City of Dark Corners

by Jon Talton

  We checked in at the Hotel St. Michael at the corner of Gurley and Montezuma streets, using the names Mr. and Mrs. Gene Hammons. We decided to leave questions about the hotel as origin of the telegram about Carrie for later and went upstairs to get warm.

  The next morning, a look outside the window showed more than a foot of new snow on the ground. My sweater, leather jacket, and jeans were maybe enough, but not my shoes. Victoria was similarly unprepared, as any Phoenician would be. After breakfast, we went to a store and bought winter boots with zigzag soles to keep our footing in the snow, mufflers, and gloves. The hundred bucks from Captain McGrath was drawing down.

  Then we set off in search of Carrie’s father. I had done many death knocks. They never got easier, and you never knew how the parents, siblings, or other next of kin would react.

  We walked several blocks west, beyond the Pioneers’ Home, to find the address on Park Avenue. Amid Prescott’s many Victorian and craftsman homes, this property was little more than a shack beneath a tall ponderosa pine. The snow leading to the porch had no footprints. But smoke was coming from the chimney, and one window showed the glow of a light.

  We mounted the creaky steps to the porch and prepared to knock. I cocked my head for Victoria to stand away from the door. I did the same on the other side. You never knew when someone might shoot through the door. I knocked, three times, loud.

  The door exploded with automatic-weapons fire, the unmistakable sound of a Thompson submachine gun. Victoria crouched, a terrified look in her eyes. I fell to the porch. She did the same. When the firing stopped, the bullet holes in the wood of the door outlined a cockeyed circle, which then fell out. It would have been funny, if the situation were not so deadly.

  “Mr. Dell!” I called. “It’s Gene Hammons, Phoenix Police. I need to talk to you about your daughter! Put down the Tommy gun and open the door.”

  I got on my haunches, the .45 in my hand, and waited. In a few minutes, the door squeaked open, and we beheld a gaunt man in overalls with a scraggly white beard that had tobacco stains on it. He was unarmed, so I holstered my weapon.

  “C’mon,” he said, and turned back inside. We followed him. “Sorry ’bout that. Never know when revenooers will come back here for my still. Had to rebuild it twice already. Want some?”

  We took a pass.

  The living room, if you wanted to call it that, was crowded with ancient furniture, heavy and dark, and it smelled of gun smoke, alcohol, and piss. A surprisingly well-made fire presided on the hearth. I took the Tommy gun, removing the magazine and the round in the chamber. Then I joined Victoria on a sofa losing its stuffing. He sat across on a tumbledown love seat.

  “Hello, pretty lady. Are you police, too?”

  “Police photographer,” she said. “Victoria Vasquez.”

  “Ah. Big-city stuff. Now what’s this about my Carrie?”

  I showed him the photograph of the live girl, the picture that had been sent to me from Prescott. He took it in his left hand and identified it as his daughter. Then I gave him the bad news. As is often the case, he first denied it. Must be a mistake. It was no mistake. After a pause, he sagged and began weeping, his bony shoulders heaving. Victoria sat next to him and put her arm around him.

  When he could speak, he asked for the details. I gave him a highly sanitized version, and this brought on more sobbing. He reached for a bottle on the side table and uncorked it, taking a deep pull, stifling a belch. Sharlot Hall was correct: he was a juicer.

  He held up the bottle. “Want some?”

  We declined again.

  “I’m not a good man,” he said finally. “I know that. But I tried to do my best for her after her mother died in ’23. That was when I started drinking, though. I thought she’d be better off down in Tempe. She’d be the first in the family with a college degree. Had her whole life ahead of her. Who would want to do this to her?”

  “We don’t know yet,” I said. “Did she have any enemies? Anyone who would wish her harm?”

  “No! My God, no. She was the sweetest girl. Everybody loved my Carrie.”

  “Any boyfriends here?”

  “Nothing serious.”

  I asked if we could see her room, and he led us down a hall, opening a door.

  Unlike the rest of the house, Carrie’s bedroom had bright wallpaper, a well-made bed covered with stuffed animals, neat student desk and chair, a trophy, phonograph, and records. On the walls were pennants for Prescott High and the Arizona State Teachers College Bulldogs.

  I leaned to Victoria and whispered, “Diaries, letters, photos, anything that might be useful. Look under the mattress and beneath drawers.”

  She nodded, and I steered Ezra Dell back to the mess of a living room.

  I told him about the telegram I received from “Ezra Thayer,” asking me to find Carrie.

  He simply said, “Oh.”

  “What ‘oh’?” I stood close to him, one arm on each side, nowhere for him to go. It was easier for me to breathe through my mouth. I wondered how long since he had a bath.

  “I sent it,” he said. “Sent down the picture, too. Thought you were a private detective.”

  “Never mind that. Why did you want me looking for her?”

  “I was worried. Hadn’t seen her for months, then she stopped writing, stopped wiring Mrs. Carter money to buy me groceries. I understand why she wanted to keep her distance, my drinking and all, but she still 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 from a girl her age.

