I drove to the station, announced myself at the desk, waited as the clerk called up to the Robbery-Homicide room. Uniforms passed in and out. No one paid me any attention as I scanned the Wanted posters. A few minutes later the stairwell door opened and Milo bounded out, brushing hair off his forehead.
'Let's go outside, I need air,' he said, not bothering to stop. His suit was the color of curdled oatmeal, the right lapel stained with something green. His tie was tight, his neck was suffering, and he looked like a poster boy for National Hypertension Week.
We reached the sidewalk and started walking up Butler. Dry, acidic heat hung in the air and I wished I'd stopped for a cold drink.
'Nothing on Pelley, yet,' he said, 'so don't ask. It's the Beatty twins who've been occupying my day. Brother Leroy told people he had an acting gig.'
'Which people?'
'His fellow juiceheads. Willis Hooks and I were down at the murder scene this evening. Not far from a liquor store where Leroy used to hang, along with some other grape-suckers. Couple of them said Leroy had bragged about becoming a movie star.'
'How long ago was this?' I said.
'Time isn't a strong concept with these guys, but they figure three, four months. Leroy also told his drinking buds he was gonna get his brother involved with the movie-said once the director found out he had a twin, he offered to pay more. The winos thought he was just running his mouth, 'cause Leroy tended to do that when he got sufficiently drunk. They didn't even believe Leroy had a twin. He'd never mentioned Ellroy.'
'Did Leroy report back after the filming?'
'No. He returned a week later, cranky, refusing to talk about it. If he'd gotten hold of any cash, no one saw it. His buddies figured he'd gone on a bender, flushed it all down his gullet.'
'Or Mr. Griffith D. Wark stiffed someone else,' I said. Now my mind was racing. Fragments of history coming together… pieces fitting…
'I thought of that,' he said. 'None of them saw any tall white guy chatting up Leroy.'
'Did Ellroy's drinking pals have anything to say about the movie?'
'Aguilar hasn't found any pals for Ellroy yet. He seems to have been the loner twin, lived by himself near the train tracks. One of the conductors remembers seeing him from time to time, stumbling around. Figured he was crazy because he was always talking to himself.'
He scratched the side of his nose. 'So here I am, stuck with the movie angle again. Maybe it's a link between Dada and the twins, but still no tie-in with Claire. Except for the fact that she went to the movies. Hell, can't you see me explaining that to her parents? I showed her picture to the bums and they didn't recognize her. No surprise, why would she have gone down to some South Central wino kip? I'm gonna head back tonight to that place in Toluca Lake where Richard used to wait tables-the Oak Barrel. It's a long shot, but maybe Claire dined there. For all we know, Mr. Wark picked up both of 'em there-and incidentally, you were right about Wark being D.W. Griffith's middle name. I looked it up. So this asshole sees himself as a cinema hotshot.'
He scratched his head. 'This is exactly the kind of flaky bullshit I hate dealing with. Why would Wark-or anyone else-bump offhis cast?'
'Keeping the budget low?' I said. 'Better not give the studios any ideas. Seriously, what's going on here? And how-and why-would a robot like Peake be clued in?'
'Maybe Wark's filming murder.'
'A snuff thing?'
'That, or a variant-not necessarily a sexual angle. A chronology of unnatural death-a literal blood walk. For the underground market. That would explain why the script's never been registered and why Wark used a fake name to rent his equipment and cut out on the bill. It could also explain the diversity of victims and methods. And the ritualism. We could be dealing with someone who sees himself as a splatter auteur. Playing God by setting up characters-real people- then bumping them off. Psychopaths depersonalize their victims. Wark could be accomplishing the ultimate degradation: reducing his 'cast' to prototypes: The Twins, The Actor, that kind of thing. It's cruel, primitive thinking-exactly the way kids play out their anger. Some angry kids never grow up. As far as Peake is concerned, he could be involved because Wark wants him involved. Because Wark's someone out of Peake's past. Wark's mightily affected by Peake's crimes. Now he's creating his own production, wants to integrate Peake into the process. And I've got a possible candidate for Wark: a fellow named Derrick Crimmins.'
