by Lisa Seidman
My head throbbed from where I had beaned myself, but the pain was remote, something I noticed impersonally while I tried to breathe around my hammering heart.
“I left the calendar under the desk over there,” I told him, motioning toward the piece of furniture I had just hid under. It was a lie, of course. I actually had no idea where the calendar was. After hitting Patrick with it back in the bullpen, I must have dropped it during my pell-mell flight down the writers’ corridor.
“I would be very honored if you would retrieve it for me, milady.”
Patrick, completely in Cloud Cuckooland, started to make one of his wide, sweeping bows. I bent down, picked up the light pole, and swung it at him. The pole was unwieldy and heavier than I expected, but I managed to crack him in the knees with it. I heard his “Ugh!” as he folded neatly to the floor. I dropped the pole like a hot potato and took off once again for the more familiar terrain of my warehouse and the front door, still holding onto my shoes as if they were sacred talismans.
I ran back in the direction of the basketball court, having finally found my voice and screaming my bloody lungs out, although no one, except Patrick, was around to hear me.
I suspected Patrick was merely stunned, and that I had only bought myself a matter of seconds. He’d catch up to me before I made it to the front—and if he didn’t, I had no idea whether the door was locked or not, and if it was, whether I’d have time to find my keys, unlock the door, and run out before he grabbed me. There was only one chance left, and although I knew that too many aspects about my plan could go wrong, it was the only thing left I could think of to try.
Still screaming for help, I raced for the writers’ warehouse. But instead of crossing over the plank, I carefully dropped down from it into the pit below. The drop was a little over five feet and I sat down on the plank and used my arms for leverage to move into the pit. I landed with knees braced and bent, my head barely reaching the top of the newly-built cement walls. Now I screamed deliberately to cover the sounds of my slowly removing the plank from its perch. A six foot, narrow piece of plywood, the plank wasn’t very heavy, and it was easy enough to lift into my hands and maneuver into the pit with me. I tried to hold it like a battering ram, although, like the lighting pole, it was heavier and more unwieldy than I expected.
I still kept screaming, deliberately alerting Patrick to my whereabouts. I didn’t think about the consequences if my plan failed. I only knew that I would fight until my last ounce of strength was gone. Still holding the plank, I backed a few feet down the pit, the cement floor damp and hard against my stockinged feet. Groping around the floor while I screamed until my voice was hoarse, I found what I needed, and although it felt like hours, it must only have been seconds before a shadow appeared in the basketball court and raced toward me. I immediately clammed up, gripped the plank awkwardly with one arm, and threw a screwdriver left behind by one of the construction workers onto the floor of the other warehouse. It made a clattering sound far enough away for Patrick to think I had crossed to the other side of the building. I could only hope he’d be too determined to kill me to notice that the plank was missing.
I hoped correctly. As soon as he heard the rolling screwdriver, he raced toward the edge of the warehouse, looking too late for the plank, and falling head first into the pit. He tried to brace himself, but he landed painfully on his knees. I heard a crunch and a sharp intake of air before he fell over on his side, his arms wrapped around both knees. I stood frozen in place, the plank still clutched between my hands, my heart twisting at the sound of his sobs.
Amazingly, he tried to crawl toward me, still intent on killing me. Enough already, I thought, more angry than frightened that this man was acting like The Terminator, refusing to quit until he killed me. It was that anger that helped me grasp the plank firmly in both hands and deliberately slam it against Patrick’s head. I heard a soft, almost surprised, “Oh,” before he finally slid into unconsciousness.
2.
It was, of course, the engagement calendar that gave him away. The day of her death, Rebecca had been forced to answer the phones because I was sitting in my car, angry over not getting a script assignment, and Jennifer was in Sandy’s office listening to Sandy tell her she was on probation. Patrick had made one of his usual appointments with Rebecca for ten o’clock the next day, which Rebecca reported to me and which I recorded in my calendar. Zack had overheard the conversation, having been with Rebecca at the time, and it was the memory of this, during our conversation with Patrick at Rebecca’s memorial service that tipped him off and led to his death.
