Authors: Jonathan Kellerman
Now she was set up financially, with the house, the travel, the hobbies du jour.
Empty space in the king-size bed.
Could she take twenty, thirty more years of this torpor? No challenges, nothing to rebel against?
Two kids who looked like men but had never grown up?
Was the psychic abyss dividing them somehow her fault? She didn’t think so, she’d always been so—
Stop
. No way would she introspect and get all dopey-mopey about
their
issues. She deserved better than that.
Her therapist agreed with her.
She said, “Ready for dessert, boys? Vanilla cherry for Aaron, chocolate ripple for Mosey. You two are nothing if not ironic.”
When the table was clear, she took them to her second-story studio and showed them the huge, bicolor canvases she’d been working on. Variations of light/dark. If either of them got the joke, they didn’t let on.
Mosey said, “Nice, Mom.”
Aaron said, “Really nice, Mom.”
Maddy noticed a thin spot on the edge of one of the paintings. Squeezing pigment onto her palette, she sat at her easel, began filling in.
The boys stood around as she daubed, stood back to gauge, painted some more. The paint was not sitting right, bad-quality acrylics, she’d noticed a definite change in the last few batches …
Squeeze, moisten, lift brush, lay it down …
When she looked up, half an hour had passed and the house was blessedly silent.
M
oe said, “So what’s this big-time lead?”
The sun was down and the courtyard cobbles were a strange, deep purple. A sad color. Moe wanted out of there.
Aaron kept his reflexive reply to himself.
What’s this big-time attitude?
He recounted Rory Stoltz’s Hyundai adventures.
Moe said, “So?”
Aaron tamped down frustration by touching the fabric of his sport coat. Super 200s from Milan, silky-smooth, nothing better. He’d bought the jacket in three shades.
“You looked at Stoltz early on, but he came across clean—”
“He didn’t come across, he had an alibi.”
“Stayed behind at Riptide even after Caitlin left. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have met up with her later. But he’s not top of my list. I hear Riptide catered to celebs back then. I don’t know who got Rory into ColdSnake but it had to be a VIP, I’m still working on that. That means Rory has an attraction to that world. What if some famous type did Caitlin and Rory protected him?”
Moe thought:
Mason Book was skinny, made perfect sense
. “Rory allegedly
loves this girl but he allows her killer to go free so he can run dope errands?”
“Dope errands and maybe more, Moses. He was still in that house until well after three. Maybe sleeping in. That says he’s wormed his way into a higher income bracket.”
“As a gofer.”
Who wants to be an entertainment lawyer or an agent. Makes perfect sense
.
Aaron said, “He thinks it’s a start.”
Moe said nothing.
“You’re not impressed by any of this.”
“You saw Stoltz chauffeur two club-rats. We don’t know if they’re in the Industry.”
“How about this, then? The house he drove them to belongs to Lem Dement.”
Moe’s arms folded across his chest. “You’re letting info out in dribs and drabs?”
“I need you to be interested before I waste my time, Moses.”
“I’m busy. Spit it all out.”
Aaron forced himself calm. “One: Dement owns the place. Two: I have a source says Dement beats his wife. Neither of the two guys was Dement, but he does have a slew of kids. Seven to be exact, and five are sons. Boys learn how to treat women from their daddies.” Or from having no daddy. “I worked the Web, found photos of three junior Dements. The two oldest fit the build of the heavier guy I saw.”
Moe pulled out his pad. “Names?”
“Japhet and Ahab.” Aaron grinned. “Japhet is twenty-five and Ahab’s twenty-eight. Ahab used to be a heavy-metal dude, goes by Ax. If you find a criminal history on either of them, I’d appreciate hearing about it.”
“Meaning you didn’t turn up anything.”
“If they’re bad boys, they’ve avoided the press. All I found were a couple of party photos with Ax trying to get his face in the shots.”
“Where were the parties?”
