Chapter 8. Grey, the Detective
Grey, the Detective
PRESENT DAY
Grey rapped on the window of Detective Ellis’s station wagon. “I got Simon Markham’s file,” she huffed, dropping into the passenger seat after Ellis unlocked the door. “That was a bureaucratic nightmare.”
“Yeah, the higher-ups don’t really like it when we poke our noses into closed cases,” Ellis said from behind the wheel. “Trust me, I know from experience. I couldn’t even get my hands on Markham’s file—I had to hear about him from another source. The brass must like you.”
Grey was about to ask Ellis who this other source was when she looked around and lost her train of thought.
“Jesus.” Trash littered the floor and back seat.
“Your car is disgusting, Ellis. And what’s that smell?
” It was like something was rotting. Grey eyed the limp, greasy fast-food bags with suspicion.
“Oh please, it’s not that bad.” Ellis gunned the engine and jerked her chin at Grey’s tweed two-piece and heels. “You worried you’ll ruin your outfit? You really are Detective Barbie.”
“Dead bodies are one thing.” Grey gritted her teeth. “But I draw the line at moldy cheeseburgers. You’re going to give yourself a disease. And what’s with all the ripped-up New York Posts and National Enquirers?”
“Research.” Ellis pulled away in the direction of the diner, which had become their spot to discuss the Drake case. It was better if the other detectives didn’t overhear where they were taking their investigation until they had an airtight case.
“Speaking of.” Ellis’s tone turned serious. “I’m just going to say this so you don’t think I’m keeping secrets. I was looking up your background, just to make sure you were … trustworthy, or whatever … and I found your sister’s file.”
Even after so many years, the unexpected mention of Alice stole Grey’s breath.
“She worked at the Serpent Room, too. It was the last place she was seen before—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Grey said quickly.
“But that’s why you work there, right? You let everyone think you’re some stripper chasing money on the side, when really, you’re investigating her case. It’s ballsy. I mean, after what happened to your dad—”
“I said no.” Grey’s voice was steel.
“All right.” Ellis threw her hands up. “Your call.” Grey could feel the other detective’s eyes on her, but thankfully, she remained silent the rest of the way to the diner.
Once they were there, after they’d ordered their usual—pancakes for Ellis, an egg-white omelet for Grey—Ellis spread out their note cards, each representing a person or event in Scout’s orbit.
The picture was still woefully incomplete, but they’d made progress.
Scout was in the center of the web, of course; even though they hadn’t found any direct evidence placing her at the scene of Drake’s or Markham’s death yet, everyone connected through her.
Other fixtures of Scout’s coterie who got their own note cards were the French Algerian model Cybele Laurent, a British fashion designer named Miranda Preston, and even Scout’s lowly personal assistant, Isabel Cruz.
They represented the most consistent threads: Miranda turned out to be childhood friends with Brenda Kellogg, the actress who’d testified against Reese Griffin; Cybele had palled around with Kathryn Burgeon a few years back in London; and Isabel was simply everywhere.
It was a little dizzying, tracking all the ways these pseudo celebrities were connected, but somewhere in that web lurked the truth.
As their waitress set hot plates in front of them, Ellis pored through Markham’s file.
His death had been ruled a suicide, but since the LAPD still investigated all deaths deemed “unnatural,” they had an autopsy and a record of the scene.
“It says Markham’s assistant found his front door open when she came to check on him,” Ellis said.
“No other signs of forced entry. He must’ve invited Scout in. ”
“If Markham was killed by someone, Scout or otherwise,” Grey corrected her. “Then yes, it seems like that person might’ve walked in the front door. No forced entry, just like with Drake. So it’s possible there’s a certain level of trust with our killer.”
Ellis’s Achilles’ heel was that she was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Scout was behind the murders.
When it came to the singer, Ellis acted less like a cop and more like a fanatic.
That was what happened to a person when no one believed them and they were alone with their theories for too long.
That me-against-the-world chip on their shoulder became their whole identity.
It had happened to Grey’s dad when he became consumed with the idea that his own colleagues at the LAPD were working to cover up Alice’s disappearance.
“What I don’t understand,” Grey said, redirecting, “is if Markham and Drake were killed by the same person, and that person got away with making Markham’s death look like a suicide, why not stage another suicide—why make Drake’s murder so obvious?”
