My Dark Places

by James Ellroy

  Bill’s house was twenty minutes away. Bill carried a reserve badge and a gun permit. He was working for the DA’s Office on an ad-hoc basis. They were building their case against Bob Beckett Sr. Bill had carte blanche at Sheriff’s Homicide. He had access to all the files and communications equipment. Our investigation was sanctioned by Sheriff’s Homicide. Bill would share information with the Unsolved crew. He had the Jean Ellroy file out on permanent loan. He said we had to study every scrap of paper in it.

  I bought a large corkboard and nailed it to my living-room wall. I borrowed some file photos and made a collage.

  I tacked up two shots of my mother in August ’57. I tacked up the evil portrait of the Swarthy Man. I wrote a question mark on a Post-it note and placed it above the three pictures. I selected five pervert mug shots and placed them below the spread.

  My desk faced the display. I could look up and see my mother moving into her tailspin. I could see the final result. I could blitz my memory of her younger and softer.

  Bill called me. He said I should meet him at the Sheriff’s Academy. He wanted to show me some evidence.

  I drove out and met him in the parking lot. Bill said he had some fresh news.

  Sergeant Jack Lawton died in 1990. Ward Hallinen was still alive and living down in San Diego County. He was 83 now. Bill talked to him. He didn’t recall the Ellroy case at all. Bill explained our situation. Hallinen got excited and told him to bring the file down. Something in it might spark his memory.

  We walked to the evidence warehouse. A small office adjoined it. Three clerks were standing around. They were deep into topical bullshit. A white guy said OJ. did it. Two black guys disagreed. Bill flashed his badge and signed an evidence form.

  A clerk took us back to the warehouse. It was wicked hot and roughly the size of two football fields placed sideways. It was lined with heavy-duty steel shelving.

  The ceiling was 30 feet high. The shelves ran all the way up. I saw 20 or 30 rows packed with plastic bundles.

  Bill drifted off. I stood by a desk near the door. The clerk brought me a bundle. It was marked Z-483-362.

  It was transparent plastic. I saw four small plastic bags inside. I opened the outer bag and placed the smaller bags on the desk.

  The smallest bag contained minute dust and fiber samples. A tag listed their origin: “1955 Oldsmobile / MMT-879 / 6/ 26/58.” The second bag held three small envelopes. They were sealed. They were marked with my mother’s name and Z-file number. The contents were listed separately below:

  “Vic’s fingernails (sample).”

  “Vic’s hair (sample).”

  “Vic’s pubic hair (sample).”

  I didn’t open them. I opened the third bag and saw the dress and brassiere my mother wore to her death.

  The dress was light and dark blue. The brassiere was white with a lace bodice. I held them and put them to my face.

  I couldn’t smell her. I couldn’t feel her body in them. I wanted to. I wanted to recognize her scent and touch her contours.

  I ran the dress over my face. The heat was making me sweat. I got the lining a little bit wet.

  I put the dress and brassiere down. I opened the fourth bag. I saw the cord and nylon stocking.

  They were twisted up together. I saw the point where the cord frayed and snapped around my mother’s neck. The two nooses were intact. They formed perfect circles no more than three inches across. My mother’s throat was constricted to just that dimension. She was asphyxiated with just that much force.

  I held the ligatures. I looked at them and turned them around in my hands. I held the stocking to my face and tried to smell my mother.

  18

  I drove out to El Monte that night. It was soaringly hot and humid.

  The San Gabriel Valley always ran hot. My mother died in an early-summer heat wave. It was just that hot now.

  I followed an old homing instinct. I kept my windows down and let hot air in the car. I passed the El Monte Police Station. It was right there in its 1958 location. The building looked different. It might have had a face-lift. My car felt like a fucking time machine.

  I turned north on Peck Road. I remembered a long walk back from a movie. I sat through The Ten Commandments. I got home and found my mother blitzed to the gills.

  I turned west at Peck and Bryant. I saw a 7-Eleven store on the southwest corner. The customers were Latin. The counterman was Asian. White El Monte was long gone. I turned on Maple and parked across the street from my old house.

