What Remains of Me

by Alison Gaylin

  “Don’t worry about it.” She moved to open his passenger-side door, but he kept it locked. “Could you unlock the door please?”

  “Kelly.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I still don’t believe you’re a murderer.”

  “Huh?” She stepped back from the car just as she heard the sirens, two police cars pulling into the parking lot.

  “I didn’t have any other choice,” he said. “Detective Dupree called me seconds after you did. I didn’t know you were in trouble. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Can you get me a lawyer?”

  He nodded.

  She took off the necklace, dropped it on the front seat. “Give this to my mother,” she told him as Dupree and his partner made for Kelly fast as sharks, all business. “It’s hers.”

  CHAPTER 25

  KELLY LUND’S SURPRISING FAN

  As controversy continues to swirl around the shooting death of movie legend Sterling Marshall, his daughter-in-law Kelly Lund has been taken in for questioning. But while many believe her to be guilty, convicted murderer Lund has gained an unlikely ally.

  Pulitzer Prize–nominated author Sebastian Todd—who detailed Lund’s 1981 murder conviction in both the Los Angeles Times and in the acclaimed true-crime opus, Mona Lisa—has now launched an attempt to prove Kelly Lund is not a killer after all. Claiming that Lund is innocent of both the Marshall murder and the 1980 shooting death of director John McFadden, for which she was found guilty and served twenty-five years in prison, Todd says his change of heart was inspired by a surprising conversation. “I’ve spoken to Kelly’s mother,” says Todd, who refuses to reveal the whereabouts of Rose Lund, said to have joined a commune after disappearing from her L.A. home in 1984, three years after Kelly Lund’s incarceration. “Rose has convinced me of her daughter’s innocence.”

  Todd recently conducted a full-length interview with Mrs. Lund at an undisclosed location, in which he questioned her extensively on the McFadden murder in particular, the details of which will be forthcoming in the July issue of Vanity Fair. “Like Kelly, Rose got a bad rap,” says Todd of Mrs. Lund, who was said to have abandoned her daughter four months before the crime, leaving the troubled young girl in the care of her father, James Lund, a drug-addicted movie stuntman with questionable parenting skills. “She had already lost a daughter [Kelly’s twin sister Catherine] to suicide and was going through a rough time in her life, but Rose never stopped caring,” Todd says. “And she never stopped believing in her daughter’s innocence.”

  But will anyone else believe? Already, law enforcement officials are accusing Todd, a notorious publicity seeker, of stirring up controversy for the sake of future book sales. (He’s rumored to be speaking to publishers about a Mona Lisa sequel.) “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that we put the right person behind bars,” says former U.S. attorney Lawrence Schwartz, who prosecuted the case and is now in private practice. “With all due respect, Mr. Todd should know better than to try to tip the scales of justice.”

  And those old enough to remember the chilling photograph of a teenage Kelly Michelle Lund, smiling on the day of her sentencing, would no doubt agree. “The poor girl never had a chance,” remarks clinical psychologist and talk show host Dr. Bob O’Neil. “It was almost as though she was raised to be a killer. Sterling Marshall’s strikingly similar murder is proof enough to me that some folks are best off behind bars for good.”

  Yet whether his main interest is human rights or movie rights, Todd isn’t going away anytime soon. “We’re always quick to blame the girl,” says the flamboyant journalist. “Especially the girl who can’t cry on cue.”

  ABC News Online

  April 24, 2010

  CHAPTER 26

  JUNE 7, 1980

  In Kelly’s dream, all the windows exploded. She found herself lying on Vee’s mattress in a pile of broken glass, both wrists gushing blood. She called out for Vee, but she knew he was at his father’s house—that’s where he’d been staying all week, Kelly alone at his apartment at her insistence, despite Vee’s protests. “It’s convenient” and “I like it there” her only excuses. And so, in her dream Kelly was all by herself and she bled and bled, paralyzed, unable to call for help. A shadow fell over her—a person, standing in the room. But it wasn’t Vee in the dream. It was John McFadden standing over her, shirt unbuttoned to reveal his pale chest, the patch of hair, Catherine’s heart-shaped necklace glittering at his throat.

