Shooting for the Stars (3 page)

I didn't believe her, of course. I figured the Laura Marlowe story would be just a waste of time for me. Another example of how far my career had fallen since the days when I was always on Page One.

In the end though, it turned out Stacy was right—and I was wrong.

Chapter
3

T
HE
next morning I woke up early to get ready for my appointment with Abbie Kincaid.

I showered, shaved, and combed my hair; opted for an open-collared white dress shirt instead of the T-shirt along with a pair of khaki slacks; and put on a navy suede sports jacket and black loafers. I picked up a large coffee at a Starbucks and carried it with me as I walked into the lobby of the building where
The Prime Time Files
offices were located. I was clean, coiffured, and caffeine-ready for my big moment with the star. I might have even passed for classy.

A very large security guard wearing a red blazer with the network's emblem on the label wanted to know who I was. I told him I had an appointment with Abbie Kincaid, and I showed him my press card. He stared at it for a moment too long. Then he took down my name and asked me to wait while he called upstairs to check.

I waited.

After several minutes another security guard—almost as big and wearing an identical red blazer—led me to an elevator and rode with me to
The Prime Time Files
studio on the twelfth floor. On the fourth floor a third red-blazered guard got on the elevator when we stopped briefly.

On twelve, I was met by a young, peppy-looking, blond-haired woman. She was wearing a miniskirt, a starched blue blouse, and the same red network blazer as the three security guards.

I wished I had one too.

I was starting to feel left out.

She took me into the reception area for the show. Another big security guard was standing there. This one was well over six feet tall and weighed maybe 225 pounds, all of it muscle. His hair was long, pulled into a ponytail at the back; he had a beard and he was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt that said:
THE PRIME TIME FILES
:
DON'T MISS IT
.

He asked for my press card too. He stared at it almost as long as the guard did downstairs, apparently looking for clues. “Lotsa security here,” I said.

He didn't answer me.

“The thing about security,” I said to the guy, “is that it can often be counterproductive. You put in all the security so you can operate your business—accomplish the things you need to do—with a feeling of safety. But then the security measures themselves sometimes become a problem, turning out to be so onerous and time-consuming that they prevent you from carrying out the activities you put them in place to protect in the first place. Eventually the security hassles become a bigger impediment to you in the work-place than the safety concerns which led you to implement them.”

The big security guard looked at me blankly.

“In other words, the cure turns out to be worse than the original problem,” I said. “Do you follow what I'm saying here? Because it really does make a lot of sense.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he shrugged. The guard said I could sit there while he went to find Abbie. Then he disappeared through a door that led to dressing rooms and a sound stage. While I waited, I took out an iPad I'd brought with me and went through the morning
papers—the
Daily News
first, then the
Post
and the
Times
. There was a budget crisis at City Hall, a new threat of war in the Mideast, and a heat wave was headed our way. None of them had any breaking news on Laura Marlowe. Hey, you never know.

At some point from behind the door, I could hear the sounds of people arguing. A man's voice, very loud, and then a woman shouting at about the same level. The shouting went on for several minutes.

Then the door flew open and a man stormed out. He seemed very agitated. He was moving so fast he almost ran into me. I stood up to get out of his way, and we were face-to-face for a second. I could see the fury and the anger there. The guy looked vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place who he was. He pushed past me without saying a word and walked out.

The bearded guy with the ponytail appeared and gestured for me to come inside.

Abbie was sitting behind a desk in her office. At first glance, she looked like she did on TV. She was a few years younger than me, probably in her late twenties. She had green eyes, long auburn hair, and a striking figure like a model—which came across even better in person than on the screen. She was wearing a brown pants suit and a beige blouse that showed off that figure quite nicely.

But as I got closer, I saw that her makeup was smeared and she looked like she'd been crying. She dabbed at her eyes with a piece of tissue.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked.

Abbie shook her head no.

“I could come back later . . .”

“Just give me a few minutes,” she said.

She took a few deep breaths and tried to compose herself.

“I apologize you had to see this,” she said finally. “Not a very elegant way to introduce myself to you. So let's start at the top
again.” She stuck out her hand. “I'm Abbie Kincaid. So glad you could meet with me today.”

