Fellows himself came in at half past eight, half an hour after the force had gone out, and with him was a girl. “This is Jean Sherman,” he said to Wilks, introducing them. “I think it’s about time we got her into this again.”
He brought her into his office with a puzzled Wilks following, then leaned out to say to Sergeant Unger, “Get hold of Watly, will you? Ask him to come over right away.” He closed the door and seated Miss Sherman in his swivel chair.
Wilks said, “Don’t tell me what this is all about. I only work here.”
“It’s more of my stratosphere stuff. It probably won’t pay off, but by the law of averages, Sid, if you keep trying long enough, something’s bound to happen.”
“What’s supposed to happen this time?”
“Figure it out. She and Watly are the only two people we know of who’ve seen Campbell.”
“You’re not going to have them draw another picture are you?”
“That’s one possibility,” Fellows admitted, “but I’m hoping just a little bit that we won’t have to resort to that.”
The girl sat quietly, a little bit awed, a little bit embarrassed. Wilks said to her, “Do you know what this is all about? I can see the chief won’t tell me.”
She shook her head. “He came this morning and got me out of bed. I don’t know what it’s for.”
Wilks bit savagely into a hunk of chewing tobacco. The look he gave Fellows said it was more hocus-pocus.
At quarter of nine, Sergeant Unger opened the door. “Mr. Watly’s here.”
Fellows brightened. He went out to greet him. “Sorry, Mr. Watly. We’re taking up a lot of your time.”
Watly nodded. He had passed the stage of enjoying any of this. He had even passed the stage of complaining.
Fellows stood aside and let him enter the office first. Watly took one step inside the door.
In the chief’s chair, Jean Sherman shrank back, then stumbled to her feet. Her voice was a shriek. “It’s him! It’s John Campbell!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Friday, 8:45-10:00 AM.
When Jean screamed, Wilks froze against the table, and Watly sagged against the wall, his face gray. Only Fellows seemed to know what he was doing. He shut the door and pulled out a chair. Jean moved into a corner, staring at Watly with a look akin to horror, her hand at her throat, her breasts rising and falling rapidly. Fellows took the stunned real estate man by the arm and aided him into the seat. “How about it, Mr. Watly?” he said. “You want to tell us about it?”
Watly leaned his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “It’s been driving me crazy. I haven’t been able to sleep or eat for waiting.” He looked up. “Let me explain,” he begged. “I can explain everything if you’ll only listen.”
“We’ll listen. You just wait here.” He opened the door and ushered Jean Sherman out into the arms of a flabbergasted Sergeant Unger. He said, “Thank you very much, Miss Sherman. You’ve been a great help. Now, if you’ll go with the sergeant, I’ll have him take you upstairs and get your statement.” He said to Unger, “First get Ed Lewis. I’m going to want him for Watly’s confession.”
Unger nodded and got busy. He departed with the girl as Wilks came out of the office. The detective sergeant was eyeing Fellows suspiciously. He said, “Something tells me this wasn’t pure accident, your bringing Watly and the girl together.”
Fellows grinned and moved to the door where he could look in on Raymond Watly, who was resting his head on his hands. “I wanted to satisfy myself,” he said to Wilks.
“You might prepare a guy for a shock like that. I’m not a young man any more.”
“I couldn’t, Sid. It was more of my stratosphere stuff and if I let on I suspected him and I was wrong again, I’d be the laughing stock of the town.”
“How did you do it?”
“I added up my theories, Sid. We figured Campbell was married, that he worked in downtown Stockford, but lived in another town, one not too far away. We had him a salesman, one who worked regular hours in the daytime and did door-to-door selling at night. We also figured he didn’t want us to have his handwriting because we could identify it, either because he had a jail record or because he was close by. We also felt he did have a record somewhere. And we thought he abandoned the body because he was sure of discovery—and the only certainty of discovery was by a prospect coming out to look at the house. That was all that stratosphere stuff you were talking about, and I expected to be wrong on a lot of it, but I couldn’t see how I could be wrong on all of it. I just couldn’t believe that.
“So then, thinking about this guy Bunnell, it occurred to me that the only guy who resembled Watly’s description at all and who could have known Bunnell would go to the house was Watly himself. As soon as I thought of that, I realized that there was still one person who worked in Stockford Center who hadn’t been cleared by Watly and that again was Watly himself. Of course I thought I was crazy, but then I began to think I wasn’t crazy because more and more I could see everything fell into place if Watly was the guy. He’s married. He works in Stockford, but he fives in Ashmun. He’s in real estate. That’s a selling job. And he was out the night you called him to go to Stamford with us. He could have gone to a movie, but he could also have been house-to-house selling, especially since his wife was home to say he was out. Then there were the differences in description, his and Jean Sherman’s. He said Campbell was five-ten, two inches shorter than he was. Jean said he was six feet. Watly said Campbell wore better clothes than he could buy. Jean said they were average clothes. Watly had him wearing a tan overcoat. Jean said a dark coat. Watly wears a dark one.” Fellows shrugged. “It’d have been rough if I’d been wrong this time. This was the last gasp.”
Wilks looked in the office door and said, “Now it’s only rough on Walty.”
