Sleep Long, My Love

by Hillary Waugh

  “Sure, why not? It’s the only delivery I ever made there. I had to go way out to do it. So when I turned the corner, this guy Campbell, he’d just pulled his car in the drive. I’d have gone around to the back like I usually do, but he was blocking the drive and I pulled up in front. So I’m getting my stuff out and he’s getting out of the car and he sees I’m going to make a delivery, so he comes over and says something like, This for Campbell?’ or something like that and I tell him, ‘Yeah,’ so he says he’ll take them and how much is it? Well, I tell him it’s—I forget what— but whatever it is, he takes out his wallet and pays me and he gives me the exact change and a tip and the last I see of him, he’s carrying the box into the house.”

  “What’d the man look like? Remember?”

  “Sure. I remember pretty good. Kind of a happy-go-lucky type. Kinda tall and dark and smiling. I don’t know the color of his eyes, but he was well built. He was in shirt sleeves, dark brown pants. Not bad-looking. And I guess he was in his thirties somewhere. He looked like he’d been around.”

  Fellows said, “I guess he had. What about the car? Remember that?”

  The boy fished in his jacket pocket for a cigarette to augment his sense of importance. “You can bet I do,” he said. “When it comes to cars, that’s something I know real well. This one was a 1957 Ford two-door sedan.” He lighted the cigarette with a Zippo, snapped it shut, and closed his eyes. “Blue plates,” he added, remembering. “Connecticut all right. Tan car, and dented left rear fender.” He looked again at Fellows. “How’s that?”

  “That’s good, Andy. That’s very good. You’d know this guy if you saw him again?”

  “Yeah. I’d know him. And I’d know his car. You bring him around and I’ll identify him for you.”

  “We’ll bring him around, son. You’ll get your chance.”

  CHAPTER X

  Friday, 6:10-7:00 P.M.

  Plainclothesman Ed Lewis was waiting in the main room of headquarters, talking to Wilks and Sergeant Gorman, when Fellows and Harris got back. The chief pulled off his cap and unzipped his jacket and said, “Jesus, Ed, I thought you died or something.”

  ‘Tve been collecting information, Chief.”

  “You ought to have the encyclopedia by now. Gorman,” Fellows told the sergeant, “get out and get some coffee, will you? I’m hungry and cold.”

  “You want a sandwich to go with it?”

  Wilks said, “Just get him coffee. He’s on a diet.”

  “Coffee and cigarettes,” Fellows said. “It’s great for the weight.” Gorman went out, and Fellows stripped off his jacket and sat down. “How is it, Ed? Good?”

  “I think it is.” Lewis took out a notebook and flipped the pages. “First I went to the railroad station. They remembered the trunk and the girl. You know that town five miles south of Ashmun?”

  “Townsend?”

  “Yeah. Well, that’s where the trunk was shipped from. It was checked through on the girl’s ticket and came in on February second. That’s Monday. It was delivered to the house that afternoon. I hunted up the guy who made the delivery and that took a little time. He remembered it, but he didn’t have much to tell. He took it to the girl’s house and put it in the cellar for her, right where we found it.”

  “He tell you what the girl was like?”

  “Yep. About five-six and a half, a hundred and thirty pounds or so. He couldn’t guess her weight too well, just said she was built right for her height, not fat, not thin. The description fit the body, or what we know of the body. She had dark hair, looked about thirty, like MacFarlane says she was, rather pretty, but kind of hard. Not tough looking, but like a girl who knew her way around.”

  “Like it wasn’t the first time she’d been with a man?” suggested the chief.

  “Like it wasn’t even the second.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, as I say, the trunk arrived on the second, but the girl, she arrived on Sunday the first. I talked to the cab drivers. A driver named Dan Pettigrew remembered taking her out to the house that day. He wasn’t sure of the day until he checked his records, but that’s when it was, and he remembers the whole thing. She came in on the twelve-thirty train, which made a stop at Townsend at twelve-fifteen. Pettigrew remembers her because she was the only person who got off and she had two suitcases which she took with her across the street to the Bar-Ritz lunch counter, where she had a sandwich. She was wearing, he said, a fur coat and a tailored suit which was dark blue or black.”

