by Rick Mofina
“We understand you’ve been inquiring about doing a feature on homicides for your newswire service. Would you be interested in talking about some older, unsolved murders?” the detective had asked.
Tanner had been cryptic during the brief call, declining to get into details over the phone. Still, Harding had said yes because any reporter worth a damn knows that when a homicide cop invites you to a meeting, you don’t say no. At the very least, he might leave with a new source.
God knows I need new sources and a kick-ass story.
He’d been working at the L.A. bureau for a few months, but in that time the pressure to break a major exclusive was mounting. Since he’d relocated back to California, he hadn’t hit anything out of the park.
You blink and nearly all of your life goes by.
Harding was thirty-seven and grew up in Birmingham. He’d worked for several tabloids in London before getting a green card and landing a job with the Los Angeles bureau of Rumored Today, a despised but top-selling U.S. supermarket tabloid.
If reporters failed to break huge, shocking stories, they were fired. Harding hated every bit of it and got the chance to leave the sleaze behind when he broke a huge story about corruption in Hollywood. It resulted in a job with the AllNews Press Agency, the global wire service, first at its head office in New York.
Then Harding was forced to go to the dreaded Los Angeles Bureau, where he was expected to deliver huge stories.
So here I am in L.A., months without scoring a big story.
Harding rubbed his chin.
He had the idea of trying to pull off an exclusive, looking into homicides for any new breaks. In the past couple of weeks he’d put in calls, even sent letters with his card, to the LAPD, L.A. County, the FBI fishing for leads.
Nothing happened until now, when he got a call from Tanner.
Harding had to land a good story.
Sure, other people had it harder and he’d faced worse. He was reflecting on a few of the tense moments he’d had on assignments over the years when something vibrated near his heart.
He reached into his jacket for his phone and checked his messages. He had an urgent one from his boss, Magdalena Pierce, the L.A. Bureau Chief. She’d told him earlier that she disdained gritty crime stories and was reluctant to give him the morning for this meeting with an L.A. County detective. Her new text said:
We’ve just learned that a studio is under investigation for tax evasion. We need you here, pronto.
Harding rolled his eyes. Same old, same old. Magda just didn’t get it.
“Excuse me, Mark Harding?”
“Yes.”
He put his phone away, shook hands with a man he’d pegged at his age but about six feet. He was wearing a crisp shirt, tie, sidearm.
“Joe Tanner. Thanks for coming. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Sure. Look,” Harding said, “forgive me, I don’t mean to sound rude, but my bureau chief’s yanking my chain. Could we do this another time?”
“You have to go? You just got here.”
“Yes, I apologize.”
“I see.” Tanner was taken aback. “I’m sorry to hear that. Well, I suppose I could always call the Associated Press or Reuters.”
No, Harding could not let that happen.
“Hold on, wait. Can you give me a bit more so I can get my editor off my back, something to convince her this is more than a local Crime Stoppers type of cold case, something that holds national interest?”
“This concerns a number of homicides,” Tanner said.
“Homicides? Plural?”
“That’s correct and only one other person outside this building knows what I’m going to tell you.”
“Who’s that?”
“The person who committed them.”
“Jesus,” Harding said. “Let me call my desk.”
11
Commerce, California
Tanner escorted Harding beyond the homicide squad bay to the Cold Case Unit and a staff kitchen that was heavy with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
“How do you take yours?”
“A little of both,” Harding said. “I’m curious. Why did you decide to call me?”
“You showed some initiative with your letter, looking to do something on homicides. And I needed to be sure I went to the right guy for this.”
“How am I the right guy?”
“We needed to go to a wire service, because their stories go everywhere. I needed someone I could trust.”
“How did you decide that?”
“I remembered you from way back with the Hollywood Washington corruption story when you were with that awful rag, Rumored Today.”
Harding had uncovered corruption and bribery between production companies, some owned by Hollywood’s biggest stars and lawmakers in Washington, D.C.
His solid reporting had forced the national mainstream media to follow and credit Rumored Today. As the pressure for an investigation mounted, one angry superstar implicated in the scandal used a film premiere to humiliate Harding during a press conference where he was surrounded by reporters who were ignoring publicists’ demands they only talk about the new movie.
The enraged star singled out Harding.
“There’s the little sewer-dweller. Look at the tiny troll.” The star, who was over half a foot taller, stepped closer to tower over him. “Your stories are crap, Harding. Garbage. And when this is over, I’ll still have enough money for a thousand lifetimes, but as long as you live-” the star patted the top of Harding’s head as if he were a lapdog “-people will look down on you. You should get those teeth fixed, buddy.”
Embarrassed, Harding kept his cool while the star was globally chastised online and on news shows. Harding’s reporting led to a federal investigation. Several people were charged, convicted and jailed and the star who had demeaned Harding narrowly missed being charged and going to prison for his role in the corruption scheme.
“I knew some of the investigators on that one,” Tanner said. “You stood your ground with egocentric stars.” He handed Harding a mug of coffee that had a bulldog insignia on it. “You’ve sure gotten around over the years. How long you been back in L.A.?”
