James Ellroy - My Dark Places

MY DARK PLACESby James Ellroy

Ellroy, James - My Dark Places

Copyright 1996 by James Ellroy
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1996.
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 1997
----------- I
THE REDHEAD----------
_A cheap Saturday night took you down. You died stupidly and harshly and without the means to hold your own life dear_._Your run to safety was a brief reprieve. You brought me into hiding as your good-luck charm. I failed you as a talisman--so I stand now as your witness_._Your death defines my life. I want to find the love we never had and explicate it in your name_._I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn down the distance between us_._I want to give you breath_.
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Some kids found her.They were Babe Ruth League players, out to hit a few shag balls. Three adult coaches were walking behind them.The boys saw a shape in the ivy strip just off the curb. The men saw loose pearls on the pavement. A little telepathic jolt went around.Clyde Warner and Dick Ginnold shooed the kids back a ways--to keep them from looking too close. Kendall Nungesser ran across Tyler and spotted a pay phone by the dairy stand.He called the Temple City Sheriff's Office and told the desk sergeant he'd discovered a body. It was right there on that road beside the playing field at Arroyo High School. The sergeant said stay there and don't touch anything.The radio call went out: 10:10 a.m., Sunday, 6/22/58. Dead body atKing's Row and Tyler Avenue, El Monte.A Sheriff's prowl car made it in under five minutes. An El Monte PD unit arrived a few seconds later.Deputy Vic Cavallero huddled up the coaches and the kids. Officer DaveWire checked out the body.It was a female Caucasian. She was fair-skinned and redheaded. She was approximately 40 years of age. She was lying flat on her back--in an ivy patch a few inches from the King's Row curb line.Her right arm was bent upward. Her right hand was resting a few inches above her head. Her left arm was bent at the elbow and draped across her midriff. Her left hand was clenched. Her legs were outstretched.She was wearing a scoop-front, sleeveless, light and dark blue dress. A

dark blue overcoat with a matching lining was spread over her lower body. Her feet and ankles were visible. Her right foot was bare. A nylon Side 1

Ellroy, James - My Dark Places stocking was bunched up around her left ankle.Her dress was disheveled. Insect bites covered her arms. Her face was bruised and her tongue was protruding. Her brassiere was unfastened and hiked above her breasts. A nylon stocking and a cotton cord were lashed around her neck. Both ligatures were tightly knotted.Dave Wire radioed the El Monte PD dispatcher. Vic Cayallero called theTemple office. The body-dump alert went out:Get the L.A. County Coroner. Get the Sheriff's Crime Lab and the photo car. Call the Sheriff's Homicide Bureau and tell them to send a team out.Cavallero stood by the body. Dave Wire ran over to the dairy and commandeered a length of rope. Cavallero helped him string up a crime scene perimeter.They discussed the odd position of the body. It looked haphazard _and_fastidious.Spectators drifted by. Cavallero pushed them back to the Tyler Avenue sidewalk. Wire noticed some pearls on the road and circled each and every one in chalk.Official cars pulled up to the cordon. Uniformed cops and plainclothesmen ducked under the rope.From El Monte PD: Chief Orval Davis, Captain Jim Bruton, Sergeant Virg Ervin. Captain Dick Brooks, Lieutenant Don Mead and Sergeant Don Clapp from Temple Sheriff's. Temple deputies called out to contain the civilians and plain curious on- and off-duty cops.Dave Wire measured the exact position of the body: 63 feet west of the first locked gate on the school grounds/2 feet south of the King's Row curb. The photo deputy arrived and snapped perspective shots of King's Row and the Arroyo High playing field.It was noon--and closing in on 90 degrees.The photo deputy shot the body from straight-down and sideways angles. Vic Cavallero assured him that the guys who found it did not touch it. Sergeants Ward Hallinen and Jack Lawton arrived and went straight to Chief Davis.Davis told them to take charge--per the contract mandating all El Monte city murders to the L.A. Sheriff's Homicide Bureau.Hallinen walked over to the body. Lawton diagrammed the area in his notebook.Tyler Avenue ran north--south. King's Row intersected it at the southern edge of the school property. King's Row ran east about yards. It terminated at Cedar Avenue--the eastern edge of the school property. It was nothing more than a paved access road.A gate closed off the Cedar Avenue end. An inner gate sealed some bungalows near the main Arroyo High buildings. The only way to enter King's Row was via Tyler Avenue.King's Row was feet wide. The sports field ran along the northern edge. A shrub-covered chain-link fence ran behind the southern curb line and a3-foot-wide ivy thicket. The body was positioned 75 yards east of theTyler--King's Row intersection.The victim's left foot was two inches from the curb. Her weight had pressed down the ivy all around her.Lawton and Hallinen stared at the body. Rigor mortis was setting in--the victim's clenched hand had gone rigid.Hallinen noted a fake-pearl ring on the third finger. Lawton said it might help them ID her.Her face had gone slightly purple. She looked like a classic late-night body dump.VIc Cavallero told the coaches and baseball kids to go home. Dave Wire and Virg Ervin mingled with the civilians. Sergeant Harry Andre showed up--an off-duty Sheriff's Homicide man hot to lend a hand.The press showed up. Some Temple deputies cruised by to check out the scene. Half the 26-man El Monte PD cruised by--dead white women were some kind of draw.The coroner's deputy showed up. The photo deputy told him he could examine the victim.Hallinen and Lawton pushed forward to watch. The coroner's deputy lifted the coat off the victim's lower body.She was not wearing a slip, a girdle or panties. Her dress was pushed up above her hips. No panties and no shoes. That one stocking down around her left ankle. Bruises and small lacerations on the insides of her thighs. An asphalt drag mark on her left hip.Side 2Ellroy, James - My Dark PlacesThe coroner's deputy turned the body over. The photo deputy snapped some shots of the victim's posterior. The victim's back was dew-wet and showed signs of postmortem lividity.The coroner's deputy said she was probably dead eight to twelve hours. She was dumped before sunrise--the dew on her back was a plain indicator.The photo deputy took some more pictures. The coroner's deputy and his assistant picked up the body. It was limp--still shy of full rigor mortis. They carried the victim to their van and placed her on a gurney.Hallinen and Lawton searched the ivy thicket and the adjoining curbside. They found a broken car antenna on the road. They found a broken stringof pearls in the flattened ivy near the dump position. They picked up the pearls circled in chalk and strung them on the necklace. They saw that they had a complete set.The clasp was intact. The string was broken in the middle. They evidence-bagged both pieces of the necklace.They did not find the victim's panties, shoes or purse. They did not spot tire marks in the gravel near the curb. There were no drag marks on any surface along King's Row. The ivy surrounding the dump position did not look trampled.It was I:20 p.m. The temperature was up in the mid-9os.The coroner's deputy cut off samples of the victim's head and pubic hair. He trimmed the victim's fingernails and placed the cuttings in a small envelope.He had the body stripped and positioned face-up on his gurney. There was a small amount of dried blood on the victim's right palm.