Even Sid Wilks was showing the effects. “You know what’s going to happen?” he said to Fellows when he checked in late Wednesday afternoon.
“No, Sid. What?”
“Nothing. That’s what. We’re not going to find him. We’re going to wrap it up tomorrow and we’re not going to find him.”
“We still might.”
“Don’t kid yourself. We’re scraping the bottom now. All the likely places were covered the first two days. It’s what I’ve been telling you. You try to read too much into your clues. The guy doesn’t work in Stockford. You just stretched your clues so fine you jump from one intangible to another and you end up in outer space.”
“He came there every night about five-thirty, Sid. I don’t think I’m reaching very far for my interpretation.”
“It’s still a reach, Fred. You jump to the conclusion he comes from a job that gets out at five. He could come from New Haven from a job that gets out at four, or he could be a rich man’s son who doesn’t work at all and picked five-thirty out of a hat. He could be an artist or a writer who doesn’t keep any hours. He could be anything, Fred.”
“He could, Sid, but the law of averages says it’s more likely what I’ve got.”
“Well, you’re going to have to get something else because, I can tell you, this isn’t it.”
CHAPTER XXVI
Thursday, March 12
When Wilks came in Thursday morning a man was sitting in Fellows’s office trying not to look at the picture gallery. He was a medium-sized middle-aged man with a gray balding head, a pleasant face, and glasses. He smiled apologetically when the detective sergeant stuck his head in the door, and said, “Chief Fellows asked me to meet him here.”
“Make yourself comfortable.” Wilks backed out and when the chief came in, said, “What gives, Fred? Who’s he?”
“His name is Bunnell. He’s new in town.”
“He got anything to do with the case?”
Fellows looked a little sheepish. “Yes, and if you think I reached in the stratosphere before, you’ll think I’m out of the solar system now.” He took off his coat and hat and hung them on the rack by the bulletin board with its schedule lists, rules and regulations, insurance company calendar, messages, and loose thumbtacks. “But hell, Sid,” he said, “he’s about all that’s left.”
The two went into the office, where Fellows introduced himself and the sergeant and thanked Mr. Bunnell for coming. “Mr. Bunnell,” he explained to Wilks, “is the man Watly showed the house to the day before the robbery. You remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Wilks said, looking sideways at the chief. Fellows sat down in his chair and Wilks closed the door and leaned against it. “Now, Mr. Bunnell, it was the twenty-fifth of February that you went out to look at the house, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. It was.”
“Would you tell us everything that happened?”
Bunnell scratched his ear. “Near as I can recall, Mr. Fellows. You see, I’ve recently taken a job here in town and my family and I were living temporarily in a furnished flat, but we wanted to get something of our own, something reasonable. I’m a school teacher and it was vacation. We’d gone to spend a few days with my folks and when we got back, I set about seeing what I could find. I went to the Restlin Agency and talked to Mr. Restlin and Mr. Watly about my needs, and Mr. Restlin thought he had just the place for me. He said it would be available the first of March and it was quite reasonable. It was furnished, but he felt some arrangement could be made if I wanted to use my own things and he told Mi’. Watly to take me out and look at it. This was the middle of the afternoon, as I recall, and Mr. Watly said certainly.
“We went out in my car and it did look like the kind of place I wanted. There was quite a bit of ground around and I have three children, so it was fine on that score. We got out and it had an empty look about it, no sign of life, but we walked around to the back and he showed me the garage and where the property extended and I asked if we might see the inside. He thought the people there wouldn’t have any objection and we rang the bell several times but there was no answer. He tried the door and it was locked. He didn't have any keys with him, so he said that perhaps if we came back the next day there’d be somebody home. I agreed because, while it looked like just what we wanted, I’d like to see the inside and I’d like to have my wife see it. We went back and talked to Mr. Restlin about it and it was left that I’d bring my wife with me the next afternoon and we’d take a look and they’d bring along keys, so if no one were home, we could go in and look around anyway.
“Of course, none of that happened. I went back the next day and Mr. Restlin was home and Mr. Watly was in a dither because of the body you people had discovered.”
“Did you mention this to anyone, Mr. Bunnell?” Fellows was particularly interested in this angle. “How many people knew you were going to look at that house on Thursday?”
“Well, my wife, of course.” He hesitated. “But if you mean knew it was that particular house, then I can’t tell you. I told her about where it was and what it looked like and I guess I mentioned that we might have found a place to a couple of neighbors who knew we were looking.”
“Would you give me the names of those neighbors, the ones you told?”
“I’m not sure which
