Fatally Haunted

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Notably, the murderer—or murderers—had removed a giant diamond stud from Mills’s necktie. They also took what little cash he had in his pockets. But later, when detectives queried his wife at the Mills’s home, she led them into his study where she nearly fainted, pointing to the open safe. “He had about ten thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds in there,” she said. Wasn’t it rather unusual to keep such an enormous number of gems, Auble and his men had asked her. Not at all, she said, because he was a manager for the Syndicate Loan Company, which was a fancy term for “pawnbroker,” she added. Mills often purchased expensive furniture for well-heeled clients who paid him in gems or jewelry.

  Auble pulled on his coat and shut the door to his office on South Hope Street. He brushed aside the young rank-and-file who tried to get his attention. He needed to wire Chief Reynolds in Colorado City for some photographs.

  He got the photographs and sketches a week later. The images were, as he’d imagined, gruesome. Were it not for the note Reynolds had placed on top of the sketches, he might have missed the treasure enclosed underneath them, wrapped carefully in brown butcher’s paper: a small grove of hair strands glued to a piece of cardboard. Captain Auble, the note read, Herewith a sample of hair from the deceased, Bessie Bouton, in the event it can serve you to find whomever may be a monster shared by our cities.

  Auble tapped a young patrolman to drive him from police headquarters at 1817 South Hope Street to 840 West Sixteenth Street. As he pulled up, he could see Mrs. Bosler standing on a crate in her front yard, pruning a fig tree. Her daughter, pulling weeds nearby, heard him first and tugged on her mother’s skirt. Bosler got down, straightened up and brushed her skirt. “What can I do for you, Captain Auble?” The officer gestured toward the front of her home. “Okay if we go inside?”

  Auble spared Mrs. Bosler the sight of the photographs of the Cutler Mountain corpse. Instead, he showed her only the strands of hair that Sheriff Grimes had taped to the piece of cardboard, and the sketches that Coroner Law drew of what he thought the dead woman might have looked like when she was alive and well. Could she be the woman Permelia saw luring Mills into the home across the street? The woman wiped her brow as she looked at these items. December in Los Angeles might as well be late spring anywhere else. “That’s her, alright,” the matron swore.

  The detective thanked her and left. He walked across the street and stared at the house where George Mills was slaughtered. It was a pretty, mint-green, two-story cottage of eight rooms, and stood by itself on the north side of the street. Green lawns and dots of geranium beds surrounded it. A wealthy harness maker and his wife owned the house. It had, for obvious reasons, remained vacant since Mills was killed twenty months ago. Auble felt sorry for the owners. No doubt they would have a hard time renting it out again after what happened there, he thought.

  At age forty-four, Auble thought he had seen enough depravity and violence for ten lifetimes. Born in Illinois and raised in Savannah, Missouri, he moved to Southern California in 1887 and got a job with LAPD almost immediately. A day after he put on his badge, he had to rescue a Chinese toddler from fire at a hovel on Sanchez Street. Hardly a day went by without breaking up a fan-tan ring, an opium den, a house of prostitution, drunken mothers and fathers, a burglary outfit. The first man he actually shot was William Bean, whom he had seen jimmying a lock at Joe Ludwig’s fruit store on Temple and Hill. Auble shot him after yelling at him to stop running away. The bullet entered Bean’s spine at such an angle that the receiving hospital doctor said he would die within a day. He did not, and instead, took Auble to court and accused the detective of entrapping him. Why else would an officer of such stature happen to be watching the back of a fruit store from a room across the street at eleven-thirty at night?

  Auble was acquitted, as usual. But the press dubbed Bean “Auble’s ghost,” and the inference was clear: the detective had spent so much time with low-level thugs that maybe he was becoming callous and sloppy and tired, and maybe he had taken some liberties with the truth of what happened. It didn’t help that once the patient woke up, Bean’s handwritten “deathbed confession” exonerating Auble was proved to be bogus. Walter knew it was time to move on to more intellectual pursuits within the department. He’d earned it. His chief would not be retiring any time soon, but he did put Auble in charge of only big crimes. The only criminals this strapping Midwestern lawman would handle were big ones: highway robbers, large-scale bunco-steerers, and murderers. This was a big one, this Mills murder. He needed to solve it.

