Free The Gorgon Festival by John Boyd Page B

let them stay and suffer,” Cabroni said. “Let’s go. You don’t want to keep Ester waiting, all alone, at night.”
    Together the two men walked into the gathering twilight to the car.
    “I’ve got a line on her murderer,” Cabroni said. “Someone who enjoyed her confidence, a bathtub buddy. Probably a fellow scientist. They were onto something together, and he didn’t want her to share credit for the discovery. So he eliminated her. Personally, I’m betting he’s a professor at Stanford.”
    “That would be a very good theory, Joe, if she were dead.”
    “She’s dead. As an old friend and fellow professor, Alex, you just refuse to face the fact of her going this way.”
    Only one professor on the campus fitted Cabroni’s description—Ward himself. Ruth had planned it this way, but her plans had gone astray; Cabroni would get him before he could get to her. Diana Aphrodite had taken his available supply of rejuvenating solution. Besides, he did not know what absorbent she had mixed with the liquid.
    They drove to the first boulevard stop on Pinyon Verde when Cabroni turned to face Ward. “What were you doing in Doctor Ruth Gordon’s bedroom between 10 p.m. and midnight, Saturday, May 29th, and why did you leave her house without turning on your car lights or starting the motor?”
    Caught off balance by the question, Ward stammered, “Well, my battery was weak and the car wouldn’t start.”
    “What about the bedroom?”
    “I was checking Ruth for side effects.”
    “What kind of side effects were you checking?”
    “Well, for one thing, the arthritis treatment unfroze her pelvis.”
    “Alex, you aren’t telling me you laid the old broad?”
    There was no point in lying to protect the reputation of a woman who was branding him a murderer, Ward decided.
    “ ‘To lay’ is hardly the verb form one would use, Joe. It was more of a horizontal dance, but she kept breaking my rhythm by humming pop music and changing the tunes.”
    “It’s honest of you to admit this, Alex,” he said.
    “Since I know you’re a family man, Joe, who gives fittings on the side, I figure my secret’s safe with you.”
    This one was wily, Cabroni decided. He was attempting to head off an investigating officer’s testimony by appealing to male loyalty. Or was it blackmail?
    As Cabroni drove on in silence, pieces began to assemble in Ward’s mind: the card from Los Angeles, the Javert who drove beside him, and there had been more to the Luke Havergal reference than an invitation.
    Because he had no choice, he would go to the western gate of the rose garden, take the solution she had hidden there, and follow the ghost of his first love into the jungles of the young, specifically to the Electric Daisy Chain in Los Angeles, where Big John would tell him where to find Diana Aphrodite, nee Ruth Gordon.
    He loved his wife, but Ester could make out quite well without him and this was a matter of prior loyalties, not to Ruth but to the continuing processes of evolution. In her youth mania, Ruth intended more than a limited rejuvenation. To widen the scope of her experiment, she needed his help and unlimited amounts of the youth solution.
    When Cabroni pulled up before the house, Ward invited him in for dinner, but Cabroni declined. “No, Alex, I’ve got to get back downtown. I want to wrap up this case by Friday. By the way, Doctor Ward, don’t leave this jurisdiction without checking with the D.A.’s office. He might want to question you… Enjoy your dinner.”
    When he entered the dining room, Ester came out of the kitchen wearing her long-suffering smile. “Your stride is off, Alex. I know what’s troubling you, but I forgive you. You had your little fling with Ruth, but she’s dead or gone.”
    “It isn’t Ruth, Ester. I’ve been immersed in theory so long I think I should come up for air, get in some field work. Down Mexico way, they’re doing some interesting work in the effects of mescaline on white mice. I