the move with the play, competing for the best view. The players didn’t even have uniforms. Both teams wore a ragtag mix of different colors. Obviously, you had to be local to know which team was which. The paramilitaries were well equipped though. With camouflage suits and the ever-present AK-47s, they patrolled in pairs.
One thing the agent may have underestimated, Fritz thought. Unless he actually ran directly in and out, thereby attracting attention, it would take more than ten or fifteen seconds to grab the sack and get back to the jungle. All in all, this was not a good deal. If it weren’t for the quinine ... Fritz withdrew his hand and allowed the vines to settle over him again. He had to get as much of an advantage as he could, so his next move would be to slip around through the jungle to the home team side. When the game ended, he would have to be as close to their bench as possible. Now, he mouthed silently to himself, which side has the home team bench?
?
Since there are only two benches, one on either side of the field, Fritz Lang has a fifty-fifty chance of picking the home team one correctly, but logic should improve the odds considerably. How can he tell which bench is most likely to be the home team’s?
First Impressions Revised
Of the four people at the round conference table, it was not hard to tell that the one in charge was the woman with straight, gray hair, the one with the sharply tailored uniform and the double loop of gold cord on her shoulder. She was a large woman, but the ease with which she carried her body demonstrated her obvious comfort with command. Across from her, two of the others, no milquetoasts themselves, showed their respect, addressing the large woman only as “Chief Voltz.” Not “Chief” or “Ma’am,” but “Chief Voltz,” as if a natural bond connected her title and her name. The two were Detective First Grade Levitt Furst and Chief Medical Examiner Marjorie Schenk. They were in civilian clothes.
The fourth person, like the chief, was in uniform. He was a balding man with glasses who somehow managed to look like he was sitting beside and behind his boss at the same time. The man was as slight as the chief was large and, in an earlier time, would never have made the height requirements for a police force. His title was Office Assistant to the Chief, and his name was Mervyn Rivers, although he was widely known at headquarters as “Miss Brooks.”
The meeting had been going on for thirty minutes already and Rivers had yet to say anything. It looked, too, as if any opportunity to contribute would soon end, for Chief Voltz had just made an expansive terminating gesture with her arm to look at her watch.
“Press conference in five minutes.” She held Furst and Schenk alternately with her gaze. “It could be one of the most important we’ve held in the past several years. Unless I can offer a reason for them to think otherwise, the press is going to have a police scandal to drool over. I don’t have to tell you the headlines: ‘Precinct Captain Handcuffs and Strangles Wife. Then Shoots Self!’ Of course,” she added, bitterly, “the fact that he is – was – the first black captain in the history of the force is icing on the cake. As if that’s not enough, the wife’s white, and – and – she was having an affair! A mess!”
She drew a long, audible breath, then exhaled even more noisily. “Once more,” she said. “Tell me one more time.”
Detective Furst opened his notebook, although he knew the details by heart. It helped him detach his eyes from those of his boss. He began. “The driver waits by the sidewalk at 7:15 this morning, like every other morning. When Max doesn’t show up, he goes to the door. It’s open. Max and Beatty had a small den just off the front foyer. Place for reading, watching TV, and that. He looks in there and they’re both dead. Or look dead, anyway. He calls ... er ... how much detail do you want, Chief Voltz? Do you want me to ...”
“Keep going.” Chief Voltz swept her watch arm round again. “I’ll interrupt if I have to.”
“Yes.” Furst cleared his throat. “I arrived on the scene at 7:48 with ...”
“Never mind who else. What did you see? First impression.”
Furst cleared his throat again. “First impression is murder/suicide. Beatty is on the floor, her back to the door. Of course, the first thing I see is the cuffs. She’s cuffed behind her back.” The detective looked at the chief uneasily. “They’re Max’s cuffs, Chief Voltz. Or at least ... well, they’re our issue, and his prints are on them.”
The chief’s expression did not change. “Keep going,” she said again.
“There are heavy welts and marks around her neck. We found a kid’s skipping rope underneath her. What ... what it looks like ... is he cuffed her and then ... it looks like he choked her.”
“And Max?” Underneath the gold braid, the chief rotated her shoulder slightly, a habit of hers when she was becoming impatient. “Ate his gun then, right?”
Detective Furst was not finding this easy. “It appears he put the barrel in his mouth and ... he was lying a few feet away. We estimate it all happened between about 10:00 last night and midnight.” He looked at Marjorie Schenk for confirmation.
“That’s right, Chief Voltz,” the medical examiner picked up the narrative. “The thermostat was set unusually high in the house and the heat made it hard to be more precise than that.”
Schenk paused until Voltz nodded to go on.
“Everything I found is consistent with the interpretation of events as Detective Furst describes them.” Marjorie Schenk tended to lapse into a witness-box style at moments like these.
“The entry and exit wounds on Captain Winters ... er ... Max ... are consistent with self-inflicted harm. Entry in roof of the mouth. Exit at the top of the skull with significant damage. The top and back of the skull are pretty much destroyed.”
“He used a dum-dum?” the chief wanted to know.
“We found it in the wall, Chief Voltz.” Detective Furst interjected. “Too smashed up to be sure, but it looks like it.”
Voltz sighed. “What next? Now we’ve got an upper-level member of the force with illegal bullets.” She sighed again. “Go on, Marjorie.”
“Except for the cause of death factors, there are no other wounds or marks at all on Cap–, Max. The same is true for the wife. No marks except for the ones on her neck, but they’re significant. Intense pressure applied just below the larynx.”
“Then he didn’t kill her.” The room went starkly silent. It was “Miss Brooks.” The others looked at him and then at each other as if they had heard an echo.
“Miss Brooks” carried on, eyes fixed firmly on the surface of the table. “It’s evident Captain Winters did not strangle Mrs. Winters. In fact, what is more likely is that a third person killed them both, and has made it appear to be a murder/suicide. Perhaps to embarrass the force. That’s only my opinion, of course.”
?
On what basis does “Miss Brooks” conclude – correctly – that Captain Max Winters did not strangle his wife?
