City of Lost Girls

by Declan Hughes

  “That is one awesome profile. Sounds almost like he’s over-qualified for the job. You sure about the incest?”

  “Not certain, but…that’s the way I’d go on it. Against all that, Jack Donovan’s an artist, and a very complex, troubled guy, who’s in a period of major transition at the moment. I’ve sat down with him, I’ve pushed him on all this.”

  “And what did you get?”

  “What did I get? That’s he’s a damaged, messy, wayward, willful man who’s alternately the most thrilling, enthralling companion you could imagine and an absolute nightmare to be around. Do I think, do I really think he could murder eighteen, twenty-one women and dump their bodies in mass graves? No, I don’t. But this is where I think you can’t simply translate personality traits or behavioral patterns into actions. Otherwise, why doesn’t every abused child become a pedophile? It’s bullshit.”

  “Well, up to a point. I mean, you’ve got an angry guy, he’s a loner, he’s got a history of violence against women, that’s gonna move him up in line from Mr. Family Man two kids a dog and a cat.”

  “Well, that’s Conor Rowan you’ve just outlined, Jack’s First AD. Angry, probably alcoholic, lives alone, girlfriends who come and go, no family, goes drinking in his local bar with people he’s known all his life.”

  “He could fit the bill.”

  “I can see how Conor Rowan might fit the bill as a guy who’d lose his temper, maybe drunk, and beat his girlfriend to death, who’d even, drinking all the time, plan to kill her. But that’s run-of-the-mill, maybe we could all fit that bill. We’ve all imagined someone we don’t like dying, how convenient it would be—it’s a short trip through a glass darkly to acting on that thought. But this is a whole different bill: eighteen, maybe twenty-one bodies, twenty-one women, left in mass graves with crucifixes carved with their initials. I mean, you can even quote your whatever, your McDonald triad, ask if this guy wet the bed, tortured animals and set fires, but even if he did, how does it go from that to here, to three-in-one, to this spectacular carnival of murder?”

  “So what are you looking for?”

  “A fact. A detail. A mistake. Something that leads me to the guy, not the type of guy. There’s a hundred and one Conor Rowans in every neighborhood, disappointed, angry, alcoholic middle-aged guys, pissed off about so much they’ve lost track themselves. Even in the unlikely event that they were all capable of murder, they’d never be capable of this. Then there’s Mark Cassidy—supercilious, sneery, clever, aloof, smart-aleck, maybe thinks he’s the real power behind the throne, the brains of the operation, feels aggrieved because he’s underappreciated. Resents being in the great man’s shadow, but lacks the balls to strike out on his own. I bet there’s a Conor Rowan and a Mark Cassidy in every workplace, bet you work alongside one or two yourself.”

  “Sure I do. Don’t work alongside any Jack Donovans, though. What’s the deal on the fourth guy, the producer, Maurice Faye?”

  “In a way, Maurice is the most opaque to me. He’s a kind of hail-fellow-well-met guy, all business, but everything’s an adventure, everything’s a joke, everything’s hilarious, even the calamities…and then he’ll get very angry about something trivial, some adverse criticism in a newspaper, say, and you see beneath all that joviality and backslapping and charm, he’s kind of in a rage…now that I talk about him, he’s actually a very characteristic Irish type.”

  Coover smiles.

  “I was gonna say. You guys have a habit of making a hell of a lot of noise to cover up a broken heart.”

  “Maybe we do. Maybe we do. But none of that…I mean, Maurice could be the killer. Jack could be. The point is, any of those guys, it’s going to be a shock. Anyone who doesn’t live in a cave on a diet of maggots and blood, it’s going to be a shock.”

  Coover can’t stop smiling.

  “I’m sorry, Ed, but that’s a big case we got here. Looks to me like, from nowhere, we’ve got this down to four suspects. You should feel good.”

  “I’ll feel good when we get it down to one. Have we got any, you have IDs, at least provisionally, for the Point Dume girls, have you got any relatives? Wasn’t there a brother?”

