City of Dark Corners

It started to sprinkle again, and I slid on my own trench coat, tightened my tie, armoring up. Just in time. “What the hell is he doing here?” I heard a whisper from a uniformed sergeant meant to be heard and ignored it.

“Railroad bull found this earlier tonight,” Don said. “Unfortunately, it’s in the city limits. Barely.”

The uniforms had tramped around so much that any chance of identifying suspect footprints in the moist soil was lost. Typical. I looked at Don and he nodded. Back in the saddle again.

Lifting the first sheet, I found the torso of a woman. The only reason I knew this was that she was busty and wearing a smart pink suit. Besides decapitation, her arms had been removed halfway between the elbow and shoulder. Her legs had been taken off in a similar fashion. Without a ruler, I guessed the spot was five inches below the pelvis. That would have meant cutting into the femoral artery, a real bleeder. But the suit was only lightly stained.

The limbs were nearby, as if an angry child had disassembled a doll.

Another sheet concealed two legs in nylons and pink pumps. The arms were beneath yet another sheet; her hands were delicate, her fingers lacking any rings, including a wedding ring. I felt like a stagehand ringing up the act curtains on a ghastly play. Finally, another sheet was raised in a dome shape. Don shone his flashlight on the head that had belonged to a woman in her twenties, with blond bobbed hair, bright lipstick, and blue eyes frozen open. The same was true of her mouth, caught in a scream when she was cut apart. Alive, she would have been a looker. I let the sheet drop and stood.

“The bull said she fell from a train. The westbound Sunset Limited came through about six, running late.”

I rolled my head, trying to unstiffen my neck and shoulders.

“That’s all wrong,” I said. “The body parts are a good twenty feet from the tracks. And train fatalities typically lose an arm or leg or get mangled. If it’s an amputation, the cut is usually clean from the flanges of the train-car wheels. This woman was completely dismembered. But it was done so purposefully. Check the marks. Her head, arms, and legs were hacked off. Like with an axe or a saw. No defensive wounds on her hands or arms. And it looks like she was arranged.”

Maybe it was my imagination, but Don seemed to suppress a shiver.

“Give me your flashlight.”

He handed it over, and I walked up to the ballasted roadbed where two sets of tracks ran east-to-west; a quarter mile to my right, they opened into the mouth of the railroad yard. No trains were coming, so I walked fifty feet in each direction, Don trailing behind me.

“Impressions?” he asked.

“No blood on the rails or ties, no body parts up here,” I said. “She definitely didn’t fall or jump from a train—I’ve seen what that looks like. She was killed somewhere else and brought here. The dismemberment would have left a lot of blood, more than what’s down there.” I nodded toward the crime scene.

“Maybe.” He retrieved his light and we walked back.

“No maybe,” I said. “It’s a homicide. Maybe Ruth Judd broke out of Florence and did it.”

He snorted.

“What about a purse, or was that on the train?”

Don pointed the light to t

he base of a mesquite ten feet to the north. The handbag was small and pink, with a gold border on the rounded top. “We found it neatly propped against that tree. Uniforms waited for me to open it. No identification. Two tubes of lipstick, compact, handkerchief, rosary, Sheaffer’s fountain pen. Fifty dollars neatly folded, two twenties, two fives. Fifty cents in coins. And this...”

He held up a piece of paper. It was one of my business cards. Now it was my turn to suppress a shiver.

He put a hand on my chest. “Do you know this woman?”

“No,” I said. “I have no idea how she got my card.”

“Take this.”

I hesitated.

“That’s evidence, Don.”

“You want to end up as a suspect and in jail?”

I shook my head, held the card by the edges, and let it fall into my pocket.

I said, “This was a very personal killing.”

“Aren’t they all?”