“Don’t ask me,” Phil said. “Ask him. He practically dragged me out of my room by the scruff of my neck.” He frowned. “Do people have scruffs?”
“Well, see, the whole thing didn’t make sense to me,” John said, herding them toward the stairwell, “so I’ve been wandering around looking at things, trying to see everything, you know, from a fresh angle. I went to look at Scofield’s room again, I looked at Cisco’s
room, I went over the ship pretty much from top to bottom, to see what I could see. And I found something up on the roof that changes everything.”
“The roof?” Gideon repeated. “Where does the roof come into it?”
“That’s what I’m going to show you. I want witnesses.” And then, portentously: “You’ll probably have to give depositions later.”
Once on the roof, he took them to the rearmost part, where Scofield had isolated himself behind the smokestack in the evenings. The sun was still above the horizon, but it had dropped below the evening cloud bank and it was tolerable to be out in the open, especially in the breeze that came up every late afternoon.
“Oops.” One of Phil’s flip-flops had caught on one of the stanchions to which the two guy wires that secured the smokestack were attached.
“Watch out, Phil!” John exclaimed. “And for Christ’s sake, keep away from the other one!” This exhortation, emphatic enough to begin with, was made still more forceful by his grabbing Phil by the elbows, lifting him bodily, and setting him down three feet to the right. “In fact, don’t move. Jesus.”
Phil docilely allowed himself to be transported, but looked puzzled. “What’s the big deal?”
“Give me a minute and you’ll see. Look around, you guys. What do you notice that’s different?”
“From?” Gideon said. He brushed at a waft of gritty smoke that had drifted down from the smokestack.
John waved it away too. “From what it was last night, and the night before, and the night before that. What’s changed?”
Gideon and Phil looked around them. “Where exactly are we supposed to be looking?” Phil asked.
“Right here. Right where we’re standing.”
“Well,” said Phil, “this is where Scofield was, right?”
John nodded. “Right. Sitting right here in his beach chair.”
Phil shrugged. “Give us a hint.”
“I just gave you a hint.”
“Here’s his teapot and his cup, still on the floor,” Gideon said, “and a plate with some crumbs in it. Well, the cup’s on its side, is that what you mean?”
“That probably figures in it, but no, that’s not what I mean.”
Gideon spread his hands. “I don’t know, John. How about letting us in on it?”
John folded his arms somewhat crossly. “For a guy who sure loves to take his time when he’s telling other people about his brilliant deductions, you’re a little impatient when you’re on the other end of it.”
Gideon saw the justice in this. “I beg your pardon. Please continue.”
“Where’s his chair, Doc?”
Gideon scowled. “His, uh, chair.”
“Yeah, his chair.”
“I don’t know. I guess somebody moved it.”
“Really? Look around. Nobody’s moved any of the others. They’re all where they were last night, roughly anyway. There’s where we were, there’s where—”
“Okay, so somebody took it downstairs.”
“Why would anyone carry a beach chair downstairs? Except for the dining room and the salon, this is the only place there’s enough room for it. And I already checked the dining room and the salon. It’s not there. Besides, who’s gonna have the nerve to take away Scofield’s chair?”
“All right, then, maybe the crew was up here cleaning up.”
“They cleaned up his chair, but they didn’t clean up the teapot and cup that he left on the floor? Nope, no good. Besides, I talked to Vargas. The crew hasn’t done any work at all up here. He didn’t even know we were using the roof.”
“Okay, already, we give up,” said Phil. “Where is it?”
“In the river,” John said triumphantly, “probably a good hundred or hundred and fifty miles back.”
“And why is that?” asked Gideon.
“Because somebody threw it in ...along with Scofield.”
“You’ve lost me,” Phil said.
