What Remains of Me Page 9

  Kelly grouped the grabber with the others, sent the folder along to Joel, typo and all. “Done,” she said. And then, only then, did she let herself feel the emptiness of her house, the crushing silence.

  She had hoped Shane would call, but knowing where he was, who he was with, she didn’t dare expect it. Instead, when she’d first gotten home she had locked the front door behind her and shut all the drawers in her mind, one by one—Sterling Marshall, Shane, Bellamy. Rocky . . . All those years in Carpentia and those years before. Mom. Dad. Catherine. Everything that led up to today and today itself, all of it . . . Last night . . . And she’d thrown herself into her job.

  Despite Sterling Marshall being all over the news, “Joel” hadn’t offered any words of condolence in his daily e-mail, which in a way was comforting. He hadn’t even cut her any slack on the grabbers—sending her a record twenty-five model pics with a one-line note: Finish today, please.

  She had. For hours now, Kelly had maintained focus, not looking up from her computer, hardly lifting her hands from the keyboard, until she’d cranked out the profiles of twenty-five fantasy females—names, workout regimes, dirty daydreams, secret kinks, clueless husbands . . . twenty-five carefully constructed sets of hidden, powerful longings that could only be filled by the right married man.

  Unfilled. Is that just a weak way of saying empty?

  Kelly clicked on her Internet icon. She hadn’t checked her e-mail since downloading the grabber pictures, and it hit her that Shane may have written rather than called. Shane had never been much of an e-mailer, but today, at his old house and with his family listening in . . .

  She saw Shane in her mind, Shane creaking open her bedroom door in the morning, the weight of him on the edge of her bed, peering at her from behind his camera with those soft black eyes.

  Shane, always watching, snapping photographs of Kelly, of the sunrise, of everything just so he could hang on to it, keep it.

  He’d said that once, after taking a picture of the two of them: “If I could just keep this one moment . . .” But still it all slipped away. He kept losing moments, losing people—both he and Kelly losing everything, everyone, losing parts of themselves so much faster than the rest of the world did, but trying so much harder to hold on.

  Really, when Kelly thought about it, that was the main thing the two of them had in common, and she wished she could hold on to Shane tighter. Maybe she could, now that Sterling Marshall was gone. Maybe she could finally say yes to Shane without that awful feeling, that wall going up, parts of her shutting down, pulling away . . .

  Kelly was older, yes, but she could still get pregnant. And she could keep the baby now. Shane could keep the baby. She closed her eyes for a few moments, tried to imagine what that might feel like . . . Our baby.

  On Kelly’s home page, a new Sterling Marshall headline. She clicked away from it fast and checked her e-mail, hoping to hear from Shane with crossed fingers and clenched fists. Please write and we can start over . . . But there was nothing. She clicked back on her home page and read the headline and her mouth went dry, heart beating harder as its meaning sunk in.

  LAPD: STERLING MARSHALL WAS MURDERED

  She clicked on the story. “Numerous police sources reveal that, contrary to earlier reports, movie legend Sterling Marshall did not leave a note prior to his death of gunshot wounds last night . . .”

  Kelly stared at the sentence until the words started swimming . . . did not leave a note.

  She glanced at the story again. “We are treating Mr. Marshall’s death as an ongoing murder investigation,” the LAPD spokesperson said.

  If suspicions prove correct, it will not be the first time that brutal murder has crossed the path of the Oscar-winning actor. Marshall’s son Shane is married to . . .

  No note. Not a suicide. A murder investigation.

  Kelly got up from the table—the kitchen table, where she’d taken her laptop so she could greet Shane as soon as he came home. Shane, who hadn’t called, hadn’t e-mailed. It was dark out, the only light in the room the glowing screen of the laptop. She walked over to the far wall and flicked the switch. With the room lit up she could practically see him planted there at the kitchen table, that big, pasty cop. Spooning sugar into his coffee as the washing machine clunked away. “Where were you this morning, between the hours of midnight and three A.M.?”

