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By Root 676 0

was burned out on death altogether. I wanted to score some leads on the redhead. I wanted to snag more information and hoard it and take it home with me. I thought up some last-ditch measures to keep me in L.A. I thought up newspaper ads and infomercials and on-line computer broadsides. Bill said it was all crazy shit. He said we should brace the Wagners in Wisconsin. He said I was scared. He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to. He knew my mother made me unique. He knew I embraced her selfishly. The Wagners had their own claim. They might dispute mine. They might welcome me back and try to turn me into a docile stiff with an extended family. They had a claim on my mother. I didn’t want to share my claim. I didn’t want to break the spell of her and me and what she made me.

Bill was right. I knew it was time to go home.

I packed up my corkboards and graphs and shipped them east. Bill transferred our tip-line number to an answering service. I took the file home with me.

Bill stayed on the case. He lost a partner and gained one back. Joe Walker was a crime analyst. He was on the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. He knew the law enforcement computer network intimately. He was hopped up on the Karen Reilly case. He thought a black serial killer snuffed Karen Reilly. He wanted to work the Jean Ellroy case. Bill told him he could.

I missed Bill. He’d become my closest friend. He chaperoned me for 14 months. He cut me loose at the perfect moment of impasse. He sent me away with my mother and my unresolved claim.

I didn’t nail up my corkboards at home. I didn’t need to. She was always there with me.

Orange Coast came out. Orange Coast was an Orange County rag. The piece was good. They ran our 1-800 number. We got five calls. Two psychics called. Three people called and wished us good luck.

The holidays ended. A TV producer called me. She worked for the Unsolved Mysteries show. She knew all about the Ellroy-Stoner quest. She wanted to do a segment on the Jean Ellroy case. They would dramatize that Saturday night and include a plea for specific information. The show solved crimes. Old people watched the show. Old cops watched the show. They had their own tip-line number and operators on duty 24 hours a day. They reran their episodes in the summer. They FedExed all their tips to the victim’s next-of-kin and the lead investigating detective.

I said yes. The producer said they wanted to shoot the actual locations. I said I’d fly out. I called Bill and told him the news. He said it was a fabulous break. I said we had to densify our segment. We had to saturate it with details on my mother’s life. I wanted people to call in and say, “I knew that woman.”

The Wagners might see the show. They might assail the portrait of my mother. She sent her son to church. Her son cashed in on her death. He turned her into a cheap femme fatale. He was a boyhood con artist. He was a character assassin now. He defamed his mother. He totaled up the balance sheet of her life incorrectly and gave the world a faulty accounting. He staked his claim of ownership on skewed memories and his worthless father’s lies. He egregiously misrepresented his mother for all fucking time.

I went back to that dark bedroom and the food court epiphany. The new memory balance. Bill’s implication. The exclusive bond that I would not sever. The Wagners might see the show. They never saw or never reacted to the book I dedicated to my mother. They were midwestern stiffs. They weren’t media hip. They might have sailed past me in newspapers and magazines. Leoda underestimated me. I hated her for it. I wanted to rub my real-life mother in her face and say, See how she was and see how I revere her anyway. She could cut me down with a few stern words. She could say, You didn’t talk to us. You didn’t trace your mother back to Tunnel City, Wisconsin. You based your portrait on insufficient data.

I didn’t want to go back yet. I didn’t want to break the bond. I did not want to disturb the core of sex that still defined it. Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.