And why the focus on her daughter?
Never mind the fact that Millar never asked Dark’s name, or to see identification of any kind....
“Have you had any strange phone calls? Noticed anyone in the area who shouldn’t be around?”
“No, I haven’t, and I’d really appreciate if you could go out and find Faye. I can pay you whatever you like. Name your price.”
“Who would know where she is, Ms. Millar?” Dark asked.
“David, that prick. I never liked him. I told her that. Did she listen? I told her what they were all like. All of those producers.”
“Who’s David?”
“Aren’t you even listening? That sneaky prick David Loeb!”
Dark made the connection instantly. You don’t hear the same surname twice in one day and chalk it up to just another Hollywood coincidence.
“Excuse me, Ms. Millar.”
“You bring her back here! I’m begging you!”
Dark was already halfway to his Mustang by the time he reached Josh Banner in his lab and asked if Herbert Loeb had any children. By the time Banner came up with the answer, Dark was behind the wheel and slamming down on the accelerator.
Herbert had one child: a son named David Loeb.
A Hollywood producer.
Back in Josh Banner’s lab at LAPD headquarters, the alarm clock rang.
[To enter the Labyrinth, please go to Level26.com and enter the code: arts]
chapter 6
LABYRINTH
As I leave the Malibu home, I’m almost disappointed to see there are no police vehicles, no flashing lights, no nothing. No one was watching me.
No one responded, no one figured it out, no one came.
And this was the easy one.
Ah, well.
There’s always a learning curve with these kinds of things. You can’t expect everyone to understand the rules of the game on the first move.
From the driver’s seat I glance at the crashing waves on the lovely pristine Malibu beach as the sun continues its languid descent across the sky.
I greedily suck in the fresh ocean air as it blasts across my face, whipping the hair from my forehead, which is still damp from the salty mist, and for just a moment I can understand the appeal, why people worked so hard for temporary little pieces of this.
Of course, the beaches should be free and open to all. Any human being should be able to sit down and enjoy this primal spectacle at any time, not because they’ve jumped through a series of hoops for the mighty and the powerful.
The pimp and his whore—not so powerful now.
I think about how easy it all was.
How the lock on the house was junk.
How surprised they were to see me—the pimp and the whore in swimsuits, dirty feet up on a coffee table that was littered with imported beer bottles, fashion magazines, candy bars, and baggies of cocaine.
How they squinted like maybe they knew me, because on the outside, I look like I could be part of their world—healthy enough, handsome enough, groomed enough, confident enough.
But I am most definitely not part of their world.
It was even easy to force them to strip.
I wondered, though, if they understood the significance of that.
I wanted them stark naked so they could truly see each other’s bodies. Not in a lustful manner, but a clinical manner.
Because if they did, then soon certain anatomical similarities would manifest themselves.
Did they ever consider the matching birthmarks?
Or the idiosyncratic shapes of their hands—the long ring fingers on the left hand?
Or their eye color—which suggested burned gold in the middle of a lush New Guinea jungle?
Did none of this occur to them, even through the narcotic haze, as they were fucking each other?
It is important that they realized why this was happening to them. Because if they could not be made to understand, then the rest of the world wouldn’t. They need to really sell it.
If we’re going to save the world together.
chapter 7
DARK
Malibu, California
Dark glanced at his watch the moment he pulled up to the address Bethany Millar had given him. If the alarm clock in that package had been a countdown to something, then they’d reached zero hour just a few minutes ago.
Fuck.
He hammered the brakes, leaped out of the Mustang, and vaulted over the wrought-iron fence, hoping he wasn’t too late.
The door was ajar. Dark pulled his Glock 19 from his jacket and nudged the door open with his boot, then cleared the living room, which was an absolute mess. Baggies of coke, high-end junk food, half-empty beers. From the looks of it, Elizabeth and Loeb had been holed up here for a long time. Days, probably.
Were they out on the beach, or making another drug or booze run?
Deep down, Dark knew that wasn’t the case. He could feel the tremor in his own blood the same way an animal can sense a thunderstorm.
The next room was a kitchen, and off to the side, a bedroom. This home wasn’t big. Just a multimillion-dollar beachside crash/fuck pad, apparently. Dark moved efficiently and quickly, sweeping the kitchen before moving into the bedroom, checking every corner and square foot of floor space before pushing forward. His muscles were wired and he steeled himself for anything. A fight, or a horror show.
Even the scent that suddenly filled his nostrils—the copperish scent of freshly spilled blood.
Dark moved forward and nudged open the door with his knee. The bodies of the A-list actress and her producer boyfriend were in the bathroom.
Loeb was facedown in a blocked toilet, a bloody exit wound in his back. Faye Elizabeth was now slumped over in the tub, gun in her hand, head twisted at a very unnatural angle.
