Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The THE BIG NOWHERE

He left his Chevy at the curb and walked over. A knot of deputies in rain slickers were pointing flashlights at the ground; cherry lamp glow fluttered over a sign for the ALLEGRO PLANTATION ARMS–FULL TENANCY BY SPRING

1951. The prowlers’ low beams crisscrossed the lot, picking out booze empties, sodden lumber and paper debris. Danny cleared his throat; one of the men wheeled and pulled his gun, spastic twitchy. Danny said, “Easy, Gibbs. It’s me, Upshaw.”

Gibbs reholstered his piece; the other cops separated. Danny looked down at the corpse, felt his knees buckle and made like a criminologist so he wouldn’t pass out or vomit:

“Deffry, Henderson, keep your lights on the decedent. Gibbs, write down what I say verbatim.

“Dead male Caucasian, nude. Approximate age thirty to thirty-five. The cadaver is lying supine, the arms and legs spread. There are ligature marks on the neck, the eyes have been removed and the empty sockets are extruding a gelatinous substance.”

Danny squatted by the corpse; Deffry and Henderson moved their flashlights in to give him some close-ups. “The genitals are bruised and swollen, there are bite marks on the glans of the penis.” He reached under the dead man’s back and felt wet dirt; he touched the chest near the heart, got dry Side 2

Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The skin and a residue of body heat. “There is no precipitation on the cadaver, and since it rained heavily between midnight and three A.M., we can assume the victim was placed here within the past hour.”

A siren wailed toward the scene. Danny grabbed Deffry’s flashlight and went in extra close, examining the worst of it. “There is a total of six oval, irregular, circumscribed wounds on the torso between the navel and rib cage.

Shredded flesh outlines the perimeters, entrails coated with congealed blood extruding from them. The skin around each wound is inflamed, directly outlining the shred marks, and–”

Henderson said, “Hickeys sure as shit.”

Danny felt his textbook spiel snap. “What are you talking about?”

Henderson sighed. “You know, love bites. Like when a dame starts sucking on your neck. Gibbsey, show plainclothes here what that hat check girl at the Blue Room did to you Christmas.”

Gibbs chuckled and kept writing; Danny stood up, pissed at being patronized by a flunky harness bull. Not talking made the stiff sucker-punch him; his legs were rubber and his stomach was flip-flops. He flashed the five-cell at the ground surrounding the dead man, saw that it had been thoroughly trampled by LASD-issue brogans and that the prowl cars had obliterated any possible tire tracks. Gibbs said, “I ain’t sure I got all them words spelled right.”

Danny found his textbook voice. “It doesn’t matter. Just hold on to it and give it to Captain Dietrich in the morning.”

“But I’m off at eight. The skipper don’t come in till ten, and I got Bowl tickets.”

“Sorry, but you’re staying here until daywatch relieves you or the lab techs show up.”

“The County lab’s closed New Year’s, and I’ve had them tickets–”

A Coroner’s wagon pulled to a stop by the sawhorses, killing its siren; Danny turned to Henderson. “Crime scene ropes, no reporters or rubberneckers.

Gibbs stays posted here, you and Deffry start shaking down the locals. You know the drill: witnesses to the dumping, suspicious loiterers, vehicles.”

“Upshaw, it is four-twenty fucking A.M.”

“Good. Start now, and you may be finished by noon. Leave a report in duplicate with Dietrich, and write down all the addresses where no one was home, so they can be checked later.”

Henderson stormed over to his cruiser; Danny watched the Coroner’s men place the body on a stretcher and drape it with a blanket, Gibbs talking a blue streak to them, Rose Bowl odds and a number on the Black Dahlia case, still unsolved, still a hot topic. The profusion of cherry lights, flashlights and headbeams darted over the lot, picking out details: mud puddles reflecting moonlight and shadows, the neon haze of Hollywood in the distance. Danny thought of his six months as a detective, his own two homicides open-and-shut family jobs. The morgue men loaded the body, hung a U-turn and took off sans siren. A Vollmer maxim hit home: “In murders of extreme passion, the killer will always betray his pathology. If the detective is willing to sort physical evidence objectively and then _think_ subjectively from the killer’s viewpoint, he will often solve crimes that are baffling in their randomness.”

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