by Tim Ellis
‘Not just in the orphanage, but after that. I want to know his life history.’
‘But what if . . .?’
‘No “what ifs”, Carl. Come back with his life history, or don’t come back at all.’
Dennis chuckled. ‘He said the same thing to us, Carl. And here we are.’
‘And you’re doing what?’ Carl aimed at Erik.
‘It’s Sunday. Sergeants don’t work on Sundays.’
The other three looked at each other.
He smiled. ‘I’ll be driving up to Bakersfield to speak to retired detective Roswell Higgins, see if he can’t shed some light on the missing file, the sketch of the killer and why the killer was never found when they had an eyewitness.’
‘Yeah,’ Greg said. ‘All seems a bit strange, doesn’t it?’
‘So, we’ll all be working tomorrow.’
They seemed quite happy with that state of affairs.
Erik said, ‘Did Mike ever mention the strand of hair found on victim number eight – Lisa Coburn?’
They shook their heads.
‘I went downstairs to speak to Ray Pinker and find out if he had anything for us, but as expected – he didn’t. However, he did mention that a long strand of dark hair was found on Lisa Coburn by Fred Newbarr, who passed it to Ray. When Ray examined it microscopically, he found that it was real hair, but that the cells were dead, which meant that it had come from a wig.’
‘Mike never mentioned it,’ Dennis said.
‘And there’s nothing about it on the board either,’ Carl observed.
Erik shook his head. ‘Mike dismissed it as irrelevant evidence. Told Ray not to bother with it.’
‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ Greg said. ‘Evidence is evidence.’
‘No, he shouldn’t have dismissed it, but he did. I’ve told Ray to speak to a professional wigmaker and see what they have to say about the hair.’
‘It could be the missing piece of the jigsaw,’ Carl suggested.
The other two laughed.
‘Which missing piece?’ Dennis said. ‘We have hundreds of missing pieces.’
‘Are we all clear on what we’re doing tomorrow?’ Erik asked them.
‘What about the others?’ Greg said.
‘It’ll be a while before they reach the end of those lists, but I’ll call Bill later and explain what we’re all doing. We’ll meet back here first thing Monday morning and see where we are.’
They were all in agreement.
‘Take the rest of the day off guys.’
‘It’s five-thirty,’ Carl said.
Greg grunted. ‘I have this weird feeling that you’re going to be the best Sergeant we ever had, Erik.’
The other guys laughed.
Erik watched them go and then called Marilyn.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s Erik. Do you fancy a drive out to Bakersfield tomorrow?’
‘You have to go there for work, don’t you?’
There was no point in lying to her. Building a relationship on a foundation of lies was no way to begin. ‘Yes, but that should only take me about an hour, probably less, and then I’m all yours. We could stop somewhere and have that picnic you were talking about.’
‘Have you got your own car, or will I be travelling in a police car like a criminal?’
‘No, I have my own car. I’ll put the roof down and we can feel the sun on our skin.’
‘What time will you pick me up?’
‘Nine-thirty?’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
He put the phone down and headed home. Could he call the bedroom he was occupying at Ruby’s his home? If he was being honest, the apartment that he’d been living in was hardly a home either. He had no affection for it. In fact, he couldn’t recall having had a home since his childhood. He’d lived in lots of places since, but he’d never considered them home. Home is where the heart is, or so the saying went. Well, his heart had been locked up in a dark place for as long as he could remember and now, he didn’t even know if he still had a heart.
Chapter Twenty
‘Who is it?’
‘Erik.’
She opened the door. ‘Eliza said you were dropping by.’
‘Is she here?’
‘In the living room.’
‘I need to speak to you after she’s gone.’
‘And that would be about the party I went to last night, wouldn’t it?’
‘She told you, did she?’
‘I’m not some errant child you can chastise, Erik. You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do. If I want to go to parties, then I will and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’
‘You’re being irresponsible. You may not be an errant child, but you are being childish.’
