Which Way to Die? (10 page)

They went over and examined the lock. Sure enough, there was a jimmy mark where the doors met. The catch of the lock had been broken off clean.

“All right,” Corrigan said. “Then this bug came in?”

“It looked like a bug. The room was pitch dark, so I only saw its silhouette against the sky as it stepped in. It had a great, hunched back, like a beetle, and long feelers stuck out from it, like the antennae of a bug. I'm telling you!”

Corrigan and Baer stared at him. “I wasn't having hallucinations,” he said stridently. “That's what the thing looked like!”

“Okay, it was a monster from outer space,” Corrigan said. “Then what?”

“It moved toward Gerry's bed.” Frank shuddered again. His eyes, magnified by his lenses, suddenly became terrified again. “It was just an accident that it went that way first,” he whispered. “What if it had decided to start on my side of the room?”

“Then we'd be talking to Gerry instead of you,” Corrigan said deliberately. “Go on, Frank. Then what?”

Frank licked his lips. “It was too dark to see what was going on over on Gerry's side of the room. Anyway, just the sight of the thing scared me witless. I was kicking off the covers and sitting up when Gerry let out that awful scream.”

The boy hugged his thin shoulders. “I panicked. I think I screamed, too, though I'm not sure. I know I jumped out of bed and made a dash for the door. Then I heard the thing spin around and head for me. I knew I could never get the door unlocked and open before it got to me. There was nothing else I could think to do but change direction, bolt into the bathroom, and slam and lock the door. When I think of the narrow squeak I had … It hit the door, then I heard something drop.” His distended glance went to the knife on the floor. “The knife, I guess … Then somebody started breaking down the bedroom door. The thing made a kind of growling noise, and I heard it running out.”

Corrigan studied him. Finally he said, “You don't really believe this thing was an oversized bug, do you, Frank? You're supposed to be super-intelligent.”

Frank's dark skin grew darker. “It didn't happen to you!” he yapped with a flash of the old Frank. “It was dark, and I was half asleep, and that thing looked like a
bug
, I tell you!”

“Look like isn't is,” Chuck Baer remarked. “Use your head, Frank. You know it wasn't anything out of the TV set. What do you suppose it could have been?”

Frank said suddenly, “A man dressed up in a monster costume!” He looked almost pathetically relieved.

“Now you're cooking, buddy boy.”

“Assuming it was a man in a costume,” Corrigan said, “try to describe him.”

“I only saw his silhouette against the moonlight for a few seconds. But he was big—I'd say well over six feet, and so wide he nearly filled the doorway. When he turned his body to move toward Gerry's side of the room, I saw him for a couple of seconds in profile. He had a big hump on his back and a long, tubelike thing protruding from each shoulder. They kind of curved around in front of him. Just like a bug's antennae.”

In absolute seriousness Baer said, “You sure they weren't wings?”

Frank seemed offended. But when he saw Baer's expression he said, “No, not wings. Not wings.”

Baer looked at Corrigan. “Some kind of flight suit, Tim,” he said, “cockeyed as it sounds. Maybe a chopper with a ladder hoist hovering over the roof.”

“We'd have heard the prop,” Corrigan said, shaking his head. “My guess is a rope with a gang hook on the end, in spite of windows that don't open for five stories down. Soon as I phone this in we'll give that wall a real hard time.”

“Something tells me,” Chuck Baer said, “that the hard time is going to be on the other foot.”

Corrigan glared at him and headed for the phone.

12.

Eight minutes later Corrigan joined Baer outdoors. Frank Grant remained inside with the women. His ratty shoulders were drawn in, as if he were in a corner. He drank black coffee with both hands.

The two men started with the wall to the left and examined it inch by inch from an imaginary line extending to the rear of the house. The moon was still bright enough for them to see by, but to make sure they missed no scratches made by a gang hook, Corrigan shone his flashlight on the top of the wall along its entire length.

They found no scratches. They found nothing at all.

But when they checked the wall overlooking the street, they struck pay dirt.