  “I made some calls yesterday. That was the thing, back in the day these girls were already runaways and you were the only one to report them. We found nobody for Desiree LaRouche or Polly Styles, but for Janice Holloway, yes, we had a brother, Keith, we got his address in her apartment in North Hollywood, kept his details on file. I called him yesterday and he’s coming out this morning. He wanted to see where his sister had been buried, so I arranged to meet him along at Point Dume—thought you could see him there also. They’ve closed the beach. And then I’m gonna need you to come in, talk on the record to me, maybe to the feds, the Irish police, too, whatever way we’re set up on this, get the whole thing moving forward.”

  Before they let us leave Patrick’s, they take a photo of Coover by the bar holding the L.A. Times “Three-in-One Killer” cover. All the stars in heaven.

  CHAPTER 24

  I follow Coover north on Pacific Coast Highway for almost twenty miles. It’s a drive I’ve always loved, this stretch of coastline bound for Malibu, with the hazy ocean glistening on one side and the jagged red rock of the Santa Monica Mountains on the other, the canyons drifting up through green hillsides and parks and then shimmering out of sight. But today the sun’s glare seems too harsh, the roadside stops too garish, the trippers and bathers and skaters positively indecent witnesses to a funeral cortege headed for an unmarked graveside.

  As we approach Point Dume, it’s as if the sun slips behind a cloud: the placards and signs with names and pictures of old and young suddenly line the highway. Coover still hasn’t released the names of the girls, and won’t until he has confirmed their IDs. So the same principle applies as at the other burial sites: anyone missing in Malibu could be one of the bodies found. There’s a limit to how many people can fit on the side of the road, and the highway patrol are pulling in on motorcycles and urging people to move on, whether for their safety or to prevent traffic delays. It looks like a cross between a mass protest and a pilgrimage, although the effect is maybe less overwhelming than those I saw on Mulholland and in Coldwater Canyon. But the iconography of loss and the dedicated communion with the missing is still deeply affecting.

  At the approach to Point Dume State Beach, the cops have effectively mounted a roadblock. Don Coover leans out his window and shows his ID, and the cop on duty calls to his colleague, who knocks on the window of a beat-up old Toyota. A skinny man in his twenties with long dark hair in black jeans and T-shirt emerges from the tragic orange heap: Janice Holloway’s brother, Keith, I presume. Keith nods to Coover and shakes his hand and sits into the passenger seat of his unmarked Ford Taurus. I follow them down Wildlife Road and we wend past the luxury houses through the evergreens and park down near the bluff on Cliffside Drive.

  The pungent scent of pine and eucalyptus lingers with me like incense from a censer as we climb the bluff. We walk a quarter of a mile through pampas grass and scrub and gorse and down to a small depression shaded by greenery. An LAPD technical team in paper suits have taken down a forensic tent to reveal a mound of freshly dug sand and earth, and beside it, a grave about four feet in depth.

  Keith Holloway looks at Coover, who inclines his head toward the grave and nods; Holloway stands by the grave and bows his head in a prayerful attitude. No matter that this is not a cemetery, that his sister’s body has been removed and has not yet been identified, he is relying on the rituals of mourning to get him through. At times like these, ritual is sometimes all we have. I stand still in the salt breeze and look out to the ocean. It would make a beautiful last resting place. My thoughts turn to my parents’ grave, with its view of the sea, and then to what has been done to it, and I, too, bow my head, but in rage. All the way to Malibu, and Podge Halligan has come with me. I turn away and leave Keith Holloway to his thoughts. Coover closes a call on his cell phone and beckons me up the bluff
a pace.

  “The FBI is requesting my presence. I want you to come in, get all your stuff on the record…how long are you here?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “That could be a while. I need to clear the ground with the feds first, bragging rights, jurisdiction, all that good stuff. But there was some stuff I was thinking on the way out. Some profiling stuff, if you’ll indulge me.”

  “Anything that works is fine by me.”

  “Well, this is all just serial-killer 101, but it’s worth considering. Okay, on the one hand, as you say, he’s hit his target, three girls gone, he’s done: not quite forget about him, but the softly softly approach is sensible, try and snare him somehow now we’ve narrowed the field of suspects to four.”

  “Two days ago, we didn’t know we had a field to narrow.”

