“Whoever is writing this isn’t a cat—a cat would care!” Elliot said. He was more indignant about the writing than what was happening to the cats. Yet the little English teacher seemed scarcely interested in the most mysterious and most exhaustive “Police Report”—at least in my short memory of reading the Exeter Town Crier.

Late one weekend night, a married couple picked up a pizza at Roland’s. As they were driving out of the parking lot, the wife saw what she thought was an assault in progress. When the couple got home, the wife called the police. The wife said she saw “a big man, who appeared to be making an unwelcome advance on a small woman, who was trying to fight him off.” Before the police dispatched a squad car with two cops, the precinct called Roland’s and asked Roland what he knew.

“Nothin’,” Roland replied. This sounded like something the real Roland would say, but Roland took his baseball bat and went into the parking lot to investigate. Shortly before the squad car arrived, Roland found the big man—the alleged attacker. It appeared that the small woman had successfully fought him off, because the guy was lying facedown in the parking lot.

“It hurts to move,” the big man whispered to Roland, who’d nudged him with the baseball bat.

“The guy looked dead, but he was moanin’,” Roland told the Town Crier. When the two cops arrived, they rolled the big man onto his back. According to Roland, “There was gravel embedded in the guy’s forehead.”

The big man’s two drinking buddies were still drinking in Roland’s. The guy with the gravel embedded in his forehead had followed a “small, pretty woman” into the parking lot. Roland said he’d seen her before, but he didn’t know her name. “She never calls and orders a pizza—she just shows up and waits,” Roland said. “She drives a dark-colored VW Beetle—there’s a lot of them around,” he added, which (for Roland) was positively loquacious. Mr. Barlow and I had never known Roland to have this much to say.

And Roland wasn’t through talking. The three drinking buddies were local Exeter men, all shipyard workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The local Exeter men were said to be in their late twenties or early thirties. The big, gravel-pocked man who had a mix-up with the small, pretty woman was described by Roland as “havin’ made unwelcome advances on women alone before.”

The injured attacker was treated at Exeter Hospital for “two separated shoulders and two broken collarbones.” He was released into police custody, but the police also released him—pending charges, “yet to be filed,” by the mystery woman he’d attacked. The police were hopeful she would come forward and identify herself. “We only want to ask her some questions,” a police spokesperson said.