Ed Lewis reported in half an hour later, and the three policemen brought in chairs and sat with Watly around the small table. The real estate agent had been begging for someone to listen to his story about the terrible business with Joan Simpson and when they were ready and Lewis had his pad set, Fellows said, “All right, Wady. Now you can talk.”
“It was a terrible thing,” Wady said nervously. He was halting in his speech as he began, but grew more fluent as he unfolded his story. “I met Joan Simpson first when I was working for the Masters Toy Company in Bridgeport. She was the boss’s secretary. I guess you’d call her his mistress.”
Fellows said, “And you worked under the name John Lawrence, right?”
He nodded. “I read you found that out, but I don’t know how. I mean how you knew Lawrence was Campbell.”
“And you were fired for playing around. You been seeing her all this time?”
Watly shook his head. “I never saw her after. I don’t mean she wasn’t a nifty dish back then when she was only about twenty, but, well, she had a setup and she didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t bother trying to see her after I left the company.”
“You married back then?”
Watly hesitated. Finally he nodded. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. That has nothing to do with it.”
“Nobody said it has.”
“I mean—I don’t want you to get wrong ideas about me. I know a husband isn’t supposed to fool around, but I can’t help it. I’m made that way. Please don’t get prejudiced against me because of that.”
“Go on with the story.”
“Well, I didn’t see Joan after that. That was, let’s see, back in April of '51. I had to get another job. I got one selling beauty preparations door to door. Lady Alma. I still do.”
“Calling yourself John Campbell or John Lawrence, or Raymond Watly?”
He wet his lips. “I call myself John Lawrence.”
“You introduce yourself to your customers as John Lawrence? Is that how the company has you listed?”
“No. They know me as Raymond Watly.”
“Which is your real name?”
“Raymon
d Watly. Raymond Kirk Watly.”
“We’ll straighten out this name business in a minute. First I want to know why you use the name Lawrence to your customers. Is that so they can’t make complaints against you?”
“No, no. I don’t do anything they’d complain about.”
“Then it’s so they can’t trace you.”
Watly was perspiring. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Chief. I don’t want you prejudiced.”
“I think you mean you don’t want us to get the right idea. What do you do, seduce your customers under the name of John Lawrence?”
“I—” He said, “Let me tell you the story, please.”
“You ever been arrested, Watly?” When Watly didn’t answer, the chief repeated the question.
“Can’t I tell you the story?” Watly pleaded.
“We’ll hear your story. I want to know your background. Have you ever been arrested?”
Watly nodded faintly.
“What for?”
“When I was about seventeen, I forged a check. The judge let me off with a warning. Then I was arrested for burglary, but I got let off. Then a couple of months later I was arrested for burglary again and got six months. When I got out, I got a job in a supermarket and then I got sent to jail for a year for embezzling eight hundred dollars.” He said with the desperate need to be believed, “but that was when I was a kid. Honest, I never did anything after that. I left town and started over. I’d learned my lesson, believe me. The draft rated me 4-F, and I changed my name to John Lawrence and got a job in a war plant and I made good money and did fine. That was way back in 1944, and I’ve been straight ever since.
“After the war I was laid off when they cut back and I got a job in the sales department of a refrigerator plant for a couple of years and after that—”
“What happened? Why did you leave them?”
“I got fired.”
“What for?”
“I got one of the girls in trouble.” .
“You ever been arrested on a morals charge?”
Watly shook his head vigorously. “No. Believe me. I never seduced young girls. I never got in trouble that way. I only got in trouble for being wild in my youth, but that’s over long ago. Listen, I’m square now. In fact, I’m chairman of our local United Fund drive. I’m an honest man. I’ve been chairman two years running and I’ve never touched a penny.”
“All right, Mr. Watly. Let’s get back to your getting fired.”
“Well, that was in 1947 and I got a job in the sales department of a bakery in a new town. I was still using the name John Lawrence. The next year, that was 1948, I got married. Of course I told my wife about myself and we got married under my real name and that’s what she called me, but I was still working with the other name. Then, in 1949 I quit the baking company— I didn’t get fired, I had a better offer. That was from the toy company where I met Joan. I had to work there under the name Lawrence, but when I got fired and got the beauty preparation job, my wife wanted me to use my real name and I did and I’ve used that ever since in my work. She wanted me to because we were going to have a baby and she didn’t want all that business and I was honest now and I thought nobody’d know I was an ex-con, so it’d be all right.
“Then, after the baby was born, I needed more money, so I took a part-time job for a while on the side, but then our other daughter was born and I quit the part-time job to take a full time job as a car salesman and I sold beauty preparations at night. I was doing all right and we bought a home in Ashmun and I commuted to the job, but that got pretty rugged, driving from Ashmun to Bridgeport every day, so I quit and started out in the real estate business in Ashmun. I wasn’t doing as well as I wanted so a year later, when Mr. Restlin offered to take me in here, I went to work for him.”
“When was that?”
“In August of 1957. I’ve been with him a year and a half.”
“Let’s get back to Joan Simpson.”
