Alienist. Laurence M. Janifer
dinner clothes still lying around my hotel room—I rang the little bell-announce, and Euglane opened the door just as quickly as before. I wondered briefly if he hid himself right behind the damn door when he was expecting visitors—twice I’d been early, and twice there’d been no delay at all. But probably not; call him speedy and hospitable.
His arms were fully extended—relaxed—but his legs weren’t; when tightened up he had rather short, almost stumpy legs, capable of carrying him nicely upright. He didn’t look much different, if you passed the eyes, which were wide and staring, and didn’t notice the fact that he was breathing just a bit raggedly.
I said: “What’s happened?” and stepped inside. He shut and locked the door behind me, and leaned against it, facing me in the entry hall.
“His name is Harris France,” he said, “and I’m horribly afraid that he’s killed someone.”
I nodded, and went on into the big living room I’d seen before He followed me, and when I sat down on the same couch he sat down in the same big chair. He twined his arms over his head. I nodded again.
“Let’s take it a step at a time,” I said. “It will make more sense that way. Who is this Harris France, who do you think he’s killed, why do you think so, and why aren’t you sure?”
That seemed an exhaustive enough list to start with; it left out only the question: Why me? which could wait a few minutes. Euglane stared at me, his arms twining and untwining. Nervousness? Panic? Worry?
“Of course you’re right,” he said. He let his arms fall. Far down by the carpet, his hands clenched and unclenched. “I’ll try to—I have a patient, whose name is Harris France. He presented with symptoms of—well, never mind, never mind. We’ve been working for six months. Almost exactly six months. Progress has been slow; he has some—intractable beliefs. Apparently intractable. They interfere with his perception of the normal world, and—Knave, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“In order to get anywhere,” I said, “it is necessary to start from somewhere. I’ve got to find out where the somewhere is.”
“Right,” he said. “Right. He came here this afternoon. Not his usual appointment, but he called and said he had an emergency. I was able to clear an hour. He told me that his companion was lying dead in their home.”
“He killed his companion?” I said.
The arms went up, twining again. “He doesn’t know,” Euglane said. “He told me he felt sleepy—it’s an escape for him, it’s been happening for a month or more now. He went to his bed and lay down, and remembers nothing. He thinks he slept about three hours. That would not be unusual. When he woke and went into his living room, he found her body. He told me she had been killed by a beamer, fired from a distance of between four and eight feet, tightest focus and maximum power. The beam had gone through her heart. He knows little more. He called me, he says, within minutes—when he was able to function at all. The shock was massive.”
“He noticed a good deal, for a man in a state of shock,” I said. “Weapon, range, focus, power. He must have spent some time examining the body.”
“He would recognize such things rapidly,” Euglane said. “He’s a Detective-Colonel with the Homicide detachment of the police.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It took a little while, but some facts emerged. Let me give you a few of them in summary, just for openers:
Harris France: age 53, career police officer, current rank Detective-Colonel, head of Homicide Four (which was the—reasonably extensive—Lavoisier section of Ravenal Scholarte, plus twenty square blocks of expensive houses, and a small park) for City Two. Twenty-two years with the police, steadily climbing the ladder. Bright, a little slow physically, medium height and a tad overweight. Living with Cornelia Rasczak for the past nine years; before that he’d been a bachelor, with a few short-term liaisons here and there but nothing serious. He’d had some kind of unhappy love-affair in his early twenties, and the details, Euglane told me, were private—“if at all possible,” he added.
“I won’t pry if I don’t have to,” I said. As it happens, I never did have to. “This Cornelia—”
“Rasczak,” he said. “Yes. She’s the one whose body he just found.”
I nodded. By then we had coffee in front of us. Euglane had pulled his arms in, and kept extending them and pulling them back. It was a little disconcerting, but at least both arms changed at the same time. I wondered if he could extend only one, and put the question aside for a more peaceful moment.
“He wouldn’t have heard the beamer,” I said. “Even awake, with a shut door between them, he might not have heard it. But he would have heard somebody come in. When he went to sleep, nobody else was in the house?”
“Just Cornelia,” he said. “Knave, I’m not used to violence. It’s not—a part of our natures, really. Gielli are not hunters, not eaters of animal life.”
“It isn’t easy,” I said. “But surely some of your patients—”
“Troubles in ideation,” he said. “Emotional difficulties. There is violence in the mix, of course there is. For humans, violence is a given, like rigidity or love. But it’s—a factor. Not an object in itself. It’s an idea, a drive.”
“Not a thing lying right out there in actual, physical, bloody existence,” I said.
“Exactly,” he said. His arms shrank and lengthened, rapidly. “I tried to persuade Harris to stay. I told him I would get help, we would discuss this fully, we would conclude—something. I was—not very effective.” His arms twined. His eyes shut and opened. “Knave, I was ill. Physically ill.” He made that sound again, the moan. “Violence,” he said.
I nodded. “I’m a little easier with it,” I said. “You don’t have to carry this by yourself. You can hand it off. And just by the way—why haven’t you handed it off?”
“But I called you.”
“I don’t mean me,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, in fact. The police will know—probably know already—”
“He called them from this house,” Euglane said. “He explained that the shock had been very great, and he had had to come here and talk for a bit before being able to make the call. He had wanted to try to find out what had happened, he said. But we could not find that out, Knave.”
“The police will,” I said. “He was an important man there. They’ll be extra-careful. They’ll figure it out. You don’t need me.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “The police—this will be a subject for the news readers. Of course it will. And the police will be anxious to make clear that Harris committed this horror. They will do everything possible to convict him.”
I opened my mouth, thought for half a second, and then nodded. “They’re afraid of being accused of covering up for one of their own,” I said. “If everything looks clear and simple—”
“They’ll fight to keep it simple,” he said. “Yes. It’s because he’s an important police figure that we can’t leave it to them to investigate thoroughly enough. They’ll see what they want to see—as humans do a good deal—and that will be the end of it.”
“So you want me to investigate.”
“I want you to find out what really did happen, Knave,” he said. “Someone has to.”
I did not rush eagerly into agreement. I knew a few police officials in City Two, and they were no fonder of me than most police officials are, anywhere. I am not a detective by trade, and taking apart a murder was not my favorite occupation.
“There’s no doubt it was murder?” I said at one point.
“No doubt at all,” Euglane said. “The only beamer found in