  “And why do we know now? First, because you made the connection, Ed: you joined the dots between Point Dume, and Dublin, and Jack Donovan. But second, because the killer tipped us off. Tipped me off. Now, why would he do that if he’s happy to just go to ground again?”

  “So what, he’s reached some kind of crisis point?”

  “Well, it’s like you said, if it’s one of these four, why would he put his own film in danger? Why would he kill actresses who had already been filmed? Unless he’s getting that way people get when…I don’t know if it’s that they want to be found out, or to close a particular chapter in their lives, or the only way they can really function is under the adrenaline gun, and each time they have to risk failure, to flirt with disaster. I’ve seen a lot of cops go to that place, usually with the help of booze and pills and powder. But it’s the same idea, you blot out the lows, and become addicted to the highs, but each time the highs get harder to come by, so you end up always having to raise the stakes. And there’s only so high you can raise them.”

  “Before what? Disaster? Self-destruction? Are you saying he wants to be caught?”

  “No. Well, yes and no. At its simplest, maybe it’s that, after fifteen or twenty years of secrecy, he wants us to know what he’s doing. In the e-mail, which we’re trying to trace—although it’s been routed through a chain of remailers, so it’s not gonna happen any time soon—he laid out each burial location, with a grid reference, and he rounded it out: Three-in-One, One-in-Three. So he was self-branding, bracing himself for the attention.”

  “The attention he would get when the movie connection with the Three-in-One Killer was made and the missing girls were attributed to him? That sounds like he was inviting disaster.”

  “Or the attention he would get when he said: that’s what I’ve done so far, the Dublin girls are what I’ve just done, see what I do next. Which is also inviting disaster, but on a more spectacular scale. And to the question, why would he do that? Well, you answered it yourself this morning: Why would he kill all these people? We’re not dealing with normal psychology here. As it stands, he could be ready to do just about anything.”

  COOVER LEAVES, AND I ponder the implications of what he has just said. Because the age of the Point Dume girls—late teens, early twenties—matches the ages of Nora, Kate and Jenny, I have pretty much taken for granted that as the killer’s range. I have assumed he would act with a certain kind of logic, in other words; I have trusted to his profile. I had been anxious for Madeline King. It has never occurred to me that Anne could be in any kind of danger. But if he is ready to raise the stakes, then any female might be fair game. It’s midday now: eight o’clock in the evening Irish time.

  I call Anne, but her phone won’t take a message, instead asking me to ring later. I don’t have her landline number, the mark of a modern romance. I could call directory inquiries, but I know she never answers the landline anyway, and that after four rings it goes to a message minder that doesn’t record any messages. “Anyone who knows me has my mobile,” she says. I don’t have Tommy’s number either, as the killer took his phone and I haven’t got the new one. I try Dave Donnelly, but his phone is ringing out, and there’s no one answering at the Serious Crime Review Team number. I leave a brief message; Dave takes long weekends off during the summer and goes down to a caravan in Courtown with his family, but I leave a message at his home in any case.

  The only other senior Garda connection I have is a superintendent in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation called John O’Sullivan. I don’t know him well, but I’ve been on his wrong side in the past, and have come through unscathed: he’s smart and fair, and if he doesn’t entirely trust me, I think there’s a certain regard there. I call and identify myself, and once I establish that he’s willing to listen, I give him the rundown. Like the rest of the world, he’s been watching the case unfold on television, but didn’t know there was an Irish angle.

  “Strictly speaking, there’s not a lot to go on there, Ed. I mean, it would be a case of having a chat, letting the four guys know we’re watching them, as opposed to hauling them in.”

  “One of them has three bodies. Either he’s buried them already, or he’s working up to it. You might catch him in the act, or provoke him into doing something stupid.”

  “Right. And so what are you doing out there? Sure the LAPD are all over that,” O’Sullivan said skeptically.

  “Well, I’ve just had breakfast with Detective Donald Coover. He’s the lead on the case so far, but the FBI are coming in, so I think they get to argue about who’s in charge. I know Coover of old, and I’ve briefed him on the Irish situation, so if you’d like me to put you in touch…”

  That has the desired effect. When Superintendent O’Sullivan speaks again, it’s with a noticeably higher degree of interest and intensity, not to mention a tone verging precipitously on the respectful.

