Trashed

by Alison Gaylin

  Simone glanced at the couch again, and for a second she could almost see Holly on it, staring into her glass of water. You . . . you don’t think there’s a story here, do you? She thought of Holly, her throat cut open, the spread from the Asteroid shoved into her mouth, and wished, so deeply, that there had never been a story.

  Sandiford walked Simone back to her car. As she got in, he said, “Neil Walker is a total pain in the ass.”

  Simone’s chest tightened a little at the sound of his name. “True.”

  “He doesn’t always think before he does things.”

  “True.”

  “But, I’ll tell you something. He’s got a good heart.”

  He walked back to the crime scene, leaving her there. Simone started up her Jeep and said to no one, “True.”

  “ICU.”

  “Yes, I’m calling to ask about the condition of—”

  “Holly Kashminian’s condition is still the same, Ms.

  Glass.”

  “You recognized my voice.”

  “It’s the third time you’ve called.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Ms. Glass. Being worried is nothing to feel sorry about.”

  Simone hung up her phone and stared at her blank computer screen, thinking, Being worried is probably the only thing I don’t have to feel sorry about. Holly was in a coma. Emerald Deegan and Destiny were dead. Julie Curtis—her best friend, whose life story she had wanted to write—was now a national pariah. All because of the Asteroid. And mostly because of Simone.

  The one decent thing she’d done was telling Julie the truth. . . . The only reason she had done it was that she didn’t want to play dead for Blake Moss. So, if everyone now knew how the Asteroid was getting its information, if Julie was now back in Chris Hart’s good graces, she had Blake to thank for that—not Simone.

  And there was still a killer out there.

  Simone knew Sandiford was questioning all of Randi’s clients—both “numbers” and “candy”—and even though Julie was candy, she had to be scared.

  Simone looked at Elliot, busy researching the “Speediest Twelve-Steppers” sidebar for the Keith Furlong interview. “Hey,” she said to him, “you’re hitting Dylan Leeds’s cans, right?”

  “I would,” he said, “but I can’t locate her address. Can’t run a DMV check on her because she rides around in a limo.”

  Simone thought of Julie’s peaceful little house, the replica of her high school home that she’d fallen in love with at first sight. “I know where she lives.”

  “You do? Then I’ll hit ’em tonight. Nigel wants us all to pick up the Chrylan slack, now that . . . you know.”

  Simone nodded. “Just do me a favor. If you find anything unusual in there? Something that obviously doesn’t belong to her? Can you let me know right away?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll even send you a pic.”

  Nigel stepped into the room, asked Simone to come into his office. “I’ve got an assignment for you,” he said. “I think you’re going to like it.”

  Simone stared at Nigel without saying a word.

  “I’m asking you because you’re the only one who’s small enough,” Nigel said. “Kath’s already posed as a chambermaid at the Chateau, so she’s ineligible.”

  “But . . .”

  “We need to pick up the Chrylan slack, love. What better way to do it than exclusive photos of their first hotel tryst?”

  “You want me to hide in a closet. With a camera phone. And take pictures of them.”

  “Under the bed is fine, too.”

  “I . . . I can’t do that.”

  “I would not ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself,” he said. And sadly, Simone had no doubt that was true.

  Logic. Use logic with him, and maybe that will work. “I can’t break into a hotel room. I’ll get arrested.”

  He looked across the desk, slid Simone a card key. “That comes from my top secret source as well.”

  Damn.

  “Arrive at the bungalow at nine thirty. Go immediately to the bedroom, assume your position. Chrylan, the source tells me, will be in the room at ten or later.”

  Simone looked at him. “Nigel. What if I tell you I refuse to do this?”

  “Then I will be forced to hire a very expensive, five-foot-tall paparazzo I know of . . . and you will be suspended from your job indefinitely.”

  “So they’re getting photographed either way.”

  “Come hell or high water,” he said. “Yes.”