  Fellows said, “Which we found in her trunk, right, Sid?”

  “There was a fur and a dark suit.”

  Lewis nodded. “I checked the lunch counter and they don’t remember her, but that doesn’t mean anything. She came out again with the suitcases and took Pettigrew’s cab. He drove her out and talked to her some. She was polite, but she didn’t talk more than she had to. She admitted she was new in town and she and her husband were going to live at the place for three months while he was assigned to this territory. He tried to pump her—”

  “Three months?” Fellows interrupted.

  “That’s what she told him.”

  “But the house was only rented for one month.” Fellows rubbed his chin. “I guess this man Campbell was snowing that girl right down the line.”

  “Sounds like it, Chief,” Lewis answered. “For one thing, she told the cab driver he was in the hardware business, representing this territory. That’s what he told the real estate guy.”

  “Hardware,” Fellows mused. “That occupation keeps coming up.”

  “I think that’s where we’re going to find our man, Chief. He’s going to be in hardware someplace.”

  “I wonder if he owns a hardware store,” Fellows said thoughtfully.

  “Cutler’s?” put in Wilks.

  The chief smiled. “You can check it out, Sid. Go on, Ed.”

  “That’s all Pettigrew got out of her, Chief. Hardware and three months. He took her bags to the front door for her and she paid him off and let herself in and that was that.”

  “She had a key, then?”

  “Yeah. Campbell must’ve given it to her.”

  “I don’t get it,” Fellows grumbled. “If he’s in contact with the girl right along, why does he rent a house for her? What’s wrong with the place she’s already living at?”

  “She’s got a family or something,” Wilks suggested.

  “So what’s a family? They go to bed, don’t they? Besides, how’s she going to explain going off like that to a family? He sets her up in a house, not to live with her, but to visit her evenings, which he could do wherever she already was living. There’s only one reason I can see for that. He must have planned to kill her all along. She probably told him she was pregnant and he wanted to get rid of her.”

  Lewis said, “I thought MacFarlane said she wasn’t pregnant.” Fellows shrugged. “That doesn’t stop her from telling him she is, does it?”

  “No. I guess you’re making sense, Chief.”

  “Am I? Why does the girl take the house? Why does she give up what she’s got and go into this weird setup?”

  Wilks laughed. “Come on, Fred. Haven’t you ever heard of a girl getting set up in an apartment a boy friend pays the rent on?”

  “Yep. That I have. But not for three months, or one month, or whatever. That’s like the art collector who paid a thousand bucks to an Eskimo sculptor for a hunk of carving he fancied, only when it arrived at his house, it was nothing but a pail of water because the Eskimo worked in ice. I mean, what’s this girl buying?”

  Nobody had an answer and Fellows shrugged his shoulders. “All right I guess we’ll have to let whoever knew the girl answer that one. You get anything more, Ed?”

  Lewis nodded. “Oh yes. A lot more. I didn’t know why a girl who lived in Bridgeport would be shipping her trunk from Townsend—”

  “That wasn’t the girl,” Fellows said.

  “So Sid told me, but back then I was wondering, and I checked on it
anyway. Well, they remembered her on account of not many trunks get shipped out of Townsend. The stationmaster looked over the files and found the girl brought it in Saturday about noon. That’s the last day of January. She filled in the label in front of him and he stuck it on the trunk and put it aside for shipment. That was all he could tell me, but I asked the porter at the station and he said it was brought there by this girl and a man in a pick-up truck. And get this. The man was dark-haired, fairly tall, medium build, and he was wearing work clothes. He and the girl both came in the truck and they seemed friendly. The guy got the porter to help him unload it and take it inside where the girl filled out the label and then the two of them got back in the pick-up and drove away.”

  “Anything else in the back of that pick-up, Ed?”

  “No, but I asked him about that truck and he said it was dusty like it had been used to carry cement.”

  “Construction worker, huh?”

  “Sounds like it. His work pants were dusty too.”

  “Any name on the side of the truck?”

