The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 22

Goldstein is right. After an hour and a half with the files, I don’t know much more about the murders than I did from the news stories.

The last time anyone saw them, the Gablers were working the topless show at the Blue Parrot. The personnel director at the Parrot, one Clay Riggins, left three messages on the twins’ voice mail, ascending in irritation level – and then gave up. The messages provided the police with a probable date for the girls’ disappearance. And no, Riggins didn’t call the police, figuring the girls just blew town or got a better gig somewhere else. From Jerry Olmstead’s interview with Riggins: They were identical twins, you know? Not that hot, but they were learning a few makeup tricks and getting better at dancing. There were angles you could work with them, you know?

Tammy Yagoda, a twenty-three-year-old showgirl at the Sands, had been the Gablers’ roommate. She was the one who reported them missing. She hadn’t seen them for two weeks – and that time frame meshed in nicely with the date of their first no-show at the Parrot. Tammy told the police that the last time she saw them, the twins were fine. They were working at the Parrot, they were taking dance and speech lessons. The thing was, Tammy had more or less just moved in with a new boyfriend, Jaime, so it wasn’t until she went back to the apartment to get some clothes that she realized something was wrong. The stench from the litter box hit her as soon as she opened the door. Romulus and Remus, the two Burmese cats who belonged to the Gablers, were ravenous. Yagoda reported that the twins adored the felines; they never would have left the cats like that. So she knew something was wrong.

She was right about that.

Red Rock Canyon is a popular tourist site about twenty miles from Vegas. A well-marked thirteen-mile scenic drive leads the visitor through the Mojave Desert landscape. Dramatic rock formations form a backdrop for native fauna (bighorn sheep, desert tortoise, wild burro) and flora (cholla and barrel cactus, manzanita, Joshua tree). The rocks bear pictographs and petroglyphs, the work of Paiute Indians, dating back at least a thousand years. It isn’t just tourists who love the place – the locals do, too. It’s a haven for the hordes of native Vegas hikers, mountain bikers, and rock climbers. The brochures and maps encourage everyone to “Leave No Trace.”

Josh Gromelski, solo hiking in an isolated area behind Icebox Canyon, stumbled upon more than a trace. He’d scaled the walls of Icebox and had entered an area behind it, which led to a much smaller canyon known as Conjure Canyon. Free climbing, he nearly tumbled to his death after setting a handhold that, when he pulled himself up, brought his face about four feet from the torso and legs of what turned out to be Clara Gabler. Gromelski had a GPS system and a cell phone in his backpack. He lasted long enough to call in his gruesome discovery before tossing his Clif Bars and going into shock.

I can see why. The crime-scene photos are stomach-turning. I force myself to take a second look, although I don’t know why. Like other photos I’ve seen – the piles of naked Jewish corpses being tipped into mass graves, the gas-bloated bodies at Jonestown, the fallen Taliban fighter on the road outside Tora Bora, his pants pulled down and a crowbar jammed up his ass – the first glance is indelible. Like other sights I’ve seen in person – the carnage in Kosovo, where I beheld a pregnant woman with no head – some things don’t require a second look.

The photo of Clara Gabler’s lower half joins what has become, over the years, a gallery of horror in my head, a place where such images – the ones you wish you’d never seen – are imprinted forever. The trunk is severed at about the waist, the legs splayed apart, one of them slightly bent. The upper cavity is like some obscene bowl, the edge of skin and subcutaneous fat at the cut comprising the container that holds a gnawed mash of red pulp.

Despite the damage done by predators, the lower half of Clara Gabler did not deteriorate much in the dry Mojave air. Except for the tattered flesh still visible where the body was severed (wildlife, the crime scene report noted, removed the organs), the torso and legs look like the lower half of a doll. The shapely legs are encased in fishnet stockings, the feet – slightly turned in – are still shod in patent leather sandals with four-inch heels. A scrap of gold-sequined fabric – like the bottom half of a bathing suit, but shredded and twisted at the waistline – covers Clara’s lower trunk.

The identity of the legs and torso was not established until later, although it didn’t take long to find the other half of Clara Gabler once the police went looking. It was only twenty yards away, wedged into a rock crevice, apparently dragged there by coyotes. This is the half with a face, a face with nibbled sockets for eyes. Looking at it is difficult: the freakish way her body suddenly stops, just below the rib cage…

Carla was found about fifty yards away, facedown in a little gully. According to the reports, animals and birds had been feeding on the bodies for approximately two weeks before the hiker found them.

Carla Gabler met death in a more conventional way than her sister. She was shot, execution style, behind the right ear. It’s almost a relief to sift through the photographs in her file, and I have to remind myself that she, too, was murdered in cold blood. The crime-scene photograph shows Carla in her costume: fishnet stockings, high-heeled sandals, gold-sequined panties, jewel-encrusted bra. She was facedown on a rock when shot. Between livor mortis, predator damage, and the exit wound made by a.38 caliber bullet, her face is unrecognizable.

If the photos are brutal, the text offers no refuge. The dry prose of the autopsy report notes that Clara was cut in half by a saw powerful enough to slice through her spinal column. The incision passes straight through the soft tissue of the abdomen, slightly above the umbilicus, severing the intestine at the duodenum… continuing through the intervertebral disk between the second and third lumbar vertebrae.

But it’s even worse than that. According to the medical examiner, injury to subject’s trunk occurred premortem. The cause of death was exsanguination.

The language of the report fails to blunt its meaning. Clara Gabler was alive when she was cut in half, alive when her murderer sent her soul howling into the next dimension.

