Fellows stroked his chin when the girl’s story was finished. He had expected that when he learned the victim’s identity, he’d automatically discover the man’s, but it hadn’t come so easily. The man, whoever he was, had operated completely under cover, had apparently sold Joan Simpson a fast line and convinced her he should never be revealed.
When Ruth’s roommate, Helen Burnam, came in with Bob Herald, Fellows and Wilks questioned them with the same effect. Helen, no more than Ruth, knew anything about the dead girl’s background, only that she worked for the Fizz-Rite Bottling Company, and she too knew nothing more than “Johnny’s” first name. Bob Herald had little additional information. “I took her trunk to the station,” he said. “She rode with me and I kept asking her where she was going, but she wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t even let me see when she filled out a tag for the trunk. She kept saying I’d find out all about it in good time. I thought it was a funny way for a girl about to get married to behave and I guess I was half thinking she wasn’t going to get married at all. I sort of suspected she was running away with some guy.” When the two policemen left, Wilks went down the stairs a frustrated man. “What was the matter with that girl?” he growled. “Couldn’t she see she was playing right into the hands of a murderer?”
Fellows said, “Are you figuring he meant to kill her from the first moment, Sid?”
Wilks banged the suitcase he carried against the rail of the concrete steps outside in anger. “What do you figure?”
Fellows shook his head. “I guess I figure the ceiling needs a few more BB’s before it falls,” he said, and Wilks gave him a puzzled look.
CHAPTER XIX
Wednesday, March 4
Wednesday morning Sergeant Wilks made a trip to the Fizz-Rite Bottling Company south of Townsend and talked to everyone there who could give him information about the late Joan Simpson. At the same time, Ed Lewis was put in charge of a new project, that of checking every motel in the prescribed area for guests by the name of John Campbell. That morning, too, Raymond Watly made another trip to Hartford and his was the dreariest job of all. Since Andy Palekowski had seen Burchard and not Campbell, all the rogue’s gallery pictures he had checked had to be gone over again. Frank Restlin complained and Watly was unhappy, but it was work that had to be done.
Wilks was back from his job before lunch and reported to the chief that Fizz-Rite company records showed Joan Simpson had been in their employ since September 1954, that she had worked in the Bridgeport production plant until September 1957, when she was among those moved to the new bottling plant just opened outside of Townsend. Before that, Joan had worked for the Masters Toy Company in Bridgeport and her family had their home in that city. As for the question of men in her life, no one there admitted knowing a thing. No one there had ever tried to date her.
“That girl was too quiet for her own good,” Wilks complained.
“Somewhere in her life there’s a man, but it’s a better secret than the atom bomb.”
Fellows said, “Sure nobody was lying, Sid?”
“I can’t swear to it. Who can? But there are only twelve men in the plant and nine of them are married and the three single ones are in their early twenties and all three are going steady.”
“And the married men?”
“I didn’t see them all. There’s her boss, of course, a guy named Donald Jones, and he knows her the best, but he’s forty and doesn’t fit the description of Campbell. I made a point of meeting all the men I could and finding out about the others. There are only two there who do fit it.” He pulled his notebook from his pocket and flipped the pages. “One is Benjamin Hamper, married, three children, lives in Stamford. The other is Henry Callen, married, no children. He lives in Townsend. Hamper claims he never even knew Joan Simpson and Callen only knew her slightly. And neither of them ever worked for Gary Hardware in Erie.”
“Erie?” Fellows reflected at the name. “I think maybe we should forget about Erie.” He sifted briefly through the papers on his desk. “I got a report today, if I can find it.” He gave up. “Anyway, the Erie police have checked everybody they can find out there who knows their John Campbell and they can’t trace any connection at all.”
“Meaning what? That it’s another coincidence?”
“That’s my guess. The guy picks Gary Hardware because he saw the name somewhere. He gets ‘John Campbell’ out of the air and it so happens there really is a John Campbell there. That’s not such a rare name and the plant employs six thousand people.”