“Not at Riptide, if that’s what you mean. I’m talking Oscars week,
the Grammys, the usual post-ceremony crap—the Standard, the Design Center, Skybar, everyone stoned, pretending they want privacy but they’re really out to make the tabs.”
“Any genuine celebs in the shots?” said Moe.
“You better believe it. Tom, Julia, Sean, George, the old see-and-be-seen. In one picture, Ax was trying to make it look like he was a pal of Mason Book.”
“Trying how?”
“Book’s all snuggly with a hollow-cheeked supermodel and Ax is leaning in between them, a fifth wheel—what?”
Moe said, “What do you mean, what?”
“Your eyes just dropped like lead sinkers.”
“I was just thinking. Book’s tall and skinny. Maybe he’s the other guy you saw.”
“Sure, but there are tons of skinny guys in L.A.” Aaron stood back. “Why am I getting that Book interests you?”
“Because Rory works for Book. As a P.A.”
Aaron’s jaw grew rigid. “Now who’s dribbing and drabbing?”
“I just found out.”
“When? How?”
“I don’t need to explain my methods.”
“Your methods …” Aaron’s smile was unsettling. “You change your mind about the Peninsula then the moment I’m gone you probably went over and reinterviewed Rory’s mommy. Fine, you’re the man and I’m hired help grateful to be clutching your coattails. But keep with that attitude and good luck closing Caitlin.”
Swinging his car keys violently, he headed for the Porsche.
Moe said, “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Aaron stopped, turned. “The point you seem to be missing is I
do
have confidence in you, Moses. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t waste time sharing info and believe me there’s plenty of brain-dead morons with gold shields I
wouldn’t
give the time of day. Caitlin’s iced over, bro. You’ve got parts of the puzzle, I’ve got others. The smart thing would be to cooperate. Like that damned song you always listened to on
Sesame Street
.”
“I hated
Sesame Street
. That was you.”
“No, no, no, Moses.
Electric Company
was my thing. Morgan Freeman at his best.”
“So we play share-zies,” said Moe. “Maybe I get my clearance up, either way you rake in nice dough.”
“Like that’s a felony?”
“You play too loose it could be felonious. I can’t afford to jeopardize the investigation.”
“Like I’m going to
infect
you with something? Give me a break, Moses. I worked the job, I know the drill. And the hard truth is, either way, I’m going to keep digging. As in, looking into Mason Book the moment my ass hits my desk chair. Because there’s more to him than you’re telling me. He bugs you and I’m going to find out why.”
“The timing is what bugs me,” said Moe. “Book’s suicide attempt was exactly one week after Caitlin disappeared.”
“Really … what, a guilt reaction?”
“It’s a possibility. Book’s an actor and probably a long-term dope fiend, so he’d have plenty of reasons to be messed up mentally.”
“Oh, man,” said Aaron. “I’ve had a bad feeling about Caitlin almost from the beginning—something psycho. Now I’m visualizing big-time ugly.”
“As in?”
“As in one of those vicious gangbangs—something that went too far for them to let her leave alive. As in Book and some buddies, maybe one or more of the Dement boys, because they’d know firsthand about abusing women. Maybe Rory himself, for that matter.”
“They killed her to keep her quiet,” said Moe, “or even uglier, she died in the process.”
“Let’s say Book’s high when it happens, a few days later his head clears, he realizes what he’s done and cuts his wrists … of course that means the guy’s capable of feeling remorse.”
Same thing Sturgis had said.
Moe said, “His name pulls up four million Google hits. I spent hours, couldn’t find a single useful factoid on the suicide attempt other than he was at Cedars for a week on the VIP ward.”
“Special Imp,” said Aaron.
“You’ve been there?”
Big smile. “Not as a patient, but I’ve visited. Top floor, city view, nice carpets, private security out in the hall. Not that it means better medical care. In fact, I hear sometimes you don’t want to be a celeb in a hospital.”