  “‘Member that Pinkerton bullshit?” asked the eager young patrolman when Auble climbed back into the motorcar. He’d decided to go on home since it was getting late, and his house was on the Sixteenth Street route as well, albeit a few miles east. He didn’t answer the younger man, but of course he remembered the Pinkerton bullshit. At two o’clock in the morning the day after George Mills’ body was discovered, that smarmy bastard from the San Francisco office sashayed into 821 Sixteenth Street, spilling hot coffee all over the foyer. “You,” said the interloper, nodding at one of Auble’s men, “have a go at that with a rag, will you, son?” The young cop stared bug-eyed at Charles Ryan’s shield, glinting in the electric lights of the house. Auble stepped between his charge and Ryan.

  “This is a homicide scene,” he growled. “What’s your business here?”

  “Maybe you didn’t see the shield, son,” the man said, “I’m with Pinkerton’s. Using Sheriff Biscailuz’s office until Ascot Park opens.”

  “Means as much to me as a fart in a whirlwind,” Auble said. “Do what you have to do and get out. And clean up your own goddamned coffee.”

  The Pinkerton detective made a big show of looking into corners of the house and lifting up papers here and there, muttering “Uh, uh hm,” every thirty seconds. After about fifteen minutes of this, the man cried, “A-ha!” so loudly that Auble dropped his own coffee. The uninvited private eye waved a little piece of cardboard. It was a baggage check from a Tucson hotel. “I will no doubt discern,” said the Pinkerton, “that whomever this baggage check belonged to is our killer!”

  Auble had a feeling that no killer would be stupid enough to leave such evidence behind. He was right; the claim check could not be matched to anyone who had stayed at that hotel in recent years. But the clue did serve one good purpose, and that was to get Pinkerton’s off on a wild goose chase and out of the hair of LAPD for a couple of months. And Detective Ryan was so excited about this inconsequential piece of paper that he completely missed what Auble did not: the nest of bizarre food products in the kitchen—a fresh bag of malted milk powder, a jar of nut butter, and a can of “Protose Meat Substitute,” all made by Battle Creek Sanitarium. Auble knew that the man who butchered George Mills was a monster who, in his brain, might be soothed by acting upon his murderous impulses, but whose bowels buckled under the stress of being attached to an abomination of nature.

  The next day, Auble rapped on the door of his boss, Chief Hammell. “Remember the Sixteenth Street case?” he asked, feeling confident enough to spread out papers and photographs on the Chief’s desk. Hammell did remember it. He just didn’t care much about it. “I still believe that it was a lover’s quarrel,” he said dismissively. “Probably even a coupla Sallys. The woman was probably a sister or a maid or even a figment of the neighbor’s imagination,” he said.

  Auble sucked in his breath. Sometimes he could not believe the man sitting in the chair in front of him was chief of all Los Angeles police. He plowed ahead. “I believe the murderer of George Mills is the same man who killed this poor thing in Colorado City. The man and woman seen at 821 Sixteenth match the description of Andrews and Bouton, and there were diamonds stolen from both Mills and Bouton.”

  “There are a lot of ‘tall and dark’ men who would kill for a quantity of diamonds,” Hammell responded with a yawn.

  “But not in such a depraved way,” Auble said. “This killer is taking a great deal of risk and effort to obliter
ate the very image of his victims once he has acquired their gems. He doesn’t even bother taking cash and other valuables.” He thought for a beat, and then said, “He is not going to stop. He can’t stop. I think he’s been here before, and he will strike again in Los Angeles.”

  “Captain.” Hammell sighed. “I know how badly you want that big one.” Auble thought it was quaint that Hammell, born in Los Angeles, still accented some words the way his German parents did. “That big one” sounded like “Dat big wan.” But his point was taken. Auble did want this mad man. He should have been able to track him down in 1903. Maybe he could have saved the life of poor Bessie Bouton, stripped of her humanity on Cutler Mountain.

