by Jon Talton
I’ll kill again and you can’t stop me. It will be worse every time.
Given the specifics, this letter was definitely from the killer. The paper contained no fingerprints. Chief of Police Matlock succeeded in getting every news outlet to spike the letter. The one exception was the Los Angeles Examiner, owned by William Randolph Hearst. It printed the letter in full, headlined: FIEND OF PHOENIX SPEAKS!
We didn’t have time to deal with the reporters. This was the donkey work of being a detective. In addition to making another run at the neighbors around where Grace’s body was dumped, the farmworkers who found Ben, and family members, we spoke to everyone conceivably involved. Ticket girls, ushers, concession-stand workers, and the manager at the movie theater. Identified the last ones to see them alive and correlated these witnesses against the same for the previous victims.
Yet it produced no suspicious matches. People at the movies that night came forward, but they didn’t notice anything or anyone unusual. Again: Teachers and friends at Phoenix Union High were interviewed. We tried, unsuccessfully, to match the barbed wire that had been used to wrap around Grace Chambers’s wrists.
Tips came in by the scores, and we had to run each one down to its inevitable dead end. Then turn it over to another detective for another try. Four goofies and hopheads came forward to confess. None possessed the information we held back from the newspaper reports, but that still meant hours in the new interview room, plus printing them to compare against the existing evidence.
I took the letter to the chief apart sentence by sentence, word by word. “Talk to me, you bastard,” I said under my breath. The person who wrote this was either the killer or intimately knew him, was an accomplice. Very confident. “She was screaming and begging right to the end. Nobody could hear her.” That indicated an isolated location or a soundproofed room.
I made notes. What did we know? All the victims went to Phoenix Union, none to St. Mary’s or the colored high school, much less the schools in outlying towns. The killer was strong. He prepared his attacks in advance. For example, he never chose a house with a dog but did pick one with a deaf grandmother. He had a connection to University Park.
“He’s neat, almost fussy,” said Victoria, who by this time had become my friend and confidant. “The comforter or blanket and sheet wasn’t thrown off in a heap. It was neatly folded. He took trophies from the first two, but otherwise their rooms were undisturbed. Barbed wire will hurt, but it won’t cause extensive bleeding.”
I made neat reports and forwarded them to Captain McGrath, as if my every addition to his “in” tray was a fresh nail pounded in the strangler’s coffin. Hell, the coffin was empty.
After a week, the case went cold again.
McGrath assigned me, Don, and Muldoon to continue working on it full-time, while other detectives went back to cases that had been holding. We had four dead students, no viable suspect. The city commissioners fired Chief Matlock in May and replaced him with David Montgomery, captain over the traffic division, who made it clear that nobody on the Hat Squad was safe from meeting the same fate. He stared at me, the youngest detective, as he made this announcement.
Dead ends multiplied: A second check found no previous arrests of the high-school teachers, not even of the many deliverymen and tradesmen who spent time in University Park. The same was true of Phoenix Union High janitors and maintenance staff.
Prowler calls increased, but arrests were few. In many cases, someone called after seeing a neighbor take out his trash or work in his backyard after sundown. One suspect had a burglary conviction in Texas, but he had the best alibi in town for the time when Grace Chambers and Ben Chapman went missing: He was in jail for drunkenness and vagrancy. Finally, the FBI report came back: The prints on the Buick were not in their extensive files.
Yet somewhere in all this noise was the fact that would break the case.
I knew I wasn’t alone among the detectives in feeling guilty for partly wishing the Fiend of Phoenix would strike again, but this time we’d get him before he killed the victim.
City leaders considered canceling the Masque of the Yellow Moon, scheduled to begin April 25th. But their consideration lasted about as long as a drunk thinking about quitting the bottle. The Masque might have started as a high-school event, but the Junior Chamber of Commerce had turned it into a parade and festival aspiring to nip at the heels of Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses. People came from all over the state. The final night of this harvest celebration—a vast pageant going all the way back to the Aztecs—filled the Phoenix Union High’s 10,500-person-capacity Montgomery Stadium.
