Read Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction From the Underside of L.A. Page 3

  I lived there for four months in 1958. I left the day my mother died. I stayed away for thirty-six years.

  It was hot, smoggy, and dusty. Rednecks and wetbacks reigned. My father called it "Shitsville, U.S.A."

  My mother died and scared me west to my father and Central L.A. Her ghost kept me out and pulled me back.

  Arroyo High was still Arroyo High. My old house was still standing. Stan's Drive-In was gone. The Desert Inn was Valenzuela's Restaurant.

  I reembraced my mother in the town that killed her. El Monte was our prime communion zone. My first visits scared me. Sustained contact wiped the fear out. Bill and I made friends with the cops and the man who owned my old house. We dined on the spot where my mother danced with her killer. We ate at Pepe's across the street and jived with Oscar De La Hoya.

  I love El Monte now. El Monte is the pure essence of HER.

  I wanted to give El Monte the power to shock and drive me again. I wanted to take my mother's lessons and consciously address a murdered woman. I wanted to find a workable case and write about it.

  Bill was still a Homicide reserve. He told me he was scanning old files for DNA submission. The captain ordered a big file review. DNA was a hot new ticket. A lot of old unsolveds might be solvable now.

  I pitched my plan. Bill liked it. I asked him to check his review files for El Monte unsolveds.

  He called me back and said he found a body dump. It was just as tight and local as the Jean Ellroy case.

  3

  I booked a hotel room near Bill's place and flew out to Orange County, I holed up with the Scales file overnight.

  It looked like my mother's file. Crime-scene shots and Teletypes and reports stuck in a blue notebook. Paper scraps and a tape cassette: Bill Scales's first interview.

  I played the tape.

  Scales spoke slowly and carefully. He described his wife's disappearance and a recent motorcycle race in the same tone. He lived to race. He should have won a trophy last week. He couldn't grab his bike and look for Betty last Monday. His bike was not street legal.

  I studied a stack of ID photos. Betty Jean Scales alive: a prim woman with long hair and granny glasses. I studied the crimescene shots. Betty Jean twenty-seven days dead: a bloated mannequin and insect repository.

  I studied the perspective shots. The pits looked like moon craters. I pictured local acidheads grooving on the landscape.

  I read the crime-scene and lab reports. I took notes. I found an odd notation:

  "Vic's sweater. Stain 0+--non-secretor."

  Odd:

  I thought the line referred to a semen stain. Some men secrete identifiable blood cells in their ejaculate; some men do not. "0+--non-secretor" was a non sequitur.

  I read the missing-persons report. I recognized locations.

  My mother shopped at Crawford's Market. We lived two blocks west of Peck Road. Arroyo High flanked Lower Azusa. Betty Jean vanished en route to Five Points.

  I read the sex-assault reports. I cleared the laundromat freak. He worked late nights and north El Monte exclusively.

  The kid vibed HOT suspect.

  He was convicted for one attempt rape. Four other rape/ attempt rape/abduction victims ID 'd him as their assailant. He assailed his consummated victim in dark seclusion. Betty Jean was last seen at Durfee Drugs. The kid worked at a print shop two blocks away. His last alleged assault occurred at Durfee Drugs on 4/23/73.

  I called Bill. He cosigned my assessment and urged me to remain circumspect. We shouldn't lock in on suspects. We should sift evidence and refrain from prejudicial conclusions.

  He reminded me:

  This was now an official Sheriff's/El Monte PD investigation. I was to look, listen, and ask questions judiciously.

  Bill said he had calls in to Koury and Meyers. They both retired to Missouri. We had to get their assessments. I mentioned the secretor notation. Bill said we should go by the property vault and retrieve the evidence bags. The victim's clothing had to be screened for semen stains and conflicting bloodstains. That was the standard pre-DNA procedure.

  I filled in the hypothetical blanks.

  The kid allegedly ejaculated on his 3/8 victim. He might have done the same thing with Betty. He might have wiped his penis with her sweater, panties, or bra. The coroner's semen smear turned up "inconclusive." The victim's vaginal membranes were badly decomposed. DNA procedures did not exist in 1973. DNAcertified semen stains can be compared to cell scrapings taken from present-day suspects. The crime lab could lift cells off Betty's clothing. The crime lab could run the kid's DNA. The lab could determine the presence or absence of DNA with absolute certainty. Fabrics retain DNA cells indefinitely.

