Twisted

CHAPTER 12

Jewell Blank, the fourteen-year-old girl murdered in Griffith Park, had relatives, but according to Detective Max Stokes’s notes, they hadn’t been helpful.

The mother was Grace Blank, twenty-nine, single, a barmaid, living with her boyfriend, Thomas Crisp, thirty-two, an unemployed trucker and “biker type.” Neither had seen Jewell for over a year, since she’d run away from their double-wide on the outskirts of Bakersfield. Neither, it appeared, had searched for her with any enthusiasm.

Twenty-nine years old meant Grace had given birth to Jewell when she was fifteen and Petra had a good idea of what came with that.

Another kid in Griffith Park. That made Petra’s stomach knot up, as she thought of Billy Straight. Same background, same escape. Billy had lived in the park, like a feral child, scrounging Dumpsters for food and narrowly avoiding death. But for a happier ending, he could’ve been sitting on a cloud next to Jewell Blank.

Petra had rescued Billy. For the first year, after his grandmother took him in, they’d stayed in touch- regular phone calls, occasional outings. Now, Billy was fifteen, nearly six feet tall, and a prep-school junior. On his way to Stanford, Mrs. Adamson confided. She’d already talked to the dean.

It had been months since Petra had heard from him. Which was probably good, at least from his perspective. His life was in order, what use would he have for the police?

She found no record that Jewell Blank’s case had been transferred to another detective.

Max Stokes appeared to have worked the case hard, getting help, as it turned out, from Shirley Lenois. The two veteran detectives had scoured the streets, interviewed scores of other runaways, checked the shelters and the churches and the agencies.

Jewell had squatted, on and off, in some of Hollywood’s last remaining abandoned buildings and was known to her street-kid peers as “stuck-up,” an assertive panhandler, an adroit shoplifter. No one could say if she’d prostituted herself for money, but she had slept with boys for drugs.

Multi-drug user: weed, pills, meth, acid, Ecstasy. Not heroin, though, everyone agreed. Needles scared Jewell. Petra returned to the autopsy report, avoiding the photos of the little girl’s head. No needle tracks. The tox screen revealed significant levels of cannabis, alcohol, and pseudoephedrine, probably from an OTC decongestant.

According to the other kids, Jewell frequented the park when she got in a bad mood and didn’t want to hang with anyone else.

No, she’d never spoken of meeting anyone there.

No, there were no boyfriends or regular johns in her life. At least, not that she’d ever mentioned.

She’d been found fully clothed with no evidence of rape. The coroner’s conclusion was that she’d been sexually active for some time.

A premortem snapshot had been stapled to the file. What looked to be a school photo of a kid around nine. Jewell Blank had been dark-haired, wan, freckled, reluctant to smile.

Grace Blank and Thomas Crisp wanted to know if the city would pay for funeral expenses. Max Stokes’s notes were terse on that subject:

“I informed them that death arrangements etc. were the family’s responsibility. Respondents were displeased by that info., said they’d get back to me.”

Jewell Blank’s body had sat in the morgue for a month before an Inglewood mortuary had picked it up for cremation.

Was there any point talking to Max? Disrupting the poor guy’s retirement by reminding him of one that had gotten away?

She looked around the room. Three detectives hunched over piles of paperwork. That young, good-looking one, Eddie Baker; Ryan Miller, another stud; and Barney Fleischer, gaunt, bald, ancient, nearing retirement himself.

Petra walked over to Barney’s desk. He was filling out a requisition form for office supplies. Demi-glasses perched on his beaklike nose. His handwriting was tiny, pretty, almost calligraphic.

She asked him if he knew where Max Stokes was.

“Corvallis, Washington,” he said, continuing to write. “He’s got a daughter up there, Karen. She’s a doctor, never got married so you can probably find her under Stokes.”

No curiosity about why Petra wanted to know. Petra thanked him and returned to Jewell Blank’s file. Skimming a bit more, she put it aside, called Corvallis, and got office and home numbers for Karen Stokes, M.D.

Max answered the phone.

“Petra Connor,” he said. “We were just sitting down for dinner.”

“Sorry, I’ll call back later.”

“No, it’s fine, just cold cuts. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Picturing Max’s ruddy, mustachioed face, she told him about reviewing the Blank file, gave him the same nosy-intern story.

“You’re thinking of reworking it?” he said.

“Don’t know yet, Max. Depends on what I learn.”

“I hope you decide yes. Maybe you can do better than me.”

“I doubt that.”

“You never know, Petra. New blood and all that.”

“You and Shirley, that’s a lot of detective ability.”

“Poor Shirley. So… what can I tell you?”

“I really don’t know, Max. Seems to me you guys did all you could.”

“I thought we did… I still think about that one from time to time. Poor little girl. Everyone said she was aggressive, had a temper, but looking at her… such a tiny little thing. It was brutal.”

The autopsy report stared up at Petra. Jewell’s stats. Five-one, ninety-four pounds.

Occipital injuries…

What was the point of all this?

