by Tim Ellis
They nodded.
‘Greg, you’re with Dennis; Bill with John; Carl with George; and John with Jack.’
They made their way out of the office.
Same Rich said as they passed, ‘What about me?’
‘I can put you in the cells, or you can shut up and sit there?’
‘I’ll sit here.’
‘Good choice. Don’t move until I say you can.’
Rich nodded.
***
She’d struggled against the leather straps holding her wrists and ankles, but all to no avail. There was no way she was ever going to free herself. The straps were at least a quarter inch thick, two inches wide, with solid metal buckles and were threaded through a slot in the steel table to keep her pinned down. All she could do was lie there and wait for the inevitable. She’d even dozed off for a time. How long, she had no idea. There was no sound or daylight to gauge the passage of the day. It had surprised her how quickly she’d become disorientated, and how her mind had begun playing tricks on her. For all she knew, she could have been there for one hour, or the whole day.
When she did hear a noise, she didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened. Unlike most captives who had no idea what to expect, she knew precisely what was going to happen to her – rape and strangulation. Before, realising that no one was coming to rescue her, she’d had this notion that she could set herself free from her restraints and save herself, but now that was no longer an option.
Without the hope of rescue or escape what did she have left? She began reminiscing about her life – her childhood; her mother’s illness; her father’s strength before he lost Annie; her time studying at university; Murray Mitchum who said he didn’t want sex with her, he just wanted her knickers as a keepsake. She’d laughed so much that she peed herself and nearly gave him her knickers. There were so many memories that popped into her head, but they would be extinguished soon, and that would be the end of her experiences.
The door opened.
Lilly Carter came in, stood over her and slid off the dark-haired wig she was wearing to reveal a skull cap, which covered Anthony Taylor’s short blond hair and receding hairline. ‘A wig makes your head sweat and itch. I wish I didn’t have to wear one, but I do.’
‘I went to see the nuns at Boyle Heights yesterday. I spoke to Sister Augustin.’
‘I’m surprised she’s still alive.’
‘She told me what the other boys did to you.’
‘That was nothing to what happened to me afterwards. I lived on the streets for a couple of months until I was taken in by what I thought were a nice couple, but once they found out what I was, they sold me to a man who knew that there were people in the world who had strange sexual appetites, especially for children, and more so for a young hermaphrodite. For the next five years I was sexually abused by so many men I lost track of the number. I became a murderer when I was twelve years old, but the abuse didn’t stop. I went to juvenile hall where I was abused by more men. After that, I was sentenced to ten years on an Arizona chain gang for nearly killing a man. And you don’t want to know what they do to hermaphrodites in prison, believe me.’
‘What brought you back here?’
‘I read about the death of my father.’
‘Trent Duncan?’
‘No, he wasn’t my father. And Duncan wasn’t the only person who moved from Fort Lee in New Jersey to Hollywood. Many of the film companies and their people moved to Hollywood as well. One such company was the Independent Moving Pictures Company who were later bought out by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company. Of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time. After I escaped from the orphanage, I made my way back to the place where my mother and I had been staying, and I found a hidden letter written to me by my mother, which stated that a man called Nathan Seward was my father. I didn’t know who he was, or what he looked like, but the name lodged in a dark corner of my memory. Gradually, what I saw that night in Harbour Regional Park dimmed, and I forgot about Nathan Seward until one day two years ago I read in the newspapers that he had died. All the memories came flooding back.’
‘Which is when the murders began?’
‘Yes.’
‘My sister Annie was your seventh victim.’
‘I’m sorry. I never really meant to hurt anybody, but something inside me snapped that first time. After that, I knew what I had to do.’
‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’
Taylor grunted. ‘The police are corrupt. The sketch artist gave me a copy of the drawing he’d made of the killer from the description I provided as a six year-old boy and after I read Nathan Seward’s obituary, I did some research on him and found younger pictures of him that resembled the drawing. The police knew very well who murdered my mother, but they chose not to bring him to justice. That just wasn’t right. The world needs to know who the killer was, and what the police did. I’ve lived my whole life in the belief that I was responsible for my mother’s death, and that it was my fault the police never caught the killer.’
‘It’ll be all right now,’ she said. ‘The detective in charge of the investigation is an honest man. He knows that the police failed both you and your mother before and wants to bring the officer responsible to justice. Let him help you?’
‘It’s too late for that.’
