Rockabye County 7 by J.T. Edson

Author:J.T. Edson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime thriller books, piccadilly publishing, jt edson, the rockabye county series, american law deputies, point of contact
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Eleven

None of the three Night Watch teams present in the Squad room expressed any surprise at seeing Alice and Brad arrive. Maybe the watches changed at four in the afternoon, but deputies following a line of inquiry continued to do so even after their tour of duty had officially ended. At first the members of the Night Watch hardly gave the new arrivals a second glance, for they gathered at Joan Hilton’s desk and listened to the police artist who had been working with Larsen’s witness at making a picture of the prowler. In addition to being a skilled artist and trained police officer, the man was a raconteur of some notoriety. Certainly he held his audience’s attention as Alice and Brad walked over.

‘So in the end I’m thinking the face looks like Bela Lugosi in an old late-late horror movie,’ the artist was saying. ‘But I thought what the hell. If Bela Lugosi could look like Bela Lugosi, so could the feller she saw. Then she hit me with it.’ His audience tensed, sensing that the story approached its climax. ‘“Now that’s real like him, young feller,” she said. “Only you’ve forgot about the teeth. He should have two of them, long, sharp-pointed, coming down out of his top jaw.”’

Sympathetic laughter greeted the words, for all the deputies had met with similar experiences. The artist put down his empty coffee-cup, rose and nodded a greeting to Alice and Brad.

‘Hi,’ he greeted. ‘I thought I’d come up and tell you what happened.’

‘Thanks,’ Alice answered. ‘So it was nothing?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. I talked to her after we’d finished the drawing, trying to find out if she’d seen somebody, or just had a nightmare through watching the late-late show. It could be either. Anyways, I told her to think hard and let us, you, know if she remembered anything more about him.’

With that, the artist walked from the squad room. He had spent an entire afternoon drawing faces, altering eyes, noses, ears, hair-lines, jaws and other features until hitting the one the witness claimed to be correct. Then it blew up in his face.

That was part of a peace officer’s work.

After answering a few questions about the progress, or lack of it, of their case, Alice and Brad went to their desk. Several fresh reports had come in and they sat down to examine the information.

‘The F.B.I.’ve sent us twelve possibles,’ Brad said after a moment. ‘Three of them are duplicated by I.C.R., all known to be in Texas. Of the three, one’s in the Walls xvii and the second’s a trusty at the Ramsey Unit. fxviii Third’s in Houston, so I.C.R.’ve asked the local law to look him up. The F.B.I.’ve done the same with the out-of-State makes.’

Duplicating the request for information had been justified and had paid off. While the F.B.I. and I.C.R. had both named the three Texas criminals, the latter also included details which would not be available to the former. The Houston police had already sent word that the suspect was still in their town and had been there for weeks.

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