James Ellroy - Silent Terror

Enough on that — Anzerhaus is no pro fugitive, he won’t last another week. The big news — the big jump — is that my “Shifter” and “Shroud Shifter” queries just got red-hot. Last June 5, a brother and sister were killed in their Sharon, Pa., apartment. He died from a neck wound caused by an ax blow, she was strangled. The killer wrote “Shroud Shifter Prevails” on the wall in the male victim’s blood, and the Sharon cops kept it under wraps to eliminate phony confessors. No confessors (611 came forth) admitted writing the words, and the cops did a super job of stonewalling the clue. I’ve got the entire Sharon P.D. case file — 1,100 pages, 784 F.I. cards alone, and am going over it with the shrinks and Jack Mulhearn. No F.I. names match to any of the names from the case files of the previous disappearance/killings we make Shifter for, and I’ve called the Aspen cops and browbeat them for info on the guy who called in the initial Shroud Shifter notation. No one there remembers the guy, it’s not in any of the Aspen files, and they’ve had a big turnover in personnel since ’76. Heavily extrapolating on that, Doc Sefdman thinks the guy who called in the information is Shifter, that he’s got genius-level intelligence and a huge ego, and is probably bisexual with a slight preference for men. Doc got ahold of some old issues of “Cougarman Comics” — the comic book that featured Shroud Shifter. He says it’s sick shit — sadomasochistic and necrophiliac in tone. Beyond all that, he thinks Shifter is between 32 and 37, and that he comes from a “Car Culture Milieu” — the Southwest or California. Doc leans toward Southern California because “Cougarman Comics” was most heavily distributed there, and because he makes Shifter as coming from an environment that worships good looks and physical fitness. Whoever chopped the male victim in Sharon was tremendously strong, and the victim and his sister were bodybuilders, so his theory does jibe with our existing hard evidence.

Where are you, Shifter?

I’ve directed a team of Denver agents to go to Aspen and turn the place upside down until they find out who called in the Shifter info, and a team out of the Philly office is going to Sharon tomorrow to do backup interviews. On Doc’s advice, I’ve requested information on unsolved homicides in California immediately before the first Shifter probable in 12/74. If Aspen doesn’t yield a name within a week or so, I’ll go there myself. You want your huge ego rubbed, Shifter? Turn yourself in to Uncle Tom, he’ll make you a star.

Doc’s been doing the bulk of the theorizing on Shifter, but I’ve been doing my own share on the link-links I now call “Blond-Brunette.” It’s heavily suppositional, theoretical and circumstantial, but I trust the overall feel.

One, I now buy a policeman killer for all seven victims. Checking through the case files, I saw that all of the blond four had been recently arrested for prostitution, making them particularly easy marks for police or pseudo-police intimidation, which would account for why such streetwise ladies let strange men into their apartments. Two, I don’t buy Saul Malvin as the Brunette Killer. I buy him as a suicide (the report filed by the officer who found his car and later his body was a model of cop smarts and clarity, if a little overboard on his own theorizing) — but O+ blood is very common, and I made some discreet calls to the Chicago S.A.C., who learned that Malvin had a thing going with a friend of his wife, and the friend was demanding a commitment. Suicide territory for a certain kind of man.

Three, a big jump, and a mind-boggling one that really feels right: the Wisconsin State Police and the two municipal P.D.’s aiding them in the brunette-killing investigations cannot find their files on the three homicides, which is one of the most incredible things I have heard in my twenty-two years as an invest gator Nine recent case files — vanished.

I think we’ve got a Wisconsin-based policeman-killer as the perpetrator of all seven blond-brunette homicides, and I think he destroyed the three brunette files to avoid a connection being made, most likely one based on identical physical evidence. And with physical evidence links destroyed from a legal standpoint (some Wisconsin M.E. or pathologist probably remembers blade specifications, etc., which wouldn’t hold up in court), all I’ve got left is opportunity.

So, any Southern Wisconsin cop missing from his assignment solely on the dates of the four blond homicides is my killer. I’ve already put in sub rosa queries with the Internal Affairs Department of the Wisconsin State Police, and the Milwaukee S.A.C. is doing the same with the personnel directors of the Janesville and Beloit P.D.’s. All I can do now is wait. Jack Mulhearn thinks my theory sucks — he thinks some cop sold the files to the media or a crime writer. We’ve got a hundred-dollar bet riding on the outcome of my queries. I can’t afford to lose — Mark and Susan’s fall tuition kick-out is coming up, but I feel solid on this one. It’s 11:23. Where are you, Carol?

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

Dusk, September 7, 1983. Clock noise was in my head, and a bag holding #9 pancake and theatrical putty was in my hands when I returned home from the golf course and shopping in Bronxville. Opening the door, I was anxious to begin my nightly transformation and almost missed the scrapbook pages spread out on my bed.

Feeling what must have happened, I gasped and looked at my bathroom and closet doors — the only places where he could be waiting. With tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick out-decibeled by adrenaline hitting my heart, I somehow managed not to run to either of them, knowing that betraying my eagerness would be an affront to the Shroud Shifter me. About to burst on all sensory levels, I forced myself to read the reunion message.

It was a newspaper article dated February 19, 1979, and it detailed the brilliant machinations that Ross Anderson had undertaken to safeguard the two of us from exposure of our latest murders. Reading and rereading the account in rapid succession, a Technicolor vision of the key points swallowed me whole, and I grabbed the bed for support.

Ross locating the dead man’s car, seeing the O+ donor card and going “Eureka!”;

Ross driving back to Huyserville for a K-9 team, even though he already knew where the body was;

Ross putting his own money in the dead man’s wallet and my old .357, sans silencer, in his hand;

Ross desecrating the man’s chest so that pathologists couldn’t tell that two shots had been the cause of his death.

My burst level decelerating, I reran the mental film; reversed the action; ran it in slow motion. In all versions, it played as pure genius — and something else.

“And you thought I was just another pretty face. Ross the Boss, what a guy.”

I warmed all over, and the spreading heat gave me poise. I got up from the bed, turned around and smiled. “Bravo, Sergeant.”

Ross smoothed his mustache and stroked the alligator emblem on his blue polo shirt. Civilian clothes, four and a half years and a thousand miles had not changed him at all; every bit of the man had stepped intact out of the time warp. “It’s Lieutenant,” he said, “but thanks.”

Made cool by his cool, I held back my barrage of questions and said, “Congratulations.”

Ross shut the bathroom door and said, “Thanks. I’m the youngest lieutenant in the history of the Wisconsin State Police, by the way. Turn those scrapbook pages over: there’s some stuff you’ll like on the back.”

I did it. More newspaper accounts were taped to the reverse sides, accompanied by faded Polaroid snapshots of butchered blond girls. While my eyes scanned the type and my brain played a film of Ross traveling and risking and killing for me, the man himself spoke slowly, his words wafting as background music.