“Where’d you get that story?”
Hilders leered slightly. “You know I’m not going to reveal my sources, Chief.”
“If you’ve been pumping my men—”
“I’d be doing my job,” Hilders pulled out his pad. “Let’s have the rest of it, Chief. What’s her name?”
Fellows’s face got flinty. He said, “There’s no story of any girl, and you’d better not try to print any.”
Hilders grinned and repocketed the pad. “In that case, then, maybe you wouldn’t mind calling old man Restlin and getting him—”
“A little blackmail, Mr. Hilders?”
The reporter flushed. “No. Nothing like that, Chief. One good turn.”
Fellows pointed a finger and said, stressing his words, “I’m going to tell you something, boy. You play along with me and I’ll give you everything I can, newswise. But you just once print something against my wishes and the only news you’ll get on this case is what you steal from other papers.”
Hilders made a face, but he didn’t say anything. Fellows waited for a couple of seconds to give him a chance, then turned to Unger. “You get the word around. No cop is to speak to any reporter. No one!” Then he said more evenly, “As for that stuff from Erie, get the headquarters in each town to check those names out. Wilks and I are going to Townsend to run down a clue.”
CHAPTER XII
Saturday, 12:00-5:30
The temperature was above freezing for the first time in a week when the chief and Wilks got to Townsend. The thermometer on the Fizz-Rite soft-drink signboard in the outskirts read thirty-three degrees against its background of bare trees and gray sky. It might be the end of the last freeze before spring and Wilks said so hopefully as they pulled into town.
Police Headquarters was a small, converted frame house on the main road. There was a flag waving briskly from a pole in the front lawn and a sign on a post on the veranda. Fellows and Wilks parked at the curb out front and went along the tarred walk, up the steps, and over the wide wooden porch. The front door opened into a narrow hall to a drinking fountain and rooms in the rear. In the wall at the left was a half door with a flat top on it forming a desk while shutting off the police records room beyond. Another room on the right was the chiefs office and Chief Delbert Ramsey was eating a hot lunch sent from a chili parlor across the street. He was a small, sour man with the reputation of a tyrant and if he didn’t smile when the two officers came in, the fact that he didn’t scowl meant he was glad to see them. “Well, come in,” he said, and glanced at the old pendulum clock with Roman numerals on the opposite wall. “It’s ten after twelve. You had lunch?”
Fellows said, “I hadn’t even thought of it,” while shaking the limp thin hand the chief held out as a matter of formality.
“You oughtta eat,” Ramsey said. “This crap is lousy, but it’s hot. Raises hell with my ulcer. You got an ulcer, Fellows?”
“Not yet. I’d like to have you meet Detective Sergeant Wilks.” Ramsey gave Wilks a curt nod. “That’s ’cause you got an eighteen-man force. You try to work with six sometime. Take last night. Accident on the highway. Two people killed. I got five men and myself. Two of them and me were up till after two in the morning. You can send somebody else, but I got to show up in person and look at all that blood. Why don’t I send out for some chili for you and I’ll tell you about it. Two teen-agers went off the road and wrapped themselves around a tree. It was a mess.”
Fellows said, “We could do with a sandwich, I guess.”
Ramsey snapped at the open door, “Hey, you, Hayes. C’mere.” The man on the desk came in, was given orders, and headed out across the street. Ramsey said, “See? He goes across the street and there’s nobody at the desk. What can you do with five men?” The two Stockford policemen took chairs and watched Ramsey gulp more of his chili. Fellows said, “We’re still trying to identify the body we found. Her trunk was sent from here.”
“I told you we ain’t got anybody missing, Fellows.”
“I didn’t think you would. She’d make plans to be away.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Check all the ‘S’s. Does Townsend have a town directory?” Ramsey snorted. “This town ain’t got enough dough to pay its police chief a decent salary. I sweat, with a bunch of crumbs for cops, and get peanuts. We work extra hours like last night. There ain’t no dough for a directory.”
Fellows sighed. “Then it’s the telephone book, I guess.”
“What’re you gonna do? Call up all the people whose names start with ‘S’?”
“That’s the general idea, I guess.”
“I hope you ain’t gonna want any of my men to help you. I only got five, you know.”
“We’ll handle it ourselves. Maybe we could make the calls from here.”
Ramsey made a face. “I suppose so. I guess you can use our phones. I got two in the other room. I hope it won’t take you long. I don’t like my wires being tied up.”
“There shouldn’t be too many ‘S’s in a town of twenty-five hundred people.”
“More ‘S’s than anything else, I guess. Now if it was ‘Z’, we only got three.”
“Be nice if it was.” Fellows got up again. “Maybe we could start now.”
Ramsey let Wilks and the chief find their own way to the phones. He had finished his meal and was dumping a pill from a bottle into his hand.
Fellows and Wilks started with the three female J.S.’s listed in the phone book, Joan Steckle, Jessica Smith, Jennifer Sandhurst. That brought no results, so they next tried the two names that were preceded only by the initial ‘J'.
