“Who resist all temptations,” Bartholdi concluded. “Here are the files.” He made a grandiloquent sweeping gesture with one arm, indicating the banks and banks of green filing cabinets that lined the walls of the room. “This is April, and you want to go back six months. That’d put you in November.” He made a vague gesture with one hand. “That’s over there someplace.” He winked at Ambrose. “Now, are we cooperating, or are we?”
“You’re the most cooperative,” Kling said.
“Hope you find what you need,” Ambrose said, opening the door. “Come on, Romeo.”
Bartholdi followed him out. Kling sighed, looked at the filing cabinets, and then lighted a cigarette. There was a sign on one of the walls, and the sign read: SHUFFLE THEM, JIGGLE THEM, MAUL THEM, CARESS THEM — BUT LEAVE THEM THE WAY YOU FOUND THEM!
He walked around the room until he came to the cabinet containing the file of persons who were reported missing in November of the preceding year. He opened the top drawer of the cabinet, pulled up a straight-back wooden chair upon which to prop his foot, and doggedly began leafing through the folders.
The work was not exactly unpleasant, but it was far from exciting. The average misconception of the city detective, of course, is one of a tough, big man wearing a shoulder holster facing a desperate criminal and shooting it out in the streets. Kling was big, not so tough, and he carried his service revolver in a leather holster clipped into his right back pocket. He was not shooting it out with anyone at the moment, desperate or not. The only desperation he knew was of a quiet sort, which drives many city detectives into the nearest loony bin, where they silently pick at the coverlets. Kling, at the moment, was involved in routine — and routine is the most routine thing in the world.
Routine is what makes you wash your face and shave and brush your teeth in the morning.
Routine is the business of inserting a key into the ignition switch, twisting the key, starting the car, and putting it into drive before you can go anyplace.
Routine is answering a letter with a polite thank-you and then answering the resultant thank-you letter with another letter stating, “You’re welcome.”
Routine is the list of questions you ask the surviving wife of an automobile accident victim.
Routine is the tag you fill out and attach to a piece of evidence.
Routine is the report you type back at the squad room.
Routine is a deadly dull bore, and it isn’t even crashing, and detectives know routine in triplicate, and the detective who isn’t patient with a typewriter — no matter what his method of typing may be — doesn’t last very long in the detective division.
When you’ve looked at missing person report after missing person report, you begin to wish you were missing yourself. After a while, they all begin to blend together into a big mass of humanity that has formed a conspiracy to bore you to death. After a while, you don’t know who has the birthmark on her left breast or who has the tattoo on his big toe. After a while, you don’t even care. There are amusing breaks in the routine, of course, but these are few and far between. Like the husband and wife, for example, who both vanished on the same day and who later filed missing person reports for each other. Very comical. Kling grinned, picturing the husband as an Alec Guinness type of character lolling with a brunette in Brazil. He formed no mental picture of the wife. He lighted another cigarette and continued his search for someone who might possibly resemble the 87th’s floater.
He consumed two packages of cigarettes while perusing the files. He had finished the first pack before lunch. He went out for a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee, which he took back to the bureau with him, together with a fresh package of cigarettes and a warning to himself to go slow on the coffin nails. By the end of the day, he had finished the second pack, and he’d also collected a sizable pile of folders that could possibly tie in with the floater. One report looked particularly promising. Kling opened the folder again and went over the material inside it.
There were, Kling noticed, certain inconsistencies in the report. Early in the report, for example, the girl was “last seen at” her “home address” on October 31 at 11:45 P.M. Later in the report, under REMARKS, the girl was last seen at the Scranton railroad station the next morning. Kling surmised, as he was forced to surmise, that police procedure was responsible for the foul-up. Henry Proschek was the man who’d reported his daughter missing. And he had probably last seen her in his own home on the night of October 31. Someone else, apparently, had seen her at the railroad station the next morning, had observed her carefully enough to describe what she was wearing. But this someone else was not the person filing the complaint, hence the inconsistency. There was, Kling further noticed, a question mark under the word luggage. He wondered if she had, indeed, gone baggageless or if the observer at the station had simply failed to notice any luggage.
The report was somewhat vague when it said, “See letter in folder.” Did this mean the first letter the girl had written or the longer letter she’d promised? And which of these letters was the last contact the parents had had? The answer, obviously, was in the folder.
Kling opened it again.
There was only one letter in the folder. Apparently, the second longer letter had never been written. And, apparently, it was this lack of further clarifying communication that had brought Henry Proschek to the city in search of his daughter, culminating in his phone call to the closest police station.
Feeling somewhat like a Peeping Tom, Kling began reading Mary Louise Proschek’s letter to her parents:
November 1st
Dear Mom and Daddy:
I know your not worried I was kidnapped or anything because Betty Anders happened to spy me at the station this morning and by now it is probly all over town. So I know your not worried but I suppose you are wondering why I have left and when I am coming back.
I suppose I shouldn’t have left without an explanation, but I don’t think you would understand or improve what Im about to do. I have been planning on it for a long time, and it is something I have to do which is also why I have been staying on at Johnson’s because I was saving my money all these years. I now have more than $4,000 dollars, you have to hand it to me for being persistint, ha ha.
I will write you a longer letter when everything here is settled. I am starting a new life here, Daddy, so please don’t be too angry with me. Try to understand. Love and kisses.
Your loving dghtr,
Mary Louise
Whoever Detective Phillips of the Missing Persons Bureau was, he had done a good job on the missing Proschek girl. He had put a call through to the Scranton police, who had then checked with the girl’s bank and discovered that $4,375 had been withdrawn from her account on October 31, the day before she’d left. The withdrawal slip had been signed by her and presented by her together with her passbook. Detective Phillips had then put a check on every bank in the city in an attempt to locate a new account started by Mary Louise Proschek. Each bank reported negatively. Phillips had checked on the stationery the girl used and found it to be five-and-dime stuff. The letter had been mailed special delivery and postmarked from a station in the heart of the city. A check had been made of hock shops in the hope the high school graduation ring would turn up. It had not. Phillips had acquired a dental chart from the girl’s parents, and that was in her folder. Kling removed it and gave it a summary glance.
He remembered that the floater’s lower front teeth had been lost in the water, but he couldn’t remember which of her other teeth had fillings or which had been extracted. He sighed and turned to some of the other information in the folder.