Mr. Murder

have thought you do," Cyrus Lowbock assured him, concentrating on his doodle.
        Marty turned his head cautiously to see if Paige showed any sign of perceiving hostility in the detective's tone and manner. She was frowning thoughtfully at Lowbock, which made Marty feel better, maybe he was not over-reacting, after all, and didn't need to add paranoia to the list of symptoms he had recounted to Paul Guthridge.
        Emboldened by Paige's frown, Marty faced Lowbock again and said,
        "Lieutenant, is something wrong here?"
        Raising his eyebrows as if surprised by the question, Lowbock said archly, "It's certainly my impression that something's wrong, or otherwise you wouldn't have called us."
        Restraining himself from making the caustic reply that Lowbock deserved, Marty said, "I mean, I sense hostility here, and I don't understand the reason for it. What's the reason?"
        "Hostility? Do you?" Without looking up from his doodle, Lowbock frowned. "Well, I wouldn't want the victim of a crime to be as intimidated by us as by the creep who assaulted him. That wouldn't be good public relations, would it?" With that, he neatly avoided a direct answer to Marty's question.
        The doodle was finished. It was a drawing of a pistol.
        "Mr. Stillwater, the gun with which you shot this intruder-was that the same weapon taken from you out in the street?"
        "It wasn't taken from me. I voluntarily dropped it when told to do so.
        And, yes, it was the same gun."
        "A Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter pistol?"
        "Yes."
        "Did you purchase that weapon from a licensed gun dealer?"
        "Yes, of course." Marty told him the name of the shop.
        "Do you have a receipt from the store and proof of pre-purchase review by the proper law-enforcement agency?"
        "What does this have to do with what happened here today?"
        "Routine," Lowbock said. "I have to fill out all the little lines on the crime report later. Just routine."
        Marty didn't like the way the interview increasingly seemed to be turning into an interrogation, but he didn't know what to do about it.
        Frustrated, he looked to Paige for the answer to Lowbock's inquiry because she kept their financial records for the accountant.
        She said, "All the paperwork from the gun shop would be stapled together and filed with all of our canceled checks for that year."
        "We bought it maybe three years ago," Marty said.
        "That stuff's packed away in the garage attic," Paige added.
        "But you can get it for me?" Lowbock asked.
        "Well… yes, with a little digging around," Paige said, and she started to get up from her chair.
        "Oh, don't trouble yourself right this minute," Lowbock said.
        "It's not that urgent." He turned to Marty again, "What about the Korth thirty-eight in the glovebox of your Taurus? Did you buy that at the same gun shop?"
        Surprised, Marty said, "What were you doing in the Taurus?"
        Lowbock feigned surprise at Marty's surprise, but it seemed calculated to look false, to needle Marty by mimicking him. "In the Taurus?
        Investigating the case. That is what we've been asked to do?
        I mean, there aren't any places, any subjects, you'd rather we didn't look into? Because, of course, we'd respect your wishes in that regard."
        The detective was so subtle in his mockery and so vague in his insinuations that any strong response on Marty's part would appear to be the reaction of a man with something to hide. Clearly, Lowbock thought he did have something to hide and was toying with him, trying to rattle him into an inadvertent admission.
        Marty almost wished he did have an admission to make. As they were currently playing this game, it was enormously frustrating.
        "Did you buy the thirty-eight at the same gun shop where you purchased the Smith and Wesson?" Lowbock persisted.
        "Yes." Marty sipped his Pepsi.
        "Do you have the paperwork on that?"
        "Yes, I'm sure we do."
        "Do you always carry that gun in your car?"
        "It was in your car today."
        Marty was aware that Paige was looking at him with some degree of surprise. He couldn't explain about his panic attack now or tell her about the strange awareness of an onrushing Juggernaut which had preceded it, and which had driven him to take extraordinary