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“Here we go,” Maddie said.
Ballard walked over and confirmed by comparison to the photo that this was the spot where Cecily had been murdered.
“This place,” Maddie said. “He killed them all here.”
“Maybe,” Ballard said. “Let’s go through the rest of the files.”
It took a half hour to do the comparison of photos from the other files—Elyse, Sandy, Debra, Willa, Siobhan, and Lorraine—to physical markers in the basement.
They were on the Lorraine file when Mrs. Barnes called from the top of the stairs, “Are you two all right?”
“We’re fine, Mrs. Barnes,” Ballard said. “We’re just about finished. Thank you for your patience.”
“I don’t know what you could be doing down there,” Mrs. Barnes responded.
“When we come up, we’ll explain everything,” Ballard said.
In the death photos, Lorraine’s body was propped against a concrete-block wall. Her throat had been cut, and the killer had used her blood to paint the lettersBDAacross her abdomen. Working together, Ballard and Maddie were able to match inconsistencies in the concrete blocks and grouting in the photo to a spot below one of the casement windows.
“That’s all eight,” Ballard said.
Her tone was somber; she no longer sounded excited by what the discoveries in the basement meant. It was a grim discovery from grim work. Ballard wanted to get out of the house and into the sunshine. She wanted to be on her board in the water, waiting for the next set.
“BDA,” Maddie said. “What do you think it means?”
“Black Dahlia Avenger,” Ballard said. “That’s what he called himself in one of the letters he sent to the newspapers back in the day. It’s actually a key piece of the picture he gave us.”
“How so?”
“It means that Lorraine, at least, came after Betty. I would have pegged the Black Dahlia as last because of the heightened brutality and figured the other deaths were steps toward that kind of hatred, mutilation—all of it. But his puttingBDAon Lorraine says otherwise. Maybe Elizabeth Short was the first and the others followed, with him controlling his rage better.”
“Elizabeth Short got so much attention,” Maddie said. “Maybe he refined his kill patterns because he was afraid of getting caught.”
Ballard nodded, impressed by Maddie’s thinking.
“So, do we call in FSD?” Maddie asked.
Ballard knew that the techs from the Forensic Science Division would be able to process the basement and come up with confirmations of what the luminol and photos indicated, but she was reluctant to go wide with the investigation.
“Not yet. There’s still work to do. We’ll bring them here when we know more.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We find out more about Emmitt Thawyer. We take the Betty file to somebody who can verify it’s Elizabeth Short. And we try to put full names to the other women in the files.”
“What about Nancy Porter?”
“Yes. Let’s go see her.”
FRIDAY, 9:21 A.M.
25
BALLARD WAS TWENTY-ONEminutes late to the all-hands meeting that she had called for the night before. Everybody else was already there.
“Sorry I’m late, everyone,” she said as she put her bag down on her desk and stayed standing. “I had to go to the lab this morning, and everybody knows what a shitshow the traffic is from there to here. Thank you all for getting here. This could be a big day. We have two things in play. Most of you know about one of them, so let’s start there. Paul, anything on the DNA from the judge yet? Is he Nick Purcell’s biological father?”
Masser cleared his throat. “I talked to Darcy a few minutes ago and she’s still waiting on Sacramento,” he said.
