Smart House (21 page)

Dwight started to speak, subsided, as if aware that Charlie should not be interrupted right now, that he was looking at something not quite visible to anyone else.

The silence endured until Charlie shrugged slightly, and said, “But, as you say, they didn’t die there and get moved to their final resting places. They weren’t dumped as corpses anywhere. And they sure as God didn’t walk alone. The damn house was responsible for their deaths, but the final act was somewhere else. In that state, when the door opened, they both had to be alive still. Whoever found them must have had the hell shocked out of him. And instantly he knew they had to be taken somewhere else, or the house would be blamed. Maybe at that time they could have been revived, could have recovered, but if even one of them died, the house would be the killer and there goes the company. Either or both might have been brain damaged. If one did recover, he might implicate whoever closed the door on them. The killer couldn’t risk any of those things. So he probably sent the elevator up to the roof, and he took the main one up. That’s the only place both elevators are side by side. His first thought must have been to get them both the hell away from the secret elevator, away from the office or Gary’s room where walls might be tapped, the secret elevator might be found. Or maybe he was already on the roof when he called up the elevator and opened it to find them both dying. Anyway, the next act must have been up there, someplace where he could go from one elevator to the other with little risk of being seen. I think he must have got Rich to his feet first, walked him to the big elevator, and finished him off there. Maybe Rich actually collapsed and that’s how he bruised his face, on the carpeted floor. But the human killer finished him off, all right. Anything at all over his face at that moment would have been enough. He was incapable of fighting back. Maybe he marked his face and used the mesh bag to hide the marks, but probably he used it just to make certain the police didn’t settle for an accidental death. Then back to Gary. Down to the first floor with him, out the rear of the elevator, and through the back hall. Gary might have been reviving by then; opening the door would have flushed out the bad air, brought in breathable air. He could walk; the original printout showed that he did walk into the Jacuzzi room, but he was dazed, stuporous; that’s how victims of anoxia are, before they actually die. The killer walked him through the dark back hall, to the Jacuzzi, and tipped him in and covered the pool. He was trying hard to make certain the police would look for a murderer, not label either death accidental. But his very cleverness made him botch it. Too many directions, too many false clues pointing every which way.

“He had to have a few minutes free just to tidy up, and neither body would be found too soon. The handheld computer would lock the elevator wherever he left it, and Gary was out of sight. He put the other control computers and the blueprints in the elevator. He didn’t want anyone finding that secret elevator just then. He made popcorn and imitated Gary’s wild laughter so everyone would assume Gary was alive and he would be provided with an alibi. Then, unlock the big elevator, rejoin the party, and wait.”

Dwight had been eating his sandwich mechanically. He chewed for several minutes. At last he shook his head. “It’s plausible, I grant you that. There are messy areas, like why did he move Gary somewhere else instead of leaving him in the big elevator too?”

“What if he was interrupted?” Charlie said. “Actually a couple of people went up to the roof at exactly the wrong time for the killer. If Gary was reviving in the cold fresh air, he would be a risk. He might start making noise. So our guy had to close the big elevator and lock it, close himself in with Gary in the secret elevator and take him someplace where he could finish what he had set out to do, and that was to clear Smart House.”

Dwight sighed, still doubtful, still not accepting. “And what’s that about the popcorn? How in hell do you figure that?”

“Gary took the popcorn maker from the kitchen before eleven,” Charlie said. “He went out the back kitchen door, on his way, no doubt, to his little elevator that would deliver him either to his office or his bedroom. Customarily he had popcorn every night in his office. So why did he then not make it there? Why carry the stuff around with him for fifteen or twenty minutes? He wasn’t in the garden during that period; too many others wandered in and out to miss him. No, he went from the kitchen to somewhere else and put the stuff down, and later the killer must have seen the perfect way to establish that Gary was still alive and hungry at eleven-fifteen. When he got the blueprints and computers to stash away in the elevator, he got them from Gary’s office; the popcorn maker was probably there, and he saw his chance and took it.”

“It could work,” Dwight said after another thoughtful pause. “And the good Lord knows I want something that could, but there’s no way on this earth to prove any of it.”