‘I am not. I’m a grown woman, I can look after myself.’
‘From what Don Carroll told me, that’s clearly not the case. If he hadn’t been there I dread to think what might have happened to you. And whether you like it or not, you are my responsibility. If it ever came out that I let you act as bait to draw the killer out into the open, I’d be finished as a police officer. In fact, I could even be prosecuted.’
‘It was my decision.’
‘Do you think anybody would believe that? It’s about time you grew up, Katie.’
‘Now, now children,’ Eliza intervened. ‘Play nicely. It’s like being at home with my three rascals. It seems to me that Erik has a point. If something had happened to you and it came out that you were working with him, people would put two and two together and make five. Tell him what you admitted to me earlier about your stupidity.’
Looking at the floor and shuffling her feet, she felt like a naughty schoolgirl. ‘I apologise, Erik. It was stupid of me and I’ll never do it again.’
‘You should have told me you were going.’
‘You’re right, I should have done.’
‘And after your escapades as a budding actress, did you learn anything?’
‘Only that men are filthy, vicious . . .’
‘About the murders?’
‘No.’
‘So you put your life in danger for no reason at all?’
‘Yes.’
Eliza intervened again. ‘I think we should kiss and make up, and agree never to talk about it again, don’t you?’
They stared at each other.
Erik made the first moved and hugged her. ‘I’m glad you’re all right.’
‘And I’m sorry that I went to the party without telling you.’
‘There we are,’ Eliza said. ‘Right, can we move on to why we’re really here now? It’s Saturday evening and I have a husband and three more children waiting for me at home.’
Erik said, ‘Did you bring the newspaper reports?’
Eliza pointed at the pinboard. ‘If you’re looking for photographs of the boy and the sketch artist’s drawing of the killer you’ll be disappointed – there are none.’
‘I was hoping there would be, but I’m not surprised there aren’t.’
‘Why?’
He told them about the missing file and the five names recorded on the record.
‘John Fenton!’ Eliza said, her eyes opening wide. ‘The Deputy Chief of Police?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is killing me not being able to report everything I know. I have to keep a long list of information that I can’t divulge, because I sometimes get confused about what is public knowledge and what isn’t.’
‘I’m going to visit a retired detective on that list called Roswell Higgins tomorrow in Bakersfield to find out if he can shed any light on what happened during the investigation and where the missing file might be.’
‘It appears that finding the original crime has opened the investigation up,’ Katie said.
Erik nodded. ‘Yes. It seems likely that Anthony Taylor is the killer. We know that he was taken into care by Family Services and they sent him to Saint Vincent de Paul’s Convent and Orphans Asylum in Boyle Heights to be looke
d after by the nuns. I have a detective going there tomorrow morning to find out what happened to him.’
‘I’m sure he won’t be calling himself by his real name now, Erik,’ Eliza said.
‘No, I expect not, but I have a detective trying to locate a photograph of him as a six year-old boy, which we’ll ask a sketch artist to age-progress in the hope of obtaining a likeness of what he might look like now. Also, I’ve asked another detective to find the original sketch artist and the drawing he made of the killer.’
Katie was standing in front of the pin-boards with her back to them. ‘I have a theory,’ she said without turning round.
‘Oh?’ Eliza said.
‘The police didn’t find the killer of Jeanne Taylor in February 1916 – why not? They had a six year-old eyewitness who saw what happened to his mother; he gave the police a detailed description of the man who raped and murdered her and the police sketch artist produced a likeness. What happened to that drawing of the killer? Why wasn’t it in all the newspapers?’ She turned round to stare at them. ‘What if Anthony Taylor is murdering these women now to force the police into solving the original crime – the rape and murder of his mother?’
‘It’s a bit far-fetched,’ Erik said.
