Dream Park

goddamned thing until I talk to my lawyer.'

Harmony spoke now, and his voice, cultured and precise, was an ugly thing to hear. 'I'm not sure you appreciate our position, O'Brien. Alex and I talked this over before you arrived. We can't have you prosecuted. Unfortunately.'

Skip's eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'

'What do you think would happen if it was known that Cowles Industries' chief psychiatrist, the man who has headed up our child research division for six years, is a cold-blooded murderer?'

'You did it, Skip,' Griffin said hollowly. 'You were in a posi­tion to alter Rice's computer records. You could ‘discover' the forgery later, after Rice was dead. You were working in R&D the night he was killed.' He leaned close to Skip, whose eyes were closed now, his breathing heavy. 'We just need to know the truth, Skip, all of It. Either we get it from you, or the police come in and drag it out for us; and the papers get everything.'

Again, O'Brien's mouth worked without sound, then a long, arid sigh. 'It was the girl. Prentice. My god, it was so long ago. .

He lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. Griffin watched the smoke haze around Skip in a cloud until Harmony whisked it into the ceiling. 'Rice was my student at Sulphur University. Bright. Promising. We became friends. My wife found it so damn easy to get into the swing of being a University wife~ The entertaining, the

parties...lbert could talk sense, and he₄...e listened to me. Looked up to me.'

He gestured aimlessly with the cigarette, the smoke making spi­rals in the air. 'We bad a thing. It didn't last for that long, but it was pretty intense. More of a crush, maybe. When I tried to back off, he grn crazy. Just nuts. Swore to tell the University. Said I was abandoning him, that I didn't give a damn about him. I tried to show him that I did.'

Griffin waited for him to continue, then started to prod gently, but Skip continued by himself. 'Sonja was a girl who had taken a class from me the semester before. She was lonely, I knew that, and I thought that maybe... maybe there was enough common ground to form a bond between them.'

'Had you had a ‘thing' with her too?' Alex's voice was dan­gerously quiet. O'Brien nodded miserably. Good old Skip. Giving his all for the youth of America.

'For a while, it worked. Maybe only to spite me, to prove he wasn't the emotional cripple he accused me of making him, Albert and Sonja starting relating. It was during this time that she mod­eled for his statue. Sometimes... sometimes the three of us would... play together.' He closed his eyes and swallowed. 'By damn,' he whispered, 'as an officer of this municipality, Alex, you had better know that none of this is admissible in court.'

'I know,' Griffin said, flatly. 'Finish it. What was supposed to be in the statue?'

'Albert was... into drugs. That was why he made the hollow statue. He had made some freebase cocaine in the lab. One night we all got incredibly high smoking it. Sonja got too high, too damn high. I don't know why Albert kept feeding it to her, but be seemed to enjoy watching her literally lose her mind.'

'And she lost more than that.'

He nodded, 'We were all zonked out, and finally I noticed that Sonja was having trouble breathing. I was stoned, and scared, and I tried to apply some kind of resuscitation. She just stopped breathing, that's all. I couldn't believe it. I was too scared to call the ambulance. Christ. My job, my wife. • .'

'So she died.'

Skip couldn't face them. 'She died. Honestly-please believe me

-I did try to call the police, then. But Albert pleaded with me. Begged me not to. Said that we could get her back into the dormi­

tory without getting caught. I was still high. I didn't know what to do.'

Harmony was pitiless. 'So you let him talk you into it.'

'Yes. Albert went out to dispose of the smoking kit, and the drugs in his apartment. Then, at three in the morning, we carried Sonja into her dormitory, got her into her room, and left her undressed in bed. I remember reading the papers, hearing them talk about ‘the suicide...' He buried his face in his hands. 'I stopped seeing Rice, and that was the end of it, until two years ago. He called me at home, the bastardl He said he knew I worked at Cowles Industries and he needed a job. He didn't make any threats, but it was there, hanging. I should have gotten rid of him somehow... I got him the job.'