  As Simone walked into the reporters’ room to get her bag, Kathy said, “I heard all that. You gonna be okay?”

  “Sure,” Simone said. “Stabbing my friend in the back was fun, but humiliating her . . . that’ll be priceless.”

  Matthew was on the phone and Elliot was running a search on his computer, but Kathy pulled Simone out of their earshot anyway, and walked her up to the street-facing windows.

  “When I first started here, the Asteroid was big on AIDS stories,” Kathy said. “Always hoped and prayed I wouldn’t get one of those. I mean, cheating is one thing. But if a guy wants to keep it a secret that he’s dying . . .”

  Simone nodded. “I get that.”

  “So the day finally came, I got one. It’s this sweet, older leading man. He’s been in the closet his whole life. Through my connections, I pose as a masseuse, give a home massage to his wife, an actress—killer boob job, by the way, I got her to tell me who her surgeon was—”

  “Anyway . . .”

  “Anyway, this poor woman must not have too many girlfriends, because within like, ten minutes, she’s crying all over the table, telling me her husband is dying. Yeah, she’s his beard and their marriage is a fauxmance. But he’s also her best friend in the world and she loves him and she doesn’t know what she’s going to do without him.”

  “God. That’s terrible.”

  “Then she swears me to secrecy. An undercover tabloid reporter. She says, ‘If anyone ever finds out, it’ll kill him and me both.’ ”

  “What did you do?”

  “Reported the story.”

  “You did?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Told the world about the wife’s boob job. Far as Nigel knew, she didn’t give me jack about AIDS.” She gave Simone a long, meaningful look. “You see what I’m saying? You’re in the hotel closet, honey. You call the shots.”

  Simone looked at her. “Nobody’s going to fire me if the camera phone breaks,” she said. “I gave it my best try.”

  “Exactly.” She winked. “Do us proud.”

  Getting into the Chateau Marmont bungalow had been surprisingly easy. Simone had used the card key and walked into the room reserved for Hollywood’s hottest cheating couple without earning so much as a second look from the hotel staff. Nigel’s “top secret source” must have been very well connected.

  But standing in the closet—just a couple of feet away from the king-sized bed, her phone turned to vibrate like some kind of panting voyeur—that was not easy. Even though Simone had no intention of taking pictures, that didn’t make her feel any better about being here, bringing new meaning to tabloid scum.

  The door to the bungalow creaked open. Showtime, thought Simone. There were no voices, no giggles, no murmured sweet-nothings or anything else you’d associate with a tryst. Just pure, thick silence. And then, footsteps.

  The footsteps moved through the living room area, coming closer, into the room with Simone. She’d left the closet door open a crack, just so she could get some air, and she peered through it now, holding her breath.

  There was only one person in the room. Chris Hart. Well, that explains the quiet. Hart sat down on the bed. He took off his shoes, but nothing else. Simone didn’t want to look too hard at Hart for fear he’d feel someone watching, but she couldn’t help but notice the expression on his face. Bored, slightly annoyed. Like a man on a business trip.

  Her cell phone vibrated. She backed up in the closet, look
ed at the screen, and saw she’d received a text message. She opened it up. It was from Elliot: Found in DL’s trash. Simone clicked on the photo attachment icon, and a tiny picture filled her screen. A picture of an emerald pendant, cut into the shape of a letter H.

  Holly’s necklace was in Julie’s trash.

  “Oh, dear God.” Simone said it out loud. She pushed open the door and ran through the room.

  “Where the hell are you going?” yelled Chris Hart. But she didn’t care, didn’t care if he saw her, didn’t care if he chased her down or screamed at her or sued the Asteroid. She pushed open the door and headed out for the parking lot, breath cutting into her lungs, hoping, praying she’d get to Julie’s in time.

  TWENTY-SIX

  From her car, Simone called Sandiford and left a frantic message on his voice mail. She kept remembering what he had said, about the killer targeting Randi’s prostitution business. Why Julie? she kept thinking as she sped to Julie’s house. She is candy, not numbers.

