The Two Timers

XV

Blaize Convery carried a tapering plastic cup of coffee to his desk and placed it carefully at the right-hand side.

He sat down on the creaking swing-chair and opened the desk’s flat central drawer. From it he took his pipe, tobacco pouch, lighter, pipe tamper and a bundle of white woolly cleaners. These he arranged in an orderly square, formating with the vaporing coffee cup, with the air of a master craftsman setting out his tools. He then opened a deep drawer, took out a thick oatmeal-colored file, and placed it in the center of the little quadrangle he had so carefully prepared. With all the necessary formalities completed, he gave a deep sigh of contentment and began to leaf through the file.

It had been a dull, routine sort of a day — most of it spent doing legwork on a case which had been successfully prosecuted a month earlier, but which had involved a mammoth tangle of legal loose-ends. He had been in and out of his car fifty times in the pursuit of three unimportant signatures, his back hurt and his feet felt swollen inside his shoes. But this was his part of the day — the extra hour he often took when his shift had officially ended, the hour in which he was free to follow his instincts along any ghost-trail they could discern.

He sipped his coffee, filled and lit his pipe, and allowed their subtle influences to carry him into realms of concentration where the yellowed sheets and blurred carbon characters seemed to come to life and whisper the innermost thoughts of the men whose names they preserved. Within minutes, Convery was caught up in his own form of time travel, and the big, crowded office bleached away as he burrowed into the past, paring it gently, layer by layer…

“Come on, Blaize,” a voice boomed in his ear. “Snap out of it, boy.”

Convery looked up, struggling to wrench his mind back into his body, and saw the sandy eyebrows and splay-toothed smile of Boyd Leyland, another lieutenant in the homicide division.

“Hi, Boyd.” Convery concealed his annoyance — Leyland was a good friend and an able cop. “I didn’t know you were on today.”

“I’m not!” Leyland always sounded triumphant. “I got Saturdays off this month, but I wouldn’t let the team down. Not me, boy, not me.”

Convery stared at him blankly for a second, then he remembered. This was October and the Saturday night bowling sessions were on again. “Oh, we’re bowling tonight.”.He failed to sound enthusiastic.

“Of course we are. Let’s go, boy!”

“Look, Boyd, I don’t think I can make it tonight.”

Leyland was instantly sympathetic. “Are they working the ass off you, too? Last week I had to do three…” He broke off as his gaze took in the file opened in front of Convery. His jaw dropped and he beckoned excitedly to a group of men standing nearby.

“Hey, fellows — he’s at it again! You know how old Professor Convery’s spending his Saturday night? He’s back on the Spiedel case!” Incredulity made Leyland’s voice almost falsetto. “He’s back on the Goddam Spiedel case!”

“I’m too beat to bowl tonight,” Convery announced defensively. “I just want to sit here.”

“Bull!” Leyland shot out his big red hands, closed the old file and dragged Convery out of his chair. “We need all the steady men we can get this year. The exercise’ll do you good, anyway.”

“All right, all right.”

Convery saw he had no chance of winning. While the others waited, he regretfully tidied up his desk then joined them as they rolled down the corridor towards the elevator. The noisy delight his workmates were taking in the prospects of an evening of bowling and beer failed to communicate itself to him. Yesterday he had talked to a guilty man.

Convery was coldly certain of Breton’s guilt, and he also now believed he would never be able to bring Breton to justice — but these were not the things which gnawed at his soul. It was the fact that he could not understand the nature of the crime.

Something very strange had happened in the Breton household nine years ago, and the effects of it were being felt to this day, flaring up to their own occult rhythm like the symptoms of an ineradicable disease. But what had happened? Convery had blunted his mental armory on the problem, and he was left with a baffled yearning to penetrate that household, to live there, to grill and sift and analyze until he knew both its members better than they knew themselves…

“Come on, Blaize.” Leyland opened the door of his car. “I’ll give you a ride to the alley.”

Convery glanced around the police parking lot, suddenly aware of the old icy churning in his belly. “No thanks. I’ll take my own — I might have to leave early.”

“Hop in,” Leyland commanded. “You won’t be leaving early, boy.”

Convery shook his head. “I might be leaving late, then. Go ahead — I’ll see you there.”

Leyland shrugged and folded himself into his car. Convery found his Plymouth in the rapidly growing dusk and slid in behind the wheel, with the siren-song loud in his ears. At the first intersection he swung away from behind Leyland’s car and gunned the Plymouth across town, fleeing as though his friends would come after him. They would not do that, of course, but they would be hurt and caustic; just as Gina had been when he’d walked out of the kids’ birthday party. But his demon was perched firmly on his shoulder, and his destiny was never to resist its blandishments.

Reaching the avenue in which the Bretons lived, Convery slowed down and drifted his car between the walls of trees with an almost silent engine. The big house was in complete darkness. Disappointment welled up in him as he brought the car to a halt. So the demon had deceived him, as had happened so many times in the past. Convery glanced at his watch and calculated he could reach the bowling alley in time to get away with a claim to have been filling up with gas. It was the sensible thing to do, and yet…

“Ah, hell!”

He exclaimed in disgust as he found himself getting out of the car to walk back to the house. Above him the darkening sky was teeming with meteorites, but they scarcely registered on his brain. The gravel of the drive crunched underfoot as he moved up the shadowed tunnel of shrubbery and along the side, past the porch.

He stepped onto the patio and surveyed the rear of the house. No lights there, either — which was what he had expected. The garage doors were open, showing that John Breton’s Turbo-Lincoln was gone and that Mrs. Breton’s sports model was still there. Obviously, the Bretons had gone out together. Convery flicked his teeth with a thumbnail. He had a definite impression that the Bretons did not go around much together, but there was nothing to stop them spending an evening in each other’s company if they wanted to try it out. There was certainly no law against it — which was not the case where snooping on private property was concerned.

Convery rocked on his heels, undecided, and was turning away when the kitchen door creaked faintly.

He went closer and saw it was ajar and moving slightly in the evening breeze. It swung wide open, emitting a billow of warm air, when he pushed it gingerly with his toe. At last provided with a vestige of a reason for being there, Convery went into the dark kitchen and put on the lights.

“Anybody there?” he shouted, feeling slightly self-conscious.

A frenzy of hammering broke out immediately in the upper part of the house, and he thought he could hear a woman’s cries. Flicking lights on as he went, Convery ran up the stairs and followed the sound to a front bedroom. The hammering was coming from a closet. He tried to open it and discovered unbreakable fishing line lapped around the handles. The steel-hard knots flaked his fingernails away as he tried to open them. He stood back and kicked one of the handles completely off the door. A fraction of a second later, Kate Breton was in his arms, and the arctic exultation was pouring through him as he realized the demon was going to be kind to him after all.

“Mrs. Breton,” he said urgently. “What’s going on here? Who locked you in the closet?”

“Jack Breton,” she said. Her eyes were empty, drained.

“You mean your husband did this?”

“No — not my husband. It was…” She stopped, drew a shuddering breath and he saw awareness flood back into her, subtly altering the lines of her face. Invisible barriers clanged into place between them.

“Tell me what happened, Mrs. Breton.”

“You’ve got to help me, Lieutenant.” She was still afraid, but the period of mindless panic had passed. “I think my husband has been kidnapped. He’s at Lake Pasco. Will you drive me there? Will you drive me to Lake Pasco?”

“But…”

“Have mercy on me, Lieutenant — I’m asking you for my husband!”

“Let’s go,” he said grimly. An opportunity had passed, but he had a feeling that Lake Pasco was the place where he would finally learn to talk with his hands.