The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (15 page)

Robert snorted. “Of course.”
“What?”
“You were about to tell me something, right? And then you decided to hide. That’s you all over.”
Embarrassment and confusion were burning in his belly, but the actor’s words stoked them into something else. A cinder that was the beginning of anger. It felt better than shame. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“What do you know about me?” Thinking,
Asshole, you don’t have the first clue what I’m going through.
Robert laughed mirthlessly. “Plenty.”
“Yeah? Try me.”
“I don’t think so, Daniel. I don’t really see the point.” He straightened, brushed his hands. “Now, I have work to do. Why don’t you show yourself out.”
“No. I want to hear what you have to say.”
Robert sighed. “You really want to do this?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. She’s gone, so we don’t have to make nice anymore, do we? You want the truth, here it is. I never understood what she saw in you.”
Daniel made himself smile, a thin thing that felt false. “Go on.”
“You’re a nice enough guy. But who are you, really? A mediocre writer in a town thick with them. Not particularly talented, not particularly smart, not particularly brave. The top of the middle of the bell curve.”
Daniel stared him down. “Well, I certainly wasn’t the star of
Candy Girls.
”
“And all the ways you hurt her,” Robert continued. “Exorcizing your relationship demons on national television. Laney playing Emily playing Laney, with you as the puppet master, and who cared if maybe these things were private, she didn’t want them out; this was art! Your drinking. Your distance. All of it.”
The smoldering in his belly caught fire. “Bullshit.”
“Oh, I know you were in love once. A long time ago, Laney told me that your wedding was the day her life began. But you know what I think? I think she outgrew you.”
Daniel’s fingers were curled into fists, the nails biting his palms. He didn’t reply, didn’t trust himself to speak.
It’s not true. None of it is true. You loved her and she loved you. When she died, you tried to
kill yourself
, for Christ’s sake.
“I think that she was getting tired of all the things I always saw in you,” Robert continued. “I think that scared you, because you knew those things too. I think that’s what all those fights were really about.”
“What fights?”
“Sure, revise again. Just forget about all the yelling, erase that whole week before someone drove her off the PCH.”
He never liked you, he admitted it. So you can’t trust what he says.You and Laney loved each other.
“My god. You killed her, didn’t you?” Robert asked in a low voice. “I didn’t. I hadn’t believed it before, but. You did it, didn’t you?”
“No.”
I’m not that man. She loved me. If I can’t believe that, I may as well not have made it off that beach. She loved me.
“You killed her. She didn’t love you anymore, so you—”
Daniel rocked forward and punched the actor’s perfect nose. His hand and wrist exploded, but it felt distant somehow, something to deal with later, and he swung again, sunk a fist in the man’s gut. Robert’s eyes went wide in shock and pain, and he staggered into the trailer wall. Daniel followed, arm cocked back, looking the actor right in his fucking movie star eyes—
—and saw the terror in them.
The anger blew out of Daniel in an instant, and in the void, a terrible sick feeling crept in. What had he done? He reeled back. The room spun. Where had that rage come from? And what had he—he had almost . . . He bumped into the desk, knocking over the framed photo.
“I— Robert, I’m.” He rubbed at his forehead, feeling the pulse throbbing. Think. He had to think. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The man wiped at his bloody nose with a shaking hand. “You broke my nose.” The magisterial tone replaced by a stunned trembling that filled Daniel with shame.
Get out of here. This is not you. You have to get away.
He looked toward the door. If he left now, the man would have every security station locked down. Guards watching. Police on the way.
The sick feeling in his gut grew as he glanced around the room. His eyes stopped on the phone, and Daniel unplugged the cord from the base, then yanked the rest out of the wall. It was about eight feet long. He walked back to Robert, who stiffened at his approach, simultaneously raising his fists and sliding farther away.
“Get out of here, Daniel.”
“I need to tie you.”
“Get
out
!”
“I’m sorry. I just—I couldn’t—the things you were saying, I couldn’t.” He sighed. “I can honestly say that I’ve never felt worse about something than I do about hitting you. But I still need to tie you.”
“No—”
Daniel grabbed one of the man’s arms, yanked it ineffectually. The actor was far stronger than he was, and Daniel doubted he would have had a chance in a fair fight. “Look,” he said. “I’m not going to hit you again unless I have to. But I need to tie you. So put your hands
out
.”
For a moment, it looked like Robert might resist. Then he held his arms forward, wrists together. Daniel lashed the cord around and around, threaded the rest around the leg of the desk, then tied a couple of clumsy knots. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it would do.
“I’m.” He sighed. “I really am sorry, Robert. I . . .” What was the point of explaining? It wouldn’t undo the damage. Daniel walked to the door, opened it, then turned back and said, one more time, “I’m sorry.”
Outside, it was a perfect day, but laid atop the bustling lot and the beautiful people and the bright sky, Daniel could see Robert Cameron’s eyes. See the way they had stared as he closed in. The wet panic in them, the animal fear. Daniel walked for the parking deck as fast as he dared.

