Yesterday's News

doorway as I heaved myself through it and onto her screened porch deckside.
    Hearing someone rushing up the steps behind me, I tried to use the right foot. Numb, it wouldn’t support my weight, and in the near dark, I couldn’t tell if I was badly hurt. I tried it anyway, crashing through a screened panel. Grabbing to break my fall, I gripped and pulled free the spear gun assembly from the gangway next to the porch.
    Rolling onto my back, I nocked both slings into the notches on the metal shaft, extending just as Liz came onto the porch. She raised a hand as a shield against the setting sun and fired, the crack of the shot jolting me into pulling the trigger on the spear gun. I felt her slug thump into the bulwark behind me, but I could see where the shaft went.
    Gurgling and bellowing, Liz fell to the deck and flailed wildly, the bolt through her throat, the blood cascading between her splayed fingers and onto her blouse. Hagan filled the hatchway, then dropped to his knees, helpless beside her. She was wrenching at the bolt now, the pain keeping her from pulling it free. Liz scrabbled to him, clenching the material of his pants and jacket as she tried, once and unsuccessfully, to climb up off the deck. Then she shuddered twice, and the only sound was Hagan sobbing and a car approaching, brakes squeaking on the dock below.
    I edged up so I could look down on Hogueira’s round face. Manos and two other officers I’d never seen before elevated their weapons to cover me.
    I said, “You’re a little late.”
    Hogueira said, “Traffic was terrible.”
    The two new officers clambered up the gangplank and around the gates while Manos kept his gun on me.
    I said, “It couldn’t be that having me dead made your case against Hagan stronger, could it?” Hogueira pursed his lips and shrugged.

The bullet that hit my foot put me more in need of a cobbler than a surgeon. Hogueira kept me at the station only a couple of hours. He said he thought Cardwell and the DA could wait until morning so long as I gave him my word I wouldn’t leave the city. He even let me use his office telephone to make two calls: Nancy to assure her I was okay and Emil Jones to confirm a room at the Crestview.
    It was about 10:45 p.m. when a cruiser took me back to my Prelude on The Quay.

    He seemed surprised to see me. Not the “My God, you’re alive!” look. No, more the “Gee, I didn’t know you were still in town” look. We went into the living room, where he used the remote to turn off the television.
    I said, “Mark doing paperwork tonight?”
    “I believe so.”
    “And partner Cronan home sick again?”
    A broad grin. “Relapse, poor guy.”
    “I’d tell you what happened tonight, but I’m sure you already know more about it than I do.”
    Schonstein resettled himself in the wheelchair, neither hand holding the Browning. “Son, I don’t know what you’re jabbering about.”
    “How about we just cut the shit and talk it out, okay? I’m not wearing a wire, and my guess is Hogueira is happy to have half a loaf in Hagan without chasing after you. So why not tell the truth, huh?”
    “The truth. Why the truth?”
    “Change of pace for you. I spent a lot of time this afternoon putting the pieces together and coming up with Liz Rendall, or Cassy Griffin, take your pick, and your protege Neil Hagan. And it all worked out, except for one thing.”
    “Oh, and what was that?”
    “Well, Hagan couldn’t have gotten close enough to Jane Rust to poison her, because she didn’t trust him. She practically accused him of murder in my office the afternoon of the day she died. So that made Liz the one who killed Jane.”
    “Never would have thought it.”
    “Liz might have had the strength to outwrestle a drunken Coyne and stab him, but there’s no way she could have fooled a derelict who witnessed it into thinking she was a ‘biggish dude.’ On the other hand, the killer crawled over to Coyne, then after the tussle, got up with a knife sticking out of his leg and limped away.”
    “And you think that was Neil.”
    “No. I thought that was Neil. The problem is that in his office last week, I brought up the Meller boy’s death. Hagan was genuinely upset about it, even after all these years. What happened on the boat tonight convinced me. Hagan’s paralyzed about killing. After accidentally ending Meller’s life, Hagan can’t intentionally take another, even somebody like me who really threatens him.”
    He rocked his head