At any rate, Torran was going to be too smart to make any two-hundred mile run in a big car at that time of night. There are two many town cops who like to wake themselves up in the small hours by hauling down big cars on the road. Torran had gotten into Decatur by bus at just about three in the morning. He hadn’t seen the blonde in a long time. He needed to change back to his own clothes. Everything pointed to their holing up close to Decatur. A tourist court was indicated. I was in for some routine legwork.
I hit twelve places before lunch. Each place I hit drained some of the confidence out of me. The second place after lunch was called the Sunset Rest Courts and it was three miles out of town on Route 36 heading east.
The woman was very brisk and friendly. “Yes, we had a girl and her mother register a week ago Thursday – I should say Friday morning at three-fifteen. The girl woke me up. We had a light burning that night because we had a vacancy. She said she had planned on driving all night but her mother was taken sick. Nothing serious.”
“A blond girl?”
“Yes. Quite pretty. I showed her the vacant room and she seemed satisfied. Here’s the register card.”
I looked at it. Mrs Walter B. Richardson and Anne Richardson, of Moline. Make of car – Buick. License – Illinois 6c424. All in angular backhand script – finishing school script. I wrote down the license number, fairly certain that they had taken advantage of the dark night to put down the wrong number.
“Are you from the police? Is something wrong? We’ve never had any trouble here. We try to run a—”
“You’re in no trouble. I’m just looking for someone. This won’t even get on the records. Do you know which way they went?”
“Well, Mrs Richardson must have recovered in a terrific hurry. They left here a little after seven. They went out of here so fast that I actually dressed and went over to see if they’d taken anything from the room. I can see the road from my bed. They went up the highway, heading east, and then turned up there at the fork and went south on Route One Twenty-one.”
“Did they have any reason to believe that you might have seen which way they went?”
“No. I’m a very light sleeper. I was about to get up anyway. As I say, I just happened to see them turn south.”
“Could I take a look at the room?”
“If you want to. There’ve been quite a few people in it during the week.”
“Then maybe there’s no point in it. Who cleaned it after they left?”
“I did.”
“Did you find anything of interest that was left behind?”
“N-n-no, not really.”
“What did you find that puzzled you?”
“A razor blade in the bathroom waste-basket. Lots of women use razor blades, of course. But this one had stiff black stubble on it, and caked shaving cream of some sort. I just thought it seemed odd. No one was in there but the two women between the times I cleaned the bathroom.”
I left and drove slowly down 121. It was definitely a secondary road. The shoulder was narrow and the brush was high in the shallow ditch. In the patches where the brush was thickest I went about eight miles an hour.
After about two miles I saw something in the brush. I got out and took a look. An old white rag caught on the base of some weeds. The second time I saw something, it was jackpot. A brown wool dress, ripped down the back and under the arms. Big shoes with the leather stiff from dampness, the stitches pulled by strain. Heavy stockings, a rain cape and a big floppy hat. The works had been rolled into a tight bundle and fastened with a woman’s belt. After I was certain of what I had found, I bundled it back up and got ready to toss it farther into the brush. A truck went by, a farm truck, and the driver looked curiously at me. I locked the bundle in the back end of my car with my luggage.
I sat behind the wheel and studied the maps. Either the gray Buick was hot or it wasn’t. If it was, I could be in trouble. If it wasn’t, then the smartest thing for the two of them to do would be to make a lot of road time. I was willing to accept south as the direction. His first run had been to the north. South looked good.
But the south is pretty roomy. Again I had to try to think like Torran. Unless the girl had brought clothes for him, which wasn’t likely, he’d be anxious to pick up a wardrobe. The best wardrobes come from the big cities. The big cities, more often than not, are inclined to have the most alert boys in the cop line. His picture would be widely plastered around. I sat and thought and scratched my head. I just didn’t have enough. With Torran alone I could chance guessing his next move. You study a man’s life long enough and you can detect the pattern of his thoughts. But Miss X added a new factor. I could guess his decisions but I could not guess either hers or their combined decisions.
So I went to Beloit for the second time. I arrived late Saturday night. Sunday morning I went to the phone company offices, presented my credentials, asked for information about any long-distance calls which had been made from the bus station ten days ago. After some stalling, the chief operator on duty dug into the records and came up with three long-distance calls made from the bus station between ten-thirty and eleven-fifteen. The one to Cleveland I didn’t consider. Nor the one to Evansville, Indiana. The one I liked was made at five after eleven to a place called Britcher City, a town of fifteen thousand midway between Urbana and Danville on US 150 east and a bit south of Bloomington. The call was to anyone at Britcher City 3888.
I hadn’t checked out of my hotel room. I found a place that would grease my car, change the oil. I took an hour nap and had a quick sandwich before leaving Beloit at noon. It was a hundred-and-ninety-mile trip to Britcher City. I drove by the city limit sign at five minutes of four. I found a square redbrick hotel called the Westan Arms and got a room. I used a pay phone in the lobby to call 3888.
I heard it ring three times at the other end and then a voice said, “Good afternoon. Westan Arms Hotel.” I nearly dropped the receiver. “Sorry,” I said, “wrong number.” I hung up. Sometimes it happens that way.
I went to the desk. The gray-haired woman desk clerk said, “Yes, Mr Gandy?”
The boyish grin was the right one to use. “I’ve got a problem, ma’am.”
“I hope we can help you.”
“I believe a young lady left here recently. I don’t know what name she was registered under. She may have checked out ten days ago. Blonde tall girl with dark eyes.”
“Oh, her!” the woman said with surprising coldness. “Friend of yours?”
“It’s very important to me to locate her.”
“Well, we don’t know much about her, to tell the truth, even though she did live here for two months. Her name is Marta Sharry. Is that the one?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to see her handwriting to make certain. Would that be too much trouble?”
She shrugged and turned around to a file behind the counter. She hunted for three or four minutes, then pulled out a card. The angular backhand was familiar.
“That’s her writing. Did she leave a forwarding address?”
“No, she didn’t. I thought there was something funny about her. No mail and no phone calls, until that last one – all the time she was here. We wondered if she was hiding from somebody.”
“Did she act as though she were hiding?”
“No. She used to take liquor to her room and drink it alone. She used to sleep every day until one or two in the afternoon. Along about five o’clock he would come for her and she’d go out with him.”