No One Needs to Know (19 page)

There were no gruesome photos like the ones Laurie had found online when she’d first looked up “Elaina Styles Murder” nearly two weeks ago. Since then, she’d ventured on Google again and read bits and pieces about the events surrounding the murders on 7/7/70.

The Wikipedia entry for Trent Hooper was on the computer screen in front of her now.

She kept thinking about how Joey was the same age as Elaina and Dirk’s baby son, Patrick. When the child wasn’t found in the house with his slain parents, a nationwide search ensued. There were candlelight vigils and church prayer services for “Baby Patrick.” The search ended on July 13, when police found the remains of a baby boy fitting Patrick’s description wrapped in a blanket in a shallow grave. The burial site was in some woods near a rundown farm outside North Bend, Washington. The cause of death couldn’t be determined because the baby’s body had been badly burned.

The farm had belonged to a fifty-eight-year-old widow named Ernestine Biggs, who may or may not have been involved with Trent Hooper. The blond-haired nomad and failed actor was thirty-two years younger than her. “Ernie” allowed him and his friends to do whatever they wanted on the place. According to one visitor at the Biggs Farm, Trent often shared her bed. And when Trent and his followers went skinny dipping in a pond on the property, Mrs. Biggs was right in there splashing around with the others.

The police determined that between three to five intruders had broken into the rented mansion on Gayler Court on the night of July 7, 1970. They jumped the fence surrounding the house. Then one of them climbed in through a kitchen window—and let in the others. They rounded up Elaina, Dirk, and their live-in nanny for the summer, a twenty-year-old Seattleite named Gloria Northrop. The three were bound and gagged, then stabbed repeatedly.

At first, the police suspected that Gloria’s boyfriend, a college dropout named Earl Johnson, may have had a hand in committing the murders. But he was soon exonerated.

A few days after the slayings, nineteen-year-old Susan “Moonbeam” Morkel, who had lived at the Biggs Farm for four months, wrote to a friend in Sacramento, describing the killings.

Laurie looked at a portion of the letter in the Wikipedia article. “Trent, me, and two others killed those people in Seattle,” Moonbeam wrote.

I had no idea they were movie stars. I thought we were going there to rob the place. We cut the phone lines. They were all asleep upstairs. We were checking out the first floor for stuff to steal when Trent went to the stereo cabinet, and found the album,
Immortal
. He played “Elaina” real loud. The husband came down, and Trent hit him over the head so he was unconceous [sic]. Then we went up and got the two women. The music was still playing by the time we finished tying them up. Trent killed them, but he wanted us all to stab each one. I just stabbed the guy. I could see he wasn’t breathing anyway. When we were finished and they were all dead, Trent told me to take off the woman’s nightgown so we could hang it from the front gate. Then he did that thing to her neck. He said he wanted to do something that would really freak people out . . .

Moonbeam never mentioned Elaina Styles’s baby son—or what they’d done with him. Perhaps it was something she couldn’t be quite so casual about.

When local police descended on the Biggs Farm early on the evening of July 14, they discovered Trent, Ernestine, Moonbeam, and nine others—all dead, in what appeared to be a mass suicide. Among the nine were Jed “JT” Dalton and Brandi Milhaud. Police investigators determined that both of them had participated in the killings on July 7.

The group—which also included another adult male, three more women, and three children—had drunk cyanide-laced lemonade. It appeared that Trent had shot JT in the head before turning the gun on himself.

Between a mountain of forensic evidence in the house on Gayler Court and Moonbeam’s blithe confession in her letter to her friend, there was no doubt who had committed the murders on 7/7/70. However, the “why” behind the killings remained a mystery. One theory was that the unsuccessful actor was jealous of Elaina and Dirk’s rising stardom. Another possible motive had to do with Elaina filming an occult film at the time, a subject that fascinated Trent. The fact that her head had been completely turned around in death seemed to validate this hypothesis. Rumors that the baby was used in some sort of sacrificial rite fueled the occult angle as well. Still, others maintained he was just a Manson copycat.

