‘Awesome,’ I say. ‘Yeah, no problem.’ My gaze falls on the locked-up fence at the side of Kalani’s house. ‘You keep gold bars back there or something?’
He steals a glance at it. ‘Nah, the night Piper was murdered, after the cops came, someone set off our backyard security light. Dad was at the window, got a pretty good look at the kid – just some scrawny teenage boy with light hair and a red tank-top.’
‘Oh,’ I say, swallowing hard.
‘Dad says he saw someone going back there much earlier in the evening, too, but I don’t think the police believed him because Dad’s a heavy day drinker. He once reported seeing a chupacabra on Tantalus. Never regained his credibility with police after that.’
I drive downtown, park in our usual garage, and hoof it over to the editing room to meet with Marissa. Although I’m several minutes late, she isn’t here, and as unfair as it may be, my mind shoots straight to the day I was supposed to pick her up at the airport.
I try her cell, but my call goes straight to voicemail. I try Church with the same result.
Shit, she forgot.
Worse, maybe she’s intentionally standing me up.
The Four Seasons has a viewing room, doesn’t it? Do I drive up to Ko Olina? Traffic should be thinning out now, but it’s still a hell of a hike just to discover she’s not there either. I try Brody to see whether he wants to come with, but his phone, too, goes straight to voicemail.
I sit in the chair in which I spent so many hours and wait. As cramped, as smelly, as sweltering as this room is, I know that I’ll miss it the moment I hand back the keys. Nostalgia is peculiar that way. Although, this may well be the room where I edited my masterpiece. I have already had conversations with a reputable Hollywood agent who’s excited to see the finished product before we begin shopping it. She’s confident the final Two Jakes twist will be enough to make studios want to take a look, and that the brilliant execution will make the sale. I can hardly believe we’ve reached this point; it feels surreal.
Surprisingly, so many times over the past couple of weeks, I flashed on the idea of calling my mom to share with her everything that’s going on. Only now do I truly feel the permanence of her absence. I’ve done a lot of crying recently. No one ever tells us we’ll cry more as adults than we did as children – or that most of that crying will be alone. Unsurprisingly, I think Professor Leary said it best over fortune cookies: ‘Life is nothing but tears, Riley, with a few smiles snuck in between.’
As tears threaten to well yet again, I chuckle at my earlier concern that a quarter century of true crime has somehow desensitized me. Hey, if only.
I glance at my Cartier watch (I switch between this and my Swatch) and lean back in my chair, ready to fall asleep. Closing my eyes, I play parts of the film on the inside of my lids. The crime scene, the Great Stall, the arraignment, the defense meetings, the Introduction of the Pube, jury selection, trial, sentencing. Life without parole.
I keep myself from crying this time.
Where the shit is Marissa?
In my head, I play the scenes where Church is at his kindest, his most vulnerable. I think of the way he wept after Ethan’s sentencing, his thousand-yard stare the following day, Marissa cautioning us that he couldn’t be left alone for the near future. I think about the night Marissa and he let us in on his illness, how his bedroom appeared as though a monsoon had hit it. I think of what he said about manic-depressives being dealt worse odds than you get in a game of Russian Roulette – and I suddenly feel sick to my stomach with an uncertain dread.
‘Have you ever … tried?’ I asked in that scene on the deck.
‘Just about every night,’ he said.
I push myself out of my chair and lock up. Drop a few dollars to our homeless friend on the return walk to the garage. I try Marissa and Church once again. Then I get in the Jeep and pull onto H-1 heading west toward Ko Olina.
FORTY-FOUR
By the time I arrive at the Four Seasons, it’s full dark, and though I still haven’t gotten hold of either Marissa or Church, I’m already overwhelmed with the feeling that I’ve overreacted. There were times during the investigation when I couldn’t get hold of Church for three or four days in a row. Sometimes due to excessive drinking, other times because he’d simply decided to stop answering his phone.
In the elevator, I pull out my key, which is going to be difficult to give up next week, particularly in light of Church’s standing invitation for us to crash and order room service any time we’d like.