Charlie spread his hands. “Neither Rich nor Gary was drugged or drunk. They probably weren’t hypnotized into lying down and dying, voodoo cursed into it, or talked into it with promises of candy. You can’t order a man to lie down and stop breathing, even at gunpoint. They had to have been in a stupor of some sort, incapable of resisting whatever was being done, but capable of walking with help. Anoxia stupor. Not forced on them by having their heads held in fruit bins, or by being urged to enter one of those experimental growing structures in the greenhouse. Someplace close by, accessible. A place that didn’t alarm either of them enough to put up a fight. I came up with the elevator. You’re right. No proof. But what else is new at this point?” He leaned back in the booth with his arm along the seat back and his hand on Constance’s shoulder. “Besides,” he said, “I knew from the beginning the damn house was guilty as hell.”

“And I suppose you know who took a chance like that just to clear the house?”

“Sure,” Charlie said. “But it’s going to be tricky to prove it.”

Chapter 19

It was nearly eight, and
Charlie had just finished loading the suitcases into the rented car when Beth and Jake found him. Beth was deathly pale, her eyes very big and frightened. Jake seemed more concerned for her than for the fact that Charlie obviously was planning to leave.

“Alexander said you’re going away!” Beth cried on the verandah as Charlie approached. “Why? What are they doing? Why did they rip up part of the balcony? Charlie, what’s happening?”

He took her arm and steered her into the foyer. “Calm down. Take it easy. We would have found you to say good-bye. Where’s Alexander now? Where are all the others? I thought you’d all be eating and we didn’t want to disturb your dinner.”

“Who can eat?” she cried.

“They’re in the dining room going through the motions,” Jake said soberly. “What’s up?”

Charlie looked at his watch and said resignedly, “Beth, will you tell Constance I’ll be in the garden bar? Let’s get a drink,” he said, turning to Jake.

Beth bit her lip, then darted up the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”

“Drink,” Charlie muttered, and led the way through the corridor into the atrium where he went behind the bar and began to look over the assortment of bottles; Jake sat on a stool opposite him. The sun was very low now, but still came through the dome on the roof, lighted up the rock wall at the far end of the room where the waterfall sparkled in its plunge. That end of the room was bright; shadows had gathered at the bar end. Charlie hummed tunelessly as he poked among the bottles and came up with Drambuie. Regretfully he put it down again and settled for bourbon on ice. Jake shook his head when Charlie offered him the same.

“I was going to meet the group in a group,” Charlie said after taking a sip. “But this might be better. I think your story should be that you and Milton struggled. He said nasty things and pulled the gun on you and you hit him. When you wrested the gun away, it went off and a bullet grazed his head. And then you panicked and tried to cover up. It isn’t neat, and it leaves a lot of questions, but between you and me, there are always a lot of questions without answers.”

“You’ve gone mad!” Jake said coldly.

“Not a bad story, all things considered,” Charlie went on, as if he had not heard. “Temporarily out of your mind, that usually works. That way I don’t have to mention the secret elevator, or the carbon dioxide in the basement, or the unattended popcorn in the garden here, or the gun on the roof. Or even the reversed Turing test and how all of you practiced being each other to fool the computer. Of course, people will assume that you were responsible for Gary and Rich’s death, but they won’t be able to prove anything, and in a way that would be good. Smart House is cleared in the minds of the people who count, and you still own the lion’s share of a prosperous company. You’ll need it, no doubt. Defense comes in costly packages. Did you know attorneys charge for every phone call, every minute they even think about your case, even if they’re on the can?”

“You son of a bitch, you’re trying to frame me and blackmail me!”

“You don’t have much time,” Charlie said easily. “When the captain calls it off for the day, I’ll tell him my story, make my report to your colleagues, and take off. Did I mention where the divers are working now? The north end of the beach. If they don’t find the ashtray and sheet today, then tomorrow they’ll bring in a logging helicopter and start playing jack-straws with all that driftwood, and maybe the divers will go on to the next rock pile, and then the next one. I have to admire that captain. He’s got gumption. He’ll stick with it until he finds something—sheet, ashtray, pair of slacks, shirt, something. But I want to get the hell out of here. So I’ll tell him a story, and I don’t give a damn which version it is, one that involves fun and games and foolishness, secret elevators and a killer house, or one that starts and stops with Milton’s death.”

“This is extortion and you know it, you bastard! I’ll get you for this, so help me God!”

“You almost did,” Charlie said mildly.

“Next time you won’t be so lucky. Have you told any of the others any of this?”

“Nope. Haven’t talked to the shareholders. I decided to let you pick the story you like best first.”

