catch my wife's killer.' Nine-year-old Michael, distraught, is now living with his father in Los Angeles. Mrs. Harris worked as head nurse at the Packard-Bell Electronics plant in Santa Monica. Both the El Monte Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have mounted a full-scale investigation.
I sat and thought, feeling strangely calm, yet engulfed by a prickly sensation when I put down the newspaper. It was too long after the facts, I told myself, too far away, too prosaic a form of murder. Strictly a non sequitur. I didn't want to catch myself up in another logical fallacy.
I needed statistics, and the only person I knew who could furnish them was a crime-buff law clerk in Lorna's firm. I called the office and got him. The receptionist recognized my voice and gave me the cold shoulder, but put me through anyway. After several minutes of amenities, I popped my question: 'Bob, what are the statistics on strangulation murders of women, where the killer is not a known intimate of the victim?'
Bob didn't have to think: 'Commonplace, but they usually catch the killer fast. Barroom jobs, drunks strangling prostitutes, that kind of thing. Very often the killer is remorseful, confesses, and cops a plea. Is this an academic question, Fred?'
'Yeah, strictly. How about premeditated strangulation murders of women?'
'Including psychopaths?'
'No, presupposing relative sanity on the part of the killer.'
'Relative sanity, that's a hot one. Very rare, kid, very rare indeed. What's this all about?'
'It's about an ex-cop with time on his hands. Thanks a lot, Bob. Goodbye.'
I watched TV that night, but television coverage of the murder was scant. The dead woman's face was flashed on the screen, a photograph taken some twenty years before upon her graduation from nursing school. Marcella Harris had been a very handsome woman: high, strong cheekbones, large widely spaced eyes, and a determined mouth.
The somber-voiced announcer called on all concerned citizens 'who might be able to help the police' to call the detective bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. A phone number was flashed across the bottom of the screen for a few brief seconds, before the announcer started a used-car commercial. I turned the TV off.
I started collecting all the newspaper articles I could find about the murder. By Tuesday the Harris murder had been relegated to the third page. From the Los Angeles
LAST HOURS OF DEAD NURSE RECONSTRUCTED
LOS ANGELES, JUNE 24—Marcella Harris, who was found strangled in El Monte Sunday morning, was last seen alive in a cocktail lounge on nearby Valley Boulevard. Police revealed today that eyewitnesses placed the attractive redheaded nurse at Hank's Hot Spot, a bar at 18391 Valley Boulevard in South El Monte, between the hours of 8:00 and 11:30 Saturday night. She left alone, but was seen huddling in conversation with a dark-haired man in his forties and a blond woman in her late twenties. Police artists are now at work assembling composite drawings of the pair, who at this time are the only suspects in the grisly strangulation murder.
Father and Son Together
'Michael will always bear the scars, of that I am sure,' William 'Doc' Harris, a handsome man in his late fifties, said yesterday. 'But I know that I can make up for the love he has lost in losing his mother.' Harris ruffled his nine-year-old son's hair fondly. Michael, a tall, bespectacled youngster, said, 'I just hope the police get the guy who killed my mom.'
It was a peaceful but sad scene at the Harris apartment on Beverly Boulevard. Sad because police are powerless in dealing with the grief of a motherless nine-year-old boy. El Monte police spokesman Sergeant A.D. Wisenhunt said, 'We're doing everything within our power to track down the killer. We have no idea where Mrs. Harris was killed, but we figure that it had to be in the El Monte area. The coroner places the time of her death at between 2:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M., and the Scouts found her at 7:30 A.M. We have detectives and uniformed officers out circulating composite drawings of the two people Mrs. Harris was last seen talking to. We have to be patient— only diligent police work will crack this case.'
Half of me felt crazy for even following newspaper accounts of this 'case,' but the other half of me screamed inside when the words 'cocktail lounge' jumped out at me from the printed page. I hemmed and hawed, and pounded myself internally for several hours, until I realized there would never be a moment's peace until I gave it a whirl. Then I picked up the phone and called Sergeant Reuben Ramos at Rampart Division.
'Reuben, this is Fred Underhill.'
'Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, where the hell have you been?'
'Away.'
'That's for sure, man. Jesus Christ, did
I sighed. I hadn't counted on recalling the past to a former colleague. 'I got the wrong man, Rube, and the department had to make me look bad to take the onus off them. That's it.'
Reuben didn't buy it. 'I'll settle for that, man,' he said skeptically, 'but what's up? You need a favor, right?'
'Right. I need you to run someone through R&I for me.'
Reuben sighed. 'You got some amateur gig going?'
'Kind of. Are you ready?'
'Hit me.'
'Marcella Harris, white female, forty-three years old.'
'Isn't she that dead dame from—'
'Yeah,' I cut in. 'Can you run her and get back to me as soon as possible?'
'You crazy fuck,' Reuben said as he hung up.
The telephone rang forty-five minutes later, and I leaped at it, catching it on the first ring.
'Fred? Reuben. Grab a pencil.'
I had one ready. 'Hit it, Rube.'
'Okay. Marcella Harris. Maiden name DeVries. Born Tunnel City, Wisconsin, April 15, 1912. Green and red, five feet seven inches, one hundred forty. Nurse, U.S. Navy 1941-1946, discharged as a Wave lieutenant commander. Pretty impressive, huh? Now dig this: arrested in '48, possession of marijuana. Dismissed. Arrested in '50 on suspicion of receiving stolen goods. Dismissed. Arrested for drunk twice in '46, once in '47, three times in '48, once in '49 and '50. Nice, huh?'
I whistled. 'Yeah. Interesting.'
'What are you planning on doing with this information, man?'
'I don't know, Rube.'
'You be careful, Freddy. That's all I'm gonna say. Some bimbo gets choked in El Monte, and well . . . Freddy, it's got nothing to do with the other. That's dead history, man.'
'Probably.'
'You be careful. You ain't a cop no more.'
'Thanks, Rube,' I said, and hung up.
The following morning I got up early, put on a summer suit and drove out to El Monte, taking the Santa Monica Freeway to the Pomona, headed east.
I went from smog-shrouded L.A. past picturesque, seedy Boyle Heights and a succession of dreary semi- impoverished suburbs, growing more expectant as each new postwar boom community flew by. This was new territory for me, well within the confines of L.A. County, yet somehow otherworldly. The residential streets I glimpsed from my elevated vantage point seemed sullen in their sameness, the big boom in postwar disappointment and malaise.
El Monte was smack in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley, enclosed by freeways in all directions. The San