“A few months.”
Harding stared into his coffee for a few seconds.
Tanner let a moment pass before saying, “Let’s get started.”
He led Harding down the hall to an empty squad room.
“This is my partner, Harvey Zurn.”
Zurn was in his late fifties and had the warmth of a ball-peen hammer. Harding offered his hand and Zurn crushed it in his. His dark eyes burned into Harding over a thick dark moustache. The room’s blinds were drawn, dimming the light. Updates on a handful of murders written in a felt-tip pen ran across the board on one wall. Faces of the dead stared down from photographs. A laptop sat on a table, a large screen hung over the far wall.
“As I was saying earlier, we discovered some disturbing elements in several homicides and we want to reach out to the public, through a story by you,” Tanner said.
“What did you find?”
“I’ll get to that. We’re dealing with five specific unsolved homicides throughout greater Los Angeles, going back six to ten years. Find a seat. I’ll give you an overview.” Tanner settled at the laptop. “The first victim…”
A key clicked and the screen filled with the title One over a clear color photo taken in a wooded area. The corpse of a naked white woman rested on the tall grass, with her hands bound behind her back and a cord stretching from there to wrap around her neck. A clear plastic bag covered her head.
“Leeza Meadows. Age twenty-one. A birdwatcher found her body November 9, 2003, at the edge of Santa Clarita. She had been sexually assaulted, among other things, as you can see here.”
The screen filled with an enlarged photo of her head. Harding stared, blinked a few times then started making notes as Tanner continued.
“She was last seen leaving her job at the Misty Ni
ghts Bar amp; Grill. Leeza never went anywhere without her cell phone. It was not found at the scene. Two weeks after her body was discovered, someone used Leeza’s cell phone to call her home. Her father answered. The caller never spoke but her father insisted someone was on the line, refusing to answer his questions. Investigators determined the call was made from downtown L.A., but that’s as far as they got. No other calls were ever made on the phone, which is still missing along with a second item.”
“Which is?”
“We’re not saying. That item is holdback, a key fact known only to a few investigators and the killer.”
“Do you suspect it was the killer who called?”
“That’s one theory,” Zurn said.
Tanner’s laptop displayed another victim’s image, labeled Two, which showed a woman’s naked torso, on its back, in a shallow grave.
“August 11, 2004, during some construction work for a new subdivision in Topanga, a grader flattening the ground unearthed the body of Esther Fatima Lopez, age twenty-nine. She had been sexually assaulted and her throat had been slashed. She’d worked for an escort agency.”
A new photo titled Three showing a winding nature trail appeared on the screen. The image changed to a small hillside and the naked corpse of a white female, semiburied under branches.
“On June 3, 2005, in Lakewood’s Monte Verde Park, a grade-nine science class on a field trip found the body of Monique Louise Wilson, a thirty-year-old accountant from Artesia. She’d been sexually assaulted and strangled with her own panties.”
Slide Four showed an old factory and its storage area, followed by a slide of a steel drum containing a woman’s corpse.
“On April 16, 2006, in San Dimas, two teenage boys flying a radio-controlled airplane that crashed into the barrels near this abandoned fruit-packing plant discovered the body of Fay Lynne Millwood, age twenty-seven. She was an aspiring actress who’d been working in a bar in Burbank. She had been sexually assaulted. Family members confirmed her remains through tattoos and surgical scars.”
The fifth photograph was of a ranch-style bungalow, with children’s bicycles, balls and toys scattered across the front yard. The next image featured a kitchen, cereal boxes and empty bowls on the table, a cluttered family bulletin board.
Then the screen changed to an image of horror. In the bedroom, a naked woman in a spread-eagled position on a blood-drenched bed, each arm and leg tied to each corner. The walls cascaded with blood.
“On February 10, 2007, a neighbor discovered the body of Bonnie Catherine Bradford, age thirty-four, in her home in Temple City. Bradford was a script writer and a divorced mother of an eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed more than fifty times according to the autopsy report.”
Tanner shut down the laptop.
“The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department handles more than a thousand homicides a year,” he said. “I won’t go into discussion on our clearance rate other than to say it’s a fact that a lot of murders go cold. But no homicide is closed until the investigation is resolved.
“For years these five cases remained unsolved and unconnected among the hundreds of other cold cases. Recently, in reviewing the Bradford murder, we discovered a piece of critical evidence that had been overlooked-a cryptic message left at the scene by the killer.”
“What did it say?” Harding asked while taking notes.
“We’re not going to reveal that. It’s holdback,” Zurn said.
“What? You call me down here and hint at a big exclusive-”
“Easy, Mark,” Tanner said. “No one has this story. Listen, after we had the overlooked evidence analyzed, we found that it was irrefutably linked to these five cases with a solid common factor.”
“What could be the common factor among-” he flipped through his pages “-a waitress, a hooker, an accountant, an actress and a screenwriter? Did these victims know each other? Belong to the same book club?”
“Nothing like that. They’re linked by the physical evidence we found.”
“DNA?”
