“Pull the sheet down all the way, please,” Rosen said.
The man did as he was asked. On the girl’s right forearm was a tribal tattoo in black ink. In the center was a red diamond.
Rosen nodded to the man, who covered the corpse back up and pushed it into the refrigeration unit.
Rosen exhaled loudly, his hands on his hips, as he looked from Giovanni to Sarah. “Well,” he said. “I guess you’re hired. Welcome to the FBI.”
24
Daniel Wolfgram sat on his front porch and sipped homemade lemonade. It was tangy with just a hint of alcohol from the bitters and gave him a warm feeling in his stomach. The one memory from childhood he could actually reflect on with joy was lemonade.
Though Daniel loved his mother, or at least as close to love as he could muster, his father was nothing but a memory of pain, like an electric shock going through Daniel’s body whenever he thought of him.
As punishment when he was a young boy, his father had made him do bare-knuckled push-ups on cement, and, if he couldn’t complete the number he was given, his father would put cigarettes out on his back. Wolfgram remembered the sting more than anything else—that initial sting when his skin would stink and burn. After a few seconds, the nerve endings would burn as well, dulling the pain.
One day at school, his teacher noticed a cigarette burn on his neck. He wasn’t sure what happened after that, just a flurry of meetings with counselors and policemen, but it ended with his father losing custody of him and spending time in jail.
Wolfgram was taken out of the home and placed with a foster family. They were nice enough, initially, but they’d had eleven foster children already. Each one provided $150 per month, which back then was a good bit of money—the only real concern the foster parents had. With eleven other children vying for what little attention they gave, Wolfgram, quiet by nature, was left to himself.
That was where he discovered mathematics when he was eleven years old. It was actually at the insistence of a neighbor—a kindly old man named Gregory. The old man seemed to understand that Wolfgram wasn’t like the other children. One day, he’d bought him a book on dinosaurs. Wolfgram was brought to his home to accept it. As he was flipping through the book, he noticed another book on the history of mathematics open on Gregory’s desk.
Gregory, himself a professor of philosophy, thought the young boy was looking at the portraits of the great mathematicians in history who were in the book. Intuitively, the eleven-year-old Wolfgram began playing with algebra and read the chapter on Leibniz and the founding of calculus. He began running the sample problems in the book on a Post-it Note on the desk, with Gregory hanging over his shoulder watching. Wolfgram thought he was just having fun and didn’t understand the old man’s reaction. But Gregory kneeled down to eye level and said, “Daniel, I’m going to give you some problems to do, okay?”
Wolfgram agreed. A textbook was given to him. Within minutes, Wolfgram was solving problems of logarithmic differentiation. And time seemed to stop. He didn’t remember how long he was at Gregory’s house, but it was long enough that night had fallen. He had gotten through most of the textbook, well into topics covered in a third-semester college class.
The next day, Gregory came over to speak to his foster parents. Wolfgram listened in from the top of the staircase. He didn’t remember most of the conversation, but certain bits of it stuck out to him. He remembered his foster father saying, “We can’t afford it,” over and over.
Gregory told them, “Well, I’ll pay for it.”
What they had been discussing was putting Wolfgram into a gifted school, someplace where he could be with other children like him, ones who cared more about ideas than football.
But that wasn’t what life had in store for him. The week before he was supposed to start his new program, at about ten o’clock one night, his foster father came into the bedroom where Wolfgram slept with four other children and informed him that he was leaving. That they had too many children and needed to, as he’d said, “Get ridda some.”
The real reason was apparent to Wolfgram even at that age: the man was jealous and insecure. He didn’t want one of his foster children, who were clearly there only for the government paycheck they received every month, to succeed in life when he had failed.
The next day, Wolfgram was shuffled to an orphanage while awaiting his next placement. Within a month, his father was granted custody again. Two years later, his father lost custody permanently due to severe child abuse and neglect, primarily from a single incident where he strapped Daniel to a pipe in the basement and whipped him until he nearly bled to death.
The course his life had taken reminded him of an aphorism he’d seen, something like “Short and evil have the days of my life been.” Now he wished he’d remembered who had said it.
The cell phone in his pocket rang. He pulled it out and didn’t recognize the number.
“This is Daniel.”
“Oh, Daniel, hi, this is Dara. From the party.”
“Yes, I remember. How are you?”
“Good.”
“How is your son, Jake?”
“He’s fine, thanks. He’s at his karate lessons right now. Um, listen, Jake’s going out of town with my parents this weekend, and I don’t really have any plans. I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to do something?”
Wolfgram grinned, and he didn’t know why. “Yes, I’d like that.”
“Okay. Do you wanna get dinner somewhere?”
“Sure. I’ll find someplace good. I can’t tomorrow, but is Saturday all right?”
“Yeah, Saturday works.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up. Just text me your address.”
“Okay, see you then.”
Wolfgram hung up and stared at his phone. He’d attempted romantic relationships before. One had been with another professor at the university. He’d taken her home and played some of his favorite pornography for her. She was revolted and left. That was a lesson that couldn’t have been learned any other way, he concluded.
