Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

Ian did not move. “Mel, don’t be more of a fool than you have to be. You have no possible excuse to put handcuffs on Georges.”

“The hell I don’t! We’re running shorthanded and I’m making this arrest without assistance. So I can’t take a chance on him trying to pull something sneaky while we’re floating back. Hurry up and get those cuffs on him!”

“Don’t point that gun at me!”

I was no longer watching. I was out of the bath, through two doors, down a long hall, and into the living room, all with a frozen motion feeling I get when I’m triggered into overdrive.

Dickey was trying to cover three people with his gun, one of them being Janet. He should not have done that. I moved up to him, took his gun, and hand-chopped his neck. The bones made that unpleasant crunching noise neck bones always make, so unlike the sharp crack of fractured tibia or radius.

I eased him to the rug and placed his pistolet by him, while noting that it was a Raytheon five-oh-five powerful enough to stop a mastodon-why do men with little souls have to have big weapons? I said, “Jan, are you hurt?”

“No.”

“I got here as fast as I could. Ian, this is what I meant when I said that my help might be needed. But I should have stayed here. I was almost too late.”

“I’ve never seen anyone move so fast!”

Georges said quietly, “I have seen.”

I looked at him. “Yes, of course you have. Georges, will you help me move this”-I indicated the corpse-“and can you drive a police APV?”

“I can if I must.”

“I am about at that level of skill, too. Let’s get rid of the body. Janet told me a bit about where bodies go, did not show me the spot. Some hole just off the escape tunnel, isn’t it? Let’s get busy. Ian, as soon as we dispose of this, Georges and I can leave. Or Georges can stay and sweat it out. But once the body and the APV are gone, you and Jan can play dumb. No evidence. You never saw him. But we must hurry, before he is missed.”

Jan was down on her knees beside the late police lieutenant. “Marj, you actually did kill him.”

“Yes. He hurried me. Nevertheless I killed him on purpose because in dealing with a policeman it is much safer to kill than to hurt. Jan, he should not have pointed his burner at you. Otherwise I might merely have disarmed him-then killed him only if you decided that he needed to be dead.”

“You hurried, all right. You weren’t here and then you were and Mel was falling. ‘-needed to be dead’? I don’t know but I won’t grieve. He’s a rat. Was a rat.”

Ian said slowly, “Marj, you don’t seem to realize that killing a police officer is a serious matter. It is the only capital crime that British Canada still has on the books.”

When people talk that way, I don’t understand them; a policeman isn’t anybody special. “Ian, to me, pointing a pistol at my friends is a serious matter. Pointing one at Janet is a capital crime. But I’m sorry I upset you. Right now here is a body to dispose of and an APV to get rid of. I can help. Or I can disappear. Say which but be quick; we don’t know how soon they will come looking for him- and for us. Just that they will.”

While I spoke, I was searching the corpse-no pouch, I had to search his pockets, being very careful with his trouser pockets because his sphincters had cut loose the way they always do. Not much, thank Bast!-he had barely wet his pants and he did not yet stink. Or not badly. The important items were in his jacket pockets: wallet, buzzer, IDs, money, credit cards, all the walk-around junk that tells a modern man that he is alive. I took the wallet and the Raytheon burner; the rest was trash. I picked up those silly handcuffs. “Any way to dispose of metal? Or must these go down the same hole as the body?”