courtroom evidence. I did not have to establish coherent and explainable motives. I could wallow in my mother’s sex and the sex of other dead women. I could categorize them and revere them as sisters in horror. I could look and sift and compare and analyze and build my own set of sexual and nonsexual links. I could call them valid on a gender-wide basis and attribute a broad range of detail to my mother’s life and death. I wasn’t chasing active suspects. I wasn’t chasing facts to conform to any prestructured thesis. I was chasing knowledge. I was chasing my mother as truth. She taught me some truths in a dark bedroom. I wanted to reciprocate. I wanted to honor murdered women in her name. It sounded wholly grandiose and egotistical. It said I was looking at life on the Drop Zone Expressway. It brought that moment at the food court back in perfect reprise. It pointed me one way right now.
I had to know her life the way I knew her death.
I held the notion. I harbored it privately. We went back to work.
We met the reporters from
A young woman called. She snitched off an old woman. She said the old woman lived in El Monte. The old woman worked at Packard-Bell circa 1950. She was blond. She wore a ponytail.
We found the old woman. She did not act suspicious. She did not remember my mother. She could not place my mother at Packard-Bell Electronics.
The
We met the cat. He gave us some names. We ran them by Dave Wire and Chief Clayton. They remembered a few of the cats. They did not look like
An Associated Press reporter called me. He wanted to write a piece on the Ellroy-Stoner quest. It would run nationwide. He’d include our 1-800 number. I said, Let’s do it.
We took him to El Monte. He wrote his piece. It appeared in numerous newspapers. Editors butchered it. Most of them cut the 1-800 number. We got very few calls.
Three psychics called. The Black Dahlia lady called. Nobody called and said they knew the Blonde. Nobody called and said they knew my mother.
We ran our key names again. We wanted to cover our bets. We thought we might hit some new data-bank listings. We didn’t. Ruth Schienle and Stubby Greene were dead or effectively elusive. Salvador Quiroz Serena might be back in Mexico. We couldn’t find Grant Surface. He took two lie detector tests in 1959. He didn’t pass them or fail them. We wanted to challenge the inconclusive results.
Bill played a hunch and called Duane Rasure. Rasure found his Will Lenard Miller notes and FedExed them down. We read the notes. We found six Airtek names. We found two of the people alive. They remembered my mother. They said she worked at Packard-Bell before she came to Airtek. They didn’t know the name Nikola Zaha. They couldn’t ID my mother’s old boyfriends. They gave us more Airtek names. They said Ruth Schienle divorced her husband and married a man named Rolf Wire. Rolf Wire was allegedly dead. We ran Rolf and Ruth Wire through our three computers and got no hits. We ran the new Airtek names. We got no hits. We drove out to the Pachmyer Group’s corporate office. Bill said they wouldn’t let us see their personnel files. I said, Let’s ask. I wasn’t chasing leads on the Swarthy Man. I was chasing leads on my mother.
The Pachmyer people were gracious. They said the Airtek division bellied up in ’59 or ’60. All the Airtek files were destroyed.
I took the loss unprofessionally hard. My mother worked at Airtek from 9/56 on. I wanted to know her then.
The Jean Ellroy reinvestigation was 13 months old.
O. J. Simpson was acquitted. L.A. waxed apocalyptic. The media went nuts behind the words “potential ramifications.” All murders ramified. Ask Gloria Stewart or Irv Kupcinet. The Simpson case would cripple the immediate survivors. L.A. would get over it. A more celebrated man would snuff a more beautiful woman sooner or later. The case would microcosmically expose an even sexier and more ludicrous lifestyle. The media would build off O.J. and make the case an even bigger event.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to see Helen. I wanted to write this memoir. Dead women were holding me back. They died in L.A. and told me to stick around for a while. I was burned out on detective work. I was fried to the eyeballs on negative computer runs and misinformation. I had the redhead inside me. I could carry her away. Bill could chase leads and stalk the facts of her life in my absence. I stuck around for a shot at some brand-new ghosts.
I made four solo trips to the Bureau. I pulled old Blue Books. I read adjudicated cases cover to cover. I had no crime scene photos. I brain-cammed my own. I read dead body reports and autopsy reports and background reports and brain-screened my own history of vivisected women. I looked. I sifted. I wallowed. I didn’t compare and analyze the way I thought I would. The women stood out as individuals. They didn’t bring me back to my mother. They didn’t teach me. I couldn’t protect them. I couldn’t avenge their deaths. I couldn’t honor them in my mother’s name because I didn’t really know who they were. I didn’t know who she was. I had inklings and a big fucking hunger to know more.
I started to feel like a grave robber. I knew I was burned out on death altogether. I wanted to score some leads on the redhead. I wanted to snag more information and hoard it and take it home with me. I thought up some last-ditch measures to keep me in L.A. I thought up newspaper ads and infomercials and on-line computer broadsides. Bill said it was all crazy shit. He said we should brace the Wagners in Wisconsin. He said I was scared. He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to. He knew my mother made me unique. He knew I embraced her selfishly. The Wagners had their own claim. They might dispute mine. They might welcome me back and try to turn me into a docile stiff with an extended family. They had a claim on my mother. I didn’t want to share my claim. I didn’t want to break the spell of her and me and what she made me.
Bill was right. I knew it was time to go home.
I packed up my corkboards and graphs and shipped them east. Bill transferred our tip-line number to an answering service. I took the file home with me.