As I reach the seventeenth floor, I wonder whether I’ll ever be in a penthouse suite like this one again. Maybe if Brody and I stay in touch with Church and Marissa. Maybe if our movie’s a hit. Maybe if it wins awards. But then, maybe that’s not what matters anyhow. Some of my happiest moments were spent in a dank NYU cafeteria, away from everyone else, eating Chinese food with Professor Leary.
I step off the elevator, stop at the door and knock loud enough to worry the guys in the meth lab up the street. When no one answers, I put the key in the door, cover my eyes with my forearm so that I don’t see anything I can’t un-see, then turn the lock to enter.
When I open my eyes, I’m immediately shook. The dark suite is a shipwreck, not so unlike Church’s bedroom the night we learned about his illness. Some furniture is turned over, the floor peppered with broken glass. All the windows are covered, allowing in only slivers of moonlight. I turn and hit the light switch – once, twice – but nothing happens.
Then I see blood, slick and ink-black in the darkness. Bile instantly rises in my throat.
With my eyes, I follow the narrow trail of blood to a blind spot behind the sectional. Slowly, I step alongside it, a growing unease in my chest.
When I finally peer around the sectional, I find Marissa Linden facedown on the floor.
Without thinking, I rush to her side. Gently but firmly turn her body over. She’s breathing, she’s alive. She has two black eyes, probably a broken nose, and there’s blood dripping steadily from her lips. Fresh blood.
Oh my god, he’s still here.
As quietly as possible, I rise to my feet and say softly, ‘Sheena, call Jesse.’
When I hear the bedroom door open behind me, I freeze and wait for Church’s voice.
‘Rye?’
But when I turn, my eyes instantly lock on Brody’s.
‘What the shit’s going on?’ I say. ‘Why the fuck are you dressed like that?’
He’s wearing a Tyvek white paper body suit, nitrile gloves, hospital moccasins, a hair net. There’s blood on the suit, blood on his gloves.
He pulls down his surgical mask, streaking that with blood as well. His bottom lip is trembling as though he could break into a cry at any second. ‘You have to understand, Rye,’ he says, trying to steady his voice, ‘that I did all this for you.’
‘Where’s Church?’ I shout.
‘In the bedroom. Sleeping it off.’
‘Sleeping what off?’
‘The Klonopin.’
My Klonopin.
‘Brody, you’re scaring me. What did you do to Marissa?’
‘Nothing,’ he says, with a slight tremor in his voice. ‘Church did it.’ He spreads his arms out. ‘Don’t you see, Rye. It’s the perfect story. Sixteen years ago, Marissa obliterated his prosecutorial career. He’s been a mental and emotional wreck ever since. Today he finally snaps and kills her. And we’re here to cover the trial. We don’t have to leave paradise. We don’t have to leave home.’
Only now do I fully grasp everything’s he’s done and why.
‘Piper,’ I manage to spit out.
‘Rye, all that time you thought I was wasting at the beach and in bars, all that time you thought I was slacking during preproduction, I was actually prepping things for our movie. I was setting it all up. It’s like Leary always said: spontaneity requires forethought, right? And I put a lot of forethought into this, Rye. I chose the best story for us, the best story for our film.’
&n
bsp; ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I squeak.
‘At first, it was going to be Yasmin Farrockh. I even followed her for a couple of weeks, internalized her routine—’
‘That’s why she recognized my Jeep today,’ I say, in a voice little more than a whisper.
‘Our Jeep, Rye, OK?’ There’s anger in his voice now. ‘I think I deserve at least that.’ Slowly he moves between me and the door. ‘I almost chose the shrink, wanted to. I knew she was planting ideas in your head, pushing you to get rid of me. I knew our lives would be better with her gone. But no, instead I chose the best story.’
‘Story?’
‘The psychiatrist had just turned forty. A woman murdered at thirty-nine, maybe a story. At forty, not even close, even as attractive as Yasmin is. Plus, she’s Iranian, dark-skinned. It would’ve presented serious problems for any studio hoping to market it in flyover country.’
