Good King Sauerkraut (22 page)

“What did you have to do to get appointed head of this gun platform project?” she asked out of the blue.

Startled, King replied, “I didn't have to do anything. Warren Osterman made the decision.”

“You must have lobbied for it, some.”

“Nope. The project had to be headed by a designer, so that eliminated Mimi and Gregory right there.”

“Mimi and Gregory didn't think so,” she interrupted. “They didn't consider themselves eliminated at all. In fact, all four of you wanted to head up this project. You wanted it bad.”

How did she know that? “Rae Borchard,” he guessed.

The sergeant smiled wryly. “Rae Borchard wouldn't give us the time of day. No, it was Warren Osterman who told us.”

“Warren!” King was surprised.

“Relax, he's on your side. It took us forever to convince him that no rival company is out to kill off your entire design team—but once he accepted that, he immediately assumed that Mimi was the culprit. He said you had such a bad case of the clumsies that you might bump somebody off by accident, but you could never execute a successful double murder. You'd find some way to botch it.”

“That's nice of him,” King said sarcastically, half pleased, half resentful.

“Osterman also said Mimi didn't take your appointment as project leader at all well.”

King lowered his head so she couldn't see the expression on his face. “That's true, she didn't.”

“He said she went right on campaigning for the job even after he'd announced you'd be in charge. And do you know
how
she campaigned for the job?”

“Probably by badmouthing me.”

“That's about it.” Marian picked up their cups and took them to the sink. “She's not your friend, King. That doesn't make her a murderer, but watch your back all the same. If she is a murderer, she must have gone back to that other apartment expecting to find all three of you there—the man who had the job she wanted and two others who could keep her from getting it. Does that fit the picture of the Mimi you know?”

He took his time answering. “She's very ambitious,” he said with what he hoped was the proper degree of hesitancy.

Marian snorted. “So's Rae Borchard. Hell,
I'm
ambitious. But is Mimi
obsessed?
”

“I'm not qualified to judge obsession,” he replied primly, and then slipped in the zinger he'd been saving. “You know she's senior partner of SmartSoft now?”

Marian's eyebrows raised. “No, I didn't. I knew she wasn't the sole owner, but I just assumed they were all equal partners. We slipped up there. Well, well.”

King said no more, satisfied for the moment with the climate of doubt he'd contributed to.

Abruptly Marian changed the subject and asked to be shown the rest of the apartment. She'd already seen the games room, with its poker and billiards tables, so King took her into the media room. King liked the media room. He waved an arm expansively and said, “What do you think?”

One wall of the room had four TV screens, a fifty-one-inch projection set at the center and three seventeen-inch screens on top. Shelves containing video equipment were attached to another wall; King pointed out four VCRs, two laser disc players, a satellite receiver. The opposite wall held audio equipment—three each of tuners, integrated amplifiers, audiocassette decks, CD players. And one turntable.

“Overkill?” Marian suggested.

King ignored that and said, “This room has five pairs of speakers built into the walls. And it has a digital sound field processor—you know what that does?”

“No, what?”

“It imitates the acoustics of concert halls and opera houses and the like.” He put a disc into the player. “Balcony or orchestra?”

Marian shrugged. “Balcony.” An overture to an opera started playing, and the music did sound as if it were coming from an orchestra pit on a building level lower than theirs.

“Now let's move you downstairs.” The music was suddenly coming from the same level, and it sounded closer. “Isn't that great?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“And look here.” King stopped the CD and opened the door of a walk-in closet that had been converted to a video tape library. “Suction fans to eliminate dust. Low-level humidity, constant temperature.” He ran his eye over the titles of some of the tapes stored there. “Do you like
Aliens?
”

There was a pause. “I don't believe I've ever met any,” Marian replied politely.

King was actually starting to explain when he realized she must have known he meant the movie. She was pulling his leg, needling him? Why? Her face gave nothing away. King didn't like being kidded, especially by this cop who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere to play such a big role in his life, and who now sat listening placidly while he babbled on about mechanized puppets. “They even have articulated lips,” he finished lamely.

“Articulated lips, huh?” Marian said absently and waved a hand toward the television screens. “So you can watch
Aliens
and three other movies at the same time here? Or four TV channels?”

“Oh, better than that.” He plopped down on a leather chair next to a control unit. “Would you believe thirty-six?”

She perched on the arm of his chair. “Right now, I think I would. What's that thing? Don't you use remote control units?”

King was pressing buttons. “Each of these screens can show nine different PIP freeze-frames, and switching from one signal to another on four separate monitors can get hairy. Even a unified remote can handle only so much. This ‘thing' here is a teletext system with a touch screen. Watch.” The control unit's screen showed an image of all four monitors; King touched the first one and the screen immediately changed to a numeric keypad. King started entering channel numbers, and after a while thirty-six different pictures were displayed on the four monitors, nine to a screen. “There you have it. Couch potato heaven.”

Marian laughed at the sight, enjoying the absurdity of it. She studied the various pictures, counting. “Twelve of those thirty-six channels are broadcasting a show or a movie about crime. Do you think that's a fair sample—one-third of our entertainment is about crime?”

“Did you count the news?”

“No.”

“Then make it thirteen out of thirty-six—there's always something about crime on the news.”

“Speaking of which, did you notice that you haven't been hounded by news reporters?”

He hadn't, but thought it politic not to say so. “I was wondering about that.”

“It's because you and Mimi stayed in this apartment the whole time you were hot news. I suggest you give the security men downstairs a big tip—they did a hell of a job turning away reporters for you.”

King hadn't even thought of that. “Does that mean we're no longer, er, hot news?”

“Did anyone accost you today when you went out?”

“Only you.”

