12 Days (16 page)

Day 5: 3:06 p.m.

Gisele An checked her voice mailbox at KVTM News several times a day. She had many admirers, both male and female, and found it hard at times to keep the bucks and does at bay. As she screened the messages, she was struck by one caller who wanted to speak only on the condition of anonymity. The caller told Gisele that he knew where the next body would be found and if she wanted to get the scoop, to meet him in the middle of the Hyperion Bridge in Glendale at 6:00 p.m. He warned her to come alone. Gisele was smart enough to know that she would never attend a meeting with an informant, alone on a bridge, in the dark; she would show up, but on her terms. She would call a couple of her “boys” and see if they wanted to accompany her on an adventure.

Day 5: 5:06 p.m.

From a Julian calendar point of view, in the northern hemisphere, December 21
^st
is the darkest day of the year. It is the day every year when the sun is the furthest from the equator in the southern sky and as a result, shines very little warming light on the citizens of Los Angeles. Each day thereafter, the Earth starts to tilt further and further towards the sun so that the mighty star shines longer, by about a minute a day, until the middle of June, at which point the earth starts to tilt back. The sun had nearly set by 5:06 p.m. when life partners Ben Jacobs and Hadley Bressman saw the spotlight on top of the abandoned building on Figueroa Street north of downtown. The light from the building was shining through a man’s body, casting an unearthly image on the clouded night sky, not unlike the cry for help that Commissioner Gordon would send to Batman when the Joker was on the loose. Ben whipped out his Android smartphone and immediately called 911.

Day 5: 5:08 p.m.

Jim pulled up the computer printout of the calls that Alice Edwards had made to the police. Over the past fifteen years, Alice had clocked an astounding 1148 calls. Jim was amazed; 1148 fucking calls, a little fewer than 80 per year, or to put it simpler terms, a little more than once a week. Jim was never one to speak ill of the dead, but this lady was a royal pain in the ass. This was the part of police work that Jim despised, tracking down leads and digging for clues. But as his father had always told him, ‘nothing in life that’s hard is easy’. Thanks, dad. There were many times in his life that he thought about his father’s favorite adage and it still pissed him off. The old man was right, of course. Jim thought going through boxes of phone messages was a huge waste of time. He thought that he should be focusing on the fifth potential victim - the “golden ring” - but he knew that he could not, for fear of incurring Captain Jones’ wrath. Golden ring, golden ring. A guy named Golden who sold rings? A blond woman who worked at the telephone company? Jim could not get his head around it. He was about to call Lisa, to fill her in and see what she might come up with, when the phone rang. Marty Lord had put an end to the ring mystery.

Day 5: 5:38 p.m.

Captain Jones and Detective Jim Jovian stood next to the illuminated and very dead body of Gordon Ring, both men looking very frustrated. Identification of the body was easy. Ring’s Screen Actor’s Guild card, which he obtained for his uncredited appearance in
Oceans 13
, was perched precariously on his swollen tongue. Marty Lord had really done a number. Poor Mr. Ring was strapped to the spotlight and an enormous five had been carved into his torso, from a point six inches above his sternum to the top of his pubic symphosis below. The inferior loop of the ‘five’ had penetrated the confines of Gordon’s peritoneum so that bowels admixed with blood were emanating freely from the open wound.

Jim was beginning to really dislike Marty Lord.

“Have we got anything?” Captain Jones asked.

“No, Skip,” Jim replied. “Spotlight was on a timer. We’re checking with the landlord to see if anyone was renting space in the building, but everything looks abandoned. The lock on the front door was wrenched off. Landlord said that the spotlight had been on the roof for years; he didn’t know that it still was in working condition. Marty could have set the timer hours ago and then taken off. The coroner’s assistant did a liver puncture and estimates time of death at around 3:00 p.m.”

Those words! Jim used every ounce of restraint in his body to not unholster his gun and show Captain Jones how much he hated that phrase. Then he wondered; had his superior officer known his father? Surely not.

Day 5: 6:12 p.m.

The Hyperion Bridge crossed the Los Angeles River near Glendale, California. Located just south of Griffith Park, it had never been known as a safe place to be after dark. There was nowhere to leave her car on the bridge, so Gisele parked her BMW on the west side of the bridge in front of a taqueria that specialized in carne asada burritos. She had arrived at her ‘meet’ thirty minutes ahead of schedule to position her two buddies in the shadows on either end of the crossing. It was cold and Gisele had not worn the right coat. It was difficult to predict the weather these days. Shivering a little, she reminded herself to do that piece on global warming, soon. Forty minutes after the agreed-upon time, there was no sign of either a decelerating car or a pedestrian heading in her direction; she decided that it was time to abort.

