“Now? You wouldn’t be able to get him today.”
“Why not?”
“He’s off. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him.”
“You just said you were a detective. Let’s see you detect.” Hilders wet his lips and put his hand on the desk phone. “I talked to him about it last night. He’ll expect to be paid.”
Fellows said, “On our budget?” His eyes narrowed. “What’s he want?”
“Fifty bucks.”
Fellows stared at the reporter for a moment in real surprise. Then he moved the phone away. “Sid,” he said. “We’re in the wrong business. We should’ve studied our drawing lessons harder in school.”
“I tried to tell him,” Hilders said. “The guy wouldn’t listen. He wants to make a buck.”
The chief said, “We got any artists in this town, Sid?”
“Sure. Out in the sticks. I can name you two or three New York illustrators.”
“They’d probably want a thousand bucks.”
“We can try them. I’ll bet Henry Whitlock would do it for nothing.”
“I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask a guy like him to. No. I’ve got a better idea. I’m going to call up the art teacher at the high school and find out who her best pupil is. I have a feeling an eager kid like that might turn out a better job. I don’t mean it’d be as good art work, but it might be a better likeness.”
If all of Fellows’s previous efforts had been coming to naught, at least in this instance things went his way. At two o’clock that afternoon, Shirley Whitlock, a dark-haired, attractive sixteen-year-old senior at Stockford High, recommended by her teacher as the outstanding artist in the school, came into headquarters with a sketch pad under her arm and a paper bag of drawing utensils in her hand. Wilks was there to greet her and take her into Fellows’s office, where the chief sat at his desk making conversation with Raymond Watly and Andy Palekowski. After the introductions, the chief sat Shirley at the table and said, “Now do you understand what we want you to do?”
“I think so, sir.”
“You try to draw a picture of a man the way they tell you to. We want to see if we can’t get some kind of a likeness.”
“Yes, sir.” She tilted the pad against herself and the table and laid an eraser and several extra sticks of charcoal within easy reach. “How should I start?”
Watly said, “I don’t know. Why don’t you start drawing a head and then we can make corrections.” He looked at Andy as the girl sketched an oval quickly. “What do you think? You saw him after I did. Narrower face than that?”
Andy agreed and the girl made changes. It went on like that. Neither man could be sure of the placement of the eyes, whether the forehead was wide or narrow. They let her go ahead.
Fellows and Wilks went out of the office, leaving the door open. The chief could sense the pressure his presence exerted on the trio, on the girl trying to draw with him looking over her shoulder, on the men, worried about their own uncertainty. Wilks said, “Where’s that reporter at a time like this? He’s missing the only decent news we’ve had all weekend.”
Fellows shrugged. “If he wants to look over the house, let him.”
“He’s not going to find anything. It’s been cleaned up except for the plumbers replacing the pipes.”
“It makes him happy. What’s the harm?”
Wilks looked sidewise at the chief. “You’re big-hearted today. Don’t tell me you’re falling for that line he threw out about being an amateur sleuth. You do that and you’re in a bad way.”
Fellows shook his head sadly. “When I turn to running charcoal pictures in the papers, drawn by high school students, of a man as described by two other men who’ve seen him once in their lives, several weeks before, I’m in a bad way. It’s like chasing after every filling-station owner or telling the highway patrols to watch for a tan Ford, or telling other police departments to check on half a dozen guys because they once worked for a hardware factory in Pennsylvania. Face it, Sid. This whole case is in a bad way.”
“That’s all right. That’s police procedure. Track down every clue. But letting some newspaper reporter examine the scene of the crime for new theories, that’s admitting failure.”
Fellows laughed. “You remind me of the guy who committed suicide when adding machines came out. He couldn’t stand having those contraptions beat him. I’m not looking for new theories, but let him have his fun. There’s nothing to lose. You’ve got to understand, Sid. I’m using every resource I can lay my hands on. Hilders is no symbol of anything. He’s a resource. Of course he’s a faint one, but you never can tell.”
He paused briefly, listening to the sounds of discussion emanating from his office. They weren’t encouraging sounds, for the men, though dissatisfied with the progress of the drawing, weren’t able to suggest effective changes. “The newspapers,” Fellows said, turning back to Wilks, “are another resource. We’ll run that picture in the papers and hope. And we’ll keep publicizing the fact the trunk came from Townsend. One of those two things might do us some good.”
At three o’clock a round of coffee was sent out for, and Fellows had the girl and the two men take a break. The girl was close to tears. She had produced a charcoal outline of a face and it was done with a sure and practiced hand, but she was unhappy. “I can’t make it come out right, Mr. Fellows.”
Watly patted the girl affectionately on the shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Shirley.” He said to the chief, “I think I’d know him if I saw him, but you pin me down whether his nose was short or long and I can’t tell you. I have an impression of his looks, but it’s”—he gestured with his hands—“sort of an over-all picture. I can tell her if the picture’s wrong, but I can’t tell her where it’s wrong.”
Andy said, “I’d know him, Mr. Fellows. You put him in a line-up, and I’ll pick him out. But it’s like what Mr. Watly says. I don’t know nothing about art. I never drew a picture in my life. This thing looks a little like the guy but not an awful lot and I don’t know what she ought to do with it.”
