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There was a groan from Laffont.
“DOJ, man,” he said. “Taking their sweet-ass time. ‘Delay of Justice’ is what they should be called.”
“Darcy said she would call up there if she didn’t hear anything by ten,” Masser said.
“Guys, it’s only been three days,” Ballard said. “If it carries over to Monday, we’ll be fine.”
“Monday’s a holiday,” Hatteras said.
“Then Tuesday,” Ballard said. “So, until we hear from Darcy, we move on. We have another case I need you all on. But before we discuss it, I want to stress that what we talk about here does not leave this room. Not until we have this thing tied up in a bow. You don’t even tell your wife or your husband what you’re working on. Everybody get that?”
Ballard swept the room with her eyes, making sure she saw a nod of agreement from everyone on the squad.
“Maddie Bosch brought this case to us,” she said. “So I’m going to let her brief you.”
Maddie stood up and started at the beginning, with Mr. Waxman calling her into the storage unit that had belonged to Emmitt Thawyer. The others paid rapt attention to the story. There was no one in L.A. law enforcement who didn’t know about the Black Dahlia. Even among the public, there were very few citizens who had not heard of the woman who had been cut in two and found in an empty lot in Leimert Park.
Maddie finished by summarizing their findings in the basement of the house on Kellam Avenue. She then handed the briefing back to Ballard.
“We also attempted to talk to Nancy Porter, the owner of the storage facility,” Ballard said. “But no one was at her home when we checked last night. We’ll follow up with her when we can.”
She opened her bag on her desk and started removing the files taken from the Thawyer storage unit.
“Can we see these photos you found of the Black Dahlia?” Laffont asked.
“You can, but not at the moment,” Ballard said. “I gave most of them to the digital analysis team this morning so they can confirm my visual identification of the victim as Elizabeth Short. I also gave a couple of pictures to the photo lab to see if they can determine the age of the Kodak paper they were printed on. Over the years there havebeen hoaxes related to the Black Dahlia—false confessions and people claiming their father, son, brother, stepbrother, even their mother was the killer. We don’t go out with this until we nail down every aspect of it, and then Carol Plovc makes the final call.”
Plovc was a deputy district attorney. Although John Lewin was the unit’s assigned DA, he handled live cases—cases where there were suspects who could still be prosecuted, whether they were already incarcerated or not. Plovc handled dead cases. She had the final sign-off on closing and clearing cases in which the alleged culprit was beyond prosecution because he or she was deceased. It was LAPD policy not to close a case without the approval of the district attorney’s office.
“As soon as I get the photos back, I will share,” Ballard said. “But I warn you, they are graphic and horrible. They will stay with you.”
“If real,” Laffont said.
“If real,” Ballard agreed. “So, meantime, I’ve got the files with the photos of the other women here. I want everyone to take a file—a victim—and work it. You start with a first name and a photo, because that’s all we’ve got. Try to find out who she was, when she went missing, and if a body was ever found.”
“You’re talking about going back seventy-plus years?” Laffont said.
“That’s right, and there won’t be any records to go to unless they’re right here in our homicide archives,” Ballard said. “I checked with records this morn—”
“Um, there aren’t any in our archives,” Maddie interrupted.
“How do you know?” Ballard asked.
“I came in early and went through all the pre-1960 books,” Maddie said. “I checked all female victims against our list of first names. There was only one match, a victim named Elyse, but she was Black and our photo is of a white victim. So, no, nothing in archives.”
“Good initiative,” Ballard said. “That supports the theory thatthese women came after Elizabeth Short. He changed his MO. Rather than leave the victims on display, he hid them.”
“To avoid media and police attention,” Masser said.
“They’re probably buried in that basement,” Laffont said. “Like Gacy did in Chicago.”
“When we bring the crime scene techs into this, I’m sure they’ll look at that,” Ballard said. “But as I was about to say, our missing persons files don’t go back this far. What’s that leave us?”
“Newspaper archives,” Hatteras said.
“Definitely,” Ballard said. “That’s a starting point. What else?”
“There are many sites online that track missing women,” Persson said. “The question will be how far they go back.”