“Why not?”
“People like that, never hear the word
no
, everyone’s afraid of them. Normal patient squawks about getting woken up middle of the night to check vitals, staff says, ‘Roll over anyway’ VIP patient squawks, staff backs off. The case I was involved in was two years ago, grandson of a gazillionaire goes in for minor knee surgery, ends up with no legs. I’m not going to tell you it was Cedars or any other place in specific. But trust me, special treatment runs both ways.”
“Who’s your contact at Special Imp?”
Aaron shook his head. “Don’t have one, they’re tighter than the Pentagon. But this is good, something’s shaping up.” Risking a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Co-op-er-a-tion, Big Bird would be proud.”
Moe twitched but didn’t yank the hand off. “What we’ve got is mutual interest. Now tell me everything you know.”
“What makes you think I haven’t?”
Moe’s turn to smile.
“Fine,” said Aaron, “but I really did give you the crux. Don’t waste your time searching for other disapperances of Riptide clients because there aren’t any. There was a couple named Rensselaer, shortly after Caitlin dropped off the earth. Turns out they were on a fugitive run from a check-kite thing, got found. The only other tidbit that could possibly interest you is Lem Dement’s got a big spread in Malibu, sixty-plus acres, used to be a summer camp. Rumor has it he’s building his own church there.”
“How close to Pepperdine?”
“Ten miles north, which would put it farther from Riptide, so I don’t see anything profound there.”
“With a big spread, be easy to hide a body.”
Aaron nodded.
How did I miss that? Must be sleep deprivation
.
“What else?” said Moe.
“That’s it, cross my heart. How about we continue to do our separate things, either of us gets something interesting, we confer.”
“I’ll do the calling,” said Moses. “From my personal cell.”
Aaron smiled. “Got a phobia of cooties?”
“Got a phobia of being associated with something that could go extralegal.”
“I already told you—”
“You going back inside to be with Mom?”
“Just to say good-bye.”
“Say it for me.” Moe strode to his unmarked, got in, drove out of the courtyard.
When he was gone, Aaron felt like the only man in the universe.
I
nstead of driving to Liz’s place, Moe sped east on Sunset through the Strip, aiming his GPS at the Hollywood Hills.
His quest took him up into a pretty neighborhood, dark and secluded, lots of gated properties, not much visible from the street. Exactly what a celeb would want. Especially one with a guilty conscience.
After months of nothing, he was getting hyped up about Caitlin. Rory Stoltz gofering for Mason Book didn’t mean much by itself, and, when you got down to it, neither did the timing of Book’s wrist-slash. But toss it together …
Aaron thought it worth pursuing …
The GPS lady offered a soothing welcome as he reached the mouth of Swallowsong Lane. Moe’s unmarked Crown Vic was conspicuous up here. The
No Outlet
sign clinched it: Park below and continue on foot.
As he climbed Swallowsong, the air felt crackly—coppery, electric, like something was ready to ignite. From somewhere higher in the hills, a coyote screamed.
Something was getting killed. Welcome to real life.
He found the property soon enough. Big gates, fancy metalwork. Darkness beyond, no indication anyone lived there.
Maybe no one did and it was just one of those party houses, used for dope-raves, porn shoots, that whole lifestyle.
He lingered, imagining Caitlin stepping into a humongous-view house, maybe a bit scared, but awestruck. Drinking more than she was used to. Or worse. Before she knows it, her soft, tan body is stretched out on a strange bed and … Moe cut his inner movie and began the downward climb.
It was nine eleven, over an hour past the time he’d told Liz he’d drop by. He phoned her from the car.
She said, “So sorry, honey.”
“For what?”
“Being late. I just got home. Meetings out in La Puente, construction dig for a shopping center unearthed some remains, they needed to make sure it’s not an Indian burial site. I figured I’d get back on time but a big rig rolled over on the freeway. I tried to reach you but my battery went dead. Were you waiting long?”
