The Man Who Cheated Death

Chapter 1 City of Angels

The telephone call early Friday morning was just what Sybil Blanchard had been waiting for. It was Saul, her agent, and he had a part for her. Not a big one he cautioned, but a part, and it was in a pilot television movie that Lorimar was trying to option to one of the networks for a series. Sybil would play a preppie virgin fresh out of Barnard who rooms with two aspiring actresses in Greenwich Village. The role was tiny, but if the pilot sold her character would stay in the series, and she would again be acting full time. Hanging up the phone, she had let out a Yipee, then opened the refrigerator and poured herself a victory tumbler of Taylor jug Chablis.

Sybil believed in herself and her ability as an actress. When she had first arrived in Hollywood that belief had somehow lifted her above thousands of other aspiring actors, and in two months landed her a bit movie role, and then a juicy part in successful mini-series. One night at a restaurant in Venice a palm reader had predicted that Sybil would be nominated for an Academy Award, and this had prompted Sybil to buy a used Jaguar and rent an oversized apartment in Glendale, convinced she was one role away from breaking into the big time.

That had been four years ago. Almost overnight her initial streak of luck had ended, and despite hundreds of auditions and cattle calls, she had been unable to land another role since. At first she had felt betrayed — like she had lost a lover — then the black clouds had rolled in. She’d grown despondent, and began to seriously doubt if she really had “it.” Was that special intangible element really there, or wasn’t it?

“I have ‘it,’ ” she had told herself for months, chanting it silently to herself like a mantra. Her spirits had slowly lifted, and through alcohol, summer stock, waiting tables, Valium, doing voiceovers for Saturday morning cartoons, and an occasional CARE envelope with a hundred dollar check from the National Bank of Idaho, she had managed to survive and not lose hope.

“To Spago,” she toasted, clinking her tumbler to the imitation crystal chandelier in her kitchen. “May I never wait on another table, drop another plate of green pasta, or be stiffed by another celebrity again.”

With a defiant toss she sent the tumbler flying through the doorway into the dining room, gouging a hole in the plasterboard wall the size of a child’s fist. You’re in big trouble now, she thought, and was overcome by a paralyzing fit of the giggles.

Sybil poured herself another glass of wine, then poured it back into the jug, fixed herself coffee, and put a George Winston compact disc on the stereo. An airy piano composition filled the nearly furnitureless apartment. Leafing through the phonebook on the kitchen counter, she vividly recalled his sold-out concert at the Hollywood Bowl a few weeks ago. A renegade hipster, Winston had looked resplendent in his tattered Levis and faded flannel shirt, his shoes left somewhere backstage as he padded out in white woolen socks. Acknowledging the applause with a barely heard “Thanks,” he sat down at the shiny grand. The next two hours Sybil had spent in the clouds, looking for new avenues to free her consciousness. His playing was an uncanny blend of classical and jazz and in the smoky autumn night it had sounded like an exotic foreign language. Sybil, knowing it was ridiculous, had likened him to Ghandi.

She got busy on the phone. Her character in the pilot was twenty-two, and that was going to take some work. The director wanted her hair cut short, and she also needed a facial, a manicure and a pedicure. Luckily she went to aerobics and didn’t need to starve herself to fit into a size six. Getting an appointment at Arden was a minor battle compared to the resistance she got from Kenneth, her hairdresser.

“Sybil honey, look at a calendar,” he admonished a minute later, a hairdryer purring in the background. “Today is Friday, Black Friday around here. The weekend is upon us. How about something sensible? Say Tuesday at three-thirty?”

“This is life and death,” she pleaded. “I got a part in a pilot. We start on Monday morning, seven a.m., and I need some major repairs. You have to squeeze me in. I’m on my knees, Kenneth.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake stop whining.” His voice carried across the salon. “Sirge, anyone drop for this afternoon? She did?” He spoke into the receiver. “You lucked out, babe. Come by at one, and I’ll make you young again.”

“You’re an angel.” Sybil hung up, and let her clenched fist slowly uncoil. She was not beautiful, and without a good cut, and the usual paint and hairspray, she couldn’t pass as even middling attractive. The phone rang, and before the answering machine in the bedroom could pick up, she answered it. The line was dead.

