The Collection (90 page)

"It's
been more recent than that, Adrian. Taggert is the most recent, but you weren't
ancient history. Maybe she even tried to blackmail you a bit, Adrian, and
that's why you were so glad to learn I'd killed her that you were willing to
help me beat the rap or make a getaway. Anyway--"

I
turned my eyes back to Taggert. His face didn't look much better than Adrian's.

I
said, "Adrian's right, Taggert. I can't prove a thing. I'm not too sure I
want to bother. But you might talk me out of this, with a pen and a paper and
full details-- including things like where you and Lola bought the gun, and
little details you'd have a lot of trouble changing your mind about if you
decided to claim the confession was under duress."

Taggert
said, "You're crazy, Wayne. I didn't have anything to do with whatever
Lola did or tried to do tonight. Even if you're telling the truth about
that."

"Okay,"
I told him, "that's fine with me. I didn't think you would, so--"

"Taggert!"
Adrian Carr was leaning forward in his chair. "Taggert, you fool! He
means
this. And what are you confessing to if you write it? Accessory before the
fact to a murder that never came off! With a good lawyer--"

I
said, "Don't argue with him, Adrian. I'd just as soon he didn't. Taggert,
get up and turn that radio on. Loud. A regular program, not the short-wave
band."

I
had to swing the muzzle of the gun dead center on his chest and let him see my
finger pretend to tighten slowly on the trigger, before he got shakily to his
feet. He backed over to the radio and turned the switch; I thought he was going
to try to do it without looking away from my face, but he didn't. He turned to
face the console to push the button for a broadcast station, and I looked
quickly at Adrian and winked.

A
little of the color came back into Adrian's face after that wink and I saw him
let out his breath slowly. The radio started to blare as the tubes warmed.
Taggert turned back and began to edge toward his chair, and Adrian started to
look scared again, though not quite so convincingly this time. But he didn't
really ham it up; there was enough of the real stuff left to carry over.

I
waited till Taggert was back standing in front of his chair, and I didn't
bother telling him to sit down; that was up to him. I asked, "Any last
words, either of you?"

"You
can't get away with this," Taggert said, but he didn't sound as though he
was convincing even himself. His voice slid upward almost to a question mark.

I
said, "I'm not expecting to. All three of us are going out the same door,
remember?"

Adrian
started to say something, but I was afraid he might say the wrong thing. I
said, "You're first, Adrian, because you came first with Lola, and besides
I want to save Taggert for the last. Are you ready?"

I
lifted the gun and sighted it. The radio came to the end of a number and the
announcer's voice cut in with a commercial. I said, "As soon as the music
starts again." I lowered the gun a few inches.

The
announcer's voice shouted on--it
was
a shout, with the radio that loud.
The commercial went on almost interminably, but it finally ended.

I
lifted the gun again, but this time Taggert yelled, "Wait! Don't.
I'll--I'll write it."

I
said, "Don't bother. To hell with you. I'd rather--" but Adrian came
in, begging me to let Taggert write and sign. Weak and shaky inside, I let
myself be talked into it. Taggert was sold by now; he was almost pathetically
eager in wanting to get to the desk and write out that confession. I let him,
finally.

He
signed it and I said, "Hand it to Adrian," and I kept the gun on him
while Adrian read it rapidly. Adrian said, "It's fine, Wayne. It's all
here. The only sad part is they can't send him up for long. A little while in
jail--and if this play goes over he'll have money when he comes out. They can't
do much to him."

I
said, "There's one thing
I
can do." I put the gun back in my
pocket and took the four steps that took me to Taggert, who was still standing
by the desk. He made only a half-hearted effort to get his hands up and went
down and out cold with the first punch I threw. There wasn't much satisfaction
in that, but there wasn't anything more I could do about it.

I
picked up his phone and called the police.