Jake looked around desperately, as if searching for a weapon, a rock, a bottle, a gun, anything. His hands were white on the counter top. Charlie was out of reach on the other side. Jake flexed his fingers and said, “You’re close to what happened.” His voice was hard, tight, the words clipped. “I was taking a walk on the balcony when Milton went mad and attacked me. He had a gun. I hit him in self-defense and he fell hard and struck his head. It was an accident, but I blacked out in a panic.” His face was white, his expression murderous.

“It might work,” Charlie said judiciously, “if the others cooperate. But after trying to frame Bruce, you lost him, and probably lost Maddie, and when Beth realizes that you were trying to win her over for her shares, I don’t know. One or the other might even remember that you were out of sight when they heard that laughing they assumed was Gary.”

“Beth will believe what I tell her, and the others don’t matter.” He leaned forward and said in an intense, low voice, “When it’s over, Charlie, I’m coming for you. I’ll have resources, more than you’ve ever dreamed of.”

“Number four,” Charlie murmured. “What about Laura? She saw Milton pick up your water gun on the roof. One day she might connect that to Rich’s killer.”

“You can speculate all you want, but you can’t prove anything about Gary and Rich, and you know it, or you wouldn’t want to make a deal.”

“Just how far gone were they when you found them?” Charlie asked.

For a moment he thought Jake wouldn’t answer, but then he drew a deep breath and said in a hoarse whisper, “Like zombies, both of them. They were dying. I know about brain damage. You can’t understand, no one can, what that would have meant to a man like Gary. To see a mind like his gone, destroyed. Maybe they could have been revived, but they were dead; they would have existed maybe, but not as men with minds. Gary…” His voice dropped even lower until it was nearly inaudible. “He was a devil, and the other side of that is that he was a god, and I worshipped him. I did what I had to, what he would have wanted if he had been conscious enough to say so.”

Charlie shook his head. “People have pulled through after accidents like that.”

He might not have heard. His face was agonized, his expression black. “I opened the door, holding the water gun, aimed at where I thought Rich would be. They were out, both of them, Rich in front. I got him to his feet, to the big elevator. I was going to take him down, get help, and he collapsed. Unconscious. Gary was in the little elevator, unconscious, moaning. They were too far gone! I didn’t want to finish them, but I had to or we would have been ruined, all of us, and they were already dead men, still breathing a little, but dead. Past saving.”

His eyes were staring, not through space, but as if through time, back to that night. His voice was thick and low when he continued. “Rich fell down and I could see how it would work out, step by step—Smart House blamed, all the work destroyed, the dream gone, everything shattered. It couldn’t appear to be accidental. I saw that before I touched him, before I even knew what I had to do. Gary would have wanted me to save the company, at any cost. Any cost. Save Smart House. His dream… I tried to make the police understand that the computer couldn’t have done it. Anyone who knows computers would know it couldn’t have done all that—the insecticide, the lights going off, the pool cover. No computer could have done it, but the fools didn’t understand, no matter what we all said.”

“You were too clever for them,” Charlie murmured. “So that’s going to be your story—two accidental deaths and self defense when Milton attacked you. It might fly.”

With a start Jake brought his gaze back to Charlie. He shook his head. “I don’t know a goddamn thing about how Gary and Rich died. That’s my story. And Milton pulled a gun on me. He must have killed them and thought I was onto him. That’s my story and it’ll work. I’m good at details, Charlie, remember? It’ll work. I’ll make it work. They’ll buy it.”

Tiredly Charlie said, “Dwight, is that enough yet? I’m getting rather bored.”

The lights came on and Dwight Ericson stepped out from the storage area behind the bar. Two other men came from the shadows; they were carrying guns.

“You goddamn son of a bitch!” Jake cried in disbelief, incredulous. “You lied!”

Charlie shrugged. “And you tried to kill my wife.” He set his glass down and the musical computer voice said, “Thank you, Charlie. Would you like another drink at this time?” He looked at Jake. “We’ve been broadcasting ever since we came into the bar. It’s all on tape; they’ve been listening in the dining room. The voice prints, they tell me, never make a mistake. If you claim this one is wrong, you blow the whole security package, don’t you?”

For a moment there was a glint in Jake’s eyes, almost of recognition of a good end game, Charlie thought, appreciation maybe. But probably not, he decided.