Only a few feet from Corrigan's old footprint in the flower bed—where he had stepped earlier to peer over at the roof across the street—they found two large, deep prints of a man's shoes. The shoes must have been size twelve or thirteen, Corrigan thought.

On top of the wall, immediately above the prints, imperfectly outlined in ridges from soil which had adhered to the shoes, were two fainter footprints. Beside the right print lay the smeary impression of a bloody hand, where the killer had evidently grabbed the outer edge of the wall to pull himself up.

The conclusion was as unavoidable as it was beyond belief. The killer had darted from the bedroom, made straight for the wall, climbed up on it, and stepped off into space.

“What the hell?” Corrigan muttered.

“I don't believe it,” Baer said.

“Neither do I, Chuck. But here it is.”

Corrigan placed his foot precisely into the footprint he had made, leaned forward, and peered over the parapet. Baer moved a dozen feet to the right, set his huge right foot in the middle of the flower bed, and looked, too.

A mile down, it seemed, a taxi drove by; it looked like a hurrying ant. A mile down and a block away two men were strolling across the street.

Otherwise there was nothing alive or dead in sight.

“Not a damned thing,” Baer said. “You see anything, Tim?”

“You know I don't,” Corrigan snarled. But then he sucked in his breath. Baer looked at him and followed the direction of his glance. Corrigan was staring across the street at the roof of the nine-story building.

“What is it, Tim?”

“Something on the roof over there,” Corrigan muttered. “I can't make it out, but whatever it is it wasn't there a short while ago. I checked that roof while you were out having a drink.”

The object lay almost exactly halfway between the edge of the opposite roof and the roof exit through which the Acid Kid had made his getaway the previous week. The moonlight was just tricky enough to distort its shape. But they could make out a pair of what looked like motorcycle handlebars emerging from a substantial central blob.

“By God,” Baer said softly. “The hump and antennae the kid saw.”

“Yes.” Corrigan shoved himself back. “Chuck, you wait here. Don't take your eye off that thing. I'll be right back.”

He ran back inside, sped down the hall, and dashed into the bedroom shared by Norma and Mrs. Grant. The rhinestone-studded opera glasses were lying on one of the dressers. He took a shortcut back through the French door of the bedroom.

Baer had not moved from his uncomfortable leaning position. Corrigan again carefully placed his foot in his personal footprint in the flower bed, leaned his elbows on the parapet, and raised the opera glasses to his good eye. Time had worked its miracle; he could see perfectly in spite of monocular vision.

“What is it, Tim?” Baer demanded. “Can you make it out?”

“Looks like some kind of scuba-diving equipment,” Corrigan mumbled. “Except that it seems to have three tanks instead of one.”

He pushed away from the wall and tossed the glasses over to Baer.

“Keep your eye on that thing in case anybody tries to lift it before I get there,” he said. “I'm going across the street.”

Passing through the apartment, he learned that Elizabeth Grant had taken it upon herself to telephone John M. Alstrom's apartment on the eleventh floor. Alstrom and Andy Betz were dressing and should be right up.

“I wish you hadn't done that, Mrs. Grant. I didn't want anyone else tramping around here until the Homicide people arrived.”

“But Gerard was his son! If it had been Frank …” Mrs. Grant clutched her son's neck and pulled him to her. For once he did not reject her. He had graduated from coffee to brandy and had a big snifter to his lips; his mother's clutch made him splutter, but he said nothing.

“Mrs. Grant is right, Tim,” Norma said. “It's Daddy's right. I … couldn't phone him myself.”

“Well, maybe I was wrong,” Corrigan said. He was always irritated with people who brought personal considerations into an investigation, then with himself for remembering that he was human, too. “Look, I can't wait right now. Tell your father not to go into that bedroom; he won't enjoy what's in there, anyway. Norma, would you come with me?”

She followed him docilely. Since her brother's death she seemed to have withdrawn a long, long way. If she felt any grief, it did not show. She was just bracing herself, he thought, for another ordeal.

In the foyer Corrigan said gently, “Let me down to the eleventh floor, Norma. On second thought, I'll wait there till they show up.” He closed the switch and stepped onto the car. “Don't forget to close the switch again when your father and Andy get up here.”

