Chapter Twenty-seven
Billy Choi, in T-shirt and jeans, sleepwalked into the conference room with the LAPD Don Juan files under an arm and a mug of coffee in one hand. He flopped into his usual chair.
Eight o’clock a.m. Sunday—usually a day off—but at least cameras had been banished by boss man Harrow, who came in behind Billy followed by Pall, Chase, and Anderson.
Choi felt like he had been on a two-day bender—burning eyes, cotton mouth, and a stomach subsisting on vending machine food.
Chase, in gray sweats, looking awake but barely, squinted at Choi over her own personalized Killer TV mug. “Where’s Jenny? She’s usually first in.”
Anderson answered, way too chipper: “On her way.”
The cornpone chemist was in a striped blue and yellow polo and new jeans, as if he had fallen out of an old Beach Boys video.
The kid said, “Thinks she may be on to some-thin’.”
The boss had on black jeans and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up, looking like an old waiter.
Harrow said, “Till Jenny saves the day, what else has anybody got?”
Choi said, “Your cute sex crimes lieutenant called to say the Hollywood Boulevard vic has a name.”
“Billy,” Harrow said, narrow-eyed. “Respect is a two-way street.”
“Yeah, I know. But you can still get run down. ID came from an ex-husband hoping there might be a reward.”
Pall, in a brown suit (a friggin’ suit) but no tie (going wild!) said, “How’d she ever let a catch like that get away?”
“Guess she didn’t know what she had,” Choi said dryly. “Anyway, her name was Megan Chavez.”
Harrow asked, “What do we know about her?”
“Born Megan Kowalski, in Arizona, died twenty-six, in LA. At eighteen, she married a local bricklayer named Ramon Chavez, moved out here. Marriage went south. Ditched everything from her former life except the last name. Became a hairdresser, never owned her own shop, but worked on a few indie flicks and a couple cable TV shows. She was union.”
Harrow said, “Show-business connection.”
“Right. And like the other Don Juan victims, she had a tidy nest egg in her bank account. But by the time Jenny tracked that down, Don Juan had transferred her loot to an off-shore account, then removed it from there as well.”
Chase said, “Love them and leave them … broke.”
Choi said, “As for the roses next to her body, Black Pearls again. And that’s all we have so far.”
Harrow nodded. “Decent start. Michael, anything on the second Billie Shears note?”
“It’s legit,” Pall said.
Chase asked, “How do we know?”
“DNA from the envelope.”
Choi said, “Licked it shut?”
Pall nodded.
Harrow said, “Matching the DNA to what?”
Pall said, “I got the DNA report from the towel the cops took from the third Shears victim, Kyle Gerut. Gerut was gay, remember, but the DNA on the letter, and the towel? Belongs to a woman.”
Harrow said, “So if we had any doubt, cross it out—this is definitely B-i-l-l-i-e Shears.”
No argument.
Chase cocked her head. “But this is a smart killer—cleaning up after herself to near perfection. About all she’s ever left behind is a hair from a wig.”
“Speaking of which,” Anderson said, “the hair from Gerut’s bed—the black one? It’d been soaked in acetic acid … vinegar … just like the other.”
Harrow narrowed his eyes. “So it’s from a wig too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Almost as if she’s parceling out clues to us.”
Pall said, “Maybe not ‘almost.’ “
Choi held up his hand with the force of a dumb kid in class finally coming up with a question. “I thought a man checked into the rooms every time.”
“From the Star Struck on,” Chase confirmed.
Anderson, grappling with it, said, “Maybe she’s one of those … cross-dressers.”
Pall shrugged. “We don’t have any really decent video of the ‘guy’ checking in. Not impossible.”
Choi said, “Or maybe Billie Shears has an accomplice, too—a male one.”
Harrow blurted, “Son of a bitch!”
All eyes were on him.
“Listen to yourselves,” he said. “It’s right there in front of us.”
Chase was the first to get it. “Oh hell …”
Then Choi got onboard and said, “Well, goddamn—Don Juan and Billie Shears … they’re not dueling. They’re together! They’re playing us!”