Max Stokes was saying, “… with the parents- actually just one parent, the mother. Plus that boyfriend of hers.”

“Solid citizens,” said Petra.

“My gut pegged him, Thomas Crisp, as the bad guy. Your typical trash boyfriend scenario, maybe gets a little too close to the daughter, you know? The coroner said Jewell had been having sex for a few years. I’d bet Crisp abused her, that would be a good reason for running away. I never asked him directly, just hinted around and he got squirrelly. Plus, he had a felony record. Bad checks, attempted welfare fraud. I know it’s not sex crimes or murder, but lowlife is lowlife. His attitude in general was bad- he didn’t even fake caring about Jewell. I checked him out carefully, even drove up to Bakersfield. Guy had an alibi. During the time of the murder, he’d been on a three-day bender with a bunch of other lowlifes. First they bar-crawled, then they bought more booze and went back to the mother and Crisp’s trailer. Neighbors in the trailer park complained and the police paid a call. Crisp was definitely in Bakersfield the whole time, everyone saw him.”

“What about the mother?”

“She was there, too. Borderline retarded, if you ask me. She did seem to care a little, but every time she started to cry Crisp nudged her in the ribs and she shut up. His big concern was who was going to pay for the burial.”

“I read your notes,” said Petra.

Max sighed. “What can I tell you. Sometimes you don’t win.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Enjoying retirement?”

“I dunno. I’ve been thinking of getting a security job. Just to get me out of the house.”

“Sure,” said Petra. “Makes sense.”

“Anyway, good luck on little Jewell.”

“One more thing, Max. I don’t see any transfer.”

“I wanted to transfer it to Shirley and she wanted to take it. Because she’d already started. Actually, it was she who came to me, wanting to partner. Because she’d caught another case, couple of years before, that probably wasn’t the same guy but there were some similarities.”

“Really?” said Petra.

“Yeah,” said Max. “Another head-bashing, but not a kid, some woman, up in the Hollywood Hills. That one, a dog got killed, too, what was the name… I’m having a senior moment.”

The name was Coral Langdon. Petra said, “Shirley thought the cases might be tied in?”

“At first she did, but in the end, she didn’t. Too many differences, what with Jewell being a poor runaway and the other one- what was her name- being a financially comfortable divorcée with a nice house. That one- Lambert, Lan-something… anyway, that one Shirley had worked the ex-husband as the main suspect because the divorce hadn’t been friendly. Plus, neighbors said he’d always hated the dog. He claimed an alibi, too, but it wasn’t much of one. Sitting at home watching the tube, no one else in the apartment. But Shirley never found anything to contradict him and one neighbor did say his car had been in his driveway around the time of the murder.”

“How come Shirley didn’t get Jewell Blank’s case?”

“I assumed she did,” said Max.

“If she did, there’s no record of it.”

“Hmm. Don’t know what to tell you, Petra.”

“In the end Shirley didn’t think Blank and the woman with the dog were similars.”

“The only thing similar was head-bashing- Langdon, that was it. Something Langdon. So Shirley didn’t work Jewell, huh?”

“Doesn’t appear so.”

“That’s kind of funny,” said Max. “You remember Shirley. Tenacious. Real tragedy what happened to her, I didn’t even know she skied.”

She thanked Max, apologized for interrupting his dinner, hung up, and turned to Coral Langdon’s file.

The murdered woman’s ex was an insurance salesman named Harvey Lee Langdon. Insurance tipped you off to the best of motives, but Harvey had sold property casualty, not term life. Shirley had taken a close look at Coral’s papers anyway, and contacted a bunch of insurance companies. No juicy policy, anywhere. No financial ties at all between Coral and Harvey since their divorce three years ago, except for five hundred a month alimony. Coral Langdon had worked as an executive secretary to an aerospace honcho, made a fine living on her own.

The dog, Brandy, had been a bone of contention in the Langdon marriage. Harvey had expressed dismay at his ex-wife’s demise but had smirked when hearing about the cockapoo. Shirley had transcribed his comments verbatim, quotation marks and all:

“Stupid little bitch. Know what her motto was? The world is my toilet.”

A shrink could have fun with that. Harvey had definitely been worth looking at, but Shirley had made no progress along those lines.

The modus and the crime scenes- two females bludgeoned in wooded areas of Hollywood- had caused the tenacious Detective Lenois to make a connection between Langdon and Jewell Blank. Had she been unimpressed by the June 28 angle?

Most likely she hadn’t noticed.

Would Shirley- astute, dogged, dedicated- have missed something like that?

Sure. The date of a homicide was something Petra never paid much attention to. As a detective, Shirley would have zeroed in on crime scene details.

The head-bashing. Like Isaac said, it was rare.

In the end, Shirley had decided the cases weren’t linked, but she hadn’t known about two previous head-bashings on the exact same date.

And now Shirley was dead and, once again, there was no evidence the case had been transferred.