“I should throw it away,” she complained.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Fellows told her. “But maybe you could help them out a little by making changes here and there. Experiment and maybe by accident you’ll put it together.”
The girl said she felt useless, but she tried, and Fellows and Wilks left them together awhile longer.
The picture that finally developed was a pretty good charcoal sketch of a dark-haired man, a little younger looking, perhaps, than thirty-five, with a slender, not unpleasant face. Artistically it was commendable, but the three creators of it weren’t well satisfied. Shirley Whitlock was glum and dispirited. Watly shrugged about it and said it might bear some resemblance, but he wasn’t willing to commit himself. Andy was a little more optimistic. “It don’t look too much like the guy,” he said, “but I don’t know. There’s something about it. I could maybe recognize him from it.” Fellows saw them off with his thanks and put the picture, slightly yellowed by the application of a fixative, on the counter for Wilks and Sergeant Unger to study. “Look like anybody you know?” The two men shook their heads. “Not around here,” Unger said.
Wilks handed back the picture. “I think it’s going to be a bust, Fred. You really want to give it to the papers?”
“Like Hilders and the house. What’s to lose?”
CHAPTER XIV
Monday, March 2
It snowed on Monday the second of March. The first flakes fell at five in the morning and by eight o’clock, there was an inch on the ground, the sky was slate and dark and the weather cold and clammy. It was a dull and depressing start of a new week, but Chief of Police Fred Fellows had hopes. The regional morning papers were publicizing the case again, putting it back on the front pages. Shirley Whitlock’s charcoal sketch was given a prominent position in the Stamford editions and the fact that the dead girl’s steamer trunk was shipped from Townsend by a man and girl in a pick-up truck got all the
play the chief had asked for. People in Townsend read the Stamford papers since they had none of their own and he hoped that before the morning was out there would be a call.
It was this morning too that the report from the Motor Vehicle Department arrived. Of the 873,000 passenger cars registered in the state, 43,000 were 1957 Fords and well over two thousand were tan, two-door sedans.
The information, too lengthy to come over the teletype, arrived by registered mail and when Wilks pulled out the sheaf of papers with names and addresses, he took them in to Fellows and tossed them on his desk and said, “I quit.”
Fellows, poring over the roster with an eye to sending more men on the filling-station detail, picked up the lists and tilted his chair back. “What’s the matter, Sid?”
“Look at those addresses. Read the letter—873,000 cars in a population of two million. Over two thousand of them match the one we’re after. Why couldn’t Campbell own a Cord or something? Do you know how long it’ll take to check every one of these people?”
“Not long enough for Campbell to die of old age, Sid.” He sorted through the thick mess of papers on his desk, hunting until he came up with the Erie police report, the names of the six former employees of Gary Hardware who lived in the area. Then he went through the alphabetical list of Ford owners. At the third Connecticut name he whistled. “Richard Lester at 440 Fair Street, Stamford, owns one of our cars. What do you know about that?”
“Stamford?” Wilks sat down beside him.
“Richard Lester. He worked for Gary Hardware, so he knows about Campbell, he drives the tan Ford, and he lives in Stamford.” He finished the sorting and said, “He’s the only one, but that’s better than I would have thought.”
“And the next question,” Wilks added, beginning to grin, “is did he know a girl with the initials J.S. I think we’re onto something.”
“Yeah, but don’t let it go to your head. It proves nothing.”
“But at least it’s a place to look. We haven’t even had that before.” He got up. “You want me to go down there?”
“I’ll send Ed down. The Stamford police are investigating him, but we’ll see what Ed can dig up. I want you to go back to Townsend and work on the girl’s angle.”
“Ed gets all the fun.”
“I know it, but you’re the better detective. You get the harder job. Try to locate that girl, Sid. And keep in touch by phone in case someone calls in about her.”
Ed Lewis was summoned and dispatched in his own car. “It doesn’t matter if Lester’s got a bent fender or not,” Fellows told him. “And if he’s not clean, bring him back and we’ll show him to Watly or that grocer boy.”
Lewis went off eagerly and Wilks went, a little less eagerly, on his assignment in Townsend. His was the harder job, all right, and he didn’t have many ideas how to tackle it.
Sidney Wilks was the first to call back. “I tried the employment agency here,” he told Fellows. “No luck and no ideas.”
“Try the contractors in town. Concentrate on the truck.”
“I don’t suppose there’ve been any calls.”
“Not about the girl, but there’ve been three about the picture we ran. They’re being checked out now.”
John Hilders came in around noon, shaking off snow. “Any news?”
“Not yet. Where’d you disappear to yesterday?”
“I looked over the house and had one of the photographers out. I got enough for a big spread.” He grinned. “You miss me?”
“Yeah. I thought you’d come up with a big new theory.”
“Give me time.” He observed Unger reading from a sheaf of papers, making notations. “What’s he doing?”
“That’s a list of all owners of tan Fords, the kind Campbell drives. He’s noting the ones who live anywhere around this area.” Hilders got out his notebook. “You going to check them all?”