“Maybe Scout’s getting cocky.” Ellis’s eyes remained glued to the file. “Or maybe she really hated Elizabeth Drake and wanted people to know the woman suffered. She’s an emotional person, you know.”
Grey frowned, but before she could ask Ellis how she could possibly know that, Ellis whooped. “Here it is. I knew my source wasn’t lying.” She shoved over Markham’s file and stabbed a finger at one of the pages. “Look.”
Grey scanned. The paragraph described where Simon’s assistant, and then later the cops, had found his body: slumped on the floor of his bathroom.
It took Grey a few seconds to see it, and then she let out a gasp louder than Ellis’s.
There was a message written on Markham’s bathroom wall, looming ominously over his body in jagged black letters: YOU’RE THE TOWN CRIER, DAMN FILTHY LIAR.
“The handwriting is identical to the writing in Drake’s bedroom,” Grey breathed. It was unique, each of the letters tall and scraggly.
“It’s written in Sharpie,” Ellis said. “Look at the bottom of the report—they found the marker next to Simon’s body. Only his fingerprints were on it. The cops assumed he’d written the message himself as some sort of suicide note.”
“Whoever killed him could’ve used gloves,” Grey said, “just like when they finger-painted Drake’s wall.
” The evidence team hadn’t been able to pull any prints, but they had found trace residue from latex on the wall.
“Filthy liar must be about Simon claiming he had nothing to do with killing his wife. Poisoning him with the same opiate mix could be the killer’s revenge for Kathryn. ”
The two detectives stared at each other for a moment. Grey’s omelet sat cold and untouched.
“You know,” Ellis said, in a deceptively light tone, “on the motive question, why Scout’s doing all this.
My hunch is it all started for her a decade ago, after her sister was killed at a Hollywood party.
” The detective watched Grey carefully, as if keen to see how she’d react.
“Most people would see a victim in that scenario. I did, too, at first. But now I believe it was the—what do they call it? Original wound.”
Grey could feel her mouth drop open. For a moment, all she could do was blink at the woman across from her. Then the words poured out. “I’m sorry, you’re telling me Scout’s sister was murdered? By who? Why? And why the hell don’t we have the case file in front of us?”
“It was a bad case,” Ellis said enigmatically. “Didn’t go well for us. I’m not allowed to access it anymore.” She waved the problem away. “The higher-ups, like I told you. But I bet you can get it. Her name was Georgia Sage.”
Georgia. Scout had a sister named Georgia who’d died. Grey’s thoughts were scrambled. When Ellis didn’t add anything, she shook her head, trying to clear them. “But I didn’t see anything about this online. Wouldn’t there have been tons of stories?”
Ellis shrugged. “Once Scout started getting famous, she hired a PR firm. You know those people can erase anything. And there’s only one reason she’d want to cover up what happened to her sister.”
Grey made fists under the table. Ellis and her eleventh-hour revelations.
Grey stabbed her omelet, pretending it was the detective across from her.
“You should have told me from the beginning. There’s no greater pain than having a sister stolen from you.
Of course that was Scout’s motive. Losing a sister could make you do unthinkable things. ”
“I guess you’d know,” Ellis said, taking a bite of pancake.
Grey sat with it, reeling. “This is actually real,” she said slowly, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.
Yes, she still needed to read everything she could about Scout’s dead sister, but this cemented it: There was a killer in Hollywood hunting high-profile harmers of women, a killer somehow connected to a pop musician, if not that musician herself.
Ellis’s wild theory was right, and now the two of them were sitting on a ticking time bomb.
When the story broke, people would lose their minds.
There would be no stopping the flood of attention. The whole world would tune in.
For the first time, Grey realized the magnitude of what she was bringing on herself.
Soon she would be scrutinized more closely than she’d been since first joining the LAPD.
Grey liked her job—the puzzle of it, acting as the arm of justice for people who’d been wronged—but that didn’t change the fact that she’d become a cop for one single, terrible reason.
And if she was going to continue to pursue her mission—if she was going to solve a case her colleagues had left cold and redeem a man they’d kicked to the curb, maybe even stab a knife into the heart of the LAPD—the very last thing she needed was the whole world watching.