‘No, it’s not. I can help you.’
‘Nobody can help me.’ He/she picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting her clothes off.
‘Please don’t do this.’
***
The cars pulled up outside 1493 Wiltshire Boulevard.
Erik was glad to see that the place hadn’t already gone up in flames.
The detective pairs were still together.
There were no lights on and the front door was locked, but there was a maroon and brown Chevrolet van parked outside.
He was beginning to doubt that they’d got it right, that Lilly Carter was Anthony Taylor, and that is was the place where all the victims had been murdered.
‘Break the door down,’ he said. It was a last roll of the dice. It was all they had. If it wasn’t here, then Katie Brazil was lost.
Greg and Dennis shouldered the metal and glass door open, went in first with revolvers in hand and switched the lights on. There was no one there, but they all saw the black and white photographs of the silent movie stars, including a pretty Jeanne Taylor in a film called Kiss Me Again.
‘This is the place,’ Erik said. ‘Search everywhere. Katie Brazil has got to be here.’
They ripped the place apart until George found marks on the floor in front of a storage cabinet. It didn’t take them long to locate the hidden catch. A gap appeared between the cabinet and the wall. John and Jack manhandled the cabinet forward on a hinge to reveal a wooden door.
‘Go,’ Erik said.
Bill and John led the way down a set of concrete steps.
The others followed.
Erik shuffled down last.
At the bottom of the steps was a corridor that extended at least a hundred feet to the left.
At the end of the corridor they came upon another door. When Bill opened the door, he found a woman strapped to a table with a half-man/half-woman standing over her with a knife. To Bill, it appeared as if the creature was going to kill the woman on the table, so he fired his gun twice without really thinking about it.
Anthony Taylor, also known as Lilly Carter, died and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Erik covered Katie’s nakedness up with a blanket and released the straps at her wrists and ankles. ‘I thought you were lost,’ he said.
She hugged him. ‘I don’t think he was going to kill me, you know. When he heard you coming, he picked up the knife and stood over me as if he was. Thank you for saving me anyway.’
‘I wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t keep wandering off without telling people who care about where you’re going.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. It never occurred to me that L
illy Carter was Anthony Taylor.’
‘It was the strand of hair from the wig that saved you.’ He helped her off the table.
Carl came over with a blanket.
With Erik’s help, Katie wrapped it around herself. ‘Thank you.’
‘Carl, you and George take Miss Brazil home and obtain a statement from her.’
‘Will do.’
‘I’ll call in and check on you later,’ he told her.
‘Okay.’
‘Everyone else out. This is a crime scene now and I don’t want any evidence to go missing. Bill, call the County Coroner and Ray Pinker – the chemist. John, make sure those are the only two calls he makes.’
Aftermath
Erik married Marilyn Rackham three months later and he moved into her apartment for a short time before finding a two-bedroom house in the suburbs, which was midway between the Cahuenga Branch Library and the Police Department. It also had the advantage of a second bedroom, which they turned into a nursery for the child they were expecting.
He also went to see a doctor who helped him come to terms with what he’d done and seen during the war. His nightmares became more manageable, but they never completely went away.
In 1956, when Lieutenant Bob O’Callaghan retired, Erik was promoted to Lieutenant.
***
Katie Brazil never did co-author an academic paper with Howard Caplan, because she was far too busy making a career for herself in the police force. She eventually joined the Homicide Division as a detective in 1957, six months after Erik became Lieutenant and asked for her. She wasn’t the first detective in the LAPD, but she was the first detective in the Homicide Division.
Katie continued to live in apartment 5F at George Washington Heights. She never married, because she couldn’t come to terms with the idea of a man ever having control of her life. She stayed friends with Martha Barbarossa and Ruby Lowenstein until their deaths a week apart in 1959.
***
Following the scoop and her series of articles on the starlet murders, Eliza Linton was promoted to city editor of the Herald-Express.
***
A copy of the original sketch artist’s drawing was found in Anthony Taylor’s basement. They matched it to a young Nathan Seward who was credited with Jeanne Taylor’s murder. Deputy Chief of Police John Fenton and retired detective Roswell Higgins were both arrested for corruption in public office, but even though they found the missing police file in the safe in Fenton’s house, the charges were dismissed due to the statute of limitations. John Fenton was forced to retire on a full pension and was not offered the position of Chief of Police. He was shot and killed in a restaurant six weeks after his retirement party.