  “Chief,” said Auble. “Do you remember when I was asked to send some of my men and a medical expert to San Pedro last September?” Hammell nodded and checked his watch. “The woman who got off the ferry boat from Santa Catalina was so sick she was foaming at the mouth and bleeding from…well, she was bleeding from everywhere she should not. She barely survived.” Hammell nodded even more vigorously and gestured for Auble to hurry up. “The woman,” the captain continued, “looked just like this one, and the nurses reported that she kept clutching the fingers of her left hand. When they pried them open, her left forefinger was cut deep, right below the diamond solitaire ring there. The gem turned out to be almost four carats.”

  “So, she was a rich one,” Hammell said. “So, what?”

  “So,” Auble continued, “at first, the doctor assumed that the cut was because her limbs were entirely swollen because her kidneys were trying like hell to get the poison out, and that the band cut into her finger. But later, he realized that, in fact, someone had tried to cut off her finger at the base with a dull knife…but it didn’t work. Or more likely, the other passengers heard her screaming before the villain could finish the deed.”

  “Right,” Hammell said. “So, the criminal wanted to get the diamond off her before her body was found. Seems like a natural thing for a killer to take, after going through dat much trouble. Probably what he was after all along, a gem that big.”

  “Yes,” Auble said, “look here at the Colorado Springs coroner’s description of Bessie Bouton’s corpse. ‘Fresh scar on left forefinger.’ Bessie’s sister identified her body by her dental work. But there was also the wound on her hand. Yesterday, I telephoned Mrs. Nelson, her sister. She confirmed that she and her husband had vacationed with Bessie and her fiancée in Los Angeles last August. The Nelsons returned to Santa Barbara late in the month, while Bessie and her beau were headed to Catalina and then to Colorado. She never heard from her sister again.”

  “Alright, then. So, who was the beau?” asked Hammell.

  “One Milton Franklin Andrews, from Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts,” Auble said, pounding Hammell’s table. “And according to the Nelsons, Bessie was absolutely besotted with this man. He tried hard to put on a polite face when they were around, but oftentimes, late in the day, he lost control, thinking she was looking at other men. He would yell at her and threaten to take away all of her belongings and her engagement ring. A regular Jekyll and Hyde, according to the Nelsons. After a nap or a meal, Franklin would apologize profusely, and give Bessie a tiny little diamond or two, and claim that he was just looking out for her best interests.”

  “Okay, so what does all of this have to do with a murderer who may or may not still be on the loose in Los Angeles?” Hammell asked.

  “Besides Franklin’s unpleasant nature,” Auble continued, “the Nelsons said they could not vacation with the pair any longer, because they could not dine out with the other couple. Franklin required very specialized foods, including large quantities of malted milk and odd, prepackaged food. They often had to spend half the day looking for stores that carried products from Battle Creek Sanitarium.”

  Finally, Chief Hammell understood. “All right, so the man who killed Mills on Sixteenth Street is the same man who killed his lover in Colorado Springs. Why do we think that he would come back here?”

  Three reasons, Auble explained. The first was obvious: Los Angeles was an itinerant town. One could hop off a steamship in Long Beach or a train at Grand Central, and immediately get lost in anonymity. Even in 1905, you could pretend you were anybody, from anywhere, even if you weren’t. Second, he said, was related to the first. There were simply a lot more people who could be a “mark.” Well-to-do people who liked to flaunt diamonds and live vicariously at gambling dens and stay at hotels among strangers were more likely to be found in Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York than they were in—say—Iowa City. And frankly, Los Angeles had the best weather.

  The third reason was the most important, and Auble “thump thumped” on the pertinent newspaper article on Hammell’s desk: “Glendale to Open Largest Battle Creek Sanitarium on Pacific Coast,” said the Los Angeles Beacon. It was dated August 5, 1904. Auble pushed several smaller articles from area papers since then, noting the progress of this “health hotel” just north of the city, in the dry junction of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys. It would, added the stories, be the largest distributor of its famous foods for temperamental digestive systems. “There is no question,” Auble said, “that Franklin went to Colorado Springs so he could isolate Bouton from her sister. Remember, he thought her body would be unidentifiable from the fire. He will have no choice but to hide in a large city, and we know he has come to Los Angeles at least twice and feels comfortable here. And he will not be able to shake his need for diamonds and predigested Zwieback toast or whatever the hell it is that he eats.”

