Chapter 25

Thursday-Saturday, July 1-3

Sam and Hugh Fulcher organized an assault on hotels and motels in the area surrounding Twin Rivers. Although the city was small, the nearby ocean resort area and the intervening small towns with motel operations made the task a large one.

Operating on the belief that their suspect might have considerable financial resources, Sam divided the long list of establishments with Hugh and directed the Deputy to begin with the largest and the most expensive of the hotels on his list.

Key employees of each hotel were to be asked a short list of questions pertaining to the three sketches -- Wallace's, Mumford's, and the consolidation of their variant descriptions. Only one set of sketches was to be left behind, with the manager of each establishment, with the request that employees on other shifts be asked the same questions.

Each manager would be asked not to make general distribution of the sketches, so as to avoid, if possible, notice of the investigation's leaking back to the suspect. In each instance, employees were to be asked whether a man meeting the descriptions, or any of them, was staying at the hotel now, as well as whether anyone resembling the sketches had been there within "the past two-week period".

There was to be no linkage of the quest for the suspect's identity with the recent murder of Emma Majeski. Sam knew that many people would make the linkage without their help, but he and Hugh would not encourage it. Along with the sketches, each officer, thanks to the help of Cassino Mumford, was carrying an enlarged color photograph of the ancient Chevy that Mumford had sold to the suspect. Had anyone seen this car in the vicinity of their establishment?

Keeping a majority of the hotels and motels for himself, Sam assigned to Hugh the task of visiting upcoming meetings of major civic and service clubs in the county, circulating among the members, and seeking identification of the suspect by this additional means.

Almost three eleven-hour days later, there was little to show for their efforts. Two motel managers, one in Twin Rivers and another in the tiny hamlet of Margaret Beach, had seen similarities between one of the sketches and a current guest of their establishment. In each instance, Hugh Fulcher had taken the witnesses, Wallace and Mumford, to the scene and had met the identified man face-to-face. Hugh had brought the two black men to the door of each of the two identified possibles, and had reported a fictitious fender-bender in the motel parking area, asking whether the man was the owner of a "'97 Olds with Virginia plates."

Neither man owned a '97 Oldsmobile, fictitious or otherwise, and Wallace and Mumford quickly confirmed in private that neither was the man they had seen.

For Sam and Hugh, it was exhausting work, in and out of their cars for three days running. All the hotels, upscale and down, had been visited. Most of the civic clubs -- those that had held meetings since the exercise had begun -- had been shown the sketches. Fulcher met with Sam at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

"Sam, tomorrow's a holiday and a Sunday, and I am a worn-out old, past-it deputy sheriff. I hope you have in mind a day off from this business, which has produced exactly nothing at all."

"You have got the day off, Hugh. Not only because it's a holiday and because you deserve it, but because I'm damned if I know anything else to do to run this guy down. I'm going to take the day myself. I'm going to sit outside somewhere in the shade, and just try to think about what else we can do. There's still nothing on the damned car. Identifying this guy is going nowhere."

"A day off will do us both good," Fulcher said.

"Damned straight! All I want you to do is relax, have a beer, and try to figure another angle. And Happy Birthday to the U.S. of A!"