the doors closed behind me and I felt no motion and heard no sound until the bell rang for the eighteenth floor.
I unlocked the door and a shaft of light from the hall illuminated a cobalt vase of freshly arranged white flowers on my bedside table. A sweet smell of lavender filled the room. I stared at the white flowers caught in the shaft of light, white flowers against the black of night.
I tried to fight the meaning that was trying to break through to tell me what my father's photographs meant. My cop's mind grabbed onto it like a bulldog and wouldn't let go. Were these photographs of her — the one with her stylized black dress and white flowers, and the other one nude — taken by my father? Why had he kept them all these years in his private album?
Then, quietly, softly, as if a breeze were carrying an image from long ago, I remembered the white flowers against the jet-black hair, white flowers set off against a black dress. These were dahlias.
And like a bouquet of flowers overpowering the confines of a narrow room, the realization suddenly filled my conscious mind: it was she, the Dahlia. The Black Dahlia.
4
A Voice from Beyond the Grave
I HAD TO LEAVE SAN FRANCISCO because of my upcoming testimony in court for a case that I was working on as a private investigator. There was nothing more I could do in California, because Father had been specific about how he wanted his remains to be handled, and his wishes, bizarre as they seemed, would be respected. The Neptune Society would take his ashes to sea on their next scheduled burial, and his final wish would be satisfied. All that remained of him would be dispersed, as if he thought that would erase all marks of his presence on earth.
I said my final goodbye to June and promised her I would return within the month to help her get through what for her was a catastrophe. I had seen death visit many lives, but I'd never seen anyone so alone and lost as June.
As I waited for Father's regular limo driver to take me to the airport, June handed me a piece of white paper that contained a full page of Father's handwriting. 'This was written by your father about the time of his last birthday,' she said. 'They are his notes to me. Last October he believed his heart was about to quit and he prepared these notes. They were for a talk he was going to have with me but never did, because his health improved. I found them in his desk. Some I understand, others I do not. You're a good detective, maybe you can help me decipher them. It is important that I know everything he wanted to say to me.'
I assured her I would do my best. I would review the notes and call her in a few days. Just then the driver arrived, and with a tearful
By being strong and supportive with June, I was also working my way through my own mixed feelings. Just as I was beginning to develop a relationship with him, my father was gone. For the second time in my life, events beyond my control had snatched him away. I felt anger and frustration at the lost opportunity, but I also believed that something had been accomplished in our awkward attempts to close the fifty-year gap in our lives.
Back in Washington, I took a few days off, to let the impact of Father's death and my dealings with June wash over me. I allowed myself to enjoy the solitude of my house on the lake, using the free time from appointments to prepare my case for trial. Then I turned to my father's photo album and the materials June had given me on my final day in San Francisco.
First on the agenda was the picture. Was it really the woman known as the Black Dahlia? I ran a quick search of the photos on the Internet and found what I was looking for almost at once. There she was, a complete digital photo album in itself, accessible by just a few keystrokes. I studied the face on the screen: high cheekbones, upturned nose, jet-black hair with its distinct hairline above the high forehead, her unusual diamond-shaped face. No question: it was she.
On page 45, Elizabeth's photographs are enlarged from Father's album. In the right photograph she appears to be nude, eyes closed. In the left, again eyes closed, she is wearing a collarless black dress with white flowers in her hair. Judging from the background Chinese statuary, these were most likely taken in our Franklin Avenue home.
After this identification, I immersed myself in the history. I back.grounded myself to make sure that I was up to speed with the thousands of Black Dahlia 'fans' who, I was surprised to learn, were still contributing information to the different websites. The main Dahlia website (www.bethshort.com) had been established by a writer and journalist, Ms. Pamela Hazelton. It was there that I began my research on the murder. The website provided a mixed bag of information quoting so-called Dahlia experts.
Ms. Hazelton's website also had photo links to the crime and various photos that had been taken by the police or newspaper photographers at the Norton Avenue site. First there was a close-up photograph depicting the victim's body, neatly bisected, the torso placed just a foot or so to the left of and above the lower half. In other photos I could see the incisions and mutilations on both halves of the body as well as extensive lacerations to both sides of the mouth. It looked as if the killer had carved a hideous grin on her face for some reason, which only he could understand. As I clicked through the different photos, I tried to understand how a detective could have leaked or sold these photos to the public or press. But there they were: detailed shots of the brutalized, desecrated body of a twenty-two-year-old woman, on display for the world to view. I was outraged, even though I realized that these photos had been taken over fifty years ago, long before the Internet, long before digital computers, even a year before the transistor was invented.
But my rage was short-lived, quickly overtaken by the enormity of what I had discovered in my father's photo album. First, those two photographs of Elizabeth Short appeared to be more or less contemporary with other photos of her just prior to her disappearance and murder. In both pictures her eyes were downcast and closed. It was clear that she had agreed to be posed this way. But why had Father kept these two photographs for more than fifty-two years in an album, where Elizabeth Short held a place of honor with the rest of those he loved?
Fragments of memory started to fit together. I remembered his overwhelming need to dominate and assert control, especially when it came to the many women in his life. He had left each of them in turn: first Emilia, then Dorothy Anthony, then my mother, whom he nicknamed 'Dorero,' and then his wife in the Philippines, before he