In the shower she weighed who to call first with her good news. Rex, her significant other, would probably suggest an intimate dinner spread out on a blanket on Venice beach; a would be Bo Goldman, he’d been banging out scripts for years, and in an act of artistic self-preservation had once wallpapered his apartment bathroom with rejection slips. She would also have to call numerous girlfriends, and eventually her Dad, who she hadn’t spoken to in a month. He was a partner in a small law firm in Ketchum, Idaho, and was of the firm belief that the United States was tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into southern California. Last Christmas he had sent a card and a plane ticket back home, his message painfully clear. Her good news would not make him happy, and she decided to call him on the weekend when the rates were cheaper.

Getting out of the shower, she heard the lingering piano trailing through her apartment, but not the buzzer. Drying off, she put on a robe, and heard the buzzer’s second ring. In the hall she hit the Talk button on the intercom.

“Yes?”

“Delivery for Sybil Blanchard.”

That would be the script from the studio. “Leave it on the floor beneath the mailboxes.”

“You have to sign for it.”

“Oh.” She touched her damp head. “Can you come back?”

“Flowers will die in the truck.”

“Flowers?” She hesitated. Who sent flowers? Certainly not Rex; he was into trashy lingerie, edible undergarments, and giant dildos tied with pink bows. Maybe they were from Saul. His way of saying nice going, you did it.

“Roses,” the deliveryman said.

“No kidding.” How theatrical. She smiled to herself and imagined that she was actually glowing. Her finger hit the electronic door release and left a wet smudge. “Bring them up.”

Sybil imagined the deliveryman cursing the ancient elevators as she brushed her hair in the bathroom. A tingling sensation had made her face aglow, and she suspected it was more than just the news, or her agent’s premature accolades. Her life was straightening itself out, finally moving forward again, on the road toward full potential, no more wayside stops. She had known it would happen, but not knowing when had always disturbed her. Every six months she erased her earnings at a self-awareness camp in Arizona where she learned to channel her energy and resources toward the eventual realization of her own being. Although it sounded odd, she was becoming herself, or as her spiritual instructor put it “growing into you” and right now she felt more in harmony with her emotions, and in better control of her own destiny, than she had since childhood.

In the kitchen she put ice cubes into a cheap plastic vase, and filled it three quarters with cold water. The doorbell rang, and she put the vase on the dining room table, tightened the knot in her robe so the delivery man wouldn’t get the wrong idea, and opened the front door.

“Miss Blanchard?”

Filling her doorway was a tall, muscular man in a brown uniform. A cap covered most of his head, his eyes hidden behind a pair of space-age wraparound shades. Sybil glanced at the veins popping in his neck and grouped him with the would-be actors at her gym who spent their afternoons pumping weights instead of learning The Method.

“That’s me.”

Sybil ushered him in. Smiling, he handed her his clipboard and pen. She took up two spaces signing her name.

“Thanks,” he said, handing her the flower box. “Can I use your phone to call my office? I’m having trouble with my van, and my cell phone’s on the blink.”

“It’s on the wall beside the fridge.”

He found it after a moment’s confusion. Dialing, he said, “You acted like you were expecting them. Birthday?”

“No, but it is a special occasion. I just landed...”

“Congratulations,” he said and began talking into the phone.

The flower box was taped together and she felt its contents shift. A small envelope was taped to the lid. Written on it was her name, her surname spelled wrong. That’s the way it’s spelled on the directory downstairs, she thought.

In the kitchen the flower man was still complaining about his van, and she told herself she was just imagining the darkness creeping around her, and popped the sides and removed the lid. A faint gurgle escaped her throat, and her knees began to buckle. Swathed in white tissue paper was a dead bird with its tongue sticking out of its beak.

“Surprised?” the flower man asked, coming out of the kitchen wielding a butcher knife.

Screaming as loud as she knew how, Sybil ran toward her bedroom. In the drawer of her bedside table was another of her dad’s presents, a.38 Smith and Wesson, and she thanked God that she always kept it cleaned and fully loaded.

The flower man tackled her in the hallway, sending them both down hard. She kicked at him viciously and he hopped on her, his knees pressing her chest to the carpeted floor, knocking the wind out of her. Grinning wickedly, he brought the knife down and stopped, the point of the blade hovering inches above her face.

“Look at me,” he whispered. “Look hard.”

His left hand simultaneously swept off his cap and sunglasses, giving her the full horror show. His misshapen head had no hair, and his eyes popped grotesquely out of his head like high wattage bulbs. He could have made his living working in a carnival side show, or gotten himself cast in plenty of C-grade monster movies. He was that frightening.

“Goddamn... freak.”

“Call me names,” he said.

