Hollywood. She says par for the course, the industry’s full of fly-by-nights, most casting calls go nowhere.” “Blood Walk,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. But it was a full month before, and I can’t take it any further.”
“What about Richard’s other job? Where’s the kiddie gym?”
“Pico and Doheny.”
“What’d he do there?”
“Played games with toddlers. Irregular work, mostly birthday parties. The gym owner said he was great-patient, clean-cut, polite.” He shot back whiskey. “Goddamn Boy
Scout and he gets bisected. There has to be more.”
“Some homicidal toddler who resented waiting in line for the Moon Bounce.”
He laughed, studied the bottom of his glass.
“You said he sent money home,” I said. “Where’s that?”
“Denver. Dad’s a carpenter, Mom teaches school. They came out for a few days after he was killed. Salt of the earth, hurting bad, but no help. Richard played sports, got B’s and C’s, acted in all the school plays. Did two years in junior college, hated it, went to work for his father.”
“So he’s got carpentry skills-maybe he met the killer at some woodworking class.”
“He never went to classes of any type that I can find.”
“A carpenter’s kid and he gets band-sawed,” I said.
He put down his glass, careful to do it silently. His eyes fixed on me. Normally startling green, they were gray-brown in the tobacco light. His heavy face was so pale it looked talced, white as his sideburns. The acne pits that scored his cheeks and chin and brow seemed deeper, crueler.
He pushed black hair off his forehead. “Okay,” he said very softly. “Besides exquisite irony, what does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems too cute.”
He frowned, rolled his forearm along the edge of the table as if rubbing an itch, raised his glass for a refill, thanked the waitress when he got it, sipped his way through half the whiskey, and licked his lips. “Why are we even talking about it?
I’m not gonna close this one soon, if ever. I can just feel it.”
I didn’t bother arguing. His hunches are usually sound.
Two months later, he caught the Claire Argent homicide and called me right away, sounding furious but sparked by enthusiasm.
“Got a new one, some interesting similarities to Dada. But different, too. Female vie. Thirty-nine-year-old psychologist named Claire Argent-know her, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Home address in the Hollywood Hills, just off Woodrow Wilson Drive, but she was found in West L.A. territory. Stripped naked and stashed in the trunk of her Buick
Regal, back of the loading dock behind the Stereos Galore in that big shopping center on La Cienega near Sawyer.”
That side of La Cienega was West L.A.’s eastern border. “Barely in your territory.”
“Yeah, Santa loves me. Here’s what I know so far: the shopping center closes at eleven, but there’s no fence at the dock; anyone can pull in there. Real easy access because an alley runs right behind. West of the alley is a supplementary indoor lot, multiple levels, but it’s closed off at night. After that, it’s all residential.
Private homes and apartments. No one heard or saw a thing. Shipping clerk found the car at six A.M., called for a tow, and when the driver winched it up he heard something rolling around inside and had the smarts to worry about it.”
“Was she cut in half?” I said.
“No, left in one piece, but wrapped in two garbage bags, just like Dada. Her throat was slashed, too, and her eyes were mangled.”
“Mangled how?”
“Chopped into hamburger.”
“But not removed.”
“No,” he said irritably. “If my storage theory about Richard is correct, it would explain why she wasn’t cut in half. Dr. Argent was five-five, folded easily into the
Buick. And guess where she worked, Alex: Starkweather Hospital.”
“Really,” I said.
“Ghoul Central. Ever been there?”
“No,” I said. “No reason. None of my patients ever killed anyone.”
3.
IN THE SPRING of 1981, Emil Rudolph Starkweather died in his bed in Azusa at the age of seventy-six, unmarried, leaving no heirs, having dedicated fifty years to public service, ten as a Water and Power engineer, forty as a state senator.