"Destroyer - 016 - Oil Slick" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"They don't need the formula, idiot. Didn't you hear him? Any chemical engineer could do it, if he was told to."

Lights went on across the campus. They heard footsteps running up the stairs. The weary elevator motor hummed into life.

"Come on, Paulie, come on," said Philbin desperately.

"We can't go without this stuff."

"I'm going, Paulie. I don't want to wait for the cops."

"We either face the cops or you know who."

"He don't have to know."

"You think he ain't going to know?" asked Mobley.

"Oh, Jesus," whined Philbin.

"Shut up and listen this time." Mobley outlined a plan.

When the campus watchmen barged into the laboratory, Mobley flashed his badge and immediately demanded to know who the watchmen were. His tone was harsh and authoritative, with a lingering ring of suspicion.

They were old men, these campus guards, retired machine operators or gas station attendants, whose main job was filling a blue uniform with an official-looking badge that had no more legal power than a belt buckle.

Mobley had no trouble badgering the watchmen into servitude. Had any of them ever attended a murder scene in an official capacity before, he would have realized one did not wrap the victim in a canvas bag or just trundle out large objects as evidence.

"This box is heavy," said one of the watchmen, grunting behind a large crate of pinkish powder.

"Yeah," said Philbin. "We need the fingerprints."

"What do we have to bring the whole thing for?"

"Because I say so," said Mobley. The watchman was used to such explanations and he didn't ask any more questions. Also, he couldn't have cared less, which seemed to be the prevalent attitude of campus watchmen everywhere.

When the body and the cement and the wallboard and the bricks were loaded on the campus maintenance trucks, the night watchmen were informed that their presence would be required at FBI headquarters.

To a man, the university employees had one question.

"Do we get overtime?"

"Absolutely," said Mobley. "The FBI guarantees it. You've got a federal guarantee."

That the FBI could not authorize someone else's payment of funds did not occur to the watchmen who had helped load what they thought was evidence. They had a promise from someone in a white shirt and tie who had an official-looking badge and the magic word was "overtime."

So they drove off that predawn spring morning in the small truck, and that was the last time they were seen on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

They were driven to an abandoned football field where they were told to mix water with the pinkish powder and when the crate of strange cement became gooey, they were all given an eternity at time and a half from the barrels of two .45 automatics.

"Kill one or four, they only hang you once," said Mobley.