BLOOD ON THE MOON

105

Laurette Powell was a long time holder of several Nembutal prescriptions, quickly classified her death as suicide. Case closed. Lloyd’s wheel turned silently. He knew that the Westbourne Drive and Larrabee Avenue addresses were a scant two blocks apart, and that the Tropicana Motel gun-in-mouth “suicide” of Carla Castleberry on 6/10/80

was less than a half mile from the first two crime scenes. He shook his head in disgust; any cop with half a brain and ten cents’ worth of experience should know that women never kill themselves with guns—the statistics on female gunshot suicides were nonexistent.

The fourth “suicide,” Marcia Renwick, 818 North Sycamore, was the non sequitur, Lloyd surmised; the most recent June 10th murder, four miles east of the first three, in the L.A.P.D.’s Hollywood Division. Occurring a full year after the Carla Castleberry homicide, the Renwick pill overdose had the feel of an unimaginative impulse killing.

Lloyd turned his attention to the file of the most recent victim before Julia Niemeyer. He winced as he read the coroner’s report on Linda Deverson, D.O.D. 6/14/82; chopped to pieces with a two-edged fire axe. Blinding memories of Julia swaying from her bedroom ceiling beam combined with his new knowledge to convince him that somehow, for some god-awful, hellish reason, his killer’s insanity was peaking. Lloyd lowered his head and sent up a prayer to his seldom-sought lipservice God. “Please let me get him. Please let me get him before he hurts anyone else.”

Thoughts of God were paramount in Lloyd’s mind as he walked down the hall and knocked on the door of his immediate superior, Lieutenant Fred Gaffaney. Knowing that the lieutenant was a hard-ass, born-again Christian who held grandstanding, maverick cops in pious contempt, he decided to invoke the deity heavily in his plea for investigatory power. Gaffaney grudgingly had given him a free rein on his caseload, with the implicit proviso that he not beg favors; since he was about to plead for men, money, and media play, he wanted to pitch the lieutenant from a standpoint of mutual religiosity.

“Enter!” Gaffaney called out in answer to the knock. Lloyd walked in the open door and sat down in a folding chair in front of the lieutenant’s desk. Gaffaney looked up from the papers he was shuffling and fingered his cross-and-flag lapel pin.

“Yes, Sergeant?”

106

L.A. NOIR

Lloyd cleared his throat and tried to affect a humble look. “Sir, as you know, I’ve been working full time on the Niemeyer killing.”

“Yes. And?”

“And, sir, it’s a stone cold washout.”

“Then stick with it. I have faith in you.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s funny that you mentioned faith.” Lloyd waited for Gaffaney to tell him to continue. When all he got was a silent deadpan, he went on. “This case has been a testing of my own faith, sir. I’ve never been much of a believer in God, but the way that I’ve been stumbling into evidence has me questioning my beliefs. I—”

The lieutenant cut him off with a chopped hand gesture. “I go to church on Sunday and to prayer meetings three times a week. I put God out of my mind when I clip on my holster. You want something. Tell me what it is, and we’ll discuss it.”

Lloyd went red and forced a stammer. “Sir, I . . . I . . .”

Gaffaney leaned back in his chair and ran his hands over his iron-gray crew cut. “Hopkins, you haven’t called a superior officer ‘Sir’ since you were a rookie. You’re the most notorious pussy hound in Robbery/Homicide, and you don’t give a rat’s ass about God. What do you want?”

Lloyd laughed. “Shall I cut the shit?”

“Please do.”

“All right. In the course of my investigation into the Niemeyer killing I’ve come across solid, instinctive evidence that points to at least sixteen other murders of young women, dating back fifteen years. The M.O.s varied, but the victims were all of a certain physical type. I’ve gotten complete case files on these homicides, and chronological consistencies and other factors have convinced me that all sixteen women were killed by the same man, the man who killed Julia Niemeyer. The last two killings have been particularly brutal. I think we’re dealing with a brilliant psychopathic intellect, and unless we direct a massive effort toward his capture he’ll kill with impunity until the day he dies. I want a dozen experienced Homicide dicks full time; I want liaisons set up with every department in the county; I want permission to recruit uniformed officers for the shit work, and authority to grant them unlimited overtime. I want a full-scale media blitz—

I’ve got a feeling that this animal is close to exploding, and I want to push him a little. I—”

Gaffaney raised both hands in interruption. “Do you have any hard physical evidence,” he asked, “any witnesses, any notations from detectives