Strangely, Trent became a cult figure for some. Even now, forty-four years later, T-shirts with his likeness continued to sell. People had chiseled off pieces from his tombstone in a cemetery near his San Diego birthplace—until the stone was replaced with a plain marker. A five-minute video some Trent Hooper “fan” had created on YouTube had—at last count—racked up over four million views. It showed early “actor” portraits of Trent—along with footage of his bit parts and wordless walk-ons in such TV shows as
The Invaders, Mannix, Get Smart, Gunsmoke,
and
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
He also had a few lines—and no billing—in two forgettable late-sixties, low-budget features:
Attack of the Wolf
and
The Grave Robbers.
Accompanying the YouTube clip was a heavy metal score that somehow—at least to Laurie—sounded disturbingly reverent.

Reading about Trent Hooper and his hippie disciples, Laurie saw troubling, obvious similarities to Ryder McBride and his tribe. She’d seen how one of Ryder’s brood had even been manipulated into committing suicide at his whim. What was to stop any of the others from committing murder under his command?

Laurie had to remind herself again that Ryder was clueless as to where she was. Just yesterday, she’d phoned Krista and then the diner to make sure everyone was all right. They were fine. Nothing unusual had happened and no one had asked about where she’d disappeared to. They were safe—and for now, so was she.

Yet, at her side was a magazine with an article that seemed so ominous. On Tuesday, just five days from now, she’d start work catering for this film shoot at the actual locales where events surrounding Elaina’s murder had taken place.

‘CURSED’ PRODUCTION

Tragic Deaths and Eerie Occurrences Plague

Filming of Notorious 7/7/70 Murders

Before
7/7/70
was even given the green light by producers,
Dana and Robert Gold
of Atlantis Film Group, the project had already seen one grim fatality. Screenwriter
Lance Taylor
, 30, had claimed his account of the murders of
Elaina Styles, Dirk Jordan
, their baby son, and his nanny would “rip the lid off the case” with revelations that would “stun even police investigators.” But shortly after selling his closely guarded screenplay to the Golds for $950,000, Taylor perished near his home in Maui. He’d slammed his BMW Grand Coupe into a phone pole. A near-lethal combination of drugs and alcohol were found in his system. Once on board for a supporting role in the film, veteran actor and Oscar winner,
Darren Jager
, 63, suffered a debilitating stroke, and had to be replaced by
George Camper
. Filming in L.A. needed to be stopped for two days when a set mysteriously caught fire. Another day of filming was lost when
Shane White
(playing Jordan) rushed to his 14-year-old daughter’s hospital bedside after she was severely injured in a horseback riding accident. Several strange mishaps during the L.A. shoot have caused expensive delays— including an injury to a boom operator that resulted in a broken collar bone. When asked if he believed there was a curse over the film shoot, director
David Storke
balked: “Considering how many people are involved in making a movie, odds are that some of them will be touched by various tragedies within the three months of filming.” Still, extra security surrounds the shoot, in some part to keep the potentially explosive script a secret, but also to protect the players.
Paige Peyton
(cast as Styles) has been receiving death threats. A small group of protesters calling themselves Hooper-Anarchists (after killer
Trent Hooper
) managed to disrupt and shut down a night shoot on Sunset Boulevard. Newcomer
T. E. Noll
(in
Revisiting Limbo
, on screens now) plays Hooper. “It’s a little scary,” he said. “I don’t believe in curses, but I do spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder lately.”

Laurie wondered what the hell she was getting herself into.

Her predecessor had died in a food truck explosion. And here she was, about to start work in a food truck on the set of a jinxed, accident-prone film shoot. She couldn’t help thinking that Joey might end up an orphan before this film wrapped production—or, much worse, something could happen to him.

A loud clank outside startled her. It sounded like the front gate closing.

Laurie quickly set the laptop and the magazine aside, and got to her feet. Moving to the window, she glanced out at the shadowy courtyard. She stood there for at least a minute, but didn’t see anyone.

One of Trent’s followers had climbed into the kitchen window of the house on Gayler Court. Tad and his cohort had tried to enter her Ellensburg apartment the exact same way. She remembered seeing the screen pried off that kitchen window.

