“Me? All my life.”
“Ever know or hear of a man named John Lawrence?”
It was a shot in the dark, like most of Fellows’s shots these days and like most of the others, it didn’t hit anything. Hilders blinked and said, “No. Why?”
“Skip it. It doesn’t matter.”
“Skip it?” Hilders laughed. “Are you kidding? You think Lawrence is Campbell’s real name, don’t you?”
“Off the record, we think it might be, but remember, Mr. Hilders. That is off the record. I don’t want that name mentioned in any of your articles.”
Hilders grumbled that his paper wanted news of the case, that he was supposed to collect stories, but anything that happened was kept a dark secret. Fellows reminded him that he had scooped the other papers on the identity of the victim. “Don’t forget, Hilders, I called you last night before I called the wire services. I gave you a break, so you play ball.”
“You called me, but too late for the last edition. It came out this morning and it was in all the other papers too.”
“Well, if you’re after exclusives, why don’t you check on funeral arrangements instead of hanging around here?”
He got rid of Hilders that way, but the reporter’s visit didn’t help the chief’s mood. He spent the rest of the morning poring over the reports and drinking coffee, sitting sullenly silent at his desk trying to find new avenues to test, new leads to follow.
At eleven, Harris called from Bridgeport. A careful check of all auto dealers, used and new, past and present, had failed to reveal anyone named John Lawrence in that field over the last ten years. It looked as if once again the chief had drawn a blank.
Half an hour later, however, he got a piece of news that reversed his views. Wilson, one of the men assigned to the motel detail called in. “John Lawrence, Chief. This time you got it! A John Lawrence checked in at the Cozy Cove motel south of Townsend on December nineteenth. ‘Mr. and Mrs. John Lawrence,’ the card says.”
The chief smiled for the first time that day. “Any home address?”
“Yes, a phoney I checked it.”
Fellows liked that. His smile broke into a grin. “Bring in that card. I want his handwriting.”
By the time Wilson returned with the motel registration card, three other reports had come in. A John Lawrence was found to have registered on December second at the Bide-a-Bit motel south of Danbury, at the Cozy Rest, east of Townsend on November eighteenth, and at the Post motel on route one east of Stamford on January fifteenth. The same false address was listed each time.
When Wilks returned at three-thirty that afternoon, Fellows was walking on wires. “Campbell is Lawrence,” the chief said, relating the day’s events. “I know it as sure as I’m born.” He clapped Wilks on the shoulder. “And you couldn’t see why we should investigate the toy company.”
Wilks was less inclined to enthusiasm, especially since he was shown up as wrong. “So what’s that prove?”
“What do you mean what’s it prove? It proves plenty.”
Wilks sat down in the chief’s chair and tilted it back. “The trouble with you, Fred, is you haven’t been eating enough and it’s making you dizzy. John Lawrence is just as phoney as his addresses. We don’t know who John Lawrence is any more than we know who John Campbell is, so what’s finding out another alias do for us?”
Fellows hooked a leg over the comer of his table and grinned. “I’ll tell you what it does. It tells us Joan Simpson used to know the man she rented the house with. Busso broke it up and they didn’t see each other after that for nearly eight years and then they met again——”
“Now wait a minute!”
“Sure. Joan didn’t have any dates and no boy friends and suddenly she takes up with a guy. Obviously they hadn’t been seeing each other and somehow happened to meet. Now, where’s a calendar?” Fellows made a half-hearted effort to find one in his pile of papers, gave up, and said, “Never mind. But I checked those motel dates. One is a Friday, two are Tuesdays, and one’s a Thursday. This Campbell or Lawrence or whatever his real name is is free any night in the week. Therefore, if he's married, it’s certain he has some evening job.”
“Or he isn’t married,” said Wilks, “and doesn’t work nights at all. You’re making unwarranted assumptions just because he used a phoney name.”
“But if he isn’t married,” said Fellows, grinning, “why wouldn’t he have his girls come to his apartment? He wouldn’t have to rent motel rooms.”
Wilks laughed and shook his head. “God, Sherlock Holmes again, reading a man’s life history from the dents in his watch. You could be all wet, you know.”
“I’ll be wrong on some things, but, by God, I’ll be right on most. You wait and see.”
“All right. What else are you going to be right on?”
“I think he’s got a jail record.”
“Oh, he has? What about Watly being all through the mug files and not finding him?”
“There are forty-seven other states he could have a record in. Forty-eight now, including Alaska.”
“All right, Mr. Bones. Tell me why you think he’s got a record.”
“Because he uses the name Lawrence not only signing in at motels, but he also used it when he worked for the toy company. A man would only use an alias if he were hiding a record.” Fellows waved a hand. “And don’t say it’s his real name, because you’re the one who said it wasn’t.”
“Maybe I’m wrong. It’s been known to happen.”
“But if it was his real name, Sid, then we’d have turned him up as working as a car salesman in