So much money was flowing into Phoenix, to build the new office towers and hotels, start new businesses, and increase land under irrigation and the yields of the farms and groves. Never mind that Mexico was in turmoil, with rebels seizing Nogales, Sonora, and federales bombing them. That seemed far away from the Roaring Twenties in the states, and especially in this state.
The last thing Phoenix political and business leaders wanted was to dampen the good times by canceling the biggest event in the annual life of the young city. The mayor demanded the chief promise him Phoenix would be safe from this “maniac nonsense,” and he did. Once again, the entire force was mobilized. Fortunately, a full moon began on April 23rd. The Masque came off safely, and May was strangely quiet except for the real harvest rituals. In a single day, the Salt River Valley sent one hundred seventy-five refrigerated railroad cars off to help feed the nation. And that was just lettuce—we also picked, packed, and shipped oranges, cantaloupes, watermelons, onions, dates, grapes, strawberries, and beets.
I had to make a break instead of waiting for one.
McGrath blew up when I first took the idea to him. Only Muldoon agreed. Turk pulled me aside and said, “Always trust your gut, lad, and sometimes fight for what it’s telling you. It’s the best weapon a good detective has.”
Finally, McGrath agreed.
Juliet Dehler worked in the records department. She was twenty-one but looked much younger. She was petite, pretty, red-haired. In my work with Juliet, I’d been impressed by her intelligence, maturity, and most important, moxie. Over lunch at the Saratoga, she readily agreed to help me in my plan. I issued her a .38 snub-nosed for her purse and took her into the desert to teach her how to use it. She also got a police whistle to hang around her neck, hidden below her blouse.
June arrived. Phoenix Union High School graduated 407 students, the Valley shipped its first-ever carloads of apricots on the Santa Fe Railway to New York City, people had to shake out their shoes for scorpions, and wealthy men sent their wives and children to California or Iron Springs. Juliet took to the streets of downtown and University Park two or three times a week. Although the summer heat was oppressive, the city cooled down at night.
She dressed like the victims the strangler favored, feminine and middle-class stylish but never like looking like a roundheels. She went to movies in air-conditioned theaters; shopped on Thursday nights, when the stores stayed opened late; took the streetcar to the Carnegie Library; walked “alone” to a rental house in University Park we’d commandeered as her “home.” She made herself visible.
I was watching, of course, tailing at a safe distance. Sometimes Don or Muldoon joined the tail. Juliet attracted plenty of attention, whether from young whistling wolves or the summer bachelors freed for the hot months of their families.
Nothing dangerous happened, however. Not a sign of a perv or rapist, much less the strangler. That changed on the night of Friday, June 28th.
Twenty-Four
Back in ’29, Turk Muldoon told me to always trust my gut. My much more experienced gut was now telling me that Carrie Dell was running a call-girl service out of the Arizona Biltmore. She was doing it under the protection of a vice detective who loved her, Frenchy Navarre. Pamela said Carrie was running with a fast crowd. Indeed, she was.
The g
ut was informed by more than a good breakfast at the Saratoga as I wrote a letter to Victoria. Over the past two days I ran down the list of incoming calls to Summer Tours. I dialed each, innocently saying I had reached a wrong number once they answered.
The numbers took me to switchboard operators at the state capitol, city hall, a bank, two respectable law offices, the Grunow Clinic—where Winnie Ruth Judd had worked as a medical secretary—and Central Arizona Light and Power Co.
I wondered how many legislators, doctors, lawyers, and executives were clients of Summer Tours. The only thing missing from the lineup was an Indian chief. In one case, the number was answered by a woman who said, “Racing News.” Greenbaum? Fast crowd.
Several calls were made from rooms at the Westward Ho, San Carlos, and other hotels. Every few days a call came from the Arizona Biltmore, but I suspected that was from Carrie. Several had repeatedly called Summer Tours, a few only once. The total individual numbers calling totaled thirty-five between May and September last year.