  The letters to her father were about school, how different Phoenix was from Prescott, and each one pleaded with him to take better care of himself. The last one was dated a week before her murder. The letters from the fall semester were shorter than she had written the previous year. They were not in keeping with Pamela’s description of an aspiring author or artiste. I’d have expected pages of reflections, observations, and stories. Instead, they contained little more than what a postcard would hold.

  That night, although mindful that someone might be watching us, we enjoyed a fine dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant. We sat at the back, both of us in a booth facing the door. Just in case.

  “It doesn’t smell right,” Victoria said over cheese-and-onion enchiladas, refried beans, and Mexican rice. “Everybody up here says Carrie is such a sweet girl. But how does that jibe with the house we saw, with the alcoholic father?”

  “Or with the transformation that was described by her friends at the teachers’ college,” I said.

  We tried to piece together a timeline of Carrie’s last months but it was full of holes. Then we went back to our room, warmed up, and tried not to break the old bed.

  Thirteen

  The next morning, I wanted to take another run at Ezra Dell. Maybe the shock of his daughter’s death had worn off enough to jog his memory, or a long, cold night alone had made him willing to tell us something he had withheld the previous day.

  But when we hiked up to Park Avenue, two cars were sitting in front of Dell’s house, the door was open, and a policeman stood on the porch. I was cold already but now a chill ran up the back of my neck.

  “You’ll need to stay back,” the cop said. “What’s your business here?”

  I held up my badge. “Phoenix Police.”

  He looked barely out of high school and worked to conceal being impressed, curious, or plain disgusted with the interruption. “Stay.” He said it as if we were two pooches and disappeared inside. No smoke was coming out of the chimney.

  In a couple of minutes an older man in plain clothes came out and waved us forward. Introductions were made. He was the Prescott Police chief. I abbreviated myself to Detective Hammons and again recklessly flashed my buzzer. But it would get me further than showing up as a private eye.

  “Dell is dead,” he said. But I suspected that already. “Suicide.” That, I seriously doubted, but I had to handle this gently. No “big-city know-it-all detective” from me.

  “Would you mind if I looked, Chief?”

  He didn’t welcome me inside without an explanation of what brought us there the day before. I gave him the short version of Carrie’s murder, without all the details.

  “Well.” he stamped his feet. “Would’ve been nice professional courtesy for you to check in with the local police.”

  “I’m sorry about that, sir,” I said. I could be deferential, but I couldn’t change the fact that I was a head taller than him. “It was a routine death notification…”

  “Nothing routine about a murder,” he snapped.

  “No, sir. We should have contacted you when we got to town.”

  That seemed to mollify him somewhat, but he looked Victoria over.

  “Miss Vasquez is a police photographer who’s been involved in this case,” I said.

  “I’d be happy to retrieve my camera and take photos here if you’d like,” she said. “For your departmental records.”

  “Looks cut and dried to me, forgive my pun.” Was he flirting? But then he seemed to change his mind, deciding it was proper to add to his departmental records, such as they were. “That’d be real nice, Miss.”

  Victoria gave me a sardonic look and started off.

  “Wait, Miss,” the chief said. “I’ll have Officer Gibbons give you a ride downtown and bring you back.”

  After they slid off down the snowy street, he turned and let me follow him inside.

  As I suspected, the fire was dead and the sto
ve cold. It felt chillier inside than outside, but maybe that was imagination. My bleak anticipation for what I would find.

  Ezra Dell was seated in the same stuffed chair as the day before, but far beyond the comfort of his liquor. His throat was slit, a seeming bucketful of blood down the front of his shirt and pants, and into the upholstery. His head was lolled back, eyes glassy. In his right hand was a straight razor.

  “See,” the Chief said. “Suicide, like I said. Looks very straightforward.”

  It looked all wrong to me.

  “How did you find him, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Got a call, check on him. Assumed it was a neighbor who didn’t want to deal directly with Ezra, who could be nasty. When Gibbons got here, the door was unlocked and he walked in and found him just like this.”

  He pulled out a cigar, bit off the tip, and lit it. “Not the first suicide here since the hard times set in. I’m not at all surprised with Ezra, poor bastard. He was a conductor on the Santa Fe, you know. But the drink cost him his job. He really went downhill after his wife passed away. I knew him well in those days, a decent man. I’m surprised he didn’t kill himself earlier with the booze he made in his home still. Then, the news about his daughter, well, that obviously pushed him over the edge.”

  I studied the wound, ear to ear. “That’s a very precise cut for somebody with as shaky hands as Ezra had.”

  “Maybe. Hadn’t really thought about it.”

  Having investigated many suicides, I knew that slitting one’s throat was exceedingly rare, much less being done with such exactness and going all the way across. One suicide I remembered was characterized by a cut that barely made it halfway. Once the man hit his carotid artery and it started gushing blood, he dropped the razor and, in a moment of regret, tried to stanch the bleeding. Too late, of course, but that was a normal involuntary reflex. Only someone with the greatest discipline and steely determination could replicate the scene before me on his own, and I’d never seen it. A straight razor was a poor weapon with the danger it would fold back on the user’s hand. That didn’t keep it from being used in many a fight in Paris Alley and Darktown. I kept these observations to myself for the moment.