“Not a sec, I’m just on my way now,” he said. “My own excavation.”
“Oh … that makes me feel better.”
She sounded tired. Moe said, “Still up for hanging out?”
“As in chips and dip?” She laughed. “Yeah, I think I can muster energy for hanging out.”
She greeted him wearing a baggy red tee and sweats, hair pinned up carelessly, no makeup, a can of Coke Zero in one hand. Kissing him quick and hard, she fetched him a beer. “This is a test. Seeing me at my worst.”
“Not much of a challenge.”
They sat on the couch. “Um, one more thing, Moses. It’s that time of the month. Came on a little early.”
“Hey,” he said, “we can drink white wine, watch
Oprah
reruns, talk about our feelings.”
“Or shoes.”
“Don’t push it.”
♦
They drank beer, talked about nothing, watched a
Project Runway
rerun because Liz liked the show and Moe found it hilarious.
After five minutes, some guy bitching about not enough time to stitch an A-line, whatever that was, Moe felt himself nodding off. Before he could shake himself awake, Liz’s head grew heavy on his chest. Seconds later she was sleeping.
He switched off the tube, managed to dislodge her without disrupting her dreams, covered her with a throw, and walked silently into her bedroom, where he activated her laptop.
An hour of Web-surfing produced consensus: Mason Book had been plagued by drug problems since his adolescence in Nebraska.
The former Michael Lee Buchalter was a self-admitted “crappy student” and high school dropout who’d done pills, weed, paint, whatever, to get through night shifts at a fetid meatpacking plant outside Omaha.
Driving to L.A. on a whim, Buchalter worked a series of dead-end jobs until a female studio head, watching him hose her Benz at a WeHo car wash, was struck by the lanky, tousle-haired midwesterner’s “aw-shucks star quality. I thought finally, someone both men and women could relate to, a Jimmy Stewart for our time.”
If Jimmy had snorted heroin.
Cleaned up and renamed by his patron, tutored by acting coaches, Book demonstrated a surprising ability to don the identities of others, was a star within eighteen months. His affair with the studio head lasted another half a year, at which time she found someone younger.
No sign that being dumped had affected Book; he’d gone on to headline a series of madcap box-office smashes, always emitting low-key, self-effacing aplomb.
Then came the wrist-slash.
Moe probed for details beyond tabloid basics, got nothing. The Internet was nothing more than a grindstone, sucking up kernels of data and reprocessing until any substance was gone.
He switched his search to
lem dement
, hoping for a direct link to
the house on Swallowsong, came up empty.
mason book lem dement
was just as useless. He paired the house’s address and the suicide try. Zip. Book had been EMT’d, variously, from his “Hollywood Hills lair,” “view crib above Sunset,” or “bachelor pad overlooking the Strip.”
An image search produced page after page of red-carpet photo-op thumbnails starring Book and a slew of actresses. Moe found surprisingly few candid paparazzi shots and every portrait was complimentary, playing on the actor’s lean body, aquiline, slightly oversized features, amiable slouch, heavy mop of too-yellow hair.
Book’s smile was custom-made for the camera. Even a couple of photos taken
after
the wrist-slash were kind. The guy actually looked pretty happy.
Near-miraculous recovery?
Soft treatment from the photo corps meant the candid shots were anything but and Moe was pretty sure he knew why. Book, like the smartest celebs, had worked out an arrangement with the digital leeches:
When you catch me, I oblige with a couple of money poses. In return, you don’t make me look like a strung-out hype
.
On the other hand, Book’s ability to sneak out of ColdSnake—if he was the skinny guy Aaron had seen—said he wasn’t being pap-stalked.
Maybe the guy was old news and no one cared. Guy hadn’t made a movie in how long … Moe clicked keys.
Three years. In Industry terms, that could be Jurassic.
He returned to the image gallery, checked out the kind of woman Book favored in public.
