“I heard Frenchy bragging about it to Kemper Marley. Kemper blew a gasket. He’s afraid of Greenbaum but wants part of his action.”

Cleveland’s eyes narrowed. “‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here.’ Goddamn Frenchy. That shit Marley. He pays me to procure colored girls for that whorehouse he runs. You know, he’s got a wall peek there so he can take photos of what’s going on in each room and who’s doing it, from businessmen to politicians.”

“I guess that helped ensure he’d get the first liquor distributorship in the state.”

“Indeed.” His big head nodded. “What I don’t get is that Frenchy is Greenbaum’s bagman. Why would he kill Zoogie, who collects for me as part of my partnership with Gus?”

“To hear him explain it, he wanted to pin the murder on a colored man, make it seem like Greenbaum needed protection south of the tracks and Kemper could provide it, as long as he got a cut from the wire service.”

His bass voice went down an octave. “That’s crazy.”

“Nobody ever accused Navarre of being a genius.”

“I tell Gus this and Frenchy’s gonna end up in the riverbed with a dime dropped on him.”

“A police officer?” I said. “Killing a cop is dangerous business, breaks the code, brings down heat, and takes away a valuable asset. Even a stupid, double-dealing police detective is worth more alive than dead.”

Cleveland thought it over. “You’re probably right. But that doesn’t preclude a well-administered beating. And Frenchy’s promise that this murder goes unsolved, not pinned on an innocent Negro. That’s my code.”

I’d love to watch that. Cleveland reached across for the C-note but I pulled it away.

“You got your money’s worth.” I wrote out a receipt and handed it across.

“Heh.” He stood, the signal we were through.

I stayed seated. “What do you know about the girl who got killed and had her body dumped by the railroad tracks a month ago?”

He pulled a cigar from a humidor on his desk, cut it, and slowly lit it with a match. It was Cuban—quality will tell.

“I know that a Negro doesn’t want anything to do with a pretty, white, blond dead girl. We’ve never had that kind of lynching in Phoenix, and I don’t want to be the first one. Race relations are pretty good here, considering. But these are crazy times. Communists. People who think Mussolini is the way to go. Okies and hoboes coming through, gas moochers…”

I let him go on. He sounded like Marley. But he knew Carrie was pretty and blond with no prompting from me.

When he wound down, I said, “What about the white man having something to do with the pretty, white, blond dead girl? You hear things.”

The perfect smile reappeared. “It’s like back in the trenches, Hammons. A man hears lots of things. Funny, though, is he never hears the artillery shell that kills him. But I’m not worried. You’re the man who caught the University Park Strangler.”

Nineteen

At eleven thirty p.m. on Thursday, January 10, 1929, the westside patrol car driving on Van Buren was flagged down by a frantic man, who led the officers to his house at 324 N. Twelfth Avenue. His daughter was dead, murdered. The blue light and horn sounded at headquarters, and more officers headed that way. I was the sole night detective and arrived a little before midnight. It was cold out, and even most speakeasies were closed.

Edna Sawyer was seventeen years old, pretty with flame-red hair. She had been raped and strangled in her bed. Her periwinkle- blue flannel nightgown was pulled all the way up, exposing pert breasts, parted fair legs, a ginger bush, and a pool of semen on the white sheet. I ran the gawking uniforms out of the bedroom, instructing one to sit with her parents—her mother had found her and her father had called headquarters and then ran a block to busier Van Buren, where he was fortunate enough to find the police car cruising.

Captain McGrath arrived with a beautiful, raven-haired female photographer. She had no hesitation in bossing me around as she took shots of the crime scene. It was the first time I met Victoria. Don and Turk Muldoon came soon after. I briefed them and, as the youngest member of the Hat Squad, prepared to step aside when Turk put a hand on my shoulder.

“You were here first, lad,” he said in his rich brogue. “You’re the primary.”

At the exact same moment, I felt a thrill—and a terrible responsibility fall upon me.

After they left, I shut the door and surveyed the scene, making detailed notes and sketches.

Entry was obvious. The killer came in through an unlocked window facing the backyard and caught the girl sleeping. Her brothers and parents were also asleep but separated from Edna’s room by the bathroom. A sock stuffed in the girl’s mouth took care of any screaming as he prepared to go about his work. But she must have fought. Her nails were bloody and flakes of the attacker’s skin were underneath them. In return, he punched her in the left eye. He must have been straddling her. Afterward, he exited the same window, leaving it fully open.

Through the door, the mother was wailing, and the father was angrily demanding a doctor. But Edna’s body was cold.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the first victim of the killer who the press would call the University Park Strangler.

The postmortem confirmed the obvious: Death by strangulation, genital bruising, penetration. She fought hard enough to break one fingernail. The killer would have received a nasty gash on his face. But he was very strong. Edna’s windpipe was collapsed, as was the cricoid cartilage surrounding it. The pathologist said it took forty-five pounds of pressure to produce such damage. He also speculated that the killer had been in no hurry, slowly strangling her.

Tags: Jon Talton Mystery
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