimer will forget the whole thing. That's not just cold-blooded, it's also stupid."

"Yah. So far it's worked, though."

"Worked, hell. The only evidence you've got against Walter is that he had good reason to kill her. Listen, if she got on his nerves that much, she may have irritated some other people too." He

Walters had moved to a hotel until such time as the police were through with his house. He

"You can move home," he told him.

"That's good," said Walters. "Find out anything?" "Only that your wife was murdered with that selfsame cigarette box. We found no sign of anyone in the house except her, and you." He paused, but Walters only nodded thoughtfully. He asked, "Did the box look familiar to you?"

"Oh, yes, of course. It's mine. Alicia and I bought it on our honeymoon, in Switzerland. We divided things during the divorce, and that went to me."

"All right. Now, just how violent was that argument you had?"

He flushed. "As usual. I did a lot of shouting, and she just sat there letting it go past her ears. It never did any good."

"Did you strike her?"

The flush deepened, and he nodded. "I've never done that before."

"Did you by any chance hit her with a malachite box?"

"Do I need a lawyer?"

"You're not under arrest, Mr. Walters. But if you feel you need a lawyer, by all means get one." He

He had asked to be put on the day shift today, in order to follow up this case. It was quitting time now, but he was reluctant to leave.

Officer.1 Fisher had been eavesdropping. He said, "So?"

"He never mentioned the word alibi," said He

"You're still sure he did it."

"Yah. But getting a conviction is something else again. We'll find more people with more motives. And all we've got is the laboratory." He ticked items off on his fingers. "No fingerprints on the box. No blood on Walters or any of his clothes, unless he had paper clothes and ditched 'em. No way of proving Walters let her in or give her the key... though I wonder if he really had that much trouble keeping her out of the house.

"We'd be asking a jury to believe that Walters left the table and Larimer forgot about it. Larimer says no. Walters is pretty sure to get the benefit of the doubt. She didn't bleed much; a good defense lawyer is bound to suggest that she was moved from somewhere else."

"Its possible."

"She wasn't dead until she was hit. Nothing in the stomach but food. No drugs or poisons in the bloodstream. She'd have had to be killed by someone who-" He ticked them off. "Knew she hid Walters' key. Knew Walters' displacement booth number. And knew Walters wouldn't be home.

"Maybe. How about Larimer or Lovejoy?"

He

"Then again, a lot of people at the Sirius Club knew Walter. Some of them must have been involved with Alicia. Anyone who saw Walters halfway through a domino game would know he'd be stuck there for awhile."

"True. Too true." He

He

The Walters case had haunted him all through di

Easy? If Walters had killed Alicia during a game of dominos at the Sirius Club, then there wouldn't be any case until Larimer remembered. Aside from that, Walters would have been an idiot to try such a thing. Idiot, or desperate.

But if someone else had killed her, it opened up a bag of snakes. Restrict it to members of the Sirius-Club who were there that night, and how many were left? They'd both done business there. How many of Jeffrey Walters' acquaintances had shared Alicia's bed? Which one would have killed her, for reason or no reason? The trouble with sharing too many beds was that-one's chance of ru

If Walters had done it, things became simpler. But she hadn't bled much.

And Walters couldn't have had reason to move the body to his home. Where could he have killed her that would be worse than that?

Walters owned the murder weapon... no, forget that. She could have been hit with anything, and if she were in Walters' house fifteen seconds later she might still be breathing when the malachite box finished the job.

He

"Her displacement booth must be ten years old-" That was it. The sight of the booth must have sparked that memory. And it was fu

JumpShift booths were all alike. They had to be. They all had to hold the same volume, because the air in the receiver had to be flicked hack -to the transmitter. When JumpShift improved a booth, it was the equipment they jmproved, so that the older booths could still be used.

Ten years old. Wasn't that-yes. The altitude shift.

Pumping energy into a cargo, so that it could be flicked a mile or a hundred miles uphill, had been an early improvement. But a transmitter that could absorb the lost potential energy of a downhill shift, had not become common until ten years ago.

He

"Yes... No. Get me Alicia Walters' number."

Sobel got it for him. "What's up?"

"Tell you in a minute," said He

It was black night. His ears registered the drop in pressure. His eyes adjusted rapidly, and he saw that there were lights in Alicia Walters' house. He stepped out of the booth. Whistling, he walked a slow circle around it.

It was a JumpShiftbooth. What more was there to say? A glass cylinder with a rounded top, big enough for a tall man to stand upright and a meager amount of baggage to stand with blur-or for a man holding a dead woman in his arms, clenching his teeth while he tried to free one finger for dialing. The machinery that made the magic was buried beneath the booth. The dial, a simple push-button phone dial. Even the long distance booths looked just like this one, though the auxiliary machinery was far more complex.

"But he was sweating-" Had Lovejoy meant it literally?

He

The lights of the Homicide room flashed In his eyes. He