Millard came back and handed Sears a piece of paper. He read it and nudged Lee. The doctor and nun turned the bottom half of the body over, spreading the legs wide. My stomach flipflopped; Lee said, “Bingo.” He stared at a teletype sheet while the doc droned on about lack of vaginal abrasions and the presence of old semen. The coldness in his voice made me angry; I grabbed the sheet and read: “Russ–she’s Elizabeth Ann Short, DOB 7/29/24, Medford, Mass. Feds ID’d the prints– she was arrested in Santa Barbara 9/43. Background check in progress. Report back to Hall following autopsy. Call in all available field officers. –J.T.”
The doctor said, “That’s it on preliminary postmortem. Later on I’ll have some more specifics, and I’ll run some toxicological tests.” He draped both halves of Elizabeth Ann Short and added, “Questions?” The nun headed for the door clutching her steno pad.
Millard said, “Can you give us a reconstruction?”
“Pending the test results, sure. Here’s what she wasn’t: she wasn’t pregnant, she wasn’t raped, but she had had voluntary intercourse sometime during the past week or so. She took what you might call a gentle whipping within the past week; the last marks on her back are older than the cuts on her front side. Here’s what I think happened. I think she was tied down and tortured with a knife for a minimum of thirty-six to forty-eight hours. I think her legs were broken with a smooth, rounded instrument like a baseball bat while she was still alive. I think she either got beaten to death with something like a baseball bat, or she choked to death on her blood from the mouth wound. After she was dead, she was cut in half with a butcher knife or something resembling it, and the killer went in after her internal organs with something like a penknife. After _that_, he drained the blood from the body and washed it clean, my guess is in a bathtub. We took some blood samples from the kidneys, and in a few days we’ll be able to tell you if she had any dope or liquor in her system.”
Lee said, “Doc, did this guy know anything about medicine or anatomy? Why’d he go after that inside stuff?”
The doctor examined his cigar butt. “You tell me. The top-half organs he could have pulled out easily. The bottom organs he hacked with a knife to get at, like that was what interested him. He could have had medical training, but then again he could have had veterinary training, or taxidermist’s training, or biological training, or he could have taken Physiology 104 in the LA city school system or my Pathology for Beginners class at UCLA. You tell me. I’ll tell you what you’ve got for sure: she was dead six to eight hours before you found her, and she was killed someplace secluded that had running water. Harry, has this girl got a name yet?”
Sears tried to answer, but his mouth just fluttered. Millard put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Elizabeth Short.”
The doctor saluted heaven with his cigar. “God love you, Elizabeth. Russell, when you get the son of a bitch who did this to her, give him a kick in the balls and tell him it’s from Frederick D. Newbarr, M.D. Now all of you get out of here. I’ve got a date with a jumper suicide in ten minutes.”
o o o
Walking out of the elevator, I heard Ellis Loew’s voice, an octave louder and deeper than normal, echoing down the corridor. I caught “Vivisection of a lovely young woman,” “Werewolf psychopath” and “My political aspirations are subservient to my desire to see justice done.” Opening a connecting door into the Homicide pen, I saw the Republican bright boy emoting into radio mikes while a recording crew stood by. He was wearing an American Legion poppy on his lapel– probably purchased from the wino legionnaire who slept in the Hall of Records parking lot–a man he had once vigorously prosecuted for vagrancy.
The bullpen was taken over by ham antics, so I walked across the hall to Tierney’s office. Lee, Russ Millard, Harry Sears and two old-timer cops I hardly knew–Dick Cavanaugh and Vern Smith–were huddled around Captain Jack’s desk, examining a piece of paper the boss was holding up.