The Ax

30

I'm back in my office. Burton has gone, I've described the reason for his visit to Marjorie, I've had more conversation with Marjorie on the subject of the two murders than I wanted but I felt I shouldn't cut it short, and now I'm back in my office, and I'm shaking with the realization of the close call I've had.

These two dead men, and their link to job-hunting, could be a coincidence, that's true. Two might be a coincidence or not a coincidence, and pretty soon they're going to come to the conclusion that coincidence is the only answer that fits these two.

But not three.

If I'd found Garrett Blackstone. If he hadn't been given that tin can label job. If I'd shot him either time this week that I'd been to his house, Detective Burton and the other detectives would now have three job-hunting paper mill managerial types shot in the same state with the same gun, and it wouldn't be a coincidence, and they'd start thinking about possible motives, and they wouldn't rest until they found me.

The same gun. I've been incredibly stupid, and incredibly lucky. It never occurred to me that they could — or would think to — link these separate murders by showing they came from the same gun. (If Willis & Kendall's personnel man hadn't stuck his oar in, they might very well not have.)

But I don't know why I didn't think of it. I've seen so many cop shows on television, and so many movies, too, where they talk about ballistics and finding the gun that fired that particular bullet, and all that, but I never once made the connection. All I thought was, this gun has not been fired by anybody in over fifty years, it has never been fired anywhere on the North American continent, there's no record of its existence, so it's anonymous.

Even an anonymous gun, it seems, can leave a trail.

They could have four victims of that gun now, instead of two, except that the shooting in Massachusetts has already been solved, so nobody's going to compare that bullet with some bullets in Connecticut. And of course I didn't use the gun with Everett Dynes.

And I'm not going to be able to use it with the last resume, either.

What am I going to do? I can't use the Luger any more, not ever again. I don't have any other gun, and I don't know how I could get one without leaving an ownership trail. I know that criminals have ways to do that, but I don't live in their world, and if I tried to enter their world something bad would happen to me, I know that much.

A gun is so clean, so impersonal. It separates you, just a bit, from the event.

Can I stab somebody? Strangle? I don't see how I could do such things.

And I can't use the car again. Even apart from the difficulty of rigging another covering accident, and the suspicion I might arouse by having a second accident of that kind, even beyond all that, I know I couldn't do that again. Once was enough. More than enough.

And I certainly can't walk up to a total stranger with a glass in my hand and say, "Here, drink this."

What am I going to do? I've come this far, I can't stop now. Those deaths can't have been in vain. I've been given a warning, and I'll heed it. I have one resume to go, and then Fallon, and it's all over. One way or another, I'll do it, because I have to do it.

Not today, though. I have to deliver Marjorie to the New Variety this afternoon for her cashier job, and then pick her up this evening. It would be too difficult and too noticeable, now that we're talking to each other again, to alter our Sunday pattern by spending the whole day away; it would certainly come up in Tuesday's session with Longus Quinlan, and what would I say?

Monday. After I drop Marjorie at Dr. Carney's, on Monday, I'll drive over to New York State and study my last resume, and see what things look like. Monday, the ninth of June; I make a checkmark on the date on my desk calendar. Not to remind myself, I certainly won't need reminding, but to express to myself my determination to see this through.

I have to think of something.