“I'm Gil Malloy of the
Daily News
.”

I shook hands with her and then sat down in a chair across from her.

“So who was that guy?” I asked.

“Just someone I'm dating.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Actually someone I used to be dating.”

“That's an important distinction.”

“I told him we had to end the relationship.”

“He didn't seem too happy about it.”

“Tommy doesn't want to, but I do.”

“The course of true love rarely runs smoothly,” I told her.

I couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Do you know him?”

“Who?”

“Tommy.”

“No, I don't think so. He did look kind of familiar though.”

“I'm sure you've heard of his father. Thomas Rizzo.”

I stared at her in amazement. Thomas Rizzo was one of the legendary mob figures in New York. Some people called him the boss of all bosses. We'd done a lot of stories about him in the
Daily News
over the years, and I think a few of them mentioned the kid, Thomas Jr. That's why I remembered his face.

“You've been going out with the son of the Godfather?” I said.

“It's not like that,” Abbie said. “Tommy's actually a very nice guy.”

“Whose father just happens to kill people for a living.”

She shrugged. “Tommy told me the stuff they say about his father isn't true. Besides, he isn't involved in his father's business anyway.”

“Says who?”

“Tommy. He's really different, you know. Went to Harvard. Made the Dean's List there.”

“So what were you two arguing about before I came in? Whether or not he takes you to the big fraternity dance on Friday night?”

“Look, we went out on a few dates, that's all. Nothing serious. It was all very casual. Tommy wanted to pursue the relationship and make it something more. I didn't. I told him that. He came here today to try and get me to change my mind. But I won't. End of story.”

“Oh,” I said.

She gave me a funny look. “What does that ‘oh' mean?”

“ ‘Oh' as in, how exactly do you go about telling something like that to the son of a man like Thomas Rizzo.”

She sighed. “Like I said, Tommy's a great guy. He's going to make some woman a great husband someday. Unfortunately, it's not going to be me. But he's still very hung up on me. That's what that was all about between us in here a few minutes ago.”

She smiled across her desk at me.

“I'm sure you've been in messy personal situations like this at some point,” she said.

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, Abbie, I try not to date the offspring of major crime figures. It's just a little idiosyncrasy of mine.”

Abbie flashed me her megawatt smile, the smile that had won her millions of viewers on TV. Then she told me she was just going to freshen up a bit before we talked. I said that was fine. She took off the jacket she was wearing, hung it on the back of her desk chair, and then went into an adjoining room where she closed the door.

I sat there waiting some more. I was getting used to waiting at
The Prime Time Files
. It seemed to be the thing to do. At some point, I looked over at the brown jacket hung from her chair. It was a terrific-looking jacket. The only problem was a bulge I noticed in one of the pockets. Hard to look fantastic—even if you are Abbie Kincaid—when you're carrying around something that big.

Several minutes passed. I looked at Abbie's jacket again. The bulge in the pocket was still there. I walked over, leaned down, and stuck my hand in the pocket. There was a gun inside. I didn't know a lot about guns, but I can tell if one is loaded. This one was loaded. I put it back inside the pocket.

I wondered if the gun had any connection to all the security I'd noticed on my visit to the place.

Of course, none of it had anything to do with me.

The heavy security around her.

The fact that she was dating a mob boss's son.

Or that Abbie Kincaid was packing heat.

Nope, it was none of my business at all.

Abbie came out of the bathroom looking more like the woman I knew from television. Her makeup was back in place, her hair was freshly combed.

“Well, I'm sure you didn't plan on coming here to talk about my love life, did you?” she said.

“No, that was just a bit of an added attraction.”

“So let's talk about Laura Marlowe,” she said.

“That's what I'm here for.”

“I understand Gary already told you that I'm about to break a big story about her death on my show this week.”

“He did.”

“Did he tell you anything about what my exclusive was?”

“Gary was a little vague on the details of that.”

“I imagine he was.”

“It does present me with somewhat of a problem. You want me to write a story about the story you're going to break. And I can understand why you want to keep the story to yourself. But unless you tell me something about it, I'm not sure what to write. You can see the dilemma I'm in.”

