Dead to Me (29 page)

And my father deserved to be punished for what he’d done, but not like this. Not while murderers like Conrad and Rex and Hanrahan went free and everything else stayed the same. The
parties, the pictures, the girls, and the horrible things that happened to them—none of that would change.

I’d found Gabrielle, but it hadn’t even mattered. It would have been better if I’d never even looked.

I tried to tell myself that she was young and scared, that it wasn’t fair to blame her for this.

I tried to tell myself that. But it didn’t sit well.

Gabrielle wasn’t too young and scared to run away from home, to live on her own, to slip through Rex’s fingers time and time again. She didn’t give up when she was trapped in
Conrad’s car in the middle of nowhere, Irma’s body locked in the trunk.

No, she’d made up her mind that she was going to live.

Deciding had been the easy part. She lay on her stomach across the floorboards of the Rolls-Royce, feeling half sick as Conrad chuckled to himself in the front seat.

“I haven’t forgotten about you, you know.”

Gabrielle didn’t know where they were. At first she’d tried to keep track of each turn, but the roads were so hilly and winding that she quickly lost track of which direction they
were going in. It didn’t matter now, though. She could just get up from the floor and see for herself. Gabrielle sat down on the long leather seat next to the passenger-side door.

“It was very thoughtful of you to stay here,” Conrad said. “Not very smart, but very thoughtful.”

There was no sense in answering, so Gabrielle didn’t. Instead, she looked around for landmarks and road signs. All she could tell was that it was one of the many low, scrubby mountain
ranges around the city, perpetually brown and burned-looking. She couldn’t tell them apart, especially not in the dark.

Conrad had noticed her looking out the window and said, “I wouldn’t start getting any ideas now.”

“If I thought about what I was going to do next, I knew I’d never go through with it,” Gabrielle told me as we sat huddled together in the janitor’s closet. “It was
so dark I could only see right in front of us. I didn’t know whether there was a shoulder on the side of the road or a cliff.”

Don’t think
, Gabrielle had told herself, and when Conrad downshifted to climb a hill, she threw open the rear suicide door. She’d heard that gangsters liked cars with doors
like these for exactly this reason. It was easier to throw a body out of a moving car when the wind was holding the door open for you, not blowing it shut. Conrad slammed on the brakes just as
Gabrielle tumbled out of the car and the Rolls fishtailed, then spun out as its rear wheels slid from pavement to the gravel shoulder.

“I landed in a patch of scrub near the side of the road. My shoes had blown off my feet, but other than that, I was okay. I got up and started running.”

Behind her, she heard Conrad put the car in gear and the sound of tires spinning in gravel until finally the engine roared, the car popped free, and the tires squealed as their rubber caught
hold of the paved road again. Gabrielle looked back over her shoulder and saw he was gaining on her.

Conrad swerved into the wrong lane and edged alongside her, pushing her onto the shoulder where the gravel bit into her feet, and she realized what he was doing. No more than twenty yards ahead,
the shoulder ended abruptly in a sheer cliff.

She turned on her heel and bolted back up the hill. As she ran, she caught a glimpse of Conrad’s face and saw that he was laughing his head off.

It was difficult for him, however, to turn the long, heavy Rolls-Royce around on a narrow mountain pass, and for a moment Gabrielle thought that she might crest the hill and get far enough ahead
to lose him. Maybe there’d be a town up ahead or a wooded spot where she could hide. But in a matter of seconds, she was caught in the headlights again. It didn’t matter. She kept
running. Her legs ached and her lungs felt like they were on fire, but she kept running toward whatever hopeful thing lay on the other side of the mountain.

There was no town and no place to get off the road and hide, but what Gabrielle saw when she came to the crest of the hill was no less lovely. No more than a quarter mile away, a little truck
was climbing the hill from the other direction. She darted across the road and tucked herself behind a rock outcropping. A lousy hiding place, but it only had to fool Conrad long enough for him to
drive past her. If he turned the Rolls-Royce around again, it might attract the driver’s attention. With his famous face and a body in his trunk, Gabrielle had to hope that he’d avoid
taking chances like that.

