Jars broke, formaldehyde sprayed, awful pieces of flesh were loosed. Tilden was right on top of me, trying to bring his scalpels down. I held his wrists up, then shot a knee between his legs. He grunted but didn’t retreat, this face getting closer and closer to mine. Inches away, he bared his teeth and snapped; I felt my cheek tearing. I kneed him again, his arm pressure slackened, I caught another bite on the chin, then dropped my hands. The scalpels hit the shelf in back of me; I flailed for a weapon and touched a big piece of glass. I dug it into Georgie’s face just as he yanked the blades free; he screamed; steel dug into my shoulder.

The shelving collapsed. Georgie fell on top of me, blood pouring from an empty eye socket. I saw my .45 on the floor a few feet away, dragged the two of us there and grabbed it. Georgie raised his head, making animal screeches. He went for my throat, his mouth huge in front of me. I jammed the silencer into his eye hole and blew his brains out.

Chapter 33

Russ Millard supplied the Short case epitaph.

Adrenaline-fried, I left the death house and drove straight to City Hall. The padre had just gotten in from Tucson with his prisoner; when the man was ensconsed in a holding cell, I took Russ aside and told him the entire story of my involvement with the Spragues—from Marjorie Graham’s lez tip to the shooting of Georgie Tilden. Russ, dumbstruck at first, drove me to Central Receiving Hospital. The emergency room doc gave me a tetanus shot, said, “God, those bites look almost human,” and sutured them up. The scalpel wounds were superficial—and required only cleansing and bandaging.

Outside, Russ said, “The case has to stay open. You’ll be canned from the Department if you tell anyone else what happened. Now let’s go take care of Georgie.”

It was:00 A.M. when we got to Silverlake. The padre was shaken by what he saw, but held his composure ramrod stiff. Then the best man I ever knew astonished me.

First he said, “Go over and stand by the car”; then he fiddled with some pipes on the side of the house, paced off twenty yards and emptied his service revolver at the spot. Gas ignited; the house went up in flames. We highballed out of there without headlights. Russ shot me his line: “That obscenity did not deserve to stand.”

Then it was incredible exhaustion—and sleep. Russ dropped me at the El Nido, I dived onto the bed and into twenty-odd hours of pitch-black unconsciousness. Waking up, the first thing I saw was the four Sprague passports on the dresser: the first thing I thought was: they have to pay.

If health and safety code violations or worse came down, I wanted the family in the country where they would suffer. I called the U.S. passport office, impersonated a detective captain and put a police hold on passport reissues for all four Spragues. It felt like an impotent gesture—a slap on the wrist. I shaved and showered then, extra careful not to wet my bandages or sutures. I thought about the end of the case so I wouldn’t think about the shambles my life was in. I recalled that something Madeleine said the other day was off, wrong, out of sync. I played with the question while I dressed; going out the door to get something to eat, it hit home:

Madeleine said that Martha called the police with a tip on La Verne’s Hideaway. But: I knew the Short case paperwork better then any cop alive, and there were no notations anywhere pertaining to the place. Two incidents sparked me then. Lee getting a long call during our phone-answering stint the morning after I met Madeleine; Lee going directly to La Verne’s after he cracked up at the stag film showing. Only “Genius” Martha could give me answers. I drove to Ad Agency Row to brace her.

I found Emmett Sprague’s real daughter alone, eating lunch on a bench in the shade of the Young & Rubicam Building. She didn’t look up when I sat down across from her; I remembered that Betty Short’s little black book and pictures were taken out of a mailbox a block away.

I watched the pudgy girl-woman nibble a salad and read the newspaper. In the two and a half years since I’d seen her she’d held her own against fat and bad skin—but she still looked like a tough distaff version of Emmett.

Martha put the paper down and noticed me. I expected rage to light up her eyes; she surprised me by saying, “Hello, Mr. Bleichert,” with just a touch of a smile.

I walked over and sat down beside her. The Times was folded over to a Metro section piece: “Bizarre Fire in Silverlake Foothills—Body Found Charred Beyond Recognition.”

Martha said, “I’m sorry for that picture I drew of you that night you came to dinner.”

I pointed to the newspaper. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“Poor Georgie. No, I’m not surprised to see you. Father told me you knew. I’ve been underestimated all my life, and I always had a feeling Maddy and Father were underestimating you.

I pushed the compliment aside. “Do you know what ‘Poor Georgie’ did?”

“Yes. From the beginning. I saw Georgie and the Short girl leave the house that night in Georgie’s truck. Maddy and Father didn’t know I knew, but I did. Only Mother never figured it out. Did you kill him?”

I didn’t answer.

“Are you going to hurt my family?”

The pride in the “my” knifed me. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“I don’t blame you for wanting to hurt them. Father and Maddy are dreadful people, and I went way out on a limb to hurt them myself.”

“When you sent in Betty’s things?”

Now Martha’s eyes fired up. “Yes. I tore out the page in the book that had our number, but I thought there might be other numbers to lead the police to Father and Maddy. I didn’t have the courage to send our number in. I should have. I—”

I held up a hand. “Why, Martha? Do you know what would have happened if the police got the whole story about Georgie? Accessory charges, court, jail.”

“I didn’t care. Maddy had you and Father, Mother and I had nothing. I just wanted the whole ship to sink. Mother has lupus now, she’s only got a few years left. She’s going to die, and that is so unfair.”

“The pictures and scratch marks. What did you mean by them?”

Martha laced her fingers together and twisted them until the knuckles were white. “I was nineteen, and all I could do was draw. I wanted Maddy smeared as a dyke, and the last picture was Father himself—his face scratched out. I thought he might have left fingerprints on the back. I was desperate to hurt him.”

“Because he touches you like he touches Madeleine?”

“Because he doesn’t!”

I braced myself for the spooky stuff. “Martha, did you call the police with a tip on La Verne’s Hideaway?”

Martha lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

“Did you talk to—”

“I told the man about my dyke sister, how she met a cop named Bucky Bleichert at La Verne’s last night and had a date with him tonight. Maddy was gloating to the whole family about you, and I was jealous. But I only wanted to hurt her—not you.”

Lee taking the call while I sat across a desk from him in University squadroom; Lee going directly to La Verne’s when Slave Girls From Hell drove him around the twist. I said, “Martha, you come clean on the rest of it.”

Martha looked around and clenched herself—legs together, arms to her sides, fists balled. “Lee Blanchard came to the house and told Father he’d talked to women at La Verne’s—lesbians who could tie Maddy in to the Black Dahlia. He said he had to leave town, and for a price he wouldn’t report his information on Maddy. Father agreed, and gave him all the money he had in his safe.”

Lee, Benzie-crazed, absent from City Hall and University Station; Bobby De Witt’s imminent parole his reason for blowing town. Emmett’s money the cash he was flaunting in Mexico. My own voice numb: “Is there more?”