The Golem of Hollywood Page 13

  “How’s that sit with you?”

  Ludwig shrugged. “I caught the case around when the big news was CODIS, media’s going on like now we’ve got this magic thing’s gonna solve every last coldy-moldy piece of crap taking up space in a file cabinet.”

  “You never got a hit,” Jacob said.

  “Not a one. I reran the profiles, first weekly, then monthly, then on the anniversaries of each killing. I went back and interviewed everyone who was still alive. Nothing had changed. Nobody arrested in the interim. Nobody straining at the seams with guilt. Nothing to deliver on the big promises. My commander implied that nobody would think ill of me if I buried it.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did what I could without getting myself noticed,” Ludwig said. “Then my wife got sick and I bowed out.”

  “Who owns it now?”

  “Hell if I know. Nobody, probably. Nobody wants to touch it, cause in the first place they’d know they ain’t gonna solve it, and in the second place they’d know they gotta deal with me calling them up and chewing on their ass about it whenever I get bored.”

  Jacob smiled. “They must love that.”

  “Oh, they’re used to me. I have plenty of time and unlimited long distance. They treat me like a senile old goat, which if you want the truth is what I am.”

  “Anyone else at LAPD I should talk to?”

  “No one name jumps out at me. You know how it is.”

  Jacob nodded. There was no tragedy so large that it would not fade, first from the headlines, then from the mind of the public, and finally from the minds of those charged to prevent its like from happening again. By the time it trickled down to a guy like Ludwig, it would have been all but erased from institutional memory, the smarter cops averting their eyes, looking out for simpler and more fruitful tasks.

  What to make of Ludwig, then? The one who pursued the fleeting?

  Admire him.

  Pity him.

  Wonder if he’s you, in thirty years.

  Ludwig fired up a cigar and leaned back. “Honesty time. What’s your angle?”

  “None,” Jacob said.

  “Hey, now. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. You didn’t drive a hundred twenty miles to enjoy my boat.”

  “Put yourself in my position,” Jacob said. “What would you think?”

  “What do I think? I think your vic was a bad guy and he probably did a bunch of bad things in addition to killing those girls. I think he maybe did some of those bad things to other bad guys, because that’s who bad guys like to hang out with: other bad guys. They get together and do bad things. It’s like Satan’s bowling league. Then one time you drop a ball on your friend’s foot, or maybe a whole bunch of feet, and he, or they, do what bad guys do, or at least this variety of bad guy. They get mad and chop someone’s head off.”

  “You find that satisfying?”

  “I find pot roast satisfying,” Ludwig said. “I find that plausible.”

  Jacob said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  Ludwig was expressionless, rolling the cigar in his mouth.

  “Whoever waxed my guy left a message,” Jacob said. “‘Justice.’”

  Ludwig said nothing.

  “Now put yourself in my position. What do you think?”

  “You didn’t think it was worth mentioning that?”

  “What do you think now?”

  “I thought this was a clean swap.”

  Jacob did not reply.

  Ludwig sighed. “Probably I’d think the same thing as you. But look. I’m telling you, I know every single one of those girls’ families. It wasn’t none of them did this.”

  “What about friends? Boyfriends?”

  “A little credit, please. Those were the first guys that got looked at. O’Connor squeezed them. As did I, multiple times. They don’t fit.”

  “Maybe they don’t fit the original murders, but they might fit this. In fact, if they did fit the originals, I’d lean toward ruling them out, because what kind of sense does that make?”

  “They don’t fit any murders,” Ludwig said. “I mean it. Leave them the hell alone.”

  A silence.

  Jacob was about to apologize when Ludwig said, “Which profile did you match?”

  “Pardon?”

  “There’s two,” Ludwig said. “Which one.”

  Jacob said, “Two what.”

  Ludwig smiled. “Right. Okay.”

  “What,” Jacob said again.

  “There were two DNA profiles,” Ludwig said. “Anal semen and vaginal semen. Completely different.”

  “Shit,” Jacob said.

  “Yup.”

  “Two guys?”

  Ludwig chuckled smoke.

  “And you didn’t think it was worth mentioning that?” Jacob asked.

  “Fair is fair, Detective.”

  “You have an interesting notion of fairness.”

  “I acquired mine same place you did: the Los Angeles Police Academy. And what’s unfair? You said clean swap and that’s what you got. Your bullshit for mine.”

  Jacob shook his head. “Anything else you want to share?”

  “I’ll tell you the identity of my secret crush.”

  “Look—”

  “It’s Salma Hayek.”

  “The word ‘justice’ was burnt into a kitchen countertop,” Jacob said. “And it was in Hebrew.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I don’t have a guess,” Ludwig said. “Hebrew?”

  “Nobody told me about two guys,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah, cause that information was never released, not even internally. You have to read the case file. Have you read the case file?”

  “I haven’t had a chance yet.”

  Ludwig sighed. He stubbed out his cigar, drained his iced tea, and stood up. “You kids.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  They caravanned to a cul-de-sac in El Cajon, septuplet ranch houses worshipping a teardrop of molten asphalt. Jacob could understand why Ludwig preferred the boat: it was easily fifteen degrees hotter out here than it had been down by the water.

