The Two Timers (11 page)

such bad luck?
Convery smiled, showing very white teeth made even more brilliant in
places by slight fluoride mottling. "I'm glad to hear you don't work
all the time, John -- it makes me feel less of a slob."
John again, Breton thought. I can't call him Lieutenant if we're on
first-name terms. "Well, what brings you out this way?"
"Nothing much -- a couple of routine calls in the area." Convery reached
into his pocket. "So I brought this." He brought out a brown pebble-like
object and handed it to Breton.
"Oh, yes." Breton inspected the object, noting its segmented, spiral
construction. "Oh, yes?"
"Yeah. My boy got it from another kid at school. I told him I'd get you
to . . ." He let his voice trail away, and stood waiting.
Breton stared down at the coiled stone, mind racing desperately. He
remembered Kate saying that Convery sometimes called to drink coffee
with John and talk about fossils. Presumably this was because John had
some professional knowledge of geology. Did it include fossils? He tried
to send his mind back more than nine years to the time when he too had
been interested in the rock-embalmed time travelers.
"This is a reasonably fair ammonite," he said, praying that Convery
merely wanted a simple identification.
Convery nodded. "Age?"
"About two hundred and fifty million years -- hard to say for sure
without knowing where it was found."
"Thanks." Convery took the fossil back and dropped it in his pocket.
His intelligent blue eyes flickered momentarily and Breton suddenly knew
that his relationship with the other Breton was a complex and uneasy thing.
"Say, John?"
"Uh-huh?" Why, Breton wondered, did he insist on using the first name
so much?
"You're losing some weight, aren't you?"
"It's nice of you to notice it. A fellow can get discouraged if he goes
on dieting for weeks without any obvious result."
"I'd say you've lost seven or eight pounds."
"That's about right -- and I really feel better for it."
"I think you looked better the way you were, John," Convery said
thoughtfully. "You look tired."
"I am tired -- that's why I took the afternoon off." Breton laughed,
and Convery joined in.
Breton remembered the coffee. "Do you feel like risking a cup of coffee
brewed with my own hand? Kate's out shopping."
"Where's Mrs. Fitz?"
Breton's mind went numb, then be recalled that Mrs. Fitz was the
cook-housekeeper. "We gave her a few days off," he said easily. "She
has to rest too, you know."
"I guess I'll just have to risk your coffee then, John."
Convery pushed open the kitchen door and ushered Breton inside. While
Breton was preparing the coffee he considered the problem of the fact
that they were supposed to know each other's preferences about cream
and sugar, and circumvented it by setting both on the kitchen table in
advance. He found the familiar domestic activity relaxing, realizing
he had been needlessly alarmed over Convery's visit. Kate had said the
policeman sometimes dropped by to talk about fossils and drink coffee --
and that was exactly what was happening. Even if Kate were to return
right then there would be nothing to arouse Convery's curiosity, and
John Breton was not expected for at least three hours.
Breton took his coffee black and so hot that flat gray films of vapor
crazed its surface. Convery took cream but no sugar, and sipped it
with evident appreciation. While he drank he raised the subject of the
meteor bombardments which were turning the night skies into firework
displays. Pleased at finding the conversation turning to something which
placed him on an equal footing with any other inhabitant of the Time B
universe, Breton discussed the meteors willingly.
"Back to work," Convery said when he had finished his second cup. "Us
minions of the law aren't supposed to laze around like this." He stood
up and carried his cup and saucer over to the sink unit.
"That's life," Breton said uninspiredly.
He said goodbye to Convery in the patio and went back into the house,
filled with a heady sense of satisfaction. There was now nothing to stop
him going ahead with his plan to step into John Breton's shoes. The one
point about which he had been uncertain was his ability to meet people
who knew John and be with them for extended periods without arousing
suspicious or, at least, curiosity. But he had carried off the encounter
with Lieutenant Convery well, extremely well, and could see that there was
nothing to be gained by delaying things any further -- especially since
Kate's emotional reactions were showing signs of becoming complicated.
