“Let me talk to her first. You said it yourself, she’s not a suspect — if anything, she’s a victim — and a homicide cop might scare her off. Let’s face it, Marillo’s murder isn’t going to help her nerves any. They were close friends. Leave it to me, Joe. I’m used to talking to people like Sarah Broughton. It’s my job.”
Joe grinned. “You think a big, black, mean ugly motherfucker like me might scare the pretty white lady right out of her wits, huh?”
“Joe, I never said you were mean.”
Joe laughed. “Okay. You talk to her first. But don’t go too easy on her. Remember, if what you say is right, she hasn’t come clean with us yet. Anything else?”
“There’s a couple of leads I’m following up. I was going to talk to Jack Marillo, so you might find a message from me still on his machine when you get around to checking it out.”
Joe frowned. “Did you tell anyone?”
“What?”
“That you were going to talk to Marillo.”
“Oh, come on Joe, you can’t be thinking he was killed to stop him talking to me?”
“Got to consider every possibility at this point.”
“Okay. No, I didn’t tell anyone. Stuart Kleigman suggested I talk to Jack. As far as I know, he’s the only one who knew outside the department. And he’d be a fool to suggest I talk to someone then go kill him before I get the chance.”
“A fool or a very clever man covering his ass.”
Arvo shook his head. “Stu? Honestly, Joe, I can’t see him doing this.”
“You got to cultivate a more suspicious nature, Arvo.”
“Even so.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “Let’s work it this way. You follow your leads and I’ll coordinate the homicide investigations, see if I can find anything in common between Marillo and the stiff on the beach — forensics, witnesses, that kind of thing. After all, Marillo was gay, and Heimar was a male hooker. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting extra staff to help on this one. And you and me will have regular meetings. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Arvo walked back down the driveway to his car and set off down the canyon, a million bits of information spinning around in his mind. At least he had forgotten his hangover.
On the narrow, winding trail, he had to pull over right to the trees to let the convoy past. The road wasn’t made to handle the kind of two-way traffic it was getting this morning.
The crime-scene specialists led the procession in their van, followed by a couple of local TV station vans. In one of them, Arvo noticed a well-known anchor putting the finishing touches to her red-blond mane. He also recognized a couple of newspaper reporters following in their own cars. So word had got out already, despite Officer Laski’s discretion. Heffer? Arvo wouldn’t have been surprised.
As he watched the vans and cars pass, he heard helicopters overhead. They liked to cover every angle, the television people; if they couldn’t get to the crime scene from the ground, then they’d damn well show bird’s-eye footage. All they needed now was the ride of the fucking Valkyries.
After the reporters came Stuart Kleigman, looking ashen behind the wheel of his maroon Caddy, and behind him came Assistant Chief Summers.
When their cars were parallel, the AC glanced at Arvo and frowned. It was either recognition or puzzlement, Arvo thought, as the road cleared and he drove on. He wondered if it mattered which and decided it didn’t. Either way, the more people who saw a member of the TMU on the fringes of a celebrity homicide case, the more likely was the kind of media circus that Joe Westinghouse had mentioned.
If Arvo hadn’t realized before, he knew now that the single letter in the file back at headquarters was a time bomb waiting to go off in his face if he didn’t start making progress fast.
He knew that his original assessment of the danger level posed by the letter had been correct. He also knew that he had done the right thing in arranging to meet Joe Westinghouse to discuss the beach murder case. At least now Joe could cover him in the interim, could verify that they were pursuing the possibility of a link between the letter and the homicides.
But he also knew that all the statistics in the world can’t protect you from the random element, the unpredictable, the one that just doesn’t fit. Call him the psycho, as Joe had, or the serial killer, whatever you want, but know that he will take all you think you know, believe and understand, and turn it inside out right in front of your eyes before ripping it to shreds.
Part three
24
Sarah’s heart sank when she walked out of customs and immigration into the waiting phalanx of reporters and cameras at the Tom Bradley Terminal of LAX. More than ten hours in the air, though, she realized, allowed plenty of time for someone to leak the details of her arrival. They would have been expecting her anyway. If she hadn’t been a star before, she probably was now. Celebrities and murder. How Hollywood loved that combination.