  I mentioned Bill Scales and vaginal drip from normal intercourse. Bill Stoner said we had to find him and take a blood sample or a mouth scrape. We had to differentiate his fluid cells. He said the stain placements were crucial. Normal leakage would pool at the crotch of the victim's panties. If the killer wiped himself with the panties, the stains would be wide and diffuse.

  I slept poorly that night. I tossed and transposed the file statistics of Betty Jean and my mother. I knew I'd blitz the next day with coffee and pure brain energy.

  I did.

  Bill and I drove to El Monte. We found our key locations and ran straight routes between them.

  2633 Cogswell: small bungalows and dirty kids in diapers. Durfee Drugs: a small corner store with wraparound parking. Crawford's Market: gone. The bank: gone. Vons Market: a big corner store with a big parking lot.

  The gravel pits: a skyscape of scoop cranes and rock piles. Fenced-in access roads and Keep Out signs.

  I went through the file and checked addresses.

  The kid lived at 14335 Ramona. The 3/13 and 3/14 assaults occurred at 14103 and 13940.

  We drove by the locations. The old structures were gone. Shopping centers had replaced them.

  The Baldwin Park Post Office: still in its old location. Walking distance to the kid's apartment. The gravel pits and Vons Market: walking distance for a kid jacked up on fear and adrenaline.

  We drove to the El Monte PD. We talked to Chief Wayne Clayton and Assistant Chief Bill Ankeny.

  They remembered the Scales case. Ankeny said the husband was their first hot suspect. He didn't remember the kid or the laundromat freak. Clayton said they popped a rape-o around the same time. A Latin guy sandbagged a girl by some railroad tracks. A witness scared him off as he forced the girl to strip. He was grilled and cleared on the Scales job.

  Clayton said he'd help us any way he could. We stood outside his office and bullshitted. I looked down the hallway. My mind wandered. I walked down that hallway the first time in June '58. Thirty-nine years had intervened. I was still obsessed and hungry at the cusp of 50.

  Bill and I drove to Sergeant Tom Armstrong's office. Armstrong ran the El Monte PD's Internal Affairs Unit. He worked out of a PD adjunct building.

  Bill ran down the Scales case. Armstrong keyed on the kid. He said he'd request full paper on him. Bill said full was essential. We had to know him before we tried to find him.

  Bill grabbed Armstrong's phone and called Joe Walker. Joe is a civilian crime analyst. He knows computer search systems. He helped us locate people in my mother's case.

  Bill laid out the kid. Joe said he'd find him--dead or alive.

  Bill and I drove to Sheriff's Homicide. Bill ran a DMV check on William David Scales. He hit. Scales was fifty-one years old now. He lived in Rancho Cucamonga.

  Close. A straight shot through the San Gabriel Valley.

  Bill said Valley folks never strayed far. I said the Valley was a fucking life sentence. Bill said, "For you it is."

  The evidence vault adjoined the Sheriff's Academy. Evidence bags were stored on shelves stacked twenty-five feet high. The vault looked like an airplane hangar. Two dozen shelves ate up most of the floor space. Technicians accessed them with forklifts.

  It was my second visit. I viewed the evidence from my mother's case the fir
st time.

  I'd touched the stocking and the cotton cord that killed her. I put the dress she died in to my face and caught a trace of her perfume.

  Bill requisitioned the Scales bag. A technician found it. We examined it in a small room next to the vault.

  The red-pink sweater, the panties, the bra. Separate items in separate envelopes.

  Bill filled out a routing form and placed the items in a cardboard box. I didn't touch them. They looked like cheap stuff purchased at Sears or JC Penney. They smelled like dust and old synthetics.

  We dropped the items off at the Sheriff's Crime Lab. A serologist named Valorie Scherr logged them in. She explained DNA in a wholly precise and stupefyingly soporific manner.

