by R. G. Belsky
Of course, none of it had anything to do with me.
The heavy security around her.
The fact that she was dating a mob boss’s son.
Or that Abbie Kincaid was packing heat.
Nope, it was none of my business at all.
Abbie came out of the bathroom looking more like the woman I knew from television. Her makeup was back in place, her hair was freshly combed.
“Well, I’m sure you didn’t plan on coming here to talk about my love life, did you?” she said.
“No, that was just a bit of an added attraction.”
“So let’s talk about Laura Marlowe,” she said.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“I understand Gary already told you that I’m about to break a big story about her death on my show this week.”
“He did.”
“Did he tell you anything about what my exclusive was?”
“Gary was a little vague on the details of that.”
“I imagine he was.”
“It does present me with somewhat of a problem. You want me to write a story about the story you’re going to break. And I can understand why you want to keep the story to yourself. But unless you tell me something about it, I’m not sure what to write. You can see the dilemma I’m in.”
“Maybe I can help you,” she said.
“With the Laura Marlowe story?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Let’s go to the movies,” she said.
Chapter 4
THE picture was grainy, and at first I assumed it had been done on a home video camera. But it turned out to be a videotape from a TV news show. I remembered that television was a lot different thirty years ago. Videotapes and VCRs were something brand new back then. The text at the bottom of the screen said: Laura Marlowe arriving at the Oscars ceremonies—1984.
Even with the not-so-perfect technology, she looked as beautiful as she did on the movie screen. She was wearing a long flowing red dress, her black hair was pinned up fashionably behind her head, and her eyes seemed wide with excitement. She smiled and waved at the crowd and even stopped to sign a few autographs as she walked up the red carpet that was used for the stars’ arrivals.
The screen went dark for a second, and then Laura Marlowe’s face came on it again. It looked like the same scene outside the Academy Awards. But everything was different. Her dress. Her hairdo. And, most of all, the expression on her face. She didn’t look happy or excited anymore. There was a woman with her this time. A man too, who looked a lot older than her. There were fans again clamoring for her autograph, but she walked right past them without a glance. The bottom of the screen said: Academy Awards Ceremony—1985.
“What a difference a year makes, huh?” Abbie said.
We were sitting in a video-screening room next to her office. Abbie clicked on a remote and froze the picture at that second shot of her going into the Oscars in early 1985.
“She looks miserable,” I said.
“Yes, she does.”
“Why? She’s got it all. She’s rich, she’s famous, and she’s beautiful.”
“Let’s just say there was a lot of things going on in Laura Marlowe’s life before she died.”
I looked at the screen again. “Who’s the woman with her?”
“Her mother.”
“She brought her mother to the Oscars?”
“The mother created her. Changed the kid’s name, signed her up for acting lessons, sent her out on auditions. She pushed her daughter into show business for years before she finally became a star. The mother is the reason she was there with Hollywood’s elite that night.”
“What about the father?”
“Long gone.”
“Dead?”
“No, just gone. For most of her life anyway. He walked out on the family when Laura was very little. She hardly knew him. But then he showed up again when she became famous. That’s him in the picture walking behind her. Probably trying to cut himself in on a piece of the action.”
Abbie clicked the remote, and a different picture of Laura Marlowe appeared on the screen.
She was coming out of a plain-looking building and getting into a car. The mother was there again. So was another man who I didn’t recognize. Laura Marlowe didn’t look beautiful or glamorous now. She was dressed in what appeared to be a hospital gown, she wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she seemed to have trouble walking. The mother and the man in the picture were each holding on to one of her arms. There was no cheering crowd this time, just the three of them.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A hospital in California. She was apparently in rehab there. A TV news crew shot this after staking out the place for a few days. It never became public though. Today the Internet and TMZ would have a field day with it. It would go viral. ‘Glamorous movie star fights substance abuse.’ ”
The bottom of the screen said June 21, 1985. Only a few weeks before she was murdered. I remembered reading in the clips that she’d been hospitalized during the filming of her final movie. They’d cleaned her up in rehab, sent her back to finish the film—and then she died. There was no happy ending to this story.
“What was her substance of choice?”
“You name it.”
“Who’s the guy with her?”
“Her husband.”
“Edward Holloway.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What was that marriage all about?”
“Well, he loved her.”
“Did she love him back?”
“Frankly, I don’t think she loved anybody at this point.”
Abbie shut off the video, and the screen went blank.
“This is all very interesting,” I said. “But here we are thirty years later, and what does any of it have to do with anything? More specifically, what does it have to do with me?”
