5
STARKEY SET me up with a Criminal Conspiracy Section detective named Marcus Lindo, who was one of many detectives brought in from the divisions to assist with the task force. She cautioned that his knowledge was limited, but told me he would help me the best he could. When I called him, it was clear from the start that Lindo didn’t want to see me. He told me to meet him at a place called Hop Louie in Chinatown, but warned he would not acknowledge me in any way if other police officers were present. It was as if we were passing Cold War secrets.
Lindo showed up at ten minutes after three with a royal blue three-ring binder tucked under his arm. He was younger than I expected, with espresso skin, nervous eyes, and glasses. He walked directly to me and did not introduce himself.
“Let’s take a booth.”
Lindo put the binder on the table and his hands on the binder.
“Before we get started, let’s get something straight. I can’t have this getting back to me. I owe Starkey plenty, but if you tell anyone we sat down like this, I will call you a liar to your face and then it’s on her. Are you good with this?”
“I’m good. Whatever you say.”
Lindo was scared, and I didn’t blame him. A deputy chief could make or break his career.
“My understanding is you want to see the death album. What is it you want to know?”
“Three years ago I proved Lionel Byrd did not kill Yvonne Bennett. Now you guys are saying he did.”
“That’s right. He killed her.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how, not the way you mean. We broke the casework down into teams. My team worked on the album and the residence. The vic teams worked the ins and outs on the vics. I know the book. The book is how we know he’s good for it.”
“Having pictures doesn’t prove he killed these women. Pictures could have been taken by anyone at the scene.”
“Not pictures like these-”
Lindo opened the binder, then turned it so I could see. The first page was a digital image of the album’s cover showing a hazy beach at sunset and curving palms. The cover was embossed with gold script lettering: My Happy Memories. It was the type of album you could buy at any drugstore, with stiff plastiboard pages sandwiched between clear plastic cover sheets that adhered to the plastiboard. You could peel the cover sheet up, put your pictures on the page, then press the cover sheet back into place to hold the pictures. Just seeing the cover creeped me out. My Happy Memories.
“There were twelve pages in all, but the last five were blank. We recovered fiber and hair samples trapped under the cover sheets, then lasered everything and put it in the glue for prints-”
Lindo checked off the elements with his fingers.
“Front cover, back cover, inside front cover, inside back cover, the seven pages with the pictures plus the five blanks, the twenty-four plastic cover sheets, plus all seven Polaroids. All of the discernible prints or print fragments matched one individual-Lionel Byrd. The fibers came from Byrd’s couch. They’re running DNA on the hair now, but it’s going to match. The criminalist says it is eyeball-identical with Byrd’s arm hair.”
“Who’s the criminalist?”
“John Chen.”
“Chen’s good. I know him.”
Lindo turned the page. The next scan showed a single Polaroid of a thin young woman with short black hair and hollow cheeks. She was on her right side on what appeared to be a tile floor in a darkened room or enclosure. The wall behind her was burned by the glare from the camera’s flash. Her left cheek was split as if she had been struck, and a red trace of blood had run down her face to drip from the end of her nose. Three overlapping drops were spotting the floor. A cord or wire was wrapped so deeply into her neck it disappeared into her skin. Someone had labeled the bottom of the scan with the victim’s name, age, date of death, and original case number.
Lindo touched the image.
“This was the first victim-Sondra Frostokovich. See the cut here under her eye? He coldcocked her first to stun her. That was a unifying element of his M.O. He stunned them so they couldn’t fight back.”
“Was she raped?”
“None of them were raped, so far as I know. Again, I didn’t work the individual cases, but this guy didn’t play with them-there wasn’t any rape, torture, mutilation, or any of that. You can see that much in the pictures. Now check this out-”
Lindo touched the page by her nose.
“See the blood drops below her nose? Three drops, two overlapping. We compared this picture with the original shots taken by the coroner investigator. The crime scene pix show a puddle about the size of her head. Likely your boy was in front of her for the strike that cut her cheek, then strangled her from behind. The blood started to drip as soon as she was down. Three or four drops like this, she couldn’t have been down more than twenty seconds before he snapped the picture.”
“He wasn’t my boy.”
“Point is, we have time-specific indicators in pretty much every picture that marks them at or near the time of death. This is his second victim, Janice Evansfield-”
The second picture was of an African-American woman with Rasta hair whose neck had been slashed so many times it was shredded. Lindo pointed out a blurry red string floating across her face.
“See that? We didn’t know what it was until we enhanced it.”
“What is it?”
“That’s blood squirting from the carotid artery at the base of her neck. See how it arcs? She wasn’t dead yet, Cole. She was dying. This exposure was taken at the exact moment her heart beat. That kinda rules out some cop later at the scene, doesn’t it?”
I looked away, feeling numb and distant, as if the pictures and I weren’t really in the booth, so I could pretend I wasn’t seeing them.
Lindo showed me each of the remaining victims, and then a photograph of a clunky black device with knobs and sensors like you’d see in a dated science fiction movie.
“Okay, the second way we put him with the murders is by the camera. These cameras, they push the picture out through a little slot when you snap the exposure. The rollers leave discrete impressions on the edges of the picture-”
It was easier to look at the picture of the camera.
“Like the rifling in a gun barrel marks a bullet?”
“Yeah. This is a discontinued model. All seven pictures were taken with this camera, which we recovered in Byrd’s house. The only prints on the camera belong to Lionel Byrd. Ditto the film packs we found in the camera.”
He showed me a picture of two film packs, one labeled with the letter A, the other with B.
“Partials belonging to a different individual were found on the unopened film, but we believe they belong to the cashier or salesclerk where he bought the film. The lot numbers gave a point of sale in Hollywood, not far from Laurel Canyon. You see how it’s adding up?”
Lindo went through his facts with the mechanical precision of a carpenter driving nails.
“Byrd bought the film. Byrd put the film in the camera. Byrd, using the camera, took seven photographs that could only have been taken by someone present at the time of the murders. Byrd was at one time charged in the murder of one of the women whose death shot-a photograph taken within moments of her death-has now been found in his possession. Having taken the pictures, Byrd then placed them with his own hands in this sick fucking book. Byrd then picked up a gun with his own hands, as evidenced by fingerprints found on the gun, cartridge casings, and ammunition box recovered in his home, and blew out his own fucking brains. What we have here is called a chain of reason, Cole. I know you were hoping we wouldn’t have squat, but there it is, and it is good.”
I suddenly wanted to see Yvonne Bennett again, and flipped to the fifth picture. Yvonne Bennett stared up at me with mannequin eyes. Brain matter and pink shards of bone were visible, along with a bright ball that had apparently been placed in the wound. I didn’t remember seeing the ball in the wound when Levy showed me the coroner’s picture.