He thought that the lie was transparent, but she trusted him. He was a war hero, after all. “It must be a pain in the butt. But journalists – they can never leave anyone alone. Anyway, I don’t see the harm in telling you who was here. There’s nothing confidential about the visitors’ log.” She consulted the notebook. “Only nine people came around all Tuesday. These two are from an architectural firm, checking some power-and-water easements on properties they’re developing. I know them. These four were women, and you’re looking for a man, so we can rule them out. That leaves three – here, here, and here.”
As she showed him the names, Chase tried to commit them to memory. “No … I guess … none of them is him.”
“Anything else?”
“Do you ordinarily just take names – or ask for ID?”
“Always ID, unless I know the person.”
“Well, thanks for your help.”
Acutely conscious of all the work on her desk, Nancy Onufer shut the notebook, dismissed Chase with a quick smile, and returned to her typing.
When he left the courthouse, it was a quarter till noon, and he was starving. He went to a drive-in restaurant – Diamond Dell – that had been a favorite hangout when he’d been in high school.
He was surprised by his appetite. Sitting in the car, he ate two cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and cole slaw, washing it all down with a Pepsi. That was more than he had eaten in any three meals during the past year.
After lunch, at a nearby service station, he used the phone-booth directory to find numbers for the men who were possibles in Nancy Onufer’s log. When he called the first, he got the guy’s wife; she gave him a work number for her husband. Chase dialed it and spoke to the suspect – who sounded nothing whatsoever like Judge. The second man was at home, and he sounded even less like Judge than the first.
The directory had no number for the third man – Howard Devore which might only mean that his telephone was unlisted. Or it might mean that the name was phony. Of course, Mrs. Onufer always asked for ID, so if Judge was using a phony name, he also must have access to a source of false identification.
Because he didn’t trust himself to remember every clue and to notice links between them, Chase went to a drugstore and purchased a small ringbound notebook and a Bic pen. Inspired by Mrs. Onufer’s efficiency, he made a neat list:
Alias – Judge
Alias – Howard Devote (possible)
Aryan Alliance
No criminal record (prints not on file)
Can pick locks (Fauvel’s office)
May own a red Volkswagen
Owns a pistol with sound suppressor
Sitting in his car in the drugstore parking lot, he studied the list for a while, then added another item:
Unemployed or on vacation
He could think of no other way to explain how Judge could call him at any hour, follow him in the middle of the afternoon, and spend two days researching his life. The killer neither sounded nor acted old enough to be retired. Unemployed, on vacation – or on a leave of absence from his work.
But how could that information be useful in finding the bastard? It narrowed the field of suspects but not significantly. The local economy was bad; therefore, more than a few people were out of work. And it was summer, vacation season.
He closed the notebook and started the car. He was dead serious about tracking down Judge, but he felt less like Sam Spade than like Nancy Drew.
* * *
Glenda Kleaver, the young blonde in charge of the Press-Dispatch morgue room, was about five feet eleven, only two inches shorter than Chase. In spite of her size, her voice was as soft as the July breeze that lazily stirred maple-leaf shadows across the sun-gilded windows. She moved with natural grace, and Chase was instantly fascinated with her, not solely because of her quiet beauty but because she seemed to calm the world around her by her very presence.
She demonstrated the use of microfilm viewers to Chase and explained that all editions prior to January first, 1968, were now stored on film to conserve space. She explained the procedure for ordering the proper spools and for obtaining the editions that had not yet been transferred to film.