THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy

TO THE HERALD AND OTHER LA PAPERS.

HERE IS DAHLIA’S BELONGINGS.

LETTER TO FOLLOW.

A lab man wearing rubber gloves slit the envelope and pulled out the contents–a little black address book, a plastic-sheathed Social Security card and a thin stack of photographs. Squinting, I read the name on the card–Elizabeth Ann Short–and knew the Dahlia case had blown wide open. The man next to me was talking the delivery up–a postal carrier found the envelope in a mailbox near the downtown library, almost keeled from a heart attack, then grabbed a pair of radio car bulls, who code three’d the booty over.

Ellis Loew pushed his way up against the lab techs, Fritzie Vogel at his heels. The head tech flailed his hands in anger; a cacophony of speculation hit the pen. Then there was a loud whistle, and Russ Millard yelled, “Damnit, back off and let them work. And give them some quiet.”

We did.

The techs descended on the envelope, dusting it with print powder, leafing through the address book, examining the snapshots and calling out their findings like surgeons at an operating table:

“Two partial latents on the back flap, smudged, no more than one or two comparison points, not enough to run a make on, maybe enough to compare to incoming suspects–”

“No prints on Social Security card–”

“Pages of address book readable, but gasoline saturated, no chance of sustaining latents. Names and phone numbers mostly men, not listed alphabetically, some pages ripped out–”

“Photographs are of Short girl with servicemen in uniform, the men’s faces crossed out–”

Stunned, I wondered: _Would_ a letter follow? Was my random snuff theory blown? Since the stuff was obviously sent in by the killer, was _he_ one of the servicemen in the pictures? Was the mailing cat and mouse, or the precursor to surrender and confession? All around me, other officers were running with the same dope, the same questions, talking in knots of two and three, or looking rapt, like they were talking with themselves. The lab techs took off with the plethora of new leads, cradling them in rubber-gloved hands. Then the only calm man in the room whistled again.

And again the commotion froze. Russ Millard, poker-faced, counted the heads and pointed us over to the rear bulletin board. We lined up there; he said, “I don’t know what it means, except I’m pretty sure the killer sent the stuff. The lab boys are going to need more time on the envelope, then they’ll photograph the pages and give us a list of names to do interviews from.”

Dick Cavanaugh said, “Russ, he’s playing with us. Some of the pages were ripped out, and I’ll lay you ten to one his name was on one of them.”

Millard smiled. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he’s crazy and wants to get caught, maybe some of the people in the book know him. Maybe the techs will get latents off the photos or be able to identify some of the men from the insignia of their uniforms. Maybe the bastard _will_ send a letter. That’s a lot of maybes, so I’ll tell you what we’ve got for sure: all eleven of you are going to drop what you’re doing and canvass the area around the mailbox where that envelope was found. Harry and I will be going over the case file to see if any of our previous suspects live or work around there. _Then_, when we’ve got the list of names from the book, we’ll go at it _discreetly_. Betty spread herself pretty thin with men, and homewrecking isn’t my style. Harry?”

Sears was standing by the wall map of downtown LA, holding a pen and clipboard. He stuttered, “W-w-we’ll do f-f-foot beats.” I saw my transfer request stamped “Rejected.” Then I heard an argument on the opposite side of the squadroom.

The arguers were Ellis Loew and Jack Tierney, both of them trying to score points and keep it sotto voce. They ducked behind a wall post for privacy, I ducked over to an adjacent phone cubicle to eavesdrop–hoping for skinny on Lee.

It wasn’t about Lee–it was about _Her_.

“. . . Jack, Horrall wants to take three quarters of the men off the investigation. Bond issue or no bond issue, he thinks he’s given the voters enough of a show. We can get around him by going at the names in the book a hundred percent. The more publicity the case gets, the more truck we’ve got with Horrall–“