In other words, I tell myself, the butchery wasn’t carried out in an effort to make the body more compact for disposal. It was an act of sadism.

But not, apparently, the result of a sex crime. Neither woman had been molested. In fact, according to the medical examiner, there was no evidence of recent sexual activity on the part of either one. Various documents in the files – Q and A’s with Yagoda, Riggins, with other residents of the Palomar Apartments, where the Gabler girls lived, and with fellow employees at the Parrot – explored the notion that maybe the twins did a little hooking on the side. “Hey,” Goldstein said, “they’re identical twins, it’s Vegas, they’re showgirls, fah Chrissake. A few three-ways, to help make ends meet? It wouldn’t exactly surprise anyone.” But according to Yagoda, Carla and Clara – while not virgins – were not “like that.” “Not at all,” Goldstein says. “Didn’t even go out that much. In fact, Yagoda said the Gabler girls worried about just that kind of thing. The twin thing. They hated it when people joked about three-ways – which happened, you know. They didn’t even like to double-date.”

Yagoda made the formal identification of the girls. For the record she stated that when the Gabler twins were alive, she could tell Clara from Carla with ease, through mannerisms and figures of speech. But now…

Distinguishing identification was eventually made through dental records. Both girls were cavity-free, but Clara chipped a tooth when she was nine and subsequently paid for a porcelain veneer – and this allowed investigators to determine which corpse was which.

The reports also make it clear that although, postmortem, predators may have dragged the corpses a few yards, the Gabler girls were not killed elsewhere and then dumped in Conjure Canyon. They were killed not far from where they were found.

I go through the binders again, first Clara, then Carla, taking notes. I spend a couple of hours plowing through the brutal eight-by-tens, looking at the sketches, reading every single document. And when I’m done, I have to say I feel sick, and tired. And it looks as if I’ve wasted my time.

Still, I’m in Vegas and I know that when I get back, Shoffler’s going to ask me – did I do this, did I do that? I can almost channel him: interview Tammy Yagoda, go to the Blue Parrot, visit the crime scene, find out where the costumes came from. And so on.

Goldstein nods his head when I tell him this. “You should speak to Chisworth, too. Barry Chisworth. He’s the M.E. worked the case. Bright guy. Probably noticed stuff didn’t make it into print.”

“Like what?”

Goldstein shrugs. “Who knows? A guess at the weapon, a hunch about the murderer – but nothing really substantiated by evidence. Guessing is not part of the M.E.’s job, and they don’t speculate on paper for good reason: anything they put down has a good chance of ending up in court. They’re real careful to confine written remarks to what they can back up. But of course they do have opinions. You get a good M.E., like Chisworth, he might pass his take on the thing on to the investigating officer. Which in this case, unfortunately, would be the late Jerry Olmstead.”

I write down Chisworth’s name, and the number for the M.E.’s office.

“But you can cross off the costumes,” Goldstein says. “I can tell you where they came from – the Parrot. What’s his name – Riggins – he was pissed about that. Jerry could not believe it. Here’s this brutal double murder and this bozo’s pissed about his costumes. We thought he might ask for the undamaged one back.”

“So why the costumes? Why were they wearing them?”

Goldstein shakes his head. “They were probably on their way to work. Apparently they liked to dress at home, do their makeup, too. Didn’t like the dressing room scene at the Parrot.” Goldstein’s digital watch emits a little chirp, and he stands up. “Hey, I gotta go.”

He sticks out his hand. I thank him for his help.

“My pleasure. And if there’s anything else – just call me. You planning to head out to Conjure Canyon at some point?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure what I could really see.” I don’t say what I’m thinking – which is that I don’t see the point of any of this, that I don’t see how the Gabler case can have anything to do with Sean and Kevin, that I believe it’s make-work, suggested by Shoffler to get me out of the house.

I can thank the detective for that, at least. Now that I’m not doing it – the long days and nights with my lists and phone calls, the constant and obsessive prowl through cyberspace – it seems like motion without direction. A gerbil wheel.

Goldstein shrugs. “In the gospel according to Ray, you always go to the scene. You never know how it’s going to speak to you.” He scoops up the files. “On the other hand” – he squints at me – “don’t try traipsing up to Conjure Canyon in your street shoes. In fact, you might consider hiring a guide. It’s rugged out there. And this time of year, you gotta get an early start or the sun will eat you up.”

Goldstein has a point about the sun. It takes five minutes of open doors and maxed-out air to cool down the car to the point where I can touch the steering wheel. I can see why the locals are so vigilant about window sunshields. It may be a dry heat but it hits you like a strong safety. I drive past a bank thermometer. A hundred and five.

Back at the Tropicana, a Bulgarian acrobat performs on the elevated stage. He stands on one hand on a wobbling tower of blocks, earning a splash of applause from the gathered crowd. Most of the Tropicana patrons don’t even look, transfixed by the plink-plink boing-boing of the slots.

Up in my room, I flesh out the notes I took at the police department and then make a to-do list:

1. The Blue Parrot/Riggins

2. Yagoda (roommate)

3. The M.E.: Barry Chisworth

4. Conjure Canyon

Might as well do it by the numbers. With a little luck, I can knock off the first three today and head out to the canyon early in the morning. But I’m not optimistic. As I reach for the phone book, I’ve got to say that this unturned stone of Shoffler’s doesn’t feel a whole lot different from the gerbil wheel.

Two young women, identical twins, dressed in provocative costumes. One butchered, one assassinated. Shoffler may be famous for his hunches, but he’s got to be wrong this time. This doesn’t have anything to do with my kids. It can’t.