  Kelly steadied herself against the kitchen counter. He couldn’t have known. He was just playing a hunch. If it was any more than that, he would have taken me in.

  Still, she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking, couldn’t get that drawer to stay closed, the one that held last night—the blood pooling on the floor of his study, spattering the photograph of Mary on his desk, the coppery smell hanging in the air. His face, Shane’s father’s face, what remained of it . . .

  And I kneeled next to him. I touched him.

  The phone rang—not the kitchen phone, which was the business number for Shane’s photo archive and not Kelly’s cell phone either, but the one in her bedroom, the landline. The phone Shane always called because he knew enough not to bother with her cell.

  Shane.

  She sprinted down the hall to her bedroom, picked up the phone. “Oh God, I’m so glad it’s you.”

  A woman’s voice replied, a little garbled, reminding Kelly that she hadn’t checked caller ID. “This is Officer Sullivan from the LAPD,” she said.

  No, please. Not yet. “Listen, I already spoke to one of your detectives this morning.”

  “I’m sorry,” the officer said. “Am I speaking to Mrs. Shane Marshall?”

  Kelly exhaled. She didn’t want to reply. “Yes.”

  Sullivan had a slight southern accent. She was obviously young and with such a sweet voice for a police officer—not a touch of sarcasm to it. “I’m calling about your husband,” she said. “He’s been arrested.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Barry slid into the seat across from Hank Grayson. “Haven’t been here for a while,” he said, making small talk, easing in.

  “For good reason,” Hank said.

  They were in a downtown diner called Grady’s—a former cop favorite that had, in the past few years, slid treacherously into hipster territory and landed with a splat. Grady’s had been in a movie a few years back—Aranofsky, maybe . . . Wachowski, Polanski, Buttinsky . . . Barry didn’t know from movie directors, but whatever his name was, an oh-so-cool Hollywood filmmaker had chosen to shoot scenes for some lame cop movie at Grady’s, and that had been the downfall of this once nice, convenient place that served food and alcohol twenty-four hours.

  These days, you couldn’t go into Grady’s without tripping over a flock of bearded numbnuts and their anorexic, tattooed girlfriends, snapping nicotine gum, gassing off about Jack Kerouac and cold-drip coffee.

  Cops—real cops—only went to Grady’s if they were desperate, which apparently was the case with Hank Grayson. He’d certainly gotten there fast enough.

  When Barry showed up, in fact, Hank was already halfway through a beer—a Belgian brand, which surprised Barry a little. He’d figured him for a cheap-American-in-a-can kind of guy.

  It made Barry feel a little better ordering a mocha cappuccino—something he’d sweated about on the way over. He knew he couldn’t grab a beer with Hank—not without risking serious embarrassment. The ugly truth was, Barry couldn’t hold his liquor. Never could. For all his purposefully gained bulk and martial arts training, when it came to drinking he was still the hundred-pound weakling he’d been back in ninth grade.

  “You want nutmeg with that?” said the waitress, who wore a clingy retro uniform and looked very much like Snow White—only with gates in her ears, studs in both cheeks, and a tongue piercing that clicked when she said “nutmeg.”

  “Do you have chocolate syrup?” he said. “I’ll take that if you do.”

  “You got it, Ace.”

  By the time Barry had figured out whether or not that was intended as an insult (it was) the wa
itress was long gone, and Hank was at the bottom of his Belgian beer and gazing dolefully at two muttonchopped idiots at the next Formica table, rolling up the sleeves of their lumberjack shirts to compare tattoos. “There’s nothing sadder,” he said, “than a place that was good, once.”

  “Tell me about it,” Barry said.

  The waitress returned with Barry’s mocha cappuccino and a full bottle of Hershey’s Syrup. “Go crazy, Ace.”

  Hank watched her walk away. “Cute,” he said. “If you like ’em perforated.”

  Barry poured syrup into his cappuccino, took a sip. He felt Hank’s appraising gaze on him and said, “A beer would put me to sleep right now. I’ve been up since dawn with this Marshall thing.”

  “What do you got so far—I mean outside of ME and ballistics?”

  “Surveillance video.”

