‘What’s our move, Cally? We’ve got to find this kid fast.’
‘We wait for Elvis and the DNA. Until then, I’m working my way through missing persons, looking for anyone that might fit this guy.’
‘Then let’s split it. I need to do something or I’ll go crazy.’
*
They’d been at it an hour when Charlie Randall, the cold case assignee from CCSS, pushed through the door and headed straight for Salgado’s desk. With his long frame, lugubrious features and time spent chasing the long dead, he’d been christened the Undertaker. Salgado saw him coming and knew that he brought news but couldn’t read whether it was good or bad by the man’s perennially gloomy features.
‘What’s up, Charlie?’
Randall perched himself on the edge of the desk, looking happy to have a rest.
‘I’ve been chasing down the provenance of the purse that was locked away in Garland’s cabinet. The one said to belong to the Black Dahlia. Case is still open so we had to keep them in the loop anyway, but I hoped we could get a line on the bag, maybe get an idea where Garland could have got it from. I spoke to them last night.’
The murder of Elizabeth Short was possibly the most infamous murder in a city awash with them. In January 1947, a woman walking on the west side of South Norton in Leimert Park saw what she thought was a store mannequin dumped on an empty lot. When she looked closer, she realised it was the body of a young woman, completely severed at the waist, drained of blood and washed. Her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears.
Beth Short, just twenty-two, had been strung up by her wrists, her corpse posed. A rose tattoo on her thigh had been cut off and inserted in her vagina.
The press labelled her the Black Dahlia and it stuck. Men were arrested, men confessed, but no one was ever convicted of her murder. Her story became legend, laced with sex, corruption and tales of gangsters and crooked cops. Books were written, movies made, and Elizabeth Short never rested in peace.
The case had never been solved, so had never been closed. Responsibility for it had been passed down through generations of detectives whose main responsibility was to talk to the press any time some new claim hit the media.
‘Who’s in charge of that now?’
‘Howard Kelsey. You know him?’
‘Howie? Yeah, I know him. He’s one of the good guys. So, what did you get?’
‘Well . . .’ Randall’s drawl suggested there was good news and bad. ‘First thing is the purse. A black bag, same shape as the one in Garland’s collection, and a single black shoe were found on top of a trash can at a restaurant, Delmonico’s, in the 1100 block of Crenshaw Boulevard. A guy named Robert “Red” Manley identified the bag as belonging to Beth Short. Manly was the last person known to have seen her alive but that was six days before she was killed.’
‘Was this Manley a suspect?’
‘Yep. He was their number one guy. But they interviewed him, put him through two lie detector tests and he aced them. But . . . well, there’s a couple of buts. First, the bag that Manley said belonged to Short is still in the case file in archives. I got Howie to check and he says it’s still there. Or at least there’s a bag and no reason to think it’s the wrong one.’
‘And?’
‘And Frankie Wynn, the name that was tagged with the purse. You know Howie, so you know he’s not the kind who’s just going to take ownership of a case like that and sit on it. He knows the file. In the initial investigation, around sixty people came forward to confess that they killed Elizabeth Short. Since then, it’s something crazy like five hundred people who’ve come forward and said they did it. But of those sixty or so immediately following the killing? One of them was a man named Frankie Wynn.’
‘Shit.’
‘Uh huh. Now, this guy’s statement was taken but he was quickly dismissed as either crazy or an attention seeker. He couldn’t give them anything to show he knew more than what was in the papers, so they kicked him to the kerb. The guy had said he worked at a restaurant, wait for it, Delmonico’s on Crenshaw, but when they followed up, the owner had never heard of anyone named Frankie Wynn.’
‘That’s wild. So, he’s given a fake name or a fake job, and that fake job just happens to be where the victim’s bag and shoe were found. Like what, three miles from the scene? How can this make sense?’
‘How the hell do I know? But I do know that Howie Kelsey is going to want that purse and anything we get on Garland’s collection.’
‘This is our case, Charlie.’
‘It’s an unsolved homicide, Salgado. Probably the number one unsolved in the history of the LAPD. Good luck holding on to it.’
‘Bullshit. Anyway, how the hell could Garland have known who killed the Black Dahlia when the LAPD doesn’t? He was guessing.’
Randall shrugged lazily. ‘His collection doesn’t suggest a man who would be guessing about something like that.’
Salgado stared back, not sure what to say or think. The telephone rang and saved him the trouble for a while. ‘Salgado.’
‘Detective, I have a result for you. The first DNA back from one of the body parts we found in the cellar.’
He could hear the tone underlying Elvis’s bland statement. If excitement could ever truly be described as laid-back, then this was it. Elvis wanted to be asked. Elvis knew it was good.
‘Which part?’
‘It’s the finger, and it’s a match to a known victim.’ Elvis paused for effect. ‘High profile.’
Salgado felt the hairs on the back his neck prickle and pay attention. ‘Are you going to tell me who?’
‘Walker Wright.’
‘Walker fucking Wright? Are you shitting me?’
The look on Charlie Randall’s face suggested he was equally surprised at hearing the name.
‘Nope.’
Salgado was now sitting upright in his chair, waving an arm as non-frantically as he could towards O’Neill.
‘You’re a sonofabitch, Elvis. No doubt?’
‘One chance in a billion that it isn’t.’
*
Walker Wright had been as high profile as it got in the summer of 2019. He dominated front pages, news bulletins, political speeches and LAPD man hours. There had even been overtime.
He was a TV weatherman for one of the local cable affiliates. That made him a very minor celebrity by Tinseltown standards, but it did mean people knew his face.
So, there was some coverage when he didn’t show for his shift and couldn’t be found anywhere. His mother didn’t know where he was, nor his girlfriend or neighbours. Walker Wright had just vanished.
It didn’t raise too much hoopla at first. He was a grown man, entitled to throw away his career by enjoying a couple of days of no-show. The company’s view was simple. If he turned up safe and well then they’d fire his ass. If he didn’t, they’d mourn the loss of a great talent in the entertainment news industry.
Walker did turn up. A little at a time.
A severed finger was sent to a rival news station along with a note saying it was his. His mother was called to examine it and said, yes, it was her son’s. A long white scar that he got after falling from his bike as a kid. It was Walker’s, she was sure.