“The murder of Dennis Cox and Gregory Dillard is last week's news. The reporters probably won't bother you at all now—unless something more happens.”

“Something more? What else could happen?”

Marian eased off the chair arm where she'd been perched and stepped around to face King. That placed her squarely in front of the big screen, with its plethora of action going on around her: Victoria Barkley drove a team of horses directly over the sergeant's head. “What else could happen? Mimi could confess.
You
could confess.”

“Me! You still think I … that's crazy!”

“You're sure Mimi did it?”

“I'm not
sure
—”

“But you think she did?” Captain Kirk scowled at King over Marian's right shoulder.

“Well, if you're convinced it was one of the two of us and I—”

“Yet you don't mind sharing an apartment with someone who might have wanted to kill you?”

“But you said she wouldn't dare try anything now! You said I was safe!”

“And if I said the moon was Roquefort, you'd buy that too?
Why aren't you afraid, King?
”

He swallowed hard. “I … I guess that on some level I'm just not convinced that Mimi is a killer.” It was the best answer he could come up with.

Marshal Dillon pointed a gun at Marian's left ear. She sighed and said, “That leaves you. Are you a killer, King?”

“
No!
” He was sweating; what kind of game was she playing? Disoriented by all the images in front of him as much as by the questions Sergeant Marian Larch was hurling at him, King jumped up out of his chair and bolted from the media room. He headed toward the living room's balcony; but the rain was still pouring down, so he stood inside and looked out, fidgeting, uncomfortable.

Marian came up to stand next to him. “You're now rid of a partner you didn't really like, and you've got yourself a new one that you do like. Dennis wanted to head your project, and so did Gregory. And so does Mimi. I hope nothing happens to Mimi, King. I really do hope that.”

“Nothing is going to happen to Mimi!” he growled. “Why would I want her dead? I already
have
control of the project!”

Marian smiled sadly. “Killers don't always act to get something. Sometimes people kill to protect what they've already got.”

“And you think that's what I've done.”

“I think my clothes should be dry by now.” Without another word, she turned and left.

King was startled at the way she'd broken off the accusations, as abruptly as she'd introduced them. Was that her technique, hit and run? Here he'd been rather pleased with himself for the subtle way he
thought
he'd been casting doubt on the matter of Mimi's innocence … was that the problem? Had he been too subtle? Was Marian Larch the kind of cop you had to hit over the head before you could get her attention?

When she came back in, she was dressed in her own clothes. Her shoes were still wet; King hoped they were ruined. “I left your robe in the laundry room,” she said. “Thanks for lending it to me. I'm supposed to report to the captain in half an hour, so I'll be going now. Next time you can tell me all about articulated lips.” With a cheery wave she was gone.

King sank down to the floor, right where he was standing. Marian Larch was making him
very
uneasy. The other sergeant, Malecki, was probably working the same game on Mimi. He leaned against the glass door to the balcony, trying to get his thoughts in order; he stayed there until his back began to get cold.

He didn't want to think about Marian Larch and her awkward questions, so he went into the office and turned on one of the computers. He couldn't do any real designing until he'd talked to the weapons people in Washington; but perhaps he could get a start on squeezing all those treads and legs into an impossibly small space. He fiddled around for an hour and then gave up; he couldn't concentrate.

Mimi still hadn't come back. Hinting that Mimi Hargrove might not be the innocent she appeared just wasn't going to do the trick. Something more definite, more damning, was called for. Something that would turn the police's attention away from him once and for all.

Yes, something was going to have to be done about Mimi.

11

King was waiting in Warren Osterman's MechoTech office when the older man came in the following morning. “Hello, King—something up?” Osterman lowered himself cautiously into his leather desk chair and watched the other man pacing aimlessly about the room.

“A couple of things,” King said, ignoring any pretense of amenities. “First, just how much patience does Defense have? If we don't get going on this thing—”

“We still have some time. Rae's been trying to arrange a confab, but about half the people you'll need to talk to aren't in Washington right now. And everybody agrees a phone conference won't do the trick. My advice is to let it ride until
they
start requesting a meeting.” Osterman took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “You know how it is with government people—everything is urgent and therefore nothing is.”

King nodded without pausing in his pacing. “That's just as well. Warren, every other team that's tried an EM gun platform design failed for the same reason—because Defense kept adding refinements that took up space needed for other things, important things. A mechanism for changing wheels to treads to legs and back again, for instance. There's no way in the world to fit one into the puny amount of space they've allotted for the job. And that space is going to shrink even more. They're going to keep adding things to our design just the way they did to the others.”

“I know, but what can you do?”

“We can anticipate them. We can go in saying the whole gun platform has to be bigger. Then we can reserve space for whatever they throw at us later.”

“But how much reserve space? You don't know what the next innovation will be.”

“I can guess. I'll bet you next year's tax refund that sooner or later they're going to ask us to include launch apparatus for the new earth-penetrating missiles.”

Osterman hooted. “Not a chance! Good god, that's an entirely different weapons system. Besides, those missiles are
huge
—”

“I don't mean those big ones that go after underground bunkers and the like.” King stopped pacing and stood in front of Osterman's desk. “But smaller ones, the size of rifle-launched missiles—think of the damage they could do! They could take out gas mains, underground power lines. That weapons system
is
different, but sooner or later it's going to dawn on someone in Washington that small earth-penetrators are a natural auxiliary to the electromagnetic gun.”

Osterman looked interested. “So what do you have in mind?”

King sat down in a chair facing the desk and took a deep breath. “I say we beat 'em to the punch. We go in and suggest it ourselves. Once Defense is convinced that the EM gun and the earth-penetrators belong together, they'll have to approve a larger platform—and that's where we'll get the extra space we need for changing the modes of locomotion. It's the only way we can lick this thing.”