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

ran east-to-west; a quarter mile to my right, they opened into the mouth of the railroad yard. No trains were coming, so I walked fifty feet in each direction, Don trailing behind me.

“Impressions?” he asked.

“No blood on the rails or ties, no body parts up here,” I said. “She definitely didn’t fall or jump from a train—I’ve seen what that looks like. She was killed somewhere else and brought here. The dismemberment would have left a lot of blood, more than what’s down there.” I nodded toward the crime scene.

“Maybe.” He retrieved his light and we walked back.

“No maybe,” I said. “It’s a homicide. Maybe Ruth Judd broke out of Florence and did it.”

He snorted.

“What about a purse, or was that on the train?”

Don pointed the light to the base of a mesquite ten feet to the north. The handbag was small and pink, with a gold border on the rounded top. “We found it neatly propped against that tree. Uniforms waited for me to open it. No identification. Two tubes of lipstick, compact, handkerchief, rosary, Sheaffer’s fountain pen. Fifty dollars neatly folded, two twenties, two fives. Fifty cents in coins. And this...”

He held up a piece of paper. It was one of my business cards. Now it was my turn to suppress a shiver.

He put a hand on my chest. “Do you know this woman?”

“No,” I said. “I have no idea how she got my card.”

“Take this.”

I hesitated.

“That’s evidence, Don.”

“You want to end up as a suspect and in jail?”

I shook my head, held the card by the edges, and let it fall into my pocket.

I said, “This was a very personal killing.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“No. Sometimes people murder for money and don’t know the victim. But this girl’s purse is full of cash. Sometimes people murder on the spur of the moment. But our guy planned this with great care. He killed and cut her up somewhere else. Then he brought her here, displayed her in new clothes, and moved her just inside the city limits. Then he placed my business card in her purse. He’s sending a message.”

“You’re a smart one,” Don said.

Then a fist suddenly connected to my stomach. It wasn’t a hard punch, and from our many fights, I knew he could hit much harder. He leaned in and whispered. “Bend over like you feel it.”

“Ugh…you bastard!” Under my breath, I told him to get Victoria Vasquez out here to get good photographs of the scene, including close-ups, with copies for me. He nodded, then he pushed me away.

“Get the hell out of here, Gene,” he yelled. “You’re not a cop anymore. Quit tagging after me.”

The others watched in amusement as I pretended to stagger off. Out of sight, my gait turned normal and took me north to Washington Street, where I caught the trolley back to town. I felt punched in the gut all right, but not by my brother’s fist.

* * *

The rain had stopped by the time I reached my second-story apartment in a newer building called La Paloma. It faced the slender, block-long park encased by one lane in each direction of Portland Street between Central and Third avenues.

I hung my trench coat on the coat hanger just inside the door to dry, but not before carefully removing the business card Don had given me and slipping it into an envelope. Without my access to the police lab, I didn’t know how I would check it for fingerprints. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

I loosened my tie and poured a glass of fine Canadian whiskey. It was part of the stash from my days with the cops—when we would confiscate liquor per the Volstead Act. We were supposed to pour it down the sewer, and we did sometimes, with newspaper photographers shooting. But we always kept a few bottles of the best stuff for ourselves.

So much for Clean Gene.

Prohibition. It was one of the dumbest things ever tried in the United States. Both Don and I had been part of the occupation troops in the Rhineland after the war, then had spent time in Paris and London deciding what to do with our lives when we received word that both Mother and Father had died in the influenza pandemic.

Neither of us was going to take up the miserable work of farming or work for the railroad. How ya going to keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree! But after being discharged, we drifted back to Phoenix and became police officers.

Honestly, it was hard to tell hooch was against the law here, even though the state had outlawed it in 1915. The stuff was abundant in a Southwestern town far from the Treasury Department. People such as Kemper Marley kept every place from the speakeasies to the best hotels well supplied. Al Capone built a bloody empire back in Chicago thanks to appetites that couldn’t be outlawed. I wouldn’t be sorry to see Prohibition repealed.

Pouring a second glass, I was well beyond humming any hymns, I put a Bennie Moten band record on my RCA Victor phonograph and fell into the sofa. Moten had a hot, young pianist named Basie who put stomp into the Kansas City Stomp style.

All I lacked was a dance partner and some energy.

This was not supposed to be my job anymore, but I was in the middle of a murder again and not protected by a badge. Don giving me the business card didn’t sit well, but he was right. If anyone else knew it was in the victim’s purse, I would be the prime suspect.

The memory of the woman’s severed head lingered through the second pour. Alive, she would have turned heads, with that Norma Shearer face and Marlene Dietrich fair hair. Hollywood stars liked to come to Phoenix in winter, stay at the San Carlos or even at the rentals on my street or one block north on the Moreland parkway. I saw Clark Gable and Carole Lombard a couple of times.

Three