Richardson endorsed Leland’s plan and put through a call for additional men on the Monday tour. The gym workers had to be encouraged to tell everything they knew about men who even remotely fitted the description. To know that one was married and that another had been with witnesses at the time of the killing would save a lot of legwork. Richardson did not want to engage in a wholesale roundup. It was bad public relations and worse police work. He would do it if he had to, of course. The case was getting too cold for them to let opportunities slip through their fingers.

The next morning, as the plan went into effect, Herbert Davis issued a statement attacking, in the main, Lieutenant Joseph Leland. Leland was an authentic hero, deserving all the honor tendered him, but in this matter he was serving as a willing dupe of the city administration and the higher authorities in the Port Smith Police Department. The administration and the Department were in concert in using Leland, a courageous but naïve man, as a shield to cover the incompetence and malfeasance that not only had allowed a situation such as Joytown to generate, but a vicious murderer to commit his crime and make good his escape. Evidence had been mishandled and facts misinterpreted. In the seventy-two hours since the police had entered the case not even the name of the so-called “secret roommate” had been learned. Yet instead of looking for the murderer, the Port Smith Police Department concerned itself with its public relations. Leland, because of his personal reputation, had been selected to “handle the press” for the duration of the case. Yesterday, Sunday, playing his role, Leland had taken an eight-hour motor trip to Lake Wokoma to conduct a meaningless twenty-minute interview with the aunt and uncle of Theodore Leikman. Right now the uncle was consulting his attorneys about the possibility of suing the Port Smith Police Department and Joseph Leland personally for the anguish he and his wife had been made to suffer in the cause of political expediency. Why Leland wanted to lend his name to covering and obscuring the lines of responsibility in such a tawdry matter was a question the Lieutenant would do well to answer before his reputation was further tarnished.

“It’s a feint,” Richardson said in his office. “He doesn’t know how you’re going to respond, but he’s willing to lose a little to gain a lot. Maybe his informant in the Department thinks you’re naïve. Davis is willing to take the chance to mousetrap the people he wants. What he wants most of all is that housing project. Take your time now when you talk to the reporters.”

“He’s still giving me my lumps for bouncing him Friday night.”

“Of course he is,” Richardson said. “But don’t lose your head.”

“He thinks that I’m Lucky Lindy or somebody.”