I recognized Harvey Glatman, a sex killer executed in 1959. A note said he passed a polygraph test.
The second stack: miscellaneous photos and wide-angles of the crime scene.
My father, circa 1946. A notation on the back: “Vict’s exhusband.” A faded snapshot: my mother in her teens. The man beside her? Probably my German-immigrant grandfather.
Arroyo High School, 6/22/58. Santa Anita Road and King’s Road–a football field with jerry-built goalposts. Those righthand-corner X marks: the curbside bushes where they found her. The topography lacked perspective. Every detail hit my eyes as too small, and unequal to the central myth of my life.
I looked at the pictures of my dead mother. I saw the stocking around her neck and the insect bites on her breasts.
Lividity had thickened her features. She did not look like anyone I had ever known.
I knew it wasn’t over. I knew my hours with the file constituted an ambiguous new start.
I left the squad room and drove to El Monte. The years then to now had been cruel.
I clenched up. It felt like something had to hit me at any second. I kept expecting a migraine or a bad case of the shakes.
New prefab houses had aged and split at the joints. Smog obscured the San Gabriel peaks.
The Desert Inn was gone. A taco hut replaced it. The El Monte PD building had been razed and rebuilt.
Anne Le Gore School remained intact. Gang graffiti on the walls provided an update.
Stan’s Drive-In was gone. My old house had been face-lifted past recognition.
Arroyo High School needed a paint job. The playing field needed a trim. Weeds grew thick all around the X-marked spot.
The town had compressed. Its old secrets had subsided into the memories of strangers.
Stoner told me Sergeant Lawton was dead. Sergeant Ward Hallinen: 82 years old and living outside San Diego.
I called him and explained who I was. He apologized for his failing memory and said he couldn’t recall the case. I thanked him for his efforts thirty-six years ago. I remembered a cop who gave me a candy bar, and wondered if it was him.
It wasn’t over. The resolution felt incomplete.
I canceled a dinner date and willed myself to sleep. I woke up at 3 A.M.–unclenched and sick with it.
Conscious thoughts wouldn’t process. I went down to the hotel gym and slammed weights until it hurt.
Steam and a shower helped. I went back to my room and let it hammer me.
New facts contradicted old assumptions. I had always thought my mother was killed because she wouldn’t have sex with a man. It was a child’s coda to horror: A woman dies fending off violation.
My mother made love with her killer. A witness viewed postcoital moments.
They left the drive-in. He wanted to ditch this desperate woman he fucked and get on with his life. The combustion occurred because she wanted more.
More liquor. More distance from the Dutch Reformed Church. More self-abasing honky-tonk thrills.
More love i6,ooo times removed in desiccation.
I inherited those urges from my mother. Gender bias favored me: Men can indiscriminately fuck women with far greater sanction than women can indiscriminately fuck men. I drank, used drugs, and whored with the bravado of the winked-at and condoned. Luck and a coward’s circumspection kept me short of the abyss.
Her pain was greater than mine. It defines the gulf between us. Her death taught me to look inward and hold myself separate. That gift of knowledge saved my life.
It wasn’t over. My investigation will continue.
I took a new gift away from El Monte. I feel proud that I carry her features.
Geneva Hilliker Ellroy: 1915–1958.
My debt grows. Your final terror is the flame I touch my hand to.
I will not diminish your power by saying I love you.
August 1994
GLAMOUR JUNGLE
I
The Crime
SHERIFF’S HOMICIDE FILE #Z-961-651. DATE: 11/30/63. LOCATION: 1227½ NORTH SWEETZER AVENUE, WEST HOLLYWOOD. VICTIM: KUPCINET, KARYN (NMI), W/F/22/DOB 3/6/41.
The place:
A courtyard complex off the Sunset Strip.
The victim:
A drug-addicted and eating-disordered actress-dilettante.
The crux of the major-case commitment:
Money and prestige. The victim’s father had very large pull.