“Well, what happened, of course, was he got caught and hung for murder, but that not-so-bright hunter, he died with a smile on his lips. You know why? Because he was thinking to himself: ‘I never did get fined that ten dollars.’ ”
Wilks said, “Get to the point, Fred.”
Fellows scratched a cheek. “The point is I don’t think many people are as dumb as that hunter. That’s the intriguing thing about this case. If a guy wants to run out on a lease, why doesn’t he just run? Breaking and entering is a crime.” He chewed thoughtfully. “Seems to me a fellow’d only do that to hide a worse crime, not a lesser one.”
“You take this seriously then?”
“Yes, I guess I do.”
“You want me to fingerprint his office?”
“I don’t know, Sid. I don’t know about that.” He reached under the counter for the phone book and hunted up Restlin’s number. He got the man on the phone and said, “What have you found, Mr. Restlin?”
“I’m making a list,” Restlin told him. “People who’re behind in their rent. I’m not through yet.”
“How many’ve you got?”
“Five so far.”
“Anybody owe much?”
“One family owes two months.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what you do,” Fellows said. “You hold off doing that and, instead, look up everybody who’s on a short-term lease right now. Then you call me back.”
He hung up, and Wilks said, “You got something on your mind, Fred?”
“Like I said. Who’d commit a crime to break a lease?”
CHAPTER II
Thursday, 11:00-12:00
Restlin called back in three quarters of an hour. He was both excited and nervous. “I want to tell you, Chief, I did like you said, and there’s one house. There’s this guy, name of Campbell, who took the house for a month, signed a month’s lease, signed it in January. There’s something funny going on around there, because it’s available the first of March, and yesterday in the afternoon Watly took a prospect out to look at it and the place was all locked up. There wasn’t nobody home.”
“Is that unusual on a working day?”
“There wasn’t even his wife home. What do you think’s the matter? That’s one of my own houses. I want to know what’s the matter.”
The chief said, “I don’t know that anything’s the matter, Mr. Restlin. That’s your only short-term lease?”
“Yes, and he paid in advance. I don’t know why you think anything’s wrong there. He can’t gyp me.”
“All the same, Mr. Restlin, suppose we go out and have a look at that house? We’ll pick you up.” He put down the phone as Wilks came in with two containers of coffee. He said, “Drink up, Sid. We’re going to have a look at a house.”
“Empty, I suppose.”
“It was yesterday afternoon.”
“But you don’t think it’s lease-breaking. You think somebody used it for a hide-out?”
Fellows shrugged. “Hide-out, stolen goods, I don’t know. Maybe for nothing.”
“Suppose it was a hide-out. Why break in and steal the lease? The guy must’ve known Restlin would have his name.”
Fellows removed the lid of his container and blew on the black coffee inside. “I’m just fumbling around, Sid, that’s all. You put sugar in this?”
“No. I remembered.”
“Good.” He sipped and made a face and said, “I hate coffee without milk and sugar. Go get Unger to take over here, will you? He’s in communications.”
Wilks and Fellows picked up Restlin about twenty after eleven and the three drove out to the house in the black police station wagon. The two policemen had little to say, but Frank Restlin was voluble. “The fellow paid cash for it. What would he want to steal the lease for? You ought to look at the people who owe me money. You ought to take fingerprints.”
The house was out of town nearly three miles, the first one on the left off Old Town Road on Highland. It was a white bungalow with five small rooms, a cellar and an attic, set back fifty feet with a dry, bare lawn around it. There was a drive on the right to an unpainted one-car garage in back and the acre of property on which it stood was mostly woods. The nearest house was a hundred yards away across the street.
Fellows swung the car into the drive and they got out by the garage. There were a couple of clothespoles with an old sagging line, a weather-beaten seesaw, and a broken sandbox leaking its contents by the deeper grass at the edge of the yard. The chief, in a leather jacket, fishing cap, blue riding pants, and laced leather boots, crunched across the hard ground to the back porch. He stamped on the planks and looked at the windows as he rang the bell. The two on the left were shaded and the one on the right stared back emptily. The whole atmosphere was desertion and disuse. “I don’t think anybody’s home today either,” he said. “You might try one of those keys, Mr. Restlin.”
Restlin obeyed. He bent and fitted a cold key into a cold lock and twisted. He pushed the door open into a short narrow hall to the kitchen. It took another key to unlock the kitchen door and the vaporous breath of the three men swirled in the small area.
They went in, Restlin first, and he nearly tripped over two woman’s suitcases standing just inside. Then he let out an anguished shriek and hurried to the sink beside the stove. “The furnace is out! The pipes! The water!” No water came from the faucet, and Restlin ran to the cellar door beside the kitchen entrance and clattered down the stairs. Fellows and Wilks watched him go, and the chief shook his head. “I’ll bet that man’s got an ulcer.” He paused and sniffed the air like a hound dog getting a scent. “What’s that smell?”
