A week after Jackson’s call from the city archives, Lambkin and Marcia decide to visit the house where Stephanie was murdered. Marcia cruises west on the Santa Monica Freeway on a hazy November morning, with a fusion of smog and fog shrinking the horizons. Pulling off the freeway, he drives through Beverlywood—about a mile south of Beverly Hills—a placid, upscale neighborhood with manicured lawns and carefully pruned shrubbery. The Gormans bought their house here in the early 1960s for $65,000. Now many houses in the neighborhood sell for more than $700,000.
Marcia pulls up in front of the place where Stephanie was murdered, a three-bedroom, brown stucco and clapboard home with white shutters. The detectives have spent months studying reports and records and files. Now, gazing at the residence from the street, they can truly visualize the murder for the first time. Lambkin remembers reading that the family used to leave their back door unlatched when they were at home. Today he sees that the house has thick bars outside the bedroom windows, a heavy iron mesh door in back, and a security system sign posted on the lawn. The house is on a corner, which Marcia finds interesting: corner houses are burglarized more often because passersby are not as noticeable.
“Maybe because this house is on a corner, the crime might have been opportunistic rather than preplanned,” Marcia says.
“I don’t think so,” Lambkin says. “Look what the guy had with him—a gun, rope, a cutting instrument for the rope. And there was no financial motive. Nothing was taken. I think it was preplanned.”
Lambkin recalls that when Cheryl and Edward Gorman returned home, and before discovering the murder, they noticed that the back gate was open. While he gazes at the gate, Marcia reminds him that Mrs. Gorman discovered a doll with its head torn off a few days after the murder. They walk to the side of the house and Marcia says, “This must have been where it was found.” The detectives, who are unsure if the doll is significant, walk back around to the front.
“The first time I saw the Eiffel Tower, I was not that impressed,” Lambkin says. “I’d seen so many pictures of it. Being here now is a different kind of feeling. The impact of the case really hits me.”
Marcia is also moved. Staring at the house, lost in thought, he re-creates the murder in his mind, from the knock on the door, to the punch, to the rape, to the shot.
When the detectives finish looking around, Lambkin sifts through the murder book while Marcia drives to a cavernous West Los Angeles hardware store where his father, a painting contractor, once bought supplies. The detectives hope to learn more about the binding that the killer used, but it was destroyed along with much of the other evidence. Fortunately, the crime scene photographs, which clearly show the victim and the rope, do still exist.
The original homicide reports stated that Stephanie was bound with chalk line—used by carpenters to mark a straight line between two points—but the crime scene photographs reveal a thicker cord. The detectives hope that identifying the type of binding will help establish the profession of the killer. Marcia shows the hardware store clerk a detail of the crime scene photograph. “Is this chalk line?” he asks.
“Chalk line’s thinner,” the salesman says. “That’s definitely not chalk line.” He leads the detectives to the rope aisle. “Here’s some nylon rope that appears similar.”
“This picture’s from 1965,” Lambkin says. “We’re looking for cotton.”
The salesman proceeds down the aisle, grabs a section of cotton rope, and compares it to the photograph.
“That’s it,” Lambkin says.
“It’s mason line,” the salesman says.
As they walk to the car, Marcia says, “We need to find a bricklayer, someone who was building walls in the neighborhood.”
“I think I recall from the files that there was a construction site on the corner,” Lambkin says. “I’ll try to find it, but there are so many damn pages to sift through.”
Marcia and Lambkin head south, toward the cemetery where Stephanie is buried. Lambkin wants to photograph her headstone. The picture, he believes, might be an effective prop for his interview of Vincent Rossi.
Lambkin spots a liquor store in the distance and tells Marcia, “When I was a probationer in Rampart my training officer stopped at a liquor store one afternoon. While I was waiting outside, a little kid came up to me and said, ‘I want to be a police officer when I grow up.’ I felt great. I asked him why, because I thought he’d say because he wanted to help people. But he tells me, ‘So I can get stuff for free.’ Turns out this guy regularly stopped by the store to pick up free cigarettes. Other cops used to stop by and get free booze.”
