Strange Highways

five-thousand-dollar fine and two years in prison."
     "Ouch."
     "We enforce it too."
     "I've no doubt. Thanks for your help."
     "And no smoking," she added.
     "I don't."
     "Good."
     She left the room, closing the door behind her.
     It had been this easy for Judge too. Chase had hoped that the city would require a sign-in procedure by which those who wanted to use the files were identified. Considering Nancy Onufer's efficiency and the law against removing documents, Chase was surprised that she didn't keep a meticulous log of visitors.
     He looked up his own birth certificate and also found the minutes of the city-council meeting during which a vote had been taken to hold an awards dinner in his honor. In the carbons of the selective-service records, he located the pertinent facts regarding his past eligibility for the draft and the document calling him for service in the United States Army.
     Easy. Too easy.
     When he left the storage vault, Nancy Onufer said, "Find what you were looking for?"
     "Yes, thank you."
     "No trouble, Mr. Chase," she said, immediately turning back to her work.
     Her reply stopped him. "You know me?"
     She glanced up and flashed a smile. "Who doesn't?"
     He crossed the open office area to her desk. "If you hadn't known who I was, would you have asked for a name and ID before I went into the file room?"
     "Certainly. No one's ever taken any records in the twelve years I've been here, but I still keep a log of visitors." She tapped a notebook on the edge of her desk. "I just put your name down."
     "This may sound like an odd request, but could you tell me who was here this past Tuesday?" When Mrs. Onufer hesitated, he said, "I'm being bothered a lot by reporters, and I don't care for all the publicity. They've said everything about me there is to be said, after all. It's getting to be overkill. I've heard there's a local man working on a series for a national magazine, against my wishes, and I was wondering if he'd been here Tuesday."
     He thought that the lie was transparent, but she trusted him. He was a war hero, after all. "It must be a pain in the butt. But journalists - they can never leave anyone alone. Anyway, I don't see the harm in telling you who was here. There's nothing confidential about the visitors' log." She consulted the notebook. "Only nine people came around all Tuesday. These two are from an architectural firm, checking some power-and-water easements on properties they're developing. I know them. These four were women, and you're looking for a man, so we can rule them out. That leaves three - here, here, and here."
     As she showed him the names, Chase tried to commit them to memory. "No ... I guess ... none of them is him."
     "Anything else?"
     "Do you ordinarily just take names - or ask for ID?"
     "Always ID, unless I know the person."
     "Well, thanks for your help."
     Acutely conscious of all the work on her desk, Nancy Onufer shut the notebook, dismissed Chase with a quick smile, and returned to her typing.
     When he left the courthouse, it was a quarter till noon, and he was starving. He went to a drive-in restaurant - Diamond Dell - that had been a favorite hangout when he'd been in high school.
     He was surprised by his appetite. Sitting in the car, he ate two cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and cole slaw, washing it all down with a Pepsi. That was more than he had eaten in any three meals during the past year.
     After lunch, at a nearby service station, he used the phone-booth directory to find numbers for the men who were possibles in Nancy Onufer's log. When he called the first, he got the guy's wife; she gave him a work number for her husband. Chase dialed it and spoke to the suspect - who sounded nothing whatsoever like Judge. The second man was at home, and he sounded even less like Judge than the first.
     The directory had no number for the third man - Howard Devore which might only mean that his telephone was unlisted. Or it might mean that the name was phony. Of course, Mrs. Onufer always asked for ID, so if Judge was using a phony name, he also must have access to a source of false identification.
     Because he didn't trust himself to remember every clue and to notice links between them, Chase went to a drugstore