Because Patrick never showed up for that appointment. He knew Rebecca was dead. He didn’t even call to cancel but remained instead on location, away from the central focus of the investigation. A cooler murderer would have claimed to have forgotten the appointment, although I might still have been suspicious, since Patrick never forgot any of his meetings with Rebecca; he always called to cancel if he couldn’t make it.
Of course, unlike the murderers caught in the detective novels I loved to read, Patrick didn’t confess a thing. Even when the police and ambulance arrived, as well as Craig, whom I had called from my cell once I was safely out of the warehouse, Patrick remained mute. At the time, the cops could only arrest him for assault, even though Patrick was the one who was physically assaulted. I had survived the ordeal shoeless, trembling, and with a bump on my head from my crash into the light pole. But the evidence, now that the police knew where to look, was soon to follow. I was able to piece the story together on my own, which I was happy to share with Detectives Wagner and Lu, who arrived on the scene shortly after the uniformed cops and ambulance. We spoke in the parking lot of the warehouse. Patrick had cut the wires of the electrical system which were located right next to the supply closet, and the forensics team was examining the damaged wires to include as additional evidence. Craig, who had raced into the parking lot in his mud-stained Jeep Wrangler, refused to leave my side, which was heartwarming—although I suspected his real motive was to prevent me from getting into any more trouble. We all stood under one of the parking lot lamps so Lu could take notes of my explanation of the events leading up to the two murders.
“It was common knowledge Patrick wanted to direct an episode,” I began, trying not to look at Wagner who was staring at me. “I even saw Rebecca bring his director’s reel to Ray the night of her death. She was giving Ray a rundown of all the possible directors and scriptwriters for the show.”
“Yeah, I remember you telling me this,” Wagner interrupted. Lu briefly rubbed his eyes, his face a sickly yellow underneath the streetlamp. Craig’s looked just as bad, and I suspected mine looked no better.
“Anyway,” I went on, “I went back to her office a couple of days later, and Patrick’s DVD wasn’t among those on her couch. But I didn’t notice. I just realized I didn’t recognize any of the names on the DVDs or scripts. Patrick must have taken his DVD when he came back to the warehouse and killed Rebecca.”
“Is that really proof?” Craig asked. I answered his question before the cops could.
“Maybe not that he killed her,” I said. “But since I saw her going into Ray’s office with the DVD, and then there was no DVD after she died, it’s proof at least that Patrick saw her at some point during that time and took it with him.”
“Unless of course it’s in Goldfarb’s office,” Lu said.
“No.” I turned to him. “I was in Ray’s office the day after her death. There weren’t any DVDs around, not even dailies. I’ll lay odds that Patrick’s reel is either in his office or at home.”
The cops found it in his office later that night, and the DVD turned out to be a key piece of evidence in Patrick’s case, but at the moment the detectives were concerned about other things.
“Why would Hager suddenly come back to Ms. Saunders’ office, kill her, and steal his own DVD?” Lu asked, still skeptical.
“When Rebecca met with Ray about possible directors and writ
ers, she probably deep-sixed Patrick. Ray actually went to location instead of straight home. Like I told you all along,” I said, glaring at Wagner who didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. “I’ll bet you anything Ray told Patrick about not using him as a director. Everyone on the show knew Rebecca made those decisions for Ray; it was the reason Patrick was kissing up to her in the first place. So Patrick probably called Rebecca, told her he wanted to talk to her, and Rebecca told Sherman not to lock up because she was expecting a visitor. Patrick has keys to all the locks, but he doesn’t need to carry a key to our front door with him since he always uses the entrance to the production side of the warehouse.”
Wagner and Lu exchanged one of their unfathomable glances. “We know about Mr. Goldfarb going to location,” Wagner said. I looked at him in surprise and he actually smiled back at me. “You thought I wasn’t listening to you. But as soon as you said Goldfarb lied about his alibi, we did some checking. It was easy enough to discover he hadn’t gone straight home.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“Because, as I kept trying to tell you,” he explained impatiently, “this was not your case.”