Two numbers didn’t require a call because I already knew them. One was the number to the detective bureau at police headquarters. The other was Kemper Marley’s line.
Only one number gave me pause: It rang directly to Barry Goldwater’s home on Garfield Street.
Barry was one of the handsomest men in Phoenix. He could have any woman in town that he wanted, and if the stories were true, he’d already had quite a number of them. Why would he want a prostitute? I’d never been with one, not even when I was a soldier. I was afraid of getting the clap. The mystery continued when I worked vice cases, although I suppose the appeal of no-strings-attached sex was strong for some and the only option for a married man. Still…Barry?
Maybe my gut was wrong. Carrie’s business might have been involved in liquor or gambling. Maybe Summer Tours was simply that—pretty girls chastely on the arms of lonely older men at restaurants. I was too cynical to buy that.
That afternoon I walked over to Goldwater’s, which occupied a four-story building with Dorris-Heyman Furniture Company at First Street and Adams in the heart of the retail district. I purchased a silk tie with an abstract design to protect myself from Barry’s scolding once I found him.
He was alone in his office, feet up on his desk, working a crossword puzzle.
“The pressure-filled life of a department store executive,” I said.
Barry’s face lit up, and he set the puzzle aside.
“Gene! Come on in. I hope you came to shop…”
I held up the necktie.
“Ah, very good. What’s up?”
“Tell me about a young woman named Cynthia.”
“Cynthia?” He wasn’t a good liar, and I told him so.
He lowered his legs to the floor, sighed, and said I’d better shut the door.
He ran his hands through his wavy dark hair. “How do you know about Cynthia?”
“That’s not her name, for starters.”
He opened his mouth to speak but closed it.
“Her name was Carrie Dell. Blonde, blue eyes, about five-five, beautiful, from Prescott, and a student at the teachers’ college.”
“Goddamn it all to hell, Gene. What are you trying to tell me? The description sounds familiar. Unforgettable, really. But what’s this about being a student and from Prescott? Cynthia was a writer, visiting last year from Cleveland. She’s the granddaughter of John Lincoln. You know, the Lincoln Electric millionaire? His wife has tuberculosis, and he brought her to the Desert Mission in Sunnyslope to recuperate. She got much better. Now he’s giving big bucks to the mission, promoting Phoenix for health-seekers. Anyway, I got to know Cynthia last summer.”
Oh, Carrie was an even better liar than I gave her credit for.
I pulled out a Chesterfield and asked if I could smoke. He asked for one, too, and I lit us both.
“Barry, what do you mean you knew the girl?”
“What do you mean?” His voice was angry.
I didn’t back down. “You damned well know what I mean.”
He quickly cooled. “Did I sleep with her? Sure.”
“Did you pay for it?”
His face reddened. “That’s not the kind of thing I usually do, but…”
I asked how much.
“Three hundred. It was worth every penny. Even though she made me use a condom.”
Now it was my turn to fight for words. That was an astounding sum. The highest-priced call girls who worked the hotels in Phoenix during the height of the tourist season charged fifty bucks. The girls at Marley’s disreputable house charged far less and netted even lower sums because of Kemper’s overhead charge.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Gene. I really like this girl. I’ve never met anyone quite like her. She’s smart as hell. Creative. Are you sure she lied about her name and all?”
I nodded and asked how he met her, expecting him to mention Summer Tours.
He said, “She’s a friend of Gus Greenbaum.”
Big Cat?
I waited until he was willing to meet my eyes.
“Well, she’s dead, Barry. Murdered.”
His hand shook and ash fell on his tailored vest. He didn’t even notice.
I sat in one of the chairs facing his desk. “I hate to have to tell you, my friend, but you were taken in.” I gave it to him straight, and although it was inconceivable that Goldwater killed her, I asked him where he was on the day she was murdered. He had an alibi, working at the store all day, then a party at the Arizona Club on the ninth floor of the Luhrs Building. He grew angry at having to answer until I spoke next.
