by Chris Frank
He had much more luck with the song, and he learned something. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was more than just a catchy ditty that tested the memory skills of choirs during the Christmas season. It was a very religious song with strong symbolism associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Jim had always thought that the first day of Christmas was around December 13th or 14th, and the song’s triumphant conclusion arrived with the birth of Jesus, but he was wrong. The first day of Christmas was actually Christmas Day with the song culminating with its twelfth day on January fifth, when the church celebrated the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany, the time when the three wise men presented their gifts to the baby Jesus. Jim kept his notes in his hands as he explained his research to Captain Jones and his peers.
“Each day of the song has strong religious symbolism. The one true love refers to God. The two turtle doves, the two books of the Bible, the Old and New Testament. Three French hens refers to Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues and Four Calling Birds refers to the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, otherwise known as the Four Evangelists. Five golden rings is the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament, which details the story of man’s fall from grace. Six geese a laying are the six days of creation, seven swans a swimming represent the seven sacraments, eight maids a milking are the eight Beatitudes, and so on until the twelve drummers refer to the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle’s Creed.”
Jim pointed to the panels behind him.
“We could not find a link between our victims because the connection was not to individuals, but to the words of a song. It was right there in front of us. Marty Lord thinks he’s clever. He hangs Paul Artridge from a tree on Pear Street. Paul Artridge. P. Artridge in a Pear tree. Janette McDermott drowns under the weight of a 200 year-old tortoise in six inches of water. Janette McDermott, philanthropist, savior of the Pacific tortoise.”
Jim passed around a picture of the vanity license plate on her car.
“As you can see, Janette McDermott, the Turtle Dove.”
Jim then pointed to the photograph of Audrey La Pense’s naked body, covered in sugar.
“He’s playing with us here. Three French hens. He actually spelled this one out for us, like we are children. Alice Edwards…”
Jim looked at her panel for a couple of seconds.
“This one is sloppy. I believe in this case that he had to improvise; that after Alice appeared on the news as a witness, he had to make Alice fit into the song. Alice Edwards called the police a half dozen times a week. He buys a bamboo cage and puts it over her head to comply with the calling bird. But...”
Captain Jones, standing off to the side and up to this point very impressed with Jim’s comprehension of the situation, saw the hesitation and jumped in.
“But what, Detective Jovian?”
“…but how could he know?”
The Captain was puzzled.
“How could he know what?”
“That Alice Edwards called the police a lot. I suppose that because Alice was a witness to the first murder and called the police about the car alarm, Lord could rationalize that Alice’s one call to the police was enough to make her the calling bird, but it just doesn’t seem like it would be enough for this guy. He’s more…poetically-driven than that.”
A middle-aged female agent from the FBI with her hair pulled severely into a bun chimed in.
“What if he knew her?”
Captain Jones looked at the agent.
“What do you mean?”
She continued.
“Detective Jovian seems to be having trouble as to whether Alice Edwards had done enough to warrant the title of ‘calling bird.’ What if Lord knew that Alice Edwards had called the police on multiple occasions? What if this wasn’t the first time that she called the police about Lord? Would that make her murder more poetic, Detective Jovian?”
“It would!” Jim exclaimed. “One early assumption in this case was that the killer lived in that West Covina neighborhood. Maybe he grew up there and knew Alice Edwards; he knew that she called the police a lot because she might have called the police on him once or twice.”
Captain Jones interrupted.
“Good. Thank you, Detective Jovian. Okay people, here are your marching orders. I need you to go door to door in West Covina and see if anyone knows where this Marty Lord might live. Start in the ‘Fruit’ streets and extend your search radius circularly. Detective Jovian, pull up every log on calls that came to the West Covina Police from Alice Edwards. You may need to go back quite a ways. We did not have a computer to track all the calls until the early nineties. The rest of the information may be in boxes and you’ve got to do some serious grunt work. Let’s get out there people, and catch ourselves a serial killer.”
Day 5: 3:06 p.m.
Gisele An checked her voice mailbox at KVTM News several times a day. She had many admirers, both male and female, and found it hard at times to keep the bucks and does at bay. As she screened the messages, she was struck by one caller who wanted to speak only on the condition of anonymity. The caller told Gisele that he knew where the next body would be found and if she wanted to get the scoop, to meet him in the middle of the Hyperion Bridge in Glendale at 6:00 p.m. He warned her to come alone. Gisele was smart enough to know that she would never attend a meeting with an informant, alone on a bridge, in the dark; she would show up, but on her terms. She would call a couple of her “boys” and see if they wanted to accompany her on an adventure.
Day 5: 5:06 p.m.
