Death Ray Butterfly by Tom Lichtenberg (best ereader for pdf and epub txt) 📕

completely different set of individual testimonies. It was only intuition on my part, and as it turned out I was completely mistaken, but it bothered me quite a bit for quite a while. I followed that Fletcher person, pestered his associates and family, grilled his employer and co-workers - this guy was a mechanical engineer, responsible for the safety of obsolete farm equipment - and generally made a terrible nuisance of myself. I'm not proud to admit it, but I am far from perfect. As my assistant, Kelley, likes to say, I'm often wrong but never in doubt.

Thirteen

My assistant, Kelley, keeps badgering me to get to the juicy stuff. Okay, okay. I like a good story as much as anybody else, but sometimes it can get a little confusing, so you're going to have to bear with me. What Kelley means by the 'juicy stuff', is, of course, the murder that didn't happen, or that did happen but maybe not. Of course it all went down on Jimmy Kruzel's riverboat. Seems our friend Mr. Jones showed up again not long after he got bailed out of the subatomic particle charges. Not only showed up, but all dapper and bragging about how no one could touch him, no one could stop him. He had a secret and was going to change the world.

He was drawing a crowd, which he often did. He was commanding the bow of the boat and standing on a half barrel, making this speech, must've been a hundred people gathered around, at least it seemed there were a hundred witnesses I had to interview, each with his own particular version of events, events that no two of them seemed able to agree upon completely. The one thing they had in common was that Kruzel didn't like it, not one bit. He came down out of his captain cabin up top and pushed his way through the crowd, some said, but I had my doubts. Kruzel was a weakling and a coward; chances are he merely begged and pleaded his way through to the front, employing that whiny obnoxious voice to squeak people out of his way. In any case, he came right up in front of where Jones was pontificating and shouted at him to get down, get out, and get lost.

Jones got down, all right, and that's where things happened; what things exactly, it is very hard to say. Some claim that Kruzel pulled a knife. Again, I found that hard to believe. Kruzel was never known to pull anything on anybody ever. And yet, when I got there, Jones was bleeding from a stab wound to his left bicep. Some said that Jones whipped out his blade first. Never did find out for sure, really. The lab guys got there before me and wiped the sucker clean. Not a print, not a drop or even a speck of blood remained on the thing. Lab guys. They'll get you every time.

The crowd pulled away, opened up as Kruzel collapsed in a puddle of blood and died right then and there before anyone could get a doctor or a medic on the scene. The timing seemed a bit odd. The first call went in to emergency about fifteen minutes after the stabbing was alleged to occur. That's a lot of people standing around doing nothing for awhile. Of course, they were leaving it up to Hobbs. He was there all right, in the front row too. Probably could have stepped between the two of them and made it all never happen. That was one of my main questions.

There's no doubt Kruzel was jealous of Jones, and wanted to know why Hobbs had bailed him out. He wanted to know why Jones would always win. Wanted to know what Hobbs' role in that was too. I think I know. It wasn't magic, or luck. It was fixed, and Hobbs was taking his cut. Used some of it for the bail money, but there was plenty where that came from. It makes some kind of sense. Kruzel's name was on the boat, Kruzel's name was fronting the place, but the money all flowed to Hobbs.

But Dennis needed Kruzel, needed his name, his face, so why did he let Jones kill him? My guess is, he didn't. Had no idea it was going to happen. Jones had never killed before, as far as anybody knew. Still, it was Hobbs who held him up in the captain's cabin until the police, meaning me, could get there. Hobbs had him locked in the room and when he let me in I could see he didn't look happy at all.

The room was filled with cigar smoke - I mean really filled. You could hardly see a thing. I was coughing and choking so bad I kicked back open the door and let it stay open. I had a couple men posted outside so I wasn't worried about Jones getting away. Jones himself was bleeding quietly on a chair beside the fireplace. I asked him if he needed a doctor and he just smiled and shook his head.

“No need, Inspector. It won't be long now.”

“What's that to supposed to mean?”, I asked.

“You remember that thing I gave you?”

“Of course I do.”

“You're going to need it, now”, he said, and he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a plastic lighter just like the one he'd given me. He grinned, gave it a flick, and he was gone.

Poof.

Gone.

Fourteen

I couldn't believe my eyes, but of course I had to. There weren't any secret chambers or hidden doorways or concealed trapdoors or anything like that. Arab "Cricket" Jones had vanished. I looked around a little bit, sure, and then I did something totally out of character. I went through the motions.