“She solved it for you, though,” Craig said, and I looked up at him gratefully. He had not only placed his UCLA letter jacket around my shoulders to protect me from the cold night air, but he’d loaned me his thick white socks to wear over my shredded stockings so that the graveled parking lot didn’t cut into my feet.
“We would’ve gotten there eventually, Mr. Keefer,” Lu said.
“Then you know about Ray and Gail,” I said to the two detectives.
Wagner answered. “We know that they left the set together. The make-up woman confirmed it. But we couldn’t trace their whereabouts after that.”
“They were here,” I said. “Sandy Martin can vouch for that.”
Wagner raised his eyebrows. “She can?”
I snapped my jaw shut. I would do my friends a world of good if I kept it permanently wired.
“That’s not important,” I said. “What is, is that Patrick killed Rebecca in a fit of rage because she wouldn’t go to bat for him about the directing gig. Then he killed Zack because Zack figured it out.” I explained about Zack’s realization after Rebecca’s memorial service. Both detectives nodded thoughtfully.
“Now that we know what to look for,” said Wagner, “fibers from Ms. Saunders’ car will probably match fibers from what Hager was wearing on the days he killed her and Mr. North.”
Craig spoke up once again. “And don’t forget his trying to kill Susan. If that doesn’t tie him into the murders, I don’t know what does.”
I squeezed Craig’s arm, and he looked down at me, concern so evident in his eyes, I caught my breath. Could it be possible his feelings for me had grown? But before I could examine that further, Lu interrupted my thoughts.
“And what are you doing here?” Lu asked.
Craig looked at Lu without flinching. “Susan called me after she called you.” Then, simply, spoken more to me than to the detectives, he added, “I was worried about her.”
He put an arm around my shoulders and held me close to his body. I could smell the scent of his aftershave, feel the thrumming of his heart through his sweatshirt. I wanted to cry … with happiness and relief. Then I caught Wagner’s amused glance, and blushed.
“How did you get out of the warehouse?” Unlike Wagner, Lu was not interested in a blossoming romance in the midst of murder.
“Easy,” I said, happy to change the subject. “After I whacked Patrick on the head, I couldn’t climb out of the ditch. So I ran down it and found a sheet of plastic hanging between the two buildings. I just went behind it and found myself outside.”
What I didn’t tell them was how I had broken down and cried, after calling the police and then Craig, sitting on the front steps, until the first cop car arrived.
Which reminded me …
“Patrick probably stole Rebecca’s Escalade after he killed her,” I told Lu and Wagner. “Zack made a lot of phone calls the day he died—when he started to suspect that Patrick was guilty of Rebecca’s murder. I bet if you check Zack’s phone records, you’ll see Patrick was one of the people he called.” “Patrick drove to Zack’s house in Rebecca’s Escalade the Sunday after the memorial service. He knew Zack suspected him of killing Rebecca. He planted the car in Zack’s garage to frame Zack. Maybe he hoped to knock out Zack and kill him then. But maybe he didn’t get the opportunity. So he went back on Tuesday. Miranda told me Patrick was on the phone with her in his car the morning of Zack’s death when he should’ve been at work. So he doesn’t have an alibi.”
Lu jotted this down and Wagner nodded. “Thanks. That should help.”
3.
Evidence slowly came in implicating Patrick in both murders. Crew members spotted him leaving location as production wrapped which, when timed out, put him at the warehouse just after Ray and Gail had left. Fibers in Rebecca’s car matched the jacket Patrick wore when he killed her. A cab company had a record of picking up a passenger matching Patrick’s description on Ventura Boulevard, close to Zack’s house, and dropping him off on Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles, near Patrick’s condo. We even learned that Patrick planted the lesbian article in the Scoop, having taken the picture of Gail and Rebecca at the show’s Christmas party, then giving it to the paper in order to disrupt the show and confuse the murder issue even more.
Michael Keller, when finally tracked down, admitted that Patrick had asked him to “fix” the sprinkler system so that a pipe would burst over my desk. Patrick paid him in cash, claiming it came from the B&B discretionary budget and promising him a job on the set, which is why Keller referred to him as “the boss.” Not wanting to simply steal my desk calendar, with the incriminating ten o’clock appointment, Patrick hoped the flood would destroy it in a way that wouldn’t cause me to think twice about his missed meeting. It was unfortunate for him that I had decided to save the calendar instead of throwing it out.
