City of Dark Corners

He finally said, “What if I wanted to hire him?”

“To do what?”

He waved the smoke away with his hand. “Errands.”

Errands, my ass. “I’d say you’d be playing a dangerous game by hiring an untrustworthy, dirty cop.”

His lips curled up. “I like dirty cops.” The smile didn’t last. “But I don’t want somebody who would play a double game, give Gus Greenbaum intelligence about me. Or do something stupid like killing Greenbaum’s line rider and making it seem like I ordered it.”

“Well, there you have your answer.”

“Tell me about the dead girl. Carrie’s her name?”

I leaned forward. “What makes you think that’s her name?”

“I’ve already told you I have my sources.”

“Then what do they tell you?”

“They say she was meticulously cut up, head, arms, legs, and laid out by the railroad tracks at Sixteenth Street, south of Eastlake Park. There wasn’t enough blood there, so she was killed and sawed up somewhere else, then taken to be dumped. Nineteen years old. Pretty. A student at the teachers’ college. And she was pregnant.”

I exhaled a plume of smoke, considering the depth of his information, who might have told him these things, most of which I had discovered. The only things he didn’t mention were her being from Prescott with a drunken father, working last summer at the Arizona Biltmore, and setting up a tourist business. Those were details in my report to Captain McGrath.

He also didn’t know about my business card being in Carrie’s otherwise nearly-empty purse. And he didn’t mention the Hamilton railroad watch I found in the Hooverville that his gang laid waste. Was he capable of ordering a prison hit on Jack Hunter, who had information for me? You bet.

“You know, Kemper, if I was still a police detective and heard all that, you’d be my prime suspect. First, I’d put you in the interrogation room for a tumble. And I’d have a search warra

nt by this afternoon and we’d go over every inch of your property looking for evidence. Who knows what we might find out there? We’d search your whorehouse, too. You couldn’t buy your way out of it, either. Not murder of a pretty white coed.”

I’d started this to feel him out, but the more I talked the more plausible he actually became as a suspect. Sure, Carrie mentions Navarre in her diary. But who the hell knew where her adventure was going, the men she 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.”