  Inside, the blinds were drawn, the air-conditioning going full bore. Ludwig stooped to pet a languid sheepdog before leaving Jacob in the kitchen.

  “One minute.”

  While Jacob waited, he checked out the photo propped next to the coffeemaker. The Ludwigs had bred for maximum blond: missus was as towheaded as mister, and the boys they’d produced looked like a Nelson cover band. Fresh tulips above the sink implied that Mrs. L had made it through whatever illness had caused the D to take retirement. Some woman was resident, anyway. Girlfriend? Second marriage? Jacob knew better than to ask. All happy families might be alike, and every unhappy family unhappy in its own way, but since there are no happy families, you never can tell.

  Ludwig clomped in, schlepping a cardboard file box. He dumped it on the kitchen table and arched his back. “I made copies of everything before I left.”

  “Need a hand?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  There were thirteen boxes, one for each of the victims and four overflow. As Jacob ferried them from the garage, he noticed a curtained corner, a workbench and plywood table visible through a crack.

  It reminded him of his mother’s old setup, and he remembered Ludwig’s comment to the reporter who’d asked how he planned to spend his free time.

  Take up a hobby.

  Jacob remarked on it to Ludwig, who snorted.

  “That clown didn’t print the rest of my answer. He goes, ‘What hobby?’ And I go, ‘I dunno, something mindless. Like journalism.’”

  Jacob laughed.

  “Got to keep busy,” Ludwig said, and he pulled
the curtain aside.

  What lay beyond was not the stuff of carved ducks. It was more like Divya Das’s second bedroom, or a hybrid of the two.

  There were hand tools, hardware, clamps, a glass cutter, a Shop-Vac—their purpose evident in several half-constructed shadowboxes.

  There were also specimen jars, tweezers, magnifying glasses. Shelves of thick books with weak spines and USED stickers. The Handbook of Western Butterflies. North American Lepidoptera. The Audubon Society Guide to Insects and Spiders.

  Jacob picked up a shadowbox containing three monarchs and a hand-lettered placard that read D. plexippus.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  “I told you, I’m bored. I never knew a thing about any of this until I moved down here. I never had the time. These days, it’s all I have. Do yourself a favor. Stay in L.A.”

  —

  LUDWIG SAID, “Anyway, that’s the way it makes sense to me.”

  They were at the kitchen table, the dog at their feet, coffee cold, boxes exploded, paper towers occupying every chair except the two they were sitting on.

  “A power struggle,” Jacob said.

  “Guys working in pairs, you’ve got a leader and a follower. There’s always going to be internal tension. Twenty years of staying quiet, that’s no small thing. Figure them arguing about something, going back and forth at each other, this and that, and one of them gets nervous and goes, ‘I’ve got to take him out before he takes us both down.’”

  “You think the message was a blind,” Jacob said.

  “It worked, didn’t it? You’re here asking about the victims. Or try this on: Guy A feels remorse, but instead of going to the cops he turns around and kills guy B. In his mind, that’s justice.”

  “The cop who responded to my scene said it was a woman who called it in,” Jacob said.

  Ludwig said, “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  “To me that’s a reason to revisit some of the victims’ families.”

  Ludwig nodded slowly. “Okay, maybe. But these people have suffered, you keep that right smack in the front of your mind.”

  “Promise,” said Jacob. “Any suggestion where I should begin?”

  A silence.

  Ludwig said, “I hesitate to even mention this.”

  Jacob said nothing.

  “One of the vics had a sister who was mentally ill. We never considered her for the original killings because, in the first place, she had no history of violence, and in the second place, we were only looking at men—we had semen. I guess it’s not impossible to fit a crazy woman to yours. Just cause she’s had some problems—”

  “I know,” Jacob said. “I get it.”

  “She’d have to succeed in tracking the guy down where we failed, and if she’s anything like I remember, that’s out of the question.”

  “Fair enough,” Jacob said. “Let me talk to her, at least.”

  “Go easy, would you?”

  “I promise. What’s her name?”

  “Denise Stein.”

  “Janet Stein’s sister,” Jacob said.

  Ludwig nodded.

  Jacob said, “Did you ever look at anyone who spoke Hebrew?”

  “Someone Jewish, you mean?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Who else speaks Hebrew?”

  “A classically trained priest, a Bible scholar. You come across anyone like that?”

  Ludwig was laughing. “Maybe I should be looking at you, Detective Lev. No. I don’t remember anyone like that. If there was, it’d be in there somewhere.”

  Warily, Jacob regarded the mess.

  Ludwig said, “Best of luck. Don’t forget to write.”

  —

  THEY REPACKED THE FILE BOXES and loaded them into the Honda: four in the trunk, two belted in the passenger seat, and seven stacked in the back.

  A station wagon pulled into the driveway, and a slightly older version of the woman from the family photo got out, carrying a Gap bag and a supermarket rotisserie chicken.

