I said, “How about his fingerprints not matching?”
“McLaughlin explained how that could be.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Every point in his favor has got a logical explanation.”
“What’s eating you, old buddy?” Frank asked. “We’ve got this guy dead to rights. You positively identified him yourself. The case is closed.”
“That’s what’s eating me,” I said.
“Huh?”
“I think we’ve got the wrong man.”
Chapter XVI
2:45 p.m. I followed Frank’s car to the Police Building, and we went upstairs to talk to Captain Hertel. He looked up from a telegram he was reading and said, “Friday, Smith. You’re not due in for a couple of hours yet.”
“Got something on our minds, Skipper,” I said. “Want to talk it over.”
He pointed to chairs. “Sit down.”
We took seats and lit cigarettes. “This is going to jolt you,” I said. “I’ve been stewing about it for days. It just came to a head.”
“Yeah?”
“This George Whiteman. I don’t think he’s really the Courteous Killer. I think he’s just a guy unlucky enough to be his twin.”
The captain’s eyes widened, but he seemed more bemused than upset. “You got some reason for thinking this?”
“A lot of small reasons. Things that don’t quite fit. It’s more hunch than evidence.”
Captain Hertel nodded. He still didn’t seem either surprised or disturbed, and I wondered why. I found out when he tossed the telegram he had been reading over in front of me.
“You couldn’t have timed your hunch better,” he said. “Take a look at that.”
I picked it up, held it so that Frank could read it at the same time. It was from the chief of detectives of the St. Louis Police Department, and it read:
HAVE IN CUSTODY GEORGE WHITEMAN, WMA, AGE 46, BORN COLUMBIA, MISSOURI, BELIEVED ROBBERY-MURDER SUSPECT DESCRIBED YOU WANT NUMBER 314 DATED SEPTEMBER 10TH. HEIGHT FIVE NINE AND ONE HALF, WEIGHT ONE SEVENTY-TWO, HAIR GRAY-BROWN, EYES BROWN, COMPLEXION RUDDY. SLIGHT LIMP RIGHT LEG. WEARS RIMLESS GLASSES. MUGS AND PRINTS BEING AIR-MAILED. CHARGED ARMED ROBBERY HERE, BUT IF YOUR MAN, WELL HOLD FOR POSSIBLE EXTRADITION.
We looked up from the message, and both of us stared blankly at the captain. He grinned a little sourly.
“Nice, isn’t it?” he asked. “Same name, same age, same birthplace, same description. If he turns out to have the same fingerprints, I’m going to resign and take up truck farming.”
“You’ll have a partner,” I told him. “How do you figure this, Captain?”
“I don’t,” Captain Hertel said. “I don’t even want to think about it until those mugs and prints come in tomorrow.”
We left it at that. Frank and I didn’t want to think about it, either.
Frank and I left word that we wanted to be called at home the next day as soon as the mugs and prints from St. Louis came in. I got the call at 12:30 p.m. and arrived at the Police Building at 1:00. Frank, having a longer drive, arrived fifteen minutes later. He found me in the captain’s office examining the mugs.
There were two sets. A regular front and profile, and stand-up mugs. I handed them to Frank.
After looking them over, Frank let out a whistle. “How do you figure a thing like this? Might be our suspect’s twin.”
“The only thing different about the two is their prints,” Captain Hertel said. “I checked them myself as soon as they came in, before I sent them to Latent Prints. You could see the difference with the naked eye.”
He sounded relieved, which was an indication of how far off center the whole screwy situation had thrown us. There has never been a case on record of two different people having identical fingerprints. But these two men were so identical in every respect, the captain had half suspected the impossible would happen, and even their prints would match.
I grinned at him. “No truck farm then, huh, Skipper?”
He grinned back. “Not this trip. I’m waiting for a kickback from Latent Prints now. Asked them to check the St. Louis suspect’s prints against the wallet and seat-adjustment knob.” The phone rang before he finished speaking. He picked it up and said, “Hertel.” After listening for a moment, he grunted, said, “Thanks,” and hung up.
“Latent Prints?” I asked.
The captain nodded. “Made him on both prints.”
I felt a sense of relief flow over me. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to think you might have been instrumental in sending an innocent man to the lethal chamber or prison. “How about the one we’ve got?” I asked.
Captain Hertel grinned. “That’s a chore for you,” he said. “Chief Brown thinks you ought to break the good news yourself. I’ll have Whiteman brought over from the County Jail.”
Frank and I waited in the squad room until George Whiteman was brought in. He looked at us sullenly.
“Sit down, Mr. Whiteman,” I said. “We’ve got a little shock for you.”
He took a seat at one of the tables, and I handed him both sets of mug shots. After a brief glance at them, he looked up at me again.
“Who do you think that is?” I asked.
“Me,” he said shortly. “What about it?”
“Look again,” I said. “Can you positively identify the pictures?”
With a mixture of suspicion and puzzlement he gave them a more careful examination. “Of course it’s me,” he said finally. “What kind of game you playing?”
“Read the data below the pictures on the card containing the head shots.”
He studied the indicated card. “George Whiteman,” he muttered. “Height, weight, and so on. Birthplace, Columbia, Missouri. Birthdate — Hey, I wasn’t born April twenty-fifth!”
“He was,” I said.
“Huh?”
“The man in those pictures. George Whiteman. Same age as you, same name, same home town, same appearance. Only he’s in custody in St. Louis, waiting for us to go pick him up.”
His eyes widened to half-dollar size. He stared at the picture again, read the vital statistics in detail, and finally looked up at me with his mouth hanging open. “You mean... you mean—”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “He’s the real Courteous Killer. We made him on his fingerprints. Sorry we had to break it to you in such a roundabout way, but there’s a reason.”
He still couldn’t quite believe it. “Wh... what’s that?”
I pointed to the mug shots. “You positively identified that man as yourself, didn’t you?”
“Why, sure,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? He looks just like me.”
“That’s the way we feel, Mr. Whiteman,” I told him. “You can hardly blame us for making the same mistake you did.”
We continued to talk to George Whiteman for some time. He had no explanation for the remarkable resemblance between himself and the St. Louis suspect. He assumed that being from the same town and bearing the same name, they were probably distantly related, which might account for the similarity of appearance. However, in his youth he had known no other George Whiteman in Columbia, nor ever heard of one.
Afterward we took him up to Chief Brown’s office. In the name of the department, the chief apologized for the mistake. He assured the unfortunate double of the Courteous Killer that full newspaper publicity would be given the error in order to clear Whiteman’s name.
Meantime, Captain Hertel had phoned the new development to the district attorney, and a representative of that office came over to the Police Building. Whiteman was taken before the Superior Court and released from custody.
2:16 p.m. Frank and I went back to Captain Hertel’s office. The captain phoned the St. Louis chief of detectives long-distance and informed him that we had made the suspect on his fingerprints, and that he was definitely the man we wanted. He asked what arrangements could be made to pick up the suspect.