My Dark Places - James Ellroy [114]
It’s 2:40 a.m. My mother and the Swarthy Man split Stan’s Drive-in. Her car is parked behind the Desert Inn or parked somewhere else. He’s bored and sullen. She’s half-drunk and chatty. They go to his place or the Blonde’s place or Arroyo High School or someplace. She shuts him down again or says the wrong thing or looks at him the wrong way or enrages him with a barely perceptible gesture.
Maybe it’s rape. Maybe it’s sex by consent. Maybe Stoner’s reconstruction was valid. Maybe my MORE theory hit some factual chords. Maybe my mother balked at a three-way at some point in the evening. Maybe the Swarthy Man decided to coerce some solo action. Maybe Lavonne Chambers and Margie Trawick got their times wrong and fucked up the means to establish any kind of accurate time line. Maybe Myrtle Mawby got her time wrong. Maybe my mother and the Swarthy Man left the Desert Inn with the Blonde and did not return for that 2:00 a.m. nightcap. You had a killer and a victim. You had an unidentified woman. You had three female witnesses and a drunken male witness. You had a seven-hour time span and a geographically localized series of prosaic events that resulted in murder. You could extrapolate off the established facts and interpret the prelude in an infinite number of ways.
She might have met the Swarthy Man and the Blonde that night. She might have met them on some previous honky-tonk jaunt. She might have met them separately. The Blonde might have set her up with the Swarthy Man. The Blonde might be an old friend. The Blonde might have urged her to move out to El Monte. The Swarthy Man might be an old lover back for more.
He might be a former Packard-Bell or Airtek employee. He might be an old barroom flame passing through. He might have killed Bobbie Long seven months after he killed my mother.
There was no telephone at 756 Maple. The cops couldn’t check my mother’s toll calls. She might have called the Blonde or the Swarthy Man that evening or some time in the four months she lived in El Monte. Every call outside El Monte proper would register on her phone bills. The Blonde might have lived in Baldwin Park or West Covina. The Swarthy Man might have lived in Temple City. The cops never found my mother’s purse. The cops didn’t find an address book at 756 Maple. It was probably in my mother’s purse. She carried her purse that night. The Swarthy Man got rid of the purse. His name might have been in the address book. The Blonde’s name might have been in it.
It was 1958. Most people had telephones. My mother didn’t. She was hiding out in El Monte.
I studied my mother’s file. I studied the Long file. I picked up strange facts and a wrenching omission.
My mother left an unfinished drink in the kitchen. Maybe the Blonde called her up and suggested some fun. Maybe our cramped little house closed in on her and forced her to bolt. Bobbie Long might have been a closet juicer. A cop found two bottles in her kitchen. I always thought my mother fought the man who killed her. I always thought the cops found bloody skin under her nails. The autopsy report stated nothing of the kind. It was my heroic embellishment. I cast my mother as a redheaded tigress and carried the image for 36 years.
Jean and Bobbie. Bobbie and Jean.
Two murder victims. Near-identical crime scenes a few miles apart. A strong consensus at Sheriff’s Homicide.
The guys thought one man killed both women.
Stoner leaned that way. I leaned that way with one reservation. I did not see the Swarthy Man as a serial killer.
I forced myself to stand back from the judgment. I knew my grounds for rejection were partially aesthetic. Serial killers bored me and vexed me. They were a real-life statistical rarity and a media plague. Novels, films and TV shows celebrated them as monsters and exploited their potential to spark simple suspense plots. Serial killers were self-contained evil units. They were perfect foils for clichéd cops on the edge. Most of them suffered horrific childhood trauma. The details made for good pop-psych drama and gave them a certain victimized panache. Serial