City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (novels to read .txt) 📗

couldn’t say how long it had been sitting there before I came along.”

After he had a horrendous coughing fit, I asked if he saw anyone in the car or could identify the make.

“The headlights kept me from seeing anything until he turned north on Sixteenth. Then I’d guess it was a Packard Eight from the silhouette, white walls, the spare tire on the side of the body sitting on the running board.”

“Two doors, four?”

“Four. But the window was up, and I couldn’t make out the driver or whether he had a passenger. He drove fast.”

I stared in that direction, smoking.

“You don’t buy that she fell from the Sunset.” He said it as a statement, not a question.

“No.”

I walked him back to my car, where I pulled out a file with the photograph of Carrie. “Ever see her, hanging around the depot, anywhere?” I shone the flashlight on it.

“My God, that’s her!” He nervously lit another cigarette.

I pressed, “Ever see her alive?”

“No.” He shook his head. “What a shame. Pretty girl. Who would do such a thing?”

After another smoke, he turned back toward the railroad yard while I crossed the two lanes of Sixteenth Street and walked the fifty or so feet to where someone had laid out the body parts so meticulously.

My day had included a visit to Ezra Thayer of Phoenix. I kept it convivial, but he denied sending the telegram from Prescott. He didn’t have a daughter or granddaughter named Carrie. He didn’t recognize the young woman in the photograph. I had no reason to doubt him.

But someone had sent them. Calls to Prescott were equally fruitless. Given the volume of telegrams and Railway Express, neither Western Union nor the express agent had a memory of who might have sent the wire or parcel to me. It would have been easy for Frenchy Navarre or Kemper Marley or Suspect X to take the train to Prescott and send them back to Phoenix. But it was a lot of time, trouble, and expense.

Now I was in the dark, only the flashlight beam to guide me.

Then I saw it.

Someone had been drawing in the dirt exactly where the body parts were found. It was an elaborately designed cross: A skull at the top, with a straight vertical line leading down, a horizontal line that led to a B on one end and a backward S on the other, and finally a long X with curled ends. I placed the flashlight under my arm and sketched it in my notebook. I had never seen anything like it.

The night was very quiet. Not even a sound from the SP yard to the west. I ran the flashlight around for other clues and found only one. Broom strokes on the ground, meant to conceal any footprints.

I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being watched.

Back in the car, I drove up to Washington Street and called Victoria from a telephone booth. She met me half an hour later and took pictures of the drawing in the dirt. And just in time, because a cold, heavy rain started to erase it.

Afterward, we sat in her car with the engine and heater running. Rain sluiced off the windshield like a phantom in the darkness was hosing us down.

She said, “Maybe it was kids.”

“Maybe. But how would kids know the exact location of the body? The location was not precisely given in the newspaper. That would be a big coincidence.”

“I know.” Victoria laced her warm fingers in mine. “I’m afraid, Eugene.”

“Of what?”

“For you. This is all so…” She searched for the right word. “Sinister. This girl was murdered and sawed apart. And the evidence in her purse was meant to implicate you. Why?”

I shrugged.

She said, “What if she came by your card herself? What if she were coming to see you for something?”

I’d thought about that. When I set up my PI business, I’d persuaded several businesses to set out my cards on their countertops. I’d handed them out to lawyers, too. But whoever killed her had taken anything that could identify her from the purse. They either left the card by carelessness or by design. I didn’t dare assume it was an oversight. The card was meant to be found.

“I would ask you to let this alone,” she said, “but I know you won’t.”

“I can’t.” I struggled to articulate a rationale. “The police won’t find her killer. Somewhere a mother and father are wondering what’s happened to their daughter. And what if he kills again?”

“Then I’m going to help you.”

“No!” I reacted too quickly and soon regretted it.

“Don’t you dare...” Her dark eyes torched me. “Who did you just call just now? Your brother? No. You called me. As you should have.” She pulled a small snub-nosed .38 out of her pocket briefly, slid it back in. “I can take care of myself. You know that, Eugene. And I can help take care of you. So, give me an assignment.”

The rain came down harder, settling the matter. Looking back later, I regretted not proposing to her right then.

Ten

The next morning, I put on my best suit and drove east on the Tempe Road. In daylight, it was a different view from the night when I visited the Hooverville: Two lanes of concrete, telephone poles on both sides, farmhouses and outbuildings, and ancient farm equipment. The vast Tovrea Stockyards and slaughterhouse. The strange new birthday-cake castle atop a rocky knoll intended as a hotel by Alessio Carraro. The Depression ended that dream, and “Big Daddy” Tovrea bought the property in ’31, just before his death. Now the castle was only occupied by his young widow, Della. Next, off to the left, the Papago Buttes where Victoria and I sometimes hiked.

Across the Salt River, I was in Tempe, then parked and walked across campus to the Old Main building of Arizona State Teachers College. Not so long ago, it had been Tempe Normal, then Tempe State Teachers College, offering a teaching certificate. Since ’29, it was