“Or he lied to Blake about selling cars.”
“Why?”
Wilks shrugged. “There could be plenty of reasons we don’t know about. Ail right, anything else?”
“Well, it’s obvious he’s a salesman. Everything points to that. The evidence also suggests he does some selling at night. Night selling would probably be door to door on his own, since he can take nights off and wouldn’t have to account to a wife for not making money. So it’s, as I’ve said before, quite probable he met Joan on a house call one evening when her roommates were out, the only difference being that he’d known her before.”
“Ail right. That’s possible, even probable.”
“And Townsend is one of his territories, but he doesn’t live there.”
“He doesn’t live in Townsend?” Wilks blinked. “I can’t wait to hear this explanation.”
“It’s easy. He wouldn’t rent a motel room where he might be known, would he? Here.” He pulled out an area road map from his papers. “I drew five mile circles around each motel he stopped at. This is reaching, I’ll admit, but if he wouldn’t stop at a motel within five miles of his home, Townsend is excluded.”
Wilks studied the four circles. Danbury was enclosed and the whole Stamford-Townsend area. The rest was open and available. The detective sergeant shrugged. “Even if you’re right, Fred, you don’t eliminate much.”
“But when all the reports are in, then I’ll circle the motels where he isn’t fisted and maybe we can kind of pinpoint his location. If we should find he’s hit all the motels in a certain section but one, the chances are he’ll five near that one.”
Wilks shook his head, somewhat in awe. “Brother. What rabbits you pull out of what hats.” He sat back. “You know, Fred, I’ll bet you’re so wrapped up in these surmises you haven’t even thought of the logical way of finding the guy.”
“Which is what?”
“Getting these motel owners to report in the next time a John Lawrence signs a card.”
“We’re doing that, Sid. The last time was January fifteenth, but after that he was mixed up with this Joan Simpson and nothing’s happened since. But he’ll start in again. We’ll watch and we may get him, but we aren’t passing up our other chances.”
“Which are what?”
“We check with Washington for a crook with a John Lawrence alias and we’re going to have all the police departments around investigate all men with a reputation as a libertine. As you say, Sid, I may be all wet on a lot of these suppositions, but I’m not going to be wrong on all of them and one of the right ones is going to turn up our boy.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Friday and Saturday, March 6-7
Chief Fred Fellows was, at the least, inventive, but the bad luck that seemed to dog him on the case held up against his best efforts. None of the answers he felt he had to get were forthcoming. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported no known criminals who used the aliases John Lawrence or John Campbell, or at least none who could possibly be involved in the Simpson case. Photostats of the handwriting, or rather the printing John Lawrence had scrawled onto motel cards had arrived, but trying to match it was reported as an impossible task. In short, Washington could give nothing but negative information.
Negative information was all that resulted from the search for known libertines. Two possibilities had been shown to Watly who ruled them out without hesitation.
The bitterest blow was struck Friday night. The editor of the Bridgeport Courier pulled reporter John Hilders off a case that produced so little interest, and Hilders, no longer needing the good graces of Fred Fellows, blew the lid off in his article. BRIDGEPORT GIRL MADE LOVE IN MURDER HOUSE was the headline and the story, which all readers were sure to devour, revealed all that Hilders knew and suspected. The girl’s name wasn’t disclosed only because the reporter couldn’t find it out, but the fact the police knew who she was and were watching her house was boldly shouted to the public. The worst blow of all, however, was the revelation that the police had information the mysterious John Campbell was known by another name and that name was John Lawrence.
It was an article that brought thirty curiosity calls to Bridgeport police headquarters and a dozen more from reporters who assailed both them and the Stockford police with questions. The police refused to comment on the story, but Fellows knew denials were useless and the Courier information was repeated in all other papers the following morning. It was a revelation that Mr. John Campbell-Lawrence could hardly miss and it insured the futility of catching the man in the traps the police had set.
Fellows didn’t go into a towering rage at the publication of the information. He banned Hilders and any other representatives of the Courier from police headquarters forever, but other than that, he shook his head dispiritedly, either at the deceit of his fellow man or at the elimination of what looked like the best hope for catching John Campbell.
As the other negative news came in on Saturday he grew quieter, drank more coffee, and shuffled the papers on his office desk a little aimlessly. Motel reports had produced no registrations in addition to the original four, so he couldn’t even pursue his pinpoint plan any further and for that day there was nothing more to do.
In the middle of the afternoon Wilks tried to cheer him up, but it was a fruitless process. “It’s the breaks of the game, Fred,” he said. “Not every case gets solved.”
Fellows said, “What’s that supposed to do, make everything all right?”
“You’ve done everything you could, and more than most. All that stratosphere stuff! That’s more than I’d have thought of.”
“All of that stratosphere stuff looks kind of cockeyed now, doesn’t it? But I guess it
