“You just put too much store in it. That’s why you feel let down.”
Fellows swung his chair around. “That’s not why I feel let down. What gets me down is that murder is the worst crime there is and this is murder and we know it and I don’t like to see a murderer, of all criminals, get away with his crime.”
“Seventy percent of them do, Fred.”
“You still don’t make me feel better. Sure seventy percent of the murders go unsolved, and that’s why there’s so much murder. Every time the police have to throw in the sponge on a killing, it means the temptation for another man to kill is just a little stronger. Every time a slayer gets caught and punished, it makes the temptation for others just a little less. Someone’s life might be saved by our catching this man.”
Wilks sat down and put a hand on Fellows’s shoulder. “Listen, Fred, you’re getting worked up and you can’t. You’re all the time cutting out too wide. You think about meanings and stuff like that the same way you think of clues, not for what they represent, but in some fourth dimension.”
Fellows managed a wry smile. “What are you talking about?”
“You and your reaching. We find the name Campbell is a phoney and you aren’t content with the obvious reason, which is that he wants to hide his identity. You try to read into it that his wife nags him, or that he’s got five kids or something. Now you take this thing. You’ve done everything you can and it doesn’t work out. You ought to shake it off. It’s not your fault, so stop worrying about what effect failure is going to have on society. What happens here isn’t going to stop or start any new murders.”
“It does, though,” Fellows growled. “If every murder were solved and every murderer punished, premeditated murder would be wiped out.”
“And you want to work towards such a day. You can’t, so forget it. You’ve done your best. Nobody blames you. Nobody else could have done more. Stop thinking you ought to be Superman.”
Fellows shook his head. “I’m not satisfied. I don’t think it is my best. I think that somewhere, if I’d thought differently, or felt differently, we might have got onto a right track.” He looked up. “There’s no such thing as a perfect murder, Sid. There’s always a track that leads from the killed back to the killer and no matter how well that killer covers that track, he’s going to leave new tracks—tracks to the cover. And if he covers those, there’ll be tracks to that cover and so on. There’s always a flaw and the so-called ‘perfect crime’ means nothing more than that the police failed to find the flaw.” He gestured at the mass of papers on his desk, the reports and information on the case. “There’s a flaw in that mess somewhere. I don’t know what or where, but there’s got to be.” He started to pick them up one by one, putting them together. “You know what I think I’ll do, Sid? I’m going to take these home and study them. Maybe I can think of something.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Saturday, 8:30-9:00
Saturday evening Fred Fellows dropped in on his detective sergeant. Wilks was in his cellar working on model trains when the chief clumped down the stairs and ducked under the hanging light bulb at the bottom. “Marge said I’d find you here.”
“I’m putting a caboose together.” Wilks held it up. “How’s that for realism?”
“Looks good. It also looks expensive.”
“At least my wife knows where I am evenings.” Wilks laid the car tenderly on his work table. “How’re you feeling?”
“Hungry,” Fellows said. “I don’t mind cutting down on lunch and stuff, but my wife’s getting into the act on dinners. She’s taking it seriously.”
“She’s trying to help.”
“That’s the whole trouble. All the kids got a mountain of mashed potatoes and I got one tablespoonful. And I weigh more than any two of them together, except Larry.”
“Come on, Fred. You didn’t come over here to bum a sandwich. You’ve found a flaw.”
“No flaws that I can spot, Sid. But I’ve got some ideas.”
Wilks hitched his hip onto the table and pulled out his tobacco. “Shoot.”
“This guy is a skirt chaser. Agreed?”
Wilks took a bite and passed the tobacco over. “That’s obvious.”
“Just because one of his girl friends is dead, he’s not going to reform.”
Wilks nodded and accepted the packet back. “Equally obvious.”
“And he lives somewhere in the area bounded by Stamford, Danbury, and Bridgeport.”
Wilks shrugged. “That’s not so obvious, but you’re probably right. So do half a million other people.”
“I see it like this, Sid. He works a regular job which gets him through at five o’clock. He picks up groceries and gets to the girl’s house at five-thirty every night.”
“Regular job? I thought you had him on the road selling.”
“That’s at night. His timing every day was too consistent for a road man. He’d be in an office of some kind, seems to me.”
“I’ll agree for kicks. Go on.”
“If that’s so, then he must work within a ten-minute drive of the murder house. That would mean Stockford, around the center of town. He couldn’t be employed at the Grafton Tool and Die Company because it’s too far away.”
“Granting the assumption, the reasoning is valid. What does that prove?”
“If he worked in town before the murder, he still works here, or he’s recently left a job here. This is going to be a rough assignment, Sid, but we’re going to catalogue every single office and working man in the Stockford Center area. He’s a white-collar man, judging from the reports. We believe he’s a salesman, but he could be anything, a lawyer, store clerk, pharmacist, possibly even a theater usher. It doesn’t matter what he is, we’re going to cover them all. We’re going to get a list of employees from everybody who hires people in that area
