For an instant I faltered, less sure of myself. I had no real evidence that Boyle had murdered the waitress, nothing but the faith I now had in my own convictions. But I knew without question that he had been ordered to kill her just as he had been directed to eliminate me. Yet I couldn't tell the police how I knew. If I tried to tell them the whole story, I would merely convince them that I was crazy.
The sergeant strode away. He reached the helicopter and pulled out a hand mike. I looked down at Boyle. He lay still, no longer struggling. Some of the bestial panic seemed to have drained out of his face. When I glanced up the sergeant was charging back toward me.
"Well?" he barked as he reached me. "What makes you say he killed the girl?"
"It was—something he said—when he was trying to kill me."
"Why would he try to kill you?"
I made my decision. "I think he blamed me—he was convinced that I had had something to do with Lois."
"Yeah?" Sgt. Bullock's hard, narrow gaze held mine. "Funny you should say that. I thought you were mixed up in this right from the beginning—and I'm beginning to think so again. It's nice and convenient for you to come up with another killer. The guy we were holding—Harry Grayson—cleared himself. The truth tests proved it right down the line. He's not guilty. He didn't kill her."
I stared again at Boyle. Handcuffed now, he was watching me. There was fright in his small eyes and it seemed to me that there was something stirring now in their depths that had been filmed over before, a glimmer of reason.
"Boyle did it," I said. "But he wasn't responsible for what he did. You can see that."
"Yeah? Maybe." The sergeant stared suspiciously at me. "What happened to your head?"