Mr. Murder

a long-time cop probably felt justified in the conviction that all men—and women—were guilty until proven innocent.

Marty finished his story and took another long sip of cola. Cold fluids had done all they could for his sore throat; the greater discomfort was now in the tissues of his neck, where throttling hands had left the skin reddened and where extensive bruising would surely appear by morning. Though the four Anacin were beginning to kick in, a pain akin to whiplash made him wince when he turned his head more than a few degrees in either direction, so he adopted a stiff-necked posture and movement.

For what seemed an excessive length of time, Lowbock paged through his notes, reviewing them in silence, quietly tapping the Montblanc pen against the pages.

The splash and tap of rain still enlivened the night, though the storm had abated somewhat.

Floorboards upstairs creaked now and then with the weight of the policemen still at their assigned tasks.

Under the table, Paige’s right hand sought Marty’s left, and he gave it a squeeze as if to say that everything was all right now.

But everything wasn’t all right. Nothing had been explained or resolved. As far as he knew, their trouble was just beginning.

... my Paige . . . my Charlotte, my Emily . . .

At last Lowbock looked at Marty. In a flat tone of voice that was damning precisely because of its complete lack of interpretable inflection, the detective said, “Quite a story.”

“I know it sounds crazy.” Marty stifled the urge to assure Lowbock that he had not exaggerated the degree of resemblance between himself and the look-alike or any other aspect of his account. He had told the truth. He was not required to apologize for the fact that the truth, in this instance, was as astounding as any fantasy.

“And you say you don’t have a twin brother?” Lowbock asked.

“No, sir.”

“No brother at all?”

“I’m an only child.”

“Half brother?”

“My parents were married when they were eighteen. Neither of them was ever married to anyone else. I assure you, Lieutenant, there’s no easy explanation for this guy.”

“Well, of course, no other marriages would’ve been necessary for you to have a half brother . . . or a full brother, for that matter,” Lowbock said, meeting Marty’s eyes so directly that to look away from him would have been an admission of something.

As Marty digested the detective’s statement, Paige squeezed his hand under the table, an admonition not to let Lowbock rattle him. He tried to tell himself that the detective was only stating a fact, which he was, but it would have been decent to look at the notebook or at the window when making such implications.

Replying almost as stiffly as he was holding his head, Marty said, “Let me see . . . I guess I have three choices then. Either my father knocked up my mother before they were married, and they put this full brother— this bastard brother—up for adoption. Or after my folks were married, Dad screwed around with some other woman, and she gave birth to my half brother. Or my mother got pregnant by some other guy, either before or after she married my father, and that whole pregnancy is a deep, dark family secret.”

Maintaining eye contact, Lowbock said, “I’m sorry if I offended you, Mr. Stillwater.”

“I’m sorry you did, too.”

“Aren’t you being a little sensitive about this?”

“Am I?” Marty asked sharply, though he wondered if in fact he was over- reacting.

“Some couples do have a first child before they’re ready to make that commitment,” the detective said, “and they often put it up for adoption.”

“Not my folks.”

“Do you know that for a fact?”

“I know them.”

“Maybe you should ask them.”

“Maybe I will.”

“When?”

“I’ll think about it.”

A smile, as faint and brief as the passing shadow of a bird in flight, crossed Lowbock’s face.

Marty was sure he saw sarcasm in that smile. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why the detective would regard him as anything less than an innocent victim.

Lowbock looked down at his notes, letting the silence build for a while.

Then he said, “If this look-alike isn’t related to you, brother or half brother, then do you have any idea how to explain such a remarkable resemblance?”

Marty started to shake his head, winced as pain shot through his neck. “No. No idea at all.”

Paige said, “You want some aspirin?”

“Had some Anacin,” Marty said. “I’ll be okay.”

Meeting Marty’s eyes again, Lowbock said, “I just thought you might have a theory.”

“No. Sorry.”

“You being a writer and all.”

Marty didn’t get the detective’s meaning. “Excuse me?”

“You use your imagination every day, you earn a living with it.”

“So?”

“So I thought maybe you’d figure out this little mystery if you put your mind to it.”

“I’m no detective. I’m clever enough at constructing mysteries, but I don’t unravel them.”

“On television,” Lowbock said, “the mystery writer—any amateur detective, for that matter—is always smarter than the cops.”

“It’s not that way in real life,” Marty said.

Lowbock let a few seconds of silence drift past, doodling on the bottom of a page of his notes, before he replied: “No, it’s not.”

“I don’t confuse fantasy and reality,” Marty said a little too harshly.

“I wouldn’t have thought you do,” Cyrus Lowbock assured him, concentrating on his doodle.

Marty turned his head cautiously to see if Paige showed any sign of perceiving hostility in the detective’s tone and manner. She was frowning thoughtfully at Lowbock, which made Marty feel better; maybe he was not over- reacting, after all, and didn’t need to add paranoia to the list of symptoms he had recounted to Paul Guthridge.

Emboldened by Paige’s frown, Marty faced Lowbock again and said, “Lieutenant, is something wrong here?”

Raising his eyebrows as if surprised by the question, Lowbock said archly, “It’s certainly my impression that something’s wrong, or otherwise you wouldn’t have called us.”

Restraining himself from making the caustic reply that Lowbock deserved, Marty said, “I mean, I sense hostility here, and I don’t understand the reason for it. What is the reason?”

“Hostility? Do you?” Without looking up from his doodle, Lowbock frowned. “Well, I wouldn’t want the victim of a crime to be as intimidated by us as by the creep who assaulted him. That wouldn’t be good public relations, would it?” With that, he neatly avoided a direct answer to Marty’s question.

The doodle was finished. It was a drawing of a pistol.

“Mr. Stillwater, the gun with which you shot this intruder—was that the same weapon taken from you out in the street?”

“It wasn’t taken from me. I voluntarily dropped it when told to do so. And, yes, it was the same gun.”

“A Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter pistol?”

“Yes.”

“Did you purchase that weapon from a licensed gun dealer?”

“Yes, of course.” Marty told him the name of the shop.

“Do you have a receipt from the store and proof of pre-purchase review by the proper law-enforcement