He settled himself at a table in a corner of the uncrowded coffee shop and spread the paper out before him. A glance at the front page left no reader in any doubt as to whom the Free Press was championing in the mayoralty election. A black headline proclaimed: Towne Released to Kill Again.

Shayne ordered coffee and scrambled eggs and settled back to read the story. Stripped of innuendo and inflammatory accusations, it told how Jefferson Towne at dusk the preceding evening had run down and killed a young recruit from nearby Fort Bliss who had been identified as James Brown of Cleveland, Ohio. The opposition paper made much of the fact that Towne had been released by Chief Dyer on his own recognizance to (as the Free Press stated it) go forth and kill again, and it broadly hinted that the entire police department had joined in a conspiracy to cover up Towne’s crime.

The news story concluded with a brief paragraph that caused a slow grin to spread over Shayne’s rugged face:

The citizens of El Paso are warned that no effort or expense will be spared by Jefferson Towne to whitewash his criminal negligence in this matter. As we go to press, the Free Press learns from a reliable source that a private detective of unsavory reputation from New Orleans has been retained to aid in confusing the electorate on this issue and to hide the full truth from our citizens.

For an interesting commentary on this desperate expedient of Candidate Towne, be sure to read the editorial by our Crime Reporter, Neil Cochrane, on this page.

A waitress brought Shayne’s coffee and eggs. He took a sip of coffee and scowled across the room. He remembered Neil Cochrane from ten years ago. Neil had been a friend of Lance Bayliss — and of Carmela Towne. A thin, waspish, eager lad, with a head too big for his undersized body, and a sharp, incisive intellect. Shayne had an idea that Neil, too, had fancied himself in love with Carmela in those days, though he must have known there could be no one but Lance in her life. Now Neil Cochrane was a reporter on the Free Press, violently opposing the election of Carmela’s father.