It was a faint and slightly unpleasant, but unidentifiable odor, and one that, if he detected it at all, didn’t interest Sergeant Wilks. “I don’t know,” he said, dismissing it in favor of the suitcases. “It doesn’t look like they left here for good.” He lifted each to determine that they were packed and set them down again. They were relatively new, of different sizes, made of pale green lacquered plastic with the initials J.S. stamped in gold under the handles. “J.S.,” he said, “doesn’t stand for Campbell.” He tested the clasps and found them locked.
Fellows sniffed the air again and said, “Well, we’re here. Let’s take a look around.” He stepped through an open door on the left and found himself in a tiny hall with three other doors. The one on the left revealed a small darkened back bedroom which he looked into and shut off again. The one in front was to the bathroom and the one on the right opened into a still smaller bedroom with a dining room beyond. It was a gray day, and the rooms were cramped, dim, cold, and dingy.
Fellows wandered through into the dining room, less interested in the rooms than in following the scent. Wilks followed, his eyes roving. An open door on the right led into the living room, and Fellows stopped again. “It smells stronger here,” he said to Wilks. “What does it remind you of?”
Wilks tried the air himself and shrugged. “Remember the time the guy wanted to sue the exterminator? The rats ate the poison and died in the walls and stank up the place?”
“It’s not like that, though.”
“Not as strong, maybe.”
“Not quite the same kind of smell.”
“Well, don’t worry about it.”
“I want to know what it is.”
The house was poorly designed as well as poorly constructed. The dining room and kitchen were at opposite corners, connected through the small bedroom on one side and through an L-shaped living room on the other. The front door of the house opened directly into the living room. The coat closet and dining room doors were to its right, the chimney section and door to the attic stairs directly ahead, while the living room itself extended to the left and around the comer. The fireplace was unfortunately placed, being adjacent to the kitchen, and the furnishings, Restlin’s own, did nothing to help matters. A couch was against the windows, facing the fireplace. There was an easy chair beside the kitchen door, an end table and lamp by one arm o
f the couch, and a small rug on the floor. The front section of the room was almost barren. A small telephone table stood by the attic door, a larger table and lamp was in the center of the area with another easy chair beside. There was a straight chair in the comer and another insufficient rug on the floor. A bare radiator stretched halfway across the two front windows.
Fellows walked slowly through the room and then got down in front of the fireplace. “Something they burned?” he suggested. The ashes were old and gray with some charred bits in them. There was a blackened stub of a small log, but nearly everything else had been completely consumed.
Restlin pulled open the kitchen door suddenly and leaned over the arm of the chair to get to the kneeling chief. “The pipes’ve burst,” he said as if he wanted to cry. “They let the fire go out and they didn’t turn off the water. This is one of my houses! It’s Watly’s fault!”
Fellows didn’t look up. “You got water in the cellar?”
“No. It’s frozen in the pipes. I shut it off. You got to make them pay for this.”
“That’s right, Mr. Restlin,” the chief said without paying attention. He reached up for a poker that hung from a knob projecting from the bricks and said to Wilks, “This doesn’t look like wood ashes to me, Sid. Not all of it.” He poked the remains.
Restlin said, “You gotta find him, Chief. Come on. Let’s go.”
“Go where, Mr. Restlin?” The poker pushed up a blackened piece of metal, and Fellows, pulling off a glove, reached in for it Restlin edged closer around the chair. “What’s that?”
“A knife, wouldn’t you say?” The chief lifted it out by its point “A carving knife with the handle burned off.” He handed it to Wilks and poked again and pulled out a hacksaw, also with the handle burned away. The steel of both items was blackened by heat, but like the ashes and the house itself, they were long cold.
Fellows poked some more, but produced nothing else. He hung up the poker, got to his feet, and slid his hand back into his glove. “Well, Sid. You might have something about those rats.”
Restlin said, “That’s all very good, but it isn’t going to help find them, you know.”
Wilks said, “What does burnt flesh smell like, Fred?”
“Don’t know. My wife’s too good a cook.”
“I was thinking—”
“I know what you’re thinking, Sid.”
Restlin said, “Why don’t you two speak English? What’s got into you? They’ve gone and every minute you waste here they’re getting farther away.”
Fellows turned to him. “Mr. Restlin, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t keep trying to tell us our business. We want to look around this place and we’d like to have it quiet. Sid, you’d better leave those things here and we’ll see what we can find.”
The chief retraced his steps, but this time he was paying attention. He paused to look in the closet by the front door, then re-entered the dining room for a quick look around. It was a neat and tidy room containing a buffet, six chairs around a table, and two more chairs in corners, and gave the impression of little use. He paused only briefly there before returning to the small adjacent bedroom. It was a cramped place with barely room for a double bed and a bureau in the comers against the windows, but it showed signs of usage. The bed was hastily made and wrinkled, the way a man makes a bed, and Fellows started his hunt there. A closet under the attic stairs was bare of everything but half a dozen coat hangers, and the chief moved on to the bureau drawers. They too were empty and looked unused. He pulled back the coverlet from two pillows which showed faint indentations. He peered closely and sniffed, then took off his glove and picked up a long black hair. He laid it carefully on top of its pillow and recovered it with the spread. “What’s the name of these people again, Mr. Restlin?”