“We’re not prepared to go into details, but we realize that this killer left us a message,” Tanner said. “He wanted us to know what he’d done, that he’s responsible for these five murders across L.A. He’s very smart.”
“Are there more victims?”
“We used the information we’d found and ran it through local, state and national databases, ViCAP and others. So far, nothing’s surfaced to suggest other murders are linked to these five, but we can’t rule out the possibility. The evidence ties the five together, five murders in a string that began ten years ago and stopped cold five years ago with the Bradford case in Temple City.”
“Any theories on why they stopped?”
“The killer is dead,” Zurn said. “Or in prison, or moved on.”
Tanner resumed. “In any event we think these serial murders have ended and that the case is solvable.”
“Really? You believe that?”
“We’re forming a task force with the LAPD, the FBI and other major police agencies,” Tanner said. “We’re going to follow every lead or clue to find the killer and clear these cases. We’re asking anyone anywhere who has information on any of these homicides to contact us.”
Before they wrapped up, Harding asked Tanner several more questions. Tanner gave him a file of information and photos along with the offer to help him reach relatives of victims, or to call him with any questions.
“The tenth anniversary of the first homicide is coming up,” Tanner said. “The profilers said an anniversary story may jog someone’s memory or yield a lead.”
“You’re using me to reach out to the killer, aren’t you?”
“We want him to know that while it took a little time, we got his message and now we’re sending him one.”
“Which is?”
“We may not be as intelligent as he is, but we’ll do everything in our power to find him.”
12
San Marino, California
The morning after the accident, Claire woke before her alarm and reached toward Robert’s side of the bed.
It was empty.
She lifted her head and looked at their bathroom. The door was open. The light was off. Maybe he couldn’t sleep? His body clock was always out of whack because he often flew across several time zones.
But his last trip had been entirely in Pacific time.
It didn’t really matter, she thought, he was always up at all hours prowling around like a cat.
It was 5:50 a.m.
She got out of bed, tired but cheerful from yesterday’s good news as she pulled on her robe and started for the kitchen to make coffee. Padding through their Spanish-style home, she noticed that the door to Robert’s office was closed. Light spilled from the bottom. She raised her hand to the doorknob but froze when she heard Robert’s voice. It was low and she only picked up bits of the conversation.
“No, I don’t want to do that… Are you listening, Cynthia… No…”
Cynthia? Claire puzzled. Is he talking to his ex-wife? What’s going on?
Robert was coming to the door. Claire left for the kitchen expecting to hear him behind her.
She didn’t.
She shrugged it all off, attributing any qualms to her early-morning grogginess. She made coffee, then went to their front step to collect the Los Angeles Times, the Pasadena Star-News and USA TODAY. Despite her pleas to save trees, Robert had insisted on the subscriptions. He was a news junkie.
She scanned the Times, finding a story on the accident inside under the headline Miracle Rescue in Fiery Freeway Crash. There was a dramatic photo of a car in flames taken from the video a motorist had recorded with his phone camera. Accompanying the story was a small picture of Robert at the hospital with the caption Hero Pilot Robert Bowen Saved Mother and Baby. They had seen TV news reports of the accident and rescue last night. Their phone rang with congratulatory calls from friends and interview requ
ests from reporters.
Claire was proud of him.
After her first cup of morning coffee, a bagel with peaches, and daydreaming about a nursery, she got into the shower. She tried taking inventory of the day ahead, but as the steam clouds rose around her, Claire was carried back through time, back to her deepest wound. Her Grand Canyon of pain…
…Her father is gripping the handgun, pointing it to the ceiling, keeping it out of reach from her mother’s frantic fingers as they battle for it at the top of the stairs. In her other arm, Claire’s mother holds Luke, Claire’s baby brother.
Claire hurries to them, pounds her doll Miss Rags at her father’s legs.
“Stop it, Daddy!”
His gambling and drinking had cost him his trucker’s license. Her mother’s part-time teaching job pays little, bills are piling up. Collectors are calling. He stinks of alcohol, mirrors have been broken, furniture has been smashed, he’s raging again.
“I’m gonna kill all of you fuckers for dragging me down!”
“No, Daddy!”
Luke is crying.
“Claire, get out of the house! Go next door! Call the police!” Her mother yells but the gun explodes with the first shot, then Claire sees the barrel slowly turning toward her mother. As her mother fights him, Claire’s father falls backward grabbing her mother and Luke, taking them with him as all three fall down the staircase to a sickening crash on the landing.
“No!”
Claire rushes to the aftermath. The gun slides across the floor, her father moans, not moving, her mother is on her stomach, one arm is turned all wrong and Luke’s tiny leg sticks out from under her as she groans. “Claire, take Luke and run for help! Now!”
Claire takes her baby brother into her arms. “Please, Luke! It’s going to be okay!” A bright red ribbon of blood oozes from his ear. He does not move. His eyes are open wide. “Please, Luke!” Claire is in the street and flinches at the first shot; turns and sees the muzzle flashes of two more bloom in the window.
At eight years old, Claire was the sole survivor.
Her family was dead, her mother and her father.