Laurie hurried into the kitchen, weaving around some boxes she hadn’t yet unpacked. She made a beeline to the back door, and double-checked that it was locked. She glanced inside the powder room and the pantry closet on either side of the short corridor by the entry. She checked the locks on the two kitchen windows. The screens were still in place.

She remembered the windows upstairs were all open. It was ridiculous, she knew, but she thought about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. A makeshift ladder had been used to gain entry into the child’s room. What was keeping Ryder and his tribe from trying something like that?

From the kitchen Laurie headed around a corner to the stairway. She switched on the light to the upstairs hall, and then scurried up the steps. Though it was dry by now, the paint smell was more prominent on the second floor. It was also cold and drafty. She kept rubbing her arms from the chill as she closed the windows in her bedroom, the bathroom, and then the annex that would be Joey’s room.

She knew she was being paranoid, but it wasn’t unjustified. After all, last night had been her first time sleeping somewhere other than a hotel room since Tad had broken into the townhouse.

Coming back downstairs, she heard something that made her stop in her tracks.

“Will you play with me?” he asked in a singsong voice.

For a moment, her heart stopped, too.

But Laurie let out a skittish laugh when she realized it was just Joey’s stuffed dog, Sparky. She’d put it in his crib with him earlier.

She checked on him. Joey was asleep, half-covered by his blue blanket. Sparky was trapped under his little arm. Laurie pried the stuffed animal out from under Joey’s elbow and set it in one corner of the crib. She didn’t want the damn thing scaring the crap out of her again—in the middle of the night.

Laurie went to the living room window and gazed out at the moonlit courtyard once again. She thought about those teenagers who had disappeared trying to get a look inside this very apartment. In their quest, how far had they made it before they’d vanished? Had they gotten inside the apartment—only to meet their end here?

Laurie’s mind was reeling with thoughts of forty-year-old murders, curses, and that missing baby boy. She imagined people holding candlelight vigils and prayer services for the safe recovery of Baby Joey.

Most of all, she wondered what was beyond that wrought iron front gate right now.

She couldn’t help picturing a beat-up silver minivan out there.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

Thursday, 10:32
P.M.

Ellensburg

D
uncan could feel the rain on his hands as he steered his blue moped up Main Street. It was just a light drizzle. Heavy showers always made a tat, tat, tat on his bike helmet, and then water would start sliding down the back of his neck. Right now, the rain was tolerable. But he still had about three miles to go until he was home. He took the bike up to thirty-five miles an hour, and the motor roared.

He probably should have jumped on Tony’s offer to drive him home. Tony was the new cook, Laurie’s replacement. Together, they’d closed the diner tonight. Tony drove a Chevy pickup, and had room in the back for Duncan’s “Blue Bomber.” But Duncan liked riding his bike, and said no thanks, figuring he’d get home before the rain started.

Now he wondered if maybe Tony hadn’t been concerned so much about the precipitation when he’d offered him a lift home. Maybe it was something far more serious.

Paul had warned the staff they needed to keep an eye out for a 2004 silver Town & Country minivan. The owner of the van had been harassing Laurie, and the police suspected he might have persuaded that wigged-out girl to set fire to herself in the parking lot last week. It baffled Duncan how anyone could talk somebody else into doing that to themselves. The guy must have been a hypnotist or something.

A silver minivan had pulled into the restaurant’s lot earlier tonight during the dinner rush. A short, bosomy woman with greasy brown hair climbed out of the vehicle and wandered into the restaurant. She asked Duncan’s least-favorite waitress, Celia, if Laurie was working there tonight. Celia told her that Laurie had quit and moved away. That was all anyone at the diner really knew. If Paul had any idea where Laurie had moved to, he wasn’t talking.

Once she’d gotten her answer, the woman left the diner, climbed into the Town & Country, and drove away. As far as Duncan could see, she’d been the only one inside the vehicle. But the minivan returned at around 8:40. It parked in the far end of the lot, near the Blue Bomber. After a while, when no one came into the restaurant, Duncan stepped outside to make sure they weren’t trying to steal his moped. His bike looked safe. When the minivan pulled out of the lot five minutes later, Duncan ran outside again to make sure the Blue Bomber was still there. To his relief, it was.