Sybil grasped the knife with both hands before he could plunge it down. In the medicine cabinet were the pills she took for her irregular heart beat. Without them, she was doomed.

She locked her arms together as he pressed down, refusing to give him this last pleasure. She concentrated on her hands, not giving an inch, the knife frozen above her.

“I win,” she gasped.

Her breath grew short, and then she felt her heart stop. It was a strange feeling, like someone turning off the lights, and throwing her into darkness.

“No—!” he said belligerently. “You can’t do this...!”

“You can’t... murder... a dead woman...”

Closing her eyes, Sybil saw her dead mother standing before her, then in rapid succession her Dad at his desk writing a legal brief, she and Rex running barefoot down Venice beach, then a snow-covered field behind her elementary school in Ketchum, the drifts enveloping the tops of the slides and metal swings, turning everything she could see a blinding, absolute white; then nothing.

Harry Wondero was getting nowhere with the genetic bouillabaisse that occupied the second floor of the Santa Monica apartments in Westwood. He had banged on twenty doors and flashed his faded badge at the assorted freaks and sleepy twilight dwellers who’d bothered to answer. To judge by the notes he’d taken, he learned next to nothing about the three Chicanos who had resided in 22F. According to their neighbors, the trio were nocturnal, hardly had a civil word to say, and had never put in an appearance at the apartment swimming pool. And that’s where the celebrity club had barbecues and cocktails every weekend, smoked a little grass and played friendly games of water polo. Nodding, Wondero had scribbled away, not believing that people took him for such a horse’s ass. 22F was a drugstore, and that kind of thing didn’t go unnoticed in an apartment complex with cardboard thin walls. Liars, every one, he told himself as the half-naked woman in curlers said she had to go, and closed the door in his face. At least he had something to put in the homicide report.

He took an elevator to the parking lot to wait for the forensic crew. His partner of six years, Casey Rittenbaugh, was upstairs questioning the two uniformed officers who had first arrived on the scene. One of the Chicanos, hardly older than his son, had taken a slug in the forehead that had separated his eyes about two inches more than normal, and Wondero wanted to sit in the car a few minutes to chase the image out of his mind. For a full minute he blasted the air conditioner and took deep breaths.

Beneath the dashboard the radio squawked. He called in to check on the forensic crew. They were in transit, and to the dispatcher Wondero said, “Tell them to hurry, would you?”

He dabbed at his eyes with a Kleenex. Driving in that morning he’d heard a smog alert, the retardate disc jockey advising him and the rest of L.A. not to breath today. When it got really heavy his eyes teared up, making him look vulnerable. His wife had said that, and Wondero, who didn’t like the image of a six-foot-two, two hundred thirty pound plainclothes detective blubbering in public, usually tried to hide his face whenever he felt an attack coming on.

The gray forensic van pulled into the lot and parked in a Handicapped spot. Two fingerprint men and a police photographer got out, followed by Doc Silverman, the ME, who cornered Wondero as he got out of his car.

“I should have known,” Silverman said. “What’s the rush Harry? We’re dealing in corpses, right? Nothing I learned in medschool can change that.”

Wondero put his finger on the fresh spot of jam on Silverman’s shirt, then into his mouth. “Strawberry. Let me guess. IHOP, or Burger King?”

“Never a minute’s peace with you.” Silverman got his pen started on a clipboard. “What have we got?”

“Three Chicano males, ages ranging between twenty and thirty, shot at close range with an automatic weapon. Two of them had their ankles and wrists bound together with copper wire. The third got shot taking a bath. No sign of struggle or forcible entry.”

“Any discernable motive?”

“Bag of ludes, a mirror with a few anthills of coke and a couple grand in cash strewn around the apartment. Casey also found a modified Uzi with a hundred rounds of ammo. Luckily no one had a chance to use it.”

“If they had,” Silverman said, still busy writing, “maybe one of your corpses would be talking.”

“Bullet from an Uzi can pass through three, sometimes four walls,” Wondero said, forgetting he wasn’t talking to another cop. “Instead of three stiffs you could have had ten. Then you would have had to skip breakfast and lunch.”

“You could stand to miss a couple meals yourself.”

Silverman followed him into the open apartment lobby and waited in silence for the elevator. Wondero had long ago stopped talking at moments like these, no longer able to find a rationale for the random acts of violence he encountered. As the peeling elevator doors opened, the photographer called to him. “Radio call for you, Harry.”

