Chief Lighthill finished talking on the telephone and put the instrument down. Rising, he went to the door of his office and looked out into the main room of the station. A sergeant sat at the desk there. “Did I hear Worth Blair a few minutes ago?” the chief asked.
“He’s in the back room with Wilding, Chief, getting some coffee.”
“Ask them to bring their coffee into my office, will you?”
The two men came in without waiting for their refreshment, and Lighthill motioned them to sit.
“Willard Ellstrom just phoned me.” As best he could, he recounted what the photographer had told him about the call from Oregon. They discussed it for ten minutes, trying to find a fresh lead in it. They were still vainly batting it back and forth when Doc Broderick walked in.
Doc nodded to them and sat down and listened. When the next stillness occurred, he filled it in by saying, “Willard called me, too. I got an idea afterward and thought I’d better bring it over here.”
He told them about Jerri Jansen’s door and her apparent fear of punishment.
Worth Blair said, “It goes right back to those books in Gustave’s study. I know it does.”
“You’ve examined the books twice,” the chief said. “You haven’t found a thing.”
“I’m an incompetent cop, that’s all.”
“Forget it. We’re all tired.”
Blair beat his fist on his knee and shook his head from side to side while staring angrily at the floor. He said, “Damn, damn, damn.” For days he had been like a man tormented by a familiar song, the name of which he could not recall though it was on the tip of his tongue. He felt that a college man with police training ought to do better.
The chief sensed his self-disapprobation and felt sorry for him, knowing that being a good policeman was also a matter of time and experience.
“I should have stuck to writing poetry,” Blair said bitterly. “At least I’m getting a book of poems published.”
“Sure,” the chief said.
Blair stopped pounding his knee and jerked his head up. “That’s it!” he shouted. He leaped to his feet and brandished his fists in the air. “That’s it! That’s it! The publisher!”
The chief and Doc and Keith Wilding looked at him and waited, all of them aware that the office fairly crackled with a charge of something like electricity.
“I was looking for something in the books,” Blair said loudly, in gleeful triumph. “My mind was stuck on explaining that blasted diagram. And all the time the answer was right there in plain view! Those two books published by the Mason Nicolini Company!”
A patient man, the chief realized his young colleague was entitled to a bit of time. “So?” he prompted gently.
“She told us she hadn’t touched a thing in that room since Gustave died. Isn’t that what she said? Nothing added, nothing removed?”
“That’s what she said.”
“She’s a liar. Mason Nicolini wasn’t in existence when Gustave was alive. I sent them my poems when they first advertised in a writers’ magazine, saying they were a new company and wanted material. Those two books never belonged to Gustave. They have to be hers. She’s been using those books on life after death. She’s been trying to open that door Ellstrom called you about.”
“That’s why she had the key in her pocket,” Lighthill said. He put his hands flat on the desk and pushed himself erect with a forceful heave. “Okay. That ties her in with the diagram, with the missing Hostetter boy and Jerri Jansen. Maybe with the whole ball of wax. Let’s go hold those books up in front of her and see if she’ll talk this time.”