  Kelly wrenched her eyes open, woke herself up. Was it normal to have such horrible, violent dreams, or did that make her a psycho? She’d had so many in her life, most of them after Catherine’s death, but it had been much worse since she started staying at Vee’s apartment. At least two of these dreams a night, all starring John McFadden, all ending in bloodshed.

  She glanced at the clock on the floor—2:00 A.M. She stood up, shaking. This couldn’t go on—keeping the secret of who John McFadden really was, waking up to that knowledge, more awful than the dreams.

  Worse still, Kelly couldn’t shake the feeling that she didn’t know the half of it, that the rough kiss outside the Porsche was just a few pages in a long, ugly book. She needed to know the rest. She couldn’t sleep until she did.

  Kelly moved into the kitchen. She turned on the light and got down on the floor, peering under the refrigerator, hoping for those diamonds . . . The necklace wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. She’d searched Vee’s apartment up and down for Catherine’s necklace, made it a part of her routine ever since she’d started staying here: wake up from a bad dream, look for the necklace, eat breakfast, take the bus to Betty Ford to visit Jimmy, bus back to this apartment, eat more, hang out with Vee and sometimes Bellamy, wait for them to leave, look for the necklace, go to bed. Dream again. It was a vicious circle and it was pointless.

  Kelly was nearly certain of it now: John McFadden had given the necklace to Catherine. John McFadden had taken it away.

  She pulled herself up to the kitchen counter and picked up the phone. Without thinking, she called the one person she didn’t mind hurting with her knowledge—the one person who might be able to tell her more. She’ll be awake. She’ll be up cleaning.

  Sure enough, Rose picked up after one ring.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Kelly?”

  “Tell me about Catherine’s Valentine.”

  “What?”

  “On the last night of Catherine’s life, she told you she was going to see her Valentine.”

  “Are you on drugs, Kelly?”

  “No,” she said. “But Jimmy OD’d.”

  “What?”

  God, Kelly needed a cigarette. She spotted a hard pack of Marlboro Reds next to the kitchen sink. She picked it up. Shook it. Empty.

  “Kelly?”

  “Jimmy overdosed a week ago.”

  “Oh my God. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He’s in rehab,” Kelly said. “He’ll be okay.”

  “Do you . . . would you like to come home?”

  Kelly plucked a good-size butt out of the ashtray on the kitchen counter. Home. What a joke. “No,” she said, grabbing the pack of kitchen matches off the stove. “I’m fine.”

  “I’m sorry, Kelly,” she said. “I’m sorry I kicked you out. I was just . . . I was at my wit’s end and your father kept calling. He kept wanting to see you.”

  She lit the butt, exhaled a billowy cloud. “Was Catherine’s Valentine John McFadden?”

  “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Is he the one she left to see that night she went away? Is he the reason why you didn’t want me to spend time with Bellamy Marshall or the rich, famous kids?”

  “Kelly . . .”

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was him?” Kelly said. “I would have understood. She was . . . we were just fifteen years old.”

  “I didn’t know who your sister was spending her time with,” Rose said slowly. “That’s what I wanted to know, but ever
since . . . Your sister never told me anything she didn’t feel like telling me.”

  “Ever since what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why were you so angry with her that night?”

  “It was very late. She was drunk.”

  Kelly took another drag, inhaled right down to the filter. “She was always coming back late,” she said, coughing. “She was always drunk.”

  “I wasn’t angry.”

  “I can’t do this anymore, Mom. I need the truth.”

  Kelly heard her mother take a deep, pained breath. She let it out slowly. “I wasn’t angry,” she said again. “I was scared.”

  “Why?”

  “For your sister.” Through the phone, Kelly heard a match strike, her mother, lighting a cigarette. “You were at school that day. I found the positive test.”

  Kelly’s whole body went numb, her heart pounded up into her ears so that she heard it louder than Mom’s voice—the pumping of her blood, the steady, sad thud of it.

