In the Heat of the Night

you want me to keep still and just ride?”
    “Talk all you like,” Sam retorted. “You won’t mix me up any.”
    Nevertheless they rode silently for some time. Sam took a steadily mounting professional pride in being able to guide his car expertly over the very tracks he had taken. He glanced at his watch. “Are you learning anything?” he asked.
    “I’m learning how hot it can be in the middle of the night,” Tibbs answered.
    “I thought you knew that,” Sam reminded him.
    “Touché,” Tibbs replied.
    “Exactly what does that word mean?” Sam asked.
    “It’s a fencing term. When your opponent scores, you acknowledge it by saying ‘touché.’ Literally it means ‘touched.’”
    “In what language?”
    “French.”
    “You’ve got a lot of education, Virgil, I’ll grant you that.” Sam swung the car silently around a comer and glanced at his watch.
    “I can’t drive as well as you can,” Tibbs replied. “I’ve never seen a man who was better.”
    Despite himself Sam was pleased; he knew that if he could do nothing else, he could drive a car with the best. He was glad that someone else was aware of it, too. Despite his training, he was beginning to like Tibbs as a person.
    “Maybe you know the answer to something, Virgil. I read a story once about a man that was real scared. He was out walking at night just waiting for somebody to jump out at him and he thought he could smell fear in the air, if that makes sense. Anyhow, the writer used a word for it—I can’t remember it, but it began with an m. Sort of—oh, cat sounding. I remember I looked it up at the time.”
    “Hm-m. Let me think. Could it be ‘miasma’?” Tibbs said.
    “That’s it,” Sam exclaimed. “That thing has been bothering me. It’s kind of a rare word. How come you know it?”
    “I read it in a story, too. More than once, so it was impressed on my mind. Just a coincidence.”
    “I wish I could have gone to school longer,” Sam said, astonishing himself with the burst of confidence. “I went to high school for a while and then I got a job in a garage. I worked there for a while before I got this job.”
    “Did you go through the FBI school?” Tibbs asked. “No, I didn’t, no chance to. Say, that reminds me, I want to ask you something.”
    Tibbs waited a moment, then he said, “Go ahead and ask.”
    “Maybe this isn’t any of my business but I heard that you told something to Gillespie today that seems to have shook him. I’d sure like to know what it was.” Virgil Tibbs stared out the window for a moment and inspected the pavement over which they were riding. “I told him that Mantoli wasn’t killed where you found him, that his body had been brought there and dumped. That was why Gottschalk, the missile engineer, is obviously in the clear. The body undoubtedly wasn’t there when he went through. It had to be brought from the scene of the murder to the highway and you found it within minutes.”
    “Virgil, how the hell do you know all this?”
    “You’d know it, too, Sam, if you’d had a chance to examine the body.”
    Sam winced under the use of his first name. Just when he found himself beginning to like the dark man beside him, he did something to suggest equality and that Sam simply would not allow. But for the moment he decided to let it ride. He asked a question instead; one word was enough: “How?”
    “From the palms of the hands.”
    “Suppose you take it from the top.” Still irked, Sam tried to make it sound like a command, but when he formed the words they were in a milder tone.
    “All right, Sam, let’s go back to the moment that Mantoli was hit on the head. We know now that it was a fatal blow, but it isn’t clear whether the man died instantly or was still conscious for at least a few seconds after he was struck.”
    Sam swung the car up a gentle grade and again glanced at his watch. He was exactly on schedule. And he was listening carefully.
    “Now if the man died instantly, or was knocked unconscious at once, exactly what would happen?”
    “He would fall down.”
    “Yes, but how would he fall down? Remember now, he’s either unconscious or dead.”
    Sam thought about that one for a moment. “I think he’d go down like a sack of potatoes.” He glanced over at Tibbs, who was half turned toward him, his right arm resting on the windowsill.
    “That’s exactly right; his knees would unlock, his shoulders would sag, his head would fall forward, and down he would