Murder on the Aisle

6

8:47 P.M.

Who would have thought that a candy ass like Richard Dunphy would have had the punch he did, Tobin thought as he lay back on the leatherette couch in the cheap upstairs dressing room.

One of the stagehands had gotten him the ice pack that now rode Tobin’s face like a hideous rubber growth.

But that wasn’t what was troubling Tobin. He’d been in plenty of brawls in his time. They only hurt for the first twenty-four hours; then they were just embarrassing. People got the wrong idea about you. Mistook you for a jerk. Gosh, who could ever think Tobin was a jerk?

No, what was troubling Tobin was the fact that he was thinking about Dunphy. Thinking fondly about Dunphy.

In his mind now he saw the two of them back in ’64, when they’d first met, as freshmen, at City College. They’d both been attending a showing of Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country, which some twinky professor who preferred foreign directors was saying good things about but in a twinky professor way. “It’s, um, a cut above Roy Rogers, but it’s a long way from Antonioni.”

Antonioni! That moron couldn’t direct traffic, let alone good films!

So Tobin, even then a mild-mannered and laid-back type, verbally attacked the professor with the ferocity of an Inquisition cardinal stumbling on a den of sin.

And before he was through, this much taller and quieter-spoken kid he’d seen around the film department a lot jumped in and started verbally pummeling the twinky professor, too, though in a somewhat more respectable manner.

That was how they met and, man, had they been good friends, the best friends in the world, and how did you get from there to here — to wrestling around on the floor in front of a live audience while the videotape was rolling?

He was just about to get up and get himself a drink when the knock came.

He had been deep enough in his memories that the knock had a startling quality, almost the quality of a summons. He raised his head — the beating he’d taken working with his day-long hangover to give him a headache of bitter hunger — and looked at the door.

“Who is it?” he called.

No answer.

Or no verbal answer anyway. But there was a sound. A sound of something falling against the door.

Instantly he knew that something was wrong. Dropping the ice pack on the dressing table, he went to the door and yanked it open.

And Richard fell into his arms.

Tobin got only a glimpse of Richard’s face but even that brief look told him of Richard’s condition.

By the time he’d dragged the man to the couch, he’d had his first good look at the knife sticking out of Richard’s back.

Dagger.

Blood.

Jesus.

“Richard, Richard,” Tobin began to say. His voice was like a mewl, some primitive human sound that tried uselessly to articulate shock and grief and dread.

“Richard,” he said again.

He had him face-down on the couch. Now he was afraid to move him. He crawled down Richard’s long body to where his face lay turned up.

“Richard,” Tobin said.

Richard had one eye open. Tobin imagined he saw recognition in it.

“Richard,” Tobin said. “Who did this to you?”

But when Richard tried to talk, blood bubbled from his mouth and then his eye closed.

Tobin went berserk. “Richard! Goddammit! Listen to me! None of our arguing meant shit to me! We’re still good friends! Still good friends, Richard!”

And then he began to shake him, as if life could fill Richard’s lungs, and start his heart again, if only Tobin shook him long enough and hard enough.

Finally, Tobin’s eyes fell on the common kitchen knife sticking up out of Richard’s back.

There was the culprit!

Maybe Richard would start breathing again if only Tobin could pull it out.

So Tobin bent down and put one hand against Richard’s back for leverage and wrapped the other hand around the wooden handle of the knife.

He was just pulling it out, his hands covered with blood by now, when Michael Dailey and Sarah Nichols appeared in the doorway.

Sarah Nichols screamed, “My God, Michael! Tobin’s killed him!”