by Sarah Bailey
Mostly, I never meet the strangers I come to understand so well. Of the two missing person cases I worked where the presumed dead victims were found alive, it was incredibly disconcerting for the imagined people to appear in the flesh. Usually, however, the dead stay dead, but their ghosts remain in close proximity, fully formed in my mind.
I often sense a victim around me, ushering me toward clues. I feel their cool disappointment when there’s no solve; their approval when we make a breakthrough. Murder victims have unfinished business and it is my job to get them the last scrap of justice possible from the world that ejected them so cruelly. The dead people I encounter can be demanding, hijacking my thoughts and putting firm cold fists around my temples. My head can be a crowded place. I wish I knew how to escape it sometimes.
The blare of a horn brings me back to the road in front of us. The traffic has morphed into a long, slow slug and the early morning fog is still stuck to the buildings as if it has something to hide. Next to me Fleet fidgets like a kid.
Speaking with Scott earlier rattled me, and the hours I spent with a strange man last night have both buoyed me and planted a seed of loneliness deep in my soul.
‘Are you getting excited about being at home with the stars?’ Fleet says as he parks the car in the service vehicle spot outside Wade and Lizzie’s apartment complex.
‘Yeah, I can’t wait,’ I reply sarcastically, ‘it’s totally my thing.’
‘Maybe you’ll pick up some styling tips,’ he says rudely, swinging out of the car.
A flush spreads from my chest to my neck. He’s been in a foul mood all morning, barely saying hello and grimacing through our case meeting. I look down at what I’m wearing. My black suit jacket is a size too big and my pants are an unfashionable grey. Fleet, on the other hand, manages to look completely haphazard but cool in faded black jeans and a chunky leather jacket.
‘Quickly,’ he says as if I’m five years old.
My burning face is slapped by the cold air as I get out of the car.
Wade’s apartment complex is one of those old converted redbrick factories—the kind that used to produce shoes or chocolate—now dedicated to the comfort of wealthy young professionals and their expensive things. We enter a painfully stylish lobby with a single globe hanging from the high ceiling on a long rope, burdened with illuminating the whole area. An armchair occupies the far corner and we walk across polished concrete as smooth as ice toward the elevator. A giant mirror reflects our every move—we look tiny, like hobbits creeping toward the edge of the earth.
‘Ah, takes me back to my own modest early twenties share house,’ quips Fleet.
‘Level 3, Apartment A,’ I say, pushing the corresponding buttons. Above, someone scans us in. We ride up in silence, transformed into blurry silver shapes on the elevator door. A ping announces our arrival and we step out onto aggressively gleaming floorboards.
‘Hello,’ says Lizzie in a wavering voice, from a doorway a little further up the hall.
Despite the industrial common areas, the apartment is light and airy. The rooms wrap around a circular courtyard that all the apartments in the complex face into. A large tree grows from its centre, giving the impression of a private oasis amid the hustle, bustle and relentless pursuit of progressive cool just metres away in hipster land. My immediate thought is that the design provides excellent stalking conditions. Depending on how security-conscious Sterling, Lizzie and Brodie are, anyone in the surrounding apartments on this level or above could have let their imagination run wild as they watched Wade go about his life. Maybe someone watched him dress in the mornings. Or watched him with Lizzie. Or with Brodie. Maybe they’ve been watching him for months, fantasising about being closer to him. Harming him.
Lizzie seems lost in thought as she stares at a giant photo board propped on a side table. Dressed in tailored jeans and a neat navy blazer with gold buttons, her brown hair in loose waves, jewellery around her neck and on her fingers, she looks like she’s about to go for a job interview.
I always find it fascinating that some grieving people use clothes as a shield from the pain, taking care to put on their best armour as if the better they look, the more likely they’ll be able to deflect the moments of crippling agony. Whereas others become incapable of grooming, as if spending even one minute on something so trivial is akin to dancing on the dead person’s grave. In contrast to Lizzie, after my mother died I don’t think I looked in a mirror for almost a week. My appearance was the last thing on my mind.
‘How long have you lived here, Lizzie?’ I ask.