I guess I was just in denial, couldn't absorb the incredible, so I just asked Hobbs some questions about the murder. He rumbled some answers I couldn't really understand, so I moved on downstairs to where the witnesses were assembled, and started plowing through their improbable stories. Each one seemed especially long-winded, but it was mostly my fatigue. By the time I got around to the crime scene itself it had been thoroughly trampled and mucked up by the lab techs. There was only one knife, although most of the witnesses claimed there had been two. There was only Kruzel's blood, though most agreed that Jones had been wounded too. The body, at least, was gone. I would look at that in the morning.

It was very late at night by the time I got home and settled myself on the back porch rocking chair. I live in a little house well out of the way, on an alley down by the river. It's quiet out there and I like to look at the water and the harbor lights blinking all night. Sometimes you can hear a fish jump, or the occasional toad advertising his presence. Mostly there's nothing and no one around. I picked up that little lighter, the one Jones gave me. I'd been keeping it on the mantelpiece, trying to ignore it, but now I was holding it my hands while I rocked a little bit and thought about the note. Without even thinking about it, I flicked the lighter, just once. No flame came out, and nothing else happened. I continued to sit out there in the dark, listening to the silence, for maybe another half an hour.

Then I heard somebody knocking on the front door. That was strange. Hardly anyone ever came out there, not even my assistant, Kelley. I got up, went and opened the door, and there was Cricket Jones, standing there on the top step.

“Mind if I come in?”, he asked, politely.

“Not at all”, I replied. I realized I was still holding the lighter and glanced at his hands to see if he was holding his, but he wasn't. I did see that he wasn't bleeding, he wasn't bandaged. His arm was not even cut. I showed him in to the kitchen and offered him a seat and a drink. He took the first and declined the second.

“You're probably wondering why I'm here”, he said as I sat down across the table from him.

“I ought to be arresting you”, I told him.

“For what?”, he smiled.

“Murder, of course”, I said.

“But I didn't kill anyone”, he said. “Not here, at least.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let me ask you. Who am I supposed to have killed?”

“You know as well as I do”, I grumbled. “Jimmy Kruzel. Stabbed him in the gut, and let him bleed to death on the floor of his own establishment.”

“Kruzel?”, he laughed. “That little puppy is alive and well. Here, I'll prove it to you”, and he turned his right forearm over to reveal the video screen he had implanted on it. He tapped his wrist a few times and the screen came alive with the wide face of Dennis Hobbs staring at us.

“Jones?”, he asked.

“Evening, Dennis”, he replied.

“Evening”, Hobbs said back.

“Evening, Inspector”, he added, turning his face towards me.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?”, he said.

“The Inspector's got the idea that Mr. Kruzel's been killed”, Jones said, “Stabbed in the belly, so he says.”

“Kruzel?”, Dennis chuckled. “Why, he's sitting right over here. See for yourself”, and he turned his own arm to show the very same and very alive Jimmy Kruzel sitting in the chair I'd seen Jones sitting in not four hours before. My night of weirdness was apparently not over. And it was Kruzel all right, the same little whiner he always was. He started right in as soon as he saw Jones on Hobbs' armscreen.

“Jones?”, he screeched, “How many times do I have to tell you. You are not welcome here. Not now, not ever. Not in person, and not on the flesh either.”

He couldn't help but laugh at his little joke, "on the flesh". Those skincams were still pretty new at the time.

“Sorry, boss”, Jones cracked, and tapping once more on his wrist, turned off the screen.

“See what I mean?”, he said, turning to me. “You can't arrest me for killing someone who isn't dead.”

“Not dead here, at least”, he added.

“I don't follow”, I said.

“But you did”, he told me. “You followed me here. To this universe. Which universe exactly is hard to say, impossible to say, really. There is nothing but the infinite recursion of adjacent universes, did you know that? What happens in one doesn't have to happen in the next. But it might and usually does. Most of the time. But the little things add up. Maybe the only difference between this and the next one is maybe a certain pop song sold a few less copies. Maybe the difference is a revolution. Right now the difference is Kruzel. Here he lives, and that's all you need to know right now.”

“Right”, I said.

I didn't know what else to say. I'm not the quickest when it comes to absorbing radical information. I was going to have to think about it. And his motives. What was he up to? What was he trying to prove? And was he even telling the truth. Maybe the whole situation was an elaborate hoax. I was going to have to check on Kruzel in person. And Hobbs. I didn't trust him either.

I sure didn't feel any different, and neither did my house, or anything around me. There was Jones'