  “Showing . . .”

  “Kelly Lund.”

  “You sure?”

  “Well . . .” Innocent until proven guilty, Barry. “Not completely.”

  “Did you talk to the family?”

  Barry looked up from his mug, into eyes so sharp they made him jump a little. “You’re talking uh . . . extended family? Because I personally paid a visit to Kelly Lund and . . .”

  Hank put up a hand that looked exactly like Barry’s dad’s hand—big and powerful, with a wedding ring that seemed soldered on. “Barry,” he said. “You’ve been a cop for how long?”

  Barry blinked a few times. “About fifteen years.”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it? Working our job in Hollywood?”

  “I guess.”

  “I mean, every city you work, there’s gonna be people in power—the ones who can get away with things. But here, those people are movie stars.”

  “Get away with things?”

  “I guess it’s not so easy for ’em these days, with TMZ and whatnot.” Hank smiled at him, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Stupid gossip Web sites have ’em all more scared than we ever did.”

  “Sorry, Hank. I don’t think I understand.”

  The waitress was back again. “Can I get you another beer, sweetie?”

  Hank nodded. Once she was gone, he leaned in close. “Back when I was in uniform, I must’ve gone four, five times to this one house on domestic disturbance calls,” he said. “I’d get there, the guy would tell me nothing was wrong, just having a little spat. His wife would be there agreeing with him, her head bobbing away, but I’d see the blood on her, the bruises. Once he’d even knocked out a few teeth. And here’s the thing. This guy was someone I idolized as a kid. It made me sick to my stomach, but he had the power, right? We never arrested him, kept it out of the papers . . . hell, I still can’t even get myself to say his name out loud, and this had to be forty, forty-five years ago.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m telling you this story to make a point. Back in the day, we saw all kinds of celebrity bad behavior—domestic assault, hard drugs you never even heard of, creepy sexual stuff . . . type of thing that’d put you off movies for the rest of your life . . . And seven, eight, nine times out of ten we’d turn our backs on it. Because they had the power.”

  Barry took another sip of his mochaccino, the foam tickling his upper lip. The waitress returned with another bottle of beer. Hank poured it into his mug and gulped at it for far longer than was necessary, and Barry felt as though they were reading from a script, Hank watching him over the rim of his mug with expectant eyes, waiting for him to say his line. “Hank?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re telling me this because of Sterling Marshall, right?”

  “You’re a smart guy, Barry.”

  “Was he, uh . . . involved in anything you had to turn your back on?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “Not Marshall himself.”

  “Someone in his family.”

  Hank took another swallow of his beer. And, for the first time since he’d known him, Barry saw his shoulders slump a little. “Let me ask you something, Barry. That surveillance video. Have you seen it yet?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Louise was the one who was at the family’s house because I was interviewing Kelly Lund.”

  “What did she say about it?”

  “Huh?”

  “What did Louise tell you about the video?”

  “It’s . . . well, it’s short, I guess. A tall woman in a hoodie is leaving the Marshalls’ house.”

  “She said it’s definitely a woman?”

  Barry thought a minute. “I . . . I think so. And anyway, Bellamy Marshall told us it was.”

  “The loving sister.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How long was the video?”

  “About five seconds.”

  “Five seconds. How do you know from five seconds of surveillance video if someone in a hoodie is a woman or a man or a fuckin’ schnauzer?” Hank leaned in very close, his drill bit eyes trained on him.

  Barry frowned at him.

  “Think about it, Barry. The figure in the video. Getting into the silver car. Couldn’t it have been a slightly built man?”

  Seriously? “Hank.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What did Shane Marshall do back then that would make him a more credible murder suspect than Kelly Michelle Lund?”

  Barry’s phone buzzed. He yanked it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. Louise. “Hey, listen can I call you back?”

  “No need, Sport,” she said. (Barry hated it when she called him Sport.) “Just look at the lead story on TMZ.”

  KELLY HUNG UP THE PHONE, HER HEAD THROBBING, UNASKED QUESTIONS buzzing around inside it. Shane had been arrested for assault and drunk and disorderly conduct, Officer Sullivan had said. “Drunk?” Kelly had said.