  “We fought about it all day. She told me he loved her. He would run off with her. He was a grown man and he was rich and they would go somewhere where they could be . . . I don’t know. Accepted.”

  “A rich man,” Kelly whispered.

  “She never told me his name,” she said softly. “Your sister only told me what she wanted me to know.”

  Kelly wanted another cigarette. Craved it. “That night . . .”

  “What?”

  “She was so upset.”

  “Yes.” She exhaled. “Who could blame her? She’d thought she was running off with him on Valentine’s Day. She thought she’d never see you or me again, but there she was, dropped home at four in the morning by her rich man, her Prince Charming.”

  Kelly remembered Mom slapping Catherine that night, begging her to tell her the Valentine’s name. She remembered Mom crumpled on the floor, a lock of goldfish-colored hair stuck to the tears on her face. “I’m sorry, baby. We can fix this.”

  But Catherine had left anyway. She’d stolen Mom’s car and wound up in Pasadena, at a lovers’ lane she’d never talked about during any of their late-night conversations. She’d driven there pregnant and wound up dead in the canyon, her skull crushed, every bone in her body broken to bits.

  “She never told me about it,” Mom was saying now. “I’m her mother and she never told me. I had to find the test . . .”

  The cops had ruled it a suicide. But why would Catherine have killed herself over being pregnant if Mom had known about it, if she’d wanted to “fix” it? And now, Kelly was remembering something else Catherine had said that night, just before she’d left. Something she’d pushed out of her mind until now. “I don’t deserve this.” At the time, Kelly had thought her sister was talking about the slap, about Mom’s anger . . .

  “Do you think she went back to him? Do you think she threatened to tell?”

  “It was a suicide,” Mom said. “That’s what the police told us.”

  “They could be wrong.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s gone either way. It was two years ago. She never said his name. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “But . . .”

  “He’s a rich, powerful man.” Mom’s voice was like ice, like stone. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  KELLY DIDN’T WANT TO FREAK OUT BELLAMY’S PARENTS OR WAKE UP her little brother at two in the morning, so she waited. She paced around the apartment, made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich she couldn’t eat any of, paced around some more, and smoked three more butts out of the ashtray and looked for the necklace and drank a glass of milk and took a shower and smoked one more butt and turned the TV on to the morning news and paced some more until finally it was 8:00 A.M. Then she called Bellamy.

  The housekeeper picked up. Kelly asked for Bellamy. “One moment,” she said. And Kelly waited, her heart beating so hard she could barely breathe.

  She heard heavy footsteps, Bellamy arguing with her little brother about something—a waffle?—and then finally the footsteps neared, her friend saying her name into the phone. “Sorry about that. Shane is so annoying—”

  “John McFadden got my sister pregnant,” Kelly said. “And I think he may have killed her.”

  “Holy shit. What? Hold on.” Bellamy closed her bedroom door, came back again. “Tell me everything,” she said.

  And Kelly did, the whole story tumbling out of her from the moment she saw the beautiful black Porsche pull up outside her old house, up through Catherine’s death, John McFadden’s aviator glasses, the conversation with her mother just six hours ago . . . She said it without taking a breath, only barely aware that Bellamy asked no questions, didn’t interrupt once. Throughout the entire story, Kelly’s best friend was as quiet as dead engines on a plane.

  When Kelly was done, the line remained silent. She worried that Bellamy had hung up on her, that she hadn’t even listened.

  “Bellamy?” she said.

  “I’m here.”

  Kelly sighed, expecting excuses or denials or “Are you sure? Maybe it was a different guy in aviator glasses.” She even thought Bellamy might accuse Mom of lying about the pregnancy, closing ranks, defending Vee’s dad, her own father’s best friend, a rich, powerful man . . . But Bellamy didn’t deny or defend or make excuses. What she said was, “John McFadden has a big garage full of cars.”

  “Huh?”

  “He like . . . collects them . . . He’s got to have at least two dozen, all different kinds, all really expensive.”

  “So . . .”

  “So,” she said. “Let’s find that black Porsche. Now.”