Thinking,
It wasn’t the punches. He wasn’t scared of me as a fighter.
He was scared because he believes I’m a killer.
And as he remembered the blind red fury that had taken him, Daniel wondered if it might be true.

or a lawyer,
Sophie Zeigler had remarkably little experience with cops. She was a negotiator, a contract maven, a front-woman, the person who said
no comment
. A hired fountain pen. On the occasions her clients got themselves arrested—DUIs, scenes in nightclubs, drugs—she held their hand, listened to the sob story, and then referred them to a criminal lawyer.

But in the last two weeks, she’d learned an awful lot about the police. Especially about Detective Roger Waters—
I know
, he’d said with a shrug,
go ahead with a David Gilmour joke if you like
—who had called her pretty much every day, asking the same questions. Where was Daniel? Why had he fled? Did he understand the serious nature of the charges? Did she?

She’d put up a stonewall. But it was getting harder to ignore the cracks. The worst thing Daniel could have done was vanish. And there was that phone call, just before he took to the road, his strange, guilty apology for a sin he wouldn’t explain.
He was confused,
she thought for the hundredth time.
Drunk and hurting and confused.

And worst of all, there was the man who broke into her home. Asking questions about Daniel and smiling, always smiling, his face as bland and banal as a supermarket manager’s even when he talked about torturing her.

It was getting to be a bit much. And perhaps sensing that, Waters surprised her at her office that morning. A shortish, intense-looking guy with just-so hair and a blocky suit made blockier by the shoulder holster. Seeing the gun prompted a quick flash to the intruder pulling the pistol from his belt, asking if she watched movies. She fought to keep her face straight. “Good morning, Detective.”

“Good morning, Ms. Zeigler.” His handshake was dry and professional. “I heard about what happened, wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine.”
“You must have been terrified.”
Gee, do you think?
The police who had responded had been very

polite. They had listened and taken notes and wandered around shining flashlights in the locks. But their expressions had been easy to read. They weren’t going to catch the guy. The whole process had taken about an hour, and then the police had left, promising to send extra patrols down her Palisades block, suggesting that she get a dog if she was still nervous. “I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.”

“What can you tell me about him?”
“I already told—”
“That was LAPD. I’m with the sheriff’s department. Sometimes

