Read Online ARM by Larry Niven - Free Book Online Page B

computer.”
    “Oh?” Porter thought that over. “Yah. Janice could have done that just in case there were some notes in there, notes on Ed Sinclair's ramscoop field equations. But look: X could have wiped those tapes, too. Stealing the generator doesn't do him any good unless he wipes it out of Uncle Ray's computer.”
    “Shall we get back to the case against X?”
    “With pleasure.” He dropped into a chair. Watching his face smooth out, I added, and with great relief .
    I said, “Let's not call him X. Call him K for killer.” We already had an Ecks involved ... and his family name probably had been X once upon a time. “We've been assuming K set up Sinclair's time compression effect as an alibi.”
    Porter smiled. “It's a lovely idea. Elegant , as a mathematician would say. Remember, I never saw the actual murder scene. Just chalk marks.”
    “It was—macabre. Like a piece of surrealism. A very bloody practical joke. K could have deliberately set it up that way if his mind is twisted enough.”
    “If he's that twisted, he probably escaped by running himself down the garbage disposal.”
    “Pauline Urthiel thought he might be a psychotic. Someone who worked with Sinclair who thought he wasn't getting enough credit.” Like Peterfi, I thought, or Pauline herself.
    “I like the alibi theory.”
    “It bothers me. Too many people knew about the machine. How did he expect to get away with it? Lawrence Ecks knew about it. Peterfi knew about it. Peterfi knew enough about the machine to rebuild it from scratch. Or so he says. You and Janice saw it in action.”
    “Say he's crazy, then. Say he hated Uncle Ray enough to kill him and then set him up in a makeshift Dali painting. He'd still have to get out .” Porter was working his hands together. The muscles bulged and rippled in his arms. “If the elevator hadn't been locked and on Uncle Ray's floor, there wouldn't be a problem.”
    “So?”
    “So. Janice came home, called the elevator up, and locked it. She does that without thinking. She had a bad shock last night. This morning she didn't remember.”
    “And this evening it could come back to her.”
    Porter looked up sharply. “I wouldn't—”
    “You'd better think long and hard before you do. If Ordaz is sixty percent sure of her now, he'll be a hundred percent sure when she lays that on him.”
    Porter was working his muscles again. In a low voice he said, “It's possible, isn't it?”
    “Sure. It makes things a lot simpler, too. But if Janice said it now, she'd sound like a liar.”
    “But it's possible .”
    “I give up. Sure, it's possible.”
    “Then who's our killer?”
    There wasn't any reason I shouldn't consider the question. It wasn't my case at all. I did, and presently I laughed. “Did I say it'd make things simpler? Man, it throws the case wide open ! Anyone could have done it. Uh, anyone but Steeves. Steeves wouldn't have had any reason to come back this morning.”
    Porter looked glum. “Steeves wouldn't have done it anyway.”
    “He was your suggestion.”
    “Oh, in pure mechanical terms, he's the only one who didn't need a way out. But you don't know Steeves. He's a big, brawny guy with a beer belly and no brains. A nice guy, you understand, I like him, but if he ever killed anyone, it'd be with a beer bottle. And he was proud of Uncle Ray. He liked having Raymond Sinclair in his building.”
    “Okay, forget Steeves. Is there anyone you'd particularly like to pin it on? Bearing in mind that now anyone could get in to do it.”
    “Not anyone. Anyone in the elevator computer, plus anyone Uncle Ray might have let up.”
    “Well?”
    He shook his head.
    “You make a hell of an amateur detective. You're afraid to accuse anyone.”
    He shrugged, smiling, embarrassed.
    “What about Peterfi? Now that Sinclair's dead, he can claim they were equal partners in the, uh, time machine. And he tumbled to it awfully fast. The moment Valpredo told him Sinclair was dead, Peterfi was his