“Maybe I can help you,” she said.

“With the Laura Marlowe story?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Let's go to the movies,” she said.

Chapter
4

T
HE
picture was grainy, and at first I assumed it had been done on a home video camera. But it turned out to be a videotape from a TV news show. I remembered that television was a lot different thirty years ago. Videotapes and VCRs were something brand new back then. The text at the bottom of the screen said:
Laura Marlowe arriving at the Oscars ceremonies—1984
.

Even with the not-so-perfect technology, she looked as beautiful as she did on the movie screen. She was wearing a long flowing red dress, her black hair was pinned up fashionably behind her head, and her eyes seemed wide with excitement. She smiled and waved at the crowd and even stopped to sign a few autographs as she walked up the red carpet that was used for the stars' arrivals.

The screen went dark for a second, and then Laura Marlowe's face came on it again. It looked like the same scene outside the Academy Awards. But everything was different. Her dress. Her hairdo. And, most of all, the expression on her face. She didn't look happy or excited anymore. There was a woman with her this time. A man too, who looked a lot older than her. There were fans again clamoring for her autograph, but she walked right past them without a glance. The bottom of the screen said:
Academy Awards Ceremony—1985
.

“What a difference a year makes, huh?” Abbie said.

We were sitting in a video-screening room next to her office. Abbie clicked on a remote and froze the picture at that second shot of her going into the Oscars in early 1985.

“She looks miserable,” I said.

“Yes, she does.”

“Why? She's got it all. She's rich, she's famous, and she's beautiful.”

“Let's just say there was a lot of things going on in Laura Marlowe's life before she died.”

I looked at the screen again. “Who's the woman with her?”

“Her mother.”

“She brought her mother to the Oscars?”

“The mother created her. Changed the kid's name, signed her up for acting lessons, sent her out on auditions. She pushed her daughter into show business for years before she finally became a star. The mother is the reason she was there with Hollywood's elite that night.”

“What about the father?”

“Long gone.”

“Dead?”

“No, just gone. For most of her life anyway. He walked out on the family when Laura was very little. She hardly knew him. But then he showed up again when she became famous. That's him in the picture walking behind her. Probably trying to cut himself in on a piece of the action.”

Abbie clicked the remote, and a different picture of Laura Marlowe appeared on the screen.

She was coming out of a plain-looking building and getting into a car. The mother was there again. So was another man who I didn't recognize. Laura Marlowe didn't look beautiful or glamorous now. She was dressed in what appeared to be a hospital gown, she wasn't wearing any makeup, and she seemed to have trouble
walking. The mother and the man in the picture were each holding on to one of her arms. There was no cheering crowd this time, just the three of them.

“What's this?” I asked.

“A hospital in California. She was apparently in rehab there. A TV news crew shot this after staking out the place for a few days. It never became public though. Today the Internet and TMZ would have a field day with it. It would go viral. ‘Glamorous movie star fights substance abuse.' ”

The bottom of the screen said June 21, 1985. Only a few weeks before she was murdered. I remembered reading in the clips that she'd been hospitalized during the filming of her final movie. They'd cleaned her up in rehab, sent her back to finish the film—and then she died. There was no happy ending to this story.

“What was her substance of choice?”

“You name it.”

“Who's the guy with her?”

“Her husband.”

“Edward Holloway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What was that marriage all about?”

“Well, he loved her.”

“Did she love him back?”

“Frankly, I don't think she loved anybody at this point.”

Abbie shut off the video, and the screen went blank.

“This is all very interesting,” I said. “But here we are thirty years later, and what does any of it have to do with anything? More specifically, what does it have to do with me?”

“Can we talk off-the-record?” Abbie asked.

“Meaning you want me to agree not to print anything you're going to tell me?”

“That's my understanding of what off-the-record means.”

“I'd rather not.”

“Why?”

“Going off-the-record makes things too complicated.”

“I know what you mean.”

“It's kind of a cop-out for a journalist.”

“Definitely.”

“I really hate going off-the-record.”

“Me too.”

“And yet here we are talking about doing it.”

