 Clement Junction
Minor authorities have claimed that the corner of S. 24th. St. and S. Alameda, and S. 25th. St. didn't aquire the name until much later, possibility as late as 1965. These are probably in error, somehow. I don't know. I surmise that the area is a old railroad junction, and an historic one. It was probably named after Lewis M. Clement, legendary surveyor of the Union Pacific. After completing the transcontinental line, Clement helped design and build the line from Sacramento south to Los Angeles by way of the San Joaquin Valley for the Southern Pacific Railroad which eventually absorbed the Central Pacific.
Old timers will say that the last leg into Los Angeles was the trickiest part as the grade must follow the riverrun in a long sweeping arc to the south and west in order to bring it into the city, and opening the way south to the harbor and San Pedro. The cuts Louis Clement made were truly the making of LA. in a sense. After surviving the awful flood in 1938 intact, the Junction now serves as the northern terminus of the massive new bulk transportation corridor.
Edwin F. Burns was born in New York in 1909 and emmigrated sometime later to California. The next time we encounter him, it's December 1942 and Ed is thirty-three, married and living in Los Angeles, working steady as a skilled camera repairman, a very important skill to the Army, and one that probably got him drafted, in spite of his relatively advanced age. Ed was a fair to middling surveyor himself, another draft bait skill. Maybe like Douglas says, he was involved in a failed housing development deal in north Leimert Park? Sure, why not.
Either way, he knew enough about some of the geographically anomalous features surrounding and intersceting the grizzly death tableau of Betty Short to pose a strikingly simple and elegant soultion to his perfect crime.
Ed got around. He knew all about the junction and it's history, it's just another one of the endless little tasks we must perform to understand the riddle and reach the proof. We were traveling east on our mules when our attention was arrested buy the name Clement in the bad part of town. Lucky #7 on the 1949 D.A. list of suspects. A probable typo. Just one of the killer's aliases. [Barnes and wife, another]. And clement also means merciful, the killer made several allusions to being sorry for what he did and asking for forgiveness. Sorry Mare. Mare is latin for the sea. Mare could be short for Maurice. Sorry Mare. We must double back west, now. Why? Only because there lies the Pacific Ocean. Mare pace.
 Hazelton, the hush puppy
6:26:09 AM 
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