No one wants to listen to a polite, but persistent elderly man, Mr. Johnson, who has a strange theory about the recent "stocking murders" of three young women. His theory? That the third murder was committed by a copycat killer. First the old man, arming himself with a phony name, goes to the police, getting an audience with the very lieutenant who led the investigation, and the lieutenant dismisses his theory, but not before briefly conceding the point that the prime suspect, already in custody, confessed to only two of the three murders (having nothing to lose, it would seem, by confessing to the third). Next, Mr. Johnson, using another alias, seeks and finds a newspaper reporter, who is boozing it up with a floozy - by chance, the very reporter who covered the story, and Mr. Johnson and his ideas are not only dismissed once again, but the condescending bartender practically throws the old man out the door. Finally, at wit's end, Mr. Johnson, no longer hiding behind a false name, consults with a priest and seems to be on the verge of confessing something horrible himself. After all, he seems to know way too much about the life of the last murder victim. Still, the well-meaning priest finds the old man is guilty of nothing more than an unseemly obsession with a tabloid story. The police must know what they're doing, don't they? Feeling utterly ignored, Mr. Johnson goes home to his wife, and even she chides him for "thinking about things too much."
—Richard S. Peltz