Trashed

by Alison Gaylin

  Where the hell are you going? As if he knew she would be there. And he wanted her to stay.

  Simone let Walker sleep on the couch as she took a shower and got dressed, thinking of Chris Hart the entire time. There was something strange about him—the way he treated Julie, that lack of emotion, that coldness—as if she weren’t a person but an object, a prop. Like the killer, he seemed to despise the media, tabloids in particular. Most of all, there was that look in his eyes. . . .

  Chris, famous people can’t have secrets.

  Yes, they can.

  If Simone were to suggest this idea to Sandiford—the idea that Chris Hart, Chris Hart, America’s most popular leading man—had brutally murdered four women and critically injured one, he would tell her to get some rest, she was obviously in shock. And that may have been true. But still, she couldn’t let go of the idea.

  When she walked out of the bathroom, Walker was awake on the couch, checking his BlackBerry. “There’s a press conference this afternoon at the Beverly Wilshire,” he said. “DuMonde Management, Jason Caputo, Chris Hart, Lara Chandler, and the rest of the Devil’s Road cast, expressing their sorrow over Dylan.”

  Simone looked at him. “I’ve got a weird feeling about Chris Hart.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said. “Because I’ve got a weird feeling about Randi DuMonde.”

  Simone searched his eyes. “You have an idea,” she said.

  “You do too.”

  “Let’s collaborate,” she said. “Freelance.”

  Walker didn’t reply. He simply picked up his cell, called in sick to work.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  If one year at the Anaheim Sentinel and ten years in tabloids had taught Neil Walker anything, it was that press conferences, all of them, were a complete waste of time. It didn’t matter whether it was the mayor of Mission Viejo or the chief of police or the cast of Devil’s Road, anybody who is knowingly standing on a stage in front of fifty reporters is not going to say a damn thing worth printing.

  But this one, the Dylan Leeds memorial press conference, this one was going to be worth Walker’s while. It would be worth his while because it was being held twenty minutes away from the offices of DuMonde Management—meaning it would get Randi DuMonde and her boy-toy assistant out of there for at least an hour in the middle of the day, when the rest of the building would be open.

  DuMonde Management was on the twenty-fifth floor of a Century City high-rise. Without having to look it up, Walker knew exactly how to get there. He’d easily been to a dozen press conferences held right in front of it, a baker’s dozen if you counted the one with Simone. As he parked the Saab in the garage and took his ticket, he remembered the way Simone’s face had looked when she realized he was one of the press corps. He felt himself smile a little.

  Walker took the elevator up to the building’s marble lobby, then got into another elevator, hit the button for the twenty-fifth floor. Suite 2504. Walker had only been in these offices once before, trying in vain to squeeze a few quotes out of the boy-toy. But that was enough for him to know it was a tiny place, with just two desks in it—and it had a combination lock, the same kind as the Interloper.

  The thing with number combination locks, they were always significant dates. Much as you didn’t want anybody breaking into your office, you also wanted to be able to get in yourself, so you weren’t going to choose some random number that would just slip out of your mind.

  If you were a bigger company, you’d choose a national holiday, something the whole staff could remember. With smaller businesses, though, the date could be something more intimate. Special. Before driving over, Walker had called up the DuMonde Management Web site on Simone’s laptop and learned that DM had officially opened its doors on April 8, 1995. This he found interesting. They could have just said the business has been around since 1995, or that it was a ten-year-old company, but no. DuMonde Management had an actual anniversary. Walker imagined that every April 8, Randi threw a party for her clients, or maybe she just took the boy-toy out for dinner at La Scala.

  So, when he reached suite 2504, Walker didn’t even bother with 1995. He keyed in 0408 and bingo, the door opened. He smiled. He was good at combinations.

  The office looked even smaller with no one in it, though the huge window did give it some class. He was glad it was a manageable space because he could get in and out relatively quickly, once he found what he needed. He estimated that the press conference had begun close to half an hour ago, which gave him fifteen minutes of safety at the most.

