The Empty Coffin (2001)

The Empty Coffin

Robert L. Wise's Sam and Vera Sloan mystery is set in Colorado Springs in the days before Thanksgiving, when George Barnes, a three-hundred-pound man called Ape who arrives at the Nevada Street police station in a battered 1988 Ford van with a stovepipe through its back door, has something to tell the police, and Sam Sloan, trying to find out where a man called Al Henry came from, goes looking for him. (Open Library)

Watches

Casio (unidentified model)

On a Sunday afternoon in late November Sam Sloan walks Acacia Park, down the block from the Nevada Street station, looking for George Barnes, the three-hundred-pound man called Ape, and finds him asleep on a bench under half a newspaper in clean overalls and a green T-shirt, looking like an old gold miner down from Pikes Peak. Woken by the sun in his eyes, Ape swings a fist at the air, glances at the plastic-strapped Casio watch on his arm and admits he has slept longer than he thought, before Sam asks about Al Henry. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: Ape glanced at the plastic-strapped Casio watch on his arm. "Longer than I thought." (Robert L. Wise, The Empty Coffin, scan cataloged as Thomas Nelson, 2001, p. 76; George Barnes is introduced on p. 2 and called Ape from p. 76; Internet Archive scan OCR)