Old Poison Read Online Free PDF Page A

and descended into the underpass. The biker
sitting at the edge of the trail lunged after her, his front tire
inches from her back tire. “I told you so,” gloated my suspicious
board member.
    The professor’s scream echoed out from the
underpass, rising over the constant noise of the traffic on
Cathedral Street. By the time I could see down the trail, I had
more speed than I’d dreamed I could muster. As my eyes adjusted to
the shadow of the underpass, I saw two bikes lying in a pile
blocking the northbound lane. Lilac and her assailant were locked
together in the southbound lane as he struggled to pull her toward
the river and the waiting boat.
    There was no way around them. I started to
hit the brakes, though I knew I would never be able to stop in
time. Then Lilac landed a fairly well-placed knee, dropping her
assailant to the rocks at the water’s edge. She tried to turn and
run but tripped and tangled herself in the fallen bikes. Her
assailant was getting up slowly from the side of the path. The guy
in the boat was yelling something in Spanish.
    Seeing a narrow opening between Evelyn and
her assailant, I let go of the brakes. Hunching down over the
handlebars, I lowered my head, keeping the back of the helmet
toward the assailant, and peddled like hell. I know I was going
thirty miles per hour when I hit the sucker because my nose was
only about two inches from the computer on the handlebars.
Fortunately for me, he stepped backward when he saw me almost on
top of him, so I only hit him a glancing blow. His own loss of
balance and the rocky bank did the rest. He stumbled backward,
falling with his upper body in the boat and his legs in the
water.
    I struggled to keep myself and the bike
upright, but about halfway up the far side of the underpass, I
tipped over and landed heavily on my right side. I lay there a
moment, legs still wrapped around the fallen bike, the breath
knocked out of me, my head stunned, my ribs in pain.
    Both men were cursing. The guy who had
fallen was pulling himself into the boat but wasn’t moving very
fast. The driver was starting to climb out of the boat and head for
the bike path.
    With my left hand I unzipped the handlebar
bag. With my right I reached into the bag and pulled out my Walther
.32 semiautomatic. Still lying there tangled in my bike, I pulled
the slide on the Walther, chambered a round, and took aim. The
driver was out of the boat, making his way though the riprap when
he heard the sound of the slide. He looked up to see the muzzle
aimed at his chest, and without a word turned back to the boat,
climbed into the pilot seat, slammed the boat in gear, roared out
of the underpass, and headed down-river.

    * * * * *

SIX

    As I watched the boat speed toward the open
ocean, I pushed the release on the Walther and dropped the clip
into my bike bag. Pulling the slide, I popped out the chambered
round, pushed the loose bullet back into the clip, and returned the
clip to the handle of the Walther.
    All the time I was doing this mechanical
routine, I was chanting the CF number on the boat. As a Sherlock
Holmes I have one great handicap: poor visual memory. If I want to
remember what a subject looks like, I must turn what my eyes see
into words and remember those words, because the minute I look
away, the mental picture is gone. It’s like a camcorder with no
video tape in it.
    I put the Walther away and hunted for a pen
and paper to write down the number. During this process, Professor
Lilac was trying to ask me a question. By the time I got that
number on paper, the volume of her voice had increased and her tone
expressed either annoyance or alarm. “Are you all right?” she
almost yelled.
    The line was irresistible. “Professor Lilac,
I presume?”
    If she caught my reference she was not
amused. “Are you that detective who was supposed to meet me this
morning?”
    Her tone was what my great-aunt Leah would
have called “snippy.” I tried to disentangle my legs from the bike
and