Spiral

for a great dinner.”
    ”But more because you wanted to wash away any trace evidence.”
    The beatific smile again. ”When Sundy came out of the bathroom, I’d already gathered up the sheets. She said, ‘Huh?’ and that’s when I took out the buck knife and started with her throat, to reduce any screaming. There’s an excellent Web-page on combat killing techniques, too, though its site address probably won’t be of much help to you anymore.”
    ”Quite a risk for you”—Jesus, now the sap ate at my elbow—”to carry that knife away.”
    ”Ah, so I was right! The police were able to match it as the one Ford Walton tried to use on you.”
    ”A nice way for you to tie him to both crimes.”
    ”Yes, John, my thought exactly. And even when I discovered after killing Sundy that Ford had an ironclad—if rather embarrassing—alibi, I thought it still might work. I even told him that I’d found the buck knife a few blocks from the hotel, where I’d seen you ‘pitch’ it after running from that hotel room.”
    ”And Walton bought all that?”
    ”Ford was not the brightest of bulbs, John, and the prospect of killing you with the same knife you’d used on Sundy was, I think, too much poetic justice for his mind to question.”
    ”You drive Walton away from my hotel, too?”
    ”Yes. It was the surest way for me to keep tabs on him for the short period between then and killing him myself. Oh”—Helides bowed, as a Japanese business representative might—”and many thanks for ‘softening him up’ for me. Even with that other Website on ‘the Knife in Combat,’ I’m not sure I could have handled an uninjured man of his background so easily, though all those years on the exercise equipment did keep my muscles toned, and these last healthy months really have strengthened them. Watch.” David Helides leaped straight and high into the air, extending arms and legs so that, combined with his head and neck, they made a five-pointed star.
    When he landed, I said, ”But once you’d killed Veronica, Sundy Moran, and Ford Walton, why take Dujong?”
    ”Malinda?”
    ”Yes. She couldn’t have identified Sundy Moran’s voice from the grave, so Dujong couldn’t have tied her caller to you.”
    ”Ah, but Malinda had ‘counseled’ me once, a stab at her ‘spiritual advising,’ though it seems she never sent my father a bill. When he asked me about our supposed session, I said, ‘I don’t remember talking to her,’ and apparently he never pursued it with her. However, I think the reason Malinda never billed him was because she really did sense something about me, and that’s why I had Sundy draw her away from the birthday party, so Malinda couldn’t sense anything more about me there.”
    I thought of Dujong’s ”crab-monster” in its cave. ”But why kill Dujong if she never attended the party?”
    ”Loose end.” Helides’ voice sounded so casual. ”If Malinda thought about Very’s death long and hard enough, I was afraid she might go to someone with any suspicions she had. Someone... like you.”
    Dujong’s call to me on my hotel voice mail. Around a burning near my left hamstring, I said, ”So you dropped off that note about Spiral and Sundy Moran to point me back at the members of the band.”
    ”Precisely.”
    ”But then why leave that second note for me in Dujong’s trunk?”
    A smile, almost sheepish. ”Hubris, John. Sheer gall. I was beginning to enjoy the game so much—a game I could never have played while depressed—that I simply didn’t want to see it end.”
    ”And so you took Justo, too?”
    A smug smile now. ”My ultimate reasoning, John. I knew from my father that you all had served together in Vietnam. I knew also that Mr. Vega and you seemed ‘brothers’ in a way Spi and I never had. After meeting you, watching you, overhearing you in the house, I began to fear that you might be capable of figuring out what the police had not. When Ford Walton’s attempt on you went awry, I decided that a frontal attack by me might fail as well. So, I thought I’d give you a stronger motivation to fall into my trap than the disappearance of just Malinda apparently provided.”
    A trap I thought I’d laid. ”Taking Justo should have been a little more trouble for you than someone Dujong’s size.”
    ”Mr. Vega’s training is almost as old as I am, John, and over the last thirty years, he’s not been in the situations I expect you have.” David Helides inclined his