  Randi’s desk was huge and minimalist, nothing on it but a flat-screen computer and some fancy paperweight that was probably an award. The boy-toy’s desk, however . . . that was a disaster area. Papers everywhere, mostly head shots and résumés in the poorest excuse for piles Walker had ever seen. He saw three drafts of the press release announcing today’s conference. Kid obviously did most of the work around here.

  He went straight for the boy-toy’s computer. He scrolled through the Word files and saw that most of them were actresses’ first names. Then he hit the icon marked “My computer” and did a file search on the names Dylan and Julie. Nothing. That didn’t surprise him much. This type of search only applied to existing files.

  Another thing Walker’s work experience had taught him: You could learn a lot about a person from what they chose to throw away.

  Did you throw her away already, Randi? A few keystrokes and the names of the boy-toy’s most recently deleted files popped up on-screen like fresh ideas. Most looked to be press releases and old company newsletters. But amidst those files, he spotted one called “DylanL.” He slipped the blank diskette he’d brought with him into the computer’s A drive, copied “DylanL” onto it, stuck it in his shirt pocket and shut down the computer.

  He looked at his watch. That had taken longer than he’d anticipated. As he slipped out the door, he heard the ping of the elevator, so he headed into the stairwell, just to be safe. By the time the elevator doors opened, Walker was already a flight down, thinking once again about how useful press conferences could be.

  After she wished Walker good luck and kissed him good-bye, Simone got into her Jeep and headed over to Chris and Lara’s house, or, as they called it in the office, Chez Clara. Getting the address had been easy. She’d simply called Elliot, who kept a file of DMV-obtained addresses for can-hitting purposes. At the end of their conversation, Elliot had said, “I heard about Dylan. Anything I can do?”

  And she’d known he meant it. It had choked her up a little. Just over a week of knowing these people and they already felt like old army buddies. “Actually,” Simone had said, “can you transfer me to Kathy?”

  As it turned out, Chez Clara was a white Beverly Hills mansion that used to belong to the head of Paramount Studios back in the ’40s. In front of the house loomed a line of tall hedges. Simone pulled up to the end of the driveway, peered through the ornate wrought-iron gate.

  The driveway wound up to the mansion—it was showy, but with an old-Hollywood hipness, like the Beverlido, like Swifty’s. Cool place, she thought.

  She pulled out of the driveway and drove to a side street that gave her a good view of the whole block. Then she put the Jeep into park.

  Kathy may not have seen one single spat during the two-week Clara stakeout she’d told Simone about when they were cater-waitering, but she had learned an awful lot about Chris and Lara’s daily schedule. As Simone had figured, Kathy had kept a list of the mansion’s comings and goings, a list she had been able to dig up for Simone when she’d called her at the office.

  At two o’clock every afternoon, a van arrived at the gate from Hampton’s Linen Service. It was now one fifty. Chris Hart was at the press conference, expressing his sorrow over the tragic loss of his leading lady, with Lara onstage beside him, showing her support. And Simone was in her Jeep, engine running, waiting for Clara’s towels to show up.

  Sure enough, a van marked Hampton’s Linens pulled around the cor
ner at one fifty-five. Quick as she could, Simone threw the Jeep into drive and zoomed up Chris and Lara’s street. She swerved in front of the van, cutting it off before it reached the mansion.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the driver shouted as Simone breathed hard, collecting herself. Then she got out of her Jeep.

  The driver, a youngish surfer type, said something along the lines of, “Dude, what the fuck?” But he stopped when he saw the tears Simone had managed to work into her eyes. “Uh . . . you okay?”

  “I’m so, so sorry,” said Simone. “I just . . . I’m a little shaken up. I feel terrible about this.”

  His expression softened. “No worries,” he said. “You didn’t hit me or anything.”

  Simone cleared her throat. “Look,” she said, “I’m going to level with you. I know you’re going to Chris Hart’s, and I really need to get onto that property.”

  A tinge of worry entered his eyes. “Uh, are you like an obsessed fan or something?”

  “No, nothing like that,” she said. “I’m a reporter.”

