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

wrote. Until she didn’t. That got me scared.”

Any parent would be, but something about his manner made me suspicious. I let my arms fall, and he walked back to the living room and took a swig. I followed.

“Why did you use the name Ezra Thayer?”

“I thought it might get your attention. He’s a somebody, and I’m a nobody.”

He was enough of a somebody to send the hundred-dollar money order.

“That was money Carrie sent me from her summer job. She was worried I’d spend it on booze, but I managed to save it.” He belched. “Well, I forgot about it. So, it was there when I needed to hire you.”

“Ever have any trouble with the police, besides the Volstead Act?”

“No!”

My tone seemed to sober him up.

“What about you and Carrie? How’d you get along?”

“We got along fine. She disapproved of my binges. Hell, it’s not my fault. Life handed me a bum hand. But like I said, I did the best I could for her.”

“Never hit her?”

“No! Not once!” He wanted to reach for his jug but stopped himself. “I didn’t kill Carrie, if that’s where you’re going, copper. Why… How…?” Then he was sobbing again, but I didn’t offer any comfort.

Then, “Two weeks ago, I got a letter. No return address. It had a lock of her hair and…”

I gently coaxed: “And what?”

“A typed note that said, ‘Your daughter is dead and burning in hell.’” He barely got it out before the weeping consumed him.

I walked behind and put a hand on his shoulder. The rest was as I would have expected, if he wanted to make my job as complicated as possible. He burned the letter, kept the lock of hair. Didn’t go to the cops because he didn’t trust them. Wired the college but never heard anything except she didn’t enroll in January. And he looked me up as a shamus to find out if the worst had happened. Parts of his story sounded screwy, but I didn’t make him for a killer, certainly not one with the abilities of the man who killed Carrie Dell with a sap and dismembered her. It was all screwy enough to be true.

I remembered the watch, pulled it out, and showed it to him. “This is yours.”

He took it in a shaky hand and stared at it like an amulet, bright as new thanks to Harry Rosenzweig.

“This was my railroad watch,” he said. “I was a conductor on the Santa Fe, before…”

“My pops was a conductor, too.”

He momentarily brightened. “Then you understand. Life-and-death responsibility. I wasn’t always this way. I gave the watch to Carrie so I wouldn’t hock it. I wanted her to have it. Where did you get it?”

“In a hobo camp outside Phoenix.”

“I don’t understand.”

Neither did I. “We have to keep it for now as evidence.”

“It’s just as well.”

“You’ll get it back,” I said, “She had a job at the Arizona Biltmore?”

He nodded. “Last summer. I don’t know why anybody in his right mind would want to be down there that time of year. But I knew she didn’t want to come back here, with me like I was.”

I asked him about the end of the fall semester. Did she return to Prescott for Christmas? He shook his head.

“And you said she wrote you…”

“Yes, every week at least. But the letters stopped after around the end of the year. I started to worry, but at first I figured she’d cut me off. It’s what I would have done. Then that envelope came.”

“Did you save her letters?”

He heaved himself up and toddled to a sideboard, bringing back a stack of mail.

“Mind if I keep these?”

“No. What kind of monster would want to hurt her?” Tears again.

“I don’t know. But I promise we’ll get him.”

It was the same promise I made to the family of every homicide victim. Only this time, I wasn’t sure I could deliver.

He stared out a smeared window. “I can’t afford to bury her.”

“We’ll find a way to help.” That was another promise I didn’t know how to keep.

Was there anyone we could call for him? No, his wife was dead, Carrie was his only child, and his brother in San Francisco had cut off contact.

Afterward, as we walked down the snowy street, Victoria said, “You’re praying for him, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“How do you keep your faith with all the terrible things you see?”

I changed the subject. “You handled yourself well under fire.”

“Thanks,” she said. “That’s never happened to me before. Here’s what I don’t understand, Eugene…” I slipped on the ice, and she caught me.

“What don’t you understand?”

“Sudden sounds make you jump. A car backfire or a slammed door. Thunder. But back there, you were a cool cucumber.”

I smiled. “I don’t know. When the stakes are high, maybe I fall back into the training and experience of a combat infantryman.” I had never cared for the nickname doughboy. “The same was true in the gunfight with the jail escapees.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes. Only a fool isn’t afraid.”

“Good.” She linked her arm through mine as we plowed the snow with our new boots. “I was terrified.”

* * *

Victoria took some photos of the courthouse and downtown Prescott. Back at the hotel, the desk clerk handed me a note. Ordinary paper. The handwriting—I’d seen it before but couldn’t remember where. I scanned it and laid it flat on the countertop for Victoria as he checked in another guest.

“Don’t touch it.”

She read in a whisper, “You’re in dangerous territory, Hammons. Stop before it’s too late.” She leaned closer. “What does that mean?”

“It means we’ve been followed.”

When the clerk was free again, I asked him who had given him the note. He didn’t remember. He had stepped away and found it sitting on the counter when he came back.

We went upstairs and read through Carrie’s letters and diary. The diary was faithfully written every day, at least a paragraph, but only through high school. She made elliptical references to her father’s “illness.” Otherwise, the content was what you’d expect