  “Under the influence.”

  Of what? Kelly hadn’t asked.

  Throughout the conversation with Sullivan, her mind and mouth had been out of synch, thoughts stalling and sputtering before she could voice them. Assault. Far as she knew, Shane had never been in a physical fight. And outside of his nightly Ambien comas, Kelly had never known him to be under the influence of anything . . .

  She grabbed her car keys off the hook near the kitchen door and was reaching for the knob when she noticed the glowing light of her computer. Her heart pounded, body working on its own, sliding back into the kitchen chair. She called up TMZ. They might not have the story yet, but let’s just see . . . I need to see first. I need to know what I’m dealing with.

  Jesus. “They don’t miss a beat, do they?” she whispered. Shane was the lead story. His mug shot filled half the screen, but the mug shot didn’t look like Shane. It didn’t look like anyone Kelly knew, didn’t look like any human being so much as a fictional character, something TMZ had cobbled together in Photoshop to illustrate the headline . . .

  STERLING MARSHALL’S SON GOES WACKO!

  What a headline. What a way to describe Shane—who had just lost his father. To beat him up all over again with those harsh words, that burlesque font. That picture. Kelly stared at the purple swelling under the left eye, the cuts on the tear-streaked face, some of them still bleeding . . . It made her cringe, the idea of so many strangers gawking at Shane’s tears, Shane’s blood. Was there anything more invasive than that? Anything more awful?

  Blood, pooling on the floor of his study, the awful slick feel of it, Sterling Marshall’s blood . . .

  Kelly shut her eyes. Go away.

  She opened them again and skimmed the article, enough to find out that Shane had gotten into a “brawl” with a fellow customer at a strip club on Pico, and that he seemed “druggy” and “out of it.”

  She didn’t need to know more.

  She raced out the door, her bag slung over her shoulder, the slip of paper in her hand with the scrawled address of the police station, clutching it like a good luck charm. Once in her car, the address plugged into her GPS, her foot on the accelerator and the engine rumbling up through the wheel
and into her hands, Kelly tried her hardest to think of nothing but driving, the feel of it.

  For a time, she succeeded.

  THE WHOLE RIDE OVER TO THE WEST HOLLYWOOD SHERIFF STATION, Barry Dupree had one thought in his mind: What kind of a guy would marry Kelly Lund? He’d gotten a pretty good answer out of Hank Grayson, who’d let him know over his second Belgian beer that in 1987 or thereabouts, sixteen-year-old Shane Marshall had consumed half a bottle of his father’s best scotch along with several lines of crystal meth and proceeded to go ballistic on the family’s longtime personal chef, wrestling him to the ground while slicing him up pretty good with a set of sewing shears.

  But that had been a long time ago. By throwing piles of cash at both the chef and the housekeeper who had reported the incident, as well as glad-handing responding officers (including Grayson), checking his son into Betty Ford, and, most of all, by being the all-around, stand-up, Hollywood hero that he was, Sterling Marshall had managed to make the whole thing go away. Shane had grown up, gone to USC, started his own photo archive business, largely without incident—that is, until he said “I do” to the woman who murdered his father’s closest friend.

  What the hell was that about?

  Barry didn’t have a lot of experience with women. He’d had maybe three actual girlfriends in his life—one of whom he’d married and who was now bleeding him dry with alimony payments. These days, he preferred the company of Penthouse videos anyway. But he knew enough. He knew that crazy could be a turn-on, especially to a sheltered wannabe bad boy, yearning to piss off his legendary dad. But to marry crazy, to stay married to it for fifteen years . . . That, in Barry’s opinion, took some serious whackadoodlery.

  “How’s his record?” Barry asked one of Shane Marshall’s arresting officers, a husky guy by the name of Greg Herne with unusually rosy cheeks and a constant sweat-sheen on him, like his temperature was turned up too high.

  “Pretty clean for a Hollywood type,” Greg said. “Just a couple speeding tickets.”