City of Dark Corners

“Not quite yet,” I said. “You know how Carrie was murdered. Please don’t tell me about your buddies on the force feeding you information. I know all about Frenchy as your bagman. He went off the reservation and got quite a hammering for it.”

“That was Cyrus Cleveland, my man on the South Side. I agreed something had to be done. But Frenchy pinning a murder on a Negro didn’t sit well with Cyrus, so I let him set Navarre straight. What’s your point?”

I said, “Who murdered Carrie Dell?”

He shrugged. “A psycho. This was deeply personal. The year I was born, 1893, Chicago held a world’s fair to celebrate Columbus reaching the New World. A very big deal, the White City. Only trouble was a guy named Dr. Holmes who built a hotel catering to single women. And he murdered them there. I’m told it had soundproof rooms and mazes. He confessed to murdering twenty-seven, but it might have been two hundred. He dissected some. Maybe Carrie ran into a Dr. Holmes, and if that’s true you have more victims. Or…”

I studied his face but it was grim, unreadable.

“Or?” I prompted.

“There is no ‘or,’ Hammons. Just a figure of speech. Carrie ran into a maniac. Phoenix is turning into a real city.”

After he was gone, I locked the door and propped a chair against it. A long hour passed before I fell asleep, the pistol under my pillow. I dreamed of taxicabs.

Twenty-Six

Friday, June 28th, 1929. Juliet took in a double-feature at the Fox and walked west on Washington in a crowd as the other theaters let out. I followed half a block behind. It looked to be another fruitless night, and McGrath would shut down my attempt at baiting the killer.

Then a taxi pulled up and paced her.

I heard the driver lean out and call. “May I take you somewhere, pretty lady?”

She came two steps closer to the curb. I thought: Do not get in that cab!

It might have been innocent, but I realized here was one thing that had evaded our attention: a driver and vehicle that could go anywhere without raising suspicion.

Suddenly, he opened the door and started to wrestle her inside. She yelled and kicked him.

Then I was there with my Detective Special out. Don was soon at my side and we braced him against the taxi with difficulty. Although he had a meek face and average build, he was strong as hell. It took both of us to get him in cuffs, with a nipper for good measure. He argued, then begged to be let go. But the game was up.

In the back seat were ropes, barbed wire, a sock, and a rag soaked in chloroform. A penknife was in his front pocket.

We sweated him for twelve hours until finally, under my continued questioning, catching him stumble through lie after lie, as he told and retold his activities on the dates of the murders, he broke. It happened when I lied to him and said his wife refused to support his alibi that he was home the nights of the murders. And when I told the truth: We found a soundproof room added to his garage. Then he spilled.

By that time, other detectives had executed a search warrant at his home, finding the knickers and stuffed animals taken from the first two victims, as well as a bloody baseball bat. His typewriter matched the taunting note sent to the police chief. His wife expressed surprise, then outrage that we suspected her husband of such heinous crimes. But I suspected she knew all along.

He wasn’t a taxi driver—that cab had been stolen specifically to snatch Juliet, who he had been watching. He was a clerk at a building and loan. Each of the female victims had opened passbook savings accounts with him. T

his was the link we didn’t find.

Emil Gorman, forty-five, was a model employee at the building and loan, shy, kept to himself. He didn’t have so much as a parking ticket. His neighbors on East Pierce Street were similarly surprised that Gorman was suspected of being the strangler.

With one exception: an elderly woman with a habit of watching the street saw him leave late at night on the date of Grace Chambers’s disappearance. She remembered because it was also her daughter’s birthday. He didn’t return until early the next day.

His arrest and confession were national news. The Hearst Examiner’s headline: FIEND OF PHOENIX CAUGHT!

Although Gorman confessed to all the murders, I always wondered if there were more. Maybe he got his taste for it on prostitutes nobody would miss. University Park seemed only sinister coincidence. The first girl lived there, and it was fertile hunting ground. Then he liked the name bestowed on him by the press.

It was the case that made me famous, at least for a time.

Twenty-Seven

Now, four years later, I didn’t feel famous or accomplished. In the morning light, my apartment still smelled of Greenbaum’s cigar. I pulled the chair away from the door, lit a nail, and made coffee.

I had my strong suspicions about Carrie/Cynthia’s game, but the smoke bomb ensured that my evidence, in the form of letters and diary, was gone. All I had left were two boxes of expensive women’s clothing, size small, and her hardcover journal. I had no interest in reading the juvenile fiction of a nineteen-year-old, whatever her pretensions. But I picked it up anyway—the cover read “My Stories,” and prepared to make a go of it.

But it wasn’t a journal. After the first page, also labeled “My Stories,” it opened to reveal a hidden compartment. A black spiral notebook, five inches by three, stared out at me.