  He laughed a little. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Simone said, “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “Dude, no way! I could lose my job.”

  Simone tilted her head to the side, then reached into her purse and removed her wallet. “Are you sure I didn’t hit you?” she said. “Because I just went to the ATM and I see about . . . what? Eight hundred dollars’ worth of damage to your van.”

  He looked at her for several drawn-out seconds. Then he said, “Nine.”

  Walker had told her she’d need a lot of cash. Good thing she’d let him lend it to her. Simone smiled at the van driver. “You’re right. I didn’t see that scratch over there. Nine hundred it is.”

  Minutes later, Simone had parked her Jeep up a side street and was riding in the back of the van among stacks of towels and sheets and comforters, all wrapped in paper the color of Tiffany boxes. After the driver pulled up in front of Clara’s gate, Simone heard him identify himself to a servant at the intercom. As the gates opened, he said, “You better not get me fired, dude.”

  “I promise,” said Simone, “to keep a very low profile. ”

  The van pulled up in front of the house. She heard the driver speaking to a maid. “We’re using a new fabric softener,” he told her. “Boss wants to know what you guys think.”

  He opened the back of the van and removed two of the wrapped packages, his eyes not registering on Simone, who was fully visible, though pressed against the passenger’s-side seat. After he left, Simone grabbed another package and walked with it into the house, a mask of boredom on her face. Low profile, low profile, low profile. The maid—a young, squat woman with shiny black hair—leaned against the doorway. “New fabric softener, huh?”

  “Yep. Old stuff was giving people allergies.” Where the hell did that come from?

  “That’s too bad,” she said. “I liked the fragrance.”

  Simone glanced at her. “Umm, I forgot where the sheets go.”

  “Linen closet’s upstairs,” she said. “Between their offices. ”

  Chris’s office. “Wonderful! I mean, thanks.”

  Simone trudged up a long spiral staircase, passing the driver, who was heading back to the van for another trip. He gave her a look of both surprise and annoyance as he passed, and she half expected him to say it out loud: You were supposed to stay outside! But he didn’t, of course. For his own good, the driver didn’t blow Simone’s cover.

  Lara’s and Chris’s offices were located down a hallway as long as a hotel’s. After Simone ripped the turquoise paper off the stack of sheets she was carrying and placed them in the linen closet, she took a look at both rooms. They couldn’t have been more different, and it was easy to guess which office belonged to whom. Lara’s—she hoped it was Lara’s—was all white: shelves, desk, couch, wicker chairs, flat-screen computer. On the wall hung a white canvas with a thick white frame. She couldn’t imagine setting foot in here without inadvertently leaving a mark. The decor was its own security system.

  Simone walked into the other office, which reminded her of a ’30s gentleman’s club—floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with screenplays and rare books, oxblood leather couches, a leather-topped desk bordered with brass studs. There was a black flat-screen computer on the desk, and when Simone booted it up, a breathy Bond Girl voice intoned, “Hello, Mr. Hart.”

  Shit. Simone jumped back, then put her hand on the optical mouse as the computer’s gunmetal desktop came into view. First, I need to find the mute icon. But she couldn’t do that, couldn’t do anything. In the hallway, Simone heard footsteps—two sets of them—moving closer to the office. And two male voices, one of which belonged to Chris Hart.

  Walker headed back up Beverly Drive to Coldwater Canyon, his heart beating against the diskette in his shirt pocket. For him, this was one of the best parts of tabloid reporting—slipping the bag of garbage into the trunk, figuring out the combination lock, talking the assistant into giving you those key photos. Getting in. Or, in this case, getting out, without anyone seeing.

  But now, he realized, there was something even better. Better than getting in, better even than learning the information. Because while he couldn’t wait to slip that diskette into the laptop and find out what was on it, he was more excited about showing it to Simone—Dylan Leeds’s deleted file, straight from Randi DuMonde’s office. He knew that when she saw it, her face would light up, and it made his chest tighten, just picturing that.

