12 Days (18 page)

“Actually, he did.” Jim pointed to the lifeguard stand. There, emblazoned on the side of the wood booth in red spray paint, was the number ‘six’.

“Look, we know this guy’s name, what kind of vehicle he drives, a partial license plate, and why he’s doing it. And with all that, we can’t stop him. We have only six days remaining; we need to go after the potential victims. We need to use every officer on the task force to find every swan, every milking maid, anyone who could fit the song and warn them.”

Day 6: 8:23 a.m.

It was hard to believe that in a day and age of high tech and instant gratification, throwbacks to a simpler time still existed, like the home delivery of dairy products by Milk Maids. Phyllis Crenshaw was happy her job had not gone away in the steamrolling world of progress, because she loved it. She had been working for Dairy Farm delivering milk and milk products to the people of West Covina for ten years. When she was a little girl, she loved when the milk truck would pull up to her door and replace her family’s empty bottles with fresh creamy fare. Many girls her age would dream of becoming actresses or nurses or models, but Phyllis from an early age knew that she wanted to deliver milk. The owners at Dairy Farm did not want to let go of the milk delivery dream either, and Phyllis Crenshaw was glad that they didn’t. The people of the ‘Fruit’ streets were her neighbors, friends and, for the last several years, her customers as well. The people at Dairy Farm were smart, offering many products other than just organic milk products, so the type of clientele that shopped at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s stores loved the idea of having certain things delivered on order.

Phyllis had liked Alice Edwards very much and was saddened by her death. This was a good, clean neighborhood full of hard-working families and she did not like what was happening around her. Hopefully this would be the last of the tragedies to take place on the Fruit streets. Other than the latest round of tragedies everyone had to endure via the media. Phyllis was very content with her life and wanted it back to normal.

Sadly, hope often sprang eternal even for those who don’t know they are in the hunter’s crosshairs. Poor Phyllis Crenshaw would not be delivering milk for much longer, if Marty Lord has his way.

Day 6: 10:07 a.m.

His eyes were moist with tears when he woke. He was sad; the euphoria and anger of the previous kills was gone and had been replaced with profound regret. But the emotion went beyond his feelings for the beautiful Giselle An; it was for a life that was denied of joy. His own! The hip, the tumor, the headaches, and now murder, all intended to draw attention to a magnificent script idea that had gone ignored. How does it happen, he wondered, that everything in one man’s life could go so horribly wrong? Why was he singled out for this misery?
What the fuck did he do?
He swallowed three of his pills and picked up the “Calendar” section of the
L.A. Times
. He wasn’t sure that he could finish his tasks at hand, but if he could, he wanted to know the movie schedule for the Arclight Theatre in Hollywood later that night.

Day 6: 11:25 a.m.

Parker Center was buzzing. Every agent working on the case was either on the phone or interviewing an individual named Swan or some variation thereof. There were 134 Swans and 652 Swansons who lived between Santa Barbara and San Diego. The logistics of speaking to each possible victim was proving to be a daunting task. Captain Jones had ordered the agents and detectives to call each adult Swan and Swanson and ask if they had met anyone strange lately, anyone with a limp. He did not want to start a panic, but since the public knew about the limping serial killer, the mere mention of such a gait abnormality drew gasps of horror over the phone.

Jim hung up the phone on his most recent call and sat back in his chair. Over the next day and a half, he surmised, there would be close to 800 people in southern California who would live in fear because of their name alone.

Unfortunately, no one had let their fingers do the walking to a specific line in the directory, the one listing for a man named Swanza, so the man from Africa never got a call.

Day 6: 1:19 p.m.

Captain Jones did not like the mayor of Los Angeles. He thought that the man was a lightweight philandering little piece of shit who rode his Hispanic ethnicity to a paper-thin victory over an infinitely more qualified opponent. Captain Jones understood politics and he knew that part of his job as police captain was to make the mayor look good, and to respond to the son of a bitch’s every beck and call. The call today required Captain Jones to attend a Sunday afternoon lunch meeting at the mayoral manse to give the politician and his selected aides a detailed update on the case that the mayor claimed “was ruining his reputation for being tough on crime.”

Tough on crime, my ass
, thought Jones.
This guy cut the police budget by close to 40% to help pay the health care costs for the millions of illegal immigrants who were financially devastating the city
.

Jones maintained his composure and told the mayor that his people had knocked on every door in West Covina and come up empty. There was no record of any family named Lord in that area or within a 30-mile radius. They had found a family named Lords in West Hollywood as well as a porn actress with the same name in the San Fernando Valley, but no Marty Lord, bad hip or not. The mayor thought that calling all the Swans and Swansons was a good idea but held little hope that it would help catch the killer. He then made it very clear to Captain Jones that the rash of serial killings would need to stop very soon or there would need to be a change in the hierarchy of command at Parker Center. Captain Jones thanked the mayor for his hospitality, got into his car and drove home to the Palisades, picturing the mayor standing next to Marty Lord and wondering which of these pieces of shit he hated more.

