Daniel passed everything ahead of them driving south on PCH back to Santa Monica, though there was little traffic this time of night. The ocean flew by on Cam’s right as Daniel’s Crown Vic shimmied at a hundred miles an hour past the last of the rugged cliff walls. It was warm, a perfect night, really, but Cam was too revved to pay much attention. She didn’t tell Daniel to slow down. She knew she’d be driving just as fast.
She saw an SUV turning onto the highway from a driveway, managed to swallow a shout of warning as Daniel jerked the Crown Vic sharply right, spinning out onto the gravel and nearly sending them airborne, a dozen feet down to the beach below. He managed to ease the car to a stop and steer back onto the road, hugging the center stripe. Cam looked back to see the SUV stopped dead in the middle of PCH, probably too scared to move. “Well done, Mario.”
He nodded, his hands white from gripping the steering wheel. He sped up, not quite hitting a hundred miles per hour again, but he came close.
“Do you think Markham killed Deborah, Daniel?”
“I think he’d have confessed to murdering his own mother with Doc holding a gun to his head, but yes, it makes sense he murdered her. Do you have doubts?”
“No, not really,” Cam said. “What really makes me mad is that Doc used us, pretended to help so he could find out what we knew, who we were looking at. We told him about Markham and his P.I. and he figured the rest out. Markham took Deborah’s computer and cell phone—how would he know to do that? We never released that detail. Doc knew the killer had to be close to one of the victims, didn’t take him long to realize Markham knew he’d killed Connie. So he figured it had to be Markham who killed Deborah. It’s all about his revenge.
“The M.E. pointed out that Deborah’s murder might have been a copycat. I didn’t want to believe there were two killers, but Doc’s going after Markham proves there were.” Cam banged her fist on the dashboard. “I grieved for Doc, I felt sorry for him. Both of them were playing us.”
Daniel shot her a look. “You were right about one thing, though. Doc didn’t kill Deborah.”
“Some consolation.”
Daniel didn’t say anything.
“What are you thinking?”
He smoothly executed a curve, then said, “I really don’t care if Doc kills Markham. They’re both monsters.” He drew a deep breath. “But it’s Doc I want, Cam. I want to make him pay, for the rest of his miserable life.”
Cam said slowly, “Because he was going to murder Missy.”
“If Blinker hadn’t been stalking her, freaked her out so much she wouldn’t have pulled up stakes and gone to Las Vegas—”
“—She’d have been at home where Doc could easily get to her. In Las Vegas, he couldn’t, not in a hotel with the twenty-four-hour casino traffic.”
Daniel nodded. “So he killed Molly Harbinger instead. You know he drove there, Cam, and we’ll prove it.”
“If Missy and I hadn’t met up in the grocery store, would he have tried for her again, rather than Gloria Swanson?”
“He’s a psychopath, you know he would have. Hang on, we’re nearly there.” Daniel turned right, bulleted down a deserted block, swung a fast left, slowed to a crawl down the alley behind Deborah’s house. Mrs. Markham’s SUV, HOLLY 7, was parked in the alley close to the back stoop. It was quiet, after one o’clock in the morning.
The small house was as dark as its neighbors’. The crime scene tape was pulled from the back door. Cam touched Daniel’s arm as he cut the car’s lights and they slowed to a stop. “There, in Deborah’s bedroom, I saw a light. Now it’s gone.”
Though she knew what he’d say, she whispered, “Backup?”
Daniel shook his head. “If he’s got Markham, we can’t wait. Whatever goes down, I want us to be the one in control, not Elman, not anyone else. Just us, you and me.”
He pulled a small flashlight out of the glove compartment. “Let’s try the back door. I doubt Doc reset the alarm, if it was on in the first place.”
They exited the car, taking care not to slam the doors, and crept along the walkway until they reached the kitchen door. Daniel tried the doorknob. It was locked.
Cam pulled out her lock pick set from her pocket, smaller than a change purse. A few seconds and the door lock sprung open. He shook his head at her, marveled. She turned the knob slowly and slipped in, Daniel behind her. They stood in the small night-shrouded kitchen, listened. They heard voices coming through the dining room.
Doc’s voice was filled with rage. “Shut up, you murdering bastard, or I’ll stuff the gag back in your mouth before I cut your throat.”
Cam pulled out her cell, pressed record.
Markham’s voice was low, pleading. “What can I say to make you believe me? I didn’t kill Deborah. I honestly thought you killed her and that’s why I hired the P.I. Don’t you remember that party? You didn’t want Deborah to have anything to do with us, you hated that she was an actress. I thought she finally threw you out and you killed her.”
They heard a hand strike flesh, then Doc’s hard voice. “You confessed!”
“I had to or you would have killed both me and my wife. But I didn’t kill Deborah. She was starring in my movie. I had no reason to kill her.”
“Did you really think I’d let you frame me for Deborah’s murder after you killed her? Let you just walk away?”
“Didn’t you hear me? You have no proof I killed her because there isn’t any!”
Doc laughed. “It’s enough that I know, Markham. You overplayed your hand, hiring that P.I., siccing the FBI on me whenever you had a chance. Oh yes, I know what you did, what you said, how you kept pushing me in their faces. I was in the inner circle, a victim. They felt sorry for me, all of them did, and they talked.”
“You’ve got to stop this. I didn’t kill Deborah. I didn’t have a motive. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Believe you? You’re not even a good liar. I’m going to kill you, Markham, whatever you say. It’s up to you if you want to go out a coward or die like a man, own up to what you did. You murdered the woman I loved.” He was breathing hard, nearly beside himself.
Markham remained silent.
