“I haven’t seen the morning papers yet.”
“You haven’t?” There was a definite note of incredulity in the sergeant’s voice. “We’ll stop somewhere and you can get ’em. The pictures of you came out swell. Mine were terrible — only one decent one in the lot.”
“That’s too bad.” A pause. “Have you any idea how long Ramsden will want me to go through the motions?”
“Hard to say. Maybe till something else pops up to take peoples’ minds off this. But this is the third one of these cases in two months. Like I told you yesterday, on one of these things, there’s no place to start. And the women’s clubs will start passing resolutions, and the papers’ll be printing editorials saying it ain’t safe for a woman to be out after dark, and the department’ll get it from high, low and the middle. The captain’s not very bright, but you can see he’s in a tough spot.”
“Yes. Yes, I can.”
“So he has to cover up the best way he can. Like having you look at the bums and winos they round up every night, and saying it was a squad car found the stolen car, and—”
“But didn’t they? That’s what he told me yesterday—”
“Naw. A woman calls up and says this car’s been parked there for a couple days, and how about hauling it away? So a squad car goes over, finds out it’s stolen, sees it’s locked, and sends for a tow truck. They start to hoist it with the derrick, and that’s when somebody looks inside and sees the — well, no point going into the details. But you see what I mean. It sounds better to say the police found the stolen car. As long as the dame that phoned in don’t squawk too loud to one of the papers. That’s another little thing I got to try to take care of.”
“They certainly keep you busy.”
“I got to see her anyway. The dame that phoned in is this Elsie Daniels — the same one that was on her porch and saw the guy park the car. Ramsden should of gave her a better shake in the story he gave the papers yesterday. As long as he was going to take credit for finding the car, he should of done something for her — make her out a hero, or extra smart, or something. Anyhow, I want to see her and the boy friend together, and see if there’s anything they might of forgotten to tell me yesterday. And at the same time try to keep her from blabbing about reporting the car. Hey, you can get the papers there.”