He was a man slightly past middle age. Tall, well dressed, handsome.
They shifted him around before he reached the captain’s office. By the time he arrived there some of his surface coolness had rubbed off. It was easier to see how unhappy he was, how distraught. A man with something unerasable on his mind.
His name was John Cullen Stack, he said. He lived in a suburb, the name of which the captain recognized. A section where the prices of houses started at $50,000. He had a wife and a married daughter. The daughter was adopted. She was actually his sister’s child.
He looked at the captain as though he distrusted him and then he reached in a pocket, took out a silver cigarette case and offered the captain a cigarette. The captain refused.
And then he came to the point. He had seen the
