by Guy Bolton
O’Neill found a handkerchief in his pocket and wiped his neck. They carried on walking. “That didn’t seem unusual to you?” he asked. “The car being left here?”
“Not really. We get a lot of wreckages left on the side of the road. Dumped mostly so people can try and hitch on the trains. Cars get turned around by the police once they get near the city. No one wants any more people coming into California. Not when they ain’t got jobs or food.”
They reached a small clearing where an area of approximately fifty feet was roped off. A knot of deputies was gathered in a circle smoking cigarettes. They took off their hats when the chief deputy approached but barely raised an eyebrow to O’Neill.
He got within twenty feet of the men before he had to cover his mouth and nose from the smell of rotting flesh. The stench was terrible, keeping everything away but the flies. O’Neill held his handkerchief over his face and moved forward until he could see the corpse clearly.
It was a dead male, fully clothed, face down in the scrub. In the moist humidity of the summer months, decomposition was very quick to set in and he could tell from the way the body had bloated and ballooned that it was between six and ten weeks old. He was surprised the animals hadn’t got to him first.
The corpse was laid out straight, both legs pointing downhill. Whoever he was, he’d been trussed, wrapped wire holding his arms behind him and a limp rope from his wrists to his ankles. There’d been no attempt to bury him.
O’Neill squatted down and tilted the man’s chin up. Ligature marks crisscrossed around his neck: he’d been strangled with a rope or cord. There was also a thick black wound across his throat, flies’ eggs and maggots already settled in. The strangulation was just the beginning. He’d been finished off with a blade.
“Can we turn him over?” he asked of no one in particular.
A deputy stepped up beside Weddle and together they pushed the body on its back. O’Neill’s nostrils flared from the odor as internal gases were expelled from the open jugular. He leaned away and cleared his throat.
The young deputy spat drily and wiped his mouth. “Smells goddamn’ awful.”
O’Neill took out a printed pad of D.O.A. forms. His neck tensed with the drone of flies. “It’s the heat. Decomposition doesn’t take long in these conditions.”
The chief deputy’s mouth tightened. “So how ripe is he?”
“Could be seven, eight weeks old. Maybe more,” O’Neill replied, writing over a carbon. “He died mid-May by my estimate.”
Weddle looked at O’Neill like he’d just performed dark magic instead of basic forensic biology.
“You can tell all that by looking at him?”
“It’s only an estimate. You said you found the car—”
“Last Friday in May. Might have been there for a while though.”
O’Neill snapped a twig and used it to peel open the tattered remains of his pants pockets. “Jeans look torn open. No wallet, no I.D.”
The chief deputy pursed his lips. “Any way you can figure out who did this to him?”
O’Neill looked at Weddle across the body. “The first step is finding out who he is.” When he looked disappointed O’Neill said, “Look, the ideal crime scene is in a house, under cover somewhere. Outside there’s little we can do. Nothing to connect him here and nobody else to connect to this location either.” He scanned the ground around the body and could see his crime scene was already trampled by boots. There was no means of ascertaining footprints. Fingerprinting would be worthless. Apart from the body, physical evidence was negligible. “We’ll need to search the forests,” he went on. “Send out teams of three or four, split the ground until we’ve covered a perimeter of maybe a mile or so. Up to the road, across to the rail line.” He pointed to the corpse on the ground. “And have someone take some photographs before you get him out.”
“Wait, don’t you want to see the rest of it?”
“There’s more?”
Weddle beckoned him along a crest then back down through the trees. “We already covered everything between here and the road before you got here.”
Further down the slope he pointed to an open suitcase under a thin layer of scabrock. The case was burned through, the insides nothing more than a few charred remains. Beside it, a broken view camera lay in pieces in the dirt and O’Neill stopped and bent down to look at it.
Weddle pushed back his hat. “One of the boys found it shortly before you got here. Camera looks busted. Not much inside the case. Whatever it was he burned it all. Lucky he didn’t light up the whole forest.”
O’Neill looked at the ground but the wiregrass and surrounding shrubbery showed no signs of fire. “If the fire didn’t spread, it might have been during one of the downfalls. When were they, early, mid-May?”
“Seems about right. Barely a drop since.”
O’Neill knelt beside the case and began sifting through the contents. There were a few clothes inside but the fabric was frayed and blistered and they wouldn’t help identify him. There were three tin containers rolling around the bottom but the metal was brittle and twisted from the heat and whatever had been inside had burned dry. He ran his finger along the inside of one of the containers. His finger was black and oily. Chemical residue.
“Sir?” They both turned to see the young deputy walking down the hill with something in his hand.
“What is it, Darrell?”
“Found this a little further up the slope toward the road. Must have come out of his pockets.”
“What is it?”
“Looks like his wallet.”
“Does it have identification in it?”
“There’s blood all over it . . .” He held it out for both to see and O’Neill took it, holding it by the edges.
O’Neill gently opened the leather and pulled out a set of notes and cards. He wiped the face of a bloodied driver’s license and held it out of the shade. The picture was unclear but beside it, printed in smudged ink, was a name he recognized immediately. O’Neill wasn’t sure what he was looking at made any sense. The identification belonged to a JAMES L. CAMPBELL.