She ignored the attempt to disarm her, said, “It’s not your jurisdiction, right?”
“No ma’am. But your intruder was asking about Daniel Hayes.”
Sophie leaned back in her chair, studied the man. Most people who walked into her office, those that weren’t in the business, they had a surreptitious voyeurism thing going. They took in the leather couch, the framed poster of
Accelerant
that Phil Hoffman and Parker Posey had signed to her, the picture of Bobby De Niro kissing her cheek, and you could see them wondering if there was a portal to Oz somewhere. Non-industry folks didn’t realize that making movies wasn’t the same as watching them, that a hundred minutes of fantasy took three years of mundane, even boring work to produce.
Waters, though, seemed not to care. Maybe he was a book guy. Regardless, he’d taken in her office at a glance, and his eyes hadn’t left hers since.
“As I’ve told you before, I have no information about Daniel Hayes’s whereabouts, nor have I had any direct communication with him since—”
“I know.” The detective held out his hands. “But what I’m wondering, maybe this guy was involved in what happened to Laney.”
Sophie met the man’s eyes, couldn’t read them. She pressed the intercom button. “Mark, could you bring me a cup of coffee?” Pointedly didn’t offer one to Waters. The tiniest crinkle around his eyes told her he’d caught the move, but otherwise he gave nothing away. “He was average height. In shape. He had on slacks and a black—”
“I read the report. I meant, what was he like?”
She hesitated. “Calm.”
“Calm?”
“Like it was no big deal. Like this was a regular thing to him.”
“He surprised you in the bathroom?”
She crossed her arms. “As I was getting out of the shower. He was standing there.”
“Anyone have keys to your house, codes for the alarm?”
“My housekeeper. A few friends. The man I’m seeing.”
“Could one of them—”
“No.”
“Can you remember what he said to you? Specifically?”
Do me a favor and don’t scream, okay, sister?
Sophie said, “He asked me about Daniel, where Daniel was. He threatened me, told me that he wouldn’t enjoy it, but that he would hurt me.” Her voice mechanical.
“Did he say anything about Maine?”
She stiffened before she could catch herself. Looking up at Waters, she could tell that he had caught it.
Sloppy, sweetie. Very sloppy.
Well, no point bluffing now. “He asked why Daniel was in Maine. If he knew anybody there.”
“And you said?”
“I said I didn’t know that he was in Maine.”
Waters nodded. “I did.”
This time she controlled her reaction. “Oh?”
“In a town called Cherryfield. A little place way up north.”
“I see.” Her mind racing. So much to put in order. Daniel would need a first-rate criminal attorney, stat. The media had already crucified him in absentia; now that the he’d been arrested, the whole cycle would start again. God, it was going to be the trial of the year, had all the elements: sex, violence, money, celebrity. “When will he be transferred back here?”
“He won’t.”
“He’s entitled to a—”
“Daniel isn’t in custody, Ms. Zeigler.”
“I’m sorry?”
“A sheriff’s deputy responding to a Teletype spotted his car and tried to arrest him.”
Tried? What does that mean?
“Your client, you know what he did?” Waters knuckle-leaned into her desk, looking down at her. “He assaulted the officer, then drove his BMW through a hotel sign and led the deputy in a high speed chase. More than a hundred miles an hour.” Waters paused, let his words sink in. “The officer fired on him.”
There was a tentative knock on the door, and her assistant Mark poked his head in, coffee cup in hand, “Here you—”
“Not now,” she snapped. Mark looked wounded, but she ignored him, spoke to Waters. “Did he— Is Daniel all right?”
Waters paused, straightened. He shot his cuffs. “We don’t know.”
Sophie leaned back, put her fingertips to her temples. Flashed on a Thanksgiving years ago, one of her Hollywood Orphan dinner parties for those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, go home for the holidays. Someone telling a joke and Daniel laughing at it, laughing that particular way he did, starting with a hand clap like he was marking the scene. He’d laughed that way as far back as she’d known him. It was a gesture that stayed the same while his body aged around it, while both their lives changed, while time plodded forward. She thought about how seeing that clap and hearing his laughter had given her a glow in her chest that was neither exactly lustful nor precisely maternal, but somewhere in between; a desire to help and protect him and relish the pleasure of his progress.
“Another thing,” the sheriff continuing, relentless. “Daniel had an office, right?”
“In Studio City. He didn’t use it much.”
“Last night someone broke in—”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re kidding. Wait, let me guess. You’re thinking Daniel did it, right?”
“—and when he was surprised by the security guard, beat the man to death with a rock.”
Sophie’s mouth dropped open. The retort withered on her tongue.
“Got your attention now? I understand that he’s your client, and your friend. I do. But this is the second murder he’s tangled up in. So please. Help me.”
“What.” Her voice came out a croak. “Why do you think—”
“The guard was in Daniel’s office. The rock had been used to break the window. Daniel’s fingerprints were all over.”
“It was his office.”
“I know. But it still places him there.” The sheriff sighed. “Look, I’m sure he didn’t want to kill the guy. Probably didn’t even mean to. But you know Daniel has a temper. Everyone he worked with said so. Said he was the nicest guy in the world, but that he could pop, go off.”
It can’t be true. Daniel wouldn’t—he couldn’t— Oh, sweet boy, tell me this isn’t true.
“He yells. He never hurts anyone.”
“He never hurt anyone
before
. But now he’s scared. Desperate.”
“Wait. I told the LAPD officers that the man who broke into my house was asking about a necklace. You know that Laney bought a necklace, an expensive one, the day she died. He’s who you should be looking for.”
The sheriff nodded. “I agree.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely. And we are. But you need to understand. The way Daniel is acting, he’s not giving us any choice. Even if this other guy is involved, right now it looks like Daniel was working with him. Until he talks to us, he’s going to look guilty.”
His words triggered a memory, one she’d tried a hundred times to ignore. The middle-of-the-night panic of a ringing phone. Daniel, his words running together, slurring drunk. Far past crying. Sobbing, the wet and choking sound of raw misery. Of a person torn in half. And barely audible between the shuddering gasps, his voice saying,
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.
She kept her mask in place.
He was drunk. It doesn’t mean what this cop would think it means.
She looked at the detective, calm in his suit, eyes sharp and hard, mind already made up. And she couldn’t blame him. Everything he said, it made sense.
“Sophie. Please. Is there anything else you can tell me?” But Daniel was still her boy.
“It’s Ms. Zeigler. And I have no information about Daniel Hayes’s whereabouts, nor have I had any—”
“Fine,” he said, going rigid. “As you like. But, Ms. Zeigler, you might remember this. You know when people are most likely to get hurt by the police?” He paused, then spoke with careful enunciation. “When they run from us.”
She opened her mouth, closed it.
“I’ll see myself out. But if you really want to protect Hayes, you’ll help me.”