  It was my third visit in 36 years. Media people accompanied me the first two times. I was glib on both occasions. I pointed out anachronisms and riffed on what subsequent tenants did to the property. This was my first nighttime visit. Darkness covered the alterations and returned the house to me as it was then. I remembered the night I watched a rainstorm from my mother’s bedroom window. I stretched out on her bed and turned the lights off to see the colors better. My mother was out somewhere. She caught me in her bedroom once before and reprimanded me. I snuck around her bedroom and checked out her lingerie drawer every time she split for the evening.

  I swung back to Peck Road and drove down to Medina Court. It was exponentially more run-down than it was in ’58. I saw four sidewalk dope buys in the course of three blocks. My mother drove me down Medina Court a few weeks before she died. I was a lazy little boy. She wanted to show me my future as an Anglo-Saxon wetback.

  El Monte was a shit town now. El Monte was a shit town in 1958. It was a genteel shit town indigenous to its era. Dope was clandestine. Guns were scarce. El Monte was running at 10% of its current population and 1/30th of its current crime rate.

  Jean Ellroy was a freak El Monte victim. El Monte appealed to her honky-tonk side. She thought she found a good place to hide. It met her safety standards. It included a weekend playground. She’d see the danger here today. She’d stay away. She brought her own danger here in 1958.

  She sought this place out. She made it her separate world. It was 14 miles from my fictional and real L.A.

  El Monte scared me. It was the bridge between my separate real and fictional worlds. It was a perfectly circumscribed zone of loss and full-blown random horror.

  I drove to 11721 Valley. The Desert Inn was now Valenzuela’s Restaurant. It was a white adobe building with a terracotta roof.

  I parked in the back. My mother parked her Buick in the same spot that night.

  I walked into the restaurant. The layout shocked me.

  It was narrow and L-shaped. A service counter faced the door. It looked exactly like the fantasy image I’d held for 36 years.

  The booths. The low ceiling. The base of the L off to my right. Everything matched my old mental print.

  Maybe she brought me here. Maybe I saw a picture. Maybe I just walked into a weird psychic matrix.

  I stood in the doorway and looked around. All the waitresses and customers were Latin. I got half a dozen who-the-fuck-are-you looks.

  I walked back to my car. I drove up Valley to Garvey. I cruised the parking lot on the northeast corner.

  Stan’s Drive-In was here then. An abandoned coffee shop was here now. Stan’s was six blocks from the Desert Inn. The Desert Inn was a mile and a half from 756 Maple. 756 Maple was a mile and a half from Arroyo High School.

  It was all tight and local.

  I drove to Arroyo High. The sky was hazy black. I couldn’t see the mountains two miles north of me.

  I parked on King’s Row. I hit my high beams and framed the crime scene.

  I assumed the Swarthy Man’s perspective. I transposed my lust for MORE into his lust to fuck my mother. I put all my rage to surmount my past into his rage to destroy my mother’s resistance. I nailed his determination and the blood in his eyes. I fell short on his will to inflict pain in pursuit of pleasure.

  I remembered a sad incident. It happened in ’71 or ’72.

  It was 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. I was coming off inhalers in Robert Burns Park. I thought I heard a woman scream.


  I wasn’t quite sure. I was jacked up on amphetamine. I was hearing the Voices.

  The scream scared me. I knew it came from the apartments on the west side of the park. I wanted to run away and hide. I wanted to save the woman. I hesitated and ran toward the sound.

  I scaled the park fence. I made a lot of noise.

  I looked into a bright bedroom window. I saw a woman putting on a robe. She looked in my direction. She turned the light off and screamed. The scream didn’t sound like the scream I thought I heard. I jumped back into the park and ran off down Beverly Boulevard. The Voices followed me. They told me to find the woman and assure her I intended no harm. I figured out that the first scream wasn’t a scream. It was a woman making love.

  I got drunk the next morning. The Voices subsided. I never apologized to the woman.

  The incident spooked me. I scared that woman. I knew she’d never understand my good intentions.

  I drove back to Newport Beach. I checked my machine and caught a message from Bill Stoner.

  He said he had urgent news. He said to call him regardless of the time.

  I called him. Bill said he found an old Unsolved file that blew his fucking mind.

  The date was 1/23/59. The victim was named Elspeth “Bobbie” Long. She was beaten. She was strangled with a nylon stocking. She was dumped on a road in La Puente—four miles from El Monte. The Long case and the Ellroy case were point-by-point twins.

