Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

I had just slipped my tie around my collar when I heard the chime on the door ring. A few moments later I hurried out to the front room.

When I saw Charles Henry Lane I felt a little foolish for having made those remarks to Anita. For all the pompous words flung around about him by the DAILY NEWS Charles Henry Lane was small-town upper-class at its best. At forty-five he still had the neat athletic build of a man ten or fifteen years younger. His dark brown hair was beginning to recede and there were some rather deep lines around his eyes and his mouth, but they only served to give him a mature and rather distinguished look.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Lane. Just got back from the Banning farm. I suppose you’ve heard of the excitement out there.”

“No. I haven’t heard.”

He spoke very slowly, almost as though he were carefully choosing his words. I was a little surprised at the expression on his face; it was almost wary. Or was it puzzlement?

“Someone found a body out there. A woman. Sheriff’s pretty sure it’s murder.”

Lane looked shocked. Remembering my own reactions when I saw the body I felt comradely toward him. He too had been through a war and seen violent death. But like me he had spent the years since in a town which hadn’t had a murder since 1895.

“It’s rather a shock, isn’t it?” I offered sympathetically.

“Yes, it is,” he answered. “Of course it happens every day in the cities but here—” He stopped and looked at me rather helplessly.

“I suppose the world had to catch up with us sometime, Mr. Lane. Although I wish it had waited a little longer.”

“Yes. Yes, so do I. I just got back last night from Cincinnati.” He grinned ruefully. “I kept thinking all the way home last night how nice it would be to get back home where everything’s nice and quiet.”

“Business trip?” I asked politely.

He nodded. “Yes. Left early Sunday. One of those conventions. Don’t really know why I go. Never seem to accomplish anything.”

The sitting didn’t go very well. I kept seeing that woman’s ghastly face every time I looked in the camera and Lane seemed preoccupied. I had to repeat every direction to him about three times. I took a couple of extra shots for insurance and then called it quits. I knew Clyde would be anxious to get my pictures so as soon as Lane left I went right to work. A couple of hours later I locked the studio door behind me and carrying a stack of slightly damp enlargements walked up the street to Clyde’s office in the county jail.

Clyde was talking on the phone when I walked in. He waved me to a chair as he finished his telephone conversation. A minute later he swung around in the swivel chair to face me. His movements were as quick and sure as ever but I caught a bewildered look in his eyes that had never been there before. He glanced quickly through the stack of photos and then piled them neatly on the corner of his desk.

“Thanks, Matt. That looks like a good job. As usual,” he added, giving me a grin that faded too quickly from his lined face. I took out a pack of cigarettes and after giving him one took my time about lighting up.

“Any idea who she was, Clyde,” I began. “I like to keep my records pretty complete, you know.”

Clyde shook his head. “And I like to keep my records complete, Matt. But so far, nothing. No identification on the body, no one’s recognized her so far, and her clothes could have come from any large department store in the state or maybe the whole country. Just nothing. Except it’s pretty certain she was strangled. Doc’s working on that now. And she’s probably been dead about forty-eight hours.” He threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I’ve started through all the channels, missing persons, the FBI for fingerprints, but all that takes time. And in the meantime...” He paused and looked at me intently.

There was a catch in my throat. “In the meantime, there’s a killer running around loose.” I finished it for him.

He nodded. “It’s probably an out-of-town killing and someone just happened on that abandoned farm and thought it a good place to dump the body.”

“But the silo, Clyde? Sure, an abandoned farm’s a fine place to get rid of a body. But why the silo? Why not a shallow grave somewhere on the farm? That silo just doesn’t make sense.”

Clyde nodded. “That’s what puzzles me, Matt. If it weren’t for that silo I’d be pretty sure this was an out-of-town killing. Or rather out of the county. It’s almost as though someone knew that silo was going to be filled soon but didn’t think that Clem would clean it out first. It if weren’t for that, why hard telling how long that body could have stayed in there.”

I saw what Clyde was getting at. If that silo had been filled on top of the body it would be months before the silage was fed out down to the body. And if it wasn’t all fed out and the silo wasn’t used the next year or the next, it might even be years before it was used again.