“And that ex-employee, Richard Lester was cleared. What about the other five names they gave you?”
“They’ve been cleared too. I got the last of that today too.” Wilks sat down and pulled out his tobacco. “What you’re trying to say is you don’t have anybody at all, is that it?”
“Right now it’s just those two men at the plant you mentioned, Hamper and Callen.” Fellows smiled. “It’s not much, is it?”
“It’s nothing,” Wilks said, biting tobacco and offering it to the chief. “I even tried that business about anything special happening at the plant last spring, back last April or May. You know, somebody coming in for a while, someone she might have met? That’s when she started dating. Her boss checked the records to see what purchasing agents showed up at that time. That’s really reaching for straws, because how the hell is she going to get that acquainted with some guy dropping in once?”
“You got those names?”
“Yep. William Sedgewick. He made two calls because he sells to them regularly. There were two others. Robert Coffin and Kenneth Worley. Sedgewick you can rule out because he’s blond and heavy. The other two called once, and the boss doesn’t remember what they looked like. We can check on them through the companies they represent if you think it’s worth while. I’ve got that dope.”
“I don’t think it’s particularly worth while, but we’ll do it”
“It’s a waste of time, but all right.” Wilks made notes and said, “So we check them and find they’re clean and then we have nothing.”
“Not quite nothing.” Fellows stared up at his picture gallery. “You know,” he said, turning, “Joan Simpson met that man somehow. Now if it wasn’t through the office, how was it?”
“She runs into an old friend on the street.”
“Maybe an old friend, or maybe a new one. Remember, Burchard never set eyes on her before, and in twenty minutes he’s in bed with her.”
“You mean she’s a sucker for any guy?”
“I’d guess not quite any guy, Sid, but we do know she was something of a pushover, not eager, but not unwilling. If she meets the right kind of guy, something clicks and off they go to the hay. That’s what I think.”
“Sounds all right, but what does it get us?”
Fellows shrugged. “It gets us the possibility that maybe her ‘Johnny’ made his connection the same way Burchard did. He rang her doorbell to sell her something.”
“When’s she home?”
“On a weekend when it so happens the other girls are away, or at night, Sid!” His eyes lighted. “At night. The other girls are out and Joan is home. He rings the bell. He’s selling something.”
Wilks gave him a quizzical smile. “Trying to make a quota, Fred?”
“People sell at night, Sid. My boy is trying to pick up money right now selling storm windows. He does that after school and in the evening sometimes.” He tilted his chair back and stared at space. “He works during the day. He’s got a job. In the evenings he works doing door-to-door selling.”
Wilks wasn’t impressed. “That’s one way he could meet her. There’re a hundred others.”
“But this way explains things that I don’t think any of the others would. For instance, we guess he’s married. We guess he then must work evenings because he had to have some kind of excuse to see Joan every night. Going out selling could be the job.”
“It could be,” Wilks admitted. “You’re taking a lot for granted, but it could
be.”
“And he’ll bear a fair resemblance to Clyde Burchard.”
Wilks laughed. “Now your reasoning is getting over my head.”
“The picture that girl drew for us wasn’t a good resemblance, but both Watly and Andy said it looked slightly like the guy.”
“But Andy never saw Campbell. It was Burchard he saw.”
“Andy didn’t, but Watly did. Figure it this way, Sid. Andy was trying to get the girl to draw a picture of Burchard, and Watly was trying to get her to draw Campbell. What they probably got was something in between. It probably looks as much like Campbell as it does Burchard.”
Wilks stretched and disclaimed interest. “Personally I didn’t think it looked much like Burchard. I wouldn’t have picked him out of any line-up on the strength of it.”
“I thought it did a little around the eyes.”
“Not much.”
“It’s something to consider. Then, of course, there’re the motels.”
“What motels?”