  19

  A night owl called it in. The San Dimas desk logged it at 2:35 a.m.

  The guy said he was out coon hunting. He saw a body by the road at Don Julian and 8th. His name was Ray Blasingame. He lived and worked in El Monte. He was calling from the gas station at Valley and 3rd.

  The desk man buzzed a patrol unit. Deputy Bill Freese and Deputy Jim Harris rolled to Valley and 3rd. They followed Ray Blasingame to the dump site. He was driving a Ford pickup with four coon dogs in the back.

  The site was secluded. The road was paved with crushed rock. A dirt shoulder and a barbed-wire fence ran behind it. The road led to a water-pump station.

  It was cold. It was dark. The Puente Hills were due south. Valley Boulevard was one half-mile north.

  The woman was laid out face-up. She was stretched flat on the dirt between the road and the fence. She was wearing a charcoal-gray and black sweater, a black skirt and open-toed black shoes. A red overcoat covered her legs. A horse-and-jockey pin was attached to the left shoulder. A black plastic purse was propped up by the fence.

  She was white. She was medium-sized. She had short blond hair. She was 45 to 50 years old.

  Her face was bruised. A nylon stocking was lashed around her neck.

  Harris radioed the San Dimas Station. The desk man called Sheriff’s Homicide. Lieutenant Charles McGowan, Sergeant Harry Andre and Sergeant Claude Everley rolled out. A patrol lieutenant and a print deputy arrived two minutes later.

  Andre saw the Jean Ellroy crime scene. He told Everley that this one looked similar. The Ellroy killer tossed the victim’s coat across her legs. This guy did the same thing.

  A morgue car arrived. A photo car arrived. A coroner’s assistant checked out the body. A photo deputy lit the crime scene and shot it.

  The morgue man noted signs of early rigor mortis. The victim’s head and neck were stiff. Everley pulled up her outer garments and examined her underclothes. She was wearing a red slip, a red bra and a red pantie girdle. Her legs were bare.

  Andre emptied the purse. He found a pair of glasses, $1.32, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a hair brush, a pair of light-blue wool or wool-cotton-blend gloves, a tin of aspirin, a plastic key fob, a ballpoint pen, a pocket mirror and a brown leather wallet with a white-and-silver horse embossed on the front. The wallet contained snapshots of the victim, a bus ticket stub, a clipping from a horse racing scratch sheet and identification cards for Elspeth Evelyn Long and Bobbie Long. The cards listed addresses in New Orleans, Miami and Phoenix, Arizona. The cards listed the victim’s DOB as 7/10/06 and 7/10/13. An insurance ID card listed an L.A. address: 2231V1 West 52nd Street. The card was dated 2/18/57.

  The morgue crew removed the body. Andre called Sheriff’s Homicide. He told the desk man to send some guys out to the victim’s address. Everley got his flashlight and searched the area. He didn’t spot any tire tracks or discarded weaponry.

  Ray Blasingame went home. The photo man took some more shots. The sun came up. Andre and Everley walked the road in full daylight.

  They didn’t see anything new.

  The victim lived in a small apartment house. Her place was at the bottom floor rear. Ward Hallinen, Ray Hopkinson and Ned Lovretovich tossed it.

  They woke the manager up and badged him. He let them into the apartment and went back to bed. They tossed both rooms. They found a box of nylon stockings and a stack of silver dollars and half-dollars. They found a stack of newspaper articles on horse racing. They found a camera with the dial set at exposure #6. They found an address book. They found a payroll check for $37.00. It was dated 1/21/59. It was issued by Bill’s Cafe—1554 West Florence Avenue. They found some horse racing programs and scratch sheets and letters from a horse-race tipster.

  The apartment was clean. The victim’s belongings were neatly arranged. The stockings totaled up to even pairs.

  They grabbed the camera and the address book. They woke the manager up and told him to keep the place locked. He said they should talk to a woman named Liola Taylor. She lived next door. He hardly knew Bobbie Long himself. Liola knew her better.

  They found Liola Taylor and questioned her. She said Bobbie Long lived next door for four years or so. She worked at a restaurant on Florence. She knew lots of men. She wasn’t loose. She liked male companionship. She was going out with a rich guy. She said she was after his money. She never mentioned his name. She never mentioned her own family.

