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

was attracting? Was Marley the man named Big Cat?

Marley’s eyes started blinking quickly. But he managed that reptilian smile.

He said, “Then I guess it’s a good thing you’re no longer a cop, Hammons.”

I slapped my badge down on the desk. “Guess what, kiddo. You were misinformed. And I have one assignment. Find the monster who killed this girl.”

The face froze.

“You know things that only the murderer would know.”

“But my sources…”

“Save it,” I interrupted, standing and walking to the safe. I spun the dial and opened it. Then I came behind him and roughly slid the envelope containing his money into his coat pocket.

“Now get the hell out of my office. The next time we meet things might not be so friendly.”

* * *

Marley bumped into Don while exiting the office. Don watched him go, then closed the door.

“What’s with Kemper Marley?”

“A little attitude adjustment.”

My brother chuckled, sat down, and used the tallboy lighter on my desk to get his Lucky Strike going.

“Roosevelt was one lucky son of a bitch.”

“Let’s hope that luck lasts,” I said.

He tossed an envelope on my blotter. Looking inside, I saw my business card with powder revealing prints. The card he had removed from Carrie’s purse, which was part of the stage dressing at her death scene.

“As you can see, I got it dusted,” he said, stretching out his long legs.

“And?”

“The good news is your fingerprints aren’t on it. You had the good sense to only hold it at the edges. Otherwise, nothing. No matches on file.”

“With criminals in our files.”

“That’s the point,” he said. “The individual who put that card in the girl’s purse hasn’t been arrested here.”

“And you won’t send it to the FBI?”

He shook his head.

“Ask McGrath!” I rubbed my stiff neck. “You could at least pretend to give a damn. What about fingerprints of cops?”

He took a long, thoughtful drag. “What are you getting at, Gene?”

“You know damned well. I think the killer might have been a police officer, with that expert blow to her temple. Kemper Marley and a college student also in the running. Neither of those two have been printed.”

He started to speak, then saw the badge on my desk.

“What the hell is this? Where did you get this?”

“The chief of Ds.”

“Jesus Christ, Gene. Are you back on the Hat Squad?”

“Not officially.”

He smashed out his smoke and immediately lit another.

“You’re investigating the girl’s death.”

“Murder,” I said. “And yes, it’s the only thing I’m investigating.”

“Oh, my fucking God.” His shoulders relaxed. “Well, walk me through it.”

I did.

After I was done, he lowered his head and looked me in the eye. “Your spy trick out at Marley’s place has Frenchy confess to killing Zoogie Boogie. Do you want to try getting the county attorney to prosecute a decorated police officer over a stool pigeon? The stupidest lawyer in Maricopa County could raise a mountain of reasonable doubt.”

I said, “Too bad Frenchy’s not Ruth Judd.”

He smiled and continued, “Greenbaum sounds like an interesting cat. This girl is full of secrets and trouble. Otherwise, everything you have is speculation and circumstantial. Jack Hunter’s an interesting lead, him knowing about the girl and ending up on the wrong end of a shiv. I like your sniffing out potential suspects by the butcher tools, but you’d need to find and match the actual ones. Ideally, you’d locate the place where the girl was dismembered, too. Then the man following you, or men, all the way to Prescott and outside your apartment. They might be related to the murder. Or they might be about the Marley-Greenbaum contest to throw weight. Or something else.”

This was my brother: He might be on the pipe, a cocaine snowbird, a drunk—but he never lost his penetrating intellect, never got lost in the woods, was a detective’s detective.

I remembered the time soon after I joined the Hat Squad, when Don and I were hanging out at Union Station one afternoon. Two men came in on the Santa Fe, unremarkable to me but not to my brother. He stopped them after they picked up a trunk at baggage claim. When they were confronted, they started stammering and sweating. They voluntarily opened the trunk, revealing gold ore. Don nodded at me to put them in handcuffs, and we took them to the shabby headquarters at old City Hall.

There he sweated them for six hours in the clubhouse, finally getting their confession to stealing the gold from a prospector near Bouse, a tiny railroad stop a few miles from the Colorado River on the Santa Fe line that branched off northwest from Wickenburg. He wired the sheriff in Yuma County, and learned the prospector wasn’t merely the victim of a robbery but dead, killed with pickaxes. Another six hours, and they crumbled under Don’s calm, focused questioning. They admitted to the murder, but claimed the mastermind was a third man. Don wired the police in Los Angeles, who picked him up. He took the bounce at Florence, and the two we arrested got off with life.

He stubbed out the third Lucky. “How can I help, Gene?”

“You could check these prints against cops.”

He sighed. “When a man joins the department, he gets fingerprinted partly so we can rule him out if he touches something on a crime scene. They go into his personnel jacket, and it’s locked up. Unless McGrath gives me permission, this will take a lot of time, and a lot of discretion.”

“That’s how you can help.”

* * *

After Don left, I arranged Carrie’s collection of love letters by date. The last one was dated two weeks before her death. It was typed.

C,

I’ve never begrudged you your freedom, your indiscretions. Our enterprise has made us all plenty of money. Me, your little friends, you most of all. All this has come thanks to my protection, don’t forget that.

But now your silence is killing me. I know I haven’t yet left my wife. It will happen I promise but I also have to think about our children. Your too young to understand how complicated