Marcia chuckles, but his mood turns somber when he pulls off the San Diego Freeway, enters the cemetery, and turns onto a narrow lane bordered by olive trees. They climb a hill and locate Stephanie’s grave. A chilly breeze rusdes the leaves of the magnolia tree that shades the grave in the watery autumn light. Freeway traffic thrums in the distance like the sound of the surf. Crouching beside Stephanie’s flat marble headstone with roses engraved on the border, the detectives read:
STEPHANIE GORMAN
1949-1965
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER
WHO TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF ALL
WHO KNEW HER
Next to Stephanie’s headstone is her father’s:
THIS WAS A MAN
EDWARD I. GORMAN
JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT
1921-1987
Marcia gently sweeps the leaves off the headstones with a palm frond. As the sun flashes in and out of the clouds, Lambkin photographs the grave, deftly changing lenses and shifting positions with the panache of a professional. He mutters to Marcia that at least his year studying photography was not a total waste.
As they return downtown, Marcia says, “Her father died while the case was still unsolved. That’s a brutal thing to live with.”
“I usually don’t get emotional about my cases,” Lambkin says. “But I’m getting emotional about this one.”
Back in the squad room, Rick Jackson wanders over and asks Lambkin about the Gorman case. Eventually, they begin reminiscing about their days in Hollywood Homicide and the bizarre things they saw. The other detectives half-listen as they work through the chatter.
“We had one case at this club,” Lambkin begins. “There was this comedy act and a guy was running around popping balloons on people’s bodies. Then the comedian tripped and planted the knife right in the middle of this guy’s chest. He killed him.”
As Lambkin cackles, Jackson says, “I’ve always liked the Stove Top Stuffing murder. A woman is walking down the street in Hollywood and runs into a guy she knows. She’s in her fifties and he’s in his sixties. They talk about dinner. He says he’s making turkey with Stove Top Stuffing. She says that it’s lousy stuffing. He doesn’t want her bad-mouthing his dinner, so he starts to leave. She gets mad and slams him with her purse. The guy falls down, has a heart attack, and dies.”
Lambkin asks Jackson, “You remember that big buff cop who dated a porn star? He had a brain aneurysm and woke up in the hospital. He thought his name was Carlos and he owned a flower shop in Hawaii.”
Jackson walks back to his desk, laughing. Lambkin and Marcia return to the murder books. They have to get ready for an interview with Stephanie’s mother and sister.
A few days later, Lambkin and Marcia drive to the West Los Angeles office of Cheryl Gorman, now a psychologist. The murder shattered her family. In 1969, after twenty-four years of marriage, Edward and Julie Gorman divorced. The detectives know this sad history and they plan to approach the family delicately.
When the detectives arrive at Cheryl’s office, Julie is fidgeting in the waiting room. Nervously rubbing her thumb and index finger, she appears absorbed in her thoughts, and her eyes have a grim, faraway look. She wears a red pantsuit and her hair is carefully coifed. As she chats with the detectives she seems uncomfortable. The detectives know she was not happy about her daughter’s decision to reopen the case. She remarried decades ago and says that dredging up old feelings is simply too painful.
“You either kill yourself, or you go on,” Julie says to the detectives. She sighs heavily. “It’s so hard to relive this. You know, I always worried it was someone we knew. I kept looking at everyone.”
After a few minutes, Cheryl, who has a determined expression, steps into the lobby and leads the detectives and her mother into her office. Cheryl was a nineteen-year-old college student when her sister was murdered. Now she is woman in her mid-fifties, married, with a grown child. All these years, her need to know what happened has never waned. Slender, youthful looking, she wears lavender pants and a green sweater.
Lambkin explains that they have located a suspect, Vincent Rossi, whose fingerprint matches one lifted from a door frame in a hallway. Now, he says, they need to find out whether Rossi had any connection to the family or was ever employed as a workman at the house. If he had a legitimate reason to be in the house, he might be eliminated as a suspect. If not, there is a good chance he was the killer. Neither woman recognizes the name.
“We’ve been trying to gather as much information as we can without him knowing,” Lambkin says. “We don’t want him on notice. If he knows we’re coming, it could be deadly, especially if he still has some evidence. These kinds of offenders sometimes keep something to reminisce about the crime.”
“Is all that original evidence down the drain?” Julie asks, horrified.
“No,” Lambkin says. “Just some of the physical evidence, so we can’t use DNA. That’s why the interview with him is so critical.”
Lambkin tells them that he and Marcia have obtained Rossi’s criminal record, his two marriage certificates, his tax records, his employment history, and the birth certificates of his children. Cheryl and Julie are unfamiliar with the names of his ex-wives and his children, but they do find it interesting that Rossi’s mother has a Sephardic Jewish name and that he married his first wife in a synagogue. The Gormans are Sephardic and both Cheryl and Julie were married in Sephardic temples. Still, they cannot think of a connection to him. Lambkin lists his employment history, to help determine if Rossi had ever visited the house.
