“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
