The Hollywood Murders-The Gretch Bayonne Action Adventure Series-Book 3

by Steven M. Thomas

  “I doubt it,” Bannon said. “I think he wore them here. He obviously wanted us to find them. I think he did it to confuse us, to make us think he's a woman.”

  I walked around the premises again to take a second look. There was a typewriter on a small table in the bedroom and dozens of typed pages.

  “Did anyone read these?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Bannon said. “It's really sad. Mae rambles on about how she once entertained celebrities in her mansion like an empress.”

  There were a couple of pages on the floor under the desk. I picked them up and sat them on the table with the rest of the papers. I didn't bother reading them, but something caught my eye. Typed at the bottom of one of the pages was The Valentino Killer.

  “My god!” I said. “Look at this!”

  It wasn't Mae who wrote that page. It was a letter from the killer. The bastard not only took his time to clean up and change clothes after slaughtering his victim, but he also sat down and typed up a damned letter.

  Dear Detective Bannon:

  If you are reading this, that means you were clever enough to search under the desk. Congratulations. I know my last letter is in a sealed envelope at the police station marked evidence #44, I believe. Poor Mae. She was a real fighter. I felt sorry for her with every plunge of my knife. How many more times must I do this?

  The Valentino Killer

  Bannon's face turned blood red. The killer was mocking him. He was mocking all of us. I felt queasy and had to get some air.

  “I need to go outside,” I said.

  Wolf followed me outside where I proceeded to throw up.

  “I need to talk to you in private,” I told Wolf as he helped me stand upright. “I got Hearst's permission to turn The Rose back over to Kots and his men. You need to call the colonel right away, then meet me at Bela's house when you can.”

  “You mean tonight?” Wolf asked.

  “Yes, tonight!” I answered. “I don't care what time it is! We need to move on this as soon as possible!”

  “Then I will just go with you now,” he said, “and we can call Kots from Lugosi's house.”

  We rode back to the police station with Bannon in silence. He only spoke a few words the whole way there, and they didn't require any response.

  “That son of a bitch,” he said.

  Just before we got out of his car, Wolf finally asked Bannon something.

  “That first letter,” Wolf asked. “Is it really marked evidence #44?” Bannon didn't even answer him.

  It was two o'clock in the morning by the time we got to Bela's house. Wolf went straight for the phone and dialed Kot's number but there was no answer.

  “We'll try again in the morning,” Wolf said.

  “I want to check something,” I said, as I walked down to Bela's library.

  I flipped through one of my notebooks until I found a page about the original letter written by the Valentino Killer.

  “It's here,” I said. “I copied it down.”

  “What's here?” Wolf asked.

  “The letter I found in the mailbox,” I answered. “It was marked as evidence #44.”

  The killer was right. And Bannon knew it. With five murders in less than three weeks, and virtually no hard suspects in the case, I am sure Detective Bannon would get less sleep than Wolf and I. After all, it was his job on the line.

  “It might be a cop,” Wolf said. “Whoever it is, they know as much about the case as we do.”

  “More,” I replied. “They obviously know more.”

  “Do you think it is more than one person?” Wolf asked.

  “I don't know,” I answered, “but that's as good a theory as any.”

  “When this is over,” Wolf said. “I would like to take a trip. Just get away from everything.”

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “That deserted island we were stranded on near Cuba after the hurricane,” Wolf said. “At the time, it seemed like we were in a desperate situation. But I often think about how wonderful it really was. I'd like to go back there someday, if we could find it.”

  “It was beautiful,” I said. “And you know what, Wolf?”

  “What's that?” he asked.

  “If we can find this killer,” I answered, “I bet we could find that island, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I desperately wanted to go back to that island again. It was some of the best days of my life. But we were chasing a rabbit named Spah then, and that seemed far more important than living in paradise at the time.

  Everyone in Hollywood was shocked all over again upon hearing the news that Mae Murray had been murdered. Yet no one knew where she had been living or what happened to her since she'd starred in Little Devil with Rudolph Valentino fourteen years ago.

  “Good morning!” Patty said as she entered the kitchen. Wolf and I must have looked like hell, having stayed up all night talking about the Valentino Killer.

  “Oh my!” she said. “Look what the cat drug in!”

  “We need to talk to you about the plan,” I told her.

  “I know,” she replied. “I just hate to give up my car. I need to go see my sister, and I have more auditions to go to.”

  “I will get you a driver,” I said. “But we need your car to be parked at your house. And we need you to pretend that you are living there. You understand, don't you?”

  I hated to drag Patty into this, but it was all we had. She was finally getting a bit of work in movies, and didn't want to miss out on any opportunities. I just wanted to keep her safe.

  “You have phone call, Wolf!” Yioko called out.

  Patty and I ate breakfast as Wolf went into the living room. A few minutes later, he came back with the news that Colonel Kots and his men had repaired The Rose and were headed to Los Angeles.

  “That quick?” I asked. “What was wrong with it?”