  Scherr said the prescreen would take ten days. They had to identify semen or other fluids first. The amount did not matter. DNA could be successfully typed off a single cell. Dissipation might factor in. The event occurred twenty-four years ago. The stains might have eroded during storage.

  Scherr gave Bill eight swab sticks and containers. She said he should tell the husband to scrape the inside of his mouth vigorously,

  She advised a backup procedure.

  They might not have a valid victim sample. He should try to locate the victim's parents or a sibling and take scrapings from them. This would help identify the victim's DNA.

  Bill grabbed Scherr's phone and called Sheriff's Homicide. A colleague tapped the DMV computer. He got a hit on Bud Bedford. His last known address: a trailer park in Fresno.

  Bill got his number from Fresno information. He called him and stated his business. Bedford agreed to be interviewed. He said he'd submit a cell sample. He said his ex-wife was still in Fresno. He gave Bill her number.

  Bill called her. She said she'd cooperate.

  We broke it off for the day. I went back to my hotel room and stared at a picture of Betty Jean smiling. I sensed that things went stray for her--beyond her already low expectations. I wanted to know how they stood on the night she died.

  We door-knocked Bill Scales. He stepped out of a time warp and let us into his house.

  He was tall and rangy and an old 51. His voice matched the voice on the interview tape down to subtle inflections.

  Bill stated our business and stressed that he was not a suspect. Scales said he'd help all he could. Bud Bedford still thought he did it. Bud had Bill Scales's own daughter convinced.

  The house was small, neatly tended, and starkly underfurnished. We sat down at a dinette table.

  Scales described the night of 1/29 unsolicited. His eyes flicked on and off Bill's gun. His account tallied with his taped account of 2/1/73. He ran it down deadpan. Bill interposed questions. Scales answered them and jumped back to his basic narrative. He rolled over for authority figures. I knew it was a long-term practice.

  I said, "Tell us about BettyJean."

  Scales said she was a dingbat. She was mousy, easygoing, and submissive. She talked a mile a minute like a true nutcase. Simple tasks flummoxed her. She didn't know how to do things.

  He said "dingbat" dead cold. I used to call my mother a drunk and a whore the same way.

  I didn't say, Why did you marry her then? Scales gave us the narrative version.

  He met Betty in late '67. He was living in Bell Gardens. She was living in Downey. Her father set her up in a pad. He found Betty in bed with a boy and cut off his support abruptly.

  Betty was going to high school then. Bill Scales moved in with her. He got her pregnant and married her. Their daughter, Leah, was born in October '68. They moved to El Monte in '71. He raced motorcycles and hung insulation. Betty worked on the assembly line at Avon cosmetics and quit to be a full-time mother. They had a son. He was 3 months old when Betty died. Leah married a guy named Baker. They had two kids. Leah was fat. She blamed her obesity on her father and her mother's death. He had a second family and raised Leah and her brother with them. Leah did not appreciate it. Betty's parents hated him and encouraged her to hate him.

  Scales said that second marriage folded. He gave us a quick rundown on the details.

  His candor was praiseworthy and appalling. He impressed me as a control freak with a dark self-knowledge learned the hard way. He cut his losses and lived inside rigid boundaries. His subtext was all male pride and self-pity.

  He gave us his daughter's phone number. He said he'd give us a cell scrape. He said he didn't remember the last time he had sex with Betty. She was on the Pill. He didn't wear rubbers. The sperm on her panties might turn out to be his.

  He looked like an Okie transplant and employed perfect grammar. He set out to refute his roots every time he opened his mouth.

  He said Bud Bedford sicced a P.I. on him back in '73. The guy tailed him to a siding job in Temecula.

  Bill said, "How did Bud and Betty get on?"

  Scales said, "Not well." Her brother said they were feuding right before Betty died.

  Bill said, "Where's the brother now?"

  Scales said, "He died of AIDS."

  We door-knocked Leah Scales Baker. She let us in and sat on a couch between us.

  The apartment was small and overfurnished. I heard kids back in the bedrooms. The husband sat on the living-room floor and observed the interview.

  Leah Baker was prepared. Bill called ahead and stated our purpose.

  He introduced me. I smiled. He said my mother was a murder victim. It fell flat. Leah Baker looked right through me. She said her mother's death destroyed her life.