  But in the back of her mind, she knew. The Asteroid. Even though Julie hadn’t spoken willingly to the press, the killer still thought she had. Simone screeched to a stop in front of Julie’s house—her simple little house, without a gate, without security, without so much as hedges blocking it from the street. She lunged out of her car, whispering, Please don’t let me be too late. Please don’t let me be too late, again and again and again. She ran up to the front door and hit the bell.

  No answer. Maybe Julie was on her way to the hotel to meet Chris. Please. Simone tried the door. It drifted open. Unlocked. If Julie had left the house, she would have locked it. No, no, no . . .

  “Julie?” Simone’s voice was a bleat.

  There was no reply. The living room was undisturbed, and as Simone moved through it, toward the bedroom, the air felt like water, holding her back. That stale, metallic odor drifted out of the bedroom and she ran in whispering, “No, no, no,” even though she knew, knew by now what that smell was.

  “No, no, no . . . ,” she said, the nos getting louder when she saw what she did, and then they became screams, sobs. She pushed 911 on her cell phone, but when the operator answered, all she could do was shriek into it, not wanting to believe her eyes, her brain. . . .

  Julie was lying on the bed, her throat cut, a butcher’s knife in her hand. She was wearing a white dress, but the dress, her hands, her feet, her face, were clumped with dirt—dirt from her many potted plants, now upended, strewn around the bed, as dead as the owner who had taken such pride in them.

  On the wall, over the bed, two words had been written in her blood. And when Simone read the words, she fell to her knees and heaved, feeling as if she could never stop, would never be able to catch her breath.

  The words on the wall: Dirty Dylan.

  Simone kept thinking of two words as she sat in one of the interview rooms in Robbery-Homicide, an untouched glass of water in front of her, a blanket that the beat cops had given her still draped around her shoulders.

  The words were “my fault.”

  She hadn’t talked since the cops arrived. After all that screaming and sobbing and heaving, her voice box had shut down, her brain unable to formulate any words but those two: My. Fault.

  If it hadn’t been for her, there would be no Dirty Dylan. Clara would still be Hollywood’s happiest couple, and Julie would be an up-and-comer. Not as famous, but not hated. Not by the murderer. Alive.

  Ed Sandiford walked in and said, “I’m sorry, Simone.” And just seeing him there made her lose it again. She started weeping, though she was quieter about it now. Sandiford waited for her to catch her breath and said, “We’re not gonna question you now, kid. We’re gonna let you go home.”

  Simone’s voice came out, a low, pained croak. “I don’t think I can drive.”

  “I know,” he said. “Someone wants to drive you.”

  He moved aside, and Neil Walker stood in the doorway, his eyes cloudy, waiting. “I’m afraid you have no say in this,” he said. “I’m driving you home whether you want me to or—”

  Simone went to him and lifted her arms around his neck and buried her head in his chest, and he never finished the sentence. He just held her.

  Walker drove Simone to her apartment, went with her to her door, and waited for her to open it. He walked in with her, turned on all the lights, made sure she was safe.

  He said, “I guess you want me to leave.”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “I can stand here,” he said. “Wait for you to figure that out.”

  She looked at him. “It might take a while.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I don’t have to be anywhere.”

  Simone and Walker sat on the couch all night. For the first part of it, she was unable to do anything other than cry, and he let her. He held her and told her it would be all right and rubbed her back as she caught her breath, then pulled her closer when she started sobbing again.

  Finally, she felt as if she could talk. And he let her do that too, let her tell him everything that had happened, every detail. He asked few questions, just nodded mostly, until she told him about Julie’s body—what had been done to it.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  “I thought you knew. Thought maybe Ed had told you.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t ask him for details.”

  She met his gaze. “But . . . it’s going to be the biggest story of the year.”