  “Kots got a call last night from Hearst,” Wolf explained. “He said it was a very simple fix. The damned civilian pilots didn't throw the right switch in the control room.”

  “What the hell?” I asked. “What switch?”

  “Power on,” Wolf replied. “But the controls aren't marked. The Rose had been operating for weeks without generating electricity before the problems finally set in. Kots said it took them all of two seconds to restore it.”

  “What is The Rose?” Patty asked.

  “It's just a really big airplane,” I said. “It is going to help us with our problem.”

  The phone rang again, but this time it was for me.

  “Take a message!” I shouted.

  “No,” Yioko yelled. “This Mr. Hearst!”

  I took a deep breath and picked up the receiver. “Bay here,” I said.

  “I just got off the phone with President Roosevelt,” the old man said. “He is as concerned about this situation as I am. He's turning the matter over to the Bureau Of Investigation. And they want to talk to you.”

  “With all due respect, sir, those bastards did a white wash of the Graf investigation,” I said. “I don't trust them anymore than the Los Angeles authorities.”

  “The President wasn't involved then,” the old man said. “And I am on very good terms with this one, unlike that bastard Hoover. And since your book came out, there's been a lot of pressure on the government not to make the same mistake again.”

  “I think the killer is a cop or someone very closely related to one,” I said. “We have a plan to flush him out though.”

  “Listen to me very closely,” the old man said. “No one in the Los Angeles Police Department can know that the B.O.I is involved. They will be operating in complete secrecy. Other than Wolf, no one can know about this. Especially not Bannon.”

  “Bannon is a train wreck,” I said. “His nerves are frayed beyond repair. His main motivation seems to be about writing a book about it.”

  “You are in charge now,” Hearst replied. “Not Bannon. You will have the B.O.I at your disposal. Don’t talk to anyone el
se. Do you understand me?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “And you will be Commander In Chief of The Rose,” the old man said. “Use it wisely.”

  “I will,” I answered. “Thank you, sir.”

  “One more thing before I go,” Hearst said.

  “What's that?” I asked.

  “Marion sends her love,” the old man replied.

  I thought about that island as Hearst disconnected our phone call. I was just be put in charge of The Rose again to find a serial killer who was plaguing Hollywood. The island couldn't have been more appealing to me. Even Hoboken would be better than this. Writing short stories for $14 a shot didn't seem so bad after all. But it was way too late to go back now.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Colonel Kots met with us at Bela's house to go over the plan one more time. It was so secret, we didn't even let Lugosi in on it. There were just five people at that meeting. Colonel Kots, the American spy Eva, Wolf, Patty and me.

  “If he does fall for this,” Wolf explained, “it could happen soon. The murders have only been a few days apart.”

  It was a simple plan. Patty would go in the front door and out the back. She would leave her car parked out in front and Wolf and I would take her back to Lugosi's house. Eva would pretend to be Patty, leaving the lights on and the window blinds up all night. The Rose would hover overhead keeping surveillance on the entire block. Kots would call Eva the second anything suspicious happened. If the anyone came into the house, Eva would take care of the rest.

  The only thing I didn't like about it was that Eva would be there alone. Sure, she could probably take out half a dozen men single handedly. And she would be armed to the nines with all sorts of specialized weapons. But what if something went wrong?

  “I definitely want at least one other person in the house,” I said. “The best the military has to offer, in case she needs assistance.”

  “We can put a half dozen experts there if you'd like,” Kots said. “But what if the killer sees one of them through a window? It would scare him off.”

  “We could have one man,” Wolf said. “He would have to stay in the bedroom, out of sight.”

  “And I want to be there too,” I said.

  “I understand that you would like to be there,” Kots said, “but again, you are risking being seen and spooking the suspect if you do.”

  “He may be right, Bay,” Wolf told me. “You're likely to be seen. We should leave this to the experts.”

  Patty had been very quiet throughout the meeting. I hated like hell to have to put her through this, but if it would catch the killer, it would all be worth it in the end.

  “Your friends are right,” she said. “Just go with the plan. You can't be staying up all night anyway. We have movies to make.”

  Yioko suddenly knocked on the door yelling “Bay! You have another visitor!”

  “Good lord!” I said. “No matter how many times I explain to this woman to take a message, she just doesn't get it!”

  “That's not good,” Kots said. “There's no gate here. Anyone could just waltz in.”

  It was the schoolgirl journalist, Nancy. Before I could say anything, she was in the library and sat down. Her eyes were as wide as saucers when she got a load of Kots and Eva.

  “You're here about the murders, aren't you?” she asked.

  I looked down at my feet, not knowing how to react. “No, my dear,” Eva lied. “We are real estate agents. You see, your friend Bay is thinking about buying a house in the area.”

  “Oh,” Nancy said. “I didn't mean to interrupt.”

  “We were just leaving,” Kots said as he and Eva stood up.

  “We will check on those properties for you right away,” Eva said as they walked out the door.

  Wolf and Patty escorted them out of the library, leaving Nancy and me alone.