  Hallinen, Hopkinson and Lovretovich drove to Bill’s Cafe. They talked to the boss—William Shostal. He said Bobbie Long was a good waitress. She was friendly. She loved horse racing. She hung out with a waitress named Betty Nolan.

  Shostal gave the cops Betty’s address. They drove to her house and questioned her.

  She said she saw Bobbie at work on Tuesday. That was three days ago. Bobbie said she was going to the track on Thursday. That was yesterday. Bobbie knew a guy named Roger. Bobbie knew a guy who worked at the Challenge Creamery. Betty said she didn’t know their last names. Betty said she didn’t know any “rich guy.” A man brought Bobbie to work two weeks ago. He had slicked-back hair and a mustache. He was driving a white-and-turquoise car. Betty said she didn’t know his name. She never saw him before or since. She said they should contact Fred Mezaway—the cook at Bill’s Cafe. Fred dropped off Bobbie’s paycheck Wednesday or Thursday.

  Hallinen called Bill Shostal and got Mezaway’s address. Shostal said he’d probably be home now. Hallinen, Hopkinson and Lovretovich drove to the address and questioned Mezaway.

  He said he planned to drop off Bobbie’s check early Wednesday night. He got involved in a card game and postponed the errand. He dropped the check off Thursday morning. Bobbie scolded him. She said he had no business playing cards.

  Mezaway said Bobbie dated around. He couldn’t supply any names. She owed a bookie $300. He didn’t know the bookie’s name. He didn’t know any “rich guy” or any guy named Roger or any guy with slicked-back hair or any guy who worked at the Challenge Creamery.

  The cops drove back to Bobbie Long’s apartment. They went through Bobbie’s address book and started calling her friends. They got a string of no-answers. They reached a woman named Freda Fay Callis. Freda Fay said she saw Bobbie on Tuesday. They got together and picked up their friend Judy Sennett. They ran Bobbie by her doctor’s office. Bobbie was having bad headaches. She bumped her head on an iced-tea dispenser at work. The doctor X-rayed Bobbie’s head and took a blood sample.

  The girls drove out to Rosemead. They dropped Judy off at her son-in-law’s place. Freda Fay drove
Bobbie back to L.A. and dropped her at her apartment. Bobbie called her yesterday morning. She said, Let’s go to the races. Freda Fay said she was broke and declined the invitation.

  Freda Fay said Bobbie was a racetrack fanatic. She took the bus out to Santa Anita habitually. Sometimes she’d meet strangers and get rides home. Bobbie was friendly. She wasn’t man crazy. She liked men with money. Freda Fay didn’t know any “rich guy” or any guy named Roger. She didn’t know Bobbie’s bookie. She didn’t know any guy with slicked-back hair or any guy who worked at the Challenge Creamery.

  The cops made some more calls. They reached Bobbie’s friend Ethlyn Manlove. She said Bobbie never mentioned any family. Bobbie told her she was married a long time ago. She got married in New Orleans and divorced in Miami. Ethlyn Manlove said Bobbie dated around. She couldn’t supply any names. She didn’t know any “rich guy.” She didn’t know Bobbie’s bookie. She didn’t know any guy with slicked-back hair or any guy who worked at the Challenge Creamery. The name Roger tweaked her. Roger might be this married guy Bobbie palled around with.

  It was 2:00 p.m. The Long snuff made the afternoon papers. A man walked into the LAPD’s 77th Street Station. He said his name was Warren William Wheelock. People called him Roger. He read about the Bobbie Long murder. He knew Bobbie. He thought the cops might want to talk to him.

  The desk sergeant called Sheriff’s Homicide. The watch commander called Bobbie Long’s apartment and talked to Ray Hopkinson. Hopkinson called 77th Street and talked to Warren William Wheelock.

  Wheelock said he met Bobbie at Hollywood Park Racetrack in May ’58. He said he went by her apartment Wednesday morning—two days ago. He invited Bobbie down to San Diego. He was going down there with his wife. Bobbie brushed him off. She said she wanted to go to the track on Thursday. Wheelock and his wife went down to Dago. They visited his brother-in-law. They went to the jai alai games down in T.J. He had a ticket for game #7—dated last night.