‘But why anyone, Brod—’
‘Why? Rye, don’t you get it? You can sense when someone’s falling out of love with you. Those first three weeks in Hawaii were the best of my life. But I saw you getting restless. You were still upset over Leary, the move out here cost more than we’d expected. I knew I could lose everything in a blink.’
‘What made you think that—’
He holds up a hand. ‘Don’t, Rye, just don’t. I’m sorry but once I started suspecting something was up, I started reading your emails.’ A lump forms in his throat. ‘And I was right. You were unhappy, you felt isolated. The money wasn’t going to last us. You still loved me, I realize that, but you also thought you needed to go back to the mainland – don’t deny it. I knew you’d go, with or without me. And I couldn’t fucking go back.’
‘We could have talked.’
‘I couldn’t risk losing you, Rye. I couldn’t risk that talk devolving into a fight and driving you away from me for good. You make real life seem like there’s something to look forward to. Like there’s a future on the other side of university walls.
‘I was terrified of losing you, Rye, of losing this life. Then one night while we were watching the evening news, it comes to me – a way to save my life in paradise and make your dreams come true. The weathergirl. She’d make a dynamite hook for our film. So I start watching her, like I did the shrink.
‘But she didn’t have many players in her life. Her only constants were her co-workers. And out of them, her only real friend was Kyle Myers. To be honest, I started losing interest in the film. But then I began watching Ethan too. I followed him one afternoon to Kakaako Beach Park, where he made a hand-to-hand, and that put my mind into motion again. I started seeing how events could come together. I started to see our film.
‘Then, just as I’m about to wrap surveillance, something wildly interesting occurs. Ethan leaves for a gig, and not ten minutes later, a white Beamer crawls up the mountain and pulls into Piper’s garage. Stays for over an hour. When I run the plate through Net Detective the next day, I’m sure I made some mistake, but no. It’s Ethan’s own fucking brother’s car.
‘So I watch Ethan’s heroin dealer, Guy, for a few days, and find out how people find him. Make an anonymous nine-one-one call, and cops discover enough H in his pad to put Guy away till he turns gray. Maybe till he turns dead.’
As Brody speaks, his excitement builds. ‘Piper downloads a GIF from a spoofed email address and – voila – full remote access and control of her computer to place my own ad on Craigslist. I stay ready for a couple of days, then sure enough, Ethan emails looking to score.’
He snaps his fingers. ‘I’d already timed the walk to the top, sliced the pay phone wire, and snatched a pair of Budweiser bottles from Piper’s recycling bin. I’d followed Nate. Knew there was one night a week when he drives aimlessly, stops at random beaches, and sits for an hour or two before heading home. With neither brother having an alibi, I knew it’d make an incredible whodunit, Rye.’
I’m trembling all over, chicken skin climbing up my arms and legs. ‘You’re sick, Brody.’
‘Rye, don’t say that. Please don’t say that.’
‘Who are you, Brody? You deplored violence.’
‘I still do, Rye. But you, you love it. And I love you.’ Before I can object, he says, ‘Don’t tell me you’re not desensitized, Rye. I was there when you learned Piper was pregnant. That pregnancy tore me up inside, but it didn’t even stir you.’
‘Maybe because I wasn’t suffering the guilt of fucking having killed her.’
‘Do you think any of this was easy for me, Rye? It wasn’t. But our money was running out.’
The words are out of my mouth before I think them. ‘My money.’
‘Cut the shit, Rye.’ His shout echoes through the suite. ‘I deserved that money every bit as much as you did.’
‘How can you say that?’
He sighs heavily as though he has a decision to make.
Finally, he says, ‘Because George Leary might have lived another ten or twenty years if not for me.’
The silence in the room grows thick enough to smother me. I think I’m about to faint.
His tone softens. ‘He didn’t suffer, Rye, I promise. I placed a pillow over his face in his sleep.’ He steps toward me as if to comfort me. ‘I’m sorry. But you were spending so much goddamn time with him. Then you started talking about staying in New York, so that Leary could help with the film. I couldn’t stay, Rye. I couldn’t, you know that.’
