Milo said, "I'm Sturgis, Doctor. West L.A."
Friedman blinked. "What the hell-" He stepped closer to Ellroy Beatty's head. "Let me tell you, Detective, someone's in deep dirt. I had this D.B. scheduled for a post and someone cut his goddamn head off! And what's he doing in that drawer when he's supposed to be over here?" Friedman waved the card.
"No one moved him, Dr. Friedman," said Martinez. "He got put here right away. And no one cut him, this is the-"
Bullshit, Albert! Bullshit on toast-bullets don't sever your damn head! Bullets don't-"
"This is D.B. Beatty," said Martinez. "The one who was hit by a-"
"I know who he is, Albert!" Another wave of the card. "Beatty, Leroy. Gunshot wound to the head, brought in last night-"
"Beatty, Ellroy," said Martinez.
"Leroy, Albert. Says so right here." The card was thrust at Martinez's face. "Case number 971132; Time of Delivery: three-sixteen A.M."
Martinez rolled up some of the sheeting covering Beatty's legs. Pulling out a toe tag, he read, "Ellroy Beatty, hit by a train. TOD three-forty-two A.M., case number 971135."
Friedman looked down at the head. Then the card. Then the numbers on the steel drawers. He yanked one open.
Inside was an intact body, naked, gray.
Exact same gray as Ellroy Beatty.
Same face.
All four of us stared.
I looked from corpse to corpse. Minor discrepancies materialized: Leroy Beatty had
slightly less hair on top than Ellroy, but more on the bottom. A full white beard.
No scratches on his face, but a keloid scar puckered the right jawline, probably an old knife wound.
The neat, blackened hole in his forehead looked too innocuous to have killed him.
The impact had caused facial distortion-swelling around the nose, puffiness under the eyes. Bloodred eyeballs, as if he'd stared too long into the fires of hell.
Friedman's head was swiveling now, too.
"Twins," said Martinez. "Brother Ellroy, meet Brother Leroy."
Friedman turned on him. "Don't joke, Albert. What the hell's going on?"
"Good question," said Milo.
It took two hours to put it all together. Dr. Friedman left long before then, muttering about having to work with incompetents.
I sat with Milo in a morgue conference room. Detective Robert Aguilar from Newton showed up first. Young, good-looking, with a sleek black pompadour, he wore a gray pinstriped suit tailored to his trim frame. Manicured nails. He spoke very crisply, a little too fast, tried to come across light-hearted but couldn't pull it off.
Milo'd told me he was new to the division, a Detective I. For all I knew, this was his first case.
Last to arrive was Willis Hooks from Central. I'd met him when he worked Southwest.
A series of killings of handicapped people that had given me a glimpse of a cowardly new world.
Hooks was in his early forties, black, five-nine, heavy, with a clean head, bulldog jowls, and a thick, drooping mustache. His navy blazer had that baggy, too-long look you sometimes see with big-chested men. His shoes were dusty.
"Milo," he said, sitting down. "Dr. Delaware. Fate keeps putting us in the same room."
Aguilar watched and listened, trying, I guessed, to gauge Hooks's mood. To know with whom to align himself.
"Fate or just plain bad luck, Willis," said Milo.
Hooks laughed hoarsely and spread pudgy fingers on the table.
Milo said, "Willis, this is Robert Aguilar."
"Newton Division," said Aguilar.
"Charmed," said Hooks. "Yours is the train?"
"Yup," said Aguilar. "Ellroy Lincoln Beatty, male black, fifty-two."
"Mine's Leroy Washington Beatty, male black, fifty-two. Think they could be distantly related?"
Before Aguilar could answer, Hooks winked and said, "Mine went down around three
A.M., give or take."
"Mine, too," said Aguilar.
"How 'bout that?" Hooks turned to Milo. "It appears someone's got it in for the
Beatty family. Maybe we should find out if they've got any other siblings. Maybe there's some more Beatty 187's all over town-hell, this could be a Beatty Holocaust.
If not, least we should do is warn them."
Aguilar frowned. Taking out a gold Cross pen, he began writing in his pad.
Hooks said, "Got some ideas, Detective?"
Aguilar looked up. His lips were tight. "Just charting the data flow."
Hooks pursed his lips and his mustache bristled. "Well, that's good. So tell me,
Detective Sturgis. What's your connection to the Bobbsey twins?"
"You're not going to believe this," said Milo.
We left the morgue at twelve-thirty P.M. Mission Road was alive with pedestrians.
The air smelled like fried chicken.
"Grease," said Milo. "Yum. Lunch?"
"Not in the mood," I said.
"Such strength of character."
He'd left the unmarked in the red zone turnaround in front of the building along with other police vehicles. I'd used a nearby lot. A white-and-blue coroner's van circled past us and cruised out to the street.
Milo said," 'Choo choo bang bang.' A train and a gun." He rested a foot on the unmarked's front bumper." 'Bad eyes in a box.' Both times Peake spouts off the day before. So when does the bastard go on the Psychic Hotline and start raking in serious money?"
"If the news got out, I'm sure agents would be doing lunch with him at Spago."
He huffed. "So what the hell does it mean, Alex?"
"Two homeless men, a psychologist, a waiter," I said. "Wide range of ages, both sexes, blacks, whites. If there's a connection, I don't see it. Maybe Wendell
Pelley's behind some of it. But he didn't do Dada. So if Dada's part of the mix, it means more than one killer. Same if the Beatty brothers really were killed simultaneously."
"Fine, fine, there's a psycho army out there. For all we know, Peake spouted off about Richard, too, but till Claire showed up, no one was around to listen. The question is how the hell does Peake know?"
"The only logical possibility," I said, "is that he has some link to the outside."
