In the Heat of the Night

reasonable man ordinarily.”
    Tibbs hesitated and locked his fingers together before he replied. “Mr. Wood and I got on very well, though at one point he misled me a little, and when I commented on it he dropped me off here without ceremony.”
    “What do you mean, Mr. Wood misled you? Be specific.”
    “Since you ask me, Chief Gillespie, I asked him to retrace with me the exact route he followed on the murder night. At one point he made a slight deviation. Gillespie rocked back in his chair. “Virgil, you ve got to understand that Mr. Wood has been patrolling the streets of the city on the graveyard shift for more than three years. He makes it a point to keep changing his route continuously so that no one can predict just where he will be at any specific time. You can’t possibly expect him to remember every turning he made on any specific night, even though it was only a night or two ago.”
    “Thank you, sir,” Tibbs said. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?”
    Gillespie pondered. He tried to find offense in Tibbs’s reply, but if there was any, it did not show on the surface. “No, that’s all.”
    As the Negro left the office, the chief slumped in his chair. A sudden idea had occurred to him, which he didn’t like at all. But he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. The idea was a startling one, but it could be the answer.
    He shut his eyes and visualized someone holding a piece of wood, swinging it through the air in a vicious, utterly merciless blow that would land on and crush the skull of a little Italian. And the man he now saw swinging the crude club and destroying the life of a fellow human being was Sam Wood.
    Sam had had the opportunity, there was no doubt of that. For Sam it would have been easy, for anyone else a tremendous risk. If Sam had walked up to the little man even in the small hours of the night, his victim would not have been on his guard, thinking he had nothing to fear from a policeman in uniform. On a sudden hunch Gillespie picked up the telephone, called the bank, and asked to speak to Mr. Jennings.
    “I want to ask you something in strict confidence concerning one of our men here,” Gillespie began. “Do you know Sam Wood?”
    “I know Mr. Wood very well,” Jennings replied promptly.
    “What I want to know is this,” Gillespie said. “Within the last two months or so has there been any unusual activity in his account? Any unusual deposits or withdrawals? Has he had to borrow money?”
    “Ordinarily we try to keep information concerning our depositors confidential,” Jennings replied, obviously stalling. “In any event, we don’t like to give it out over the telephone. You can appreciate why.” Gillespie’s temper shortened again. “All right, all right! You are being cautious and I don’t blame you, you’re doing your job. But you didn’t answer my question.”
    "Let me understand clearly, Mr. Gillespie,” Jennings retorted. “Is this an official request for information?”
    “You can consider it that.”
    “Then of course we’ll cooperate. If you will come to my office whenever you find it convenient, I will allow you to look at the records.”
    “Can’t you deliver them to me here?”
    “If you get a court order for us to do so, we gladly will,” Jennings answered evenly. “Otherwise it would be much better if you could call here, since obviously we don’t want to let our records out, and we try to avoid making copies whenever possible.”
    Satisfied that he could do no better, Gillespie hung up. He was annoyed that the conversation had given him no hint one way or the other. Robbery did not appear to be the motive, but Kaufmann had mentioned that Mantoli habitually carried large sums of money on his person. Sam Wood might have killed and robbed him, leaving enough money behind to divert suspicion. That sort of thing had been done before.
    Arnold appeared in the doorway; he had a few sheets of paper in his hand. “Virgil says you want to see his report on Mantoli’s body.”
    “Of course I want to see it,” Gillespie snapped. “What have you been sitting on it for?”
    “I didn’t think you wanted it,” Arnold replied. He shrugged and left.
    Bill Gillespie looked over the report. As he read from paragraph to paragraph, he began to hate the document. He hated it because it was the work of an inferior and at the same time better than he himself could have done or had done. But it would save him from possible serious