A Knife in the Back by Bill Crider

and waving to someone, maybe the photographer.
    â€œYou’re supposed to like yourself,” Sally said, walking into the office. “It’s a sign of a healthy self-concept.”
    Jack told her that he hadn’t heard anyone use the phrase self-concept in years. “Are you sure there’s not some new phrase for that?”
    â€œI don’t keep up,” Sally said. “It doesn’t seem worth it, somehow.” Then she changed the subject. “Weems is pretty upset with us, you know.”
    â€œNo shit, Sherlock,” Jack said. And immediately felt like an idiot.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be crude. That just slipped out. I’ve been feeling a little weird ever since I hit my head on the floor in the automotive building.”
    â€œIt’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” Sally said. “And the thought of having to talk to Weems would make anybody want to say a few bad words.”
    Jack had avoided seeing Weems sooner by virtue of the fact that Sally had called the EMS on her cell phone while Jack sat by the wall and suffered in silence. As she had predicted, the phone hadn’t worked inside the shop, but it worked just fine once they got out. She called the EMS first, then Desmond, and then Weems. The EMS had beat Weems to the scene by at least a minute and a half, for which Jack would be eternally grateful.
    At the ER, he’d been poked and probed and X rayed and wrapped. To his surprise, he had only two cracked ribs—not broken but cracked—and while they hurt quite a bit, it could have been worse. The tape would hold him together for a while, and then he’d be fine. Or so he’d been told. Jack wasn’t sure he trusted a doctor who looked so young that she could have passed for a student at HCC. Besides the cracked ribs, Jack also had a hard little knot on the back of his head, but there was no concussion.
    He sipped at his Pepsi, then said, “Weems can’t possibly believe I had anything to do with this murder,” he said. “Can he?”
    â€œI don’t see why not,” Sally said. “You’re the one with blood on his hands. You’re the one whose handprint is going to be right there on the floor by Thomas’s body in Thomas’s own blood.”
    â€œI think it was something besides just blood,” Jack said, but he didn’t say what it was.
    He looked at his hand, palm up. It was clean now, but he easily could imagine that the blood was still there. He could practically see it trapped in the lines that crisscrossed his skin. He knew how Lady Macbeth must’ve felt.
    â€œI shouldn’t have told you about that,” he said. “That Weems couldn’t possibly think I had anything to do with the murder, I mean.”

    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt sounds almost like I was trying to create an alibi. When I think about it, I can see how Weems might figure it: I was supposedly in my office working on the lesson plans for Naylor, but in reality I was out in the automotive building killing Thomas.”
    â€œWhy would you do that?”
    â€œI don’t have a clue, but I’m sure Weems will come up with a reason. That’s the way his mind works.”
    â€œYou don’t have any history with Thomas, do you?”
    Jack sighed and offered Sally a cheese cracker. She declined, so he ate it himself. The peanut butter gummed up his mouth, and for a few seconds he couldn’t talk at all. He took a drink from the Pepsi can, swallowed, and said, “I might.”
    â€œYou might? What do you mean by ‘might’?”
    â€œI guess I mean that I sort of do.”
    It was Sally’s turn to sigh. “For such a mild-mannered man, you seem to make a lot of enemies.”
    Jack wondered whether it was a compliment to be considered mild-mannered. He decided that he wouldn’t ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
    â€œWe weren’t enemies,”