Chase: Roman

the fact that it explains how he might possess a silencer for a pistol. He could have machined it himself, with a bit of patience and the application of his own special knowledge. I remember him blaming his bad aim on the bore of the silencer.’
        Chase drove back to her apartment. Together they went over the list, circling the names of the physics instructors - three in all. He dialled all of them inside of ten minutes and managed to speak a few words with each. None of them sounded like Judge.
        On the off chance that a physics tutor might not necessarily teach the subject in his regular job, they circled the names of senior and junior high school science teachers and phoned all thirty-nine of them. Twelve did not answer their phones, and four others were not at home but were expected back before dinner. None of the other twenty-three sounded like Judge.
        By six-thirty they were satisfied with all but one man: Charles Shienbluth, a junior high school general science instructor. When Chase dialed his number for the seventh time, however, the man answered. ‘Shienbluth speaking.’
        ‘Is this the Mr Shienbluth who teaches science at Walterson Junior High School?’ Chase asked.
        ‘Yes, that's me.’
        ‘Charles Shienbluth?’
        ‘Yes. Who is this?’
        Chase hung up.
        ‘Well?’ she asked.
        He said, ‘It wasn't Judge. It's all been another false lead.’
        

    Twelve
        
        Anne and Harry Karnes lived in a modest white frame house on Winkler Street, one of the older middle-class residential developments on the north side of the city. There was a three-year-old Rambler parked in the gravelled drive, and lights shone in the front room downstairs. Gauzy yellow curtains kept Chase from seeing anything of the room beyond the windows, but he supposed it would be as plain as the house and the block the house was set in. The only sounds were those made by trucks on the super-highway three blocks west and by a television set turned too loud in one of the nearby houses.
        Glenda said, ‘Are we going in or not?’
        ‘I've been thinking,’ Chase said, ‘that maybe the homosexual angle doesn't have anything to do with this.’
        ‘But the man following them drove a red Volkswagen, according to Louise Allenby. And you said he overreacted when you confronted him with the accusation on the telephone.’
        ‘But gay people are supposedly less violent than straights. And the ones I've known bear that out. I can't picture any of the gay men I've met picking up a knife and killing.’
        ‘The lover scorned,’ she said.
        ‘That's too trite to be acceptable.’
        She slid closer to him, ignoring the console between the bucket seats. ‘What's the matter, Ben? You're just making excuses to keep from going in and talking to Mike's parents.’
        He looked at the lighted windows and sighed. ‘They're going to want to thank me for trying to save their son's life, and it's going to be the hero thing all over again. I'm tired of that.’
        ‘Maybe it'll be different,’ she said. ‘Anyway, if you want, I can go in alone.’
        ‘It'd seem odd,’ he said. ‘They don't know you, who you are.’ He opened the car door and put a foot on the kerb. ‘Come on, let's get this over with.’
        Anne Karnes answered the door, a grey-haired woman who wore no make-up and would not have benefitted by it very much even if she had. Her face was harsh, all angles and flat planes, her eyes set too close together by a fraction, her mouth too prim and thin-lipped. She was wearing a shapeless housedress that fell to the middle of her stocky calves, not out of any consciousness of fad styles, but because it was the kind of thing she had, apparently, always worn.
        ‘Please come in,’ she said. ‘I've very glad to meet you.’
        Grey. The inside of the house was grey, sad, quiet. The living-room furniture was heavy and dark, the arms of the chairs and sofas overlaid with white antimacassars. Two lamps burned, both shedding pale light, colourless light. The television was on, but one had the feeling that it was always on and that no one really watched it. The walls were the same tan colour of the walls in public institutions like schools and city hall corridors. Half a dozen motto plaques dressed the walls to conform with the styling of their tenants.
        Harry Karnes was as grey as his wife and the