  “The porter thought so, but he couldn’t remember what it was.” Gorman returned with coffee and the men chipped in. They took their paper containers and tested for flavor, and Fellows said, “Got anything else?”

  Lewis said, “How the hell much more do you want?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind having the name of the man and the name of the girl. That would help.”

  “The woman’s name was Campbell, according to the station-master.”

  “Great.” Fellows swigged some of his coffee. “Well, we’d better see what we’ve got before that reporter Hilders comes back from supper. One thing. I don’t want any of you people giving out interviews. Any reporter ask you something, even if it’s about the weather, you refer him to me. I don’t want the papers knowing anything I don’t want them to know.”

  Wilks said, “What things don’t you want them to know?”

  “I don’t want them knowing about that tan Ford and what we’re going to do about it. I don’t want anybody knowing anything about the Sherman girl.” He fondled his cup and sat up straighten “We’ve got leads to both the man and the girl. If we can find out who just one of them was, then we should have no trouble finding the identity of the other. We’re going to explore both ends and see if we can’t come out in the middle. Tomorrow we’re going to hit the Motor Vehicle Department for a list of all tan 1957 Fords in the state. Meanwhile, every available man is going to be put on tracking that car. It had a dented rear fender, so I want every garage south as far as Stamford, north as far as Danbury, west to the state line, and east to Bridgeport canvassed to see if any repair work was done on such a fender. In addition, we’re going to hit all service stations, starting in Stockford and fanning out, for customers owning tan Fords. One way or another we’re going to find that car. Now I don’t want any leaks. I don’t want the murderer reading about what we’re doing. I don’t want him painting that car or running it into the Sound.

  “As for the girl, the evidence is that she lives in Townsend and I’d guess the man probably lives there too. In either case, we shouldn’t have too much trouble. It’s a small town. I’ll want three men checking Townsend service stations tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Wilks and I’ll try to find the girl. If we’re good and lucky, and we should be, we ought to have the man in jail by tomorrow night.”

  The chief finished his coffee and stood up. “All right. You men can go home now. I’m going to write up a statement for the press. If the morning papers announce that our J.S. came from Townsend, we may have help finding out who J.S. really is.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey, Gorman. Get on the phone to the Townsend police. Ask Chief Ramsey if anybody’s been reported missing from there.”

  When the chief drove home at seven o’clock, he wore a smile of carefully controlled, but not completely contained optimism. True, Ramsey had reported no known missing persons but that didn’t surprise Fellows. The girl with the initials J.S. had expected a three months’ stay in the murder house and she would have made the necessary excuses to her friends and relatives. That was nothing compared to the credit side of the ledger. The papers had been given the news and it would appear in the morning editions. The victim had been pinpointed as coming from a town of 2500 people and that made tracing her easy. Fellows was willing to bet the man was from there too and if he was, it wouldn’t take long to uncover him. Things, the chief decided, were progressing nicely.

  CHAPTER XI

  Saturday, February 28

  By the time the inquest started Saturday morning, activities were already well under way at Police Headquarters. Dzanowski, Harris, and Raphael had gone to Townsend to canvass filling stations and work south. Chernoff, Wade, and Kettleman were covering Stockford, Ashmun, and between points as far as Townsend. Four more men were working the towns to the north, east, and west. The local police of all towns in the area between Stamford, Danbury, and Bridgeport had been alerted to watch for a tan, 1957 Ford with a dented rear fender.

  The inquest itself took place in the conference room of Judge Reed on the first floor of the town hall. Present at the hearing were Town Prosecutor Merrill, Dr. MacFarlane, Wilks, and Fellows and the session lasted only half an hour. MacFarlane’s testimony was in substance the same as his report to Fellows. The dead girl was about thirty, brunette, estimated height five feet six, estimated weight 135 pounds. She had died sometime between Friday afternoon, February twentieth, and Saturday evening, February twenty-first. The woman was not pregnant, had never borne a child, and the cause of death was impossible to determine due to the fact parts of the body were missing. He produced a series of glossy prints of the dismembered remains and showed them around to substantiate this point. Judge Reed glanced at them quickly and looked away, Merrill looked at them briefly, and Fellows didn’t bother looking at them at all.

