Witherspoon said, “Is he the one who did this?”
“We don’t know if anyone did anything, sir. What else can you tell us about Ms. Murphy?”
“That’s all I can think of,” said Petrello. “She was so alone. Like so many of them. That’s the main problem, really. Aloneness. Without Divine Grace, all of us are alone.”
Milo asked if we could show Erna Murphy’s picture to the other residents, and Darryl Witherspoon frowned.
Diane Petrello said, “There are only six women in residence this week.”
“Any men?” said Milo.
“There are eight men.”
Witherspoon said, “It’s been a tough couple of weeks, everyone we’ve got is kind of fragile. Those pictures you showed me would be too much.”
Milo said, “How about this: no picture, we just talk. And you come along to make sure we do it right.”
Another glance passed between Witherspoon and Petrello. He said, “Guess so. But at the first sign of trouble, we quit, okay?”
Witherspoon returned to his desk as Milo and I trailed Diane Petrello up a flight of protesting stairs. The upper floors were divided into single rooms that lined a long, bright, turquoise hallway. Women were housed on the second floor, men on the third. Each room was set up with two bunk beds. Bibles on the pillow, a tiny portable closet, more religious posters.
Half of the residents were sleepy. Erna Murphy’s name elicited only blank looks until a young, dark-haired woman named Lynnette with the face of a fashion model and old needle tracks in the crooks of her pipe-stem arms, said, “Big Red.”
“You know her?”
“Roomed with her a couple of times.” Lynnette’s eyes were huge and black and wounded. Her hair was long and dark and greasy. A tattooed star the size of a sheriff’s badge decorated the left side of her neck. A vein ran through the center of the body art, pulsing the blue ink. Slow pulse, steady, unperturbed. She sat on the edge of a lower bunk, Bible at one arm, bag of Fritos at the other. Her back curved like that of an old woman. The downturn of her mouth said she’d given up on personal safety. “What happened to her?”
“I’m afraid she’s dead, ma’am.”
Lynnette’s pulse remained sluggish. Then her eyes drooped with amusement.
Milo said, “Something funny, ma’am.”
Lynnette shot him a crooked grin. “Only thing funny is ‘ma’am.’ So what, someone offed her?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Maybe her boyfriend did it.”
“What boyfriend would that be?”
“Don’t know. She just told me she had one and that he was real smart.”
“When did she tell you this?” said Milo.
Lynnette scratched her arm. “Had to be a long time ago.” To Petrello: “Had to be not the last time I was here, maybe a few times before that?”
“Months,” said Petrello.
“I been traveling,” said Lynnette. “Had to be months.”
“Traveling,” said Milo.
Lynnette smiled. “Seeing the U.S.A. Yeah, had to be months- could be six, seven, dunno. I just remember it cause I thought it was bullshit. Cause like who’d want her? She was a skank.”
“You didn’t like her.”
“What was to like?” said Lynnette. “She was a whack job, would start off having a conversation with you, then space out, start walking around, talking to herself.”
“What else did she say about this boyfriend?” said Milo.
“Just that.”
“Smart.”
“Yeah.”
“No name?”
“Nope.”
Milo stepped closer to the bed. Diane Petrello interposed herself between him and Lynnette, and he retreated. “If there’s anything you can tell us about the boyfriend, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
Lynnette said, “I don’t know nothin’.” A second later: “She said he was smart, that’s it. Bragging on herself. Like, he’s smart so I’m smart. She said he was gonna come take her out of here.” She puffed her lips. “Right.”
“Out of Dove House?”
“Out of here. The life. The street. So maybe he did. So look what happened to her.”
We got back in the car. Milo said, “What do you think?”
“Erna Murphy liked pretty art,” I said. “That would be a point of contact with someone like Kevin, the self-assigned arbiter of art. Julie Kipper’s paintings certainly qualified as pretty. Erna would’ve been attracted to them. Maybe he directed her to the show. Used her as some sort of distraction.”
“CoCo Barnes opens the back door and maybe she forgets to lock it.” He rubbed his face. “A psychotic advance woman. Think he could’ve used Erna for more than just that? What if he had her actually do Julie? Erna was big enough to overpower someone Julie’s size, especially in the closed confines of that bathroom. A woman would also explain the lack of semen or sexual assault. And we just heard she could be lucid.”
“Relatively lucid,” I said. “Julie’s murder was too well planned and thought out for a psychotic. Not a shred of forensic evidence was left at the scene. Erna can’t have been counted on to be that meticulous. No, I can’t see that. There’s something else going on here-’E. Murphy’ wrote a review of Vassily Levitch a year ago. The prose was florid but not confused enough to be Erna’s. Her name was expropriated. It’s a kind of identify theft.”
“Smart boyfriend,” he said. “Lynnette was sure Erna was being delusional about that.”
“In terms of a romantic bond, she probably was. But there was a relationship. Erna’s aesthetic interests, the fact that she’d been educated, was periodically articulate, could’ve made her appealing to someone like Kevin Drummond. A tragic figure who’d hit rock bottom, the ultimate outsider. Even her psychosis would have appealed to him. Some fools still think being crazy is glamorous. But whatever bond they had, Kevin was careful to keep her at arm’s length. His landlady never saw her around his apartment, and no one Petra’s talked to has linked the two of them.”
“He idealizes her, then he kills her.”
“She ceased fitting into his worldview, became a threat.”
“Cold,” he said. “That’s one thing that does fit all of it. Coldhearted. Like Baby Boy’s song. I bought one of his CDs, been listening to it, trying to get some insights.”
“Any success?”
“He was one hell of a player, even a tone-deaf philistine like me can hear his soul pouring outta that guitar. But no big insights. Did you know your name’s on the album?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tiny print, on the bottom, where he thanks everyone from Jesus Christ to Robert Johnson. Big list, Robin’s in there. He calls her ‘the beautiful guitar lady,’ thanks her for keeping his instruments happy. Then he tacks you on. Something along the lines of ‘Thanks to Dr. Alex Delaware for keeping the guitar lady happy.’ “
“Been a while since that was true.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d get a kick out of it.”
I pulled away from the curb, drove west on Hollywood Boulevard. Construction brought us to a halt. Hard-hatted crews running amok. Graft kings rejuvenating the neighborhood. Maybe one day, the shiny, sterile, franchised Hollywood the civic fathers lusted for would emerge. Right now, glitz coexisted with sleaze in an uneasy balance.
A few miles away, north, in the hills, was the Hollywood sign, where a starlet had ended her life decades ago, and China Maranga’s body had been left to rot. I didn’t suggest driving up there, and neither did Milo. Too long ago to matter.
We crawled to Vine Street. He said, “Erna. Another soul expropriated.”
I said, “A user. That’s what this is all about.”