by Matt Clemens
“Boy! You ain’t watchin’, boy!”
“Sorry, sir,” the boy said. “I will, sir.”
When the old man returned to his business, the boy did not hesitate.
He swooped down, grabbed the cord and lamp in his hands and jerked them free from the wall. The old man had just started to back away from his victim, hearing something, when the boy looped the cord around his father’s neck and jumped on his back, pulling the cord taut.
The old man tumbled off the bed, taking his son with him, knocking the wind from the boy, who reflexively loosened his grip on the cord.
Like a wounded animal, the bare-assed old man rolled over, snatched up the cord and wrapped it around his son’s neck, yanking the ends tight, like the old bastard was tying his boots. The boy choked but made no sound.
The naked girl flew at her father, but he backhanded her and she smacked against the door frame with a sick squish and slid to the floor in a human puddle.
The boy tried to scream, but still no sound came out, precious air harder and harder to come by. His mouth just kept working, though nothing happened, no air able to enter, no sound able to emerge. He could feel his eyes bugging and as he clawed at the cord, he could feel himself scratching wounds in his own throat, trying to get one finger under the killing cord.
Sweat streamed down his forehead, into his eyes, burning them. Still, he could see the wild eyes of his killer, his own father, the perverted old bastard pressing down on him as he pulled like a madman on the ends of the cord.
The boy couldn’t inhale, yet still he could smell the old man’s foul breath welcoming him to Hell.
When blackness enveloped him, it would have been a relief if he weren’t also falling, endlessly falling, arms windmilling as he dropped into a bottomless pit. …
A man now, he woke up, coughing, choking for breath.
The sweat that had been part of the dream was with him still, as he sat up in his bed—not in the black painted womb of Louis St. James, but his real bedroom, in his own home, where he lived under his real name.
He looked at the clock, cursed the hour, then flopped back down. The perspiration-soaked pillow did not encourage a return to sleep. Maybe that was just as well, since sleep might bring that nightmare back with it. Even in his goddamn dreams, the old man kicked his ass!
As a child, he’d hated his parents. As an adult, he despised them even more—his mother for abandoning them, the old man for every disgusting, obscene damn thing he’d ever done to brother and sister.
Giving up, he clicked on the nightstand lamp and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Sat there. In only his shorts, he reached for the folded towel he kept at his bedside just for nights like this.
After drying off, he sat for perhaps five minutes more, trying to drive away the images in his head. Some dreams disappeared on waking, others seemed to dissolve away, detail at a time.
This dream lingered.
No, more than lingered—persisted, its terrible images lodged in his brain like inoperable tumors.
Despite the hour, he grabbed his cell. Just before it kicked over to voice mail, his sister (thank God!) answered.
“The nightmare?” she asked, sleepy but forcing herself alert.
“Sorry,” he said.
“You know it’s not real.”
“I know. Feels real.”
“Think pleasant thoughts.”
“That never occurred to me.”
“Sarcasm?”
“Sorry.”
“You should be happy. The FBI! That’s the real prime time.”
“I know.”
“Concentrate on that. We have to be on top of our game.”
“I know.”
“The FBI, they’re not stupid.”
“Neither are we.”
Her voice was almost a purr. “I know, dear. I’m just saying … we’re getting close now, to what we want to achieve.”
“What we need to achieve.”
“Right. We can’t get caught too soon, dear. We need to be careful.”
“We’re always careful.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I would so like to make the FBI look like fools.”
Her voice had a smile in it. “Do you have something in mind?”
“… There’s a young woman I’ve had my eye on.”
“Acting-class candidate?”
“No. But she’s right for the part, anyway.”
“That’s good! This’ll take your mind off all the ancient bullshit.”
“… Tell me we’ll be famous.”
“We already are. But right now all we have is our fifteen minutes. We want to live forever.”
“We’re going to live forever.”
“Live forever, and do things the old man never thought we could!”
Their father’s abuse had spoken volumes about how little he regarded them. Never once had he given them credit for being anything more than receptacles.
“We’ll show the old bastard!” he said. “We’ll show him! We’ll show all of them!”
“Tell me about the new candidate.”
“I’ve been watching her for a few weeks. She’s a teller in a small bank in Newport Beach.”
“Not an actress?”
“No.”
“But will she bite for Louis St. James?”
“Oh yeah.”
They always referred to Louis St. James in the third person. Although Louis was a role he played (like Don Juan), he and his sister referred to St. James as another full-fledged member of the team. Or rather … the cast.
“She’s already met Louis,” he said. “She was attracted to him, obviously.”
“But a bank teller? That’s a lowly profession.”
“She dresses well. Designer clothes. I suspected hidden depths.”
“So you e-mailed her.”
“I did. And found hidden depths, all right. Hidden riches.”
“You are so smart, dear.”
“When Louis suggested that she’d make a better actress than most of the so-called actresses he had to contend with, she got very excited.”
“Typical.”
“Turns out she acted in high school, but never considered acting a practical goal. She’s certainly pretty enough. But she comes from a conservative family, you know—business types.”
“How you’re raised can set you on a path, they say.”