Day 6: 2:35 p.m.

By his count, Jim had successfully scared to death forty-one Swansons and fifteen Swans; not bad for half a day’s work. All the dialing for dollars had taken its toll and he had one mother of a headache. He had tried to call Lisa several times but her phone kept going straight to voice mail.
She must be out looking for a job
, he thought. Jim didn’t tell the Captain that it was Lisa who figured out the Giselle An angle; Jim took credit for the discovery because he did not want Jones to know that he was discussing sensitive police material with a witness. He wanted to speak to Lisa to get her thoughts on the potential Swan victim; she always had good insight and right now he could really use her help. Plus, he really missed her. It was crazy, he thought, but Lisa Klein might just be the one. He picked up his phone and tried her cell but once more, voice mail.
I wonder where she is
, he thought,
probably shopping for dinner
. Oh well. Jim looked over the names before him and started to dial the next Swan on his list.

Day 6: 2:36 p.m.

Lisa sat in her car and stared at the phone. She wanted to answer when Jim called but she could not get up the nerve. She never thought that she would meet a man who could make her happy, but Jim Jovian had succeeded where so many others had failed. Lisa knew that she made Jim happy as well. When he was sleeping last night, she stared at him for what had to be an hour. He was so content, so peaceful. They had not yet mentioned the word, but it was coming. At some point, she would hear the word love from Jim’s mouth. Lisa’s actions would test the boundaries of that word; she prayed that love would help them survive. She looked at the purchase she had made in her hands for a long time before opening her car door.

Day 6: 4:34 p.m.

David Swanza filled a bowl of seed for his bird, Moesha, patted her head, and told her to behave. This would be David’s last night of work for the year. Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve and David would be spending it with some Ethiopian friends who had a place in Inglewood. They would wear ceremonial garb and eat foods that were village favorites from back home. David looked forward to New Year’s Eve. He locked his apartment door and left his place on Franklin Avenue to begin the mile and a quarter walk to work. When he got to the street, he saw a man in a dark gray Ford flatbed truck pull into a parking spot across the street from David’s building. David did not give the truck a second thought until he saw it parked again, this time in the alley off Hollywood Boulevard next to the Arclight. Without fear, David walked down the alley and approached the truck. As he got within fifty yards, the driver threw his car in reverse and sped out of the alley backward.
That will show him
, David thought,
no one scares David Swanza
.

Day 6: 4:41 p.m.

Marty Lord settled for a parking spot on Ivar south of Hollywood Boulevard. He did not expect the Ethiopian to approach his truck, which was a surprise. He did not think that the usher saw his face but he could not be sure. He was sweating right now; the screeching of his tires as he fled the alley had caused overwhelming paroxysms of pain to pass behind his eyes. He struggled with the bottle of narcotics as he seemed to be losing strength in his right hand and control of his fingers. The doctors said that this would happen; at some point the tumor would destroy that portion of his brain that controlled motor function. He managed to extract a couple of the pills and chewed them to a fine powder before washing them down with a sports energy drink. He knew that he would not last long now; first voluntary muscle control would go, then speech, and finally the involuntary muscles such as his diaphragm, until he just stopped breathing. He looked at his right hand in frustration before smashing it against the steering wheel.

Day 6: 5:13 p.m.

Imperial Boulevard in Los Angeles ran in an east-west direction, reaching its Pacific Ocean terminus near LAX. In less than three miles, the boulevard was the home to no less than twelve strip clubs catering to weary travelers and horny surfers. Every one of the girls who plied their wares at the clubs carried a story of some kind of abuse and used the ‘pole’ as a crutch to try to get them past their demons. For Toni Richardson, her abuse of choice was crystal meth. Dancing under the stage name Velvet, she was a single mother who, despite the fact that she had delivered two children, maintained a killer body. She was twenty-four years old and lived with her mother and the kids in a three-bedroom house that her father left them in El Segundo. On a good night, she could take home $500 cash with an extra $500 if she was willing to party with the customers. It was great money, but she knew that her looks would not last forever. Toni had a plan; she was saving up to go to college and become a physical therapist. She finished her makeup, kissed the kids goodbye, and drove to the club. She looked forward to the day when she would never have to dance again.

Day 6: 7:35 p.m.

“I must have spoken to one hundred people today who had a ‘swan’ somewhere in their name,” Jim complained between bites of his steak. “It was unbelievable.”

“Do you think you accomplished anything?” Lisa asked.

“I definitely succeeded in scaring the shit out of those people,” Jim replied.

“Don’t underestimate what you did, Jim. At least they will be extra vigilant tomorrow. If everyone you called stays home, you are going to make it harder for Marty Lord to get his next victim.”

Jim nodded as he downed a mouthful of wine.

“I know, prime objective is to protect the public, but it’s not helping us catch the guy. We know everything about the son of bitch, except how and where to find him.”