Flatlander - Larry Niven [128]
“All right, it’s a stupid suggestion, but it’s the best I’ve got. If we can put a disappearing mirror out there, we’ve cleared Naomi, haven’t we?”
“Absolutely. I think we have enough to get her out of the holding tank now pending a second trial.”
“Get together with the mayor,” I told him. “I expect he’s inclined to be reasonable.”
“Good.” Boone went back to eating. He had nearly finished that huge plate.
I said, “A mirror can be a thin film stretched on a frame, can’t it? If the killer was a lunie cop, he could just pull it apart and stash it. Penzler said three hundred to four hundred meters from his window, but the mirror would be only half that far … hey. That tilted rock was 190 meters away. And everyone else would be searching in the wrong place.”
“Tilted rock?”
“Futz, yes! There’s a big boulder out there 190 meters from his window. Chris thought he was looking past it, but he couldn’t say which side. The mirror was probably propped on the rock!”
Boone’s deep-set eyes seemed to withdraw further. He ate steadily while he thought. Then, “Very good. Did you have a particular suspect in mind?”
I knew of a policewoman who had been involved in yesterday’s search for Chris Penzler. I knew she had a liking for flatlanders. In her love affairs (plural or singular?) she was possessive in a fashion more typical of lunie than flatland custom. She might have involved herself with Chris Penzler, then been rejected by him, at least by her own standards.
She was thoroughly familiar with the Hovestraydt City computer from age ten. If Naomi could have taken a message laser without leaving a record, why not Laura Drury? She could get into an empty apartment the same way.
A lunie cop could have committed the later, successful murder. The moon was swarming with them. The killer could have joined the swarm before or after the murder, given that we didn’t have an exact time of death.
But Laura had been at the desk the night Penzler was shot in his bath. Hadn’t she? When had she come on duty? Would she have had time to go outside for a folding mirror? The killer had been in a hurry that night …
“Hamilton?”
“Sorry. Yeah, I’ve got suspects, but I still don’t have a disappearing mirror.”
“This isn’t a courtroom.”
“I know. Keep thinking about the mirror. I’m not a lunie; I’m handicapped.”
I returned to my room after the afternoon session.
Outside my window the dreadful alien light of lunar noon was somewhat softened by filter elements in the window. It was still too bright. I tried commands on the window until I got it dimmed a bit.
By now I could have picked out the tilted rock while blind drunk. A hundred ninety yards away … Chris had seen a human figure three to four hundred meters away, past the tilted rock. I looked out at the tilted rock and tried to recall the darkness of a week ago, when Chris Penzler had glimpsed … what?
An image in a mirror?
The distances were close enough. One hundred ninety meters to a mirror on the tilted rock, another hundred ninety back. Chris had said three to four hundred meters. More reason to think he’d seen a lunie. A lunie taller than the Belters Penzler was used to would seem closer.
He’d gone out to look at the tilted rock. Had he found what he was after before someone had found him? Probably not; he’d left us only a puzzle written in frozen blood.
Alan Watson and I hadn’t found much, either …
My phone was calling me.
It was Boone. “The court has ordered the lady revived,” he told me. “She’s already out. She’ll be returned to Hovestraydt City around noon tomorrow. I was told she would need to recuperate overnight in the Copernicus hospital.”
Why? But she was out; that was what counted. “Is she awake now?”
“Yes, I’ve talked to her.”
“Okay, I’ll—”
“Please don’t call her, Hamilton. She sounded tired. She wouldn’t give me visual.”
“Um. Okay. What’s the situation with apartments?