Crime Wave Part 6

I called the dead nurse Marcella De Vries. She hailed from my mother's hometown: Tunnel City, Wisconsin.

I did not research that book. Fear kept me from haunting archives and historical sites. I wanted to contain what I knew and felt about my mother. I wanted to acknowledge my blood debt and prove my imperviousness to her power by portraying her with coldhearted lucidity.

Several years later, I wrote The Black Dahlia. The t.i.tle character was a murder victim as celebrated as Jean Ellroy was ignored. She died the year before my birth, and I understood the symbiotic cohesion the moment I first heard of her.

The Black Dahlia was a young woman named Elizabeth Short. She came west with fatuous hopes of becoming a movie star. She was undisciplined, immature, and promiscuous. She drank to excess and told whopping lies.

Someone picked her up and tortured her for two days. Her death was as h.e.l.lishly protracted as my mother's was gasping and quick. The killer cut her in half and deposited her in a vacant lot twenty miles west of Arroyo High School.

The killing is still unsolved. The Black Dahlia case remains a media cause celebre.

I read about it in 1959. It hit me with unmitigated force. The horror rendered my mother's death both more outre and more prosaic. I seized on Elizabeth Short and h.o.a.rded the details of her life. Every bit of minutiae was mortar with which to build walls to block out Geneva Hilliker Ellroy.

This stratagem ruled my unconscious. The suppression exacted a price: years of nightmares and fear of the dark. Writing the book was only mildly cathartic; transmogrifying Jean to Betty left one woman still unrecognized.

And exploited by a master self-promoter with a tight grip on pop-psych show-and-tell. - I wanted her to fight back. I wanted her to rule my nightmares in plain view.

The Homicide Bureau was temporarily housed in an East L.A. office complex. The squad room was spanking clean and copant.i.thetical.

Sergeant Stoner met me. He was tall and thin, with big eyes and a walrus mustache. His suit was a notch more upscale than his colleagues'.

We had a cup of coffee. Stoner discussed his most celebrated a.s.signment, the Cotton Club murder case.

The man impressed me. His perceptions were astute and devoid of commonly held police ideology. He listened, carefully phrased his responses, and drew information out of me with smiles and throwaway gestures. He made me want to tell him things.

I caught his intelligence full-on. He knew I caught it.

Talk flowed nicely. One cup of coffee became three. The file rested on Stoner's desk--a small accordion folder secured by rubber bands.

I knew I was stalling. I knew I was postponing my first look at the pictures.

Stoner read my mind. He said he'd pull the worst of the shots if I wanted him to.

I said no.

The file was a mishmash: envelopes, Teletype slips, handwritten notes and two copies of the Detective Division Blue Book, an acc.u.mulation of reports and verbatim interviews. My first impression: This was the chaos of Jean Ellroy's life.

I put the photograph envelope aside. Penal-code numbers and birth dates jumped off the Teletypes.

The DOBs ran from 1912 to 1919. The codes designated arrests for aggravated a.s.sault and rape.

My mother left the bar with a "fortyish" man. The Teletypes deciphered: requests for information on men with s.e.x-crime priors.

I read some odd notes. Minutiae grabbed me.

The Desert Inn bar: 11721 East Valley Boulevard. My mother's '57 Buick: license KFE 778. Our old house: 756 Maple Avenue.

I read the names on the front of the Blue Book. The investigating officers: sergeants John Lawton and Ward Hallinen.

The squad room lapsed into slow motion. I heard Stoner telling people that Bill McComas had aced his surgery. I spotted two full-size sheets of stationery with memo slips attached.

Early in 1970, two women wrote Homicide and informed "To Whom It May Concern" that they believed their respective exhusbands murdered Geneva Hilliker Ellroy. Woman Number One stated that her ex worked at Packard Bell and had had affairs with my mother and two other women there. The man "behaved in a suspicious fashion" in the weeks following the killing and hit her when she pressed him about his whereabouts on the night of June 2 1. Woman Number Two said that her ex-husband harbored a "long-standing grudge" against Jean Eliroy. My mother refused to process a workers' compensation claim that the man had proffered, and his resentment sent him "off the deep end."

Woman Number Two included a postscript: Her ex-husband torched a furniture warehouse in 1968 to avenge a dinette-set repossession.

Both letters read vindictively sincere. Both were respectful of police authority. Memorandums indicated that the leads were checked out.