  Weird. He’d had a lot of girlfriends, but this was new. This wasn’t lust so much as . . . an overwhelming desire to make her face light up.

  Okay, lust too.

  Too bad she lived in North Hollywood, though. He hated Coldwater Canyon. The Saab had trouble with the steep climb up and the sharp turns, and to make it worse, he always got tailgated, no matter how fast he drove. Like this Impala. Right now. This ridiculous land shark from the ’80s with the paint chipping off, and even that was riding up his ass. Was he that slow a driver? He sped up some more. He was going seventy now, up a mountain. That satisfy you, douchebag?

  He felt a thud on his back bumper. The Saab jolted forward. He opened his window, yelled, “What the fuck?” There was a glare coming off the Impala’s windshield. He couldn’t see inside.

  Like most reporters, Walker had a microcassette recorder. He kept his in the change holder of the Saab, and now he pulled it out, hit PLAY and RECORD and said, “Chevy Impala, late seventies, early eighties. Light green.”

  Thud. It hit him again. Walker leaned on the horn, jammed his foot on the accelerator, pulled up ahead of it for a few seconds. . . . The Impala lurched forward, and as it did, Walker caught sight of its front license plate: “247CDR,” he said into the recorder, shoving it into his pocket with the diskette. The Impala sped up and pulled next to his car.

  He looked into the car and saw a figure wearing a hood. Jesus. Metal scraped against the thin driver’s-side door as the Impala plowed into it. He spun the wheel away.

  The Saab skidded off the road, and for one frozen moment he was airborne, all four wheels hovering over the dusty canyon.

  I’m going to die, he thought. Then the Saab landed, his body flying off the seat and his head socking into the ceiling, then slamming back down again, the seat belt like ropes against his neck and chest. He got his hands on the wheel and tried to steer, but what was the point of steering when the car was bouncing down a canyon like a roller skate, the tires shot, rocks flying into the windshield? The Saab skidded, flipped onto its side. Walker heard a crack like a gunshot and knew it was the passenger’s-side mirror breaking off, and then the window shattered. He closed his eyes and felt thousands of stings on his face, as if he were being attacked by bees.

  Stupidly, he thought about this Saab he’d bought used ten years ago, how it was just the type of car to roll down a mountain and catch fire, how with the money he made he could afford something newer, something safer—a Volvo. Weren’t
they the safest cars? And he was mad, mad at his brain for betraying him like this.

  The car rolled, and his head slammed into the ceiling and he felt something beyond pain, a type of crushing, and then he flew into the driver’s-side window and noticed the warm wetness of blood trickling down his face.

  He smelled heat and dust, and when he opened his eyes for a second he saw motes of canyon dirt swirling, the thick red stain of his own blood on the ceiling.

  This is it.

  Something big and slick socked Walker in the face. He thought, About time the fucking air bag deployed. And as everything went black and his breath began to falter, he wished, so much, that his last thought had been sweeter.

  Chris Hart kept a vintage smoking jacket in the closet of his office. It was made of heavy silk and stunk so strongly of bay rum it pervaded the whole space, making Simone’s eyes water. Of all the places to hide from Hart, the closet of his office probably wasn’t the most ideal, but she hadn’t much choice.

  She heard the voices louder now, and then the two men walked into the room.

  Chris Hart said, “I don’t remember leaving my computer on.”

  Simone gritted her teeth.

  “You’re scattered,” said the other voice, deep and calm. Simone peered through the crack, then eased back again. It was Hart’s bodyguard, Maurice. “You need to relax.”

  “How can I relax?” said Chris. “The tabloids—”

  “Don’t know a damn thing. Nobody knows a damn thing, Chris, except you and me and the lamppost.”

  There was a pause, then, “Fucking lamppost.”

  Maurice laughed.

  Hart did too, but the laughter died fast and Simone heard nothing but breathing and someone, one of the men, pacing around the room.

  “Least you still got your sense of humor,” said Maurice.

  “I’m just so scared. . . . About getting found out and—”

  “Don’t be scared,” said Maurice. “I will protect you, always. I will guard this secret with my life.”