Harrow was chuckling, in a dark sort of way. “Nobody in this room is old enough to remember, but years ago? Two very famous radio comedians, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, pretended to have a feud. Really they were close friends. But the ratings? Went through the roof for both their shows.”
Pall said, “In non-broadcasting terms?
“We’ve been looking at these as unrelated investigations, chasing two separate killers in two separate cases.”
Harrow was smiling, but his eyes were hard. “The evidence seems to be telling us that Don Juan has a female accomplice, and that Billie Shears has a male accomplice—that there are two people involved in each set of cases.”
Nods around the table.
“What are the odds of that, even in a city the size of Los Angeles? Two male/female serial-killing teams? When did that ever happen? Logically, we have one serial killing team, trading off victims.”
“And,” Choi said, “playing us for chumps.”
Only Pall seemed at all skeptical. “Is there any way we can test this theory? Remember, we may have been stalled this long because we tried to fit the facts into a preconceived theory.”
“Good point,” Harrow said. “But there’s one thing all the victims in both cases have in common.”
Jenny, coming in at the rear of the room, answered him: “They were all drugged.”
“With the same drug,” Anderson said, as she nestled next to him. “Flunitrazepam. A.k.a Rohypnol.”
Roofies.
Harrow asked, “Anything we can track?”
“As if,” Choi said.
Anderson shook his head.
“All right,” Harrow said, and sighed. “What about the levels of the drug in their systems?”
The chemist checked his notes. “More in the men than in the women, but roughly the same by gender.”
“How much?”
“Pardon?”
“We know the dosages weren’t lethal, right?”
“Ah, I see where you’re goin’, boss—they each, male and female, had enough of the drug in their systems to make them … well, pliable, but not knock them out.”
“So whoever gave them the drug had some working knowledge of the stuff, including the correct dosage, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pall asked, “Someone in the medical community?”
“Or a pharmacist,” Chase said without enthusiasm.
“Yeah, I know, it’s weak,” Harrow said. “Let’s go back to the victims. FBI Rousch said we should reexamine the victimology.”
“Yeah,” Choi said, “we should take advice from that stooge.”
“Billy …” Harrow began.
Choi held up his hands in surrender.
“Well,” Jenny said, “I may have something—the men who checked into those three motel rooms … Jeff Bailey, Al Roberts, Eric Stanton?”
All eyes were on her.
Harrow said, “What about them?”
“Really common names, but … they’re also all characters from movies. Crime movies. Film noir?”
“Go on,” Harrow said.
“Jeff Bailey was a character played by Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. Al Roberts was from a movie called Detour. Played by Tom Neal, and Dana Andrews, that actor in Laura? He played Eric Stanton in Fallen Angel.”
Harrow said, “Out of the Past, Detour, Fallen Angel. Anyone think those are randomly chosen?”
No one spoke up.
Turning to their resident profiler, Harrow asked, “Any ideas, Michael?”
“Not yet. I’ll need to think on it.”
“Fair enough. Let’s get started looking into the possibilities. Laurene, call Amari, Polk, and Rousch and share our theory with them, and this new information. Tell them I’d like to meet straightaway.”
Chase nodded, and headed into the hall, cell phone in hand.
Harrow said, “Suddenly there’s a movie theme running through the Billie Shears case.”
Choi said, “But Billie Shears is a music reference.”
“Doesn’t matter. The cops dubbed her that. But Don Juan gave himself that name. We get the great lover significance—what about movie resonance?”
“Hollywood Boulevard body turned up near the Chinese Theater,” Choi said, “on Errol Flynn’s star, Don Juan himself. Wendi Erskine was an actress, infomercials mostly. Gina Hannan a dental assistant. Megan Chavez a movie hairdresser….”
“Those last two may be day jobs,” Harrow said, “for wannabe actresses. Let’s find out.”
Jenny said, “I’d like access to the e-mail accounts of the victims.”
“I think,” Harrow said, “we can arrange that.”