One detective interviewed both ex-husbands. He concluded that the allegations were groundless and that the women did not know each other and thus could not have colluded.

A relatively obscure homicide. Two disturbingly similar accusations--unrelated accusations--eleven and a half years after the crime.

I examined the Blue Book. The reports and interview transcripts lacked a continuous narrative line. I scanned a few pages and realized that my basic knowledge of the case was sufficient to make odd bits of data cohere.

The crime-scene report was logged in mid-book. The first El Monte cop to respond reported that "the victim was lying on her back at the side of the road. There was dry blood on her lips and nose. The lower part of the victim's body was covered with a woman's coat. The victim was wearing a multi-colored (blue and black) dress. A bra.s.siere appeared to be around the victim's neck."

Further examination reveals: The bra.s.siere is really a stocking.

A necklace strand rests under the body.

Forty-seven individual pearls are scattered nearby.

The coroner arrives. He views the body and points out bruises on the neck. He thinks the woman was strangled with a windowsash cord or clothesline. Drag marks on the woman's hips indicate that she was killed elsewhere and brought to this location.

The investigation commenced. My memory filled in Blue Book continuity gaps.

No identification was found on the body. The El Monte Police Department called in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Bureau.

Radio bulletins went out. The dead woman's description was flashed Valley-wide.

Our neighbor Mrs. Kryzcki responded. She was brought to the county morgue and identified the body. She said Jean Ellroy was a fine lady, who did not drink or date men.

My mother's car was discovered parked behind the Desert Inn. Bar employees were detained at El Monte police headquarters.

They identified my mother from a snapshot that Mrs. Kryzcki provided. Yes, the woman came in last night. She arrived alone about eight o'clock and later joined a man and a woman. Said man and woman were not regular patrons. None of the staff had ever seen them before.

The man was a swarthy Caucasian or a Mexican. He was about 40 years old, thin, between five feet nine and six feet tall. The woman was white, blonde, and in her late twenties. She wore her hair tied back in a ponytail.

No one heard them exchange names. A waitress recalled that a regular named Michael Whitaker had several drinks with the dead woman and two unknowns.

A waitress supplied more names: every known patron in the bar Sat.u.r.day night. Sergeants Hallinen and Lawton checked the El Monte PD arrest docket and learned that Michael Whitaker was picked up for plain drunk at 4 A.M.

The man, 24, was spotted on foot near Stan's Drive-In. He sobered up in the El Monte drunk tank and was released at 9 A.M.

The known patrons were brought in and questioned. Several remembered seeing my mother with the Swarthy Man and the Blonde. None of them had ever seen my mother before. None of them had ever seen the Swarthy Man or the Blonde.

Michael Whitaker was brought in. Hallinen and Lawton questioned him. A police stenographer recorded the interrogation.

Whitaker's memory was booze-addled. He couldn't recall the name of the woman he was currently shacked up with. He said he danced with my mother and hit her up for a Sunday-night date. She declined, because her son was coming back from a weekend with his father.

Whitaker said the Swarthy Man told him his name. He couldn't remember it.

He said my 43-year-old mother looked "about 22." He said he got "pretty high" and fell off his chair once.

He said he saw the Swarthy Man and my mother leave together at about 10 P.M.

The Swarthy Man told Whitaker his name. This supported my long-held instinct that the murder was not premeditated.

A waitress confirmed Whitaker's account. Yes, Michael fell off his chair. Yes, the redhead left with the Swarthy Man.

Hallinen and Lawton retained a sketch artist. Desert Inn patrons and employees described the Swarthy Man. The artist drew up a likeness.

The drawing was circulated to newspapers and every police agency in Los Angeles County. The Desert Inn crew examined thousands of mug shots and failed to identify the Swarthy Man.

Officers canva.s.sed the area around Arroyo High School. No one had noticed suspicious activity late Sat.u.r.day night or Sunday morning. Hallinen and Lawton interrogated a score of local cranks, perverts, and career misogynists.

No leads acc.u.mulated. No hard suspects emerged.

On Wednesday, June 25, a witness came forth--a Stan's DriveIn carhop named Lavonne Chambers. Hallinen and Lawton interviewed her. Her testimony--recorded verbatim--was precise, articulate, and perceptive. Everything she said was new to me. Her statement radically altered my take on the crime.

She served the Swarthy Man and my mother--on two different occasions--late Sat.u.r.day night and early Sunday morning. She described my mother's dress and mock-pearl ring. She described the Swarthy Man's car: a '55 or '56 dark-green Olds. She said the sketch was accurate and ID'd the man as white, not Latin.

