The trip took a little over an hour; Hollywoodland sign spiel accompanied me on the radio. The deputy sheriff in the gate hut examined my badge and ID card and called the main building to clear me; whatever he was told made him snap to attention and salute. The barbed-wire fence swung open; I drove past the inmate barracks and over to a large Spanish-style structure fronted by a tile portico. As I parked, an LASD captain in uniform walked over, hand out, nervous grin on. “Detective Bleichert, I’m Warden Patchett.”
I got out and gave the man a Lee Blanchard bonecrusher. “A pleasure, Warden. Has Roach been told anything?”
“No. He’s in an interrogation room waiting for you. Do you think he killed the Dahlia?”
I started walking; Patchett steered me in the right direction. “I’m not sure yet. What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s forty-eight years old, he’s an anesthesiologist, and he was arrested in October of ’47 for selling hospital morphine to an LAPD narcotics officer. He got five to ten, did a year at Quentin. He’s down here because we needed help in the infirmary and the Adult Authority thought he’d be a safe risk. He’s got no prior arrests, and he’s been a model prisoner.”
We turned into a low, tan brick building, a typical county “utility” job–long corridors, recessed steel doors embossed with numbers and no names. Passing a string of one-way glass windows, Patchett grabbed my arm. “There. That’s Roach.”
I stared in. A bony middle-aged man in county denims was seated at a card table, reading a magazine. He was a smart-looking bird–high forehead covered by wisps of thinning gray hair, bright eyes, the kind of large, veiny hands you associate with doctors. I said, “Care to sit in, Warden?”
Patchett opened the door. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Roach looked up. Patchett said, “Doc, this is Detective Bleichert. He’s with the Los Angeles Police, and he’s got a few questions for you.”
Roach put down his magazine– _American Anesthesioligist_. Patchett and I took seats across from him; the doctor/dope peddler said, “However I can be of service,” his voice eastern and educated.
I went right for the throat. “Dr. Roach, why did you kill Elizabeth Short?”
Roach smiled slowly; gradually his grin spread ear to ear. “I expected you back in ’47. After Corporal Dulange made that sad little confession of his, I expected you to break down my office door any second. Two and a half years after the fact surprises me, however.”
My skin was buzzing; it felt like bugs were getting ready to eat me for breakfast. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
Roach’s grin disappeared, replaced by a serious look, the movie doctor getting ready to deliver some bad news. “Gentlemen, on Monday, January 13, 1947, I flew to San Francisco and checked in at the Saint Francis Hotel, preparatory to delivering my Tuesday night keynote speech at the annual convention of the Academy of American Anesthesiologists. I gave the speech Tuesday night, and was featured speaker at the farewell breakfast, Wednesday morning, January fifteenth. I was in the constant company of colleagues through the afternoon of the fifteenth, and I slept with my ex-wife at the Saint Francis both Monday and Tuesday nights. If you would like corroboration, call the Academy at their Los Angeles number, and my ex-wife, Alice Carstairs Roach, at San Francisco CR-1786.”
I said, “Check that out for me, would you please, Warden?,” my eyes on Roach.
Patchett left; the doctor said, “You look disappointed.”
“Bravo, Willis. Now tell me about you and Dulange and Elizabeth Short.”
“Will you inform the Parole Board that I cooperated with you?”
“No, but if you don’t tell me I’ll have the LA District Attorney file charges on you for obstruction of justice.”
Roach acknowledged match point with a grin. “Bravo, Detective Bleichert. You know, of course, that the reason the dates are so well fixed in my mind is due to all the publicity Miss Short’s death garnered. So please trust my memory.”
I got out a pen and notepad. “Go, Willis.”
Roach said, “In ’47 I had a lucrative little sideline selling pharmaceuticals. I sold them primarily in cocktail lounges, primarily to servicemen who had discovered their pleasures overseas during the war. That was how I met Corporal Dulange. I approached him, but he informed me that he appreciated the pleasures of Johnnie Walker Red Label scotch whisky exclusively.”