BLOOD ON THE MOON
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rated from the rest of the apartment by a bright green door bearing a Rod Stewart poster.
Lloyd looked down at the floor and felt his stomach start to churn. In front of the crack below the door was a pile of dead cockroaches, melded together in a pool of congealed blood. He kicked in the door, murmuring,
“Rabbit down the hole,” closing his eyes until he assimilated the overwhelming stench of decomposing flesh. When he felt his tremors go internal and knew he wouldn’t retch, he opened his eyes and said very softly,
“Oh God, please no.”
There was a nude woman hanging by one leg from a ceiling beam directly over a quilt-covered bed. Her stomach had been ripped open from pelvis to ribcage and her intestines were spilled out onto her upended torso, splaying out to cover her blood-matted face. Lloyd memorized the scene: the woman’s free hanging leg swollen and purple and twisted out at a right angle, caked blood on her breasts, a bluish-white tint on what he could see of her unbloodied flesh, the bed coverlet drenched with so much blood that it crusted and peeled in layers, blood on the floor and walls and dresser and mirror, all framing the dead woman in a perfect symmetry of devastation. Lloyd went into the living room and found the telephone. He called Dutch Peltz at the Hollywood Station, saying only, “6819 Leland, Apartment 406. Homicide, ambulance, Medical Examiner. I’ll call you later and tell you about it.”
Dutch said, “Okay, Lloyd,” and hung up.
Lloyd walked through the apartment a second time, willing his mind blank so that things could come to him, moving his eyes over the living room until he noticed a leather purse lying next to a cactus plant. He reached down and grabbed it, then dumped its contents onto the floor. Makeup kit, Excedrin, loose change. He opened a handtooled wallet. The woman had been Julia Lynn Niemeyer. The photo and statistics on her driver’s license made him ache: pretty, 5'5", 120 pounds. D.O.B. 2–2–54, making her a month short of twenty-nine.
Lloyd dropped the wallet and examined the bookshelves. Romances and popular novels predominated. He noticed that the books on the top shelves were covered with dust, while the books on the bottom shelf were clean. He squatted down to examine them more closely. The bottom shelf contained volumes of poetry, from Shakespeare to Byron to feminist poets in soft cover. Lloyd pulled out three books at random and leafed through them, feeling his respect for Julia Lynn Niemeyer grow—she had been read-82
L.A. NOIR
ing good stuff in the days before her death. He finished flipping through the classics and picked up an outsized paperback entitled Rage in the Womb—
An Anthology of Feminist Prose. Opening to the “Contents,” he went numb when he saw dark brown stains on the inside cover. Flipping forward, he found pages stuck together with congealed blood and bloody smatterings growing fainter as he worked toward the end of the book. When he reached the glossy finished back cover, he gasped. Perfectly outlined in white were two bloody partial fingerprints—an index and pinky; enough to run a make on.
Lloyd whooped and wrapped the book in his handkerchief and carefully placed it on one of the beanbag chairs. On impulse, he walked back over to the bookshelf and ran a hand in the narrow space between the bottom shelf and the floor. He came away with a handful of vending machine dispensed sex tabloids—the L.A. Nite-Line, L.A. Grope, and L.A. Swinger. He carried them over to the chair and sat down and read, saddened by the lurid fantasy letters and desperate liaison ads. “Attractive divorcee, 40, seeks well-hung white men for afternoon love. Send erect photo and letter to P.O. Box 5816, Gardena, Calif. 90808.”; “Good looking gay guy, 24, into giving head, seeks hunky young high school guys with no mustache. Call anytime—709-6404”; “Mr. Big Dick’s my name, and fucking’s my game! I give good lovin’ to much acclaim! Let’s get together for a swingin’ nite, my dick is hard if your pussy’s tight!—Send spread photo to P.O. Box 6969, L.A., Calif. 90069.”
Lloyd was about to put the tabloids down and send up a mercy plea for the entire human race when his eyes caught an advertisement circled in red. “Your fantasy or mine? Let’s get together and rap. Any and all sexually liberated people are invited to write to me at P.O. Box 7512, Hollywood, Calif. 90036 (I’m an attractive woman in her late 20s).” He put the paper down and dug through the other two. The identical ad was featured in both. He stuck the papers into his jacket pocket, walked back into the bedroom, and opened the windows. Julia Lynn Niemeyer swayed from the draft, turning on her one-legged axis, the ceiling beam creaking against her weight. Lloyd held her arms gently. “Oh, sweetheart,” he whispered, “oh, baby, what were you looking for? Did you fight? Did you scream?”
Almost as if in answer, the woman’s cold left arm was caught by a gust of wind and flopped out of Lloyd’s grasp. He grabbed it and held the hand tightly, his eyes moving to the large blue veins at the crook of the elbow. He gasped. A pair of needle marks were outlined clearly against the middle