Shadows Of An Afternoon is one of the better entries of the third season of Route 66. It begins almost blandly, in a sleepy Florida town, and soon the drama escalates, as a wounded dog, slashed by something or another, is cared for by Linc, while an older woman who lives across the street claims that he slashed the dog himself.
The circumstantial evidence against Linc works against him, and he's soon in jail. Since he was merely house-sitting for a local woman who was away for an extended period abroad, he's viewed with suspicion by the citizens of the town, and before long his case becomes a media circus.
The plot thickens in the second half of the episode, as the top lawyer in town, apathetic at first, agrees to take on the case. Meanwhile, the woman who claims to have witnessed the crime has issues of her own. She's eccentric, lives alone, claims her husband died heroically at sea. The story unfolds at a rather leisurely pace, but then it's not like Linc is up on charges of first degree murder. In the end it's more a character study than a crime story, as was easy to guess early on.
Glenn Corbett's Linc dominates the episode, with Martin Milner playing second fiddle. Corbett gives a good, disciplined performance, and he never overacts. Ralph Meeker is forceful as the lawyer who, with some prodding from his secretary, rises to the occasion. The best performance however comes from stage and screen veteran Miriam Hopkins, who captures the pathos of a lonely older woman who has kept so many secrets for so long that her judgment has become impaired. She's not a bad person, just a wounded one.