‘Why else link all these murders to the original crime?’ She wiped the information off the blackboard and began writing on it again. ‘We’re thinking of the original crime as being after the nine murders now, because that’s the order in which we found them. What if we put Jeanne Taylor’s murder first. We have a silent movie star who is raped and strangled in Harbour Regional Park by an unknown assailant; the woman’s six year-old son hides in the bushes, sees what happens and who did it; he provides a detailed description of the killer to the police; the police gradually run the investigation down to nothing and fail to catch the culprit. In the meantime, the boy is sent to an orphanage to live his life and is forgotten. Thirty-two years later, he discovers that the killer was never brought to justice, and devises a plan to force the police to reveal his mother’s killer.’
‘If he wanted us to re-examine the death of his mother, he could simply have walked into the police department and asked us,’ Erik said. ‘Instead, he’s recreated a crime that occurred thirty-two years ago and has taken us two years to find.’
‘And if he had walked into the police department with that request, would you have dropped everything to oblige?’ Katie grunted. ‘I doubt it very much. If you recall, I have experience of the helpfulness offered to the public by the police department.’
‘We might have looked at the file.’
‘What file? You’ve said that there is no file. Maybe he knows the original investigation was a cover-up, but he has no evidence. That’s what he wants you to find – evidence of what really happened.’
Eliza’s brow furrowed. ‘I agree with Erik. It’s a bit far-fetched.’
‘To a normal person it’s all far-fetched, but I think we’re agreed that the killer is not a normal person.’
They were all quiet for a time.
‘It’s an interesting theory, but it doesn’t help us, Katie,’ Erik said.
‘Maybe it does. Maybe in order to solve these murders . . .’ She pointed at the photographs of the nine murdered women on the pinboard. ‘You have to solve the original murder of his mother. I don’t think he’ll stop killing until his mother’s killer has been identified and brought to justice – that’s his overarching motive.’
‘Well, I suppose by default, that’s what we are doing. As I said, I’m going to Bakersfield tomorrow morning to speak to the retired detective who worked on the original case . . .’
‘Why aren’t you speaking to John Fenton, the Deputy Chief of Police?’ Eliza asked.
‘Because he’s the Deputy Chief of Police, and he was the last person to access the file.’
‘All the more reason to speak to him I would have thought.’
‘And say what?’
‘Ask him why he didn’t identify the killer when he had an eyewitness who gave the police a detailed description of the man; where the sketch artist’s drawing is and why it didn’t appear in any of the local newspapers at the time; where the file is now . . . There’s a lot of questions I’d like to ask him.’
‘I’m sure, but he’s the Deputy Chief of Police, one of my bosses and a powerful man who could ruin both our careers. If he was involved in a cover-up, then by marching in there and asking him questions about what happened at the time, I’d be alerting him to the fact that we’re investigating Jeanne Taylor’s murder, and opening it up to the possibility that he’d dispose of any evidence that might still be left. That’s why I’m going to see the retired detective first. After that, then we’ll see where we are.’
‘I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ Eliza said.
‘I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Mrs Linton.’
The two women laughed.
‘There are a couple of other pieces of information that we’ve discovered also. First, Trent Duncan – a silent movie director – who directed Jeanne Taylor in a couple of early silent movies died two years ago when the murders first started. He was rumoured to be the father of Taylor’s son, which he denied. However, that didn’t stop him being arrested for her murder, but he was later released due to lack of evidence.’
‘And we have no idea if the sketch artist’s likeness of the killer resembled him?’
‘No. But when I visited his wife in Long Beach earlier, she didn’t think he murdered Jeanne Taylor. She also gave me an old photograph of Duncan from around that time. If we ever do find the drawing, then we’ll be able to compare the two.’
‘What do you think?’ Katie asked.
