Chapter 12 #3
Alex poured himself a drink and sat down on the couch, and Mickie sat on the couch opposite and stared at him, feeling that she was in over her head.
He drained the glass of Scotch and came over to sit next to her, and she didn’t stop him.
She half wanted to leave and half wanted to stay.
She wanted to turn the clock back only days to when he was a doctor and he was rich, back to the yacht in the Caribbean and the plane.
She didn’t want to be tied to a criminal, or go to prison herself.
She wanted a lawyer and didn’t have one to call.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her and kissed her, and the next thing she knew they were having wild passionate sex. They couldn’t stop, and it felt like a death dance to her now. They made love until they couldn’t breathe or move or talk, and then they fell asleep in a tangled mass of sheets.
Mickie woke up two hours later and went to take a shower. She was awake all night, thinking about him while he slept.
She had to go to the police. She wore the same clothes she’d worn to the arraignment the day before.
All her clothes were at the house in Bel Air, which she and Alex had no access to now.
She needed a lawyer to help her get out of this mess.
Then she remembered that one of Alex’s patients was an attorney whom Mickie had talked to several times while she waited for her Botox shots.
She went to the living room of the suite, got the number from information, and called her.
Her secretary came on the line and put her through to Patricia Scott. She sounded calm and kind on the phone.
“I was hoping you’d call me,” she said smoothly. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Mickie said, with a trembling voice.
“How’s Alex? I saw the paper.”
“He’s a mess. And I swear I never knew.”
“I figured. No one did. He’s incredibly good at what he does. He probably believed it all himself after a while.”
“I have to go to the police this morning. Will you come with me?” Patricia had a full calendar, but she wanted to help Mickie. She was young, innocent, and in a terrible situation.
“Yes, I will. I just have office appointments. I’ll have my assistant cancel them.
Where do I meet you?” Patricia wrote it down and thought of something she wanted to ask Mickie, now that some of the lies had been exposed.
She was sure there were others. “How old are you really, Mickie?” Thirty-three had never rung true to her, even though Mickie was mature and dressed the part.
“I just turned twenty,” Mickie said in a small voice.
“I thought it might be something like that. Let’s get you out of this. Is there anything else I should know?”
“Not really.” Mickie couldn’t remember her own lies now, or even his. They had seemed true at the time.
“I’ll see you at the police station in an hour. Don’t start talking until I get there.”
When Mickie got off the phone, Alex was awake. He looked as exhausted as she felt.
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, I have to talk to the police this morning. I just spoke with Patricia Scott. She’s going to meet me there.”
“She’s a nice woman. I’m sorry, Mickie. This is such a mess. I never thought it would blow up like this.”
“Yeah, neither did I.” She realized now that she didn’t love him.
She never had. And he didn’t love her. They had used each other and it got out of hand.
She couldn’t stand her sister, but she’d been right.
Billie had sensed something off with Alex since the beginning.
Mickie never had. All she could see were the diamonds in the sky, and she wanted to get them and grab them while she could.
Alex had made it so easy to do that. She didn’t care how many lies he told or how he bent the truth.
He was doing the same thing she was. But she had never hurt anyone, and he had.
She wasn’t sure that she would see him again.
She didn’t want to come back to the hotel.
He was going to prison, and there might be a trial.
It felt like this was the end. She wanted to get all her pretty clothes out of his house, but she didn’t know how.
Maybe Patricia Scott would help. Alex couldn’t help her anymore.
And what would they do now until he went to prison?
She wasn’t an ambassador anymore. He wasn’t a doctor.
She hated to have Billie be right. She and Jason were so smug and so sure.
Mickie didn’t want to go crawling back to her.
She had to figure out something for herself.
At least she had the hundred thousand dollars in the bank that Alex had given her not to go back to school, when she lied about Stanford. It was all she had now.
She didn’t feel guilty about lying to him. And she didn’t feel sorry for him. She didn’t feel anything except sorry for herself.
