Fisher was hot and sweaty and breathing hard, as if he had been working. He dropped into a chair and wiped his forehead and neck. "There wasn't much point in going," he said.

"We found what was left of a bacon and tomato sandwich sitting on a placemat. Probably her last meal. She wasn't much of a housekeeper. Probably wasn't making much money, either."

"How so?"

"All her gadgetry is old enough to be going to pieces. Her Dustmaster skips corners and knocks things off tables. Her chairs and couches are all blow-ups, inflated plastic. Cheap, but they have to be replaced every so often, and she didn't. Her displacement booth must be ten years old. She should have replaced it, living in the mountains."

"No roads in that area?"

"Not near her house, anyway. In remote areas like that they move the booths in by helicopter, then bring the components for the house out through the booth. If her booth broke down she'd have had to hike out, unless she could find a neighbor home, and her neighbors aren't close. I like that area," Fisher said suddenly. "There's elbow room."

"She should have made good money. She was in routing and distribution software." Hennessey pondered. "Maybe she spent all her time following her ex-husband around."

The autopsy report was waiting on his desk. He read through it.

Alicia Walters had indeed been killed by a single blow to the side of the head, almost certainly by the malachite box. Its hard corner had crushed her skull around the temple. Malachite is a semiprecious stone, hard enough that no part of it had broken off in the wound; but there was blood and traces of bone and brain tissue on the box itself.

There was also a bruise on her cheek. Have to ask Walters about that, he thought.

She had died about 8:00 P.M., given the state of her body, including body temperature. Stomach contents indicated that she had eaten about 5:30 P.M.: a bacon and tomato sandwich.

Hennessey shook his head. "I was right. He's still thinking in terms of alibis."

Fisher heard. "Walters?"

"Sure, Walters. Look: he came back to the Sirius Club at seven twenty, and he called attention to the time. He stayed until around eight thirty, to hear Larimer tell it, and he was always in someone's company. Then he went home, found the body and called us. The woman was killed around eight, which is right in the middle of his alibi time. Give or take fifteen minutes for the lab's margin of error, and it's still an alibi."

"Then it clears him."

Hennessey laughed. "Suppose he did go to the bathroom. Do you think anyone would remember it? Nobody in the world has had an alibi for anything since the JumpShift booths took over. You can be at a party in New York and kill a man in the California Sierras in the time it would take to go out for cigarettes. You can't use displacement booths for an alibi."

"You could be jumping to conclusions," Fisher pointed out.

"So he's not a cop. So he reads detective stories. So someone murdered his wife in his own living room. Naturally he wants to know if he's got an alibi."

Hennessey shook his head.

"She didn't bleed a lot," said Fisher. "Maybe enough, maybe not. Maybe she was moved."

"I noticed that too."

"Someone who knew she had a key to Walters' house killed her and dumped her there. He would have hit her with the cigarette box in the spot where he'd already hit her with something else."

Hennessey shook his head again. "It's not just Walters. It's a kind of murder. We get more and more of these lately. People kill each other because they can't move away from each other. With the long distance booths everyone in the country lives next door to everyone else. You live a block away from your ex-wife, your mother-in-law, the girl you're trying to drop, the guy who lost money in your business deal and blames you. Any secretary lives next door to her boss, and if he needs something done in a hurry she's right there. God help the doctor if his patients get his home number. I'm not just pulling these out of the air. I can name you an assault rap for every one of these situations."

"Most people get used to it," said Fisher. "My mother used to flick in to visit me at work, remember?"

Hennessey grinned. He did. Fortunately, she'd given it up. "It was worse for Walters," he said.

"It didn't really sound that bad. Lovejoy said it was a friendly divorce. So he was always running into her. So what?"

"She took away his clubs."

Fisher snorted. But Fisher was young. He had grown up with the short-distance booths.

For twenty years passenger teleportation had been restricted to short hops. People had had time to get used to the booths. And in those twenty years the continuity clubs had come into existence.

The continuity club was a guard against future shock. Its location was ... ubiquitous: hundreds of buildings in hundreds of cities, each building just like all the others, inside and out. Wherever a member moved in this traveling society, the club would be there. Today even some of the customers would be the same: everyone used the long distance booths to some extent.

A man had to have some kind of stability in his life. His church, his marriage, his home, his club. Any man might need more or less stability than the next. Walters had belonged to four clubs ... and they were no use to him if he kept meeting Alicia there. And his marriage had broken up, and he wasn't a churchgoer, and a key to his house had been found in Alicia's purse. She should at least have left him his clubs.

Fisher spoke, interrupting his train of thought. "You've been talking about impulse murders, haven't you? Six years of not being able to stand his ex-wife and not being able to get away from her. So finally he hits her with a cigarette box."

"Most of them are impulse murders, yes."

"Well, this wasn't any impulse murder. Look at what he had to do to bring it about. He'd have had to ask her to wait at home for him. Then make some excuse to get away from Larimer, shift home, kill her fast and get back to the Sirius Club before Larimer wonders where he's gone. Then he's got to hope Larimer will forget the whole thing. That's not just cold-blooded, it's also stupid."

"Yah. So far it's worked, though."

"Worked, hell. The only evidence you've got against Walters is that he had good reason to kill her. Listen, if she got on his nerves that much, she may have irritated some other people too." Hennessey nodded. "That's the problem, all right." But he didn't mean it the way Fisher did.

Walters had moved to a hotel until such time as the police were through with his house. Hennessey called him before going off duty.

"You can move home," he told him.

"That's good," said Walters. "Find out anything?"

"Only that your wife was murdered with that selfsame cigarette box. We found no sign of anyone in the house except her, and you." He paused, but Walters only nodded thoughtfully. He asked, "Did the box look familiar to you?"

"Oh, yes, of course. It's mine. Alicia and I bought it on our honeymoon, in Switzerland. We divided things during the divorce, and that went to me."

"All right. Now, just how violent was that argument you had?"

He flushed. "As usual. I did a lot of shouting, and she just sat there letting it go past her ears. It never did any good."

"Did you strike her?"

The flush deepened, and he nodded. "I've never done that before."

"Did you by any chance hit her with a malachite box?"

"Do I need a lawyer?"

"You're not under arrest, Mr. Walters. But if you feel you need a lawyer, by all means get one." Hennessey hung up.

He had asked to be put on the day shift today, in order to follow up this case. It was quitting time now, but he was reluctant to leave.