Fellows told him what he was having Lewis do. “Look at it this way, Sid. From what we know, this guy is a chronic philanderer. A guy like that needs a place, doesn’t he? Motels are great for it.”
Wilks had to admit it. “Let’s hope he uses the name Campbell,” he said.
“And meanwhile, you and I can keep busy. Now that we know who Joan’s parents are, I guess it’s time to let them know about her. You can see what you can learn at the Fizz-Rite main company in Bridgeport, and I’ll talk to her folks. I guess it’s about time somebody told them what happened to their daughter.”
CHAPTER XX
Wednesday, 1:00-2:30 P.M.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Simpson lived on Eastview Avenue in Bridgeport, a lower-class suburban street whose houses were old, but whose trees were older, consisting of full-grown maples and elms, their naked branches jigsawing the sky. The Simpson place was a two-story, one-family house in need of paint. There was a postage stamp lawn crusted with the remains of Monday’s snow and an icy driveway to a tumbledown garage in the rear.
Fellows looked the house over and took a deep breath when he got out of the car. This was the second time in the case he had approached a house prepared to explain to anguished parents that their daughter was dead and he relished it even less this time.
A man in a T shirt and house slippers answered the door and allowed that he was Mr. Simpson. Fellows introduced himself and the man let him in, his stern face, under a shock of iron-gray hair, showing perplexity and a little disquiet. Mr. Simpson didn’t think he had broken any laws, but he couldn’t imagine why else a policeman should be at the door.
Mrs. Simpson entered the living room wiping her hands on an apron and was equally uneasy upon learning the identity of the caller. Where her husband was a big man, as tall as Fellows himself, rock-ribbed and solid, she was short and had once been petite, though now she was running to fat. The two of them perched on chairs, leaning forward and waiting for whatever axe was to fall, and the chief, dangling his hat between his legs in an opposite chair, stared down at the floor. “You have a daughter Joan?”
The father exhaled, and his tension relaxed a little. He hadn’t broken any laws after all. His wife sat a little farther forward, as if the tension he lost had been added to hers. “Yes,” she said in a quiet, strained voice.
“I want to talk to you about her,” Fellows said, trying in his mind to phrase his sentences.
It was Mr. Simpson who spoke then. “She got herself into trouble, didn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I’m not surprised,” the man snapped. “She’s a tramp.”
“She’s a good girl,” his wife said defensively.
“It was with a man, wasn’t it?” Simpson said.
“Yes.”
“That’s what I thought. She’s a no-good tramp. That’s what I told her and that’s what I told you. Whatever she done she deserves what she gets.”
Fellows changed his approach a little. “Why do you say that?”
“She don’t live how we bring her up. Men! She’s always playing around with a man.”
His wife said, “Now, Robert, you don’t know that.”
“What do you mean I don’t know it?” he said back. “I do know it. How about that guy in the toy company? You think she got those presents because she took shorthand good?”
“What man was that?” the chief asked.
Mrs. Simpson said, with hot tears in her eyes, “That’s no way to talk about your daughter. Especially to strangers. Joan was a good girl.” She turned to Fellows. “She was always good to us. She was nice to have around. Never an unkind word, never any fights—”
“We had fights,” Simpson said. “Her and I.”
“It was you who did it. Hitting at her because she wanted a good time. What’s being young for, but to have a good time?”
“She didn’t have to go shacking up with her boss. That’s not the way a girl should behave. I told her and told her she’d have to pay the price.”
“She was a good girl. The only thing wrong was you not talking to her, except when you had wine and you wanted to fight.”
“She didn’t deserve I should talk with her. Would she go to church? Would she act decent like I wanted her to? No.”
Mrs. Simpson turned her attention to the chief. “What kind of trouble is she in?”
Fellows would have stalled, but the question was direct and there was no way to avoid an answer. “We think she’s been killed,” he said quietly.
