“We’ll start with the chain of command. I’m supervising, Lieutenant Millard is exec, Sergeant Sears is the runner between divisions. Deputy DA Loew is liaison to the press and civilian authorities, and the following officers are detached to Central Homicide, effective 1/16/47: Sergeant Anders, Detective Arcola, Sergeant Blanchard, Officer Bleichert, Sergeant Cavanaugh, Detective Ellison, Detective Grimes, Sergeant Koenig, Detective Liggett, Detective Navarette, Sergeant Pratt, Detective J. Smith, Detective W. Smith, Sergeant Vogel. You men see Lieutenant Millard after this briefing. Russ, they’re all yours.”
I got out my pen, giving the man next to me a gentle elbow to get more writing room. Every cop around me was doing the same thing; you could feel their attention rivet to the front of the room.
Millard spoke in his courtroom lawyer’s voice: “Yesterday, seven A.M., Norton Avenue between 39th and Coliseum. A dead girl, naked, cut in half, right off the sidewalk in a vacant lot. Obviously tortured, but I’ll hold off on that until I talk to the autopsy surgeon–Doc Newbarr’s doing the job this afternoon at Queen of Angels. No reporters–there’s some details we don’t want them to know.
“The area has been thoroughly canvassed once–no leads so far. There was no blood where we found the body; the girl was obviously killed somewhere else and dumped in the lot. There’s a number of vacant lots in the area, and they’re being searched for weapons and bloodstains. An armed robbery-homicide suspect named Raymond Douglas Nash was renting a garage down the street–the place was checked for prints and bloodstains. The lab boys got zero, and Nash is not a suspect on the girl.
“There’s no ID on her yet, no matchup to anyone in the Missing Persons files. Her prints have been teletyped, so we should get some kind of report soon. An anonymous call to University Station started it all, by the way. The officer who caught the squeal said it was a hysterical woman walking her little girl to school. The woman didn’t give her name and hung up, and I think we can eliminate her as a suspect.”
Millard switched to a patient, professorial tone. “Until the body is ID’d, the investigation has to be centered on 39th and Norton, and the next step is recanvassing the area.”
A big collective groan rose. Millard scowled and said, “University Station will be the command post, and there’ll be clerks there to type up and collate the field officers’ reports. Clerical officers will be working up summary reports and evidence indexes. They’ll be posted on the squadroom board at University, with carbons distributed to all LAPD and sheriff’s divisions. You men here from other squads are to take what you hear at this briefing back to your station houses, put it on every crime sheet, every watch. Any information you get from patrolmen, you phone in to Central Homicide, extension 411. Now, I’ve got lists of recanvassing addresses for everyone but Bleichert and Blanchard. Bucky, Lee, take the same areas as yesterday. You men from other divisions, stand by; the rest of you men that Captain Tierney detached, see me now. That’s it!”
I jockeyed out the door and took service stairs down to the parking lot, wanting to avoid Lee and put some distance between him and my okay on the Nash memo. The sky had turned dark gray, and all the way to Leimert Park I thought of thunderstorms obliterating leads in the vacant lots, washing the sliced girl investigation and Lee’s grief over his little sister into the sewer until the gutters overflowed and Junior Nash popped his head out, begging to be arrested. As I parked my car, the clouds started to break up; soon I was canvassing with the sun beating down–and a new string of negative answers kiboshed my fantasies.
I asked the same questions I asked the day before, stressing Nash even harder. But this time it was different. Cops were combing the area, writing down the license numbers of parked cars and dragging sewers for women’s clothing–and the locals had listened to the radio and read the papers.
One sherry-breathing hairbag held out a plastic crucifix and asked me if it would keep the werewolf away; an old geezer wearing skivvies and a clerical collar told me the dead girl was God’s sacrifice because Leimert Park voted Democrat in the ’46 Congressional. A little boy showed me a movie pinup of Lon Chancy, Jr. as the Wolfman and said that the vacant lot at 39th and Norton was the launching pad for his rocket ship, and a boxing fan who recognized me from the Blanchard fight asked me for my autograph, then told me straight-faced that his neighbor’s bassett hound was the killer, and would I please shoot the cocksucker? The sane nos I got were as boring as the nut answers were fanciful, and I started to feel like the straight man in a monstrous comedy routine.