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

also bestowing a four-year bachelor of arts in education. Now it had a new name and would soon have a new president, Grady Gammage, a man said to have ambitions for the school. The sun was out, but the weather remained chilly, in the fifties.

The registrar was a man with a shock of white hair and a lavish mustache that seemed on the verge of cascading down the sides of his mouth. He was suspicious of helping a private investigator until he read my card.

“Gene Hammons,” he said. “You were a Phoenix Police detective.”

I said that I had been.

He took in a long breath of air. “You solved the University Park Strangler case.”

Right again. It was a hell of an icebreaker.

He looked away for a moment and when he faced me again his eyes were wet. “My granddaughter was one he killed. Grace Chambers.” He reached out and took my hand in both of his. “She had her whole life ahead of her when this monster took her from us. The not knowing who did it was one of the hardest things. And you got him. It’s un-Christian of me, but I was glad when they hanged the bastard.” He looked around, but no one was nearby. “Thank you.”

I squeezed his hands back with both of mine. “It was my job. I’m so sorry about Grace and the other girls.”

Grace Chambers: Sixteen, redhead, pretty, fit his pattern. Disappeared one night and her body was dumped on a lawn at Thirteenth Avenue and Polk Street two days later. Like the others, she had been raped and strangled. In her case, she was also tortured. I was happy to see the SOB swing.

“How can I help you, Detective Hammons?”

I pulled out the photograph and laid it on the counter. “All I have is a name, Carrie Thayer.”

He bent down and studied it carefully.

“I’ve seen this girl.” He retreated to a filing cabinet and thumbed through it. Then he pulled out a ledger and went through several pages.

“No Carrie Thayer,” he said, which didn’t surprise me. I wasn’t even sure this was her name. “But she looks familiar. Now we have 875 students. It’s harder to keep track.”

“Do you mind if I show her picture around campus?”

“No. Not at all. If anyone questions you, tell them I gave you permission.”

* * *

I walked down the steps and into a flock of students changing classes or lounging on the grass by droopy palm trees and sitting on the side of the circular fountain, despite the cool air. “T Mountain”—really more of a rocky butte—sat in the distance. Before the war, I thought about going to college. Teaching held no appeal, so that would have meant attending the University of Arizona in Tucson. And study what? I was a bit aimless, as any good seventeen-year-old should be. Don, four years older, went to Tucson and studied history. He worked his way through the university with a part-time railroad job thanks to our father’s pull. He thought about becoming a lawyer but was made an officer when the war came. He was awarded a Bronze Star. Without a degree, I rose to sergeant and got a Purple Heart. Now I surveyed this campus a bit wistfully before getting to work.

It was easiest to approach a group of coeds chatting at the fountain. Easier on the eyes, too. No teacher of mine ever looked like these four.

“You look like a cop,” one said, a green-eyed, chestnut-haired wren. The others laughed.

“Am I that obvious?”

“Yes, but you’re not bad looking.”

“I’m a private detective.”

“Oh,” a blonde said, “a private dick.” More laughter. I joined in.

This was much more satisfying than doing Kemper Marley’s dirty work.

“Do you have a roscoe under there?” Wren patted my jacket and felt the .45 in its shoulder holster. Her playful smile froze. I gently set her hand aside, telling her she read too many pulp novels, and showed around the photograph.

“That’s Carrie Dell,” Wren, who introduced herself as Pamela, said. “I was in several classes with her. But I haven’t seen her this semester.” The others agreed. The progress was stalled when I asked if they knew anything about where she lived, who were her close friends, or any boyfriends.

But I had a name, at least, to take back up the stairs to get Carrie Dell’s information from the registrar.

Halfway up, Pamela called. “Aren’t you going to cuff me, private dick?”

“Maybe later,” I said over my shoulder.

* * *

Carrie Dell was nineteen years old, a straight-A student, and came from Prescott. This and other miscellany, plus the names and address of her parents, were in my notebook as I walked back around the pretty shaded campus.

On a lark, I asked directions to the Art Department, where I knocked on a professor’s door. A woman in a paint-stained smock answered and introduced herself as Pearl Kloster, instructor of Fine Arts. With twinkling brown eyes and light-brown hair in a chignon, she was somewhere in her thirties.

“Come in, come in. I don’t think I’ve ever met a private investigator.”

“We’re even, because I’ve never met a fine arts professor.”

She had a spacious office that doubled as a studio. An unfinished oil painting sat on an easel, a stunning sunset and mountains.

“That’s beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m no prodigy, but I usually drive out and set up outdoors to paint landscapes. Here I teach basics to students who might go on to teach art in high schools. I’m never going to make a living off my paintings. You want to see greatness, go find George Burr. He’s a magnificent etcher, lives on Lynwood Street in Phoenix. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“Sorry, no.”

I could see her opinion of me drop like the oil gauge of a jalopy.

“He’s world famous,” she sniffed. “He’s been kind enough to lecture at some of my classes.”

I showed her the photo.

“Carrie Dell,” she said. “She was one of my models. Don’t get the wrong idea. She never modeled nude. But I teach a class