“The police took everything,” he told her, looking bleak. “Will you stay at the hotel with me?” he asked her, looking tragic.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what to do now.” She could go back to modeling, but she didn’t want to. She had liked being with him, but she didn’t like the way it ended, or what would happen now.
“What are you going to tell the police?”
“I don’t know anything about the treatments you give your patients,” she said to reassure him. “And I believed you were a doctor.”
“Thank you. I’ll walk you out,” he offered. She had called an Uber and it was ten minutes away. She was going to ask the police if she could take her clothes out of Alex’s house. He had bought most of them, but he had given them to her.
They walked side by side down the winding paths of the hotel grounds to the wide walkway at the entrance, and she stepped into the driveway.
There was a white car with two men in it parked across from them, waiting for someone.
Mickie thought it was her Uber, except for the man in the passenger seat, and as he opened the door and stepped out, Alex pushed her away, and the man came straight for him, shot him twice in the chest and once in the head, and jumped back in the car as Mickie stood in the driveway covered in blood.
Alex lay in a pool of his own blood as people ran to him, someone screamed, and the car sped away.
Nobody thought to stop it. They were all crowded around Alex and he was dead, with part of his head blown away and his chest wide open.
Two people were holding Mickie up as she started to faint, and there was blood splashed all over her face and arms and in her hair.
All she had seen were two men in the white car, and Alex had pushed her away as one started shooting, and then they were gone.
They sat her down on the ground, and then she heard sirens.
There were police everywhere and an ambulance came, and they put a tarp over Alex.
The police closed the entrance to the hotel, as it was a crime scene, and redirected people to the side entrance. They led Mickie inside to a chair and gave her a glass of water. She was shaking all over, and they took her to a room to lie down.
Lieutenant Dan Kelly was waiting for Mickie when the sergeant at the reception desk came to tell him that her attorney was waiting outside at the front desk, and at the same moment he got a call on his emergency line.
He closed his eyes and shook his head and told the sergeant to bring the lawyer in.
He listened for a moment and spoke into the phone he was holding.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Get the hotel video, names of witnesses. Keep the girl there. Is she hurt? Fine,” Kelly said, and hung up as Patricia Scott walked into the room. She was a nice-looking businesslike woman in her fifties. She looked at him pleasantly.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I didn’t want to disturb you. I’m waiting for Michaela Banks. I’m her attorney, Patricia Scott.” Kelly stood up to acknowledge her and sat down again.
“I’m afraid we have a situation. Apparently, Michaela Banks was at the Beverly Hills Hotel with Alex Addison.
There was a shooting five minutes ago. Addison is dead.
She’s uninjured but in shock. She was standing next to him when he was killed.
Two men in a car, one jumped out and shot him at close range in the head and chest, and they sped off.
We’ve closed the entrance to the hotel, but they got away.
It all happened very fast, execution style.
We can see it on the hotel cameras. I’m afraid I need to go over there.
Do you want to go with me and see Ms. Banks, or be there when she speaks to us? ”
“Yes, I’d like that. The poor kid has been through a lot.”
“Is she a kid?” he asked. “I was told she’s in her mid-thirties.”
“I believe Alex Addison told people that so they’d think he had worked miracles on her. She just turned twenty.” She threw Alex under the bus for Mickie’s sake. He was dead now anyway, so it didn’t matter, and she wanted to play the youth card for Mickie. Dan Kelly groaned as he stood up.
“I have a daughter the same age,” he said.
“They get in one mess after another. They say she’s pretty badly shaken up by the shooting.
” He led the way to the emergency door to the garage.
A police driver was waiting for him, and he got in the front seat and directed Patricia Scott to the back seat.
They took off in seconds, with the red light flashing and the siren on.
They were at the hotel in six minutes, and the police on the scene conferred with Kelly for a moment.
Alex’s body was still on the ground covered by a tarp, an ambulance was waiting to take him to the morgue, and police were keeping bystanders away.
They were putting up yellow tape to mark it as a crime scene.
The press were arriving. A TV network news van had just appeared, and reporters would be there in minutes.