Chapter 47
Kitty and Antoinette’s Airbnb, West Hollywood, Los Angeles
I don’t sleep.
How can I? Knowing Antoinette is out there somewhere. With someone who either means her harm. Or has already caused her harm.
Why else would there be blood on her phone?
Why else would it be in a bush with the screen smashed unless it was lost in a struggle?
I’m almost tempted to take Agnes up on her offer for something to help me sleep. But that would be worse. What if something happens? What if there’s news and I miss it because I’m out of it in an artificial sleep? I can almost hear Charlie or my mother reprimanding me.
‘You’re no use to Antoinette if you’re exhausted.’
And they’d be right.
But I’m even less use to her whacked out on benzos or whatever Agnes has in her stash.
So instead I do the only thing that I can think of to do.
I research.
Knowledge is power, after all.
Although I feel the complete opposite of powerful right now.
I’m sitting in bed with my laptop open on a Reddit sub about the WeHo Ripper. This is a different one, one where users speculate about things like motive and patterns.
The villa feels so wrong without my sister, like her absence is a living, breathing thing. It’s too cold and too quiet.
Just me.
And the brutal absence.
The Ripper sub seems like it’s grown since the last time I looked at it. There are so many new threads. None of them are exactly comforting bedtime reading.
I click one titled He Strikes After Dark and scan through the replies, hungry for information but also aware of the sickness it’s causing, the cold bile biting into my stomach.
The post is full of people speculating about when the Ripper likes to hunt. I scroll until my eyes hurt. The one thing they all agree on is that his favourite time is after midnight. And that he stalks his intended victims until they’re walking alone in the dark.
It’s got to be someone that no one notices, one poster helpfully points out. Someone who blends into the background. Like Kevin Spacey in that old movie.
Get that name off of this sub.
Bro, this is LA, no one blends into the background here. No one wants to.
Background artists do. That’s literally their entire point.
Honestly? Its more likely that he’s an influencer or YouTuber. They’re everywhere all at once. They’re like streetlamps. No one pays them any attention.
I reckon he’s a rejected actor with an axe to grind.
Nah. It’s someone who hates women. Who hates women?
Everyone.
There’s a link that I click on that takes me through to a colour-coded spreadsheet.
Jesus, someone has really put time into making this thing.
The women I know about are on there: Alicia, Sofi, Ellie and Juno.
Their last known movements tracked. The places where their bodies were dumped.
Links to their PrivatePool accounts. But I’m shocked to see more names.
Names of women who are missing in Hollywood.
Could there be even more victims than the ones we know about?
Marissa Hale – yoga instructor. Last seen New Year’s Day, early hours, left a house party in The Hills to walk home. Had a PrivatePool.
Talia Shah – model. Reported missing by her boyfriend when she failed to arrive at his house in Fairfax. She’d texted him to say she was five minutes away and was never heard from again. Had recently set up a PrivatePool.
Brooke Chandler – actor. Missing for two years. She was last seen saying goodbye to friends on Sunset. Was very active on PrivatePool and had a large following.
There are half a dozen similar stories and no one can agree if they’re victims of the Ripper or not. The conversation about them is predictably misogynistic.
Nah. The Ripper dumps the bodies at landmarks. He wants us to know he’s killed them. These hoes are probably just junkies.
Or they’ve run off with a sugar daddy.
Or they’ve been trafficked to Dubai and are living that porta potty lifestyle.
Do you think he fucks them before he kills them?
Nah. These skanks are too dirty. He just eliminates them.
None of them are ugly though? I’d stick it in before I choked them.
LMAO. Right?
I wonder if he’s looking for a Robin to his Batman.
The amount of men who want to hurt women never fails to horrify me. After everything I’ve seen. Everything I’ve done. It still chills me to my core. And now one of them has my sister.
I slam the laptop shut, unable to bear reading any more of the vitriol. How are men applauding someone who murders women? And just because the women make content for men exactly like them? It’s so fucking backwards that it makes my head spin.
I suddenly feel very scared and alone.
I pick up my phone and check the time. Just after 11pm.
I do some quick maths. It’s seven o’clock in the morning in the UK.
Would Charlie be awake? I know he would.
He was always a lark and I think I’ve established that I very much am not.
But it was never something that clashed for us.
It meant that he’d make a lavish breakfast before I woke up.
Or he’d clear up any mess we’d made the night before.
Mess we didn’t tidy because we were too busy pulling each other’s clothes off.
I miss him so much.
I want to talk to him so badly.
I want to tell him about Antoinette and how scared I am for her. How scared I am for myself.
I scroll to his contact but, just as I’m about to hit the call button, I remember.
I remember that he’s blocked me.
That he wants nothing to do with me.
I blink the tears away. I can’t let myself crumble. Not now.
But I need to speak to someone.
Not Tor. I can’t burden her with this. Not with everything she’s dealing with.
Not Maisie. She’s probably got her head in a toilet bowl. And she’s growing actual people. I can’t stress her out.
I scroll to my mother’s number instead. There’s very little chance of her being awake but I try anyway.
The phone rings and rings until her voicemail kicks in.
I don’t leave a message. I want to talk to her, not her answering service.
I end the call and stare at the phone in my hand.
The loneliness is a punch when it hits me.
I have no one.
Absolutely no one.