While
we waited, Adrian said, "Damn you, Wayne, did you
have
to scare me
to death after we got here? Couldn't you have tipped me off in advance? How'd I
know, for a while there, that you really weren't going to shoot both of
us?"

I
said, "You might have hammed it up, Adrian. You can't act, you know."

He
grinned weakly. He said, "I guess
you
can. Well, with him in jail
or out, Taggert's play goes on. Only I won't consult him about who gets the
lead. You still--I mean, did and do you really want it?"

I
said, "I guess I do. I don't really know right now. I'll let you know
after the police get through with me and I get over the hangover I'll have from
what I'm going to do after that. I'll let you know. I feel like--"

I
remembered the radio was still blaring; we'd both forgotten it. I went over and
shut it off and then turned to Adrian. I asked him, "What will the job
pay?"

He
laughed out loud. He said, "You'll be all right, boy. You're coming out of
it already."

I
had no premonition of horror to come. When I reported to work that evening I
had not the faintest inkling that I faced anything more startling than another
quiet night on a snap job.

It
was seven o'clock, just getting dark outside, when I went into the coroner's
office. I stood looking out the window into the gray dusk for a few minutes.

Out
there, I could see all the tall buildings of the college, and right across the
way was Kane Dormitory, where Jerry Grant was supposed to sleep. The same Grant
being myself.

Yes,
"supposed to" is right. I was working my way through the last year of
an ethnology course by holding down a night job for the city, and I hadn't
slept more than a five-hour stretch for weeks.

But
that night shift in the coroner's department
was
a snap, all right. A
few hours' easy work, and the rest of the time left over for study and work on
my thesis. I owed my chance to finish out that final year and get my doctor's
degree despite the fact that Dad had died, to the fact that I'd been able to
get that job.

Behind
me, I could hear Dr. Dwight Skibbine, the coroner, opening and closing drawers
of his desk, getting ready to leave. I heard his swivel chair squeak as he
shoved it back to stand up.

"Don't
forget you're going to straighten out that card file tonight, Jerry," he
said. "It's in a mess."

I
turned away from the window and nodded. "Any customers around
tonight?" I asked.

"Just
one. In the display case, but I don't think you'll have anybody coming in to
look at him. Keep an eye on that refrigeration unit, though. It's been acting
up a bit."

"Thirty-two?"
I asked just to make conversation, I guess, because we always keep the case at
thirty-two degrees.

He
nodded. "I'm going to be back later, for a little while. If Paton gets
here before I get back tell him to wait."

He
went out, and I went over to the card file and started to straighten it out. It
was a simple enough file--just a record of possessions found on bodies that
were brought into the morgue, and their disposal after the body was either
identified and claimed, or buried in potter's field--but the clerks on the day
shift managed to get the file tangled up periodically.

It took
me a little while to dope out what had gummed it up this time. Before I
finished it, I decided to go downstairs to the basement--the morgue proper--and
be sure the refrigerating unit was still holding down Old Man Fahrenheit.

It
was. The thermometer in the showcase read thirty-two degrees on the head. The
body in the case was that of a man of about forty, a heavy-set, ugly-looking
customer. Even as dead as a doornail and under glass, he looked mean.

Maybe
you don't know exactly how morgues are run. It's simple, if they are all
handled the way the Springdale one was. We had accommodations for seven
customers, and six of them were compartments built back into the walls, for all
the world like the sliding drawers of a file cabinet. Those compartments were arranged
for refrigeration.

But
the showcase was where we put unidentified bodies, so they could be shown
easily and quickly to anybody who came in to look at them for identification
purposes. It was like a big coffin mounted on a bier, except that it was made
of glass on all sides except the bottom.

That
made it easy to show the body to prospective identifiers, especially as we
could click a switch that threw on lights right inside the display case itself,
focused on the face of the corpse.

Everything
was okay, so I went back upstairs. I decided I would study a while before I
resumed work on the file. The night went more quickly and I got more studying
done if I alternated the two. I could have had all my routine work over with in
three hours and had the rest of the night to study, but it had never worked as
well that way.

