I didn’t believe it. Bobbie was looking to score. Jean was looking to hide and get out of herself and maybe give herself up for something weird or new or better.
Bobbie Long was not our real focus. She was a possible or probable related murder victim and a possible or probable lead on the Swarthy Man’s deteriorating psyche. There were no Long case eyewitnesses. Bobbie’s friends were mid-50-ish in 1959 and were probably all dead now. The Swarthy Man was probably dead. He was probably a hard-living bar habitue. He probably smoked. He probably drank whisky or pure grain spirits. He might have bellied up from cancer in 1982. He might be hooked up to an oxygen mask in scenic La Puente.
I sat in the dark and held the two Identi-Kit portraits. I turned on the lights and looked at them once in a while. I violated Stoner’s rule and reconstructed the Swarthy Man.
Bill saw him as a smooth-talking salesman. I saw him as a slick blue-collar guy. He did odd jobs for extra money. He worked weekend gigs out of his beat-up ’55 or ’56 Olds. He carried a toolbox in the backseat. It contained a length of sash cord.
He was 38 or 39. He liked women older than him. They knew the score on one hand and fell for cheap romance on the other. He hated them as much as he liked them. He never asked himself why this was so.
He met women in bars and nightclubs. He beat a few women up over the years. They said things or did things that got under his skin. He took a few women the hard way. He came on scary and convinced them to give it up before he took it by force. He was fastidious. He was cautious. He could turn on the charm.
He lived in the San Gabriel Valley. He liked the nightspots. He liked the construction-boom scope of the place. He daydreamed a lot. He thought about hurting women. He never asked himself why he was thinking such flat-out crazy shit.
He killed that nurse in June ’58. The Blonde kept her mouth shut. He lived scared for six weeks, six months or a year. His fear fizzled out. He chased women and fucked women and beat up women once in a blue moon.
He aged. His sex drive abated. He quit chasing, fucking and beating up women. He thought about that nurse he killed way back when. He felt no remorse. He never killed another woman. He wasn’t a raging psycho. Things never spun out of control like they did that night with the nurse.
Or:
He picked up Bobbie Long at Santa Anita. The nurse was seven months dead. He picked up a few women in the meantime. He didn’t hurt them. He figured the nurse was some freak accident.
He screwed Bobbie Long. She said something or did something. He throttled her and dumped her body. He lived scared for a long fucking time. He was afraid of the cops and the gas chamber and afraid of himself. He lived with the fear. He grew old with it. He never killed another woman.
I called Stoner and pitched my reconstructions. He found the first one plausible and dismissed the second one. He said you don’t kill two women and just stop there. I disagreed. I told Bill he was unduly tied to cop empiricism. I said the San Gabriel Valley was this deus ex machina. The people who flocked there flocked there for unconscious reasons that superseded the conscious application of logic and made anything possible. The region defined the crime. The region was the crime. You had two sex killings and one or two sex killers eschewing standard sex-killer behavior. The region explained it all. The unconscious San Gabriel Valley migration explained every absurd and murderous act that went down there. Our job was to pinpoint three people within that migration.
Bill listened to my pitch and got specific. He said we needed to comb my mother’s file and start looking for old witnesses. We had to run DMV checks and criminal records checks. We had to evaluate the 1958 investigation. We had to trace my mother’s steps from her cradle to her grave. Homicide jobs veered off in weird directions most of the time. We had to stay on top of our information and always stand ready to jump.
I said I was ready now.
Bill told me to turn off the lights and go back to work.
21
Ward Hallinen was 83. I saw him and remembered him immediately.
He gave me a candy bar at the El Monte Station. He always sat to the left of his partner. My father admired his suits.
His blue eyes took me back. I remembered his eyes and nothing else about him. He was frail now. His skin was covered with red-and-pink lesions. He was 46 or 47 in 1958.
He met us outside his house. It was a faux-ranch job enclosed by shade trees. A nice stretch of land adjoined it. I saw a barn and two horses grazing.
Stoner introduced me. We shook hands. I said something like, “How are you, Mr. Hallinen?” My memory was running at warp speed. I wanted to ignite his memory. Stoner said he might be senile. He might not remember the Jean Ellroy case.
We walked inside and sat down in the kitchen. Stoner placed our file on a free chair. I looked at Hallinen. He looked at me. I mentioned the candy bar moment. He said he didn’t recall it.
He apologized for his bad memory. Stoner made a crack about his own advanced age and failing faculties. Hallinen asked him how old he was. Bill said, “Fifty-four.” Hallinen laughed and slapped his knees.
Stoner mentioned some old Sheriff’s Homicide men. Hallinen said Jack Lawton, Harry Andre and Claude Everley were dead. Blackie McGowan was dead. Captain Etzel and Ray Hopkinson were dead. Ned Lovretovich was still up and about. He retired a long time ago himself. He wasn’t sure of the date. He did some private security work and started breeding race horses. He’d notched a lot of pension time. He’d milked LA. County for a nice piece of change.
Stoner laughed. I laughed. Hallinen’s wife walked in. Stoner and I stood up. Frances Traeger Hallinen told us to sit down.
She looked fit and alert. She was old Sheriff Traeger’s daughter. She sat down and tossed out some names.