If he was going to fit in and blend with other people, he had to act like them. He couldn’t be honest with anyone.
He rose, glanced around his neighborhood, and went inside his home. He had other matters that were more pressing than a date.
25
Sarah watched as Kyle Vidal tapped his fingers against the desk. The man was handsome and younger, somewhere between Rosen and Giovanni. He had shifty eyes, though. She got the impression that he wasn’t someone you could fully trust.
“You guys are kidding me, right?” he said.
Rosen cleared his throat. “No.”
“Do you even realize how ridiculous this is, Agent Rosen? Do I look like some backwoods hick spotting UFOs in swamps?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
Rosen seemed embarrassed, but the only indication was a slight blush in his cheeks. “No, you don’t seem like that, sir.”
“Then why the hell are you sitting here with a carnival sidekick and pitching it to me like we just landed Sherlock Holmes? Do you have any idea what the media would do if they knew you had taken her to a crime scene? How do you think Gillian is going to react when she finds out that you took a fortune-teller to her house?”
Giovanni spoke up. “She’s not a fortune-teller.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Kyle said, his voice raised.
Kyle continued that way for a few minutes. It seemed degrading for Rosen to be yelled at by someone nearly fifteen years his junior. But he was quiet and professional. Giovanni, though, was beginning to raise his voice and fidget.
Sarah was quiet. Behind Kyle’s desk were floor-to-ceiling windows, and she stared out of them onto Fourth Street. She couldn’t see much, but on the roof of a small building across the street, a man sat on a lawn chair reading a book.
“Well?” she heard someone say.
Kyle was staring directly at her. “Excuse me?” she said sheepi
shly.
“I asked why you think we should pay you a salary to consult on cases when you have no education, no training, and are a liability to this entire division.”
Sarah swallowed and looked down at the desk. She wasn’t used to being on the spot like this and didn’t particularly enjoy it. “I don’t know.”
Kyle glanced at Rosen and Giovanni. Rosen looked away, but Giovanni held Kyle’s gaze. It was sweet of him to want to protect her. A man hadn’t done that since her father, when she was a child.
In a flash of forced relaxation, she opened her mind.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, thoughts came to her. They began in the front of her brain and seemed to ease their way to the back of her skull like a flowing stream. Then it filled her head until she had nothing but the images and sounds, and the pain behind her eyes that pounded like a jackhammer against her head.
The conversation came first: a woman and Kyle standing in a kitchen. The woman was in sweats and had makeup running down her face. She’d been crying for awhile. Her arms were folded, and she was leaning against the sink.
Kyle was against the refrigerator. He’d been crying as well. Sarah, if she concentrated, could hear what they were saying. The voices were thick and laced with emotion, but she could just make out enough of the conversation to know that the woman was leaving.
And then another scene replaced it: Kyle standing over her grave. He appeared older but not by much. An entire family was gathered around the site as a priest read from the Bible. The woman was in the casket.
Her eyes opened, and she looked up from the casket.
The woman stared at Sarah and began speaking.
Sarah opened her eyes, ignoring the deep, stabbing pain in her skull. “You don’t want to ask me about this job,” Sarah said to Kyle. “You want to ask me why your wife left you.”
“Excuse me?” he said. “How dare you—”
“She wants you to know that the drunk driving wasn’t your fault. That it was her fault, and she would have done it whether you two stayed together or not. She doesn’t want you to beat yourself up about it.” The pain made Sarah grimace, and she had to take a moment to attempt to push it back. Kyle was silent the entire time, his eyes wide and moist. “And,” she continued, “she wants you to marry Cynthia. She’s a good woman and will—”
Kyle jumped to his feet. “Get the hell outta my office!”
Rosen said, “Kyle, calm down. This is what you wanted to see.”
“Get out, now. All of you.”
Sarah rose and nearly fell over. Giovanni grabbed her and held her up. He wrapped his arm around hers and led her out of the room gently. Some of the other people on the floor were staring at them, but no one said anything.
“Can we use your office?” Giovanni said to Rosen.
“Yeah.” Rosen turned and looked at Kyle, who was still standing at his desk, his chest heaving. “That’s why I brought her in, Kyle. We need her. I can’t stop this thing without her.”
26
The couch was comfortable but too short, and Sarah’s legs hung over the end. Giovanni had shut the door to give her some privacy, but she didn’t feel like this was private. The door was just glass. She could feel eyes on her every time someone walked by.
After a bit, the door opened, and Kyle Vidal stood there.
“Come to yell at me some more?” she asked.
He shut the door behind him and sat down in one of Rosen’s comfy leather chairs. He crossed his legs and stared at her as though she were a patient in a psychiatrist’s office. “I’m sorry for my reaction. That’s not who I am.”
Sarah closed her eyes. The light hurt and made her head throb even more. “I’ve had worse.”
“You don’t know how painful that was for me. If you’re a fake, please tell me. Tell me you looked me up somewhere before you came here today.”
“She wanted you to know that the photo album you were looking for the other day is at her mother’s house. I can tell by your face that means something to you. So tell me how I could’ve looked that up.”