  When it was the chiefs turn, he told what had been accomplished in the case so far. The man in question was not the John Campbell of the Gary Hardware Company. The victim was not Jean Sherman in Bridgeport. Campbell could be identified by three different people, he drove a tan Ford with Connecticut plates, and his description was known. “Watly and the boy, Andy,” Fellows said, “are going to Hartford this afternoon to look through their photo gallery. If the man’s ever been arrested in this state, we should be able to get a line on him.”

  Judge Reed, unhappy at having to delay his vacation in the first place, was even more disgruntled over what he’d had to delay it for. When Merrill had finished his questioning, Reed said, “What kind of an inquest is this? What kind of a decision am I supposed to hand down on the information you’ve given me? You’ve had the body for two days and you don’t even know how she died. You don’t even know who she is or who took the knife to her.”

  Fellows said, “That’s right, Judge.”

  Reed fixed him with a stony eye. “I would say it behooves you, Chief, to get yourself some help. The Stockford police department is obviously ill-equipped to handle major crimes. Why haven’t you called in the State Police?”

  “We have. We’ve been using their facilities right along, their lab and technicians. And they’re helping us hunt for Campbell’s car.”

  “I would strongly recommend, Chief, that you turn the whole investigation over to them.”

  Fellows said, “Is that your verdict, Judge?”

  “Don’t be flip.”

  “And don’t you be telling me my business, Judge.”

  “I’m not trying to.” Reed looked at his watch impatiently and said, “I can’t give you a verdict. All I can say right now is that a woman died from unknown causes and was mutilated after death by an unknown man. What this court wants is the cause of death and the identity of the man.” He said, as an afterthought, “And the identity of the woman.” He scraped his chair back and stood up.

  “Have a good time in Florida,” Fellows said.

  The judge left the room to go back to his chambers and the others went out into the h
all where Carleton Lawrence, editor of the Stockford Weekly Bulletin, the reporter named Hilders, and two other newspapermen were waiting. Merrill gave them the inquest verdict and MacFarlane said to the chief, “How long do I have to keep the body? When do we bury her?”

  “How long can you hold off?”

  “As long as I have to, I suppose.”

  “Call me on Monday, Jim. I want to find out who she is if I can.”

  The chief went downstairs to headquarters and Hilders followed him. “Hey, Chief, how about letting me take a look around the murder house?”

  Fellows said, “Help yourself.”

  “It’s locked. Restlin has the keys.”

  “Then ask him. We’re through with it. It’s not our house.”

  “I have asked him. He won’t open it up.”

  The chief pulled open the hall door to the main room for Wilks and himself and held it so Hilders could follow. He said to Sergeant Unger, “Any reports?”

  “One from Erie.” He handed it to the chief who read, PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION REVEALS SIX MEN WHO ONCE WORKED FOR GARY HARDWARE NOW LIVING IN CONNECTICUT-NEW YORK AREA STOP HARVEY BENTON 228 WESTSIDE STREET, HARTFORD, JAMES COLES 164 EDGEHILL ROAD STRATFORD, MARTIN FINE 55 WEYMOUTH LANE NEW ROCHELLE, RICHARD LESTER, LAST KNOWN IN STAMFORD, KIRBY NORRIS 681 BEVERLY DRIVE NEW HAVEN, SAMUEL TRAUBE 40 ESSEX STREET NEW LONDON.

  Fellows showed it to Wilks and said, “Nobody in Townsend. I guess that was expecting too much.”

  Hilders wanted to see it, but Fellows kept it away. “You don’t want names, Mr. Hilders. It’s just people who know a John Campbell works for Gary Hardware. Their names are our business.”

  “Everything’s your business. I can’t write a story on the handouts you give.”

  “I thought you were going to nose around on your own, Mr. Hilders.”

  “You’ve got me blocked. You won’t let me into the murder house, for instance.”

  “There’s nothing there in the first place and it’s not our affair in the second.”