The investigation faded out. The Swarthy Man became less relevant. We targeted a killer and amassed facts on his victim. I wanted to write a book and give my mother to the world. I wanted to take what I learned about her and portray my arc of recognition and love.
I wrote My Dark Places in seven months. I went at it with deliberate intention. I spilled the most sordid facts of my mother’s life and did not cite mitigation. I did not want people to think that I loved her in spite of her unconsciousness and erratic and negligent acts. I wanted people to know that I loved her because of them–and that my debt of gratitude derived from the fact that she was precisely who she was–and that the specific components of her ambiguously defined psyche and her sexual hold on me all contributed to shape and save my life.
My Dark Places was a best-seller and a critical success. I booktoured in America and Europe. Bill Stoner joined me in France and L.A. We took camera crews to El Monte. We showed them Arroyo High and the spots where the Desert Inn and Stan’s Drive-In stood. I summarized my mother’s story 6,ooo times. I reduced it to comprehensible sound bites. I gave her to the world in a spirit of passion and joy.
The book sparked a string of worthless tips. Bill checked them out. I went home to Kansas City and researched my next novel.
My mother stayed with me. She stormed my heart at unpredictable times. I welcomed her insistent presence.
I couldn’t give My Dark Places up. I didn’t want to give it up. I toured for the paperback edition. I gave more readings and more interviews and took my mother public again. I told her story with undiminished passion. The repetition did not wear me down. I went home wanting more. I went home wanting something new and altogether familiar.
I missed Bill.
I missed the law-enforcement world and my observer role.
I missed El Monte.
I lived there for four months in 1958. I left the day my mother died. I stayed away for thirty-six years.
It was hot, smoggy, and dusty. Rednecks and wetbacks reigned. My father called it “Shitsville, U.S.A.”
My mother died and scared me west to my father and Central L.A. Her ghost kept me out and pulled me back.
Arroyo High was still Arroyo High. My old house was still standing. Stan’s Drive-In was gone. The Desert Inn was Valenzuela’s Restaurant.
I reembraced my mother in the town that killed her. El Monte was our prime communion zone. My first visits scared me. Sustained contact wiped the fear out. Bill and I made friends with the cops and the man who owned my old house. We dined on the spot where my mother danced with her killer. We ate at Pepe’s across the street and jived with Oscar De La Hoya.
I love El Monte now. El Monte is the pure essence of HER.
I wanted to give El Monte the power to shock and drive me again. I wanted to take my mother’s lessons and consciously address a murdered woman. I wanted to find a workable case and write about it.
Bill was still a Homicide reserve. He told me he was scanning old files for DNA submission. The captain ordered a big file review. DNA was a hot new ticket. A lot of old unsolveds might be solvable now.
I pitched my plan. Bill liked it. I asked him to check his review files for El Monte unsolveds.
He called me back and said he found a body dump. It was just as tight and local as the Jean Ellroy case.
3
I booked a hotel room near Bill’s place and flew out to Orange County, I holed up with the Scales file overnight.
It looked like my mother’s file. Crime-scene shots and Teletypes and reports stuck in a blue notebook. Paper scraps and a tape cassette: Bill Scales’s first interview.
I played the tape.
Scales spoke slowly and carefully. He described his wife’s disappearance and a recent motorcycle race in the same tone. He lived to race. He should have won a trophy last week. He couldn’t grab his bike and look for Betty last Monday. His bike was not street legal.