A Cop and His Ghosts

John St. John studied me over the top of his V.O. and water and said there were ghosts out there, hundreds of them, drifting down the hushed corridors of apartment buildings, hovering over vacant lots, lingering at the street corners. One of them was Helen Meyler.

He said it in a tone characteristically flat, his expression bland, the pauses between comments long and silent. I waited while he took a sip of his drink. The man won’t be rushed. He’s got his own pace.

Finally he put the drink down in a manner that was deliberate to the extreme of ritualism, meticulously straightening the cocktail napkin, wiping an imaginary speck off the table.

Then when he was ready, he said: “Anytime you’ve got homicides that aren’t solved, the lives of the victims remain incomplete. They’re still haunting us. They’re still restless.”

Having said that, he studied the front door of the bar with his one good eye as though he expected one of those ghosts to come through. “That bothers me,” he said. “That sure as hell does bother me.”

John St. John. Jigsaw John. Forty-seven years with the LAPD this month, 40 years a detective, senior man with the department, badge No. 1. Some say he might be the best homicide investigator ever to walk the streets of L.A., untangling with patience and determination mysteries that leave less-gifted colleagues baffled.

To look at him, you’d never figure the old guy to be a whiz at anything. If you saw him on the street in his polyester suit you’d think he was somebody’s grandpa out Easter shopping. He has a kind of slow, deliberate way of walking and he’s blind in his right eye. That makes him seem uncertain and befuddled. He isn’t.

I met John 14 years ago and wrote about him for The Times. Then I wrote a book and a pilot that became a television series. Jigsaw John. They call him that because of a dismemberment murder he solved a long time ago and because solving a murder is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. About 80% of the time old John makes all the pieces fit.

“You never give up on unsolved murders,” he said the other day over a drink at the downtown Redwood House. John calls it the Red Dog. We’ve been meeting there since 1974. “Sometimes I wake up at 3 in the morning thinking about them. Helen Meyler. That’s one.”

Meyler, Helen Jones. Homicide Report DR 72-627 479. Date and time of homicide: Aug. 26/27, 1972, 1000/1107 hours. Cause of death: severe injuries due to blunt force trauma to the head.

She’s one of his ghosts, an old lady beaten to death in her apartment for the few dollars the killer could find.

John used to go by her place every month or so. He’d walk up the back stairs, pausing occasionally to listen, as though he expected Meyler’s ghost to whisper something. Then he’d stand at the door of the apartment and stare.

“One of these days I’ll find him,” John would say. “One of these days . . .”

His empathy for victims of murder is rooted in the violence that left him half blind. A year after he joined the department, he was attacked from behind by a juvenile jail prisoner swinging an iron bar ripped from a bunk.

“It was a lesson,” he told me once. “I learned what it was like to be a victim. I learned what it was like to be left for dead.”

When I saw him the other day, he was still wearing a “187” pin in his lapel. It’s the penal code section for homicide. At 69, John looks pretty much the same as he did when we were writing the book together. He’s still never fired his weapon at anyone. “I’m out there to solve crimes,” he likes to say, “not to shoot people.”

I’m no cop junkie. I go bananas when Daryl Gates shoots off his mouth. I foam at the mouth when a protector turns predator. But show me a good cop--I mean a good cop--and I’ll show you a guy willing to risk his life, his domestic tranquility and his sanity for the simple but eloquent purpose of trying to keep us safe.

St. John is no genius and he’s no saint. His talent is limited to solving murders. He gets himself into trouble for saying the wrong things. But, still, he knows what it’s like to be a victim and he has an unfailing regard for everyone’s rights. As such, he epitomizes the special cop. I knew that a long time ago, I know it now.

“Be a good citizen,” he said when cocktail time was over. He’s been saying that for 14 years.

“Happy 47th anniversary,” I said.

Then he walked up 2nd Street and turned the corner, heading off to where the ghosts were hiding.