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

Don said. “Now you’re out of a steady job making a hundred-ten dollars a month, and they’re going to hang her. Wonder if Ruth will end up doing an Eva Dugan?”

Eva Dugan, a housekeeper, was convicted in Pinal County for murdering her employer and apparent pimp. The whole thing was sordid as Caligula’s Rome without the grand buildings. Don and I were sent by the Phoenix Police as witnesses to the execution, even though the crime occurred in an adjacent county.

Don chuckled. “I’ll never forget when that long drop decapitated her. Eva’s head rolled right up to our feet. Five of the witnesses fainted. Same thing is coming for your girlfriend. Pop goes the head!”

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

Don was Dr. Jekyll with most people. He was Mr. Hyde with me, always trying to goad me or worse. I should have been used to it, but I was seething, not least because after talking to him I couldn’t walk home with Isaac Watts in my ears.

I stood to leave.

“Hang on there, Clean Gene. We’ve got work to do.”

I reared on him. “Since when is there a ‘we’?”

“There’s cold meat down by the railroad tracks, and I need your assistance.”

“Are you paying? Because, as you keep reminding me, I don’t carry a buzzer anymore.”

He stood and stretched. “Fucker.” He dug a sawbuck from his wallet and handed it over.

* * *

We drove south in his 1930 black Chevy sedan, then turned east on Van Buren Street, passing gas stations and on the north side, the stately new buildings of Phoenix Union High School.

“Are we collecting tonight?”

Don laughed. “The protection money from those whorehouses and gambling dens prop up the City of Phoenix treasury, especially at a time like this. You know that.”

“And the detectives who collect and protect them get a piece of the action, too.”

“Don’t act like you never played. Anyway, I’m not handling much vice anymore. A convenient opening came up to take the lead in homicide cases. Thanks, little brother.” He clapped me on the leg, then stared straight ahead as if he was alone in the car. I was happy to let the silence accompany us.

At Sixteenth Street, he turned south past Eastlake Park until we were at the mouth of the Southern Pacific railroad yard, then he wheeled east again along a dirt road north of the tracks. A switch engine huffed past us, the headlight offering momentary artificial daylight for what lay ahead. I dug my fingers into the seat as the locomotive came close.

Two of the new Phoenix Police radio-equipped cars were parked beside the railroad, their spotlights aimed at the ground. About twenty feet north, I could see the blood seeping through a white sheet that looked like a madman’s abstract art.

“What the hell?”

“I’m paying for your consultation.”

Stepping out, I pulled my fedora to eye level, not the jaunty look Victoria preferred. I lit another cigarette and took a deep pull. The last thing I wanted was to see any of my former colleagues, to have them see me. My job loss humiliated me, but I could put on a mask, never let them see. We walked past a police ambulance along the cinder-strewn dirt toward the scene. I took one more drag and stomped out the nail.

As we got closer, I saw the white sheet had siblings: three more laid separately a few feet away in geometric precision.

It started to sprinkle again, and I slid on my own trench coat, tightened my tie, armoring up. Just in time. “What the hell is he doing here?” I heard a whisper from a uniformed sergeant meant to be heard and ignored it.

“Railroad bull found this earlier tonight,” Don said. “Unfortunately, it’s in the city limits. Barely.”

The uniforms had tramped around so much that any chance of identifying suspect footprints in the moist soil was lost. Typical. I looked at Don and he nodded. Back in the saddle again.

Lifting the first sheet, I found the torso of a woman. The only reason I knew this was that she was busty and wearing a smart pink suit. Besides decapitation, her arms had been removed halfway between the elbow and shoulder. Her legs had been taken off in a similar fashion. Without a ruler, I guessed the spot was five inches below the pelvis. That would have meant cutting into the femoral artery, a real bleeder. But the suit was only lightly stained.

The limbs were nearby, as if an angry child had disassembled a doll.

Another sheet concealed two legs in nylons and pink pumps. The arms were beneath yet another sheet; her hands were delicate, her fingers lacking any rings, including a wedding ring. I felt like a stagehand ringing up the act curtains on a ghastly play. Finally, another sheet was raised in a dome shape. Don shone his flashlight on the head that had belonged to a woman in her twenties, with blond bobbed hair, bright lipstick, and blue eyes frozen open. The same was true of her mouth, caught in a scream when she was cut apart. Alive, she would have been a looker. I let the sheet drop and stood.

“The bull said she fell from a train. The westbound Sunset Limited came through about six, running late.”

I rolled my head, trying to unstiffen my neck and shoulders.

“That’s all wrong,” I said. “The body parts are a good twenty feet from the tracks. And train fatalities typically lose an arm or leg or get mangled. If it’s an amputation, the cut is usually clean from the flanges of the train-car wheels. This woman was completely dismembered. But it was done so purposefully. Check the marks. Her head, arms, and legs were hacked off. Like with an axe or a saw. No defensive wounds on her hands or arms. And it looks like she was arranged.”

Maybe it was my imagination, but Don seemed to suppress a shiver.

“Give me your flashlight.”

He handed it over, and I walked up to the ballasted roadbed where two sets of tracks