Chase: Roman

asked for a name before I went in there to root around?’
        ‘Why, of course,’ she said. ‘No one has ever taken any records in the twelve years I've been here, but I still see the need for some safety check.’
        ‘And you keep a list?’
        She tapped a notebook on the edge of her desk. ‘I just put your name down, out of habit.’
        He said, ‘This may sound like an odd request, but could you tell me who was here this past Tuesday?’
        She looked at him, looked at the book, reached a quick decision. ‘I don't see why I should hesitate,’ she said. ‘There's nothing confidential in the list.’ She opened it, thumbed through several pages, then said, ‘Only three people all day.’ She showed him the names.
        When he had them well in mind, he said, ‘Thank you. You see, I'm constantly being bothered by reporters who want stories, and I don't care for all the publicity. I think they've said everything about me there is to be said. But I've heard there's a local man working up a series for a national magazine, against my wishes, and I wondered if he'd been here Tuesday as I'd been told.’
        Even he thought the lie sounded utterly absurd, and he had no hope of her believing him, until he realized that he would not have had to offer her any explanation whatsoever. She trusted him. Everyone trusted a hero. She nodded at his fabrication as if it were perfectly logical, and she commiserated - for a few brief moments - on the problems of unwanted publicity he must have to face. Then, conscious of the time she had been wasting, she bent her head to her work and thereby dismissed him.
        When he left the office, he realized that Mrs Klou had never once looked up and had not paused even for a moment in the furious pace she set at the typewriter.
        It was a quarter to twelve when he stepped out of the courthouse, and he was surprisingly hungry. He got his Mustang out of the lot after paying a dollar ransom to the man in the ticket booth, then drove out Galasio Boulevard to the string of drive-in eateries that had sprung up like glass-and-aluminium mushrooms since he had gone away to war. He parked in a slot at the Diamond Dell and ordered more food than he thought he could eat. A cute redhead in tight hotpants brought his food, accepted his money and said she hoped he'd like everything. By a quarter to one he had consumed everything on the tray, more than he had eaten in any three meals during the last year.
        At a nearby gas station, he used the telephone booth directory to find numbers for two of the three people who had browsed through city files on Tuesday, and called them. Both were women, rather elderly, and both did exist. The third name, Howard Devore, was a phony. It did not appear in the telephone book, and when he looked later, was not in the city directory. The man might be from out of town, of course. But Chase didn't think that was the answer. Howard Devore, he felt certain, was an alias that Judge had used.
        Because he did not trust himself to store his knowledge logically and to notice links between bits of diverse data, Chase purchased a small ring-bound notebook and an inexpensive plastic pen, and he carefully listed the following:
        
        1. Alias-Judge
        2. Alias - Howard Devore
        3. Possible homosexual
        4. No criminal record, prints not on file
        5. Has knowledge of lock-picking, broke into Cauvel's office
        6. Owns a red Volkswagen
        7. Owns a silenced pistol, probably a.32 calibre
        
        Chase looked over the list when he was finished with it, thought a moment, then added an eighth fact, one which struck him, somehow, as important: ‘8. May be either unemployed, on vacation or on a leave of absence.’ That seemed the only way to explain how he had been able to call Chase at any hour of the day, follow him in the middle of the afternoon and waste two days ‘researching’ Chase's life. He neither sounded nor acted old enough to be retired. Unemployed, then. Or on a vacation. If the former were the case, his field of suspects could be drastically narrowed, though the resultant group would still be quite large. If it were the latter, and if Judge were on vacation, the number of hours a day that Chase was endangered would be reduced in a week or two when Judge was back on the job.
        He closed the notebook and started the car, aware that the last thought had been a