Free Always Leave ’Em Dying by Richard S. Prather Page B

came back.
    I said to Lyn, "Listen, there's proof that Wolfe was going to squirt something into me. His hypodermic syringe was on the floor where he fell. You must have seen that when you found me."
    She shook her head. "There wasn't any syringe on the floor."
    "There must have been." She didn't say anything. I looked around and saw the water carafe on Wolfe's desk.
    "That water bottle," I said. "I told you he drugged me. Check it. You'll find some kind of drug in the water. That will prove it."
    Lyn asked softly, "What would that prove, Mr. Scott?"
    And then I realized it wouldn't prove anything at all, just that Wolfe had sensibly attempted to subdue a maniac who was running around loose. Lyn stood near the chair, looking at me. She wasn't much taller standing up than I was sitting down, maybe five-two, and those dark eyes were a warm velvety brown; the long thick hair wasn't a fiery red, but more a soft darkness with a hint of redness in it.
    Meadows and the patrolman had understandably spent almost as much time looking at her as at me, but now Meadows got up off his haunches and said, "Let's go, Scott."
    That "Let's go" startled me. I knew what it meant if they took me to jail, to a cell in Raleigh. Even now, right here where it had happened, nobody believed I hadn't murdered Wolfe, either in babbling insanity or after cold premeditation. The bald statement that I'd killed him in self-defense would sound ludicrous to anyone else. It almost sounded that way to me, now.
    I looked at Lyn again. "I tell you, Wolfe dropped that syringe in here. Just a few seconds before . . . I shot him, he got it out of some kind of cabinet." I looked along the wall, saw it. "That one, I guess. He took the syringe out, then filled it with something, I think."
    She glanced at the officers, then at me. She went to the cabinet, took some keys from her pocket, and selected one. She opened the cabinet and picked up a small black case, opened it.
    Three syringes were inside it, and there were no empty spaces. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "Don't you think you might have imagined it?"
    I licked my lips and they were dry. Pain started throbbing in my head. "No," I said. "No, I didn't imagine it. Damn it, I know it happened. Are you all lying? What the hell is this?" I swallowed. "Somebody must have come in before you did, picked the thing up and put it into the case, put the case back. Dixon. Does she work for Wolfe?"
    "Yes."
    "Talk to her. She must have done it. She was in with him."
    I stopped and it was quiet. The two cops looked amused. Sergeant Meadows scratched his thigh. "Guess this does it, Al," he said to the patrolman.
    I said, "It's true. It had to happen that way."
    Meadows said, "Come on, let's get out of here." Al walked toward me. A pulse started beating heavily in my temples.
    "I know it's hard to swallow all at once," I said rapidly, "but that's the way it happened. Look, I talked with Mr. Hunt just before I ran into Wolfe in the hall. He can tell you what we talked about, and that I was normal."
    She asked me what room he'd been in and I told her. She went out, and came back in a minute. "There isn't anybody there," she said. "The bed is rumpled, but that's all."
    "This Hunt," Meadows said slowly, for the first time seeming to show some interest. "Who is he? What's he look like? How'll we recognize him if we see him?"
    "Randolph Hunt. Find him and talk to him. For all I know, he's still here somewhere. And you couldn't miss him. He'll be wearing a yellow shirt with roosters on it, and a white coat, and a black Homburg. And . . . Oh, nuts. The hell with it."
    It was not only that Meadows and Al were about to fall down and roll around on the floor holding their sides, but that I was starting to wonder if this could really have happened. Could I have had a Technicolor dream? I realized now that Meadows had just been fishing for a laugh, and he'd got it. He was having a real belly laugh now, his breath spraying me.
    I said slowly, "Shut