  “Fair play, but you might have briefed us on the Irish connection a bit sooner, Ed.”

  “As you said, at one level, there’s not a lot to go on. And anyway, it takes eleven hours to get here, and I’ve been kind of busy since I arrived.”

  I give O’Sullivan Coover’s details, and phone numbers for the Gang of Four, and he says he’ll arrange visits to each of them tonight, even if he has to carry them out himself. I thank him and finish the call.

  The LAPD forensic team are waiting to fill in the grave. Keith Holloway says his final farewell to his sister’s temporary resting place and we walk back to our cars together. The screeching and keening of seabirds cuts through the dull roar of the wind and the surf, a discordant Dies Irae for Desiree LaRouche, Polly Styles and Janice Holloway.

  “I’d like to thank you,” Keith says. “Detective Coover said you were the one who reported Janice missing. All those years ago.”

  “Well. I was only doing my job. You were pretty young back then.”

  “I was seventeen. But I was on my own. We kind of got scattered as a family. So I didn’t even know Janice was missing until someone saw the police alert.”

  He has dark eyes and pale, unshaven skin and his long hair is thick and dark with a natural wave in it.

  “I wonder, do you have anything of Janice’s? Any possessions, keepsakes?”

  “She didn’t have a lot in the way of possessions. She lived in a rented apartment. There were some clothes, but I got rid of them. I figured, even if she showed up, she’s a woman, she wouldn’t want her old clothes.”

  “Did you think…did you hope she was alive?”

  Holloway looks out to sea and considers this.

  “You know, she was missing to me long before that. Maybe that’s why yes, I always sort of thought she would come back. I was so used to her being away.”

  His voice is low and delicate, ethereal, if you were being grand, dreamy if you weren’t. He strikes me as quite a dreamy person. Not a bad way to be, if you ask me.

  “So there’s nothing of hers left?”

  “There’s a box of books. Paperbacks, mostly. I kept them. Sometimes tempted to sell them, but they’re not the kind of stuff my customers would go for.”

  “Do you have a store?”
/>   “Comics. Keith’s Komix. With, I regret to say, a K and an X.”

  “You didn’t have a choice.”

  “I think there’s a federal law.”

  “I thought part of that law said you had to have a goatee, and a beer gut, and a Slayer T-shirt, and a baseball cap on backward.”

  “Although I choose not to, I can put my hair in a ponytail. Otherwise, what can I say? I Am Not Like the Other Comic Book Guys.”

  “Do you think I could…would you mind letting me see Janice’s books?”

  “Not at all. The store’s in Venice, on Market, between Riviera and Main. I live above it. You can follow me if you don’t know the way.”

  “I know the way. I’ve been there before.”

  CHAPTER 25

  There’s a duty to be cheerful, she acknowledges that, and there are many blessings to be counted, but honest to God, there are some nights where she feels she has had enough by eight o’clock and needs to go to bed and sleep for a year and wake up, if she’s lucky, in the middle of somebody else’s life, and tonight is one of them. It has been a grim day, for a start, not helped by how she and Ed had parted the previous night. Christ, he could be so brusque sometimes, rude, in fact, and almost rough, the way he insisted, because suddenly he had been called away somewhere, he wouldn’t say where, and she didn’t ask, didn’t pester him, but why she had to march out on the street and get a cab straightaway just because he was leaving she didn’t understand, she had just started a conversation with one of the actresses, the American, who had been in Gilmore Girls and was lovely, and she had suddenly contracted a real thirst and could have put three or four more away, it wasn’t as if she got out that often, and Maurice and Mark were in such good form and you never knew what Jack might suddenly do, God if he sang again she’d die, and all in all Anne was feeling the stardust of the evening on her cheeks and in her eyes and suddenly the lights go out. So…paternalistic, and no question in his mind but that she’d agree, and she had been so swept along by his forcefulness that she had consented, meekly (God, of all the words, meek. Blessed are the meek? Yeah, because they are fucked. And not in a good way) and he had kissed her on the cheek, a peck, as if he was her brother or something, and said he’d see her soon, and the cab was in Ringsend before her annoyance even attained coherent form and then she had almost ordered it back to Temple Bar.