Free Destination by James Ellroy

mother was a redhead. Samantha Eggar was a redhead. She played the captive in the film. I saw it during the Watts Riot. It played in Beverly Hills—stone’s throw to Hillsboro and Sawyer.
    Tim Marcia and I discussed a wild card. The Gorman job— consensual sex goes blooey.
    Pros and cons. Coronado/the rope trick/the
Collector
connection. A secret boyfriend unnamed. The gun and rope as book-movie props. The boy’s shaky psyche. Chaste kicks and Stephanie’s imposed limits.
    It flew for ten seconds. It flew apart then.
    Why use the sister’s bedroom? Stephanie’s room was out back. Mom and Dad parked in the rear. They’re home—oops—let’s split.
    And:
    The torn lip/the punch there/the head bump/the drag burns/ the cord by the front door.
    Dave ran the file by a Fed profiler. He posited a front-door approach. The killer knocks. Stephanie answers. It’s her last look at daylight.
    I skimmed the file. I read the Georgia Street Juvie reports.
I
spent a night at Georgia Street. It was August ’65. I shoplifted some ice cream. LAPD popped me.
    It was scary. Tough kids made fun of me. A friend’s dad got me out. He took me to County Probation. I was too old to adopt. Somebody signed a paper. It made me an “emancipated juvenile.”
    The reports detailed a world wild and wimpy. It’s all middle-class Jewish freaks. Two names jumped out. I knew one guy at John Burroughs Junior High School. I smoked weed with another guy. He knew my pal Craig Minear. Craig crashed his 2-seater plane. He died November ’70.
    I read the file backwards and forwards. I became friends with Dave and Tim. We yukked at phone-call outtakes and picaresque sex freaks. We discussed the rape and no-rape angles. We lauded and mourned Stephanie.
    Tim and I drove to Hami. We checked old yearbooks and found Stephanie. She’s sleek in her Phi Delt sweater. Her pageboy’s down and swept by barrettes. Her expression shifts picture to picture. She’s a pensive kid. She tries to show happiness. She doesn’t always succeed.
    I told Tim that I loved her to death. He said he did, too.
    THE INVESTIGATION BUILT. Dave and Tim built that warrant for X.
    They had his CII#, FBI#, LAPD arrest stats. The Auto-Track computer system shot them ten prior addresses. They had his wife’s and ex-wife’s stats. He married the ex in ’62.
He lived in
West L.A. in ’65.
They had stats on his kids and kid brother. The “Family Index” ran 100 pages. It tallied prior addresses and driving records. It listed other people living at old addresses. Mr. X had a son and a daughter. The son was clean. The daughter had busts: dope/theft/prostitution.
    The case hinged on the print. The case would build off X-MAN’S denial. No, I wasn’t in that house. Bullshit, you
were.
    LAPD print-solved a ’63 case. It went to court four years back. Hollywood Division/fall ’63. Male killer/female vic.
    They ran unknown prints. They utilized CODUS. They got a match. The man lived in Minnesota. He denied his presence in the pad. He claimed navy duty then. Navy records disproved it. A jury convicted him.
    The print was
it.
The confrontation would goose a reaction. We’ll make sure his wife is gone. We’ll brace him alone. We’ll hook him in slow. We’ll bring a search warrant.
    Dave was writing the warrant now. It was detailed and legalistic. They were looking for this:
    Personal records. Vehicle records—late ’50s to late ’60s. Firearms and ammo. Docs describing X-Man’s size on 8/5/65. Photos of X-Man in a blue uniform. Mason cord or photos of X-Man with same. Docs establishing X-Man’s whereabouts on 8/5/65. Docs establishing connections to the Gorman family. Photos, film, or video depicting violence against women. Pornography depicting women posed in restraints.
    The approach ran tripartite. The print/the warrant search/ X-Man’s reaction and/or