"Got to be Pelley," he said. "Or another Starkweather alum. Guys like that would know all the boozehound places like the train tracks, the alley where Leroy was shot. Booze and mental illness, you said so yourself: bad combination. And Pelley's history fits: he was blind drunk when he shot his girlfriend and her kids. Now he's living on the streets again. The Beattys are just the kind of people he'd run into."
"Why use the train?" I said. "Why not shoot both of them?"
"The guy's crazy. Maybe a voice told him to do it that way. Choo choo goddamn bang bang. The main thing is, there's some pattern here."
I didn't reply.
He said, "You have a problem with Pelley?"
"No," I said. "I just can't see any conceptual link, even eliminating Richard Dada from the mix, between Claire and the Beattys."
"The Beattys were alcoholics," he said. "Claire worked with alcoholics. Maybe they were her patients."
"They'd fit the County profile," I said, "but that still doesn't offer any motive to kill them. It had to have something to do with Peake. His crimes-those clippings
Claire held on to. She targeted him because there was something she wanted to learn about him. Or from him. I went back into the newspaper files and got some background on the Ardullo family. Scott's father was a major agricultural figure, adamant about not selling farmland to developers-he'd been wooed for years, but refused. Then he died, Scott and his family got murdered, and all the Ardullo land was sold. Be interesting to know who inherited."
"What?" he said. "We're running off in a whole other direction? The Ardullos were eliminated for profit, and Peake's some corporate hit man? C'mon, Alex, I'm more likely to believe Peake can flow through walls at will, off people, and return to his beddy-bye at the Loon Farm."
"I know Peake's disorganized, but big money always adds another dimension. Maybe you should at least visit Treadway-Fairway Ranch. Maybe someone will be around who remembers."
"Remembers what?"
"The crime. Something. Just to be thorough."
"Right now being thorough means finding Wendell Pelley."
He placed both hands on the hood of the unmarked and gazed over at the coroner's building, then up at the milky sky. Behind us were Dumpsters, water pumps, the rears of two antique hospital buildings. Sculpted cornices and ornate moldings topped crumbling brick. More Victorian London than East L. A. Jack the Ripper would've found it cozy.
"Okay," I said. "Let's stick with here-and-now. I can even give you a motive. The
Beatty twins died at around the same time. That has a ritual flavor to it-a game. My vote is slaughter for fun. That also fits with the second-killer scenario. Plenty of precedent: Leopold and Loeb, Bianchi and Buono, Bittaker and Norris. It could return
Richard Dada to the victim list. Pelley's buddy killed Dada before Pelley was released. But only a month before-the crime would still be psychologically fresh.
Maybe the buddy's descriptions of how he did it turned Pelley on, got him back in the murder game."
"And the other bastard could be some nutcase Pelley hooked up with at the halfway house, Alex. I saw the guys living there. Not the Kiwanis Club. Okay, I'm going back, gonna be a little more assertive. Gonna continue patrolling Ramparts on my own, too. Keep checking the bum haunts. Play more phone tag with other divisions, neighboring cities, in case Pelley and/or Nut Buddy has been a bad boy somewhere else. Though the site of the Beattys' murders says they're still local. Which makes sense. They probably have no wheels, can't hit the freeway."
That reminded me of something. "The first time we discussed Richard, we talked about someone without a car. Maybe a bus rider. Same for Claire's phantom boyfriend."
"There you go," he said. "Bus-riding lunatics. You said he wouldn't look crazy. How do you feel about that, now?"
"Pretty much the same," I said. "All four murders were planned and meticulous.
Whoever killed Richard and Claire had the sense not to steal their cars. And murdering the Beattys on the same night adds another level of calculation.
Choreography. So if Pelley is involved, he's probably not actively psychotic. At least not externally. Don't forget, they let him out. He must've appeared coherent."
"When he kills, he's neat. That makes me feel a whole lot better." Shaking his head,
Milo reached for the car door.
I said, "So theTreadway thing's off the table, completely?"
"You don't want to let go of it?"
"Those clippings bother me, Milo. Whatever Pelley's role in all this, something went on between Claire and Peake. She sought him out, made him a project. He predicted her murder. Sixteen years ago, he took out Brittany Ardullo's eyes. Claire's eyes were also targeted. It's almost as if he'd been trying to connect the two crimes-somehow relive his past, using a surrogate."
"The Beattys' eyes weren't messed with."
"But Richard's eyes were taken. Too much variation, too much that doesn't fit.
Peake's the only link. If we understand more about him-his history-it may get us closer to Pelley. And whoever else is involved."
He swung the door open. "I just don't have the time, Alex. But if you want to go out there, fine. I appreciate the effort- I'll even phone Bunker Protection, see if I can get them to be cooperative. Meanwhile, I go nut-hunting right here on the streets."
"Good luck," I said.
"Luck doesn't seem to be cutting it." He withdrew his hand from the door and placed it on my shoulder. "I'm being a cranky bastard, aren't I? Sorry. Not enough sleep, too much futility."
"Don't sweat it."
"Let me apologize anyway. Contrition's good for the soul. And thanks for all your time on this. I mean it."
"My thanks will be your getting good grades and cleaning your room."
He laughed. Much too loudly. But maybe it helped.
21.
TWENTY MILES NORTH of L.A., everything empties.
I'd stopped at home long enough to pick up and scan the articles I'd photocopied at the library, gulp down some coffee, and get back on the freeway. The 405 took me to the 101 and finally Interstate 5, this time headed north. The last fast-food signs had been five miles back and I shared the freeway with flatbeds hauling hay, long-distance movers, the odd car, a few Winnebagos lumbering in the slow lane.
