Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

defiantly as she tied her robe. 'It's not what you think. Tom is an actor. He has a love scene in a film. We were ...' Tom paled at the sight of the gun holstered on my left hip, clearly visible under my open sport coat. He stumbled for words: 'It's true. I have this part. I have the script at home.... I can show you.'

The young man standing in front of me with trembling hands as he tried to button his shirt was almost a mirror of myself in stature and age. I moved my hand toward my gun and I actually weighed the options in front of me. I wanted to draw and fire. I wanted to take every bit of the hatred that was coursing through me at that moment and force it through the nozzle of my off-duty revolver. Just the sight of his bare chest was compelling me to blow huge holes in it. But even filled with liquor, I knew he wasn't worth prison, and neither was she. I fought the urge.

'If you're not out of my house in five seconds,' I said in a low growl that I'd never heard myself make before, 'I will blow your fucking head off. And if you ever call or see my wife again, as God is my witness, I will kill you.'

The young man bolted for the door and took the hundred steps down six at a time. My hatred now turned back full force to Kiyo. 'You fucking bitch! How many others have you fucked behind my back? How many other cocks have you sucked while I was sitting in class at night? Tell me! Answer me!' Kiyo turned and walked toward the dining room. 'You're so immature, Steven,' she said. 'You're not my husband — you're my child.'

My hands were shaking as I fought to control the anger and hatred I felt for this woman. I knew I had to get out of the house and away before I lost control. My job had shown me what happened when men and women lost control, and I was now part of the job. I kept my weapon in its holster and walked out of the house.

The following afternoon, I had my partner return with me to the house and we parked the black-and-white in front of the steps. Moving day. I knew she was gone to teach piano. All I wanted from the house were a few personal papers and my clothes. Within an hour we had all of my personal effects loaded into the back of the car. I went to the study to look for my passport, birth certificate, and other personal papers. I riffled through her desk, but they were nowhere to be found, but there was a bank savings account with her name on it, 'Kiyo Hodel.'

I opened the passbook and stared at the balance: $4,500. Jesus Christ! Where did that money come from? I was proud of our joint savings account, into which we'd managed to stash $400, but this was like finding another set of business books. What was going on? The next folder I saw in her desk was labeled 'Astrological Charts.' I thought to myself, 'Screw her, she's not keeping mine in here.' I opened the folder and my chart was on top. I pulled it from the stack and looked at the second horoscope with its circle and symbols and read the name 'Amilda Kiyoko Tachibana, born in Boston, Massachusetts, August 2, 1920.' I stared at the year: '1920.' That meant she wasn't thirty-three, as I believed, but forty-five! Could it be?

I dropped my partner off at Van Nuys police station, where I was then assigned, took the rest of the afternoon off, and drove to my mother's apartment in North Hollywood. I told her everything. After Mother got over the shock of seeing me, she sat in horror as I told her of my elopement and secret marriage to Kiyo, and of Kiyo's insistence and my sworn oath not to tell anyone, especially my family, of our marriage. I told Mother of our recent meeting with Father, and his strange reaction, and then my returning home unexpectedly two nights ago and finding Kiyo in the embrace of another man. Finally, I related the discovery of the chart showing her birth date was 1920. Was it true? Was she really forty-five? What did she know about Kiyo?

Mother sat in silence for several minutes, and then she cried as she told me the true story of Kiyo and my father. 'I had no idea when

I said, 'Let's go to a party at Kiyo's house' that any of this could have happened. I can't believe it has.' She lit a cigarette while she searched for the right words to continue her story:

'Yes, Kiyo is forty-five,' she continued. 'Your father brought her home one night after seeing her standing waiting for a bus or taxi, something like that. I'm not sure exactly how they met; it's been so long. She was a student at the Chouinard Art Institute, and the war was on. They were arresting all the Japanese off the streets and in their houses, and she lived with us on Valentine Street. She was very young and very beautiful, and he felt sorry for her, and was afraid she'd be interned like the others. Then she moved out and away and we lost track of her. After the war, we heard she had married, and she and her husband Brook used to come to the Franklin House to our parties. They later divorced, and she married again. Before that party I took you to, I hadn't seen her in years.'

I called a lawyer and filed for divorce that same week. It became final a year later. Kiyo and I never spoke again, and I heard from Rumor Central that she had remarried, or was living with a man even younger than me. She continued to teach astrology classes and found her fifteen minutes of fame, which included her picture and a small article in Time magazine as a recognized 'astrologer to the Hollywood stars.' She died from cancer while she was still in her mid-fifties, about ten years after our divorce.

My only explanation for Kiyo's interest in me was her private moment of truth in those brief minutes in the lobby at the Biltmore Hotel when I introduced her to my father as my wife. To her, it was all worth it for the 'Hello, George.'

In that single moment, Kiyo had exacted her revenge for the grudge she held against him. Twenty years earlier, in her youth and innocence, she had loved him and succumbed to his seduction. His conquest complete, Father had cast her aside and quickly moved on to other women and other loves. It was a slow road for her to travel, but she would be avenged. Her moment came in the lobby of the Biltmore, as she was introduced as Kiyo Hodel, his son's wife. Standing there, ignorant of the drama, I was hoping and praying that Dad would be impressed with my choice of a wife. He wasn't the only Hodel who knew how to pick beautiful and sophisticated women!

In the following days, after the discovery of Kiyo's infidelity, her lies about her age, and Mother's explanations about her true relationship with Father during the war years, I was shaken to my core, tilled with the rage and hatred that only youth can know. However, it would not be for another thirty-four years, until I saw Kiyo's picture in my father's album after his death, that the full impact of Dad and Kiyo would begin to dawn on me. Then only gradually did I come to know the truth. His love for her was no weekend romance. Her picture was there, hidden with the rest. Carried for fifty years in his sanctum sanctorum. He had loved her!

11

The Dahlia Witnesses

Mid-July, 1999. Bellingham, Washington

I HAD ALREADY REVIEWED ENOUGH MATERIAL on the Condition of Elizabeth Short's body to recognize that what her killer did to her was no mere butcher job. The only person who could have performed a bisection so perfectly had to be a doctor, a skilled doctor. I was also impressed by the indications that the killer had performed a postmortem hysterectomy. Not only did he know the female anatomy, but he clearly possessed a level of surgical skill far beyond that of the average medical student or, as some had speculated at the time, mortician or nurse. The killer or killers were also brutally sadistic: they had tortured and humiliated Elizabeth before putting her to