He laughed. “Imagine, finding a woman in Los Angeles who isn’t an actress wannabe.”
“It’s like finding a unicorn.”
“Well, this unicorn has money.”
“How much?”
“Those conservative parents I mentioned? They died and left her a small bundle. Accounts I’ve accessed so far? Add up to just shy of a hundred thousand.”
“Oooooh—that would keep us going for a while.”
“She looks at me and sees a bright future. I look at her and see my own personal ATM.”
“You are a riot! … When are we going to bring her into the production?”
“I’ll call her in the morning. See if she’d like to have dinner with Louis. You all right with that? Not too soon, is it?”
“Not at all,” she said. “We should step it up. J.C. Harrow’s all in a tizzy about getting preempted by the FBI. I love it! … What preparations do we need to make?”
“Usual.”
“I’ll get the flowers after lunch.”
“Cool. I’ll prep the room. Get the camera loaded.”
Her voice took on an ethereal quality. “You know—if we can keep this going, to where we want it to? We’ll be Manson famous.”
“Son of Sam famous.”
“Night Stalker famous.”
“Bundy famous.”
“Gacy famous.”
“Dahmer famous.”
“Jack the Ripper famous.”
“All stars, in their own right,” he admitted. “But we’re taking it to the next level. Something our role models ne
ver dreamed of.”
“Hollywood famous,” she said.
They bid each other good night.
His pillow was dry now.
He could try to sleep again.
Before he drifted off, he felt confident the nightmare would not return tonight. He knew the old man couldn’t hurt him anymore.
Still, there was the lingering, bittersweet disappointment that came knowing hard living had killed the old man before son and daughter got the chance.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Billy Choi, in T-shirt and jeans, sleepwalked into the conference room with the LAPD Don Juan files under an arm and a mug of coffee in one hand. He flopped into his usual chair.
Eight o’clock a.m. Sunday—usually a day off—but at least cameras had been banished by boss man Harrow, who came in behind Billy followed by Pall, Chase, and Anderson.
Choi felt like he had been on a two-day bender—burning eyes, cotton mouth, and a stomach subsisting on vending machine food.
Chase, in gray sweats, looking awake but barely, squinted at Choi over her own personalized Killer TV mug. “Where’s Jenny? She’s usually first in.”
Anderson answered, way too chipper: “On her way.”
The cornpone chemist was in a striped blue and yellow polo and new jeans, as if he had fallen out of an old Beach Boys video.
The kid said, “Thinks she may be on to some-thin’.”
The boss had on black jeans and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up, looking like an old waiter.
Harrow said, “Till Jenny saves the day, what else has anybody got?”
Choi said, “Your cute sex crimes lieutenant called to say the Hollywood Boulevard vic has a name.”
“Billy,” Harrow said, narrow-eyed. “Respect is a two-way street.”
“Yeah, I know. But you can still get run down. ID came from an ex-husband hoping there might be a reward.”
Pall, in a brown suit (a friggin’ suit) but no tie (going wild!) said, “How’d she ever let a catch like that get away?”
“Guess she didn’t know what she had,” Choi said dryly. “Anyway, her name was Megan Chavez.”
Harrow asked, “What do we know about her?”
“Born Megan Kowalski, in Arizona, died twenty-six, in LA. At eighteen, she married a local bricklayer named Ramon Chavez, moved out here. Marriage went south. Ditched everything from her former life except the last name. Became a hairdresser, never owned her own shop, but worked on a few indie flicks and a couple cable TV shows. She was union.”
Harrow said, “Show-business connection.”
“Right. And like the other Don Juan victims, she had a tidy nest egg in her bank account. But by the time Jenny tracked that down, Don Juan had transferred her loot to an off-shore account, then removed it from there as well.”
Chase said, “Love them and leave them … broke.”
Choi said, “As for the roses next to her body, Black Pearls again. And that’s all we have so far.”
Harrow nodded. “Decent start. Michael, anything on the second Billie Shears note?”
“It’s legit,” Pall said.
Chase asked, “How do we know?”
“DNA from the envelope.”
Choi said, “Licked it shut?”
Pall nodded.
Harrow said, “Matching the DNA to what?”
Pall said, “I got the DNA report from the towel the cops took from the third Shears victim, Kyle Gerut. Gerut was gay, remember, but the DNA on the letter, and the towel? Belongs to a woman.”
Harrow said, “So if we had any doubt, cross it out—this is definitely B-i-l-l-i-e Shears.”
No argument.
Chase cocked her head. “But this is a smart killer—cleaning up after herself to near perfection. About all she’s ever left behind is a hair from a wig.”
“Speaking of which,” Anderson said, “the hair from Gerut’s bed—the black one? It’d been soaked in acetic acid … vinegar … just like the other.”
Harrow narrowed his eyes. “So it’s from a wig too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Almost as if she’s parceling out clues to us.”
Pall said, “Maybe not ‘almost.’ “
Choi held up his hand with the force of a dumb kid in class finally coming up with a question. “I thought a man checked into the rooms every time.”
“From the Star Struck on,” Chase confirmed.