A whole
lot
of women, with some variation in hair color and skin tone, but the dominant arm-candy flavor was leggy and blond. No rarity in L.A., but both criteria fit Caitlin Frostig.
Picking up the hostess? Why not? Book was thirty-three, had never been married, and one tab termed him “still on the prowl.” Had the actor taken that literally?
Nice story line, but no facts to back it up, and Moe started to wonder if a few suggestions by Aaron had launched him on a massive wrong turn.
Aaron had leeway, but
his
options were limited to butt-numbing scut and reinterviews of witnesses.
He needed to get out on the street and
do
something.
He peeked into the living room. Liz had stretched herself out on the sofa, her face mostly covered by the throw.
Moe sat back down, faced the flat black window that gazed into cyberspace.
lem dement children
produced references to the director’s “huge brood,” “slew of kids,” “clear slap in the face of overpopulation,” “religious fanatical tribe.” Moe was about to try something else when he turned to the thirtieth page of citations and came across a one-year-old
Malibu Sunrise
article about Dement’s plan to build a replica of a wooden church in Krakow, Poland, that had been destroyed during World War II.
The reporter had some trouble grasping why anyone would want to construct a personal house of worship, but the tone was gushing: Hollywood biggie creates One Big Happy Family.
Lem Dement’s new fundamentalist leanings might be at odds with Westside sensibilities, but rich and famous trumped everything.
The puff piece was illustrated by a photo of the entire clan posed in front of a log-sided building. Dement looked relaxed, wearing his fishhook hat and a plaid shirt. Wife Gemma, a fair-haired stick-figure whose pretty-but-pinched features contrasted with Dement’s ruddy, porcine mug, looked stiff and uncomfortable.
The two of them flanked the kids, standing as far from each other as possible.
The three youngest kids were towheaded, bronzed, and prepubescent, with that easy smile that came from being brought up soft.
Ambrose, Faustina, and Marguerite
glowed
with optimism.
Not so Mary Giles and Paul Miki, the skinny, sullen teenagers posed behind them.
At the back, scowling, were a pair of long-haired, bearded hulks in black T-shirts. Pug-pusses and barrel torsos shouted
No paternity test required
.
Japhet and Ahab Dement could’ve been twins. Moe would’ve cast them as
evil
twins—hillbilly pig-farming mutants lurching down from the hills in one of those family-gets-lost-in-the-hinterland splatter flicks.
Japhet waving a chain saw, Ahab swinging grappling hooks. You wouldn’t even need to change their names.
Moe clicked for a long time before finding the picture of Ax that Aaron had described. Yup,
Ahab “Ax” Dement, son of director Lem
did appear to be horning in on Mason Book’s body contact with a tall, starved blond beauty.
Another half an hour produced something that had eluded Aaron: Mason Book had been spotted by one of the free weeklies in a club named Ant during a gig by Ax’s band, Demented. The actor’s presence was deemed the most memorable aspect of a “drearily predictable, Prozac-inducing, thrilling-as-lettuce attempt to meld the least redeemable aspects of Metal and Emo.”
The date was three weeks prior to Caitlin’s disappearance. Moe searched for info on the band. Nothing. Same for the club.
Logging onto the LAPD search engine, he entered his password, got okayed, asked DOJ, NCIC, and every other satellite of the Big Cop in the Sky what they knew about Ahab Dement.
DMV reported the guy’s middle name—Petrarch—as well as a couple of speeding tickets and six parkers issued to a Dodge Ram pickup registered at a Solar Canyon address in Malibu.
If Ax was a felonious bad boy, he’d gotten away with it.
The letdown brought on a wave of fatigue. Moe checked on Liz again, saw scurrying motion beneath her eyelids, a faint smile on her lips. Dreaming away at warp speed. Maybe even about him.
Settling on the floor, he watched her for a while. Then, thinking about chain saws and grappling hooks, he covered her feet, dimmed the lights, let himself out.