“We’re after a guy who drives a tan Ford. What do you think?”
“And I can print it?”
“We’re taking the wraps off that angle. You can print it.”
Ed Lewis called in at two o’clock. “Richard Lester has a tan Ford, all right, and he used to work for the Gary Hardware Company, Chief, but he doesn’t fit the description. He’s got sandy hair.”
Fellows said slowly, “How old is he?”
“Thirty-eight, and he’s about the right build and height, but he’s got reddish brown hair.”
“Does he look anything like the picture?”
“Look, Chief. I’m telling you. He’s not the right guy.”
“Does he look like the picture, Ed? I’m asking you.”
“Well, some people might see some kind of a resemblance. Personally, I don’t.”
“What have the Stamford police got on him?”
“They questioned him. He’s married, four children, works in the shirt factory here. No dents in his fenders.”
“What was he doing nights last month?”
“Staying home.”
“Who says so?”
“He does.”
“And you’re going to take his word for it?”
“Chief, this guy—”
“Has sandy hair. Ed, anybody who can change his name can change the color of his hair. This is the closest thing to a clue we’ve had yet and I want it checked out. I want proof he’s not the right man and if you can’t get it, I want him brought in for questioning. Try to get a photograph of him or something we can show Watly or the kid.”
As the afternoon passed, Fellows grew restless. Wilks called in twice more reporting no luck and two more phone calls came in about men who resembled the picture in the paper, but none came from anyone who knew of a trunk being sent from Townsend. The picture had now brought in a total of five calls, but not one of the names mentioned could be found on the list of tan Ford owners. Despite this, Fellows had two men busy following up the leads, going out to question the men and make inquiries of their neighbors.
Late in the afternoon, Town Prosecutor Leonard Merrill dropped in from his office upstairs. He listened to Fellows’s report of no success with ill-concealed annoyance. He said, “It looks bad for the town, Fellows, when a man can commit murder and get away with it.”
“Who said he’s going to get away with it?”
“That’s what he’s doing, isn’t it?”
“So far, Len. Only so far.”
“You haven’t learned a damned thing since the inquest, have you?”
“We’ve found out a few people it couldn’t be. I don’t suppose you’d call that learning anything.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Fellows sighed. He said, “Wheels are grinding. I guess that’s about all I can say.”
“The wheels aren’t making any noise. People in this town are thinking you’re sitting on your hands.”
“You been out taking a poll or something?”
“This isn’t something to joke about.”
“I’m not joking. I’m just reminded of this guy who had a BB gun he liked to play with. So one day he fired a shot into the ceiling and the whole ceiling fell in on him. At the hospital, one of the doctors asked him why he did it and he said he didn’t think the ceiling would fall in, he’d been shooting BBs into it for three years and it never happened before.”
Merrill said, “What are you telling me a thing like that for?”
“I’m just saying, you don’t want to be like that guy with the BB gun, Len. Sure, the wheels grinding don’t make much noise and you wouldn’t hardly know anything was happening. But you just wait and one of these days the ceiling’s going to fall down and it’s going to land right on our boy.”
“It’d better be one of these days soon,” Merrill said irritably, and went out.
Shortly after Merrill had gone, Ed Lewis returned looking gloomier than the town prosecutor. “I’ve got the proof,” he told Fellows.
“On that guy Richard Lester?”
“That’s right. Richard Lester, who works in the shi
rt factory. In the first place, he’s been putting in overtime for the past couple of months. This, I found out at the factory itself. He doesn’t get through until six o’clock.”
“Meaning,” asked Fellows, “that he couldn’t have been at the murder house at five-thirty.”
“That’s about it. And I talked to his neighbors. They back up the story he’s home nearly every night. In fact, on three evenings, he was with one of them. You want the dates?”
Fellows sighed. “I guess you can skip the dates.”
“And the weekend that Campbell was supposed to be in New York, this guy was home. He and his wife went to a movie with a neighbor couple. That’s Saturday before last. You want more?”
“You can keep the rest. He’s alibied.”
“I told you that earlier.”
Fellows said, “Now there’s no point in both of us losing our tempers. You can’t afford it with me and I can’t afford it for myself. It’s one more lead down the drain, that’s all. Go home, Ed. Take your shoes off and have a beer.”
Lewis managed a dry smile. “All right, Chief. Those’re the best orders I’ve heard since the body was found.”
Fellows took himself in hand after the plainclothesman left and pored over the reports, arguing that patience was the quality that would eventually break the case. A certain percentage of leads in all cases were false and it was to be expected. He’d had enough experience to know that fact, but the disgruntling thing about this particular affair was that all the false leads seemed to be coming at the beginning. He was ready for something more substantial.
The something substantial didn’t come from Sergeant Wilks, however. When he returned, Fellows was drinking coffee in the office and Wilks said, “I can tell how tough a case is, Fred, by the coffee you drink.”
“I didn’t have any lunch.”
“You should eat. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“Never mind about me. What’s your report?”
Wilks told him the bad news. He’d checked all the builders in Townsend and questioned everyone connected with them but no one would admit knowing anything about depositing a trunk at the station.
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