“Well, let’s say you’re never at a loss for some new path to follow.”
“Something has to break somewhere and it’s got to be this.”
“You mean you hope it’ll be this.”
“It’s got to be, because if this fails, all that’s left are two real brain teasers.”
“Yeah?” Wilks was curious if not really interested. “What?”
“Why did he break into Restlin’s office and steal the lease? That’s one. The other is, why did he start to destroy the body and then stop and run?”
Wilks shrugged. “The answer to the first is that he didn’t want us to have a copy of his signature. The answer to the second is he was afraid of discovery. Did you say brain teasers?”
“Brain teasers, Sid, because the answers to those answers are ‘why?’ and ‘why?’. Why didn’t he want us to have a copy of his handwriting? And what made him so scared he was going to be discovered?” Fellows smiled. “When you’re not working tracking down people around town, you think about that. See if you can come up with anything.”
“I can come up with something right now. He doesn’t want us to have a sample of his handwriting, because he’s somebody we’re likely to investigate and this would damn him.”
Fellows nodded. “That’s just what I mean when I say he must work in this neighborhood. But, since Watly has seen him, he can be identified anyway, without the handwriting.”
“Watly only saw him once, Fred. That identification might not stand up in court. The handwriting would. Or, if you think that makes the guy too bright and foresighted, he might not have intended killing the girl when he rented the house and it was only afterwards that he thought about covering up. Watly, he couldn’t do anything about. The lease he could.”
“And what about running off and leaving the body?”
Wilks munched on his tobacco carefully. He scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s see. He starts burning the body in the furnace. Then, for some reason the furnace goes out and he can’t start it again, so he switches to the fireplace. That creates such a stench he’s afraid the neighbors will notice, so he quits.”
“That’s what we’re apt to think, Sid, but it can’t be the answer. A man bold enough to bring another woman to that house isn’t going to run away and leave the job because the neighbors might notice. He’d have to have reason to believe the neighbors did notice. Remember, it’s winter and all windows would be shut in everybody’s houses.”
“Maybe he couldn’t stand the smell himself.”
“Then he’d try something else, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t just close up shop and skip. It seems to me he must have had some reason to believe he was about to be discovered.”
“Some neighborhood kid poking around might have found something.”
“Maybe. Seems like that’s something we ought to try to find out.”
CHAPTER XXV
Sunday Through Wednesday
On Sunday Fellows worked long and hard with Wilks organizing the search that would be made of all downtown establishments. They got in Dudley Warner, the First Selectman, they got the Town Planning Commissioner and the head of the Chamber of Commerce. They plotted out the area from town maps, located and itemized the offices, stores, banks, theaters. They got the personnel managers of the two department stores in Stockford to bring in their lists of employees and made note of the departure of two men from their employ in the period they were interested in, the twentieth of February to the present time, and two policemen were sent to check the whereabouts of the missing two.
By the time the day was through, Fellows and Wilks had the operation pretty well worked out and the first thing Monday morning Raymond Watly was sent for and brought in. “This is the story,” Fellows told him. “I have twenty-five policemen, every available patrolman and supernumerary, out on a door-to-door check of this whole area. We’re convinced the man we’re after works around here. You can stay in your office and conduct your business, but we want you available at any moment to go someplace and make an identification. Our men have the description you gave us. Every employee, manager, or worker is going to be looked at and any one who even vaguely resembles the man you saw is going to be shown to you. When an officer spots such a man, he will call in immediately. I have a driver standing by who will pick you up and take you there. The officer will point out the man in question and then it’s up to you.”
Watly was nervous at that. “It’s been a long time, Chief. I only saw him that once. I don’t want to have to say whether somebody I look at now might be the man I talked to six weeks ago. I don’t want to be responsible. I don’t remember him that well.”
“This isn’t a question of wanting, Mr. Watly. This man killed a woman. You remembered very well what he looked like when the case first broke and you remembered him well when the kid drew the picture, well enough to criticize the likeness. Now you aren’t going to tell me you’ve suddenly forgotten what he looks like because I know that’s not so. This is a duty and it’s a duty only you can perform because you’re the only one who’s seen the man. I’m after a killer, Watly, and I'm not going to be thwarted because you’re squeamish about putting the finger on him.”
Watly