“Can we talk off-the-record?” Abbie asked.
“Meaning you want me to agree not to print anything you’re going to tell me?”
“That’s my understanding of what off-the-record means.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
“Going off-the-record makes things too complicated.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It’s kind of a cop-out for a journalist.”
“Definitely.”
“I really hate going off-the-record.”
“Me too.”
“And yet here we are talking about doing it.”
“Do we have a deal?”
I didn’t really have much of a choice. I knew the only way Abbie was going to talk to me was if I agreed not to print it. If I went off-the-record, I’d at least find out what was on her mind, even if I couldn’t do anything about it. If I didn’t go off-the-record, I wouldn’t know anything. Life is a series of imperfect choices.
I told her we were off-the-record.
Abbie picked up the remote again and clicked another shot on the screen. This one was a montage of four different faces. All four were women.
“Do you know any of them?” she asked.
I looked at the pictures. A couple of them looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them. The only one I knew for sure was Cheryl Carson. She was a country singer. She’d died a while back from a drug overdose during a concert tour somewhere out West.
“Cheryl Carson,” I said.
“No one else?”
“I don’t think so.”
Abbie nodded.
“I did some checking up on you,” she said. “It was very interesting. You were pretty famous there for a while.”
“Fame is fleeting,” I said.
“You’ve covered a lot of crime stories.”
“Yes.�
��
“Do you know much about serial killers?”
“Serial killers?”
I wasn’t sure where she was headed with this.
“Yes.”
“A little, I suppose. Why?”
“I’m working on a story about a possible serial killer.”
“Are we talking about a different story now?”
“How much do you know about serial killers?” Abbie said, ignoring my question.
“I’m not an expert or anything. But I guess I do have some knowledge from stories I’ve covered in the past.”
“Is there always a pattern that links all of the murders?”
“Sure, that’s why they call them serial killings.”
“Tell me more . . .”
I still wasn’t sure where she was going, but I was curious enough to play along until I could find out.
“Look, they’re all different,” I said. “Every case has unique characteristics. A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why serial killers do the terrible things they do. No one has come up with any astounding conclusions yet. But there are common threads that seem to run through most of them.”
“Such as?”
“The character flaws or moral aberrations that turn a person into a serial killer usually seem to start in childhood. They come from dysfunctional parents. Or families with histories of drug or alcohol or sexual abuse. They’ve never known happiness, so they have a compulsion to lash out and make the world around them as unhappy as they are.”
“What about the sexual aspect?”
“Yes, sex is a big factor. For most serial killers, the thrill of the kill seems to be the only way they can achieve sexual satisfaction. That’s why many of them spend so much time stalking their victims, so they can maximize their pleasure out of the event. The killing itself becomes the equivalent of the sexual orgasm. But there’s other factors too besides sex. Some serial killers think of themselves as missionaries—they believe they’re doing God’s will by ridding society of undesirable elements like prostitutes or homosexuals. Others get off on the power it gives them over their victims. And some are pure thrill killers—who get a high from the act of murder just like from drugs or alcohol. After the actual killing, many of them feel depressed or even remorseful. Like an addict who succumbed to temptation and went on a drug or alcohol binge. They may go weeks, months, or even years before the urge to kill begins to overwhelm them again. It’s during this period that some serial killers write letters to newspapers or call the police to confess, hoping they’ll be caught. But in the end, they keep on taking lives until they’re apprehended. There is no such thing as a reformed serial killer.”
“It’s always hard to kill the first time, but after that it gets easier,” Abbie said. “Isn’t that what they say?”
“Exactly.”
“Have you ever seen a serial killer case where there is no common thread between the murders?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“I’ve seen a few where I’m not sure what the connection is, but I know there is one.”
“In other words, you just haven’t found it.”
I looked at the pictures of the four women on the screen again.
“Is this about Laura Marlowe?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“You think that the guy who killed her played some role in the deaths of these other women too?”
“I’m not sure.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because the guy who killed Laura Marlowe has been dead for thirty years. He killed himself in a hotel room a couple of days after her murder. I don’t know anything about those other women, but one of them—Cheryl Carson—died well after that. I know that for a fact. So there’s no way Laura Marlowe’s killer could have killed her too, unless . . .”
That’s when it hit me. I suddenly understood. I understood the big story Abbie was working on. She wasn’t trying to prove that Laura Marlowe was still alive. She wasn’t dredging up old facts or speculation or gossip about the murder just to make a quick hit in the ratings. She had figured out the one thing that could blow the case wide open again even after all these years.
“I think the cops got the wrong guy,” Abbie said.