Anderson, grappling with it, said, “Maybe she’s one of those … cross-dressers.”
Pall shrugged. “We don’t have any really decent video of the ‘guy’ checking in. Not impossible.”
Choi said, “Or maybe Billie Shears has an accomplice, too—a male one.”
Harrow blurted, “Son of a bitch!”
All eyes were on him.
“Listen to yourselves,” he said. “It’s right there in front of us.”
Chase was the first to get it. “Oh hell …”
Then Choi got onboard and said, “Well, goddamn—Don Juan and Billie Shears … they’re not dueling. They’re together! They’re playing us!”
Harrow was chuckling, in a dark sort of way. “Nobody in this room is old enough to remember, but years ago? Two very famous radio comedians, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, pretended to have a feud. Really they were close friends. But the ratings? Went through the roof for both their shows.”
Pall said, “In non-broadcasting terms?
“We’ve been looking at these as unrelated investigations, chasing two separate killers in two separate cases.”
Harrow was smiling, but his eyes were hard. “The evidence seems to be telling us that Don Juan has a female accomplice, and that Billie Shears has a male accomplice—that there are two people involved in each set of cases.”
Nods around the table.
“What are the odds of that, even in a city the size of Los Angeles? Two male/female serial-killing teams? When did that ever happen? Logically, we have one serial killing team, trading off victims.”
“And,” Choi said, “playing us for chumps.”
Only Pall seemed at all skeptical. “Is there any way we can test this theory? Remember, we may have been stalled this long because we tried to fit the facts into a preconceived theory.”
“Good point,” Harrow said. “But there’s one thing all the victims in both cases have in common.”
Jenny, coming in at the rear of the room, answered him: “They were all drugged.”
“With the same drug,” Anderson said, as she nestled next to him. “Flunitrazepam. A.k.a Rohypnol.”
Roofies.
Harrow asked, “Anything we can track?”
“As if,” Choi said.
Anderson shook his head.
“All right,” Harrow said, and sighed. “What about the levels of the drug in their systems?”
The chemist checked his notes. “More in the men than in the women, but roughly the same by gender.”
“How much?”
“Pardon?”
“We know the dosages weren’t lethal, right?”
“Ah, I see where you’re goin’, boss—they each, male and female, had enough of the drug in their systems to make them … well, pliable, but not knock them out.”
“So whoever gave them the drug had some working knowledge of the stuff, including the correct dosage, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pall asked, “Someone in the medical community?”
“Or a pharmacist,” Chase said without enthusiasm.
“Yeah, I know, it’s weak,” Harrow said. “Let’s go back to the victims. FBI Rousch said we should reexamine the victimology.”
“Yeah,” Choi said, “we should take advice from that stooge.”
“Billy …” Harrow began.
Choi held up his hands in surrender.
“Well,” Jenny said, “I may have something—the men who checked into those three motel rooms … Jeff Bailey, Al Roberts, Eric Stanton?”
All eyes were on her.
Harrow said, “What about them?”
“Really common names, but … they’re also all characters from movies. Crime movies. Film noir?”
“Go on,” Harrow said.
“Jeff Bailey was a character played by Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. Al Roberts was from a movie called Detour. Played by Tom Neal, and Dana Andrews, that actor in Laura? He played Eric Stanton in Fallen Angel.”
Harrow said, “Out of the Past, Detour, Fallen Angel. Anyone think those are randomly chosen?”
No one spoke up.
Turning to their resident profiler, Harrow asked, “Any ideas, Michael?”
“Not yet. I’ll need to think on it.”
“Fair enough. Let’s get started looking into the possibilities. Laurene, call Amari, Polk, and Rousch and share our theory with them, and this new information. Tell them I’d like to meet straightaway.”
Chase nodded, and headed into the hall, cell phone in hand.
Harrow said, “Suddenly there’s a movie theme running through the Billie Shears case.”
Choi said, “But Billie Shears is a music reference.”
“Doesn’t matter. The cops dubbed her that. But Don Juan gave himself that name. We get the great lover significance—what about movie resonance?”
“Hollywood Boulevard body turned up near the Chinese Theater,” Choi said, “on Errol Flynn’s star, Don Juan himself. Wendi Erskine was an actress, infomercials mostly. Gina Hannan a dental assistant. Megan Chavez a movie hairdresser….”
“Those last two may be day jobs,” Harrow said, “for wannabe actresses. Let’s find out.”
Jenny said, “I’d like access to the e-mail accounts of the victims.”
“I think,” Harrow said, “we can arrange that.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Midmorning, Harrow met briefly in his office with Amari, Polk, and the FBI agent Rousch. Everybody quickly got on board the theory that Don Juan and Billie Shears were a single serial-killer team.
Anna looked casually great in an LAPD T-shirt and jeans. Polk was casual, too, or anyway his idea of it, black cargo pants and a black T-shirt. The FBI guy wore a suit.
“I’m fine with giving Jenny Blake access to the appropriate e-mail records,” Anna said. “Anything else?”
Harrow leaned back in his swivel desk chair. “We know they’re using roofies, right?” “Right.”