Watterson turned his head away, as if Eliot had bad breath. “I didn’t do that.”
“Do what, Lloyd?”
Now he looked at Eliot. “Kill that woman in the papers-that ‘Blue Dahlia’ woman.”
Eliot sighed, stood straight again, rocking on his heels. “ Black Dahlia, Lloyd. That kill has your fingerprints all over it-severed torso, body drained of blood, washed clean…”
Watterson’s expression was one of wounded indignation. “But she had her head on! The papers said she had her head on. That’s not my style.”
Eliot reached out and grabbed Watterson by the shirt, catching some of the twine. “Isn’t it, Lloyd? Or did you leave that poor girl’s head on her shoulders and carve that grin in her face so you could laugh at me, through her?”
“No!”
“Wasn’t that death grin you cut in her face just the latest smart-ass postcard you sent me, Lloyd?”
“No! I didn’t do that crime-you know it didn’t fit my… what do you call it… modus operandi!”
Eliot let go of him, and began to pace slowly, in a very small area right in front of Watterson in his chair. “You never had a consistent M.O., Lloyd. Sometimes you left the bodies whole, after decapitation.”
Watterson managed to shrug, despite his bonds. “That was the men.”
“Yes, the men-who you also emasculated. It was the women you cut in two.”
“And dismembered them, remember! Mr. Ness, that Dahlia woman was only cut in half-she still had all her arms and legs! And you know that’s just not my style.”
The surrealism of this discussion-Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run arguing over the finer points of mass murder-triggered images of Welles’ bizarre Crazy House set with its dismembered mannequin limbs.
I moved in front of Watterson and Eliot stepped aside. “Lloyd, I can tell you something that is your style. One of your victims, in early ’37, was a woman, never identified, her torso bisected… She was probably around twenty- five with a nice figure, and a fair complexion and brown hair.”
Eliot, wondering what I was getting at, asked, “The partial torso that washed up on the beach at 136th Street, you mean?”
“Yes,” I said to him. Then to Watterson I said: “That victim on the beach had another one of your special, whimsical touches-you stuffed an object up the woman’s ass… a pants pocket.”
“I was sick, then,” Lloyd said, with quiet dignity. “I’m well now.”
“Happy to hear that,” I said. “By the way, here’s something that hasn’t appeared in the newspapers, Lloyd: Elizabeth Short had something stuffed inside her, too-a scrap of flesh cut from her thigh, bearing a rose tattoo.”
I stepped aside as Eliot moved in and pointed a finger at Watterson like a gun. “You did this crime, didn’t you, you miserable son of a bitch!”
“No! I swear I didn’t. I’m well. I’m better!”
I said to Eliot, “Get the door for me, would you?”
“The door?”
“Yeah, the door, Eliot. Open it.”
Again, though he didn’t follow what I was up to, Eliot went along for the ride. “All right,” he said, went over and opened it and stepped aside.
I grabbed Lloyd by the blond hair on the top of his head and I dragged him by it out into the hallway-only it wasn’t a hallway, really, but a relatively narrow corridor that bordered a five-story drop to the lobby floor. Casters screeching, the chair bearing the twine-tied Butcher did my bidding as I dragged it over to the central staircase and dragged his ass down the iron stairs, eight of them, jarring him, jolting him, shaking him, rattling him, thump, whump, thump. His wails of terror and pain echoed through the cavernous building, like memories of the cries of mercy he had ignored from his victims.
In the shadow-crosshatched moonlight, we were on the landing, Lloyd and me-still almost five stories up-and it was as if a little stage had been provided for our modest melodrama. Our intensely interested audience-Eliot Ness-walked slowly down the iron steps, making no move or even uttering a sound to try to stop me, as I pushed the tied-in-the-chair Watterson face first toward and then right up to the edge of the railing. The railing itself was heavy, and about waist high. I lifted the chair and the man in it by the back of the chair and held him up and over the railing so he could see the hard, shiny floor waiting far below.
I was barely breathing hard as I said, “Elizabeth Short was a patient at the Dailey clinic, Lloyd.”
“Please don’t kill me!”
“Don’t say that again or I will. She was your patient, Lloyd, wasn’t she?”
“No!”
“What happened? Did you botch the operation, accidentally, then find yourself with a beautiful young corpse on your hands? And did it just get the old juices flowing, Lloyd?”
“Noooo!” His cry reverberated through the vastness of the Bradbury. “I didn’t kill her! I didn’t even operate on her! She was Dr. Winter’s patient, not mine!”
I leaned him over some more, wondering if that twine would hold, not really caring. “You’re saying Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, just happened to be a patient at a clinic where you work?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Yes, you did it?”
“Yes, it’s just a coincidence!”
Detectives do not believe in coincidence. Some of us believe in fate, a few even believe in God; but none of us believe in coincidence.
I pulled him back, sat him down, in his chair, teeth-rattlingly hard, on the iron floor of the landing. Backing away from him, I found myself sitting on the stairs as Eliot moved in to take over.
“I don’t care whether you admit to this crime or not, Lloyd,” Eliot said, “you’re going back to Ohio, with me.”
Out of breath, shaking his head, eyes rolling wildly, Lloyd yelled, “I’m not! I’m well! I’m cured! I was legally released. I’m as sane as either of you crazy assholes! You have no right, no recourse to-”
Eliot stood calmly, arms crossed. “Your uncle requested I bring you home.”
Watterson’s face tightened, as if he was not sure he’d heard right. “My uncle…?”
“It’s either go home to your uncle, and sign in for some more therapy, Lloyd-or go to the police, and be identified in public as the Kingsbury Run torso killer… and the maniac who killed the Black Dahlia.”
Lloyd thought about that for a while. And then, irritatingly, chillingly, he smiled. “You won’t do that.”
Eliot’s eyes narrowed. “I won’t?”
Watterson shook his head, confidently. “No. Mr. Ness, you would be disgraced, and I know you wouldn’t want that. Besides, the police would never arrest me.”
“Is that right?”
Now Watterson seemed openly amused-even smug. “It would expose Dr. Dailey and his clinic and all the crooked homicide cops involved.”
Eliot laughed humorlessly. “You want me to believe the LAPD would cover up a crime of this magnitude?”
“Why not? You did.”
Eliot staggered back a step.
Then he grabbed Lloyd by the shirtfront and said, “Do you want me to turn you over to my friend, here? He wants to cut off your head and bury you in the desert. And I’m ready to bring the shovel.”
“I didn’t do this, Mr. Ness!” Watterson’s smugness had evaporated, and the terror was back. “It’s all just a coincidence, I tell you-a crazy goddamn coincidence!”
I stood. For a while I was just poised there, on the stairs, as if not sure whether to go up or down.
I thought of Orson Welles on that Columbia soundstage, wandering through a nightmare of his own creation, severed limbs and crazy shadows and clown grins. Was Welles the killer, or perhaps the mastermind manipulating some dupe, like Lloyd here? To me, that still seemed absurd on the face of it. And yet…
… some hand was directing this action. Not the director of Citizen Kane, perhaps-but some sure, sick hand…