Tears stream freely down my cheeks. My voice shakes. ‘Two people are dead, and two men are in prison for what you did.’
‘I had an out for Ethan. I was going to prevent him from being convicted at the last minute and make Church into a fucking superhero. That’s why I left the shoeprint in the yard. I’d planned to give the shoes and Piper’s poncho and clothes to Roy down the street from our apartment.’
‘You were going to frame the homeless guy! The one you made friends with? The one you brought up to our apartment to shower?’
‘I put him on a bus that day so he’d be seen in the area. For you, Rye. I did it for you, for us.’ He clutches the back of his neck, the way he does when he’s stressed. ‘But then you …’
‘I what?’
‘You fell for him. Even after Breakers, I was willing to let him off the hook. But then you meet him in our editing room, fucked him on Waikiki Beach … Why the hell would I then do him the favor of getting him off?’
‘But George Leary? Piper? How could you?’
He hesitates, the anger over Ethan falling away from his face, replaced by a look of worried confusion. Then, in little more than a whisper, he says, ‘I looked at them and saw her, Rye. I looked at them and saw my mother.’
He steps toward me, clearing tears from his eyes, his tone suddenly sharp and efficient. ‘Let me finish Marissa and stage the scene, all right? Then we’ll get out of here, you and me. No one will check on them till room service tomorrow morning, right around the time Nick Church will be waking from his Klonopin nap.’
I don’t know what to do. Now that I know what he’s capable of, I’m petrified. I can’t play along until we get outside, because it’ll be too late for Marissa. I can’t believe how much I want to save her fucking life right now.
Surreptitiously, I scan the room for something, anything, I can use as a weapon. But it’s dark and my head is swimming, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
Finally, I spot what I need. And it’s within grabbing distance.
‘Do what you have to do,’ I tell him in as firm a voice as I can muster.
He studies my facial expression, as he’s done so many times before. I soften my features, tilt my head, part my lips, look him warmly in the eyes.
‘It’s brilliant,’ I say, fully committing myself to the role and taking a step toward him. ‘How can I fault you for this, Brody? How? You’re giving me everything I ever wanted.’
He nods his head, a new hope visible in his eyes. He sniffles, exhales in relief, then wipes his nose with the side
of his arm. A look of excitement slowly spreads across his face.
‘This one’s going to be even bloodier, baby, even sexier.’
Oh no. Heart pounding, I’m suddenly drenched in sweat. My hands are trembling. I’m lightheaded, short of breath. I push back a threatening nausea and steady myself. Tell my body over and over again: Not now. Not now. Not now.
‘Stand back,’ he says, covering his mouth with the mask. ‘You don’t want to get any of this on you.’
He pulls a large kitchen knife from his body suit and moves deliberately toward Marissa. As soon as he steps past me, I go for the seventies speaker box in the middle of the dining room table. I heft it over my head and with both hands bring it down on the back of Brody’s skull with every ounce of strength that I have. We both go crashing to the floor.
The knife skids in one direction.
In the other, a gun I’ve never seen before.
We both go for the latter, only I don’t get to it in time.
Rising to his feet, he holds the gun on me.
I think it’s a .38, but it’s too dark to be certain.
With his free hand, he rubs the back of his head, flinches, then stares at his palm, which is now crimson. In the darkness, tar-black.
‘How could you hurt me, Rye?’ he asks with genuine sincerity. ‘How could you hurt someone you promised to unconditionally love? How could you aban—’
Suddenly, sirens sound in the distance.
Startled, Brody stops dead, says, ‘Did you …?’
I shake my head.
‘I did.’
Jesse’s familiar voice emanates from the seventies speaker box lying broken on the floor at Brody’s feet.
Brody stares down at it with a look of amused disbelief.
Sobbing, then, as hard as I’ve ever seen him sob, he raises the gun, levels it at my head. He says, ‘I told you, Rye. If we’re not meant to be together, then we’re not meant to be.’
I close my eyes, as warm pee dribbles down my inner thighs. I cry silently and wait for the bullet because it’s all I can do.
The Rough Cut Page 26