Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
"It was five o'clock of a wet March evening when he walked into my down-at-heels brain emporium. He looked changed. Older, very sober and severe and beautifully calm. He looked like a guy who had learned to roll with a punch."--Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953).
Forest Lawn is a very fitting place for any Angelino to fall down dead. The primal forest is long gone. Only the lawn is left, and beautifully manicured, with a view that is non pariel anywhere in the known world, as if anywhere in the world were as well known as there. The four Marx Brothers. As well as all six of the Three Stooges. Betty Davis is here, seatbelt properly fastened. Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, Spencer Tracy (Cut in half in Captians Courageous), up on the Silver Screen as both Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde and even a dead fighter pilot in A Guy Named Joe. Lucille Ball, Jack Webb, Stan Laurel, George Raft, and Freddie Prinze. Quite the collection of stiffs.
L.A. neo-classical  Plantation Style
Maybe, on his way out of town, the killer had a notion that this place would be Elizabeth Short's last, last resting place. He already knew her last resting place. Her body, as it turned out, was buried nowhere near there, or here. But you can't plan everything, sometimes you have to rely on luck, but even luck will let you down. Planning is everything to a successful crime of passion, like this one. It's what the devil's into today,driving while dead, and the details of the dissection. Beth's a stellar section now, as famous as any movie star and more famous than most. You ought to be in pictures. She is the Black Dalhia now, and forever.
"The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck out life's blood." --Betty Davis
Maybe he didn't care that much. Just doing his thing he knew the Keystone Cops wouldn't make the scene down on Norton, until Harry the Hat got his usual wake up call at eleven o'clock. He probably could've counted on that. The fog usually lifts around noon back down there. Maybe he stopped for breakfast. Maybe then he hopped a military flight out of Burbank. Army, Air Force, they were the same thing in those days, besides the war had been over for a year and a half, and things were going slack, but the glow of victory had not entirely worn off, and the reaction had only started to set in.
Beth wouldn't live long enough to have to take a loyalty oath, or be called to testify to the HUAC people as to whether she had ever been a communist or not. The Red Dahlia scare. She had her own black list though, a long one. She took it from Mark Hansen. Beth was the type of girl who knew how to keep up a correspondance, a lost art today. She had that address book with her when she was killed. The killer mailed it to the Los Angeles Examiner, after tearing out several pages. But why? To deflect attention? No one knew who the hell he was. Why send something like that anyhow, unless the purpose is to taunt the cops? Sure. It's really scenic from up here, isn't it? Wow. That's a million dollar view, even in those days. It'll cost you ten times that now. Let's go.
Looking East-South-East  From the Hollywood Hills.
The Sunny Southland is your personal orange, give it a fresh squeeze. Do you want to go to Tara and see Scarlet and Rhett? 10202 W. Washington, Culver City. The ceremonial entrance to the Thomas Ince/Triangle Studio. The first studio. I am all but awash with a feeling of nostalgia for a place that never really was. The City of Our Mother Mary, Queen of the Angels, Babylon Westwood, The Big Nowhere, the Dream Factory, Made in Hollywood, U.S.A. More stars than there are in the heavens.
This is Edendale, this place is too beautiful, and too distracting, somehow. The mountians, the sea...I can't concentrate anymore. I'm mesmerized by it all. The Cuneiform and the Cupcake. The killer has led me a merry chase through the compulsory school figures. Way down South, and up into the hills, on a right-outer-back edge the whole way, and then completely disappeared in a scratch spin. Sonja Heine a'la Harry Houdini. Poof, a cloud of dust and an hearty Hi-O Silver. William Conrad, gone Dad. Or did he? I'll speculate on this first.
By leaving Elizabeth Short's body where he did, the killer has made one thing clear, he was driving an automobile. even then, the best way to get around L.A., or through it, as the case may be. And he was doing so on his way out of town by the shortest routes available. Via one of the two, close in municipal airports, both of which while being equally distant from the dump site, will have local conditions which may favor one or the other, in the presumed heat of a getaway. Fleeing South to Hawthorne Airport seems the logical first choice, given it's proximity to both air and rail facilities, and the relative directness of the route. West would be the next best route, giving the preference to the flight-only direction over the railway-only choice, East to Clement Junction. North seems the least like direction of the four. North and East also would entail some backtracking across town, that is, if he came from that way. Going North or East? He keeps the car and drives out of the area.
Suspect #1: Parker Carcass, Motor vehicle operator. An unknown person, not from anywhere around there. Lookest thou otherwise, and elsewhere, make like he had skeedaddled on somewhere off the range of suspects. But if home is where the heart is, there Parker hadn't really been in a long, long time. Some smart guy, this hacker to the recently hacked. Maybe too smart by halves? We'll see, man. Somehow, I think he did leave town for parts unknown early on that beautiful, crisp, clear January morning, and he did so by air, and he was going to the place where he "lived" to put in an appearance before the alibi committee, and to feed the goldfish, but he'd be back in L.A. very soon. Maybe the same day. He never could stay away very long. He had business there.
12:09:08 PM 
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