The Black Echo

fall from Robbery-Homicide. It was more than curiosity. He sensed that something important rode on what he told her. She was making a decision about him.
    “I guess you know the basics,” he began. “Somebody was strangling women, mostly prostitutes, then painting over their faces with makeup. Pancake, red lipstick, heavy rouge on the cheeks, sharp black eyeliner. The same thing every time. The bodies were bathed, too. But we never said it looked like he was making them into dolls. Some asshole-I think it was a guy named Sakai over at the coroner’s-leaked that the makeup was the common denominator. Then this Dollmaker stuff started playing in the press. I think Channel 4 was the first to come up with that name. It took off from there. To me, it looked more like a mortician’s work. But the truth is we weren’t doing too good. We didn’t have a handle on the guy until he was into double figures.
    “Not much physical evidence. The victims were all dumped in random locations, all over the Westside. We knew from fiber evidence on a couple of the bodies that the guy probably wore a rug or some kind of hair disguise, fake beard or something. The women that were taken off the stroll, we were able to isolate times and places of their last trick. We went to the hourly motels and got nothing. So we figured the guy was picking them up in a car and then taking them somewhere else, maybe to his home or some kind of safe place he used as a killing pad. We started watching the Boulevard and other hot spots the pros work, and we must’ve busted up three hundred tricks before we got the break. This whore name of Dixie McQueen calls up the task force one morning, early, and says she just escaped from the Dollmaker and is there a reward if she gives him up. Well, we were getting calls like that every week. I mean, eleven murdered women and people are coming out of the woodwork with clues that aren’t really clues. It’s panic city.”
    “I remember,” Wish said.
    “But Dixie was different. I was working the late shift in the task force offices that day and I caught the call. I went and talked to her. She told me that this john she’d picked up on Hollywood near Spa Row, you know, near the Scientology mansion, took her to this garage apartment in Silver Lake. She said that while the guy was getting naked she wanted to use the toilet. So she goes in and while she’s running the water she looks through the cabinet below the sink, probably to see if there is anything worth lifting. But she sees all these little bottles and compacts and all this women’s stuff. She looks at it all and she just puts it all together. Just like that. Bingo; this has to be the guy. So she gets a case of total creeps and bails out. She comes out of the bathroom and the guy’s in the bed. She just hauls ass through the front door.
    “The thing is, we hadn’t put out all the stuff about the makeup. Or, actually, the asshole that was the media leak didn’t put out everything. See, we knew that the guy was keeping the victims’ stuff. They were found with their purses but there were no cosmetics-you know, lipstick, compacts, things like that. So when Dixie told me about what was in the bathroom cabinet she got my attention. I knew she was legit.
    “And that is the point where I screwed up. It was 3A.M. by the time I was done talking to Dixie. Everybody on the task force had gone home and I was left there thinking that this guy might realize Dixie made him and clear out. So I went there alone. I mean, Dixie went with me to show me the place, but then she never left the car. Once we were there, I saw a light on above the garage, which was behind this rundown house off of Hyperion. I called for patrol backup, and while I’m waiting I see the guy’s shadow going back and forth across the window. Something tells me he is getting ready to bug out and take all the stuff from the cabinet with him. And we had no evidence from the eleven bodies. We needed the stuff that was in the bathroom cabinet. The other consideration was, what if he has someone up there? You know, a replacement for Dixie. So I went up. Alone. You know the rest.”
    Wish said, “You went in without a warrant and shot him when he was reaching under the pillow on the bed. You later told the shooting team that you believed it was an emergency situation. There had been enough time for him to go out and get another prostitute. You said that gave you the authority to come through the