Compulsion

spare some time and we headed over to Katrina Shonsky’s address in Van Nuys.

Big-box complex on a treeless block. The air smelled of construction dust though no projects were in sight. All the charm of a heat rash.

Robin said, “I can see why she’d want to get away from this. Not that living in thirty rooms on twenty acres helps, if you’re lonely.”

“Thinking of someone in particular?”

She nodded. “He’s coming to town on business in a week or so. In between appointments, he intends to drop by to ‘visit my commission.’ It’s not that big of a deal but if you could be there, I wouldn’t mind.”

“He was inappropriate?”

“No, but when he talks to me he sounds so needy. Like he wants to get close – know what I mean?”

“An agenda behind the commission.”

“Maybe it’s silly,” she said.

“Conceited girl.”

She smiled. “So you’ll be there?”

She returned to her studio and I thought awhile about Ella Mancusi and Kat Shonsky. Could see no solid link beyond big black stolen cars.

I played with search engines, pairing variants of homicide and luxury car. When that came up empty, I substituted murder. Still, zero.

I began combining murder with specific automobile marques, went through Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, and BMW, with no luck.

Lamborghini and Cadillac pulled up a pair of shootings, one in L.A., the other in New York. Two gangsta rappers gunned down leaving late-night recording sessions, one alone in his Murcielago, the other caravanning with an entourage in a tricked-out Escalade. Officially, both cases were unsolved. But everyone in the hip-hop world knew whodunit.

Bentley and Aston Martin came up empty. Mercedes elicited nothing about Ella Mancusi, probably because of the lack of media coverage – and that made me question the value of the search. Benz produced photos of Hitler in both of his massive 770Ks and a rant from a Qatar-based blogger who believed Der Fuhrer had been a misunderstood “cool guy everyone thinks is a murder.”

I typed in Lincoln, not expecting much.

So much for my powers of prediction.

Double homicide, nine years ago, in Ojo Negro, a struggling agricultural hamlet north and inland of Santa Barbara. The case had been logged on DarkVisions.net, a borderline-literate Web site that delighted in listing gruesome, unsolved killings and posted crude cartoons and grainy photos cribbed from true-crime books.

The facts, as recounted by the site’s “soal author and webmaster, DV Zapper,” were spare and brutal: Leonora Bright, owner of the only beauty parlor in Ojo Negro, and Vicki Tranh, her resident manicurist, had been murdered sometime after closing the shop, their bodies found the following morning “multipally stabbed,” and “maybe disamenbered.”

A black Lincoln Town Car had been parked near the shop just before dusk. A tall man in a floor-length canvas duster and ten-gallon hat had been seen earlier in the day. Exiting the car, walking past the salon, driving off.

The car was later identified as a rental, stolen from a hotel parking lot in Santa Barbara.

Cowboys were no novelty in Ojo Negro; several nearby cattle ranches struggled against Big Agribusiness. But the stranger’s swagger and the costume-like getup attracted glances.

“Pale Rider,” the site tagged him. “And in Wilde West days, the Detroit beast could probably a been a cole-black stalleon.”

The morning after the sighting, a parcel-service driver delivering nail polish and “other cosmetic items made a stomach chorning discovery.”

“What I wonder,” mused DV Zapper, “is was Leona was married and maybe Vicki also and if yeah why didn’t there husbands go looking for them the hole time?”

I ran a search using the victims’ names.

Only one story, printed in The Santa Barbara Express a week after the murder. Two new facts: The car had been stolen at the Wharf Inn. And: “Sheriff Wendell Salmey is currently talking to Santa Barbara detectives.”

Googling Salmey evoked zero hits and the computer’s suggestion that I really meant Wendell Salmon. Just to be safe, I said I did and got connected to the Web site of a Washington State Fish and Game booklet for children.

I printed the newspaper text, returned to DarkVisions, clicked the bloody knife contact icon, and inquired if anything new had come up on the case.

Within seconds, I had a reply.

hey alex jason blasco here aka DV ZAPPER aka the mannnn. no there is shit the cops don’t wanna talk maybe its prejustice or something tranh was veetnamise you know????? if you hear something you can post with me

Googling Jason Blasco brought up a similarly misspelled MySpace page.

I’d just corresponded with a gawky, dark-haired, fourteen-year-old, self-described “genius wizard gore-geek” who lived in Minneapolis and liked AC/DC “even tho theyr older then anteeks and have shit drumming.”

I asked him how he’d heard about the Ojo Negro case.

they were in a magzine one a those thrilling detectives or some shit is in a big pile

ebay???

don do that shit this is slo lets im

sorry no buddy list

kidding

sorry

sucks dude

so that magazine…

you like that shit????

if the stories are good

i like it when they find the guy and xecute

yeah that’s better

got tons a that shit you can buy it if you want thrilling det shocking det

how much