Time had run out.
At first glance, Dark could see the scenario that was supposed to have unfolded:
Producer David Loeb goes crazy, beats and strangles his actress girlfriend—the famous Faye Elizabeth. In a desperate act of self-defense, she shoots him in the chest. Both collapse and die of their injuries.
But Dark knew that wasn’t the case. They had been forced. Their bodies had been arranged. Forensics would prove that.
Whoever had done this had taken the time to arrange everything from the beginning. Now he was daring the police to catch him before he killed again.
The FBI arrived a short while later, having strong-armed the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department out of their own case. The special agent in charge threatened to have Dark thrown into “fucking Gitmo” for contaminating the crime scene. Dark allowed him to vent—he knew the frustrations of the job better than most people—before showing him his digital badge on his cell phone. At which point the SAC shut up and mumbled a promise to keep Dark apprised of any developments. Dark thanked him and waited on the fringes.
The bullet that had blasted through David Loeb’s chest and buried itself in the bathroom’s tile wall was traced back to the gun in Faye Elizabeth’s hand. No other DNA in the bathroom or the rest of the rental property—except for that of a lone cleaning woman. All signs pointed to: They did each other.
Time of death . . . well, the crime scene guys could tell, it had been just a few minutes after the time the alarm clock went off in Banner’s office.
Dark stared at the house and thought about something his old director pal Valentine had said. About Bethany Millar “boffing” Herbie Loeb.
He asked the forensic guys for samples of each victim’s blood, which they gave after a curt nod from the SAC, and sped away in his Mustang.
chapter 8
DARK
West Hollywood, California
Back home in his basement lab, Dark loaded the blood samples from the crime scene and began the process of DNA testing.
The gear in this secret room beneath Dark’s West Hollywood abode was also thanks to Lisa Graysmith. It enabled him to analyze his own forensic samples
and check the results against the most sophisticated (and secret) database in the world.
A few hours later, DNA testing on the vics confirmed it: There was an 88 percent likelihood that Faye Elizabeth and David Loeb were half siblings. Their common parent: famous artist Herbert Loeb.
A crude childhood rhyme drifted through Dark’s head: Incest is best, put your sister to the test.
Somehow, the killer had known their dirty little secret. Was this personal, then?
If so, and the goal was to shame them in the most public way possible, why take out two LAPD detectives along the way?
Dark stared at the ceiling, putting together the narrative of the day from Labyrinth’s point of view, trying to tune in to his particular, sick wavelength.
He closed his eyes and began to put it together.
He went into brooding mode.
Back at Special Circs, Dark was known as a brooder, especially when sinking his mind into a new case. Other agents would joke that when Dark was in the zone, he moved so slowly he almost went back in time a few days. Riggins, however, would defend him. Dark may be a tortoise, Riggins would say, but you should see the collection of mounted rabbit heads on his living room wall. It was true. When Dark turned his mind to a case, it was as if nothing else existed. His focus bordered on the preternatural.
Only difference now was that Dark had to divide his life into two distinct parts: manhunter and . . .
“DADDY!” shouted Sibby from the living room. “We’re HO-OOOME!”
That would be Sibby, freshly sprung from her first grade classroom, escorted by her grandmother. Now it was time for Dark to turn off the quadruple homicides running through his mind and focus on his five-year-old girl, who’d want to tell him all about her day. Dark would have to stop thinking about the DNA testing and nude sketches of B-movie starlets and think about pouring his daughter a cup of juice and asking what kind of homework she had tonight.
The full-time father thing was new. Recently Dark had moved his daughter down from Santa Barbara to live with him here in West Hollywood. His formerly spare living room—nondescript furniture, movie posters—was now overwhelmed with little-girl stuff. Gone were the nightmare-inducing movie posters of boyhood favorites (The Hitcher, To Live and Die in L.A., Dirty Harry). In their places: framed art from little Sibby herself. Sometimes Dark could swear that all she’d learned to do in kindergarten up there in Santa Barbara was generate a ridiculously huge catalog of original art.
So yeah, his life, his house—all in a state of extreme transition. It wasn’t just his home anymore. It was Sibby’s, too.
In the past he never would have thought that his life as a manhunter and his role as a father could coexist. Seemed an either/or proposition. That’s the way it had been with little Sibby’s mother. The two of them had worked . . . just so long as he could keep the demons at bay. It had taken Dark a long time to reach the place where he could be both a father and a manhunter. And he knew he could do both.
The hard part, though, was flipping the switch.
Snap out of it, he told himself. Put the monster out of your head. Be here for your daughter.
“Steve?” his mother-in-law called out from above. “Are you home?”
Dark was ready to reply when his smartphone buzzed—a text message.
From Graysmith:WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW
Followed by a link to an online video.