‘About eighteen months,’ she murmurs softly.
I walk over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. I look at the photos too. There must be at least a hundred shots. Sterling and Lizzie are in most of them, surrounded by beautiful faces and perfect bodies dripping in designer clothes and jewellery.
Being a detective has altered how I process a new environment. I’ve spent enough time around various forensics teams as they rip through a room and upend a life that I now find myself doing the same with my bare eyes. I can almost smell the DNA that drips from the surfaces, sense the smudges of fingerprints, the remnants of sweat and other unsavoury body fluids. No matter the plushness of a room or the quality of the bed linen, we all leave pieces of ourselves everywhere we go. Even my nasty hollow of an apartment would no doubt provide a decent amount of information about me: my skin, hair and tears already lodged deep inside the cheap sheets and worn carpet.
I feel Sterling’s presence here. His tanned skin is embedded in the smooth sandy floorboards. His chiselled face is carved into the marble-drenched kitchen. Despite the youth of the occupants, the furniture is straight out of the sixties. A huddle of painfully chic light grey couches is dwarfed by giant copper dome lamps. A curved glass coffee table sits between them and there’s a retro record player in the corner. Huge prints of iconic ads from past decades adorn the walls, promoting the virtues of soap, beer and Coca-Cola. A large vase of fading white roses is like a small tree on the kitchen bench. I picture Sterling’s long, lean body stretched out on the couch, perhaps Lizzie curved beside him as he strokes her hair. My vision jumps, and now I see Sterling and Brodie locked in a passionate embrace, arms rising as clothes are pulled off. Kissing.
I shake my head and make the couch empty again.
Lizzie sinks back against the cushions. She seems so much older today; not in her schoolgirl gear but still prissy. Despite the symmetry of her face, she’s not as pretty as Ava. There’s something unremarkable about her: she’s more of a blank canvas than a masterpiece. Still, I feel gritty and plain against her glossy cleanness.
‘Hello,’ says a man’s voice from behind me, making me jump slightly.
Lizzie’s brother Kit has walked into the kitchen. He pours a glass of water and brings it over to his sister, who gives him the faintest of smiles in response. He sits next to her and gives her hand a squeeze.
Fleet and I lower ourselves onto the couch opposite. Lizzie looks at me, her eyes as unfocused as a baby’s. She manages another faint smile. ‘Thank you,’ she says softly. ‘Thank you so much for looking after me the other night. I wouldn’t have coped without you being there. You were so kind.’
‘It was a terrible shock,’ I say. ‘How are you feeling now?’
She opens her mouth to reply but the movement turns into a full-body collapse and suddenly her head is in her hands and she is choking on sobs. Kit strokes her back, staring at the top of her head. After a couple of minutes Fleet stands up and fetches a box of tissues from the kitchen bench. He puts it on the coffee table near her, then sits back down beside me.
‘Where’s Brodie?’ he asks, as she clutches at the tissues like a lifeline.
‘He’s gone out for a walk,’ replies Kit.
‘He’s pretty messed up,’ adds Lizzie. ‘We both are.’
‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, Lizzie,’ I say. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’
‘Yes, I w
ant to do whatever I can to help—sorry,’ she says, taking a deep breath to steady herself. ‘I’m just struggling to believe this is actually happening.’
‘Lizzie, you knew Sterling so well,’ I say. ‘And we are obviously doing everything we can to work out what happened on Wednesday. We’re wondering if there’s anything you can think of that we should know about.’
She raises her head, her eyes drowning in tears. She takes a deep, shaky breath. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sterling never mentioned getting any strange messages from fans? He never mentioned being scared or uncomfortable about anything?’
‘Not really. A lot of people wrote to him online but I don’t think they were dangerous.’
‘What about the other cast members, or the crew?’ I press. ‘Was he close to any of them?’
‘He was friendly with everyone, but not really friends with them. He was actually kind of shy in a way.’
‘He never mentioned being followed?’ says Fleet.