  “He’s taking it off my hands,” Ludwig said to her, thumbing at the boxes.

  She beamed at Jacob. “My hero.”

  Her name was Grete. She insisted Jacob stay for dinner. While they ate, she asked if Jacob intended to take her husband’s bugs, too. “Pretty please,” she said.

  “She won’t let me bring them in the house,” Ludwig complained.

  “What sane human being would?”

  “I think it’s good to have a hobby,” Jacob said. “Better that than gambling.”

  Grete stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Listen to the man,” Ludwig said. “He’s a bright one.”

  Jacob showed him the photos of the insect from the cemetery.

  “Any idea what that is? I think I have an infestation.”

  Ludwig put on his reading glasses. “I can’t tell the scale.”

  Jacob demonstrated with his fingers. “About yea.”

  Ludwig arched an eyebrow. “Really. That big . . . ? Well, tell you what: e-mail them to me, and I’ll think on it. Don’t get your hopes up, though. It’s black, it’s shiny, it’s got six legs. Could be a lot of things. You know how many species of Coleoptera there are? About a hundred jillion. They once asked this biologist what his study of nature had taught him about the Creator. He said, ‘God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.’”

  “Can we please, please talk about something else,” Grete said.

  Jacob asked about their kids.

  The younger son was at UC Riverside, the elder a sous chef in Seattle.

  “You must eat well when he comes home.”

  “I won’t let him in my kitchen,” Grete said. “He destroys it. He’ll use every single pan I own to make a salad. He’s used to other people cleaning up after him.”

  “Like father, like son,” Ludwig said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Northbound traffic was bad, Sea World day-trippers returning to Orange County. Jacob burned most of a tank feathering the gas pedal. Behind and beside him, the boxes thumped and listed and threatened to topple, and every time he glanced in the rearview and confronted an expanse of tan cardboard, the magnitude of his new burden fell heavily on him.

  Best of luck. Don’t forget to write.

  Thanks, Philly.

  Three exits shy of LAX, a Sigalert put an accident ahead. Jacob killed the radio and settled in to wait, using the quiet to turn over his discussion with Ludwig.

  The D’s bias could stem from an honest belief that the family members were innocent. It could also be sensitivity to the suggestion that he had screwed up the first time around. Jacob sympathized. Anyone could benefit from a pair of fresh eyes. That didn’t make looking through them any fun. He wondered how well he’d take it if a young punk with half his years and twice his energy showed up to interrogate him about his most outstanding failure.

  Minus Ludwig’s sales pitch, however, the Psychopath vs. Psychopath scenario held less appeal. Both versions—Jacob dubbed them Nerves and Remorse, respectively—had major shortcomings.

  Remorse, because what defined a psychopath was lack thereof. It was far more common for a guy to get caught bragging than confessing.

  Nerves suffered the same problem. Psychopaths didn’t get anxious. Jacob knew of no calm so profound and chilling. It enabled them to engage in behaviors that would cause an ordinary person to pass out.

  Also: a nervous man didn’t waste time on symbolism.

  Unless Ludwig was right, and the point was to juke the cops.

  Psychopath trying to look like an avenger. Ha-ha: I control everything.

  Maybe. But Jacob’s instincts rebelled. He’d seen the severed head, seen the message. As gestures, they were at once too subtle and too theatrical not to be genuine.

  These were
telegraphs, direct from the heart.

  A twisted heart, but one that felt, deeply.

  A heart that longed to communicate.

  Then his mind pretzled: double fake-out? Avenger trying to look like a psychopath trying to look like an avenger?

  Vice versa?

  How far up the theoretical beanstalk did he want to climb?

  In a way, the process he was engaged in—inflating ideas to their extremes, then kicking them for soundness—drew on skills cultivated in Hebrew day school and yeshiva. Argument proceeded by putting forth a law, then presenting challenges and contradictions to it. Sometimes those challenges were resolved. Sometimes not. Sometimes the reasoning behind a law was roundly demolished but the law itself retained in practice.

  It was an idiosyncratic method, a mash-up of pure logic and faith-based exegesis, insisting on the truth of many truths. You argued not to find an answer, but to argue well.

  For that very reason, the method had its limitations when applied to the real world. He didn’t think his superiors would be content with a series of penetrating questions.

  Or would they?

  Questions are good.

  The basic refutation to the Psycho vs. Psycho theory was the woman on the 911 call. Ludwig had to agree that she couldn’t be one of the original killers, not unless there was a third person never accounted for, and such an explanation flew in the face of parsimony. Two killers was already pushing it. Two plus a female was beyond farfetched.

  Jacob laughed to himself with an unexpected memory: an old friend who kept a running list of English words that sounded like Yiddish.

  Farfetched.

  Far-flung.

  Melts.

  Inspiring Jacob to create his own list, English that sounded like Talmudic Aramaic.

  Derisive.

  Houdini.

  Time to add a new one.

  Beheaded.

  The Prius in front of him stopped short, and he jammed on the brake, his brain popping and fizzing. He couldn’t remember feeling this keyed up in years. He’d never get to sleep tonight without a drink.