She nodded.

Corrigan jabbed the “D” button and the door slid shut.

The elder Alstrom and Andy Betz were hurrying along the eleventh floor corridor toward the penthouse elevator when Corrigan stepped out of the car. Alstrom had pulled trousers and a suit coat over his pajamas; he was still in bedroom slippers. The chauffeur had put on shoes, slacks, and a shirt; he had even slipped into a leather jacket and taken the time to comb his hair.

Alstrom was almost as dead-pale as the son lying upstairs. He halted in front of Corrigan, fine lips twitching. “How could you let this happen, Captain? Is this the protection our police provide? And where was Mr. Baer? I don't see
how
…”

Corrigan said in a gentle voice, “I'm damned sorry your son is dead, Mr. Alstrom, but let's get something straight. You were repeatedly advised that, since you refused to let us have any part in planning security, neither the police nor Chuck Baer could accept responsibility if anything went wrong. We did our best under your rules. Apparently they weren't good enough.”

Alstrom made a shuddering effort to control himself. “All right, Captain. I'll concede that. But that setup upstairs is impregnable. How could this have happened?”

“We don't know yet, Mr. Alstrom.”

“Is my young mister all right?” Andy Betz croaked.

Corrigan nodded and motioned the two men into the elevator. “Before you go up, Mr. Alstrom, I want something clearly understood. You and Andy are to stay in the living room. You're not to go back and look at your son, and you're not to step out on the roof. Clear?”

“Clear,” Alstrom said stiffly.

He pushed the “U” button and the door closed.

A prowl car pulled up just as Corrigan got to the street. A middle-aged officer with a growing front porch and a lean, younger man jumped out of the car.

Corrigan flashed his I.D. “Corrigan of the Main Office Squad. You men here in answer to the homicide squeal?”

“Yes, sir,” the older cop said. “I'm Sergeant Hooker and this is Patrolman Kent.”

“You come with me, Kent. Sergeant, go up to the penthouse and stand by until Homicide gets here. You'll find a private detective named Chuck Baer up there keeping an eye on the roof across the street through a pair of opera glasses. Just leave him be. He's doing it on my instructions.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.

“Take the elevator to the eleventh floor. Then cross the hall to another elevator. You'll find a phone on the wall next to it. You have to call the roof so someone can send the elevator down. Probably a Miss Alstrom will answer. Tell her who you are and that I sent you. And don't touch
anything
.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let's go, Kent.” Corrigan hurried across the street to the building opposite. It was 1:30
A
.
M
.

He and the young officer took an elevator to the ninth floor, followed a hall around two turns, and finally came to a door with FIRE EXIT over it. There was no handle on the roof side of the door. Corrigan used a packet of paper matches as a wedge so they could get back in.

The first thing Corrigan did on the roof was glance across the street and up. At the parapet of the other rooftop he could see the glitter of the opera glasses focused his way. He waved to Baer, and only then did he walk over to inspect the object of his hunt.

He had never seen anything quite like it before. There were three small metal tanks attached to what looked like a fiberglass corset. Two short metal tubes hung out of it, downward and at a slight outward angle from the middle tank. Two thicker metal tubes, about the diameter of motorcycle handlebars, curved upward and forward and ended in grips.

“Any idea what this is?” Corrigan asked the uniformed man.

Kent shook his head. “Some kind of diving equipment, maybe?”

Corrigan grunted. There was some stenciling on the fiberglass corset; he directed his pencil flashlight at it. It said: BELL AEROSYSTEMS CO., INC. He produced a handkerchief, covered his palm, took hold of one of the handlebar-like tubes, and turned the device over. He pushed aside the straps, evidently used to buckle the corset into place, in order to inspect the inner side of the corset.

There was something stenciled there, too: 305TH AIR NAT. GUARD.

Patrolman Kent, craning, exclaimed, “That's the National Guard Air Force unit out on Long Island, Captain. I know what this thing is now!”

“What is it?”

“A Buck Rogers belt!”

Corrigan rose from his stoop and looked the young officer over. “Come again?”