Lizzie lifts her head and some life comes into her eyes. ‘Well, maybe. Sterling did say something about that.’ Her voice breaks a little as she says his name, but she lays her hands out on the coffee table and seems to steady herself. ‘I didn’t think anything of it then, but maybe now…’
I look at her encouragingly. ‘What did he say, Lizzie?’
‘Well, about a fortnight ago he said he was feeling weirded out because he thought someone was following him.’ She brushes more tears from her eyes. ‘I kind of laughed it off because he probably was being followed. I mean, he was a celebrity. People wanted to talk to him and take photos of him all the time. We both got a bit of that sometimes.’
‘But he said this was different?’ I say.
‘I guess so. Enough that he mentioned it to me.’
‘Did he see this person? Describe what they looked like?’ asks Fleet. He slouches in his chair as if he’s watching TV, and I feel a surge of frustration at his sloppiness.
Lizzie looks at us helplessly. ‘No. He just said he thought a guy was following him home one day. Sorry, I wish I had more to tell you. I remember it was the day that he met with Katya March, our producer, about the shooting schedule. They’d been trying to make it work around a trip to LA that Sterling had planned. They met at some bar near our apartment—I don’t know the name but I know where it is. I can show you.’
‘Was it late when they met? Do you remember what time he got home?’ I ask, thinking that we might get lucky and score some CCTV footage from that night, though it’s unlikely. Most small businesses only keep footage for a week or two.
‘No, I got home just before him, maybe around eight. He walked home. It’s less than ten minutes from our place. He’s been followed before but it’s normally just people wanting his autograph. This time he seemed a bit spooked, which wasn’t like him.’
‘Is there anything else you can remember about what he said?’ I press.
She shakes her head, biting her lip. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘We’ll definitely look into it,’ says Fleet. ‘Can we ask you some other questions?’
Her phone keeps buzzing on the couch next to her, but she ignores it.
She blinks. ‘Of course.’
‘Let’s start with Riley Cartwright. Did you know him before you were cast in the movie?’
‘Don’t you want to hear how Sterling and I met?’ Her fingers clench around the water glass and she looks to be on the brink of tears again.
‘Ah, sure,’ says Fleet, sounding momentarily thrown. ‘That’s a good idea, talk us through that.’
‘Well, obviously Sterling’s on The Street, you know, the soap?’
We nod.
‘I did heaps of little roles on it when I was a kid, mainly as a hero extra—you know, a line here and there but not an actual part. Before she died, Mum was very serious about me finishing school before I did too much acting or modelling. But I kept in touch with everyone, did a few stage shows with a few cast members over the years, saw them at events, things like that.’
‘Right, so did you meet Sterling on set?’ I ask.
‘No.’ Her lip juts out and trembles slightly. ‘No, this movie we were shooting was going to be our first job together.’
‘Okay, so then how did you meet?’ Fleet is firm, clearly not wanting Lizzie to turn back into a sobbing mess.
‘Well, one of the girls on The Street, Milla Hersham? She played Rose Flightman.’ Lizzie looks between us again but we are both blank. ‘No? Well, anyway, she had a party at her place about three years ago and I went along. I was so excited to meet Sterling, I mean half the girls there were, but I really wanted to talk to him about work. Acting, I mean. I figured I could really learn from him.’
‘But you ended up really hitting it off?’ I say.
She smiles and then crumples as reality trumps history. ‘Yeah. Not like instantly. We didn’t hook up that night or anything but we kept in touch. He offered to put in a good word for me with one of his mates who was directing a short film. Let me know about auditions, stuff like that.’
‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ I say gently.
‘Yeah. He was the best,’ Lizzie says, twisting her hands together. ‘He was always really generous with his time.’
‘So then you did hook up—when was that?’ Fleet presses.
‘Maybe two, three months later. That September we had our first proper date. I moved in around the start of last year.’
‘When did Brodie move in?’ I ask.
‘Just a couple of months ago. He was going through a rough patch and Sterling wanted to help him out.’
‘Did you mind your love nest being crashed?’ asks Fleet.
Lizzie blinks vacantly. ‘No. We were often home at different times. Sterling worked long days on set and I often worked nights doing plays and short films. It was nice for him to have someone to keep him company.’
