Free Shape of Fear by Hugh Pentecost Page A

in my car. I pulled up across the street from the apartment and hurried toward it. It was a walkup—three flights. I’d just reached the first landing when the shooting began.
    “I ran up the last two flights and smashed my way into the apartment. The front door was locked but flimsy. I found Valmont on the floor, torn to pieces by gunshots. The windows onto the fire escape were open and I saw a man just reaching the street level at the rear. A car was waiting for him—a small black Peugeot. Instinctively I knew there wasn’t anything I could do for the colonel. But there was just a chance I might be able to cut off that little black car before the killer got completely away. Thank God Juliet wasn’t there, I told myself.
    “I ran down the stairs, crossed the street to my car, and took off—not having the slightest idea that Juliet, hurrying back from the corner market, had seen me.
    “I knew the streets around that area like the back of my hand. I’d come and gone so many different ways. I had to make a guess as to which way the Peugeot would go, and I guessed wrong. I must have cruised around for half or three quarters of an hour before I gave up. I was about to head back for the apartment when I realized I was directly across the street from Paul Bernardel’s office. I thought it was important to get the word to him, and I left my car and went in.
    “Bernardel, white as a ghost, had already got word from the Sûreté. Not only that, he had the word that Juliet had identified me leaving the apartment and that there was a general alarm out for me.
    “It didn’t seem complicated to me. I should go straight to the apartment. Juliet would know I was telling the truth. When the facts of the case were put before the police, they’d know, too. Bernardel put another light on the whole matter.
    “The terrorists and their drug-peddling friends would want to pin this killing on someone else if they could. They had an unimpeachable witness in Juliet. Whatever she might believe, she had seen me running away from the building. Valmont had been after a drug ring. It was a certainty that someone would come forward with the story of my acquiring a fix from Langlois for Al Jenkins. The higher-up, whoever he was, would nail me to the barn door but good. The one way to get me out of this was to provide me with an alibi.” Digger drew a deep breath. “He talked me into it. I tried to get Juliet on the phone—my one condition—but she wouldn’t or couldn’t talk to me. Well, tomorrow I’d be able to make it all clear to her.
    “We drove to Bernardel’s country place in his car. It was really just a little hide-out where he went to get away from people. No servants, no near neighbors. The next morning we went back to Paris, and I gave myself up to the police.” Digger stood up. “I need a drink,” he said. He walked over to the sideboard and poured himself about four fingers of bourbon. He drank it like water.
    “I know you two have read the newspaper accounts of the hearing,” he said. “They’re far from complete. The first few hours of it were strictly under a blanket. Juliet was there, a stranger, in shock. When I tried to approach her, she started to scream. My enemy that day was Charles Girard. I’d met him once or twice. I knew he resented me. He always looked at Juliet like a hungry man outside the window of a rotisserie. Maybe he was after a murderer that morning, but I had a feeling he was more concerned with polishing off a rival for Juliet.
    “Girard listened to our carefully prepared alibi, and I could see he didn’t choose to believe any part of it. Whether he didn’t believe it or whether he didn’t want to believe it, I can’t say. He had a pretty good case. As Bernardel had predicted, he knew about my connection with Langlois and Al Jenkins. He didn’t choose to believe I’d just been doing a favor for a friend. He accused me of being in on the drug racket. He suggested I’d made a patsy