A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

her fingers off the keys—to wipe her brow with a handkerchief before transcribing the last statement.

“Yeah, you’re a real ladies’ man, Bruce,” said the sheriff to mock. “But we still haven’t located this make-believe hooker of yours. And until we do, your alibi is nothing more than a fairy tale.”

I jumped in again and asked the prisoner where I could find Dan Ledoux. He shrugged and said he didn’t know.

“He usually shows up at the track during the meet, but I ain’t seen him this year.”

“What’s he look like?”

“I don’t know. I’m not in the habit of ogling men.”

“Tall? Short? Medium? Dark? Fair? Old? Young? Surely you can tell me the color of his hair.”

“He’s got brown eyes, I think. Black hair. Maybe he’s forty, like me. And about my size, too.”

“If he’s anything like you, he must be a prize,” said the sheriff with a chuckle.

Robertson scowled at him. I thought Pryor’s comment was unnecessary. For all his odious qualities—and he had them in spades—Bruce Robertson couldn’t really do much to improve on the irregular parts God had given him to work with.

“I do okay, thanks, Sheriff,” he said bitterly, but I could tell he didn’t believe it himself. “And why shouldn’t I get girls? Johnny Dornan did just fine with the ladies, and he was no taller than me.”

I’d squeezed about all I was going to get out of Bruce Robertson, but I had one last question. I steered the conversation back to the mystery of the thrown race and asked about Mack Hodges.

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much. Except he’s dead.”

“When did he die?”

“Last January or February, I think. Died in his sleep.”

“Old age? Heart attack?”

“His house burned down with him in it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Frank Olney confirmed positively the identity of the body in the car. It was twenty-four-year-old Micheline Bernadette Charbonneau of Terrebonne, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal. I felt a pang of regret as he pronounced the name, even if I’d already known it was she. The finality of an official identification smothers the last gasp of hope. Of course if it hadn’t been Micheline in the driver’s seat of Vivian McLaglen’s Chrysler, it would have been some other poor girl, murdered for some unknown reason. Why shouldn’t I have mourned her as well? Perhaps I should have simply been happy that an anonymous girl had survived the cruelty of the world for another day. I found no comfort in my rationalizations.

I sat at my kitchen table until the sun went down, typing out my story for Monday afternoon’s edition of the Republic. My photographs of the scene, shot the night before in my evening gown on the side of Route 67, would provide dramatic evidence of the tragedy. I hadn’t yet seen the developed film, but I recalled having captured fine images of Sheriff Frank Olney looking resolute and in charge of the scene, the wrecker pulling Vivian McLaglen’s ghostly black Chrysler out of the field and back onto the highway, and the ambulance—rear doors closed and windows dark—that carted away the body. I presented the news in straightforward fashion. The body of a woman linked to the double murder on Tempesta Farm a week before had been discovered in an advanced state of decomposition on the Montgomery side of the county line. The sheriff’s office had confirmed the identity of the woman, and the coroner had determined that the cause of death was a severed spinal cord between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. The car had been registered to one of the victims of the Tempesta murders, Vivian McLaglen, née Coleman.

I wrote a second article on the chief suspect in the murders, Bruce Robertson. Basing my story on the interview he’d so graciously granted, I painted the picture of a career petty criminal and gambler, who denied all involvement in the killings. I even detailed the alibi he’d offered to the Saratoga County sheriff and district attorney, to wit that he’d been breaking commandments with a prostitute on the night in question. In deference to the sensibilities of the Republic’s readers, I omitted the number of times he’d claimed her as an alibi.

Then I slipped another piece of carbon paper between two fresh sheets of paper and rolled them all into my portable typewriter. My third story dealt with the fire that had claimed the Tempesta caretaker’s house. I hoped my photos of the blaze would turn out well.

I struggled to justify including my observation that someone had been squatting inside the house before it was razed, because I was the only witness. Yes, I had the one frame of Wednesday’s Republic in the second-floor room as evidence, but, if I was honest with myself, I had to admit that it was hardly indisputable. It might have been taken anywhere. In the end, I wrote the article without mentioning it and resolved to ask my editor for guidance.

I phoned Charlie Reese at home and of course got his wife on the line. After a cold, lingering silence, she passed the receiver to her husband and we reviewed my three stories. He gave me some notes, and I made the changes.

“I’d really like to find this Dan Ledoux,” I said. “Somehow I think he’s right in the middle of this whole thing. He was Vivian McLaglen’s lover, for one. Second, he helped his boss, Mack Hodges, fix the race nine years ago. And last, he was in on the scheme to lure Johnny Dornan into the plot.”

“Any idea where he is?”

“Not yet.”

I asked him about including the squatter in my story, and he thought it better to leave it out. At least for now.

“Not enough supporting evidence,” he said. “We don’t want your piece to sound like a ghost story.”

I agreed. Then he congratulated me and asked if I needed any other help.

“Maybe you could answer your phone once in a while. Your wife really hates me.”

Feeling drained and exhausted from lack of sleep,