Chapter 5
THE article I wrote about Abbie Kincaid’s show for the next day’s paper stuck pretty close to the basic instructions I’d gotten from Stacy—Abbie was going to break a big exclusive about the long-ago forgotten Laura Marlowe murder on The Prime Time Files this week.
I used a bunch of teaser quotes from Abbie about how the story would shock viewers with the disclosures and generate big news about the infamous case.
I also included a lot of the background material on Laura Marlowe and her death that I’d researched since it had all happened so long ago.
I did not write that Abbie would reveal evidence showing authorities might have blamed the wrong man for the murder.
Or that there might have been subsequent murders carried out by the same killer after Laura Marlowe’s death.
Or that Abbie had been dating the son of New York City mob boss Thomas Rizzo.
She had shared most of this information with me off-the-record. And I honored that commitment. I didn’t even tell Stacy about it. Partly because I take my “off-the-record” vows very seriously as a journalist. But also because . . . well, I liked Abbie Kincaid, and I didn’t like Stacy. So I kept all the secrets she had told me that day out of the article.
I sure was looking forward to hearing what more she had to say on the TV show though.
* * *
That “wrong man” blockbuster was pretty much all I’d gotten out of Abbie on the Laura Marlowe case. I think she probably realized she’d already told me too much after she said it. I wondered if she’d planned to be that open with me before the interview. Maybe she was just in an emotional state because of the fight with the boyfriend, Rizzo. Maybe she’d taken something in the bathroom that relaxed her enough to let her guard down momentarily. Maybe it was because I was such a friendly, likeable guy who people just wanted to pour their hearts out to. Or maybe it was a combination of all of those things.
At one point, I’d asked her about the gun in her jacket.
“How did you know about that?” she asked.
“I’m a hotshot investigative reporter, remember?”
She smiled.
“Why do you need a gun?”
“In case I have to shoot somebody.”
“Seriously.”
“No reason.”
“There’s always a reason for a gun.”
“It’s no big deal. I just have it in case there’s ever any trouble.”
Abbie talked more about Laura Marlowe’s background, expanding on some of the things I’d read in the bio clips. She told me things she’d uncovered about:
Laura’s mother and how she’d pushed Laura to become an actress since childhood.
Her father, who ran out on the family when Laura was a little girl and then came back to try and cash in on her success after she became rich and famous.
Laura’s first agent, who had stood by her during the struggling early years of trying to make it in show business—a woman who had almost become a surrogate mother to Laura—but then was abruptly fired by the mother as soon as Laura hit it big.
And how Laura—like something out of a real-life Hollywood fairy tale—inexplicably emerged from obscurity to land the part in Lucky Lady that made her an overnight sensation and the biggest movie star in America.
Abbie shook her head at the incongruity of it all.
“Did you ever hear the quote from Lauren Bacall about what it takes to become a big star? Bacall said, ‘Stardom isn’t a profession. It’s an accident.’ That’s what happene
d to Laura Marlowe. Hell, that’s probably the way it happens for most of the people in this business.” She shrugged. “Maybe even me.”
* * *
I tried to push her more on the serial killer angle she’d been talking about, and how it might connect to the Laura Marlowe murder. But she didn’t divulge any more details. The same when I asked her for more details about why she thought Ray Janson didn’t kill Laura and if she had any idea who might have been responsible.
“I’m just curious,” I said to her at one point. “Why did you start investigating the Laura Marlowe case again?”
“It’s a good story.”
“But why now after thirty years?”
“I obtained some new information.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Will you do it on the show?”
“Not this show. Maybe eventually . . .”
“And you won’t tell me who your source was? Even off-the-record?”
“A good reporter never reveals a source, Gil,” she said. “You should know that better than anyone.”
It wasn’t until the end of the interview that she opened up to me again in a genuine way like she did at the beginning.
“I really enjoyed talking with you, Gil,” she said as she walked me to the door of her office.
“Me too,” I said.
“We should do this again.”
“Do what?”
“Talk.”
“Do you mean another interview?”
“No, I mean we could just talk sometime. Like over a drink. Or dinner.”
“You and me?”
“Yes,” she laughed, “that would be the pairing.”
I was having trouble grasping all of this. It seemed as if she was asking me out. On a date. Or something like a date. But that couldn’t be right. I mean she was Abbie Kincaid, the big TV star. She wouldn’t ever want to spend time with a guy like me, would she? Well, apparently she did.
“Why me?” I blurted out.
“I need someone to talk to.”
“You must have a lot of people around you that would love to spend time talking with Abbie Kincaid.”