The Green Trap Read Free

the rumpled bed.

REDWOOD  CITY:
DAYS  INN
    M urdered?” Cochrane heard his voice squeak.
    â€œA blow to the head with a blunt object,” said the sad-eyed white detective. “In his office at the…” He hesitated a moment.
    â€œThe Calvin Research Center,” the black detective finished for him.
    â€œMike? Murdered?” Cochrane couldn’t get his mind around the idea. “Are you certain it’s him?”
    The white cop pulled a three-by-five oblong of photographic paper from his inside jacket pocket. “This your brother?”
    Cochrane took the photo in a trembling hand. And almost retched. Mike’s face was distorted, his mouth twisted, his eyes open and staring blankly, his hair matted with blood that pooled beneath his battered head.
    â€œWell?”
    Fighting back the bile burning up his throat, Cochrane handed the photo back to the detective. “That… that’s my brother,” he managed to say.
    â€œSeveral people at the research lab identified the body,” said the black man.
    Cochrane sat on the bed, breathing hard, staring at the floor. He realized that he was barefoot; it made him feel stupid, exposed.
    â€œI’m Sergeant McLain,” the white cop said. “He’s Sergeant Purvis. We need to ask you a few questions.”
    â€œYeah, sure,” Cochrane murmured, barely hearing him. “Go right ahead.”
    McLain pulled a slim notepad from his jacket pocket and flicked it open. The only light in the room was from the bedside lamp. He squinted and read, “You arrived at San Francisco International at three-eighteen this afternoon, right?”
    Cochrane nodded as Purvis pulled the chair from the corner, turned it around, and sat on it backward, facing Cochrane, his arms folded on the chair’s back.
    Still standing, McLain said, “You drove past this motel and went straight to the Calvin lab, didn’t you? The receptionist remembers you coming in around four, four-fifteen.”
    â€œThat’s right. My brother wasn’t there.”
    â€œYes, he was,” said Purvis softly.
    Before Cochrane could react to that, McLain said, “You had time to meet your brother out back in the parking lot first. He’d bring you into the building through the rear entrance. You could have doubled back to the parking lot and then come in the front way, so the receptionist would see you.”
    Realizing what the detective was saying, Cochrane protested, “That’s not true! I didn’t—”
    McLain went on, “Then you drove here to the motel, checked in, and made sure plenty of people saw you having dinner in the restaurant. And you told the room clerk you were checking out tomorrow instead of staying the whole weekend.”
    â€œI didn’t kill my brother!”
    McLain’s hard expression didn’t alter by a millimeter. “I didn’t say you did. I’m just talking theoretical.”
    â€œI didn’t kill Mike. I didn’t even see him.”
    Purvis said, “He was murdered just about the time you were at the lab.”
    â€œI didn’t do it,” Cochrane repeated.
    â€œYou were at his house, too,” McLain added. “Fingerprints on the front door, the garage door. What were you looking for?”
    â€œMy brother!”
    For a long moment McLain stood in sour-faced silence in the middle of the motel room, his shadow against the wall huge and menacing in the light from the bedside lamp. Purvis sat straddling the chair, his eyes boring into Cochrane.
    Cochrane remembered, “Wait a minute. At first the receptionist said his phone didn’t answer. Then it went into the voice-mail mode. While I was there in the lobby! You can ask her.”
    Purvis looked up at his partner. “That means that his brother was murdered while he was in the lobby.”
    â€œIf he’s telling the truth,” McLain said, as if Cochrane weren’t