“Campbell,” Restlin said with ill-concealed annoyance at the leisurely manner of the chief.
“Mrs. Campbell a brunette?”
“I don’t know. I never saw her. I never saw him for that matter.” Fellows gave him an expression of mild surprise. “You rented the place to him sight unseen?”
“Watly rented it. Watly knows him.”
“I see.” Fellows went out the opposite door and looked into the bathroom. The bottom of the tub was stained and scummy-looking as if it had been washed out but not scrubbed. He went on to the back bedroom, darkened by drawn shades. The room was barren and gloomy. There was a vacant bureau, a straight chair, two night tables and lamps and a double bed stripped to the mattress with the uncovered pillows lying awry at the top.
Fellows left the others at the door and crossed the room to raise the shade by the bureau. He opened the drawers one by one and found nothing but a white button lying on the paper lining of the middle drawer. He left it there, noted that there were no closets, and came out again. “I don’t know, Sid,” he said. “It looks pretty clean. If it weren’t for those suitcases in the kitchen, I’d think they just packed up and left.”
Restlin was edgy now. “What do you think’s happened?”
“I can’t tell you, Mr. Restlin. I’m not sure at all.”
“What’s that smell supposed to be? It’s all over the house.” Fellows shrugged. “I don’t know that either. It might be something they burned in the fireplace, it might be because the house has been shut up tight a couple of days. Did you notice it down cellar?”
Restlin said, “I didn’t notice anything down cellar. I was looking at the pipes. They busted those pipes on me. They let the fire go out and they didn’t shut off the water valve. I gotta replace all those pipes.”
They went into the kitchen, where the chief stared thoughtfully at the suitcases. Restlin said, “I can’t get those pipes fixed right away, and here I got a man wants to rent this place starting the first of March. He wants a year’s lease. I’m getting gyppecl”
“I can’t help you on that, Mr. Restlin. I’m not a plumber.” Fellows opened the cellar door and went down the steps sniffing his way into the dimness below with Wilks and Restlin following.
There were coalbins at the front and a preserve closet and a woodbin, well-stocked with logs. An old washing machine was near the stairs, the furnace was in the center of the floor, and the rest of the area was vacant except along one side back of the woodbin. An accumulation of items was there, some old and broken furniture, a trunk under a dusty sheet, with rusty ceiling fixtures on top, a stack of bushel baskets, a lawn mower, snow shovel, and gardening tools.
“I don’t smell anything down here,” Wilks said. “It must be something they burned.”
“That’s my guess,” Fellows said, but he wasn’t disposed to let the matter alone. He looked into the bin compartments and preserve closet and came back to the dead furnace. Wilks said, “What’re you looking for now? They’ve moved out.”
“They moved out several days ago, but they left two suitcases.” The chief opened the furnace door and peered in at the dead ashes, started to close it again, but stopped for another look. “Sid, come here.”
Wilks bent over the chiefs shoulder for a view. “I see ashes.”
“Coal ashes?”
“Those aren’t coal ashes. Not on top. I don’t know what they are.”
Fellows closed the grate door gently. “Mr. Restlin, you rent this place furnished?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Watly turned it over to the guy for a month, complete with everything, linen, silver, coal, electricity, local phone service, everything.”
“All this stuff along the wall is yours?”
“Certainly. Of course.”
“That trunk?”
Restlin wasn’t sure. “If it isn’t mine, I’m going to keep it anyway to pay for the pipes. The suitcases and the trunk and everything in them.”
Fellows pulled up the comer of the dusty sheet. Then he removed the fixtures and uncovered the trunk. It was a solidly constructed metal affair painted green and decorated with two initials in faded yellow. The initials were the same as on the suitcases, J.S.
Wilks started to say, “They might come back for it—” But something about the chiefs voice stopped him. He went up the stairs.
The screwdriver was large and strong, but so was the lock. Wilks’s first efforts only dented the metal of the trunk. He kept prying until he worked the wedge of steel well under the clasp. This time, when he bore on it, the lock popped.
Restlin wet his lips. It was another case of breaking and entering, and he started to mention it, but Fellows and Wilks were busy unhooking the side clasps. They threw back the lid and revealed crammed wads of feminine attire, two overcoats, jackets, stadium boots, spring dresses. It was the sort of thing one would expect to find in any woman’s trunk, except the winter clothes were mixed with the summer and the smell of mothballs was mixed with a fainter and less pleasant odor.
They didn’t speak but pitched in. Wilks lifted out an armload of clothes and Fellows spread the sheet for him to put them on. They removed a tray and went after the things underneath. Restlin peered over their shoulder and said, “What’s that funny smell?”
Fellows nudged him aside when he lifted out dresses wadded as no woman ever packed dresses. “Please keep back, Mr. Restlin.”
Restlin didn’t stay back. He went around beside Wilks and tried to get a look. When the sergeant reached the end of the clothes on his side, Restlin peered closer at what lay beneath. “What’s that?” he said.
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