Plot It Yourself

So at five-thirty I pressed the button in the vestibule, the click came, and I opened the door and entered. I was ready for the garlic and took a deep breath as I headed for the stairs. My opening line was on my tongue. Three flights up I turned to the front, and there, at the open door where Mrs Jacobs and the boy had awaited me on my previous visit, I was again awaited, but not by them. In the dim light I took two steps before I recognized him, then stopped. We spoke simultaneously, and spoke the same words.

“Not you,” we said.

I knew. As Jane Ogilvy would have put it, a fact felt though not perceived. The presence there of Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide West might have meant any one of a dozen things-one of the kids had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, or Jacobs had killed his wife, or one of them was merely being questioned about some other death by violence-but I knew. It had to be. That was why I said, “Not you.”

“I’ve been here five minutes,” Purley said. “Just five minutes, and here you come. Jumping Jesus!”

“I’ve only been here five seconds,” I said, “and here you are. I came to see a man named Simon Jacobs on business. Please tell him I’m here.”

“What kind of business?”

“A private kind.”

His jaw worked. “Look, Goodwin.” He has been known to call me Archie, but in different circumstances. “I come here on a job. If I’m somewhere on a job and someone asks me who is the last person on God’s earth I would want to show up, I would name you. What I’d like, I’d like to tell you to go somewhere and scratch your ass with your elbow. A man’s body is found. He was murdered. We get him identified. I go to where he lived to ask some questions, and I no sooner get started than the bell rings and I go to the door, and it’s you, and you say you came to see him on business. When you come to see a corpse on business, I know what to expect. I’m asking you, what kind of business?”

“I told you. Private and personal.”

“When did you learn Jacobs had been killed? And how? He was identified only an hour ago.”