Floyd Hanson hangs himself in the detention center

Floyd Hanson’s suicide in custody is reported to Philip Marlowe by Bernie Ohls during a late-night call. Its method and the effort involved make the death more than a brief case update: Marlowe later uses the facts to challenge Clare Cavendish’s understanding of the violence surrounding the investigation and to press her to disclose what she knows.

Background and Circumstances

The call comes after Marlowe has spent the evening drinking at Barney’s Beanery. The bartender, Travis, has refused to serve him more, taken his car keys, and helped him into a cab; Marlowe has made it home and fallen asleep before the telephone wakes him in the middle of the night. Bernie Ohls tells him that Hanson has been found dead in his cell.

Discovery in the Cell

Hanson used strips torn from a bedsheet to make a rope and attached it to a bar at the cell window. The window was too low for him to hang clear of the floor, so his feet remained on it and his knees were bent. Bernie’s report and Marlowe’s later account both emphasize that Hanson would have taken a long time to die. The facts establish suicide in custody, not an accidental death, while leaving the circumstances that brought Hanson into detention outside this episode’s account.

Marlowe’s Account to Clare Cavendish

When Marlowe later tells Clare Cavendish what happened, she begins to refer to what the newspaper said. He counters with the physical circumstances of the death, emphasizing the deliberate actions required. Clare turns ashen and responds with pity for Hanson. Marlowe then places his death alongside Lynn Peterson’s murder and the killing of two Mexican men, describing the affair as brutal and urging Clare to stop withholding what she knows. The suicide thus becomes part of his attempt to make the human cost of the case impossible to dismiss.

Significance in the Investigation

Hanson’s death removes another person from the unfolding investigation, a consequence Bernie marks with grim humor on the call. In a later conversation, Marlowe groups it with Lynn Peterson’s death, the killings at the Cahuilla Club, and Wilberforce Canning’s flight from the country. The juxtaposition gives the suicide weight beyond its immediate report: it is one more death in an affair whose violence has spread while its central questions remain unresolved.