I force myself to keep my gaze on Lizzie rather than exchange a look with Fleet. But I notice Kit’s gaze darting around, and I wonder if he has suspicions about Sterling and Brodie.
‘Right,’ Fleet says, crossing and then uncrossing his legs. ‘And how did it come about, you two both being in the film?’
‘Riley had wanted to work with Sterling since forever. They’d been talking about doing a project for a long time. Riley was signed up to direct the movie about two years ago and suggested Sterling for the lead. It was all falling into place but then the funding was cut. Everyone was gutted. Sterling had been talking about moving to the US and figured that if he didn’t have that film shoot to stay here for, then we should just take the chance and go, start auditioning for roles and all that. But then the storylines on The Street got better and he scored a film role so he decided to wait out the year.’
Lizzie is talking fast, clearly happy to have her mind busy and distracted by the past. Her hands have stopped gripping each other in her lap and curve around her kneecaps instead.
‘And it obviously all got resolved eventually?’ Fleet says, leaning forward.
Lizzie moves back slightly in response. ‘Yes. By the beginning of this year the shoot was back on and they just picked up where they’d left off.’
‘No hard feelings?’ Fleet asks.
Lizzie looks puzzled. ‘No, there was nothing to be angry about. Funding falls through all the time, it’s no big deal. Sterling was just happy to be able to still do the movie. And the money was great, more than he’d ever been paid before. Same for me.’ She tugs at her ring again, before saying carefully, ‘If I’m honest though, I think that the movie was a bigger deal for Riley than it was for Sterling. He hadn’t had a decent project for a while and he wasn’t in a great place. I mean, it was huge for all of us but Sterling was starting to get offers from Hollywood. I’d been asked to audition for a few parts too. Nothing was definite but our agents were pretty positive about our chances. I think Riley needed Sterling. Everyone knew that him being cast in the film was why the new investors came on
board.’
I take this in. Did Riley Cartwright like being so dependent on his leading man?
‘What do you mean that Cartwright wasn’t in a great place?’ I ask her.
‘I think he has some problems,’ she says diplomatically. ‘There were rumours of drugs and gambling but it might have been just talk. You have to be careful you don’t believe everything you hear.’
‘Any other rumours about Cartwright?’ Fleet asks.
Her forehead wrinkles prettily. ‘No. He has a temper sometimes but a lot of directors do. I know some people find him hard to work with but he’s always been good to me.’
It seems she hasn’t heard about the sexual assault accusation.
Swiftly changing tack, Fleet says brightly, ‘Were you and Sterling still planning to move overseas?’
Lizzie looks around the room as if she’s worried someone will overhear her. ‘Yeah, after Christmas. Sterling wanted to spend it at home with his parents. We hadn’t told anyone yet. He was still under contract for The Street, and we weren’t one hundred per cent sure when we’d go, but we were making plans.’
Kit keeps his gaze on the floor. He and Lizzie are obviously close, and I wonder how he feels about this.
‘Okay, cool,’ says Fleet smoothly. ‘Now let’s talk about the past few days.’
Lizzie looks lost again, as if she had temporarily forgotten about Sterling’s death. ‘The past few days,’ she repeats.
‘Yes. The movie shoot started on Monday?’
Lizzie leans back in her chair and nods wearily. ‘Yes, we’d been doing rehearsals since June but the shoot officially started this week. We did some inside scenes first, which were kept pretty well on the down low. Wednesday was the first street day and it was always going to be hard to keep it under wraps. We were shooting the main zombie scene on Spring Street when Sterling…when it happened. The plan was to film there for three days and cover it all off in one go.’ Her voice cuts in and out as she tries to avoid crying.
‘And how was Sterling?’ Fleet asks. ‘Anything out of the ordinary?’ ‘The whole thing was surreal. I’ve never been on a production like it. It’s been full on. Sterling was more used to it but I think he was still pretty overwhelmed.’ Lizzie succumbs to a large, shuddering sob. ‘We had so many plans, you know. What am I going to do now?’