Flatlander - Larry Niven [62]
“How about the apartment below? I presume it has a different set of elevators.”
“Yes, of course. It belongs to Howard Rodewald, the owner of this building—of this chain of buildings, in fact. At the moment he is in Europe. His apartment has been loaned to friends.”
“There’s no stairs down to there?”
“No. We searched these apartments thoroughly.”
“All right. We know the killer had a nylon line, because he left a strand of it on the generator. Could he have climbed down to Rodewald’s balcony from the roof?”
“Thirty feet? Yes, I suppose so.” Ordaz’s eyes sparked. “We must look into that. There is still the matter of how he got past the camera and whether he could have gotten inside once he was on the balcony.” “Yah.”
“Try this, Gil. Another question. How did he expect to get away?” He watched for my reaction, which must have been satisfying, because it was a damn good question. “You see, if Janice Sinclair murdered her great-uncle, then neither question applies. If we are looking for someone else, we have to assume that his plans misfired. He had to improvise.”
“Uh huh. He could still have been planning to use Rodewald’s balcony. And that would mean he had a way past the camera …”
“Of course he did. The generator.”
Right. If he came to steal the generator … and he’d have to steal it regardless, because if we found it here, it would shoot his alibi sky high. So he’d leave it on while he trundled it up the stairs. Say it took him a minute; that’s only an eighth of a second of normal time. One chance in eight that the camera would fire, and it would catch nothing but a streak … “Uh oh.”
“What is it?”
“He had to be planning to steal the machine. Is he really going to lower it to Rodewald’s balcony by rope?”
“I think it unlikely,” Ordaz said. “It weighed more than fifty pounds. He could have moved it upstairs. The frame would make it portable. But to lower it by rope …”
“We’d be looking for one hell of an athlete.”
“At least you will not have to search far to find him. We assume that your hypothetical killer came by elevator, do we not?”
“Yah.” Nobody but Janice Sinclair had arrived by the roof last night.
“The elevator was programmed to allow a number of people to enter it and to turn away all others. The list is short. Doctor Sinclair was not a gregarious man.”
“You’re checking them out? Whereabouts, alibis, and so forth?”
“Of course.”
“There’s something else you might check on,” I said. But Andrew Porter came in, and I had to postpone it.
Porter came casual, in a well-worn translucent one-piece jumpsuit he must have pulled on while running for a taxi. The muscles rolled like boulders beneath the loose fabric, and his belly muscles showed like the plates on an armadillo. Surfing muscles. The sun had bleached his hair nearly white and burned him as brown as Jackson Bera. You’d think a tan that dark would cover for blood draining out of a face, but it doesn’t.
“Where is she?” he demanded. He didn’t wait for an answer. He knew where the ‘doc was, and he went there. We trailed in his wake.
Ordaz didn’t push. He waited while Porter looked down at Janice, then punched for a readout and went through it in detail. Porter seemed calmer then, and his color was back. He turned to Ordaz and said, “What happened?”
“Mr. Porter, did you know anything of Dr. Sinclair’s latest project?”
“The time compressor thing? Yah. He had it set up in the living room when I got here yesterday evening—right in the middle of that circle of dead grass. Any connection?”
“When did you arrive?”
“Oh, about six. We had some drinks, and Uncle Ray showed off his machine. He didn’t tell us much about it. Just showed what it could do.” Porter showed us flashing white teeth. “It worked. That thing can compress time! You could live your whole life in there in two months! Watching him move around inside the field was like trying to keep track of a hummingbird. Worse. He struck a match—”
“When did you leave?”
“About eight. We had dinner at Cziller’s House