My Dark Places

Stoner tossed out some names. Hallinen tossed out a few. The names sparked little stories. I took a little cop nostalgia tour.

I recognized a few names. A hundred deputies dropped notes in the Ellroy and Long files. I tried to picture Jim Wahlke and Blackie McGowan.

Frances Hallinen brought up the Finch-Tregoff case. I said I followed it as a youngster. Ward Hallinen said it was his biggest case ever. I mentioned a few details. He didn’t recall them.

Frances Hallinen excused herself and walked outside. Bill opened up the file. I pointed to the horses outside and segued to the Bobbie Long case and Santa Anita. Hallinen shut his eyes. I saw him fighting to bring it all back. He said he remembered going out to the track. He couldn’t dredge up anything more specific.

Bill showed him the Arroyo High photos. I ran a concurrent crime scene narration. Hallinen stared at the pictures. He screwed up his face and fought. He said he thought he remembered the case. He said he thought he had a very good suspect.

I mentioned Jim Boss Bennett and the ’62 lineup. Bill got out a stack of Jim Boss Bennett mug shots. Hallinen said he didn’t recall the lineup. He stared at the mug shots for a good three minutes.

His face contorted. He held the pictures and clamped one hand down on the kitchen table. He dug his feet into the floor. He was fighting his incapacity full-bore.

He smiled and said he couldn’t place the man. Bill handed him the Ellroy Blue Book and asked him to flip through the reports.

Hallinen read the dead body report and the autopsy report. He read the transcribed witness statements. He read slowly. He said he remembered a few other cases he worked with Jack Lawton. He said the stenographer’s name was familiar. He said he remembered the old El Monte police chief.

He stared at the crime scene photos. He said he knew he was there. He gave me a look that said, That’s your mother—how can you look at these pictures?

Bill asked him if he kept his old case notebooks. Hallinen said he tossed them out a few years ago. He said he was sorry. He wanted to help. His mind wouldn’t let him.

I gave Bill the cutoff sign. We packed up the file and said our goodbyes. Hallinen apologized again. I laid out a time-gets-us-all rap. It sounded patronizing.

Hallinen said he was sorry he didn’t nail the bastard. I said he was up against a very cunning victim. I thanked him for his hard work and kindness.

Bill and I drove back to Orange County. We discussed our future plans all the way. Bill said we’d be fighting a failed-memory onslaught. We’d be talking to people who were middle-aged in 1958. We’d be sifting through memory gaps and chronologically skewed recollections. Old people concocted things unconsciously. They wanted to please and impress. They wanted to prove their mental solvency.

I mentioned Hallinen’s notebooks. Bill said our file was short on supplemental reports. Hallinen and Lawton worked the case all summer. They probably filled up six notebooks. We had to reconstruct their initial investigation. They could have interviewed the Swarthy Man and never snapped to him as a suspect. I asked Bill if Jack Lawton was married. Bill said he was. Two of his sons worked as deputies for a while. Jack used to work with his old partner Billy Farrington. Billy would know if Jack’s wife was still alive. He could contact her and see if she kept Jack’s notebooks.

I called the notebooks a long shot. Bill agreed. I said it all came back to the Blonde. She knew the Swarthy Man. She knew he killed Jean Ellroy. She never came forward. She was afraid of reprisals or she had something to hide. I said she probably shot her mouth off anyway. She told people what happened. She bragged about her closeness to murder or phrased the story as a cautionary lesson. Time passed. Her fear abated. She told people. Two people or six people or a dozen people knew the story or elements of the story.

Bill said we had to take our case public. I said the Blonde told people who told people who told people. Bill said I was the fucking publicity scrounger supreme. I said we should install a toll-free tip line at my pad. Bill said he’d call the phone company and set it up.

We discussed the Long case. Bill said we had to call the Coroner’s Office and see if they kept the semen samples they took from Bobbie Long and my mother. He knew a lab that ran DNA tests for $2,000. They could conclusively determine if Bobbie Long and my mother had sex with the same man.

I asked Bill to prioritize the Long case. He said it rated low. A random pickup killed Bobbie Long. My mother probably knew the Blonde and the Swarthy Man. She probably knew at least one of them before that night.

I mentioned the Swarthy Man’s car and the IBM punch cards in the file. It looked like the cops only checked car registrations for the San Gabriel Valley. Lavonne Chambers pinpointed a ’55 or ’56 Olds. I figured the cops would check registrations for the whole fucking state. Bill said the punch-card run was confusing. Homicide jobs were full of weird inconsistencies.

I said it all came back to the Blonde. Bill said, “Cherchez la femme.” We flew up to Sacramento the next morning. We flew up behind some bad news.

Bill called the Coroner’s Office. They said they tossed our semen slides. They tossed out old evidence routinely. They needed space to store new evidence.

We rented a car and drove to Charlie Guenther’s house. Bill called Guenther last night and told him we were coming. He asked him some preliminary questions. Guenther said the case was vaguely familiar. He said the file might revive his memory.

We brought the file. I brought 50 potential questions.

Guenther was friendly. He came across 65 going on 40. He looked good. He had gray-white hair and blue eyes like Ward Hallinen. He ran an O. J. Simpson hate riff in place of standard hellos. He jumped to our case fast.

Bill ran the key points by him. Guenther said he remembered it now. He got called in with his partner Duane Rasure. Some woman snitched off her ex-husband. They checked the guy out. They didn’t confirm or refute his guilt.

We sat down at a coffee table. I emptied the Will Lenard Miller envelope. It contained three photographs of Will Lenard Miller; reports from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; copies of Will Lenard Miller’s 1957, 1958 and 1959 income tax returns; income tax withholding statements from 1957, 1958 and 1959; a finance company bill dated 5/17/65; an Orange County Sheriff’s Department to El Monte PD teletype dated 9/4/70; a house escrow