“On his marriage certificate, he listed his occupation as an engineer for an insulation company,” Lambkin says. “Did you ever have any walls ripped up?”
“No,” Julie says.
“On one of his children’s birth certificates he gave his occupation as salesman for a garden tool company,” Lambkin says. “Does that ring a bell?”
Julie glances at her daughter with a quizzical expression. They both shake their heads.
“He worked as a property manager once,” Lambkin tells Julie. “Did Mr. Gorman’s law practice have anything to do with real estate?”
“No,” she says.
“Was there any brickwork done at your house?” asks Lambkin.
“No,” Julie says. “We had all flagstone.”
“Any brickwork done nearby?”
“I can’t remember,” she says.
Finally, Lambkin reveals the composite of Rossi. Julie picks up the picture and a flicker of recognition flashes in her eyes.
“There’s something about him that’s familiar,” she says.
Cheryl studies the composite. “He looks Sephardic to me.”
“We blew up his profile,” Lambkin says. “It’s almost identical to the composite.”
Julie shakes her head. “I just can’t place him.”
Lambkin tells them that in 1971, a dozen typewriters were stolen from a Hollywood business and Rossi was arrested after reselling one of them for $200. He claimed that he did not know the typewriter had been stolen, and eventually pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property.
“We’d prefer if his burglary was a hot prowl or had some sexual overtones,” Lambkin says. “But what’s really interesting is that the business was in Hollywood, but the man who owned the business lived only three blocks from your house.”
Lambkin provides them with the address and the names of the other two people arrested in connection with the burglary. “Ring a bell?”
“No,” the mother says.
Marcia then tells them, for the first time, about Michael Goldsmith. “He’s a bizarre-looking guy. Longhaired and kind of crazy-looking. He stopped by the house on the afternoon Stephanie was killed and actually called the police himself. He said he visited the house to see a friend and didn’t realize the friend no longer lived there. But the friend told the detectives that he hadn’t lived in the house for years and the guy should have known it.”
“That story doesn’t make sense,” Julie says.
“It’s very odd,” Cheryl says. “This is the first we’ve ever heard of that story.”
“He was eliminated on prints,” Marcia says.
“What time was the murder, do you estimate?” Cheryl asks.
“It would have been around the same time period he showed up at the house,” Lambkin says.
“That’s one of the weirdest things I’ve heard,” Julie says.
Lambkin tells them that Goldsmith graduated from Hamilton High School a few years before the murder.
Cheryl appears alarmed and says, “Then he would have graduated with me! And don’t forget, I was supposed to be at home that day.” Cheryl hugs herself and says, “About a week or two after it happened, I got several calls. They were horrible. Someone said: ‘You’re next!’” Staring at a wall, she adds, “I had to get away from it. It happened in August. I moved into my sorority in September. I didn’t want to come home. It happened in my bedroom.”
“We led a quiet life,” Julie says. “My husband spent a lot of time at home. He had rheumatic fever and had two heart operations. I just played tennis and bridge at the club.”
“Stephanie went to the club a lot,” Cheryl says. “I wasn’t athletic, but she was a great athlete. She played tennis every day.”
“I just gave her money so she could be on the drill team,” Julie says, staring into the middle distance. “The tennis pro was crazy about Stephanie. Everyone was.” She grips the sofa and adds, “I wanted to leave the club and go home, and I was just walking out, but they begged me to fill in so they could play doubles. This has been on my mind for years. Why? Why did I stay to play? I didn’t even want to. Maybe I could have saved her. Or maybe I would have been killed, instead of Stephanie.”
After a minute of silence, Julie says, “I have a feeling about that guy who pulled in the driveway.”
“I agree,” Cheryl says. “Why’d he stop by that particular day?”
“Why’d he call police?” Julie asks.
“Maybe he thought someone spotted him,” Lambkin says.
Lambkin agrees that Goldsmith’s story is suspicious, but he tells her that he believes Rossi is their primary suspect. “The more I look into him the stronger I feel about it.”
Lambkin tells them Rossi’s daughter has been arrested many times for prostitution and that a young relative accused him of a sexual impropriety. “This is consistent with a sexual offender. His lack of a criminal record bothers me. But there are explanations for that.”
“Is it your gut feeling that you’ve got the right guy?” Cheryl asks.
“I just can’t see any legitimate reason,” Lambkin replies, “for this guy’s prints being in your house.”