He shook his head. ‘From the little I know about him, I don’t think he’s the murderer, but I’m prepared to be proven wrong. Also, the County Coroner found a long dark hair on victim number eight – Lisa Coburn. He passed it to our police chemist who examined it microscopically and discovered it came from a wig. The reason I’ve only just found out about it is that Mike O’Meara dismissed it as irrelevant. Now, he might very well be right, but he didn’t tell any of the other guys that it’d been found, nor did he pursue it as a possible lead, so I have Ray Pinker – that’s the police chemist, consulting a professional wigmaker on Monday to find out what else they can tell us about the hair, or the wig that it came from.’
‘This is Hollywood,’ Eliza said. ‘There are thousands of wigs used every day in the movies.’
‘That’s exactly right. It’s probably nothing, but it should be examined rather than dismissed out of hand.’
‘Of course.’
‘Lastly, the latest victim is called Eva Steiner who came here from Salt Lake City a week ago. She was sharing an apartment with two other women who knew very little about her. She went out on Friday afternoon without telling them where she was going and never came back.’
Katie wrote the information on the pinboard.
‘I also have four detectives narrowing down that list of male stylists you produced, Eliza, based on the description provided by Doctor Caplan. It’ll take time, but we should end up with a more manageable list of men who we’ll examine in detail. If Anthony Taylor is on that list, then we’ll find him.’
‘What if he’s not on that list?’ Katie said.
Erik shrugged. ‘Then we’ll have to try something else. Anyway, that’s where we are. Most of our efforts are now on Jeanne Taylor’s murder – the missing file; the sketch artist’s drawing of the killer; a photograph of Anthony Taylor; what happened to the boy once he went to the orphanage; and finding out from retired detective Roswell Higgins what happened during the original investigation in 1916.’
As she ushered Eliza and Erik out Katie said, ‘I think I’ll have a lazy day tomorrow.’
‘And me,’ Eliza said. ‘My husband and children think I don’t live at home anymore.’
‘I’ll see you on Monday evening, Katie,’ Erik said.
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‘All right. Have a good trip to Bakersfield tomorrow.’
‘Thanks.’
***
Sunday, January 25, 1948
The knocking came from somewhere, but he couldn’t identify where. And the more he thought about it, the more he thought that maybe he was the person who was knocking, but knocking on what? Why? There was no door in front of him, only blackness and a dark crevasse that he couldn’t see the bottom of.
‘Erik.’
Who was that calling his name? Where were they calling from?
‘Erik. There’s a telephone call for you.’
He sat up in bed. His pyjamas were drenched. His face was covered in sweat. Where had he been? What had he seen?
‘Erik, it’s Ruby.’
His watch showed it was ten to seven.
‘Yes, Ruby.’
‘There’s a Detective Carl Seger on the telephone.’
‘Coming. He put his dressing gown on and opened the door.’
Ruby stared at him. ‘Bad night?’
‘I guess so.’
‘I heard you screaming and crying out.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Absolutely no need to be sorry. I’m sorry that I can’t help. Maybe you need to see someone.’
‘You’re not the first to suggest that.’
He picked up the telephone. ‘Erik Urban.’
‘Erik, it’s Carl.’ Carl’s voice oozed sickliness.
‘You don’t sound so good, Carl.’
‘No, no, I’m not. In fact, I’m the opposite of good. Maybe I’m coming down with something, but I can’t stop puking and shivering. I just called to say I’m going back to bed.’
‘Look after yourself, Carl.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t get to the orphanage.’
‘Not to worry. I’ll cover it. You get yourself well.’
‘Thanks, Erik.’
He hung up the telephone and stood there facing the wall. Now what? The Mother Superior was expecting Carl at eleven o’clock. He was due to pick up Marilyn at nine-thirty. He could do it – pick Marilyn up, drive to the orphanage, meet with the Mother Superior and then drive to Bakersfield, but it would screw up the whole day, the picnic and possibly his blossoming relationship with Marilyn. All the other detectives had their own tasks, so there really was only him available. Maybe he could call the Mother Superior and rearrange the appointment for tomorrow. That wasn’t really an option, he needed the information today.