Even though she knew it would be getting dark outside, she wore sunglasses and kept her head down all the way to the car. Stuart and an airport security guard did their best to steer her through, but the crowd jostled and harassed them all the way to the automatic doors, shoving mini-cassette recorders in her face, flashing cameras at her, yelling questions.
“What was your reaction to the news of your co-star’s murder, Miss Broughton?”
“Miss Broughton, had you any idea your co-star was homosexual?”
“Miss Broughton, what are the plans for the future of the show?”
“Is there any truth in the rumour that Richard Romano is being considered to take Jack Marillo’s place in the series?”
As soon as they left the air-conditioned airport environment for the LA evening, still pursued by reporters brandishing microphones, Sarah felt that familiar balminess in the air, the mild warmth caressing her cheeks.
The arrivals area outside the terminal was the usual chaos of cars, limos and shuttles zipping along the half-dozen or so lanes, piles of luggage and confused tourists looking for the van stops. The air was acrid with exhaust fumes. As she ducked into the passenger seat of Stuart’s waiting Caddy, Sarah noticed the tatty airport palm trees by the concrete walls of the parking structure across the lanes of traffic. So they hadn’t been smoked out of existence yet.
When the porter had finished packing Sarah’s luggage in the trunk, Stuart tipped him and edged the Caddy into the lanes of traffic. A car pulled out behind them, but Sarah didn’t pay it any special attention.
She took off her dark glasses and looked at Stuart’s profile. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Jack... who would want to harm Jack?”
Stuart kept his eyes on the road. “I know, sweetie,” he said. “I know.”
“What happened?”
“The cops don’t really know anything yet.”
“All you told me on the phone was that Jack had been killed and the police thought it was either Jaimie or some sort of homophobic maniac. I can’t believe it was Jaimie.”
“Arvo doesn’t think it was, either.”
“Then it was some maniac?”
“Well, there’s a theory it might have been someone Jack picked up on the Boulevard or—”
“Oh, come on, Stuart. You know as well as I do that Jack wasn’t like that.”
“Yeah... well.” Stuart scratched the side of his nose. He seemed a little sheepish, cagey.
Sarah paused a moment, then said, “Did the detective suggest that there was any connection with the letters, the body I found on the beach?”
“Look,” Stuart admitted, “I didn’t really want to go into it over the phone, but yes, Arvo says it’s all too much of a coincidence. I mean, he thinks someone could be out to bring down the show, some fucking crazy.”
“There couldn’t be any connection,” Sarah murmured. But she knew there had to be. “Does he have any evidence?”
Stuart shook his head. “Not that he’s told me about. He just seems very sure of it.”
Stuart negotiated the airport maze, a small city in itself, and took Lincoln. It was early evening, just getting dark, and a pale full moon shone low in the indigo sky. Opposite, the western horizon glowed deep vermilion. When Stuart turned on the radio, The Doors came on singing “LA Woman.” Sarah asked him if he would change the station and he did, finally settling on a Mozart wind quintet.
As they rounded a curve in the road, just for a second they were at such an angle that the fanned leaves of one of the tall distant palms stood silhouetted against the full moon like a decal. That was so Southern California, Sarah thought, nestling deeper in the seat as the moment passed. Picture-postcard stuff. Beautiful but theatrical. And ephemeral.
Sarah closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths. It was Thursday, December 27, two days after Jack Marillo’s body had been discovered mutilated on the bed of his Laurel Canyon home. Stuart had phoned Sarah in England on Boxing Day, and she had managed to get a flight out of Heathrow the following day. She had left London close to three o’clock, and now it was just after five in LA.
That morning, after a miserable, sleepless night, she had received another letter. Mailed in Los Angeles and sent express delivery, it was addressed simply to Sally Bolton, Robin Hood’s Bay, England.
It was a Christmas card.
The picture on the front showed a typical garish manger scene with bright, blurry stars and the vague figures of the three wise men in the distance.
In addition to the heart with her name inside, the message read, “Merry Christmas. I miss you and I’m thinking of you always. I know we are One in Spirit. Maybe one day soon we will have a Baby to love like Little Baby Jesus.”
