James Ellroy - Silent Terror

Ross smiled broadly and showed his bad teeth, and in chat moment I loved him. “It’s because you know that that I’d never hurt you, sweetie.”

A merciful shortcut out of my dilemma ticked across my mind, and I passed it to Ross immediately, knowing the plan’s full implications only too well. “You know this area intimately don’t you?”

“The back of my hand, sweetie.”

“Let’s do a job together. Blonds, brunettes, I don’t care — as long as they’re perfect.”

Stroking Alice, Ross said, “Pick me up tomorrow around noon. We’ll cruise the summer sessions at Vassar and Sarah Lawrence. Wear a jacket and tie so you’ll look like a cop, and I’ll guarantee you some great sport.”

I walked to Ross and kissed him on the lips, knowing that if I couldn’t kill our perfect one, I would have to close out my blood journey by killing the man himself — my liberator and only eyewitness. Calmed by that, I broke the hands-to-shoulders embrace and walked out of the bedroom. The house was alive with chatter as I moved downstairs, and the last thing I heard as I opened the front door was a titillated soprano trill: “Richie, do you think maybe Ross is gay?”

From Thomas Dusenberry’s diary:

9/8/83

1:10 A.M.

Aboard Eastern Flight

228, D.C. to N.Y.C.

Got one!

I’m now en route to Croton, New York. A team of agents out of the Westchester Office are meeting me at La Guardia, then we’re driving to a summer house in Croton to arrest a Wisconsin State Police lieutenant for all seven blond-brunette homicides plus, incredibly, the murder of Saul Malvin.

It went down this way: the exec at W.S.P. Internal Affairs called me at Quantico three hours ago. He told me that his only possible was Lieutenant Ross Anderson, Daywatch Commander of the Huyserville Substation. As a sergeant working Extraditions and Warrants, Anderson was in the four blond-killing cities on the nights of the homicides, having flown there 1–3 days before each murder. In each case, he returned with his prisoner 24–48 hours after the coroner’s estimated time of the victim’s death. On top of that:

1. — Anderson has O+ blood.

2. — As a patrol sergeant in late ’78-early ’79, Anderson worked the sector where the three brunette bodies were found.

3. — Anderson supervised the surveillance deployment to catch the brunette killer.

4. — On 3/11/76, Anderson shot and killed an armed marijuana trafficker in the line of duty. The man, William Gretzler, was a boyhood friend of his.

5. — The W.S.P. case file on the brunette killings was stored in the Detective’s Squadroom at the Huyserville Substation, where Anderson has served in various capacities over the past six years, the last eight months as Daywatch Commander.

6. — Since his promotion to Lieutenant eight months ago, Anderson has often been seen in the squadrooms of the Janesville and Beloit P.D.’s, where the other brunette files are missing from.

7. — Anderson was seen perusing the Vice files of the Louisville and Des Moines P.D.’s twenty-four hours before the homicides in those cities.

8. — The kicker of all kickers: Anderson was the officer who discovered the car, donor card and later the body of Saul Malvin, who the W.S.P. unofficially made as the brunette killer.

Fucking astonishing. On an earlier page of this diary I called Anderson’s report on his discovery of Malvin’s body “a model of cop smarts.” The fucking audacity of it!

Here’s my reconstruction of the Malvin killing. Anderson has just killed Claire Kozol, his third brunette victim. He resumes patrol, sees Malvin’s Caddy on the shoulder of I-5 and investigates. Malvin is in the car, and while checking the glove compartment for his registration Anderson spots the O+ donor card. He thinks “patsy,” and tells Malvin he’ll drive him to the next town. He tells Malvin to walk to his cruiser, then somehow, making it look accidental, he pushes the Caddy off the road.

It s snowing hard, few cars are on the road. Maybe Anderson gently questions Malvin on his whereabouts at the times of the first two killings, maybe he doesn’t, and just decides to play the factor open and hope for the best. In any event he has the .357 in the cruiser (this is probably the way he implemented the now presumably premeditated killing of William Gretzler), and on some pretext he stops the car and forces Malvin to walk into the woods. He shoots him in the chest, then puts the gun in his hand, knowing full well the blizzard will cover up the two sets of footprints and keep Malvin’s body from being discovered — at least overnight.

The following day, with the snow ended, Anderson makes his phony discovery of Malvin’s car and donor card, does his brilliant impromptu theorizing, makes a charade of going to Huyserville for a K-9 team, “finds” Malvin’s body and ham-acts the smart young cop to the hilt from there on in. He lucks out on Malvin’s whereabouts at the times of the first two homicides, and he’s home free.

Fucking astonishing.

As I write, Milwaukee agents are securing warrants to search Anderson’s apartment in Huyserville. If he confesses tonight or the Milwaukee guys find weaponry matching the stats on the blond killings, he’s dead and buried. I’ve got only one real question. What has the bastard been doing during the two years since his last killing? That’s scary.

To top things off, I’ve got a list of six names from the Denver S.A.C., phoned in less than an hour ago. An Aspen cop located some old notes of his old partner’s, who was the officer who caught the phone call volunteering the Shroud Shifter info. The officer himself died last year, and the notes he left are in some weird shorthand, but six names are discernible in one column, with S.S. — Com. bk.? written directly across from them. The names — George Magdaleno, Aaron BeauJean, Martin Plunkett, Henry Hernandez, Steven Hartov, and Gary Mazmanian — are being run over the nationwide computer right now, and Jack Mulhearn is going to call the Westchester Office later with the results.

I’m getting tingly. The Anderson bust is going to be all Bureau, just us four agents with shotguns. He’s the youngest lieutenant in Wisconsin State Police history. What happened?

And Shifter is narrowing down. Two of the names are Latin, and the other four are uncommon enough so that a nationwide kick-out should run no more than twenty possibles per man. Run big, tall, dark-haired and mid to late 30’s against the kick-out, and the list will narrow; shoot the hard probables’ mug shots or D.M.V. photos to agents in the cities where the credit-card frauder eyewitnesses are, and I’d lay 3 to 1 that they confirm rather than deny. I won a C-note on Anderson, and I’m still feeling lucky. Who are you, Shifter? Where are you? Come to Uncle Tom. He’ll arrest you and get you indicted and prosecuted, and when you’re convicted he’ll get you a nice cell at a nice federal prison. If you’re really lucky, maybe you could bunk with former Lieutenant Ross Anderson. I’m sure the two of you would have a lot to talk about.

Edgy like the movie sheriff awaiting High Noon, I spent my morning preparing for the big moment.

First I drove to Brooks Brothers in Scarsdale. Ross wanted me to look like a cop, and since I didn’t own any suits or sports jacket-slacks combinations, I decided to purchase a suitably elegant outfit for my debut as a policeman. Walking into the store, I realized I hadn’t worn a coat and tie since I was a child, and I felt every bit of Ross’s boyhood humiliation when I asked a salesman to show me the extra-large summer blazers. Condescendingly, he said that blazers came in numbered sizes, and suggested I try on a selection of 44 longs. Angry now, I complied, opting for a navy blue linen jacket that looked as though it had the class to disarm a Vassar coed. The salesman did a slow burn at my manner, and when I said, “Slacks, thirty-four, thirty-four,” he pointed to rows of them arrayed on metal rods and walked away. I found a pair of light blue trousers that complemented the blazer and grabbed them; on my way to the cashier I picked up a white shirt and the first necktie I saw — a maroon print with crossed golf clubs. The total price of my showdown costume was $311.00, and leaving the store felt like getting out of jail.