***
Erik was unable to discover which of his detectives acted as John Fenton’s spy, so they were all replaced with new up-and-coming detectives. Corruption in the police force was being tackled head-on by Mayor Bowron and Chief of Police Arthur Hohmann.
***
Doctor Howard Caplan joined the FBI in 1962 and began teaching Applied Criminology whilst also developing further his theory that a killer’s likely personality characteristics could be derived from the way in which they committed the crime, and which was eventually to become known as criminal profiling.
***
Anthony Taylor was buried next to his mother. No one attended the funeral.
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Author’s Note:
I’ve taken some liberties with historical fact. Eliza Linton is based on Agness “Aggie” Underwood (1902 – 1984) one of the first American female crime reporters; and Doctor Howard Caplan is based on Howard Teton, a police officer who joined the FBI in 1962, and who hadn’t developed his hypothesis about criminal profiling until about 1960 – eleven years before this book.
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Thank you for choosing and reading my book. If you enjoyed it, I would be grateful if you could write a review and post it on Amazon.co.uk and/or Amazon.com.
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About the Author
Tim Ellis was born in the bowels of Hammersmith Hospital, London, on a dark and stormy night, and now lives in Cheshire with his wife and one Shih Tzu. In-between, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at eighteen and completed twenty-two years’ service, leaving in 1993 having achieved the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 (Regimental Sergeant Major). Since then, he settled in Essex, and worked in secondary education as a senior financial manager, in higher education as an associate lecturer/tutor at Lincoln and Anglia Ruskin Universities, and as a consultant for the National College of School Leadership. His final job, before retiring to write fiction full time in 2009, was as Head and teacher of Behavioural Sciences (Psychology/Sociology) in a secondary school. He has a PhD and an MBA in Educational Management, and an MA in Education.
Discover other titles by Tim Ellis at http://timellis.weebly.com/
Also, come and say hello on his FB Fanpage:
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Genghis Khan
Warrior: Path of Destiny
Warrior: Scourge of the Steppe
The Knowledge of Time
Second Civilisation
Orc Quest
Book I: Prophecy
Harte & KP
Solomon’s Key
Parish & Richards
A Life for a Life
The Wages of Sin
The Flesh is Weak
The Shadow of Death
His Wrath is Come
The Breath of Life
The Dead Know Not
Be Not Afraid
The House of Mourning
Through a Glass Darkly
A Lamb to the Slaughter
Silent in the Grave
In the Twinkling of an Eye
A Time to Kill
Deceit is in the Heart
The Fragments that Remain
The Kisses of an Enemy
Evidence of Things Not Seen
Dominion of Darkness
There is no Fear in Love
All is Vanity
Wings of the Dawn
I Will Fear No Evil
The Heart Knoweth
Through the Eye of a Needle
Quigg
The Twelve Murders of Christmas (Novella)
Body 13
The Graves at Angel Brook
The Skulls Beneath Eternity Wharf
The Terror at Grisly Park
The Haunting of Bleeding Heart Yard
The Enigma of Apocalypse Heights (Novella)
The Corpse in Highgate Cemetery
The Lost Children of Bethnal Green (Novella)
The Charnel House in Copperfield Street
Tom Gabriel
Footprints of the Dead
Whispers of the Dead
Souls of the Dead
Games of the Dead
Rage of the Dead
Stone & Randall
Jacob’s Ladder
The Gordian Knot
Josiah Dark
Dark Christmas (Novella)
Dark Heart (Novella)
Dark Shadows
Inigo Morgan
As You Sow, So Shall You Reap (Novella)
The Measure of All Things (Novella)
Cyrus Kane
An Ill Wind (Novella)
Chains of Illusion (Novella)
Edge
The Serial Killer’s Apprentice
Mata Hari
The Murders of Christmas Past (Novella)
Brazil & Urban
Staring into the Darkness
Collected Short Stories/Poetry/Anthologies/Non-fiction/Collections
Untended Treasures
Where do you want to go today?
Winter of my Heart (Poetry)
With Love Project – The Occupier
The Killing Sands (Anthology)
Raga Man (Short Story)
The Writer’s A-Z of Body Language (Non-fiction)
Summer of my
Soul (Poetry)
Sinful 7 (Anthology)
The Black Car Business Vol 2 (Anthology)
Also planned in the future:
Lest the Darkness Come Upon You (Parish & Richards 26)