My Dark Places - James Ellroy [79]
A black woman shot and killed her husband. She buzzed Lennox Station and placed an anonymous prowler call after the fact. The dispatcher sent a car by her building. The deputies didn’t see any prowler. The woman called Lennox Station back. She told the dispatcher she shot her husband by mistake. He came in the window unexpectedly. She thought he was a prowler. She didn’t know that all incoming station calls were tape-recorded.
The dispatcher called Sheriffs Homicide and explained the situation. Stoner rolled to the crime scene and confronted the woman. She admitted that she shot her husband before she made the first call. She said he’d been beating her up. She showed off her bruises to prove it. Stoner arrested her and ran her husband’s name by the Lennox detective squad. The guys were glad she offed the fucker. They were getting ready to pop him for a string of robberies.
Stoner talked to the woman’s neighbors. They said the heist man beat his wife up regularly. He lazed around the crib while she worked. He spent her money on liquor and dope.
The woman remained in custody. Stoner went to the DA and talked mitigation. The DA agreed to plea-bargain her beef down.
The woman got probation. She called Stoner and thanked him for his kindness. He learned that women killed men when that last blow to the head tipped them just a bit off-center.
Homicide was a learn-as-you-go proposition. The Dora Boldt job was a big education.
He caught it with Billy Farrington. Billy split on another vacation and let him run crazy with it. The job was a two-week tornado.
Dora and Henry Boldt lived in Lennox Division. They were white holdouts in a black neighborhood. They were frail and almost 80 years old.
Their son found them.
Dora was dead in the living-room hallway. A pillowcase was wrapped around her head. It was soaked with blood and brain fluids.
Henry was alive in the bedroom. Somebody beat him and kicked him unconscious.
The house had been ransacked. The phone lines were cut. The son ran next door and called 911.
Patrol units arrived. An ambulance arrived. Henry Boldt regained consciousness. A deputy asked him to hold up one finger if the killer or killers were white and two fingers if they were black. Henry held up two fingers. The ambulance took him away.
Stoner and Farrington arrived. A lab crew showed up. Everybody thought the same thing.
It was two guys. They beat the old lady to death. They did it with their fists, their feet and flashlights.
The lab guys dusted for prints. They found glove marks all over the house. Stoner found a half-eaten piece of cheese on the kitchen floor. A photo man stepped on it and destroyed the teethmarks.
Stoner talked to Dora Boldt’s family. They inventoried the house and helped him compile a list of stolen items. They gave him serial numbers for a missing crockpot and TV set.
Billy Farrington went on vacation. Stoner went to the Lennox detective squad, the Inglewood PD squad and the LAPD’s West L.A. Bureau. He talked to a dozen burglary cops. He talked to some guys at LAPD Homicide. He told them about his case. They described 40 similar B&Es with three murders attached.
The victims were old white women. They were beaten to death. The perpetrators always cut the phone lines and ate food out of the icebox. They bludgeoned their victims. They ransacked their houses and stole their cars 30% of the time. All the victims were elderly whites. All the cars were abandoned within a small radius out in West L.A. All the beatings were savage. One woman lost an eye. The perpetrators were going out every third or fourth night.
Stoner categorized the crimes and wrote up a detailed report. He put out an urgent county-wide bulletin. He went back to the Lennox, Inglewood and West L.A. squads and laid out his information. Everybody thought the same thing: They had to go proactive immediately.
The Beverly Hills PD called Stoner. They saw his bulletin. They had two suspects for him.
Their names were Jeffrey Langford and Roy Benny Wimberly. They were male blacks in their mid-20s. The BHPD got them for