Petra studied the photocopied driver’s license attached to the file. Coral Langdon had been an attractive woman with a tan, oval face under a short cap of blond hair. Five-seven, one-thirty. Slender. Probably strong, too. According to Shirley’s notes, Coral had worked out at a gym, studied kickboxing.

Meaning whoever had brained her was in good shape. And stealthy enough to get her from behind.

Petra visualized it. Langdon taking the cockapoo out for a night-time stroll, he steps out of the shadows…

Jewell Blank would’ve been a whole lot easier. A tiny little girl in the park.

No doubt, Shirley had wondered about that, decided it wasn’t a match.

But six cases on the same date, that was different.

Like Isaac said, statistically significant.

Like Isaac said.

Petra figured that phrase would be adhering to her brain for a while.

She went back and studied the first two murders in detail. Marta Doebbler, the twenty-nine-year-old housewife who’d gone to see a play at the Pantages, left for the ladies’ room and didn’t return, and Geraldo Solis, the Wilshire Division case. Elderly man found sitting at his breakfast room table, brains leaking onto a plate of sausage and eggs. Now there was a charming detail.

Nothing else about the Solis file sparked her interest, but a notation on Marta Doebbler gave her pause: Doebbler had been called out of the theater by a cell phone squawk, and the detectives had traced the call to a pay phone around the corner from the theater.

Had someone lured her out? The fact that she’d complied, coupled with her body being dumped in her own car- unlike the others- said it was someone she knew. The detectives had interviewed the husband, an engineer named Kurt Doebbler, and remarked that he seemed “overly calm.” Doebbler had an alibi: home with his and Marta’s nine-year-old daughter, Katya.

She reread the Solis file. No sign of breaking and entering. Someone the old man had known as well?

No apparent connection between the victims but could it have been the same person?

She jotted down the names of the D’s on both cases. Conrad Ballou and Enrique Martinez on Doebbler, another unfamiliar name on Solis, DII Jacob Hustaad, Wilshire Division.

Barney Fleischer was still at his desk, pen in his hand, but reading. Blue folder of his own. She’d always thought of Barney as end-of-career deadweight. Was he still working cases?

She approached him again, said, “Sorry, but I was wondering if you knew any of these guys.”

He closed the murder book- a file labeled “Chang”- and examined the list. “Got a cold-case assignment?”

“Self-imposed assignment,” said Petra. “The kid, Gomez, thought I should look at a few old files.”

“The genius,” said Barney. “Nice kid. I like him.”

“He talks to you?”

“From time to time. He likes to hear about the old days.” Barney smiled. “And who better than a geezer like me?” He put the Chang file on his desk. “That’s one I did five years ago. No one gives me anything, anymore. I should leave but I’m not sure it would be good for me.”

He peered at the list again. “Connie Ballou’s a real old-timer. He was here well before I arrived, probably has ten years on me. He left around five years ago.” Barney frowned.

“What?” said Petra.

“Connie left under somewhat… clouded circumstances.”

“What kind of circumstances?”

“He had a bit of a drinking problem. We all knew about it, we all covered. One night he tanked up, got behind the wheel of an unmarked, and crashed it into a building on Cahuenga. That was kind of hard to cover for.”

“How was he as a detective? When he was sober.”

Barney shrugged. “That wasn’t too often.”

“No Sherlock,” said Petra.

“More like Deputy Dawg, when I knew him. But I heard he used to be okay in the early days.”

“What about his partner, Martinez?”

“Enrique had no big problems, but was no great talent, either. He got tarred by Connie’s brush. The brass decided he should’ve reported Connie’s drinking and demoted him down to uniform. The obvious question was what about all those other partners Connie had ridden with. But Enrique was the goat. I think he went over to Central Division as a deskman, but who knows how long he lasted there.”

“He’s living in Florida now.”

“Makes sense,” said Barney. “He’s Cuban.”

A lush and a no-talent. There was a good chance Marta Doebbler’s murder hadn’t been worked to the max. Nor, as far as Petra could tell, had it been transferred. She asked Barney about that.

Right away, he said, “Schoelkopf.”

“He doesn’t transfer cases?”

“He doesn’t like to, if they’ve gone cold. What with all the manpower problems and the gang issues. You wouldn’t know about that because you tend to solve your cases.” Barney removed his reading glasses and massaged the ridge they’d etched into his nose. His eyes were wide, clear, blue, nested in a thatch of wrinkles.

“I know you don’t like him, Petra, but I can’t say as I’d do it any different. It’s always a matter of priority. Cases go cold for a reason.”

“Who says I don’t like him?”

Barney grinned and Petra returned the favor.

He looked at the list again, said, “Jack Hustaad’s dead. Suicide. Not job-related. We played golf together once in a while. Jack was a four-pack-a-day smoker, got lung cancer, started chemotherapy, decided he didn’t like it, and ate some painkillers. It’s not a completely irrational decision, right?”

“Right,” said Petra.

“Anyway.”

“Thanks, Barney.”

“I assume,” said the old detective, “that you want your research kept private.”

“That would be good,” said Petra.

“No problem,” said Barney. “I don’t like him either.”