  Bill asked her if she remembered her mother. Leah said hardly at all. Bill laid out a riff on DNA and said we had a promising suspect. Leah started in on her father.

  He was mean. He was nasty. He belittled her in front of his family. She locked herself in closets and gobbled cookies to spite him.

  Bill said he was cleared back in '73 and was not a suspect now. Leah said she had dreams. Her father was hitting a faceless figure. She watched him. She was wearing a white nightgown. Her grandfather said she used to wear a nightgown like that as a child.

  Bill said, "Did your father beat you?" Leah said, "Maybe." She had these memory gaps. She could not recall large blocks of her childhood.

  Bill tried to ask a string of questions. Leah talked over him.

  Her father ridiculed her. Her stepmother and stepbrother teased her. They tried to tease her out of being fat--but she stayed fat anyway.

  Bill asked her if she'd like to see her mother's case solved. Leah started back on her father. Bill clenched up. So did I. Victimhood was a summons to exploit and explore. Love the one you lost only if they deserved it.

  Know your dead. Learn how you derive and diverge from them.

  Leah said her father was the key suspect. She didn't know her mother was murdered for years. Her father hid the fact. That was suspicious. That meant he was hiding things. Her grandfather said he saw the apartment the day after her mother vanished. The place was a mess. Clothes were scattered around. Her baby brother sat in a pool of urine.

  Bill said, "Your father passed a polygraph test."

  Leah shrugged.

  I asked her where she got her information.

  Leah said, "My grandfather."

  I asked her if she ever read newspaper accounts.

  Leah said, "No."

  Bill gave me his "more questions?" look. I shook my head.

  Bill thanked Leah. I said we might clear this thing. It might help her get on with her life.

  Leah looked right through me.

  I dropped Bill off and drove back to my hotel. I stretched out on the bed and turned the lights off. I dropped their male surnames and ran with Betty Bedford and Geneva Hilliker.

  Not doppelgangers. Not symbiotic twins. Inimical personalities and antithetical souls.

  My mother drank Early Times bourbon. She fucked cheap men and cut them off if they cloyed or messed with her solitude. She got pregnant in '39 and aborted herself. She rammed literacy and the Lutheran Church down my throat and made me grateful as a middle-aged man.<
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  Betty fell into things. My mother hid out in El Monte. She lived out the dreams and crazy expectations that drive bright and beautiful women. Betty hid out in El Monte. It was a good place to live the lie that life was hunky-dory.

  Two Jeans.

  My mother went to nursing school and shortened Geneva to Jean. She was 19. It was 1934.

  She could shoot men down with stern words or a look. She wanted sex on her own sweet and unconscious terms. She knew how to say no.

  She said yes, no, or maybe that night. She didn't sense danger. She could have walked away from the drive-in. She had options that Betty Jean didn't. Her unconsciousness made her passively complicit. Betty Jean went to the drugstore and bought baby food. Her life ended nineteen years short of my mother's.

  I wanted to find the piece of slit who killed her and fuck him for it.

  Bill called first thing in the morning. He said he just got off the phone. He talked to Tom Armstrong, Joe Walker, and Lee Koury.

  They traced the kid. He was serving three-to-life. He got out on parole in '75. He stayed out two years and went down behind a fresh rape.

  AND:

  Koury said the kid almost confessed to the killing. He almost gave it up at his polygraph test. He said, "My dad's got heart trouble. This would really kill him."

  II

  4

  I replayed the words from L.A. to Fresno. Koury and Meyers made the kid for the Scales snuff. The kid was 42 now. He was locked down at the California Men's Colony. He fell behind a kidnap-rape in Bakersfield. Tom Armstrong just received a full report.

  Bakersfield was a hundred miles from Fresno. Bill was from Fresno. Betty Jean's parents lived in Fresno.

  We drove up in Bill's car. We took Bill's father along. Angus Stoner was 86. He knew Kern County. Kern County was all new to me.

  Dirt fields and shack towns. Wind and dust and a big flat sky.

  Angus supplied travel notes. He identified orchards and harvesting contraptions. He talked up his hobo adventures, circa 1930.