The image opens with the actress, holding up the nude sketch her father drew. She smiles, even though it’s clear she’s been crying. She tells us: “The notion of a painting being worth two million dollars and being owned privately will be no more. Art is for the people; it’s free. Everyone must understand it and have access to it. Not for just the rich and privileged—the spoilers of our world . . .”
Then the actress lifts a gun and points it at the camera. Someone off-screen says: “What are you doing?”
Smash cut to black. A scream: “OH GOD NO.” A gunshot. A scream—male this time. Then a title card: I WILL SHOW YOU
THE WAY OUT OF
THE LABYRINTH
chapter 9
DARK
Once the Labyrinth video hit the Net—and minutes later, the mainstream media—there was no way of containing any part of the story.
The Elizabeth-Loeb incest/double murders pushed everything else out of the news cycle—foreign revolutions, economic meltdowns, gas spills, political summits, and every other celebrity scandal.
The Labyrinth video attracted over 2.7 million views in the first few hours alone. YouTube had almost instantly yanked it from their site, but mirror sites had popped up everywhere, and every effort to contain it caused the video to spread even faster, like a malignant tumor on steroids.
And the news didn’t leak to the media so much as spontaneously manifest itself, independent of hard facts or reporters making phone calls. Over the past few years Dark had been observing a shift in the way people received their news. Gone were the days of dogged newshound reporters and stentorian anchors filling us in on the events of the day—packaging it, processing it, delivering it. Now media consumers craved news instantly, and they wanted to curate it themselves. When disaster struck, some people still turned on the television. But an increasing number also had their phones in their hands, so they could see what their friends were writing and linking and joking about. In a sense, it was a return to a village mentality, where like people huddled together. Instead of occupying the same piece of turf, people followed one another on social networks.
But something strange had happened with this new “Labyrinth” case.
As Dark had waited for the results of his DNA test, the rumor that Elizabeth and Loeb were half siblings was already trending. Somehow, people out there in social network land knew—and began to spread—information that nobody else had yet.
One alleged fact was Tweeted within the hour:Dead actress girl? Dead producer boyfriend? They were half siblings!
1 hour ago
Followed by endless Retweets and forwards and further comments:Grossburgers. RT: Dead actress girl? Dead producer boyfriend? They were half siblings!
54 minutes ago
Hollywood types will do anything.
40 minutes ago
Impossible. She’s hot, he’s a dork, no relation.
32 minutes ago
You should see my little sister/she can raise quite a blister
19 minutes ago
How did the word travel so fast? Dark wondered if this was one of those open Hollywood secrets. He called his insider to ask.
Hell no, claimed Vincente Valentine, who had consulted a host of usual suspects—flacks, agents, producers. The Elizabeth-Loeb relationship itself wasn’t a secret; online gossip sites had been reporting that they’d been palling around for at least six months. But the incest thing? Not a hint. “And I would have known,” Valentine said. “Believe me. Bethany, you sweet old idiot . . .”
When the story hit the mainstream press, reporters practically fell over themselves racing to Millar’s barren Hollywood Hills home. Microphones were jabbed at her face. Why didn’t she tell her daughter the truth? What kind of monster was she?
Dark knew the answer to that one:
The kind who didn’t want to admit the truth. Not even to herself.
But the incest thing didn’t bug Dark. This was L.A., a virtual pit of twisted secrets. Lying to your daughter about the true identity of her father was nothing new, especially in a world where lineage could mean everything, and the wrong set of parents could doom you from the moment the doctor slapped you to kick-start your first breath.
What Dark kept coming back to was that this Labyrinth knew.
Not only knew, but targeted them and exploited this fact in the most sensational way possible.
Someone who wanted to make a point to whomever would listen.
Which, at this point, was pretty much everybody.
All Comments (43,978)
A senseless tragedy . . . cause she
was HOTT even if she was banging her bro
Alx9722 55 seconds ago
If celebrity deaths come in threes does this count for two of them? Or only one? Is there a brother/sister discount?
HELP ME I AM SO CONFUSED
petme1029 1 minute ago
Who the hell is LABYRINTH??? This what I want to know.
Mesta mysteries 1 minute ago
Wow. This looks fake.
gossoon 2 minutes ago
nipple!!!
zzzzmango 3 minutes ago
Good riddance to all of these hollywood faker types, I say. Overpaid, undertalented hacks. They probably just crossed their drug dealer. Who was most likely their first cousin or something.
Joeno ono 5 minutes ago
Alx9722 is right I woulda tapped that shit before she died and all WHAT A WASTE
discostixxx 5 minutes ago
How happy this vain little tart must have been to have died on camera.
Omnigatherum111 5 minutes ago
What is wrong with you people? These were human beings for gods sake?
CrystalShawATL 6 minutes ago
More coming soon . . .
Dark Revelations Page 3