Jack Breton went upstairs to the guest bedroom, took the pistol from
its hiding place deep in a closet, and laid the cool, oily metal against
his lips.
IX
When Lieutenant Blaize Convery was a boy of four, his mother once told
him that deaf-and-dumb people usually learned "to talk with their hands."
He decided then and there that this would be a useful and fascinating
accomplishment, even for a person who had all his faculties. For the next
three years the infant Convery devoted some time every day to learning
the secret, sitting alone in his room, staring at his right hand while
putting it through every conceivable contortion, hoping to discover the
magical combination of flexures and tensions which would cause a voice
to issue from his palm. When he finally found out, through another chance
remark, that his mother had been referring to sign language he abandoned
his quest immediately and without regrets. He had learned the truth,
and was satisfied.
When Lieutenant Blaize Convery was a boy of seven, his father had shown him
a diagram consisting of a square, nested inside a circle, with straight
lines connecting the corners laterally. It was possible, his father had
said, to reproduce that diagram without lifting his pencil or going over
any line twice. Convery worked on the puzzle at odd moments for six years.
After the first month he was virtually certain it was impossible --
but his father, who had died in the meantime, had claimed he had seen
it done -- so he kept on gnawing at the problem. Then he had chanced
on a magazine biography of the eighteenth century Swiss mathematician
Leonard Euler, founder of topography. The article mentioned Euler's
solution of the problem of the seven bridges of Konigsberg, proving it
was possible to cross all of them without crossing any twice. It also
mentioned, incidentally, that the same proof provided a way to check on
the solvability of diagram puzzles -- count the number of lines entering
each node of the diagram, and if more than two of them have an odd number,
you cannot draw it without going over a line or lifting your pencil.
Again, he had closed a mental file, satisfied at having reached a firm
conclusion one way or the other, and the pattern of thinking that was
to make him a very special kind of policeman was already sharpening
into focus.
He had gone into the force almost automatically, but -- in spite of
excellent academic qualifications -- had not made his expected progress
through the ranks. A good police executive learns to live with the
statistics of his profession. He accepts the fact that while some crimes
are solvable, most are not, and channels his energies accordingly;
optimizing gains, cutting losses.
But Blaize Convery was known in the force as a "sticker" -- a man who was
constitutionally incapable of letting go a problem once he had got his
teeth into it. His seniors and fellow detectives respected his personal
record of successes, but it was a standing joke in the area that the
chief of the records bureau had resorted to making secret raids on
Convery's desk to get back sizable sections of his filing system.
Convery understood his own idiosyncrasies, and knew how they were
affecting his career. He frequently resolved to alter his approach to
the job, often managing to conform for weeks on end, but just as it was
beginning to look as though he had won, his subconscious would throw up
a new slant on a three-year-old investigation, and an icy, egotistical
joy would start churning his stomach. This moment, Convery knew, was
the crunch: his own private version of the experience which made other
men great religious leaders, immortal artists, or short-lived combat
heroes. He had never resisted its mystical blandishments, and had never
been disappointed in the rewards, or lack of them.
And as he drove away from the Breton house, through tree-guarded avenues,
Convery could feel that arctic elation stalking the pathways of his
nervous system.
He guided his elderly but well-maintained Plymouth past green lawns,
reviewing the Breton-Spiedel affair, reaching nine years into the receding
past. The case was unique in his memory, not for the fact that he had
failed to crack it -- there had been many failures in his career --
but because he had been so monumentally wrong. Convery had been in the
station when Kate Breton was brought in, and he had got most of the
story from her in those first stunned minutes while a policewoman was
washing flecks of human brain tissue from her hair.
Compressed to its essentials, her story was that she and her husband had
fought on the way to a party. She bad gone on alone on foot, foolishly
taking a shortcut through the park, and had been attacked. A man had
appeared from nowhere, put a bullet though the attacker's head, and
vanished again into the night. Kate Breton had run blindly until she
was on the point of collapse.