For a moment, Gabrielle wondered whether she should flag down the driver of the truck, but decided against it. There were few good reasons to be out on a road like this at four in the morning,
and fewer honest ones. What if the person behind the wheel had intentions every bit as bad as Conrad’s? And even if the driver was a farmer, carting something as innocuous as milk or produce
to market, Gabrielle wasn’t sure she knew how to explain what had happened to her. There was no lie, no cover story that would account for the presence of a fourteen-year-old girl barefoot in
a party dress on a narrow mountain pass at four in the morning. No story that didn’t raise more questions than it answered, or end with her being delivered to the nearest county sheriff.

Sometimes, when she was low on bus fare, she’d hitched rides from women or the occasional man, if he was especially elderly or kindly looking. They all asked a lot of questions and usually
dropped her off with some sort of scolding or lecture about there being all sorts of perverts out there in the world, and did her parents know where she was?

She wouldn’t risk taking the ride. She’d walk, at least until it got light. She’d gotten away, and if she saw Conrad’s headlights coming up the road now, she’d have
time to hide before he saw her. Another thought had buoyed her spirits.

“It was almost morning, and Conrad still had Irma’s body in his trunk. He could get rid of her, or he could get rid of me, but he didn’t have time to do both,” she told
me.

She’d stuck to the shoulders, in the trees and brush when she could, and in her bare feet, Gabrielle began walking toward Los Angeles.

Whatever Gabrielle decided to say when Rex and Ruth took her to the police, I knew I had to forgive her. This wasn’t about being young and scared. It was about making up
your mind that you were going to live. If Gabrielle told lies about Annie and my father, it was only because she had no other choice to save herself. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair,
but nothing about any of this was.

I huddled against the wall in the room next door to Conrad’s, fingers still clutched around the doorknob, when I heard the squeal and thunk of the hallway door closing behind Rex, Ruth,
and Gabrielle. And I realized that Conrad was alone in there now. Alone, with a gunshot wound, in a hospital bed.

As I put my shoes back on, I turned over the things my mother had said the night before and the things she said a few minutes ago. I’d been trying so hard not to think about them, and I
didn’t want to let them come together now.

I wouldn’t have said she made the whole thing up.

He’ll never come near this family again.

I wouldn’t have cared how it made the studio look.

Finding out the truth is like solving a puzzle. You snap the last piece into place, crack the last letter in the code, and you feel a surge of gratification at finally unlocking some secret
unknown.

That’s not what this felt like.

At last, I knew why Annie left. I understood why she’d risked everything to protect Gabrielle, why she’d dared to involve the police.

Knowing didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t give me any relief or satisfaction. All it gave me was another awful thing to carry around in my heart.

Only this wasn’t about me. It was about justice for Irma and Gabrielle, but it was about something else, too.

It was about a father who betrayed his older daughter, a mother who wrapped her up in evening gowns and sent her out to sing for a room full of wolves.

And one night four years ago, Conrad Donahue had been one of them.

I wondered whether he’d started off trying to charm her, or whether he’d cornered her in a dressing room; whether the other men at the party had known what had happened or not;
whether my father’s first impulse had been to save his daughter, or his movie star. When my mother said she’d kill Conrad Donahue, she meant it. Now I felt the same way.

I looked around the room for something that I could use as a weapon, but there was nothing sharper or heavier than a bedpan. I wondered if I’d be able to do it with my bare hands, strangle
him or hold a pillow down over his face until he was dead.

At that moment, I felt like I probably could.

I wasn’t thinking straight—every sensible thought in my head was consumed by white-hot rage as I crawled out from behind the door and into the hallway, rehearsing in my mind how
I’d do it. I’d climb up on the bed and pin his arms down with my knees, and I’d smother him. I thought about the story Gabrielle had told me, how he’d drowned Irma for less
than no reason; I thought about what he’d done to Annie. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the world would be a better place without Conrad Donahue in it.