They arrived at 10:20, shortly after their Desert Inn departure. They "talked vivaciously" and "seemed to have been drinking." The man had coffee. My mother had a grilled cheese sandwich. They ate in the car and left a half hour later.

Miss Chambers worked late that night. My mother and the Swarthy Man returned at 2 He ordered coffee. He seemed "quiet and sullen." My Inother was "quite high and chatting gaily." The man "acted bored with her."

Miss Chambers said my mother looked "slightly disheveled." The top of her dress was unb.u.t.toned, and one breast was spilling out.

Sergeant Hallinen: "Do you think they might have had a petting party?"

Miss Chambers: "Maybe."

They left at 2:45. Jean Ellroy's body was discovered eight hours later.

I turned to the autopsy report. The coroner noted signs of recent intercourse. My mother's lungs were severely congested, presumably from years of heavy smoking.

She died of ligature asphyxiation. She sustained several blows to the head. Her fingernails were caked with blood, skin, and beard fragments.

She fought back.

I opened the photo envelope. The first stack of pictures: detained and exonerated suspects.

Cruel-looking men. Rough trade. White trash with a vengeance. Hard eyes, tattoos, psychopathic rect.i.tude.

I recognized Harvey Glatman, a s.e.x killer executed in 1959. A note said he pa.s.sed a polygraph test.

The second stack: miscellaneous photos and wide-angles of the crime scene.

My father, circa 1946. A notation on the back: "Vict's exhusband." A faded snapshot: my mother in her teens. The man beside her? Probably my German-immigrant grandfather.

Arroyo High School, 6/22/58. Santa Anita Road and King's Road--a football field with jerry-built goalposts. Those righthand-corner X marks: the curbside bushes where they found her. The topography lacked perspective. Every detail hit my eyes as too small, and unequal to the central myth of my life.

I looked at the pictures of my dead mother. I saw the stocking around her neck and the insect bites on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Lividity had thickened her features. She did not look like anyone I had ever known.

I knew it wasn't over. I knew my hours with the file const.i.tuted an ambiguous new start.

I left the squad room and drove to El Monte. The years then to now had been cruel.

I clenched up. It felt like something had to hit me at any second. I kept expecting a migraine or a bad case of the shakes.

New prefab houses had aged and split at the joints. Smog obscured the San Gabriel peaks.

The Desert Inn was gone. A taco hut replaced it. The El Monte PD building had been razed and rebuilt.

Anne Le Gore School remained intact. Gang graffiti on the walls provided an update.

Stan's Drive-In was gone. My old house had been face-lifted past recognition.

Arroyo High School needed a paint job. The playing field needed a trim. Weeds grew thick all around the X-marked spot.

The town had compressed. Its old secrets had subsided into the memories of strangers.

Stoner told me Sergeant Lawton was dead. Sergeant Ward Hallinen: 82 years old and living outside San Diego.

I called him and explained who I was. He apologized for his failing memory and said he couldn't recall the case. I thanked him for his efforts thirty-six years ago. I remembered a cop who gave me a candy bar, and wondered if it was him.

It wasn't over. The resolution felt incomplete.

I canceled a dinner date and willed myself to sleep. I woke up at 3 A.M.--unclenched and sick with it.

Conscious thoughts wouldn't process. I went down to the hotel gym and slammed weights until it hurt.

Steam and a shower helped. I went back to my room and let it hammer me.

New facts contradicted old a.s.sumptions. I had always thought my mother was killed because she wouldn't have s.e.x with a man. It was a child's coda to horror: A woman dies fending off violation.

My mother made love with her killer. A witness viewed postcoital moments.

They left the drive-in. He wanted to ditch this desperate woman he f.u.c.ked and get on with his life. The combustion occurred because she wanted more.

More liquor. More distance from the Dutch Reformed Church. More self-abasing honky-tonk thrills.

More love i6,ooo times removed in desiccation.

I inherited those urges from my mother. Gender bias favored me: Men can indiscriminately f.u.c.k women with far greater sanction than women can indiscriminately f.u.c.k men. I drank, used drugs, and wh.o.r.ed with the bravado of the winked-at and condoned. Luck and a coward's circ.u.mspection kept me short of the abyss.

Her pain was greater than mine. It defines the gulf between us. Her death taught me to look inward and hold myself separate. That gift of knowledge saved my life.