'Then the demands started, right? A better job... Manipu­late his psych proffie... Just a little twist of the arm, a little blackmail that grows-' Griffin left it open.

But O'Brien was shaking his head. 'It wasn't like that, really. It was do a favor for a friend. Then it was make sure you stay my, friend. He kept pushing and I kept trying to draw the line. Finally he told me that he still had the smoking kit, and that all those sets of fingerprints were on it. His. Mine. Hers. If I didn't do as he said, the police would get it. He told me I had more to lose than he did. He was right.

'So I broke into his apartment and ripped it apart looking for the kit. I broke the statue open but there wasn't anything in it. The next day he told me I had twenty-five hours to falsify his records, or he would go to the police. I did it. The night that the R&D center was broken into, I went to meet him, to tell him that now he had as much to lose as I did, and that all bets were off.'

Skip seemed to have forgotten them. His eyes were dreamy, peaceful; he wasn't seeing anything in Harmony's office. 'I found him in the break room, trussed up like a turkey. I already knew it wouldn't work. It couldn't. He'd keep pushing me as long as there was a reasonable doubt as to my weakness. I wanted my job, my freedom... my marriage. He could ruin me. And there he sat, looking at me over that big wide bandage across his mouth, wait­ing for me to turn him loose. He was sniffling, trying to suck in enough air.'

Skip's voice was shot through with horrified fascination, fear and heady power. 'He was sniffling. Like calling attention to his nose. Alex, it was like finding an Easter basket the day after

Easter's over. When I held his nose shut he went crazy. I had to kneel on his chest to keep him steady. It took two minutes before I could get a good grip, and another three before he finally stopped struggling. .

He looked at his fingernails, chose one after careful deliber­ation, and began to chew on it. 'I never found the smoking kit. Maybe your man Bobbick will have better luck.'

Alex said, 'I doubt it. Rice must have dumped it, just like he told you the first time.'

The office was deadly quiet for a while. Smoke wafted silently into the ceiling fan. Three still and silent men watched each other with calculating eyes.

Harmony said it first. 'Well, what do I do? We know you did it, but probably can't prove it. Even if we could, we couldn't afford to turn you in. Too many innocent people would suffer. Cowles Industries would suffer.' He drummed those thick fingers on his desk. 'Griffin? You've called the shots on this thing so far. Any ideas?'

'Yes.' Alex kept his voice cold, and refused to allow himself to look at Skip. 'First, Skip resigns from Cowles Industries, effective immediately. Second, he agrees never to work with children ever, anywhere again. If he does-' Now he looked at Skip. From the way his former friend pulled back, shrinking into his chair, Alex knew that O'Brien was seeing a Griffin he had never seen before. 'Then we have a talk with his employers. And his wife. Do you understand?' Skip nodded.

Griffin closed his eyes lightly. 'And then there's the matter of Tony McWhirter. He may be a thief, but he's no killer, and I don't want him treated like one.'

'Alex, we can't tell the District Attorney-' Harmony began. 'No, we can't. But we can offer Tony legal assistance. I can tes­tify that a reasonable doubt exists as to his capacity for cold­blooded murder. That, together with the voice-stress analyzer, if he takes it, may well counterbalance the coroner's report.'

'All right. .

'And one more thing. Even with that, a couple of years are going to be added on his sentence for... oh, negligent homicide at the least. When he gets out of jail, I'm going to offer him a job. With me. He beat my security system, and I can use him. Well, what do you say?'

The man with the linebacker shoulders nodded. 'That seems

fair.' He turned to the man with the briefcase, the man with the flesh stretched tight across his cheekbones, who seemed to be try­ing to hide in the plushness of his chair. 'All right, O'Brien,' Har­mony said, his voice for once unmelodic, ugly. 'I'd like you to dictate your letter of resignation, and then go clean out your desk. I want you out of the Park by 1400, and out of CMC by next week.'