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We’re going to accept you.’ I said, ‘Great. What do I do?’ I was wondering if they would send me to an academy or provide some special training. He said, ‘Just go out and get a gun and come to work.’”
    Speaking between bursts of laughter, Berndt continued. “Well, I went out and bought a .357 Magnum. And then I’m thinking, ‘I don’t believe I really want to do this.’ The whole Montgomery force at that time was about four people.” Berndt postponed her ambitions and focused on keeping a shaky marriage together. It didn’t work.
    After a painful divorce, she launched a job search in major cities, which included interviews in Los Angeles and Houston, Texas. Just prior to a trip to Kansas City, she received an offer from Houston. “Actually, I really wanted to work for the LAPD, so I turned Houston down. I came here and was accepted. Just like everyone else, I started as a recruit. Unless recruits are fired, they become a police officer and serve a period of probation.”
    As a patrol officer in Hollywood, Berndt inevitably encountered celebrities. She recalled being dispatched, along with paramedics, to the home of Orson Welles when he died. His amazing obesity has stuck in her mind. “He was up in a second-story bedroom. The man was huge. I’ve never in my life seen anything like the size of his ankles, like elephant legs. That memory has stayed with me all these years.”
    Berndt knew right away she wanted to be a detective and began working toward that goal. “For twenty-six of my twenty-eight years, I have been in Hollywood. I was in uniform for nine years before making D-I, the first step as a detective.” She worked cases from 1990 to 1995, and then accepted a promotion to supervisor in 1996.
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    In the early-morning hours of Saturday, June 2, 2007, from her bedroom at home, Wendi Berndt spoke by telephone to Detective Conboy. He had a remarkably odd case on his hands. An anonymous report had been telephoned from another county. The unknown informant had spoken of a woman being shot by someone named David Mahler several days earlier. However, no unexplained reports had been received of a dead body or a wounded victim.
    Retrospectively discussing the case, Wendi Berndt said, “Ray called me and told me that a call had come in about a murder up at a house in the hills. He got the address and said that a suspect known to the caller had done it. I realized we didn’t have enough information to go out and kick in the door, but certainly could go there and knock. I asked Ray, ‘Can you get some more information?’”
    Conboy went into action. He recalled, “At 0145 hours, I received notification on my cellular phone that the PR’s call was transferred to the Communications Division by the Orange County Communications Center. He reported that a man killed a lady and came to his door and wanted help to dispose of the body. At 0200 hours, the Hollywood Desk called to say the PR had called the station and was on hold. I advised the desk officer to have the PR call my cellular phone.”
    At last, four minutes after two o’clock, Conboy spoke to the mysterious informant and learned that his name was Karl Norvik (pseudonym).
    Norvik’s voice throbbed with stress as he spoke of spending Saturday night, May 26, and Sunday at the house up on Cole Crest Drive. He had heard shouting and screaming coming from the bedroom of David Mahler, the leaseholder and manager. At about six twenty-five, Sunday morning, Norvik said, he had been awakened by the sounds of hard knocking on the door of his studio apartment, two levels below Mahler’s quarters. He responded and found Mahler at his door. Mahler had said, “I need to dispose of a dead body.”
    According to Norvik, Mahler led him upstairs to his bedroom, where he looked in and saw the deceased body of a white female dressed in white pants of a thin