I didn’t think about whether I was physically strong enough or whether I’d be able to go through with it. I didn’t think about what I’d do after it was over. All I could
think was that Conrad Donahue was going to get away with everything unless I did this.

The problem was, every time I steeled myself to leap out of my sprinter’s stance and run into Conrad’s room, the faces of people I knew, people who cared about me, began to swim up
before my eyes. I could see Cy telling me he wanted to see me again, my mother asking me to promise I’d be careful. I could hear Cassie’s voice saying,
Don’t make me sorry I
helped you, Alice
, and Jerry asking,
Do you think Annie would want you mixed up in any of this?

I was in no shape to listen to reason or conscience or Jerry Shaffer, and I certainly wasn’t listening for Ruth. The shoes she wore were flat with rubber soles, ugly, sensible, and quiet.
But not silent. I should have heard her doubling back down the hall, would have heard her had I not been crawling on my hands and knees down a hospital hallway, revenge seething in my brain.

With a single swift motion, she lifted me up by the elbow with one hand and covered my mouth with the other, then marched me down the hallway. Only when we were through the door did she let me
speak.

“Where’s Gabrielle?” I asked, gasping for breath.

“She’s in the car with Rex.” My face must have indicated what an insane idea I thought this was because Ruth waved me off and said, “He’s not going to lay a finger
on her.”

Then I remembered. Of course he wouldn’t—not now. Conrad had just sent the three of them off to the police station so Gabrielle could tell everyone about the terrible things Annie
and my father had done to her.

I wrenched my arm out of Ruth’s grip.

“You set Annie up,” I said. “I won’t lie for you. You can’t make me say anything.”

A strange look crossed Ruth’s face as she caught hold of my arm again and bent my wrist between my shoulder blades.

“If you’re smart,” she said, “you won’t say another word.”

I struggled to get loose, but Ruth was stronger than she looked. She shoved me in the direction of the stairs.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

Ruth didn’t answer, and I realized it didn’t matter. She must have known I’d overheard everything. There was no way she’d let me out of her sight until she’d
delivered Gabrielle to the police. And after that, there was no telling what she, Rex, and Conrad had in mind for me.

As we wound our way down the stairs toward the hospital lobby, I found one tiny hope to hold on to. Ruth didn’t know Gabrielle had trusted me with her story—the real
version—and now we were about to share a ride to police headquarters. Maybe seeing me would prick her conscience and remind her of what my sister had done for her. Maybe she’d at least
think twice about going along with Conrad and Ruth’s plan.

Down in the hospital lobby, it was bedlam. Reporters and photographers fought their way into the hallways and stairwells while lines of unblinking LAPD officers forced them back, nightsticks at
the ready. A few who tried to reach for a door handle or who were shoved from behind into the police barricade got a taste of those. No chance we were getting out this way.

Ruth steered me behind the line of officers, then down another hallway to the hospital’s rear entrance, where the ambulances were dispatched and the truly dire cases were admitted.
Conrad’s Rolls-Royce was idling there, Rex behind the wheel and Gabrielle sitting next to him in the front seat.

“Get in,” Ruth said. She shoved me into the backseat, then crawled in next to me.

“Gabrielle,” I said, but she wouldn’t look at me. She wouldn’t even turn around.

The tires squealed as Rex threw the car in reverse and peeled out of the lot. But not before I saw two things.

First, the ambulance bay door flew open and Jerry appeared, panting, arms pumping as he vaulted down the flight of steps and hit the pavement without breaking his stride. His hat was missing,
and blood streamed down the side of his swollen face. I turned around and watched through the back window as he chased the Rolls-Royce across the parking lot, looking like he might collapse at any
moment.

As I wondered what had happened to his face, I saw Walter Hanrahan stroll out from between two parked ambulances and tip his hat to Jerry before getting into his police cruiser.

I pressed my hand to the glass as the last wisps of hope I’d held on to melted away.

It was over. Just like that.