03-Flatlander by Larry Niven

Author:Larry Niven [Niven, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1995-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I had the taxi drop us at the lobby level of the Rodewald Building. When I told Porter I wanted a ride in the elevator, he just nodded.

The elevator to Raymond Sinclair’s penthouse was a box with a seat in it. It would have been comfortable for one, cozy for two good friends. With me and Porter in it, it was crowded. Porter hunched his knees and tried to fold into himself. He seemed used to it.

He probably was. Most apartment elevators are like that. Why waste room on an elevator shaft when the same space can go into apartments?

It was a fast ride. The seat was necessary; it was two gees going up and a longer period at half a gee slowing down while lighted numbers flickered past. Numbers but no doors.

“Hey, Porter. If this elevator jammed, would there be a door to let us out?”

He gave me a funny look and said he didn’t know. “Why worry about it? If it jammed at this speed, it’d come apart like a handful of shredded lettuce.”

It was just claustrophobic enough to make me wonder. K hadn’t left by elevator. Why not? Because the ride up had terrified him? Brain to memory: dig into the medical records of that list of suspects. Claustrophobia. Too bad the elevator brain didn’t keep records. We could find out which of them had used the boxlike elevator once or not at all.

In which case we’d be looking for K2. By now I was thinking in terms of three groups. K1 killed Sinclair, then tried to use the low-inertia field as both loot and alibi. K2 was crazy; he hadn’t wanted the generator at all, except as a way to set up his macabre tableau. K3 was Janice and Drew Porter.

Janice was there when the doors slid open. She was wan, and her shoulders slumped. But when she saw Porter, she smiled like sunlight and ran to him. Her run was wobbly, thrown off by the missing weight of her arm.

The wide brown circle was still there in the grass, marked with white chalk and the yellow chemical that picks up bloodstains. White outlines to mark the vanished body, the generator, the poker.

Something knocked at the back door of my mind. I looked from the chalk outlines, to the open elevator, to the chalk … and a third of the puzzle fell into place.

So simple. We were looking for K1 … and I had a pretty good idea who he was.

Ordaz was asking me, “How did you happen to arrive with Mr. Porter?”

“He came to my office. We were talking about a hypothetical killer—” I lowered my voice slightly. “—a killer who isn’t Janice.”

“Very good. Did you reason out how he must have left?”

“Not yet. But play the game with me. Say there was a way.”

Porter and Janice joined us, their arms about each other’s waists. Ordaz said, “Very well. We assume there was a way out. Did he improvise it? And why did he not use the elevator?”

“He must have had it in mind when he got here.

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