CHAPTER 17He drove downtown, stopping in Sheridan Square to pick up a couple of less sensational papers. Both contained libel-proof references to the men’s garment found in the dead girl’s grasp; both had vaguely worded statements about her engagement to a sergeant in a paratroop outfit stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The more sedate of the morning journals reported a brief interview with the grief-stricken mother; her daughter had never been wild or wayward, always hardworking and home-loving—had been liked by everyone. The circumstances of her death were utterly incomprehensible.
They would hardly be more understandable, to the mother, Don thought glumly, if she knew about the peculiar sequence of violence which had followed the swindle at Mens wear. The boy’s kidnapping, the girl