I told him everything I'd learned about Treadway. The longtime conflict between the Ardullos and the Crimminses, Scott's affair with Sybil, the Crimmins boys' antisocial behavior, Derrick's involvement with Sybil's abortive theater group.
'He had no special love for his stepmother, Milo, but he stayed involved with her. Because the whole notion of theater-of production-grabbed him personally. He also matches the physical description Vito Bonner gave us of Wark-tall, thin-and his age fits. Derrick would be in his mid-thirties now.'
Milo took a long time to think about that. We were walking dark residential streets, shoes slapping the pavement. 'So all the Crimminses except this Derrick are dead?'
'Father, stepmother, brother, all by accidental death. Interesting, isn't it?'
'Now he's a family murderer, too?'
'Rigging accidents can also be seen as a form of production-setting up scenes. Derrick was far from a model citizen. Wanda Hatzler described him and his brother as spoiled bullies and possible rapists.'
I stopped.
'What?' he said.
'Something else just occurred to me. Sheriff Haas told me that after the murder Peake was found with lots of different drugs in his shack, including some illegal prescription pills, phenobarbital. None was missing from the pharmacy in Treadway and no one in the Ardullo household had obtained a prescription for it. So Haas was certain it had to have been obtained out of town. But no one ever saw Peake leave Treadway. So maybe he had a dope source in town. Wanda saw Derrick and his friends hanging around with Peake, mostly to harass him. Peake offered no resistance, was extremely passive. What if the Crimmins boys were the ones who supplied him with drugs- having fun with the village idiot? The night of the massacre, Peake got massively stoned, his psyche broke down, and he slaughtered the Ardullos. And Derrick and his brother realized they'd played an indirect role in it. Someone else might be horrified by that, but the Crimmins boys had plenty of reason to hate Scott Ardullo. His refusal to sell his land had obstructed their father's big development deal for years. And Scott was sleeping with their stepmother. What if they were pleased with what Peake had done? Took some vicarious credit for it? And, in a sick sense, it was a successful production: the land deal went through, the family became rich again. That kind of high could've been powerful stuff for a kid who'd already shown some serious antisocial tendencies. A few years later, Derrick tries his hand at something more direct: blowing up Daddy and Stepmom's boat. And, once again, he gets away with it.'
'Or,' he said, 'the boat thing really was an accident, someone else gave Peake his dope, Wark's not Derrick, and Derrick's just some playboy drinking pifla coladas in Palm Beach while working on his melanoma.'
'All that, too,' I said. 'But as long as we're being contentious, I'll go you one further: Derrick and Cliff's involvement was more than vicarious. They fed Peake dope and played on his delusions intentionally. Prodded him to kill the Ardullos. They were dominant, aggressive; Peake was passive, impressionable. Maybe they learned that Peake harbored some resentment of his own toward the Ardullos, and they used that. Perhaps they never really expected it to happen-idle teenage dope talk-and when Peake ran amok, they were frightened, initially. Then amazed. Then pleased.' He knuckled his eyes. 'What happened during your childhood to make you think this way?'
'Too much spare time.' Alcoholic father, depressed mother, dark hours alone in the basement fighting to escape the noise upstairs, struggling to create my own world… 'My, my, my.'
'At the very least,' I said, 'wouldn't it be good to find out where Derrick lives, what his financial situation is, does he have some sort of police record?'
'Fine,' he said. 'Fine.'
Back in Robbery-Homicide, he played with the computer. No wants or warrants out on Derrick Crimmins, no listings on the sex offender rosters or the FBI's VICAP file, and as far as we could tell, he wasn't occupying space in any California jail.
A call to the Department of Motor Vehicles police info line revealed zero current registrations under that