From a Julian calendar point of view, in the northern hemisphere, December 21st is the darkest day of the year. It is the day every year when the sun is the furthest from the equator in the southern sky and as a result, shines very little warming light on the citizens of Los Angeles. Each day thereafter, the Earth starts to tilt further and further towards the sun so that the mighty star shines longer, by about a minute a day, until the middle of June, at which point the earth starts to tilt back. The sun had nearly set by 5:06 p.m. when life partners Ben Jacobs and Hadley Bressman saw the spotlight on top of the abandoned building on Figueroa Street north of downtown. The light from the building was shining through a man’s body, casting an unearthly image on the clouded night sky, not unlike the cry for help that Commissioner Gordon would send to Batman when the Joker was on the loose. Ben whipped out his Android smartphone and immediately called 911.
Day 5: 5:08 p.m.
Jim pulled up the computer printout of the calls that Alice Edwards had made to the police. Over the past fifteen years, Alice had clocked an astounding 1148 calls. Jim was amazed; 1148 fucking calls, a little fewer than 80 per year, or to put it simpler terms, a little more than once a week. Jim was never one to speak ill of the dead, but this lady was a royal pain in the ass. This was the part of police work that Jim despised, tracking down leads and digging for clues. But as his father had always told him, ‘nothing in life that’s hard is easy’. Thanks, dad. There were many times in his life that he thought about his father’s favorite adage and it still pissed him off. The old man was right, of course. Jim thought going through boxes of phone messages was a huge waste of time. He thought that he should be focusing on the fifth potential victim - the “golden ring” - but he knew that he could not, for fear of incurring Captain Jones’ wrath. Golden ring, golden ring. A guy named Golden who sold rings? A blond woman who worked at the telephone company? Jim could not get his head around it. He was about to call Lisa, to fill her in and see what she might come up with, when the phone rang. Marty Lord had put an end to the ring mystery.
Day 5: 5:38 p.m.
Captain Jones and Detective Jim Jovian stood next to the illuminated and very dead body of Gordon Ring, both men looking very frustrated. Identification of the body was easy. Ring’s Screen Actor’s Guild card, which he obtained for his uncredited appearance in Oceans 13, was perched precariously on his swollen tongue. Marty Lord had really done a number. Poor Mr. Ring was strapped to the spot
light and an enormous five had been carved into his torso, from a point six inches above his sternum to the top of his pubic symphosis below. The inferior loop of the ‘five’ had penetrated the confines of Gordon’s peritoneum so that bowels admixed with blood were emanating freely from the open wound.
Jim was beginning to really dislike Marty Lord.
“Have we got anything?” Captain Jones asked.
“No, Skip,” Jim replied. “Spotlight was on a timer. We’re checking with the landlord to see if anyone was renting space in the building, but everything looks abandoned. The lock on the front door was wrenched off. Landlord said that the spotlight had been on the roof for years; he didn’t know that it still was in working condition. Marty could have set the timer hours ago and then taken off. The coroner’s assistant did a liver puncture and estimates time of death at around 3:00 p.m.”
Jones looked at his watch and shook his head.
“Two and a half hours ago. Gordon Ring, do you believe it? Motherfucker. I really want to catch this prick.”
Jim concurred.
“No more than me.”
“It’s not a contest, detective. How are you doing with the Edwards’ calls? Have you made any progress?”
“Not yet, Captain. She called the station a shitload; it’s going to take me a while to get through it all.”
Jones peered over the lifeless form of Gordon Ring for the last time before offering Jim some final words of encouragement.
“Just get it done.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And detective, remember, nothing in life that’s hard is easy.”
Jones walked away.
Those words! Jim used every ounce of restraint in his body to not unholster his gun and show Captain Jones how much he hated that phrase. Then he wondered; had his superior officer known his father? Surely not.
Day 5: 6:12 p.m.
The Hyperion Bridge crossed the Los Angeles River near Glendale, California. Located just south of Griffith Park, it had never been known as a safe place to be after dark. There was nowhere to leave her car on the bridge, so Gisele parked her BMW on the west side of the bridge in front of a taqueria that specialized in carne asada burritos. She had arrived at her ‘meet’ thirty minutes ahead of schedule to position her two buddies in the shadows on either end of the crossing. It was cold and Gisele had not worn the right coat. It was difficult to predict the weather these days. Shivering a little, she reminded herself to do that piece on global warming, soon. Forty minutes after the agreed-upon time, there was no sign of either a decelerating car or a pedestrian heading in her direction; she decided that it was time to abort.
“He’s not going to show,” Gisele said into the speaker on her new cell phone. “He must have seen you guys.”
“Roger that,” came a response.
Gisele laughed.
“Roger what, Eddie. What are you, a spy?”
“Call me Brackett,” he responded. “Eddie Brackett.”
Eddie Brackett and Kyle Longley were Gisele’s good friends. Neither man worked in security nor for the news station, but they both volunteered their services as muscle when Gisele called looking for help. Both of these good-looking young men with well-chiseled physiques and fake tans were dying to get into Gisele’s pants. If either could enhance his chances by offering Gisele protection from someone who might turn out to be the “Birdman,” so be it. Many men before Eddie and Kyle had risked so much more for so much less. Gisele had stationed Eddie at one end of the Hyperion Bridge and Kyle at the other. Their plan was to allow the “source” to get close to Gisele, capture their conversation on the phone and, if all went well, capture the subject. But the informant did not show.
