And then, suddenly, out of the blue, it came to him. He riffled through the paper, found the story, and reread it. What had happened was so simple it was almost ludicrous.
Mr. and Mrs. George J. Yates had gone shopping the preceding Friday night at the neighborhood Supermarket. Mr. Yates had gone in to do the marketing for the week-end — Mrs. Yates not, apparently, being the domestic type — leaving her in the car in the parking lot. When he returned, some twenty minutes later, the car was not there, nor was Mrs. Yates. He had trudged home, only to find that his wife was not there either, and the following morning he had reported her disappearance to the police. As three days passed with no news of her, Mr. Yates’ concern turned to worry, to terror, to dread of the horrible fate which had probably overtaken Mrs. Yates. But he was not prepared to be so humiliated by the preposterous truth.
Mrs. Yates, it now appeared, had been sitting in the car waiting when Alvin Canmer, aged 16 and a junior at West Side High School, happened to pass the car. Alvin was on his way home from his part-time job in the hardware store, where he had waited on Mrs. Yates once or twice. He said “Good evening” to her, and a conversation ensued, the details of which, unfortunately, were not recorded. But Mrs. Yates was beginning to be bored with waiting for Mr. Yates, and also, it seems, she had been bored with Mr. Yates himself for some time. At any rate, the dialogue had apparently got down to the facts of life in near-record time, with the result that Alvin got into the car and drove to the nearest motel. There they paid a night’s rent in advance, parked the car outside their bungalow, and retired — for three days. Alvin had occasionally sallied forth for food.
But when, after three days, they had attempted to slip out without paying the balance of the bill, they had been apprehended by the motel proprietor. Finding both of them insolvent, he had called the police, who, on checking the registration of the car, learned somewhat to their surprise that they had recovered the missing Mrs. Yates, who was duly returned, temporarily, to her outraged and reluctant husband.
Along with a million other readers that morning, Conway chuckled inwardly at the story. But it was not the story itself which interested him: it was the timing of the disappearance — the suddenness, the rapidity, the unpredictability of the whole thing.
He turned to the account of the murder of the waitress.
He could sympathize with the bafflement of the police on this one. Gladys Ford, 89, divorced, had left the restaurant where she was employed at ten o’clock Saturday night. She had not, so far as could be ascertained, been seen alive again. Her parents, with whom she lived, had reported her disappearance. As in the case of Mrs. Yates, nothing had come of that, either.
Monday afternoon the patrolmen in a radio car cruising on a quiet residential street had noticed a parked car with a license number which seemed vaguely familiar. Checking, they discovered it to be on their stolen car list. Checking further, they found on the floor, covered by a blanket, the body of Gladys Ford. A resident of the neighborhood was sure the car was there before eleven o’clock Saturday night — which was no more than an hour after the unfortunate victim had left the restaurant. She had been strangled with her own belt.
The headline, “Slain by Sex Fiend,” Conway decided, might have been due to the fact that the pattern of the case somewhat resembled other sex murders of the past few months. Or it might have been that editors know that the addition of the word “Sex” lends a piquancy which is lacking in a murder performed by a run-of-the-mill maniac.
But the important thing was that tragedy, as well as romance, could strike with such complete unpredictability. And merely because of its fantastic suddenness — and senselessness — leave no trace. In that was the idea for a story, and Conway believed that he could write it.