Now the sun was setting, the western sky a red-streaked blaze, the ocean azure fringed with white. Charlie and Constance were in the living room with the group, Charlie at the window looking at the panorama of sea and sky, Constance in a straight chair near him. Very nice, he decided, very nice. He turned to look at the others who were still arranging themselves: Beth in a white high-backed chair that dwarfed her and bleached the color from her face; Laura and Harry Westerman at opposite ends of a sofa; Maddie in a chair drawn close to Bruce. He was ignoring her. Bruce was sprawled, his clothes a mess, his hair a mess, sneakers untied. Alexander had not yet lighted on anything, but paced around the room jerkily as if seeking a special perch. Dwight Ericson and his men were gone. Jake was gone, too.

“Alexander, if you will come to rest someplace, I’d like to get this over with,” Charlie said.

“Sorry, sorry,” Alexander said, as flighty as a hummingbird, and sat on the edge of the nearest chair.

Charlie nodded. “By now you’ve all seen that little elevator, and you know about the hand-held computers that could control just about everything in this house, including the secret elevator. I’ll keep this as brief as I can. From the beginning there were several questions that seemed to need answers. Playing the assassin game, why didn’t Jake kill Rich when he had a chance, several chances, in fact? He inherited his as victim early in the afternoon when he got Beth and did nothing about it the rest of the day and evening. Then, why would Gary cheat in his own game, when he tried to get Maddie to witness after she was out of it? Why did Gary laugh in the garden that night? At whom? Everyone was accounted for and no one was with him, apparently. Why didn’t Gary make popcorn in his room or his office? Why didn’t the main elevator work after eleven o’clock that night? Those questions all came up when you told me about the game and your movements.”

They were all looking blank. He shrugged. “There were other questions that came up over Milton’s murder. Why did anyone pick that night to hide the little computer? Why scatter dirt and leave a pile at Bruce’s door? Why was Jake wearing his contact lenses if he had been in bed asleep? If he hadn’t been in bed, why the pajamas? Why did anyone wipe prints off all the accessories in Milton’s room? Why did Bruce mention a gun that night?

“We’ll have to go back to the game for this,” Charlie said apologetically. “Milton Sweetwater has gone down to the basement for a new weapon. He hears Jake and Rich, and sees the office door close. Minutes later he returns to the elevator to see Rich alone, and they ride up together. The problem is that Jake had Rich’s name, and made no effort to get him either time, although when Milton came down he could have been a witness. Why not? He says that he didn’t know his next victim, that he kept forgetting to check. Maybe. And remember that curious scene when Gary had a tantrum because his mother would not witness his killing Bruce. Very strange. What was that all about? Everyone insisted that Gary loved games, that he wouldn’t have cheated, and yet, that was clearly an illegal move. And in front of Jake. Picture it: Gary and Jake enter a room where Bruce and his mother are and Gary uses the plastic knife to stab Bruce, but his mother won’t play, and Jake has left by then. Gary has a royal tantrum. Why? Because Maddie refused to play, something he already knew, or because Jake left prematurely? What would have happened if he had entered the kill in the computer and Maddie had witnessed?” He looked at Alexander and waited.

Alexander fidgeted, embarrassed again, and shook his head. “It would not have been allowed, not if Maddie had been taken out of the game.”

“But exactly what would have happened?” Charlie persisted.

“The computer would have said something to the effect that nonplayers wouldn’t be allowed to participate in any way, that Gary was out of line, and he could not make another attempt at murder with that particular dagger. Depending on who made the mistake, it might have added a penalty. Because it was Gary, it probably would have given Bruce a twelve- or twenty-four-hour reprieve, a time that Gary could not attack again. That’s all.”

Charlie nodded gravely. “And how unusual would it have been, to have a computer respond in that way?”

Alexander looked infinitely relieved now. He brightened, his eyes gleamed. “You just don’t know! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s reasoning! Human reasoning, not just number crunching! Jake would have been plenty impressed! Plenty!” He stopped abruptly and looked panic-stricken.

“Exactly,” Charlie said. “I’ve been listening, Alexander. I really have been.” He turned to Beth. “That day after Jake killed you in the garden, you wandered down to the greenhouse, didn’t you?” She nodded, her gaze fastened on him as if hypnotized. “Which door did you enter by?”

She moistened her lips and swallowed, then said, “I walked around and went in the end door.”

“So Gary and Jake were at the end nearest the house. And they both ran out when you entered. I wonder why. Jake had killed you; he knew you were no threat. And Gary knew you had overheard his murder; again, no threat. Why did they duck out? What were they carrying, Beth?”