September 4, 2025

An Inheritance of Grief

Jack Hammer04 mins
Grayscale, gritty image of a pulp-noir detective in the rain, holding a "Missing" flyer for a girl, haunted by ghostly reflections in "Old Town." Grayscale, gritty image of a pulp-noir detective in the rain, holding a "Missing" flyer for a girl, haunted by ghostly reflections in "Old Town."
This entry is part 1 of 11 in the series Chapter 2: An Inheritance of Grief

THE HAMMER FILES: Old Town Ghost

The Call’s Echo

The phone receiver sat in its cradle like a tombstone, a cold piece of plastic grief that had just connected me to a life I had tried to bury. Erma Bennett’s voice, as fragile as old paper, had cracked through the silence of my self-pity. She knew about Old Town, a part of me I thought was locked away forever. Angela’s mother, calling me back to the one place I swore I’d never return.

A Scar Called Old Town

I stared at the scattered files on the floor, the remnants of a man who was supposed to be dead. But Erma’s call had ripped the bandage right off the wound. It wasn’t just a place. Old Town was a scar. It was where a 14-year-old me, already running numbers for Claude Bronson, met Angela Bennett. She was 17, and a million miles out of my league. She was a different kind of light in a dark world. We had a summer of love that felt like it would last forever. But forever only lasted until the bunco squad put me in reform school. When I got out, the Bennett family was gone.

No one in the neighborhood knew where they went. It was as if they had been erased. I tried to find them, but every door I knocked on was sealed shut with tight lips. Except for Sister Alison, who never had a kind word to say about Angela and me.

The Unsettled Debt

I’d always had an inkling, a gnawing suspicion that Angela had been pregnant. And in those days, a pregnant, unwed teenager, with a thug on her arm headed for reform school, was too much for a family to bear. I always blamed myself. The shame of what I was, what I had become, had driven them away. I’d spent my life running from that shame, only to find it again in the arms of a dead girl on a rain-slicked street. The girl who had died to save me. My daughter. My heart felt like it was breaking all over again.

Now, Erma Bennett’s voice echoed in my head, “too serious to discuss over the phone.” She hadn’t just called me. She had called the part of me that, despite my best efforts, was still Jack Hammer. The part that knew I’d be in Old Town on Thursday to confirm my darkest suspicions.

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Chapter 2: An Inheritance of Grief

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