  “I didn’t care,” he said quietly. “I only cared about you.”

  Simone’s eyes started to well up, and her throat clenched and she said nothing, too moved to speak. She waited for him to crack a joke. To say something like, But as of tomorrow, I’m back on your ass. But Walker didn’t say a word. He just looked at her. She put her head on his shoulder. And she closed her eyes.

  Simone didn’t know she’d fallen asleep until her ringing phone jolted her awake. She looked at the caller ID: Chris Hart. Chris Hart?

  She picked it up. “Chris?”

  “You could have gotten some awesome photos,” he said.

  “What do you—”

  “Problem is, you were in the wrong closet!” He started to laugh, the laughter growing louder and louder until it became a shriek. The shriek of a murdered woman.

  Simone jolted awake. Walker said, “Wha . . .”

  They had both fallen asleep, sitting on the couch with all their clothes on. Simone looked at her watch: four a.m. “Nightmare,” she said.

  “What did you dream?”

  She waved him off. “Not important.”

  “Okay.” He closed his eyes again, put his arms around her shoulders. But when Simone closed her eyes, she realized the feeling remained. That odd feeling about Chris Hart. How cold he’d looked, taking his shoes off on the hotel room bed, not a shred of anticipation in his entire face. And what was it he’d said when Simone had run out of the room?

  The phone rang, and for a moment she expected to fall into another nightmare, but this time when she looked at the caller ID, she saw her sister’s name.

  “Greta?” said Simone.

  Walker raised his eyebrows.

  “Sorry, I know it’s four in the morning there.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Listen, I just got to the station and your friend Dylan’s murder is on the wires and I wanted—”

  “I’ve got no comment.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Simone, I wasn’t calling to ask you for a comment,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

  Simone swallowed. “Oh.”

  “I had no idea she was Julie Curtis,” she said.

  “You knew Julie? When we were friends, you’d already graduated. You were living in Atlanta.”

  “Yeah, but I came home for a visit, and I went to your spring musical. Hair, remember? Julie played Sandra. Mom told me she was your best friend. Really beautiful girl.”

  Simo
ne said, “You’ve got a good memory. She was great, huh?”

  “To tell the truth,” she said, “the only thing I really remember about that show is that you were stage manager, and I spent the whole time worrying about you back there. Hair is really hard to stage manage. All those cues. . . . Well, I was really impressed.”

  Simone felt herself smile a little. “You’re probably the only person in the audience who was watching the stage management.”

  “Yeah, well. You’re my baby sister. I care.”

  “That’s sweet,” said Simone. She meant it.

  “Anyway . . . it’s really late. I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

  “Wait, Greta?”

  “Yeah?”

  She closed her eyes, took a breath. “I . . . I’m not at the LA Edge. That folded.”

  “I knew that a month ago. I was waiting for you to tell me.”

  “I work for the Asteroid now.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, during which Walker asked, “Did she hang up?”

  Simone started to nod when she heard Greta say, “I could never work there.”

  Her jaw tightened. “I know. Sleazy, huh?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean . . . you’ve got to have guts to work for a tabloid. No one talks to you, you need to go find leads on your own . . .”

  “I didn’t think you’d see it that way.”

  “Simone, I know you think what I do is silly.”

  “No, I—”

  “But I never wanted to be a journalist. I just wanted to be on TV. You . . . well, you’ve always been the brave one.”

  Simone felt herself smiling. “I have?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But I’m still bigger than you and I can still kick your butt.”

  Simone said, “ ’Night, Greta. And thanks.”

  “Good night, Monie.”

  After Simone hung up, she looked at Walker. “She says I’m brave.”

  “Leave it to a cable anchor to state the obvious.”

  Simone smiled, and settled back into his arms, and soon they both fell back asleep.

  It wasn’t until she woke up in the morning that she remembered exactly what Chris Hart had said when she ran out of the room. Where the hell are you going? Not, What the hell are you doing here?