“Yes, but meeting her was accidental.” He covered his face with his hands briefly. “That was a real bad accident! What happened was I called at her place one night selling Lady Alma stuff. She had a couple of roommates, but they were out and we struck up our old acquaintance again. After that I saw quite a bit of her. At first it was fun, like we used to have, and when I’d have time or when I was selling around Townsend and felt like some excitement, I’d call up and see her. The trouble was, she’d changed. I didn’t know it at first, but along about the end of last summer it was getting obvious. She was starting to make demands on me and she was starting to talk about marriage. It hadn’t been like that before. When she was young she didn’t care about marriage. Now, the first thing I knew she was talking divorce and me marrying up with her. And more than that, she was telling me when her roommates would be out so I could see her. She was expecting things.
“So, I wasn’t going to put up with that. I quit coming around. That was November or December sometime but the trouble was, when I first ran into her, I let down my hair a little for old times’ sake and told her I lived in Ashmun. When I stopped seeing her, she made inquiries of the Lady Alma company. She found out there was no John Lawrence working there, but she learned a Raymond Watly lived in Ashmun and that did it. One day in January, damned if I don’t come home and find her in front of the house waiting for me. She’d taken the bus over and I quick took her for a ride around and drove her home and tried to set her straight that the whole thing was no go. She wouldn’t listen to me. First she pleaded, then she threatened. She said she’d go to my wife if I didn’t see her. So I saw her again and she kept after me. She said we were right for each other and I needed her and she wanted to prove it. She said the only way she could prove it was for us to live together as man and wife. I didn’t want that, but she wouldn’t listen to reason and I was scared she’d go to my wife and I finally gave in. I thought maybe the best way to make her leave me alone was to go along with it. I figured after a month or so she’d be satisfied.”
Fellows said, “You had her believing it was for three months.” Watly was momentarily flustered. Then he said, “Well, she wanted it for three months and I agreed, but I only rented the house for one month. I thought that would be enough to convince her. If it wasn’t, then I could renew the lease.” He glanced around the circle of faces, trying to measure the amount of feeling against him.
“I rented the house in the name of John Campbell because, of course, I couldn’t let anybody know it was me. This was all right with her and she called herself Joan Campbell.”
“So you set her up in a house and came to see her.”
“Yes, sir. I told my wife I was going out selling as usual, but I couldn’t sell. She made me come see her every night and one night, one Friday, she insisted that I come for dinner. She bought the things herself and made a big fancy production and I had to come to it because if I didn’t do what she said, she’d tell my wife. So I had that dinner with her and I brought her groceries the other nights after work and I came to see her every evening but still that didn’t satisfy her. The next thing I knew she wanted me to spend a weekend with her. She said it wasn’t like being married when I didn’t stay overnight so I had to tell my wife I was going away on business for a weekend and I went there.
“That was a Friday night. That was February twentieth. That was the night I decided I couldn’t stand it any longer. We had a fight. I told her it was the end, that even if she went to my wife I wasn’t going to go on with it. So she got very angry and she grabbed a carving knife out of the kitchen and came at me.” He buried his face. “I didn’t know she was going to do this, otherwise I would have run. But she came at me and I tried to get out of the way and I stumbled and fell over backwards and she was rushing at me so hard that she tripped over me and fell against the fireplace and hit her head.”
Watly looked up with a tortured expression. “I thought she was just knocked unconscious. I put the knife back and carried her into the bedroom, but I couldn’t revive
her and then I examined her and found out she was—dead.” He put his face in his hands again. “She’d hit her head and done something and she was dead.”
He looked up pleadingly. “You’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know what to do. At first I was going to call the police and then I realized how bad it’d make me look, the way we were living and all, and there weren’t any witnesses. Everybody would think I was guilty no matter what I said. I tore my hair out wondering what to do.”
“And you decided to go to New York,” Fellows said with a trace of sarcasm.
“I had to get away where I could think. I didn’t want to go home because then I’d have to explain why I’d come back. Besides, my wife would know something was wrong. I had to get away—far away. So that’s what I did. I banked the furnace and locked the room and the house and drove to the station for the first train to New York.”
“And made a date with Miss Sherman.”
Watly rubbed his face. “I know that sounds terrible, but you don’t understand. I knew I was going to have to do something about Joan’s body, but I couldn’t face up to it. I wanted companionship.”
“Not your wife’s, of course.”
“You don’t understand. I wanted an uncomplicated relationship. I just wanted to be with a woman. It’s always been that way with me. When I’m in trouble, I turn to a woman. That’s why I went to New York and that’s why I started that thing with Jean. She would have been nice for the weekend, but she was busy and I brought her back with me because, somehow, it wouldn’t seem quite so terrible going back into that house if she were with me.
“We just spent that one night and I put her on the nine o’clock train the next morning and went to work. Mr. Restlin wasn’t there because he usually takes Mondays off. He keeps the office open seven days a week because weekends and holidays and times like that are good. That’s when people go out house-hunting. I don’t work weekends, so he does and he takes Mondays off. That meant I didn’t have to face him with all that terrible thing on my mind. I’d decided the best thing to do was try to dispose of her body if I possibly could and the thing I decided to do was burn it in the furnace.
Sleep Long, My Love Page 18