“She was pregnant, Barry.”
When I finally stood and exited the office, I’m not even sure Barry was aware that I had left.
Twenty-Five
I am in Belleau Wood again. Unlike so much of the tree-denuded front, this forest is almost untouched in 1918. Until now. The poilus are urging us to retreat back to the trenches, but we move ahead, fixing bayonets. Our job is to protect the Marines’ flank.
The darkness is giving way to daylight, but you’d never know it from the trees and low fog. The scent of decomposing bodies is everywhere. You never get used to it. Our skirmish line moves two hundred yards when we run head-on into the Huns.
I fire my rifle, but the bullet slithers out slowly from the barrel and falls to the ground. Then the German is upon me, and I am unable to get my bayonet in a position to repel him. He’s fast, but I’m impossibly slow. My buddy brings him down with a bayonet but then his face disappears into a mist of blood and I am alone. Artillery starts falling while I tremble uncontrollably.
Next we’re in dugout fighting positions, night has returned. I’m lying amid skulls and goo with rats running across me. The rats and lice bite. Our company dog goes on point; he’s been trained not to bark or even growl. When he goes on point, an attack is coming. Victoria is here, kitted out like any infantryman. She’s maybe ten yards away in a shell hole. I call to her, move toward her on my belly, working my elbows and legs to stay low, but when I get there she’s gone.
Back in the line, we wait. The dog growls now, but the field is strangely quiet. No artillery barrage. What if mustard gas is coming? I can’t find my gas mask. I grip my rifle. The word is quietly passed: Fix bayonets! But stormtroopers are already inside our perimeter, black eyes beneath coal-scuttle helmets. Two of them are upon me, and my bayonet has disappeared. He had a German war dog with him ready to pounce. I know I’m going to die…
* * *
When I woke up, sweat covered my body. As I got my bearings, I thanked God I was in my apartment. When I had these nightmares and Victoria was with me, she said I started making an eerie sound. It was my screaming and shouting in the dream, barely making it into the real world. She woke me with difficulty. Shaking and calling my name was no good. She finally realized the way to bring me around
was to push hard against my body, rocking me awake. She was afraid I might come out fighting, but I never did. She was my saving angel.
But she wasn’t in the bed tonight. The moon streamed in through the window, and I pulled up the covers as the sweat quickly evaporated in the low humidity of the Phoenix night. That was when I heard a sound that might be mistaken for rodents in the walls. But this was a nearly new building. Someone was picking the lock to my front door.
Wearing only pajama bottoms, I put my feet on the cold floor and slipped the heavy M1911 Colt semiautomatic from its holster and thumbed back the hammer. The sound of the lockpick tools became more distinct, and I heard the front-door lock’s tumblers begin to turn.
Deciding to stay in the bedroom, I made myself one with the wall beside the open door, holding the cold steel of the pistol against my face, arm crooked. The front door quietly opened, then shut. A heavy tread came inside and moved toward me. Then a silhouette was inside the bedroom, and I brought the M1911’s barrel down to the silhouette’s temple.
“Move and I’ll blow your brains all over the room.”
I stepped back and pivoted to face him, keeping the pistol aimed. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and smelled of expensive cigars.
“Back out into the living room, very slowly. Keep facing me.”
He did as told. Now the ambient light was enough to reveal my visitor.
Gus Greenbaum smirked at me.
“I must be losing my touch.”
“Sit down, gangster.”
“You need to show some respect, Detective Hammons. What if I have some well-armed associates waiting right outside the door?”
“Then they’re going to find their boss on the floor without a head, and I’m going to kill them, too. Respect is earned, and maybe I’m the only guy in Phoenix who doesn’t get excited by your presence, but you’ll have to live with it. Or not.”
Greenbaum muttered something and sat on the sofa. He started to turn on the floor lamp, but I stopped him. I had night vision and had recently been in hand-to-hand combat with German stormtroopers.