Craine stretched back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t focus. The snatches of sleep he was getting weren’t enough, and the migraines were steadily getting worse. He was sitting in his office in the homicide unit, his desk littered with crime reports. In his hands were the two dozen photographs Denny had given him. He sipped at his coffee and started to leaf through the pictures for the hundredth time. The photographs were of girls, naked or half-dressed in fox furs and expensive negligees. The prints were black and white, mostly mediums and close-ups taken with beauty dish lamps and soft fill lighting rigs. They were artistic glamour shots rather than dirty pictures, mainly girls in cabaret dress posing erotically.
He quickly identified a range of different girls: some blond, others brunette, some curvy, others slim but attractive, many disarmingly so. They weren’t the hookers he’d seen crawling street corners; they were highly trained professionals working in the sex industry. He separated the photos of different girls into piles. As far as he could see, there were maybe five or so different girls in as many different scenarios. Most were in bedrooms, a few in gardens or on swings; some were of girls in swimming pools. He thought he recognized one or two of the girls but he couldn’t put a name or a place to any of them.
He’d spent the past few days considering what to do with the pictures and the new information he had gathered on the Loew House shootings but had yet to form any conclusions. In his imagination he saw Campbell and Rochelle dealing in soft pornography and being killed for that very reason, but his conclusions seemed premature and naive. This involved too many other people. There had been a cover-up, that he was sure of. He wondered nervously who was involved. The studio? More than likely. Anyone else? Had someone actually hired the shooter to kill Campbell, Rochelle and Florence Lloyd? Was it Stanley’s last act before taking his own life? Or was it Louis Mayer himself? Who was the puppeteer? He could find no p
atterns, no rational explanation for what had happened.
Opening the window, he took long breaths of the city air and loosened his necktie. It was drizzling outside, but he could still make out the barred upper floors of the Hall of Justice through the smog. He heard the sound of sirens approaching then fading away. Behind him he could hear murmurings in the hallway beyond the door. Maybe they were whispering about him, spreading rumors, instigating gossip. He tried to imagine what they would say if they could see him now. He’s trying to construct an investigation but he’s incapable of doing so. He’s not a detective; he’s a fraud, a charlatan.
Turning back to the desk, he picked up Campbell’s Chicago file. He had evidence proving that the man they thought was Campbell was actually someone else. The killer had wrongly been identified. So who was he? And where was the real Campbell and why hadn’t he come forward?
Pulling his notepad toward him, he tried to make a list of things he needed to do: he knew he needed to re-examine Lloyd’s house; he needed to find out why Campbell’s uncle had identified the body as Campbell; he had to identify the girls in the pictures; he also had to find out who the shooter really was and who had hired him; finally, he needed motive.
His train of thought was interrupted by two sharp taps on the pebbled glass of his office door. Instinctively he opened his top desk drawer and slid Campbell’s file and Denny’s photographs off the desktop. A moment later the door opened.
O’Neill was standing outside. His face was dry and sun-blasted. There was dirt and dust in his hair and stains on his knees. He had a large envelope in one hand, his jacket grasped tightly in the other.
“Lieutenant?”
Craine didn’t stand up, sliding the drawer shut quietly. “What do you want, O’Neill?”
“Can I come in?”
Craine didn’t say anything but O’Neill came in anyway.
“Do you remember who identified the Loew House killer?”
Craine studied O’Neill’s face. Did he know about the Campbell file? Why was he in his office, asking him questions about a case that was otherwise considered closed? Craine had thought about going to O’Neill when the file first arrived from Chicago but he’d been wary of having someone else involved. He was used to working alone and wasn’t sure he wanted O’Neill to be part of this. Or maybe he was worried that O’Neill would tell him what he didn’t want to hear.
Craine shrugged without answering.
“What was his name? Was it a family member?”
“Why?”
“I got a call-out this morning all the way from San Bernardino. They found a body in the Cajon Pass.” O’Neill pushed the envelope across the table toward Craine and took a seat in the chair opposite. “He was dumped by the rail line heading through the mountains. Someone had cut his throat.”
Craine opened the envelope, pulling out six photographs. They were crime scene glossies, freshly printed and barely dry. The first picture showed a bloated corpse face down in a forest. He glanced at the next photo. The victim’s throat was black and open to the bone, maggot-eaten and surrounded by flies. His stomach sank when he saw the man’s face. He tried to convince himself that it was all in his imagination but he knew exactly whose body he was staring at. Despite the swollen facial features, the broad nose and large ears were unmistakably Campbell’s. He put the photos down on the table. His fingers started to shake so he quickly hid them under the desk.
“And?”
“We found this near the body.”
O’Neill pushed a small piece of card onto the lip of Craine’s desk. It was a driver’s license, soiled and torn but still in one piece. The name was printed across the front—there was no doubt whom it belonged to.
Craine thought for a while before replying. “This isn’t the same Campbell.” He picked up the photographs. “The Loew House shooter was identified by his uncle as James Campbell. They matched his car. I saw him in his apartment. This is someone else.” He pushed the photos away and sat back in his chair. He made a show of looking at the clock on his wall. “Excuse me, if you don’t mind I have a few other things I need to be doing right now.”