Kyle stayed silent a moment. “Is she here now?”
“No.”
Kyle nodded, staring out the windows. “It happened about three months after she left. She was driving drunk on the freeway and hit a semi that was changing lanes. Her car flipped about four times. She died instantly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never got to ask why she left. She would just tell me she was unhappy but never give me a reason.”
“She had her demons, like everyone else. And I don’t think they had anything to do with you.”
Kyle looked at her. He grinned weakly and rose. “You don’t need to go through the hiring process. You’ll be a ten ninety-nine employee. My secretary will have the paperwork for you. Your official title will be as an assistant to me.”
With that, he left, leaving Sarah staring up at the ceiling. Despite the pain, she grinned.
After the new-hire paperwork was filled out, Sarah took a few ibuprofen and returned to Rosen’s office to meet up with Rosen and Giovanni. She lay down on his couch again as the two men sat.
“So, how does this work?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Rosen said. “I’ve never done this before. I guess we could take you to the scenes where we found the bodies, and you could tell us what you think.”
“You said this was a copycat, right?”
“Yeah. Copycat of a copycat of the Black Dahlia murder.”
“Maybe I should learn about the Black Dahlia first.”
Rosen shrugged. “Why not? I’ll get the files for you.”
27
The sun was at its zenith when the files were brought into the small library at the Bureau. The shelves had mostly law books stacked on bookshelves with two long tables and several chairs spread out in the room. Sarah sat in the one farthest from the door and had a good view of the entire room. It was quiet, and dust coated everything.
Rosen brought in several thick files, some of them old and worn. He stacked them on the table she was sitting at and said, “Well, you’re getting to do something a lot of people wish they could do. Go through the FBI’s files on the Black Dahlia murder.”
“I never heard of it until now.”
“It’s pretty famous. I think they made some movies, too.” He stared at the files and then at Sarah. “You sure you’re okay with this?”
“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”
He shook his head. “Probably not.”
With that, he left, leaving her alone again in the library. The files were numerous, and she didn’t know where to start. So she just started at the top.
The first file had a black-and-white photo of a pretty young brunette. She skipped the birthdays, place of birth, and the family history and came to the original reports by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office, as well as the FBI.
The Black Dahlia was a nickname given to a young woman named Elizabeth Short by the newspapers after she had been killed. William Randolph Hearst himself was rumored to have handpicked the nickname because he thought it sounded dramatic. On January 15, 1947, her body was found in Leimert Park in Los Angeles. The body had been cut in half at the waist. It was found by a young mother walking her toddler.
The body had been drained of all blood, and they determined the killer had washed it before dumping it in the park. Every inch of her seemed to be mutilated. Her face had been cut from the corners of her mouth to her ears—the reports referred to it as a “Glasgow smile.” Sarah had never heard that term before, so she googled it on her phone. The name originated from gangs in Scotland who would cut their victims’ mouths at the corners and then beat the victims so their cheek muscles contracted and tore their cheeks across the face, leaving a scar like a large smile.
Portions of Elizabeth Short’s breasts and thighs had been removed, as had the intestines, which were found at the scene. Sh
e had a tattoo that had been cut off and shoved inside her throat. A photograph was included in the file. The body had its arms over its head and its legs spread. It wasn’t a natural position. Someone, Sarah guessed, would’ve had to arrange her that way.
The actual death wasn’t particularly detailed. In fact, the autopsy report stated she had “Female trouble.” Sarah wondered if, in the late ’40s, it was improper to discuss anything relating to female sexual anatomy, even in an autopsy report.
The bulk of the file was the confessions of at least forty people claiming to be the murderer, and it was in the papers on and off for the past fifty years.
The suspects were what interested Sarah. An enormous list was attached to one folder. It included politicians, police officers, actors, bankers, and everyone in between. She just skimmed the huge list rather than reading through it.
One note caught her attention. A detective in Cleveland named John St. John was investigating a series of murders known as the Cleveland Torso Murders, which occurred in the 1930s to the 1950s. The murders were just as brutal as the Black Dahlia. The killer castrated the male victims and mutilated the genitals of the female victims. He then decapitated them and cut them in half. Some of the victims had evidence of chemical burns as well.
Forensic investigation not being what it was now, most of the victims in the Cleveland Torso Murders weren’t identified, and they never found the heads of many of them. Detective St. John believed that the killer in the Torso Murders had also killed the Black Dahlia and then fled Los Angeles. The suspect he was going to arrest died before they could get there.
As of right now, sixty years after the crime, the killer of the Black Dahlia, and the Cleveland Torso Murders, was still considered at large.
Sarah stared at one of the photos from the Cleveland murders. She could almost believe the victim was still alive, except for the fact that she’d been severed completely in half. The lower portion of the torso with the legs was placed away from the top portion, and most of one of the breasts was gone. Revulsion filled her, and she had to close the file. Though she felt disgust and pity, no images came to her. Sometimes, she’d found, when she really didn’t want to see anything, her mind closed itself off and nothing would come to her. She wondered if unconsciously she really didn’t want to see what had happened to the Black Dahlia.
Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) Page 12