Gisele spoke into her phone.
“Let’s bring it in, boys.”
Like two puppies excited to see that their master had purchased a new Frisbee, the boys came running. Kyle was the first to arrive.
“Sorry, Gisele. We tried. Man, its fucking cold.”
Gisele smiled.
“I know, thank you.”
Eddie arrived at her other side.
“Thank you both.”
“It was our pleasure.” Eddie chimed in. “So what do you want to do now?”
Gisele interlocked her arms with her two friends as they walked to her car.
“Now I am going back to the KVTM. I will be doing a follow-up on the La Pense murder from the station at 10, so I need some rest, research and makeup before I go on the air.”
Kyle looked heartbroken.
“Aw, Gisele. How about R&R?”
“Look,” she told them as she pulled her keys from her purse, “I’ll be done by 10:30. Meet me at Mirabelle’s at 11:00. We’ll get some oysters to wash down our martinis. On me. How does that sound?”
“On you, anything sounds great,” Eddie responded.
Kyle was not amused.
“Easy, cowboy.”
Gisele kissed each of her friends on both cheeks, waved ciao, and drove away. It wasn’t until she turned left on Alvarado five minutes later that the man, who was hiding in her backseat, sat up and placed the sharp end of a large knife against her trachea.
He brought his face close and whispered in her ear.
“Hello, Gisele.”
“H-h-hello,” she stammered.
“I told you I’d come. I would never stand you up.”
Chapter Eight: A Man Needs A Maid
Day 5: 7:35 p.m.
It was an endless stream of information, like he was reading the entire Matrix from the movie. Jim could not look at the computer printout any longer. He rubbed and rubbed his eyes, but the blur would not go away. He got up from his desk and walked over to the panels. Number five had recently been erected and there was no shortage of Gordon Ring pictures to fill the space. Gordon Ring, that son of a bitch. Five Gordon Ring. What was that, a Japanese pronunciation of English joke? Jim went back to his desk and took out his notes on the “Twelve Days.” What was next, six geese a laying? How would Marty make that fit? The killer was always playing with words and letters.
Jim grabbed a piece of chalk and like a dutiful student, started writing on the board. Geese A Laying. Jim tried to alter the pronunciation, change the accents, scramble the letters; he came up with nothing. It’s right there, I know it is. And fucking Marty, he’s laughing at me. When he kills the next victim, we’ll look back and say, of course, why didn’t we see it? Oh that Marty, he’s so clever. Jim slammed his fist hard against the chalkboard as resignation fell over him. For the first time since the murders began, Jim Jovian stopped referring to potential victims as “ifs” and thought of them as “whens.”
Day 5: 7:46 p.m.
David Swanza had emigrated to the United States from Ethiopia in 1988, escaping famine and political unrest in his native land. He first moved to New York and drove a cab to make ends meet but he left the Big Apple when he found that the weather did not suit his clothes. It wasn’t the temperature that bothered David as much as the wind. There were times David felt that the wind blowing down 17th Street in Stuyvesant Town was actually penetrating his bones. He tried moving to the South first, but the humidity and the bugs in Florida reminded him too much of home. He also did not find the locals as tolerant of Ethiopians as the people of Manhattan; New Yorkers seemed to dislike everyone equally. He made a brief stop in Houston but did not find a decent job until finally he landed in Los Angeles.
David Swanza had not seen many movies while he lived in Africa. He did not develop his taste for cinema until he reached the U.S. He found the perfect job when he landed a gig as an usher at the Arclight theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The money wasn’t great but the weather inside the theatre was always 72 degrees and he could watch every new movie for free. This, he thought, was why he had come to America. This was what made America great.
Day 5: 9:16 p.m.
Lisa had purchased a half-gallon of cioppino and a rotisserie chicken. She set both in front of Jim on the kitchen table. The chicke
n was still warm. Lisa nibbled at her food while Jim devoured his portion mercilessly. He had noticed her reticence to talk, which he attributed to joblessness and guilt. He volunteered to clean the kitchen and sent her to the bedroom for a long hot bubble bath. Jim wanted to be the caring boyfriend and he found that with Lisa, it was not a formidable task. She really was a bright light in his life, a flame that he did not want to extinguish. He was sitting on the couch, waiting for the Ten O’clock News to start, when she emerged from the bedroom, wearing a pair of red silk pajamas. Jim did not own a pair of red silk pajamas; therefore Lisa must have brought them from home. She was getting comfortable being at his place and he would have it no other way.
“Nice,” Jim said.
Lisa twirled, modeling.
“Oh, this old thing. I’ve had it for years.”
“Turn around.”
Lisa obeyed.
“Yes sir, detective.”
Jim reached up and pulled the price tag off the back of her collar. She laughed at being busted. He pocketed the tag and pulled her close.
“You are the most beautiful woman I know.”