"He seems to have been murdered." Moffat's eyes flickered sideways
along his passenger's wide shoulders, down to the thick wrists and
hands. "We'll go to headquarters first, if you don't mind, and you can
talk to Inspector Harries."
In the following time, at the office, Kintyre answered many questions.
Inspector Harries seemed to have little doubt who his corpse was, but
much uncertainty about everything else.
"Bruce Lombardi. Age twenty-four, did you say? Five feet nine, slender
build, brown eyes, curly brown hair--m-hm. Did he wear glasses?"
"Yes. He was nearsighted. Horn rims."
"What kind of clothes did he ordinarily pick?"
"Anything he got his hands on. He was a sloppy dresser. I remember--no,
never mind."
"Please tell me, Dr. Kintyre. It may have some bearing."
"Hardly. This was about five years ago. I was an assistant bucking
for an instructorship, he was a freshman with a major in my
department--history, did I tell you? There was some kind of scholastic
tea or something--semiformal--you know. He showed up in a secondhand
tweed jacket and an old pair of khaki wash pants. He honestly thought
they were suitable for--Never mind. It seemed funny at the time."
Kintyre stubbed out his cigarette (the fifth, sixth, twentieth?) and
took a deep breath. He was letting this run away with him, he thought.
He was yattering like an old woman, shaken into brainlessness. It was
not as if he had never encountered death before.
He groped toward the teaching of the dojo, the judo school. Judo
is only in part a sport; it is also a philosophy, the Gentle Way,
with many aspects, and the first thing to learn is to relax utterly.
The passive man is prepared for anything, for he can himself become
anything.
But it was an unreal attempt. Kintyre's interest in judo was a
superficial growth of a few years; his roots lay in the West. He
understood with sudden bleakness why Bruce's death had so clamped on
him: once again someone he cared for was gone, and the horror he had
borne for two decades stirred toward awakening.
"Don't you feel well, Dr. Kintyre?"
Harries leaned over the desk, politely concerned. "I'm sorry to put you
to a strain like this. If you want to rest a while--"
"No." Kintyre mustered a degree of steadiness. "I was a bit shaken,
but--Go ahead. If Bruce really was murdered, I certainly want to give
you any help I can finding who did it."
The inspector regarded him thoughtfully. "You and he were pretty close,
weren't you?"
"In a way. He was almost eleven years younger than I, and had lived
a--limited life. Not sheltered in the usual sense, his family being
poor, but limited. And he was such a peaceful fellow, and his life
since entering college had been mostly books. It made him seem even
younger."
Kintyre sighed. "We got to be about as friendly as one can get under
such circumstances," he finished. "Maybe I looked on him as a son. Not
being married, I can't be sure of that."
"Did he ever say anything which led you to believe that he might be in
serious trouble?"
"No. Absolutely not. That is, I knew his older brother hung--hangs
around with a dubious crowd over in San Francisco, and it distressed
him, but he never implied anything really bad was involved."
"Let's see." Harries looked at some notes. "I gather he left his,
uh, girl friend's place about six P.M. Saturday, telling her he had
business over in the City and she shouldn't wait up. She got worried
and checked with you Sunday evening. And he was found by a patrol car
this morning, at daybreak, on the bank of the old frontage road, near
the Ashby Avenue turnoff."
"You've worked fast," said Kintyre. _Or did I tell you all this?_ he
wondered. _There are a few minutes which I remember only hazily. I was
so busy fighting myself._
"What did you do over the weekend?" asked Harries in a casual tone.
"Oh, let's see--Saturday morning I puttered around down at the yacht
harbor, doing some work on my boat. I went home in the afternoon,
graded papers and so on, went out at night and had a few beers with a
friend--Dr. Levinson of the physiology department. Sunday morning I
took a sail on the Bay, and later finished my paperwork. Shortly after
Miss Towne had called me, I was invited over to Gerald Clayton's suite
at the Fairhill. We had some drinks and talked till quite late. This
morning I turned in my last reports to the University, came home, and
was horsing around with Trig Yamamura when your man arrived."
"You seem pretty well alibied," smiled Harries. "Not that we suspect
anyone on this side of the Bay."
"Why not?"
Harries' mouth tightened. "Dr. Kintyre, you'll undoubtedly be asked a
great many more questions in the next several days. Get the worst over
with now. Then go out with some friends and have a lot more drinks.
That's my advice."
They shook hands, feeling it was a somehow theatrical gesture, and thus
being embarrassed without knowing how to avoid it. Moffat drove Kintyre
through miles of city, down to that place in Oakland where the dead man
was kept.
They entered a chill room. Kintyre took the lead, compulsively. He went
to the sheeted thing and uncovered it.