Eddie Brackett and Kyle Longley were Gisele’s good friends. Neither man worked in security nor for the news station, but they both volunteered their services as muscle when Gisele called looking for help. Both of these good-looking young men with well-chiseled physiques and fake tans were dying to get into Gisele’s pants. If either could enhance his chances by offering Gisele protection from someone who might turn out to be the “Birdman,” so be it. Many men before Eddie and Kyle had risked so much more for so much less. Gisele had stationed Eddie at one end of the Hyperion Bridge and Kyle at the other. Their plan was to allow the “source” to get close to Gisele, capture their conversation on the phone and, if all went well, capture the subject. But the informant did not show.

Gisele spoke into her phone.

“Let’s bring it in, boys.”

Like two puppies excited to see that their master had purchased a new Frisbee, the boys came running. Kyle was the first to arrive.

“Now I am going back to the KVTM. I will be doing a follow-up on the La Pense murder from the station at 10, so I need some rest, research and makeup before I go on the air.”

Kyle looked heartbroken.

“Aw, Gisele. How about R&R?”

“Look,” she told them as she pulled her keys from her purse, “I’ll be done by 10:30. Meet me at Mirabelle’s at 11:00. We’ll get some oysters to wash down our martinis. On me. How does that sound?”

“On you, anything sounds great,” Eddie responded.

Kyle was not amused.

“Easy, cowboy.”

Gisele kissed each of her friends on both cheeks, waved ciao, and drove away. It wasn’t until she turned left on Alvarado five minutes later that the man, who was hiding in her backseat, sat up and placed the sharp end of a large knife against her trachea.

Chapter Eight: A Man Needs A Maid

Day 5: 7:35 p.m.

It was an endless stream of information, like he was reading the entire Matrix from the movie. Jim could not look at the computer printout any longer. He rubbed and rubbed his eyes, but the blur would not go away. He got up from his desk and walked over to the panels. Number five had recently been erected and there was no shortage of Gordon Ring pictures to fill the space. Gordon Ring, that son of a bitch. Five Gordon Ring. What was that, a Japanese pronunciation of English joke? Jim went back to his desk and took out his notes on the “Twelve Days.” What was next, six geese a laying? How would Marty make that fit? The killer was always playing with words and letters.

Jim grabbed a piece of chalk and like a dutiful student, started writing on the board. Geese A Laying. Jim tried to alter the pronunciation, change the accents, scramble the letters; he came up with nothing.
It’s right there, I know it is. And fucking Marty, he’s laughing at me. When he kills the next victim, we’ll look back and say, of course, why didn’t we see it? Oh that Marty, he’s so clever.
Jim slammed his fist hard against the chalkboard as resignation fell over him. For the first time since the murders began, Jim Jovian stopped referring to potential victims as “ifs” and thought of them as “whens.”

Day 5: 7:46 p.m.

David Swanza had emigrated to the United States from Ethiopia in 1988, escaping famine and political unrest in his native land. He first moved to New York and drove a cab to make ends meet but he left the Big Apple when he found that the weather did not suit his clothes. It wasn’t the temperature that bothered David as much as the wind. There were times David felt that the wind blowing down 17
^th
Street in Stuyvesant Town was actually penetrating his bones. He tried moving to the South first, but the humidity and the bugs in Florida reminded him too much of home. He also did not find the locals as tolerant of Ethiopians as the people of Manhattan; New Yorkers seemed to dislike everyone equally. He made a brief stop in Houston but did not find a decent job until finally he landed in Los Angeles.

David Swanza had not seen many movies while he lived in Africa. He did not develop his taste for cinema until he reached the U.S. He found the perfect job when he landed a gig as an usher at the Arclight theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The money wasn’t great but the weather inside the theatre was always 72 degrees and he could watch every new movie for free. This, he thought, was why he had come to America. This was what made America great.

Day 5: 9:16 p.m.

Lisa had purchased a half-gallon of cioppino and a rotisserie chicken. She set both in front of Jim on the kitchen table. The chicken was still warm. Lisa nibbled at her food while Jim devoured his portion mercilessly. He had noticed her reticence to talk, which he attributed to joblessness and guilt. He volunteered to clean the kitchen and sent her to the bedroom for a long hot bubble bath. Jim wanted to be the caring boyfriend and he found that with Lisa, it was not a formidable task. She really was a bright light in his life, a flame that he did not want to extinguish. He was sitting on the couch, waiting for the Ten O’clock News to start, when she emerged from the bedroom, wearing a pair of red silk pajamas. Jim did not own a pair of red silk pajamas; therefore Lisa must have brought them from home. She was getting comfortable being at his place and he would have it no other way.

Jim reached up and pulled the price tag off the back of her collar. She laughed at being busted. He pocketed the tag and pulled her close.

“So you said that you were going to give me some details on the case. I don’t produce news any more and I promise not to tell anyone. Please, please.”

“All right.”

Jim told Lisa about the events of the day, the murder of Gordon Ring, Bobby Santoro, Marty Lord, and The Twelve Days of Christmas. Jim noticed that the more he talked about the case, the closer Lisa would get to him and the more she would touch his leg.