On top of the news of Jack’s murder, the card had made Sarah physically sick. Now she carried it in her purse next to the letter. She knew the police would be pleased to have his actual handwriting.
Sarah listened as Stuart told her exactly what he had discovered. So far, no drugs had been found in Jack’s system, despite the three grams of cocaine the police had found on his bedside table. And that was entirely consistent with the scenario they had constructed: Jack had just arrived home from Christmas dinner at his parents’ house in the Valley, which he had left at eleven o’clock that evening, and someone — either his lover, Jaimie Kincaid, or a stranger — had been waiting for him. He hadn’t had a chance. As far as the police knew, there was nothing of any value missing, so robbery was ruled out as a motive. They were still in the dark.
Jack dead? Sarah could hardly believe it. More than that, she had a terrible feeling that it was her fault. She had refused to face reality. Not only had she told no one about the heart drawn on the beach except Paula, whom she had sworn to secrecy, but she had even denied to herself that she really had seen it. She had almost convinced herself, too, until she read the letter she had carried with her to Robin Hood’s Bay.
If the same person had killed Jack, an idea she was still resisting, then she was at least partly culpable. If she hadn’t been such a bloody fool and denied to herself the existence of the heart, if she had acted immediately when she got the letter that referred to it, then Jack might still be alive. Paula was right; Sarah was selfish, and she had put her own Christmas plans above someone’s life.
Maybe she couldn’t blame herself for taking the letter to England and not reading it sooner, but that wasn’t the point. The minute she had read it, she should have phoned Arvo Hughes. Maybe he would have arranged for her to fax it or have it couriered to him immediately. And maybe it would have led him to the killer before he got to Jack. What could she say to the detective now? How could she even face him?
The car hit a bump and jolted her. “What?” she said.
“I didn’t say anything,” Stuart answered. “I think you must have been dreaming.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sarah, rubbing her eyes. “I’m so tired.” She realized she had been dozing and looked at her watch. “It’s after one in the morning for me, you know.” When she looked up, she caught a glimpse of a car in the side-view mirror and thought she had seen it pull out behind them at the airport. She could have been mistaken. It was dark, and she couldn’t tell one car from another most of the time. Even if it was following them, it was probably a reporter too impatient to wait for tomorrow’s scheduled press conference at the studio. Or maybe even some sort of bodyguard, a police escort. She mustn’t let her paranoia run away with her. Next thing she’d be suspecting Stuart.
Stuart dipped under the Ocean Avenue tunnel, where Highway 1 hit the coast again after its inland detour from Long Beach. Sunset colors writhed on the ocean’s ruffled surface like oil slicks. On the hillside, oil pumps jogged rhythmically back and forth like giant insects. The car was still behind them.
They didn’t talk much for the last couple of miles. Sarah settled deep in the comfortable seat staring out of the window through half-open eyes, gnawing at her lip and wondering what the hell she would say when the detective interviewed her. Which he would surely want to do before long.
She knew she should just tell him everything, but she felt so foolish and so damn guilty over what had happened to Jack that she didn’t know if she could. She was tired and scared; and when she got scared she got all hard-shelled and defensive. At least she hoped she would get some time to rest first, take stock and prepare herself, like she did for a stage role.
Occasionally, she glanced back through the mirror and became convinced that the same car had been following them all the way from the airport.
When Stuart put his left blinker on to turn toward the house, Sarah noticed that the car behind them did exactly the same. That was too much of a coincidence. She panicked.
“Don’t stop, Stuart,” she said. “Please. I think he’s after us. Just keep going.”
But Stuart turned off the highway toward the parking area.
“Stuart!” Sarah repeated. “Please!” Why was he ignoring her?
Stuart didn’t reply until he had come to a complete stop, and by then the other car was pulling up behind them.
“Calm down, honey, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s only Arvo. He wants to talk to you, and he won’t wait. I agree with him. Things have gone too far. And there’s no way you should come back here alone.”
Sarah nodded. Her spirits sank. She should have known. Now she wouldn’t get any chance to bolster her defenses before the questioning began.