It was a long and thankless task and the sandwiches Hayes brought them were long gone before they were through. It was a fruitless task too. There was no call that even showed promise. No one they talked to knew anything about a girl leaving town at the beginning of the month, and in the whole list, they failed to get an answer only three times.
They finished at ten after three, thanked Ramsey and went across the street to the chili parlor for some coffee. It was strong coffee with a bitter taste, as if it had been made with yesterday’s grounds, but it suited their mood. “I feel like we’re chasing a shadow,” Wilks grumbled. “It’s got me wondering maybe she borrowed the luggage and her initials haven’t got a ‘J’ or an ‘S’ in them. Or maybe she comes from some other place. The guy in the truck can only carry her trunk to here and she has to ship it the rest of the way.”
Fellows blew gently on his coffee. “I don’t think it’s that bad, Sid. We got three no-answers. It might be one of them.”
“I’ve got a very strong feeling it’s not. It’s a better feeling you might say.”
“They’ve got to be her suitcases and trunk, Sid. Who’re you going to borrow a suitcase from for three months?—pretty new suitcases too?” He sipped his coffee and mused. “And that truck driver. He couldn’t be the man, could he?”
“He fits the description.”
Fellows shook his head. “But if he’s got a truck, and she’s got the trunk, why ship it? Stockford’s not more than a twenty-minute ride. Why didn’t he take it to the house?”
“Easy. He doesn’t want to be seen with her.”
“That may be, but how would he explain that to the girl?”
“You mean you think the truck driver isn’t the guy?”
Fellows shrugged. “I don’t know who he is. But let’s get back to the girl. We’ve got to presume her initials are J.S., there’s no other way around it. And I’d have to believe she comes from here. I can’t see sending the trunk from here otherwise, your explanation to the contrary notwithstanding.”
“Then why don’t we find somebody who knows her?”
Fellows sipped some more coffee and got out his chewing tobacco. “That’s what we have to figure. All right, a single girl. She gets around so she must have access to a phone. The phone, unless it belongs to one of the no-answers, isn’t in the family name. So she doesn’t live with her family. That makes it a boarding house or she shares an apartment with another girl and it’s in the other girl’s name. That make sense to you, Sid?”
“Yeah. So do we call every number in the book?”
“I don’t think we’d have to do that. Now why would a single girl live in a town like this without her family?”
“She works in it.”
“Exactly. And the biggest company in town is the Graystone Greeting Card Company. What do you want to bet she doesn’t, or didn’t work there?”
Wilks smiled for the first time. “Let’s see if we can find out.” They left the chili parlor with an optimistic step, but they weren’t to gain the information that day. The Graystone Greeting Card Company was shut down for the weekend and attempts to locate someone with access to the files was a failure.
When they abandoned that hunt, they tried the three phone numbers that hadn’t answered before and, getting no answer again, went out to each house and questioned the neighbors. Again they came up against a blank wall. No departed girl was connected with any of them. Then they called up every boarding house in town and got no better results there. As Wilks grumbled on the way home, it was like hunting ghosts, and even Fellows was glum.
Back at headquarters they found Hilders playing cards at the table in the public part of the main room. They also found further reports. Gorman had put them on the chiefs desk, and Fellows and Wilks went in there to digest them. The first was from the State Police lab in Hartford. An analysis of the ashes from both the fireplace and furnace disclosed, among the usual fuels, the presence of bone ash and charred bits of flesh. It confirmed the theory that the missing parts of the body had been burned, but it added nothing to their scant supply of knowledge.
The next report was from Bridgeport and said in effect that investigation of Jean Sherman’s background cleared her of complicity in the death of the woman. She had been home all through that month except for the weekend trip to New York. Further, no attempt had been made by any man to visit bar and she hadn’t reported any phone calls from John Campbell.
The other reports dealt with the hunt for tan, 1957 two-door Ford sedans with dented rear fenders and so far none had been found to fit the category. “Worser and worser,” growled Wilks. “If we don’t get some confirmation of something pretty soon I’m going to start believing this whole thing never happened.”
They left the office with long faces and got into their coats. Hilders, seeing them, swept up his cards and came over. “I hear you’re looking for Campbell’s car, Chief.”
Fellows said, “That much you can print.”
“I don’t want to butt in, but it seems to me you’d have a better chance of picking up your man if you broadcast a picture of his face instead of a description of his car.”
Fellows, zipping up his jacket, managed a smile. “You got an idea where we can get one?”
“Sure.” Hilders was using a different approach on the chief, all eager and co-operative. “You’ve got three people who’ve seen him, right?”
“Three?”
“Watly, the delivery boy, and
