“No,” Perkins said. He groped for something to ease the tension he could feel in the man beside him, “Girls can be a big waste of time. There’s lime for all that later, I guess.”
Bogan nodded approvingly. If they would all just wait a while instead of rushing together to lock themselves in the charmed circle. That was the maddening thing about the couple in the furniture shop. Twice he had stopped to make a trifling purchase, and they had made him feel like an intruder, something gross and ugly profaning their happy isolation. They were polite enough on the surface, quick with a smile and a comment on the weather, but they gave him no warmth or affection. That was too precious to squander on anyone but themselves. He couldn’t remember when he had decided to kill them; the thought must have been there always.
The planning had been a dreary business and strangely confusing — acquiring the gun from a disquietingly jocular pawnbroker, and then the tedious search for a car, which had been the most difficult problem of all But eventually he found what he needed — the Buick used by the corner drugstore for deliveries. The young man who drove it obviously operated on a tight schedule, for he didn’t remove the key when he went inside to pick up his parcels. When the car was parked at the curb, the key was always in the ignition; Bogan established this fact in a week of patient snooping. Thus the timing of his ultimate act was determined by the delivery schedule of the drugstore. And for some obscure reason this pleased Bogan; it lent a whimsical, unpremeditated tone to his plans.
Bogan felt in his pockets for a chocolate bar, then remembered that he had left them in his overcoat. He felt his eyes sting with tears; he needed something sweet, but he had been so pressed and excited that he hadn’t remembered to take the candy bars from his overcoat.
Bogan sat up straighter. Suddenly he thought of the dark-haired waitress at the restaurant — the one he had bought the coffee from. Why had he been such a fool? The need for something warm and sweet had been powerful, but he should have resisted it; she would tell the police what he looked like — and enjoy doing it, he thought sullenly and unhappily. She would like telling on him, getting him into trouble. He knew that from her face and eyes; there was no warmth there, only meaningless politeness.
“Don’t get excited,” he told himself, his soft lips silently forming the words. The trooper didn’t ask her about me; there was still time.
He said quietly to Perkins, “We’re going to have to make a U-turn.”
“But that’s not legal. We’ll be stopped.”
“We’ll just make sure there are no patrol cars in front or behind us,” Bogan said easily “Anyone else will think we’re an unmarked police car.”
Bogan put the muzzle of his gun against Perkins’s side. “You’re a nice young boy. I don’t want to hurt you. Turn into the left-hand lane, and we’ll watch for one of those openings the police cars use.”
Bogan felt a pleasant excitement running through him; he was almost glad of the way things were working out. It would be very satisfying to have that arrogant girl in his hands. And he realized that he had the bait to lure her to him — the name he had heard from the gas-station attendant: “Dan O’Leary.”
Lieutenant Trask and O’Leary learned nothing from the white Edsel station wagon; it had been driven twelve miles, from Howard Johnson’s No. 1 to No. 2, and then abandoned, the driver disappearing like a phantom. Lieutenant Trask had checked out the waitresses and countermen in the restaurant while O’Leary and a team of troopers searched the grounds and inspected the trucks that were lined up like huge animals in the truckers’ area. They waked the drivers and examined the lashings and tail gates for any sign of forced entry.
After this O’Leary talked to the gas attendants. None of them remembered anything helpful. He did come on a bit of irrelevant information, however; one of the attendants mentioned that someone — a man standing in the shadows of the office — had made some comment about O’Leary’s speed when O’Leary had driven into the area ten or fifteen minutes earlier. The attendant said he told the man Trooper O’Leary knew his business — or something to that effect. The attendant wasn’t exactly sure of what he’d said, but it wasn’t important in any case, O’Leary decided.
He rejoined Trask, who had returned to the Edsel station wagon. Trask had been in contact with Captain Royce. They now had an identification on the owner of the Edsel, the elderly man who had been killed at Howard Johnson’s No. 1.
“He lived in Watertown,” Trask said, flipping his cigarette into the darkness. “Name was Nelson, Adam Nelson, a widower, retired executive at the paint factory there. They got a line on him from the laundry marks in his shirt.”
These markings — in this case a triangle with the digits 356 beneath it — had been relayed to state-police headquarters by radio, where they had been checked against the master file of all laundry marks in the state. The sergeant in charge had established the location of the laundry from the triangle: a telephone call to the manager had established the identity of the customer from the digits 356.
Trask added, “He was on his way to spend a few days with a married daughter in Newbury. None of which helps us a damn bit.”
O’Leary was frowning faintly. He had been trying to fit together a picture of the murderer, and for some reason his guesses about the man bothered him; the portrait was Hawed with inconsistency, and O’Leary had that tantalizing feeling that a significant fact was hidden somewhere in that blurred image.
What in heaven’s name was it? O’Leary tried to analyze the inferences he had drawn from the man’s behavior. The killer was both bold and deliberate. He had killed brutally and swiftly, with no signs of panic. He had made a mistake in taking a conspicuous car, but had corrected it cleverly — which meant he was thinking clearly under pressure And he hadn’t duplicated his first mistake; he had got away from the Edsel without being seen, and by now, safe to assume, was on his way in a less conspicuous car. Also, he seemed to be working according to a plan, time wasn’t important to him, or he’d have taken a chance and tried to get through an exit in the Edsel. After all, he couldn’t have known for sure that the police would identify the missing car. But he hadn’t taken that chance; he was in no hurry. And he’d given the police credit for being as smart as he was.
It was a picture of a man who was ruthless and cunning. A man who thought clearly and measured his chances shrewdly. And that was where the inconsistency became apparent; the image was streaked with flaws, something was out of place, something incongruous. Because the killer had done something foolish...
“What’s the matter with you?” Trask said.
O’Leary put both hands over his ears; the traffic on the pike rushed by like a river of noise and light, and he tried to shut out the sound of it, tried furiously to find the truth that was hidden somewhere in this maze of facts and hunches, of inferences and intuitions. Then it was as if a clear and brilliant light had snapped on in his mind; then he had it.
He caught Trask’s arm. “The dead man. Nelson; he’d had his dinner, right? He had left the restaurant and walked to his car. But there was a coffee container beside his body. And one of those little cardboard things they put hot dogs in. Remember?”
“Sure,” Trask’s dark face was impassive; but a flicker of understanding came to his eyes. “Go on.”
“Those containers belonged to the killer,” O’Leary said. “He ate and drank there beside Nelson’s car. Then he dropped them on the ground.”
“Which means he went into the restaurant after all,” Trask said, his voice sharpening. “But you told me you checked out the waitresses. They should have remembered a guy without a hat or coal on a night like this.”