I
used the coroner's secretary's desk for studying and had just got some books
and papers spread out when Mr. Paton came in. Harold Paton is superintendent of
the zoological gardens, although you would never guess it to look at him. He
looked like a man who would be unemployed eleven months of the year because
department store Santa Clauses were hired for only one month out of twelve.
True, he would need a little padding and a beard, but not a spot of make-up
otherwise.

"Hello,
Jerry," he said. "Dwight say when he was coming back?"

"Not
exactly, Mr. Paton. Just said for you to wait."

The
zoo director sighed and sat down.

"We're
playing off the tie tonight," he said, "and I'm going to take him."

He
was talking about chess, of course. Dr. Skibbine and Mr. Paton were both chess
addicts of the first water, and about twice a week the coroner phoned his wife
that he was going to be held up at the office and the two men would play a game
that sometimes lasted until well after midnight.

I
picked up a volume of
The Golden Bough
and started to open it to my
bookmark. I was interested in it, because
The Golden Bough
is the most
complete account of the superstitions and early customs of mankind that has ever
been compiled.

Mr.
Paton's eyes twinkled a little as they took in the title of the volume in my
hand.

"That
part of the course you're taking?" he asked.

I
shook my head. "I'm picking up data for my thesis from it. But I do think
it ought to be in a course on ethnology."

"Jerry,
Jerry," he said, "you take that thesis too seriously. Ghosts, ghouls,
vampires, werewolves. If you ever find any, bring them around, and I'll have
special cages built for them at the zoo. Or could you keep a werewolf in a
cage?"

You
couldn't get mad at Mr. Paton, no matter how he kidded you. That thesis was a
bit of a sore point with me. I had taken considerable kidding because I had
chosen as my subject, "The Origin and Partial Justification of
Superstitions." When some people razzed me about it, I wanted to take a
poke at them. But I grinned at Mr. Paton.

"You
shouldn't have mentioned vampires in that category," I told him.
"You've got them already. I saw a cageful the last time I was there."

"What?
Oh, you mean the vampire bats."

"Sure,
and you've got a unicorn too, or didn't you know that a rhinoceros is really a
unicorn? Except that the medieval artists who drew pictures of it had never
seen one and were guessing what it looked like."

"Of
course, but --"

There
were footsteps in the hallway, and he stopped talking as Dr. Skibbine came in.

"Hullo,
Harold," he said to Mr. Paton, and to me: "Heard part of what you
were saying, Jerry, and you're right. Don't let Paton kid you out of that
thesis of yours."

He went
over to his desk and got the chessmen out of the bottom drawer.

"I
can't outtalk the two of you," Mr. Paton said. "But say, Jerry, how
about ghouls? This ought to be a good place to catch them if there are any
running loose around Springdale. Or is that one superstition you're not
justifying?"

"Superstition?"
I said. "What makes you think that's--"

Then
the phone rang, and I went to answer it without finishing what I was going to
say.

When
I came away from the phone, the two men had the chess pieces set up. Dr.
Skibbine had the whites and moved the pawn to king's fourth opening.

"Who
was it, Jerry?" he asked.

"Just
a man who wanted to know if he could come in to look at the body that was
brought in this afternoon. His brother's late getting home."

Dr.
Skibbine nodded and moved his king's knight in answer to Mr. Paton's opening
move. Already both of them were completely lost in the game. Obviously, Mr.
Paton had forgotten what he had asked me about ghouls, so I didn't butt in to
finish what I had started to say.

I
let
The Golden Bough
go, too, and went to look up the file folder on the
unidentified body downstairs. If somebody was coming in to look at it, I wanted
to have all the facts about it in mind.

There
wasn't much in the folder. The man had been a tramp, judging from his clothes
and the lack of money in his pockets and from the nature of the things he did
have with him. There wasn't anything at all to indicate identification.