“Tell her I’m up to my ass at the moment.”

“I already took the liberty.”

Wondero got ugly. “And?”

“Dispatcher said this was really important.”

“Someone ought to start giving these broads urine tests.” Getting behind the wheel of his car, Wondero identified himself to the dispatcher, then listened. Saucers of water filled his eyes and made ribbons down his cheeks.

“Be there in twenty,” he said.

The two rookie cops guarding Sybil Blanchard’s apartment carefully examined Wondero’s credentials before letting him pass. Once inside, Wondero saw the same scene as before, the same familiar faces, and he supposed, the same conclusions. Four years of work had drawn him no closer to this killer than the day he’d started, and he no longer looked at each new victim as a possible solution to what had become an endless string of senseless homicides.

There was considerable activity inside the spacious apartment. Two technicians busily dusted the furniture and glasses for fingerprints, while another vacuumed the carpet for hair and minuscule clothing fibers. Down a hall in the bedroom an Asian man was taking photographs of the corpse, whose pink toes pointed to the ceiling.

The apartment, like so many in L.A., said a great deal about Sybil Blanchard’s dreams and aspirations, yet almost nothing about her past, as if part of becoming an actress or singing star required shelving your upbringing. In the same glance, Wondero saw what had probably attracted their killer to Sybil. She lived alone, no pets, and was often home during the day. He was good at speculating, and guessed that Sybil was young and impressionable. Smart, but not street smart. Otherwise she wouldn’t have opened her door to a stranger.

On the dining room table sat a flower box. Flowers are a way to a girl’s heart, he thought. He looked inside and saw the dead bird. It had been dusted and looked sugar coated.

He pushed himself down the hall to the bedroom. A detective named Marstello was taking notes while one of Silverman’s pupils examined the corpse. Standing in the doorway, Wondero halted. From the floor Sybil’s terrified eyes stared up, forever frozen.

“Close them,” he said.

The CSI tech closed Sybil’s eyes with his fingertips. He spoke slowly, his voice a monotone. “The victim appears to have died from a massive coronary. I found these in the bathroom.” He shook a bottle of pills in Wondero’s face. “Seems she had a bad ticker. The perpetrator jumped her in the hallway and they struggled on the bedroom floor, which resulted in her having a heart attack. She died almost instantly.”

“Good for you,” Wondero said to the corpse.

Marstello gave him a funny look. The tech said, “Let me show you something,” and motioned Wondero to kneel beside him. He gently parted Sybil’s fluffy brown curls and pointed at the graying roots dotting her scalp.

“It’s dyed,” Wondero said. “So what?”

“She didn’t dye her hair,” the ME explained. “I did a quick test of several strands. She was a natural brunette.”

“What are you saying?”

“She just started going gray.”

“So did I,” Wondero said sarcastically.

“Not in the last two hours.”

Wondero looked to Marstello for help. “I’m on the wrong wavelength. What’s our friend here trying to say?”

“We think she was frightened to death,” Marstello explained, being careful as he walked around the corpse. “Like the lady in Malibu last year. You remember, the rich broad with the poodles. Something scared her bad enough to cause a stroke.”

“That was the coroner’s speculation,” Wondero reminded him, remembering the case clearly, and how her dogs, locked up in a closet, had attacked the first officer on the scene.

“This isn’t speculation Harry.” From a night table Marstello picked up a pillow wrapped in a ziplock and handed it to him. A note cut and pasted from a newspaper was impaled to the pillow with a railroad spike, and Wondero read the twisted message silently.

Wondero sat on the bed. What had Sybil seen? He thought he knew. A killer that lacked internal control that might allow him to spare his victims the sadistic pleasures that dominated his murderous sprees. A killer that hacked up his victims and scattered their remains, a leg in the fireplace, an arm on the wet bar, the fingers clutching a beer bottle. Insanity — letters that spoke of blackness and despair that often reversed themselves, becoming wicked and perverse. Cruelty — a killer who preyed on the vulnerable and the old. A plague in human form. Sybil had met Death and surrendered to him.

“You ought to go outside Harry. Get some air.”

Wondero stared vacantly through a window. “I once read that when you die all experience is reversed. You feel the pain you inflicted during your lifetime, and suffer the way you made others suffer. Atonement for all sins. And you get an eternity to pay for what you’ve done.” He looked up at Marstello. “Do you believe that Ray?”

Marstello thought about it. “No.”

“Neither do I,” Wondero said. “But I want to.”