“Do we have a deal?”

I didn't really have much of a choice. I knew the only way Abbie was going to talk to me was if I agreed not to print it. If I went off-the-record, I'd at least find out what was on her mind, even if I couldn't do anything about it. If I didn't go off-the-record, I wouldn't know anything. Life is a series of imperfect choices.

I told her we were off-the-record.

Abbie picked up the remote again and clicked another shot on the screen. This one was a montage of four different faces. All four were women.

“Do you know any of them?” she asked.

I looked at the pictures. A couple of them looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place them. The only one I knew for sure was Cheryl Carson. She was a country singer. She'd died a while back from a drug overdose during a concert tour somewhere out West.

“Cheryl Carson,” I said.

“No one else?”

“I don't think so.”

Abbie nodded.

“I did some checking up on you,” she said. “It was very interesting. You were pretty famous there for a while.”

“Fame is fleeting,” I said.

“You've covered a lot of crime stories.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know much about serial killers?”

“Serial killers?”

I wasn't sure where she was headed with this.

“Yes.”

“A little, I suppose. Why?”

“I'm working on a story about a possible serial killer.”

“Are we talking about a different story now?”

“How much do you know about serial killers?” Abbie said, ignoring my question.

“I'm not an expert or anything. But I guess I do have some knowledge from stories I've covered in the past.”

“Is there always a pattern that links all of the murders?”

“Sure, that's why they call them serial killings.”

“Tell me more . . .”

I still wasn't sure where she was going, but I was curious enough to play along until I could find out.

“Look, they're all different,” I said. “Every case has unique characteristics. A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why serial killers do the terrible things they do. No one has come up with any astounding conclusions yet. But there are common threads that seem to run through most of them.”

“Such as?”

“The character flaws or moral aberrations that turn a person into a serial killer usually seem to start in childhood. They come from dysfunctional parents. Or families with histories of drug or alcohol or sexual abuse. They've never known happiness, so they have a compulsion to lash out and make the world around them as unhappy as they are.”

“What about the sexual aspect?”

“Yes, sex is a big factor. For most serial killers, the thrill of the kill seems to be the only way they can achieve sexual satisfac
tion. That's why many of them spend so much time stalking their victims, so they can maximize their pleasure out of the event. The killing itself becomes the equivalent of the sexual orgasm. But there's other factors too besides sex. Some serial killers think of themselves as missionaries—they believe they're doing God's will by ridding society of undesirable elements like prostitutes or homosexuals. Others get off on the power it gives them over their victims. And some are pure thrill killers—who get a high from the act of murder just like from drugs or alcohol. After the actual killing, many of them feel depressed or even remorseful. Like an addict who succumbed to temptation and went on a drug or alcohol binge. They may go weeks, months, or even years before the urge to kill begins to overwhelm them again. It's during this period that some serial killers write letters to newspapers or call the police to confess, hoping they'll be caught. But in the end, they keep on taking lives until they're apprehended. There is no such thing as a reformed serial killer.”

“It's always hard to kill the first time, but after that it gets easier,” Abbie said. “Isn't that what they say?”

“Exactly.”

“Have you ever seen a serial killer case where there is no common thread between the murders?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“I've seen a few where I'm not sure what the connection is, but I know there is one.”

“In other words, you just haven't found it.”

I looked at the pictures of the four women on the screen again.

“Is this about Laura Marlowe?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

“You think that the guy who killed her played some role in the deaths of these other women too?”

“I'm not sure.”

“That's impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because the guy who killed Laura Marlowe has been dead for thirty years. He killed himself in a hotel room a couple of days after her murder. I don't know anything about those other women, but one of them—Cheryl Carson—died well after that. I know that for a fact. So there's no way Laura Marlowe's killer could have killed her too, unless . . .”

That's when it hit me. I suddenly understood. I understood the big story Abbie was working on. She wasn't trying to prove that Laura Marlowe was still alive. She wasn't dredging up old facts or speculation or gossip about the murder just to make a quick hit in the ratings. She had figured out the one thing that could blow the case wide open again even after all these years.

“I think the cops got the wrong guy,” Abbie said.