  “I have some information,” Nancy said. “It may not mean anything, but…”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “My mother is the president of a Rudolph Valentino fan club called Valentino Forever,” Nancy explained. “They publish a newsletter that is mailed out to members once a month. It's mostly old photos and people writing articles about Rudolph and things like that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I am sure there are many fan clubs, but go on.”

  “My mother's is the biggest,” she said as she pulled a letter out of her backpack and handed it to me.

  “I don't really have time to read fan mail right now,” I said. “It's almost time for dinner, but I will look at it later.”

  “You need to read this now,” she said.

  I reluctantly unfolded the letter and read the damned thing only to appease the young girl.

  Dear Valentino Fans:

  I mailed a letter to the newspapers after killing Alice Lake, but they did not publish it. How many more must die before they recognize me? How many more movies will be made and blood shed and who will be the next in line to finally get noticed again? They make me kill. Mabel Normand was a great actress, too. Why should she die? Why did Rudolph die? They killed him. Not me.

  The Valentino Killer

  It was unsettling, to say the least, but I tried to play it off to Nancy as not being of any real significance. The writer had knowledge of the letter I'd found at Alice Lake’s house, and that hadn't been reported in any of the news stories.

  “It's just another crazy fan letter,” I told Nancy. “Anyone could have written this. Don't let it worry you. There are a lot of disturbed people out there.”

  “But the postmark date on the letter is two days before Mabel was killed,” she replied. “If it wasn't written by the killer, how would he know she would be the next victim?”

  I did what I always do when faced with a question I have absolutely no idea how to answer. I lied.

  “The writer got lucky,” I said. “He was betting that Mabel would be next, that's all. He was right, but that doesn't make him the killer.”

  “My mother thinks he is,” Nancy said, “and so do I. I wanted to show it to you first before I took it to Detective Bannon.”

  “Leave it here with me and I will take care of it,” I said. “I don't want you talking with Bannon anyway.”

  “Why not?” Nancy asked. “I have been wanting to talk to him for ages, but he doesn't return my calls. And now I have something that he will definitely be interested in. It's my only shot at getting a meeting with him.”

  “You don't want to talk to Bannon,” I said. “In fact, you shouldn't talk to anyone about this at all. You have to trust me on this.”

  Nancy was right. I knew damned good and well that the letter was written by the killer. I just didn't want Bannon to get a hold of it and ruin my plan.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The only thing the letter really proved to me was that the Valentino Killer wanted attention. He didn't get his twisted letters published in the newspapers, so he was resorting to fanzines.

  “This guy can't wait to get caught,” Wolf said. “He's practically begging for it.”

  “What the hell kind of sick mind are we dealing with here?” I asked.

  “It's the fame he's after,” Wolf replied, “or infamy. As long as he remains unknown, he can't have that. You know, like Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie had letters, even poems, published in newspapers across the country.”

  “Then maybe I should write him a letter back,” I suggested.

  “And send it to where?” Wolf asked. “Crazy Central?”

  “The newspapers,” I replied. “I can talk to the old man. You know he would publish the letter in a heartbeat if he believed it was real. And I could reply back to the letter a day later. That would give the killer his thrill and maybe prevent him from acting out any further. It might even open up a dialogue that would lead us to finding him.”

  “Or it might encourage him to kill again,” Wolf said.

  “Ignoring him hasn't worked so far,” I replied. “I want to sucker this guy int
o a conversation. I want to engage him one on one. And if I get close enough, I will grab the rabbit by the throat and shake it.”

  I placed a phone call to Hearst and left a message to have him reach me as soon as possible. Then I sat down at the typewriter in Bela's library and wrote an open letter to the Valentino Killer.

  Patty cracked the door open just as I was finishing up. “Bay,” she said, “you should go to bed now. It is very late, and we have to get up soon.”

  “In a minute,” I replied. I read over the letter I'd just composed. This might just work, I thought.

  Dear Valentino Killer:

  Good try, but I don't think you are the one.You have inside information, no doubt about that. But you could have gotten that through leaks downtown. I need more to convince me. Something the detectives don't know. Don't try to hoodwink me either. If you are who you claim to be, prove it to me. Otherwise, stop writing these letters and wasting my time.

  Signed,

  Bay

  For once, I was glad I didn't have to report to a movie set. I slept in, only to be awakened by Yioko yelling that I had an important phone call.

  “Take a message!” I yelled from my bed.

  “I told you!” she replied, “I take no more messages. Besides, this is Mr. Hearst!”

  I stumbled out of bed and hurried to the phone in the living room. “Bay here,” I said.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” the old man asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I have a letter that I believe was written by the killer. The detectives don't have it. And I wanted to turn it over to you to have it published in your newspapers.”

  “What on earth for?” Hearst asked. “It sounds like something the police should have.”

  I explained that I thought the killer was seeking attention and about my plan to confront him with my own letter to try to flush information out of him.

  “I think he is frustrated that his previous letters haven't made the news,” I explained. “He sent this one to a small Valentino fan group run by Alma Ruben's sister.”