Both parents said, “No!” together, and Mrs. Simpson leaned still farther forward. “That can’t be.”
“We found a body,” the chief said, “which has been tentatively identified as being a Joan Simpson, who worked for the Fizz-Rite Company in Townsend. We’ve been told you are her parents.”
Mr. Simpson’s heavily lined face crinkled up. A choking sob came out of his mouth and tears started from the creases that hid his eyes. “My baby,” he cried. “My Joan.” He began to sob and stumbled blindly out of the room, his cries echoing back through the house until a door slammed.
Mrs. Simpson sat perfectly still for a long time, staring vacantly into space, her only movements being a gentle rocking and the twisting of her fingers in her lap. Then she looked painfully at Fellows. “Is there—any chance of a mistake?”
Fellows said, “Of course, until your husband or you view the remains it’s not positive, but I’m afraid there isn’t much question.” She nodded and stared emptily once more. “You—said—someone killed her?”
“We believe so.”
“Did—you—catch him?”
“No, ma’am. We’re trying to. I’m hoping you can help us.”
“Of course we’ll help.” She was silent a moment and then said, “Please excuse my husband. He really loved her very much.”
“I never doubted that.” Fellows made a move to get up. “If you’d rather I came back later—”
“No,” she said. “It’s—I don’t mind talking about her. I’d like to talk about her.”
“Maybe you could tell me something about her life, particularly from high school on.”
Mrs. Simpson nodded and started. She talked at length, and to a large extent irrelevantly, as if recollecting her only child’s life for her own sustenance, purging herself of the temptations of grief by remembering. Fellows made no effort to stop her, to direct her along the lines that interested him. He let her ramble for her own good and for the possible chance that something, apparently unconnected, might be a clue to what happened to her later.
Joan Simpson had always lived in their present house. In childhood she went to the neighborhood school and on to Bassick High, where she graduated in 1946. There followed two years in the Junior College of Commerce in New Haven, learning shorthand and typing, where she proved herself a more than capable student. Mrs. Simpson demonstrated her point by getting Joan’s high school and Junior College diplomas, and Fellows was properly impressed. Afte
r that, Joan got a job in an accounting firm, but didn’t care much for it and in October of 1950 took another job as private secretary to E. M. Busso, Vice President of the Masters Toy Company. “My husband thinks she wasn’t a nice girl with Mr. Busso,” she said. “I don’t think that’s right. We met Mr. Busso many times when he came to take Joan out and he was always a gentleman. He was very rich, but he didn’t talk down to us at all. He was nice to us and he thought the world of Joan. Just because he gave her some presents—he could afford them. He gave us that television set one Christmas. He was a very nice man. I always hoped,” she said sadly, “that perhaps he and Joan would get married, even if he was a lot older. That didn’t happen and I guess it’s because he looked on Joan more like a daughter. He was very nice to young girls trying to get ahead. When he let Joan go, which was in June back, let me see, I believe it was 1954, when he let her go, it was to give a new young girl a chance. As he explained it to Joan, she was ready for better things. Joan was quite bitter, but I’m sure Mr. Busso knew best.”
Fellows said, “Your husband didn’t share your view that Mr. Busso was—a father to Joan?”
“I think my husband was jealous because Mr. Busso did such nice things for her. My husband wouldn’t hardly talk to Joan. All the time she worked for Mr. Busso, which was nearly four years, she lived with us and he wouldn’t say hardly anything except to call her a tramp or sometimes worse things. But Joan was a good girl. She lived with us. She didn’t have her own apartment.”
After her release from Masters Toys, Joan spent several months idling around, doing nothing. She went on a Nassau cruise that summer on her savings and stayed around the house the rest of the time until after Labor Day. “She didn’t think Mr. Busso treated her fairly,” Mrs. Simpson said. “She didn’t know it was for her own good, because Mr. Busso was a nice man and wealthy and gave us presents and a man like that wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t right.”
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