“Your wife won’t grieve for you. She knows you cheated your way through eighteen years of marriage. Do you think she kept count of all the young actresses you stashed in your little house in the Colony? Deborah told me you charged Connie a bit of rent, to make it look good, and both of you denied you were sleeping together. What a joke. How many other actresses before Connie did you keep there? They slept with you, sold their bodies to you, so you’d get them roles? Your precious wife is still tied up. I could go back there, finish it for her. And I would. Up to you. I want the truth, now.”
Theo Markham finally spoke, his voice low and flat. He sounded broken, in pain. How many times had Doc struck him, tortured him before they’d arrived? “I loved Connie more than anyone and you murdered her, sliced her throat. You’re the monster here, not me. Connie had what it took to be a star, with or without me cheering her on. I loved her, do you hear me, you crazy bastard? And you killed her!”
Doc gave a small chuckle. “I really enjoyed killing her. Let me tell you about it. She was asleep, probably dreaming of some handsome young stud, not a middle-aged man she was having to suffer sleeping with to get her start in some idiot movie. You know what? There was a script open on the bed beside her. It was The Crown Prince, the role Deborah wanted and deserved. Her eyes popped open just as I sliced across her neck. She stared up at me with her big beautiful green eyes, and she never made a sound. I watched her die. Like you watched Deborah die, you bastard. There’s one thing I want to know from you before I cut your throat and let you join your little slut in hell. How did you know it was me?”
“I saw you.”
“No, that’s not possible. I checked, you were at that splashy party at your house that night.”
“I was only fifteen minutes away. I never drove into the Colony, I always parked outside, came in under the fence. I saw you leaving the house, and I went in and she was dead.”
“How did you know who I was?” He slapped his hand to his forehead. “How could I forget that party at that degenerate’s house six months ago? That producer’s house, Willard Lambeth, that was his name. You telling me you actually remembered me, after six months?”
“Of course. The way you acted, your obvious disdain for all of us in the business, the way you treated Deborah.”
“Then why didn’t you tell the cops?”
Markham actually laughed. “You’re so smart, who do you think they would have put at the top of their suspect list? Me, of course, they’d have painted me the jilted lover. I had no proof you were there, and I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Even if they didn’t convict me, I would have been ruined, my career, my marriage, over.”
“You murdered Deborah for revenge, didn’t you? You gave Deborah that part she wanted so badly in your damned movie, and you sent her out of the country. All that time you were planning how to set it up.”
“You deserved to be destroyed, both of you. Like you destroyed Connie.”
They heard a fist strike flesh, heard Markham moan in pain. Cam started forward, but Daniel grabbed her arm.
Markham was panting now, screaming back, “It doesn’t matter. You’re insane! You murdered all those helpless, innocent young women. I had to stop you. Even after all of it, you tried to kill Gloria Swanson. Because I was sleeping with her? Are you completely insane?”
There was silence and then Doc spoke, his voice dreamy. “Connie was my third, you know. She was the worst of them, really, taking up with you. You’re responsible for her death, no one else. Do you know, each of them was better than the last? I fancied it was like a ballet, every move smooth and exact. They all died so beautifully, and I whispered to them to repent their sins but they couldn’t, their throats were cut open.”
There was the sound of a fist striking flesh again and another cry of pain.
Cam moved quickly along the narrow hallway, went down on her knees and looked into the second bedroom. Markham was duct-taped arms and legs to a chair. Deborah’s desk chair, Cam recognized it. Everything else looked the same as Cam had seen it Wednesday morning. The chair sat in the middle of the room, Doc leaning over Markham, his knuckles bloody from the many blows. Markham’s face was swollen and discolored, a deep cut over one of his eyes. A small maglite was propped up on a backpack, lighting Markham’s bloody face.
Markham’s words were liquid with blood. “There are hundreds, thousands of actresses. You said Connie was the worst because she slept with me. Everyone sleeps with someone. It’s only sex. Why? Why my Connie? Why all of them?”
Doc raised the knife and both Cam and Daniel aimed their Glocks at him, center mass. Then he slowly lowered the knife and spoke, his voice emotionless, thin as parchment. “You want the truth? All right. Back at the beginning, before I understood how corrupt and venal this business is, I wanted Deborah to succeed. She wanted it more than anything, more than she wanted me, probably. Of course you know why Deborah didn’t get any of those roles, you scum. It was because she was loyal to me, she didn’t sleep with any of you lechers to get ahead. So I decided I would help her.
“You know what? I found I was quite good at it.” His voice had dropped, became confiding. “It’s not as well controlled as surgery, and I really am a superb surgeon. I didn’t have to practice much to be a first-rate killer.”
There was a long moment of silence. Cam thought if she could see his face there’d be a huge smile on it. He was revving himself up. They heard him announce, his voice excited now, “It’s how I became famous, in the end. Time for me to go now, Markham, time for you to die. There are pretty young senoritas waiting for me.”
Markham had gone beyond fear. His voice sounded eerily calm. “They’ll get you, you know they will, no matter where you go, they’ll find you. They’ll never stop.”
“You think I don’t know that? I know this part’s over. There’s always an end of the line. That’s why I came for you, Markham. Did you think I’d leave you behind? They’ll come for me tomorrow with more questions and their lie detector, and what they’ll find is rubble and a burned body. They’ll think my grief for Deborah drove me to kill myself. By the time they know better, I’ll be gone, an obscure village doctor they’ll never find.”
Doc’s voice suddenly caught, and he sobbed. “You know what, Markham, you evil bastard? If you hadn’t killed Deborah, none of this would be happening.”
Markham barked out a strangled half laugh. “Of course it would. You’re a serial killer.”
Doc’s shadow lengthened and he raised his knife.