O’Neill dropped his head. Exhaling, he stood and moved to the door. He paused and turned. Craine could see in his eyes he was trying to draw on courage he’d rarely used before. O’Neill took a deep breath.
“It has to be James Campbell,” he blurted out quickly. “Why else would he have his license?”
“There could be two dozen other Campbells in Los Angeles, let alone the state. What, you think you’re the only Patrick O’Neill in California?”
“It’s the same one. James L. Campbell.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes I do; it’s right here, clear as day.”
“You’re speculating.”
“And you’re hiding something,” O’Neill said accusingly. He’d crossed the mark now, it was too late to go back; he could only go further. “You’re hiding something to do with the Loew House murder. Or Herbert Stanley’s suicide—”
Craine interrupted, “That’s ridiculous.”
But for once O’Neill couldn’t be stopped. “Is it? I know what the papers printed was a lie. Worse than that, I was complicit in that lie and so were you. Stanley, Lloyd, Campbell, the shootings. They’re all tied together but every time I try to make a connection I get closed down. You and Simms, who do you work for? City Hall? M.G.M.? Because you’re not real police; if you were, you wouldn’t be determined to sabotage any attempt at a real investigation.” He was almost shouting now, his fingers jabbing at the air between them.
Craine glanced at the silver Lieutenant’s bar on his left shoulder. “You forget yourself, Detective.”
“Forget myself? Do you even remember what you’re supposed to be? To protect and serve? That’s a joke. Who are you serving? More to the point, who are you protecting?”
Craine rubbed his jaw and whispered a sigh. Even now his natural instinct was to fend off O’Neill’s questions, but if he was going to do this, to delve further, he needed help. He couldn’t do this alone. “Shut the door.”
“Craine—”
“Patrick, please. Shut the door.” When O’Neill realized that Craine was ready to talk he stepped toward the doorway, glancing outside to make sure no one was within hearing range. Craine waited for the door to close then motioned for him to have a seat.
His eyes focused on O’Neill’s round Irish eyes. “Who have you told?”
“No one. I came to you.”
Opening the drawer, Craine reached down and lifted out Campbell’s Chicago file, leaving Denny’s pictures out of sight. He shouldn’t give everything away. Not yet, anyway.
He flipped the mug shot photo of Campbell across the table, face up beside the others. “You’re right,” he said, comparing the sunken, putrid face to the police mug shots. “The body you found is James Campbell.” Opening the folder, he held up the Campbell R.A.P. sheet. “I got Campbell’s file from Chicago last week. This is him. There were pictures of him at his place. I should have figured.”
O’Neill leaned his head back. “So, if the body at the Cajon Pass is Campbell, who was the shooter?”
“I don’t know. But the papers made a mistake . . . we made a mistake. Whoever the shooter was, I think he killed Lloyd, then Campbell and then went for Rochelle at Loew House.”
“All three of them?”
“There were no prints at Lloyd’s house. No one heard the shots. The guy I saw at Campbell’s apartment was firing a semi-automatic with a suppressor. The ammunition from both crime scenes was nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds. That’s unusual, the sign of a professional—”
“How do you know that?”
“Ballistics matched them.”
“But you didn’t say anything before.”
“No,” said Craine, the edges of his mouth turned down, “no, I didn’t mention it before.” There was no defense in his voice, only disappointment.
“The body off the Caj
on Pass wasn’t shot. He was tortured then his throat was cut.”
“That’s the work of a pro. These weren’t random; they weren’t crimes of passion.”
O’Neill frowned. “You think he was for hire?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“Employed by who?”
“That’s as far as I get.”
“And how does this relate to Stanley?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t question it was suicide—Stanley was an addict.”
“You know that for certain?”
“Rochelle told me he sold to Stanley. I figured a drug connection between all of them but now I’m not convinced. Maybe that has nothing to do with it. Rochelle tried to tell me something at Loew House.”
“What?”
“I never got the chance to find out. Next thing I knew he was bleeding to death on the washroom floor.” Craine’s fingers pecked on Campbell’s file. “Look, if I tell you everything I know, will you help me? If we’re going to find out why the three of them were killed, we need to know who the shooter was and we need to know who identified his body as Campbell and for what purpose. But for now at least, this investigation has to stay between us.”
“What about Simms? What about the D.A.?”
“Forget senior command. This is you and me. You can’t tell anybody; your career in the Bureau will depend on it. No one else can know that we’re reopening the investigation, do you understand that?”
The jaw muscles in O’Neill’s face tightened. His eyes looked wider than usual. Slowly, he nodded his head.
“So what’s next?”
Chapter 30
Shortly before six o’clock, O’Neill knocked on the door of Conrad Frazer’s apartment off Winward Avenue in Venice Beach. Like most of the other doors on the corridor, the frame was splintered, the doorknob broken clean off, probably from replevin actions filed by creditors. Repossession was common in these parts.
When there was no answer, O’Neill knocked again. A low voice called out from inside.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Frazer? Mr. Conrad Frazer?”