  GETTING INVITED TO VEE’S HOUSE WAS EASY ENOUGH. KELLY SIMPLY called him, told him she was lonely at the apartment and wanted to practice with him for her screen test, which was at his father’s office in Century City, later today.

  Bellamy, she told him, was bored. “You guys can practice with me, and give me a ride to your dad’s office?” she said. “I’m kind of nervous. I could really use the company.”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Vee said, which made Kelly feel relieved, but also guilty. She suspected Bellamy felt the same. When she picked Kelly up at Vee’s apartment in her VW Rabbit, she made no mention of their plan. They spent most of the ride there barely speaking, listening to Bellamy’s British bootleg tape, smoking Marlboro Reds and singing along.

  When “She’s Lost Control” came on, Kelly smiled a little. “Remember when you played me this song?” she said. “It was the day you introduced me to Vee. You were so excited about it.”

  Bellamy said nothing. She reached for her dark glasses, but as she was putting them on, Kelly noticed a tear, sliding down her cheek.

  “Are you okay?” Kelly asked.

  “He died.”

  “Huh?”

  “Ian Curtis from Joy Division. He killed himself a week ago.”

  “Um . . . That’s sad.” Kelly didn’t know what else to say. As she reached Mulholland, Bellamy lit another cigarette with shaky hands, holding the bangle bracelets against her wrist as she did. Even so, Kelly caught a glimpse of the scratches. They looked fresh.

  “She’s Lost Control” played on, those few driving piano notes and dead Ian Curtis’s sad singing voice filling the car, haunting it. And she gave away the secrets of her past . . .

  Kelly saw the gate up ahead. “We’re here,” she said. Bellamy pulled up to it and hit the button on the intercom, said her name. Vee answered fast, a smile in his voice. “Dad’s at his office, you guys. We’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”

  Bellamy cleared her throat, adjusted her dark glasses, turned off the song. “I hate losing people,” she said.

  “I’M BORED.” BELLAMY SAID IT AFTER KELLY’S THIRD READ-THROUGH of the script pages McFadden had left for her—a high school girl telling her best friend that she saw a space alien in her yard. Said it while sitting on overstuffed, velvet couches in jewel tones, bright bolts of silk cascading from the ceiling and shielding the
windows in those same jewel tones, silk pillows scattered everywhere, a real hookah in the middle of the floor, alongside exotic-looking musical instruments that had never been played.

  They were in the den of Vee’s dad’s sprawling house. It was a cozy room compared to many of the others, but so otherworldly, so magical. It reminded her of Jeannie’s bottle from I Dream of Jeannie, even though it had been designed, according to Vee, to look like the harem quarters in the palace of a Moroccan sheikh. She’d wondered if Catherine had ever been in here, Catherine the harem girl . . . then forced the thought out of her mind. She could never imagine anyone feeling bored in this room, but Bellamy said it so convincingly, Kelly wondered why she wasn’t the one reading for the movie part.

  “Well, what are we supposed to do?” Vee said. “It’s not like we can get wasted. Kelly’s got an audition in two hours. And we have to drive her there.”

  “I want to look at your dad’s cars.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” She gave Kelly a prompting look.

  She picked it up. “Bellamy was telling me about them,” Kelly said, quickly. “I was talking about how much I loved the Jag and she said your dad has like two dozen other cars that are even more amazing.”

  Vee shrugged. “My dear guests. I am your host.” He said it in his best Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island accent and led them out of the Moroccan room, through a blue, Dutch-themed sunroom filled with fresh tulips onto a deck and across an expansive green lawn, to a garage that was about five times the size of Jimmy’s house and the old lady’s combined. This place was more impressive than Fantasy Island. It made Bellamy’s house look humble and small.

  Vee pushed a button and the garage door raised—the entire side of the structure. Kelly gasped. It was a showroom—a vintage Mustang alongside two brand-new Ferraris, one red, one electric blue, three Jags, a Bentley, a silver, convertible Rolls-Royce covered in crazy detailing—black and golden swirls, a butterfly at the back.

  “That used to belong to Jimmy Page,” Vee said to Kelly. “You want to go inside?”