Working on those bare facts, Convery had reached two possible explanations.
He had begun by immediately dismissing the idea that it had all happened
by chance, that a mysterious stranger had just happened to be walking in
the park at the right moment, carrying a high-powered rifle. This left
the possibility that the marksman was someone who knew the attacker and
suspected him of being a psychotic killer, who had trailed him until he
had positive proof, and then carried out a summary execution. It was a
theory which Convery had rejected instinctively, although he would check
it out as a matter of course.
He had found his mind drawn into a vortex centered on Kate Breton's
husband. Suppose the car breakdown and the subsequent fight had been
planned? Suppose Kate Breton's husband had wanted to get rid of her and
had brought a gun in the trunk of his car? He could have followed her
to the park, been about to shoot when the attack occurred, and on the
spur of the moment fired at the attacker.
The second theory had holes in it, but Convery was experienced at plugging
holes. He had begun by asking Kate Breton if she had any idea who did
the shooting. Still in a state of shock, she had shaken her head -- but
Convery had seen the curve of her lower lip deepen as she subvocalized
a word, a name beginning with J.
And when he had gone to the Breton house, armed with the description
provided by the teenagers who had seen the shooting . . . And when he
had read the guilt in Breton's eyes, he had
known
that here was his
killer. . . .
The discovery that Breton could not be touched had wounded Convery in
some obscure way he could hardly understand. He had spent weeks trying
to shake the alibi given to Breton by the neighbors who had noticed him
standing at his front window; and he had made himself unpopular with the
forensic staff by insisting they could have been wrong about the rifle
not being fired. Convery had even experimented with an old deer rifle
-- firing it, cleaning it with various solutions and spraying it with
dust. But in the end he had acknowledged that Breton, the man who had
charged the very air with his guilt, could not be touched.
For any other cop, that would have been the time to close the file and
move on to something more promising -- but Convery's demon was perched
firmly on his shoulder, whispering its heady promises of fulfillment. And
as he drove homewards he could hear its voice suddenly grown strong
again. There had been times during the past nine years when his visits
to the Breton house had seemed utterly pointless, acts of monomania,
but today he had smelled the fear and the guilt. . . .
Convery swung the Plymouth onto the short concrete walk outside his own
house, narrowly missing a tricycle belonging to his youngest son. He got
out of the car and as he was closing the door detected a faint squeak from
one of the hinges. After swinging the door several more times to satisfy
himself about the location of the tiny sound, he went into the garage,
brought out an oilcan and lubricated the hinges on all four doors. He put
the can back in its own appointed place then went through the inner door,
through the utilities room, and into the kitchen.
"You're late, darling." His wife, Gina, was standing at a table which was
covered with baking requisites. Her forearms were streaked with flour
and the warm air of the kitchen was filled with the nostalgic odor of
mince pies.
"Sorry," Convery said. "I got held back." He patted his wife on the rump,
absentmindedly lifted a piece of candied peel and began to nibble at it.
"Blaize?"
"What is it, honey?"
"Were you over at-the Breton house again?"
Convery stopped chewing. "What makes you ask?"
"Tim said you'd been into his fossil collection again. He said his
ammonite was missing."
"Hey!" Convery laughed. "I thought I was the detective in this house."
"But were you there?"
"Well, I did stop by for a few minutes."
"Oh, Blaize -- what must those people think?" Gina Convery's face showed
her concern.
"Why should they think anything? It was just a friendly call."
"People are never friendly with a detective who has investigated them
in a murder case. Specially people with their sort of money.
"There's no need to get all tensed up over it, honey -- John Breton and
I get along well together."
"I can imagine," Gina said as Convery went through into the lounge. He
sat down, picked up a magazine and turned the pages unseeingly. Something
very strange had happened in the Breton household nine years earlier, and
today had been like a trip back through time to that focus of stress. As
well as being thinner, Breton had looked older -- yet, in an indefinable
way, he had seemed younger, less experienced, less sure of himself,
emitting a different aura.