  Hammell turned his nose at this last comment and then chuckled. “Okay, I’m convinced. What would you like to do? Need men? Money?”

  Auble thought for a moment. “No. I don’t need ’em. Just an extra secretary for a day.”

  The next day, the captain telegraphed the harbor masters in San Pedro, Long Beach, and Los Angeles, warning them to be on the lookout for a man fitting Franklin’s odd description. Most likely, Auble noted, he would be traveling with an attractive, blonde companion, as was his usual preference. The detective also telegraphed all the major railroad depots between San Diego and San Luis Obispo counties to be on the lookout.

  Nothing. For seven long months, nothing. In his spare time (scant with four children at home), Auble followed up with victims of jewelry heists, women who had been beaten by their husbands or lovers, and health food stores that sold Battle Creek goods, hoping to find the name of someone who placed any large or regular orders (there were literally hundreds—too many to interview). He trolled gambling dens in his regular clothes, looking for anyone who was using diamonds, either as collateral or accepting them as a substitute for cash winnings. As the weeks turned into months and summer turned from pleasantly hot in June to blistering hot in August, Auble found himself increasingly irritated by his on—the—clock responsibilities, busting “blind pigs” and illegal faro games and liberating women in “disorderly places.” But being a captain with the LAPD comes with some perks, and one of them was being sent to the cool, mild shores of Avalon, Santa Catalina with thirteen of your most athletic patrolmen to play baseball against San Francisco’s fourteen most crack men in blue—which is what happened on July 12, 1905.

  San Francisco’s team routed Auble’s team, but nobody minded. The constable of the island invited both teams to inspect his new jail, and when all of the bluecoats were looking at the Spanish-style wainscoting, he playfully shut the barred door and captured his “prisoners.” While all the junior officers enjoyed the beer, dinner and party given them in their “cell,” Auble took aside his old friend, Jeremiah Dinan, Captain of the San Francisco Police Department. He explained the history of the Andrews specter, and promised to have his secretary send all the information and theories he held for the lethal figure in fashionable clothing. Peterson shrugged at the story—his city had its own share of peculiar evildoers—but he promised to put out a bulletin when he returned home. “I’ll be sure to alert
Marshal Vollmer, too,” Dinan said, referring to the new lawman in Berkeley. “Malted milk? Are you sure?”

  The next day, before getting on the steamship Cabrillo with his tired but happy men to go home, Auble had a private word with their host, Avalon’s Constable Allen. Of course, Allen remembered Bessie Bouton and her consort from the summer before. How could he forget? He had queried the druggist on the island right after he read about Bessie almost dying upon reaching San Pedro. He had sold carbolic acid to a man fitting Franklin’s description just two days before Bouton returned to the mainland, riddled with poison.

  Exactly two months later, on October 12, 1905, Florence Auble answered the call from the Central girl, who relayed Captain Dinan through to her husband. Walter Auble was now acting chief, owing to Hammell’s resignation in late August. Mrs. Auble liked it when the operator said, “Chief Auble,” but she knew her husband was not thrilled at political nonsense that came with the job—it was the reason Hammell quit.

  “Auble,” Dinan said excitedly. “There’s been a big development. I believe your ghost man is here!” The acting chief could barely contain himself and strained to hear more against the static piped through the instrument. He explained that an Australian man, one William Ellis, showed up at Roosevelt Hospital in Oakland, with severe head wounds. The man—a wealthy horse breeder—had arrived in the States a few days earlier with a couple who had befriended him back in Australia. The man and woman were inveterate gamblers, as was he. The couple had talked Ellis into going to Honolulu with them, to play in a tournament. The male lured Ellis to a picturesque but remote piece of land there called Diamond Head, and the next thing he knew, a bullet whizzed past his ear!

  “‘Diamond Head.’ You’re not serious, man. Are you?”

  “Dreadfully serious,” Dinan responded.

  “Why on Earth didn’t this gentleman flee for his life?” Auble said.