Zack’s autopsy revealed a slight bruising above his left ear that proved he was hit on the head before being placed in Rebecca’s car. To avoid the death penalty, Patrick unexpectedly pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter and one count of murder. He made a full confession that confirmed my theory of the events leading up to both Rebecca’s and Zack’s deaths, and was given a life sentence, due for parole in fifteen years.
Jennifer tackled Charles about his argument with Ray that I had overheard in Ray’s office the day after Rebecca’s death. Charles admitted that he knew about Ray’s affair with Gail as well as Rebecca trying to blackmail Ray into a promotion. Charles had demanded that Ray stop seeing Gail, feeling it was destroying the morale of the show. Ray adamantly refused.
When confronted by the police, Ray admitted to seeing Rebecca the night of her death. He said he had told her he had decided not to promote her because Gail and he had decided to go public with their relationship. Wagner told me this, unofficially, as a thank you, I suppose, for inadvertently speeding up the process of catching Patrick.
“Besides,” he grumbled to me as I sat across from him in an interview room at the Hollenbeck station, giving him my official statement, “you’d have found out anyway and ended up telling me. This way I get to one-up you.”
He smiled at me and I couldn’t believe I had once found him frightening or without personality.
Ray eventually hired two other staff writers, a man and a woman, to help take over the writing load. Although the show never again received a twenty-five share, it still remained in the top ten. The media eventually found out about Ray’s and Gail’s affair, Winifred sued for divorce, and Ray moved in with Gail.
I stayed on at Babbitt & Brooks, and, encouraged by Charles, who seemed to want to be my mentor, started writing a B&B spec script about the ladies being stalked by a murderer. Charles’s agent called to say he liked my Dress Blue spec and looked forward to reading the one for B&B when I finished it.
In the meantime, he’d treat me as a “back pocket” client, which meant he wouldn’t sign me to a contract, but would send my scripts out to any show that seemed appropriate.
To offset my joy at this piece of good news, Jennifer and I never really got back to our old, easy friendship. It was my fault. Like learning your partner has cheated on you, I could not forgive and forget Jennifer’s sending the two death threats. Jennifer realized what was going through my mind, but let it rest, mainly, I think, because I never told anyone else about what she did. Patrick, of course, denied sending the threats, and since the detectives never found evidence that he had, they eventually dropped the matter. It stayed between Jennifer and me, unspoken, but always in our minds. Sandy remained friends to us both and wisely never interfered.
Sherman checked in briefly to say he found another night watchman job and that his band was practicing for a major gig at Harvelle’s, a blues club in Santa Monica. He promised to let me know the date so that I could come, but he never called me again.
My parents eventually got over the shock of my having been chased by a murderer (giving them the G-rated version of that night helped enormously), and Craig and I … well, we’re taking things slowly. Craig did finish his book, which he showed to me. It was pretty good, and he’s currently rewriting it before taking it to New York to try and sell it. My Florida grandmother sent me some money to “tide me over,” while my Nazi-fighting Buby didn’t seem the least bit surprised when I told her I had successfully defeated a murderer.
“Of course you did,” she said. “You have my genes. We’re good at things like that.”
THE END
About the Author
Lisa Seidman began her television career writing for the primetime serials Falcon Crest, Dallas, and Knots Landing, as well as Cagney & Lacy, Murder, She Wrote, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. For five years, Lisa was the head writer on the phenomenally successful, award-winning Russian primetime serial, Poor Anastasia, as well as Sins of the Fathers, Talisman of Love, and the Russian adaptation of Betty La Fea (Ugly Betty in the U.S.). She received an Emmy nomination for her work on Guiding Light as well as Writers Guild nominations for Guiding Light and Sunset Beach. After a year writing for One Life to Live, she returned to Moscow as the head writer of One Night of Love, which was nominated for an International Emmy Award.