Rick Mofina - Into the Dark

He’d come here to reflect after filing his serial killer feature to the ANPA’s world headquarters in New York.

It was a strong story and would get good pickup, he thought, while driving along the twisting, turning ridgeline that straddled the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains. Mulholland wound by celebrity mansions hidden behind security gates, hedges and jagged canyon nooks. On the north side you could see the San Fernando Valley. To the south you got breathtaking views of the metropolis, its twinkling city grid stretching to the horizon.

Was the killer still out there?

Five women had been murdered, but his feature didn’t explain how their deaths were linked, other than Tanner’s vague reference to a cryptic message. It frustrated Harding that Tanner had refused to give him details on the killer’s signature. He parked at a lookout point, got out and leaned against his car to ponder the view. The sweeping vista suited him. He preferred it to sitting alone in his apartment on the east side.

Harding’s building was advertised as clean and quiet. And it was, provided you didn’t count the beer cans bobbing in the pool, the overflowing trash bins in the parking lot, the yipping poodles or the hammer and thud of car speakers and LAPD choppers.

Tonight, after working late at the bureau to finish his story, he didn’t go to his empty apartment. He went to a burger place to eat and think before taking a drive.

He’d worked hard on this story. Magdalena, the bureau chief, had cut him loose to go full tilt on it and over the past few days, Harding had talked to five grieving families. Meeting times and schedules had him pinballing all over greater L.A. In each case he’d called ahead to allow them to brace for what was coming. He was relieved when he’d learned that Tanner had already alerted them to expect a reporter’s call.

In all of Harding’s years as a reporter, talking to the parents of a murdered child, or the loved ones of someone who’d died tragically, was a part of the job he never stopped hating. Meeting the bereaved relatives and friends of murder victims face-to-face, even years after the fact, ripped open wounds that never would heal.

You saw it behind their eyes-something was broken.

Still, they’d all opened their doors to him and to Jodi-Lee Ruiz, a recent grad from UCLA, who was the bureau’s interning photographer. Harding had asked Magda to assign her to work with him.

“She’s close to the age of some of the victims,” Harding had said. “She’d be a psychological bridge to the families.”

Magda had agreed.

Jodi-Lee followed Harding’s subtle cues. The first interview was in Santa Clarita-the case of twenty-one-year-old Leeza Meadows. Her father, Louis, took to Jodi-Lee. He showed them his daughter’s bedroom where he talked about receiving the strange phone call from someone using Leeza’s cell phone shortly after she was murdered.

“The police could never prove it was the killer but in my gut, I know it was him.” Louis recalled the last time he’d seen Leeza. Then he answered Harding’s question about the music box on the dresser.

“It was one of the last things she touched,” Louis said.

Harding nodded to Jodi-Lee, who raised her camera and took Louis Meadows’s photo as he brushed his fingers tenderly on the music box.

Later, Louis flipped through an album of photos of Leeza, proud of how pretty she was. The pictures contrasted with the crime scene images burned into Harding’s mind of Leeza, leaving him to wonder privately if her father had ever seen those pictures.

“I just hope your story helps find the animal who killed my daughter and the other women,” Louis said. “It won’t bring Leeza or any of them back, but it might give me answers. And I hope to hell I stay on this earth long enough to see the son of a bitch go into the ground.”

Harding and Jodi-Lee then went to Torrance to talk to Carmen Lopez, a retired janitor who lived with Sonny, her Shih Tzu, in a mobile home in Horizon View Hamlet. Her twenty-nine-year-old daughter Esther’s body had been unearthed in Topanga in 2004. At the time of her murder, Esther had been working for an escort agency.

“It was drugs that ruined her life,” Carmen said with Sonny on her lap. “My daughter wanted to be a teacher and was taking college courses when her husband was killed overseas. He was a soldier. After his death, Esther fell apart, turned to drugs and lost her way.” Carmen stroked her dog. “Now, to learn that she was murdered by someone who has killed so many others- I pray police find him and bring him to justice before he hurts any more girls.”

Next, they drove to Santa Ana in Orange County, where they met with Lana Gibson, a county administrator, whose younger sister, Monique Louise Wilson, was found murdered in Lakewood. Students on a junior-high science field trip had discovered her body in a park.

“Mon was engaged to be married. Her accounting firm wanted her to help run their new office in Sydney, Australia. She was thirty with her whole life ahead of her. I miss her so much,” Gibson said, fingering a bracelet that had belonged to her sister. Jodi-Lee took a few frames. “And now we learn that the monster responsible for taking her life has killed so many other women and that he could still be out there?”

Harding and Jodi-Lee traveled to Santa Monica and the home of Will Parson, a security official at one of the big studios. The headless corpse of his fiancee, Fay Lynne Millwood, had been found stuffed into a barrel in San Dimas. She had been an actress and part-time bartender.

“Fay worked so hard and was starting to get bigger parts in pictures,” Parson said. “When she was killed, she was up for a small role in a Brad Pitt, George Clooney project.” Parson stared at nothing and shook his head. “People don’t understand what this does to you. We were planning our wedding when she was taken from me. I wish I had had five minutes alone with this guy. No, five seconds.”

After talking to Parson in Santa Monica, they went to Thousand Oaks to see Ross Corbett about Bonnie Catherine Bradford.

“We’ve been through a lot of counseling together,” Corbett said, “and it’s helped.” He’d agreed to let Jimmy and Jessie talk to Harding and be photographed. “We’re doing this,” Corbett said, “because police think a compassionate story might yield another new break arising from the killer’s message in the case.”

This stopped Harding.

None of the other families had said anything about “another new break” relating to the killer’s message. All that the others knew from police was that five cold case murders were now linked. Harding wanted to know exactly what the message said.

“Ross, what did you mean by ‘another new break arising from the killer’s message’?” Harding asked. “What does that message say?”

Corbett backpedaled and changed the subject, but later Harding pushed him on it.

“Look,” Corbett said, “the detectives asked us not to say anything, so forget anything I said.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but that’s all I’m saying, I don’t want to jeopardize anything.”

Harding absorbed the revelation and now, as he stared down at Los Angeles, he exhaled slowly. Obviously there was more at stake for the families, but having had the emotional fallout of five murders filter through him had taken a toll and he was exhausted.

His cell phone rang. The number was blocked. He answered.

“Mark, this is Joe Tanner. Did your story run yet?”

“It’s going out tonight.”

“I got a call from Ross Corbett. He said you were pressing him hard to learn more about the killer’s message.”

“That’s my job, Joe.”

“I know. Zurn and I have discussed things with our lieutenant and captain.”