Hollywood Lust Page 14

  ***

  June 6th, 2000

  Hello my angel,

  I saw you today! It took me weeks of planning but I was finally able to get away. I waited outside your school and saw you walking home. Oh, how I wanted to go to you, tell you that I’m your mother, and that I love you…

  Judie Crawford put her pen down. This letter, written years after the first one, brought her almost as much pain and emotion. The garden where she sat became a watery blur as tears rolled down her cheeks. The deluge was so profound that her entire body convulsed with sobs.

  She took several deep breaths and finally controlled her emotions. She glanced back toward the house. Ryan had promised to take Lindsay to a soccer game. She’d seen them leaving together but knew her husband couldn’t be trusted. There had been dozens of times that he’d made promises over the years and then had gone back on his word. Her husband was an abusive liar and she didn’t believe anything he said or did.

  After checking the house again, Judie was satisfied that she was alone. She walked back to the bench in the garden where her pad and pen awaited. She tried to steady her nerves, wondering how to begin. How do you tell a daughter you’ve never known that the man who had raised her when she was a child had been killed because of a cover-up?

  Judie’s mind tumbled back in time. Kate had been four years-old at the time John Sexton, the man who she’d chosen to raise her daughter, had died. She remembered seeing on the evening news that he’d been murdered. After she’d dealt with the emotion of what happened, she’d become sickened and revolted. She knew the monster that had forced her to marry him and controlled every aspect of her life had killed him. It had all been made clear to her when she’d confronted him after learning about the killing.

  “You…I saw what happened yesterday…on the news.” She’d tried to control her feelings, but the tears came. Through a torrent of emotion she’d said, “You killed John, didn’t you?”

  Ryan’s face had contorted into something that bordered on rage. “I had to…” His eyes darkened. “Besides, you still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

  “No…I…it’s nothing like that.”

  His dark, brooding gaze held on her. “If you understood the truth about…everything, you’d understand why I had to do it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It was a job. Sexton was beginning to put things together about someone I’ve been working for. It was made clear to me that I had no choice.” He’d glowered at her. “You, of all people, should understand that. You know who I work for.”

  That was the moment when she’d begun to piece everything together. Ryan had been a make-up artist. He’d worked for some of the most powerful people in Hollywood. Then, all at once, other things fell into place and she knew.

  She remembered the look on Ryan’s face when she said to him, “This is about what happened to Jean Winslow, isn’t it?”

  A thin smile had found Ryan’s lips. “The truth will never be known.” The man she was married to and despised had come closer to her, grabbing her arm and twisting it until she’d screamed. “And if you ever say anything to anyone, you will regret the day you were ever born.”

  Judie pushed the thoughts of that day away but in that moment she had understood everything. Ryan had worked for some of Hollywood’s elite, the power brokers who controlled the studios. And she knew one of those men, maybe the most powerful man in Hollywood, had become infatuated with the actress. A month earlier, Jean Winslow had been found dead in the back yard of her home. They had said it was a drug overdose, but she knew better. Even the press didn’t believe what was being reported. Ryan had learned that John Sexton was working part-time in his off hours at the studios and had found out about what really happened. He had murdered the man who was raising her daughter to cover up the crime.

  Judie took a deep breath and sat back down, leaving those memories in the past. She tried to focus. How do you begin? How do you tell a child about the deep mystery that is at the center of her life?” She had no answers. All she did know was that she had to tell her the truth. Maybe someday, if Kate got the letters, she would understand. It was the right thing to do.

  Her trembling hand picked up the pen and she began again.

  I know this will be difficult for you to hear, but what happened to your father...there’s much more to the story.

  ***

  I was so stunned and upset by what I’d read that I dropped my mother’s letter, the pages fluttering through the air and landing at Bernie’s feet. I reached down, gathering up the papers, even as my tears fell on them.

  “Oh, God,” I said aloud, overcome with emotion after hearing a truth that had taken over thirty years to find me. I felt the need to say aloud what I now knew. “My father, the man who raised me, was killed to cover up the murder of Jean Winslow.”

  I stood up and began pacing around the room, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. My father, or the man I considered to be my father, had been a cop, a patrol officer, when I was a child. I knew that he’d worked part-time at the studios, doing security work. That was where he’d apparently met and become involved with Judie Crawford.

  Even after he and Judie broke up, from what my adoptive mother had told me, my father had continued to work at the studios. That must have been where he’d learned about the cover-up of Winslow’s death and it had cost him his life. The realization that the man who had raised me had been murdered to cover-up the highest profile death in Hollywood history was overwhelming.

  I sat back on the bed, dragging a hand through my hair. “Who?” I said aloud. “Who was the studio mogul who had fallen in love with Jean Winslow?” I had no idea. All I did know was that one way or another I would find out. And then, all at once, I realized something else. It felt like my life had been fated, that I’d waited a lifetime to come to this moment of clarity. I was going to solve my father’s murder and, at the same time, solve the biggest crime Hollywood had ever known.”

  My cell phone buzzed. I picked it up and answered without checking the number.

  “Kate, it’s Joe Dawson. Something big is breaking on our case.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s The Swarm. Janice Taylor has given them a signal to begin killing people tomorrow. Greer wants us in Denver first thing in the morning.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The following morning, after calling Lieutenant Oz and telling him I was needed in Denver again, I made arrangements for Robin to take care of Bernie. I then took a chartered FBI plane to Denver. Joe Dawson hadn’t given me any details about what was happening and I hadn’t asked because I was still in shock after reading my mother’s letter.

  The letter.

  It had left me with both a purpose and uncertainty. I now knew there was a conspiracy at the center of the murder of the man who had raised me and also regarding the death of the actress Jean Winslow, but I still had no idea who was involved. All I did know is that I would make it my purpose to find out. I owed that much to the man I call my love-dad.

  The uncertainty I’d been left with was because I still didn’t know who my biological father was. That uncertainty had left me wondering if my mother didn’t want me to know about him. It occurred to me that maybe there was something about him that was unsavory or maybe even criminal, like Ryan Cooper.

  I’d, once again, considered reading the third and final letter, hoping to get some answers, but, after receiving Dawson’s phone call, I’d held off. I decided I needed more time to process what I’d learned and maybe talk to Noah and my friends about it. There was also the knowledge that there was only one more letter, one last opportunity to hear the words of my deceased mother. There was finality in knowing that, and it filled me with a deep sadness. This was the only connection I would ever have to the mother I never knew, and, to an outsider it might sound strange, but I wanted to savor that connection.

  After my flight, a driver met me at the airport in Denver and dro
ve me to the FBI headquarters. I met up with Joe Dawson in the corridor outside a meeting room where the taskforce was assembling.

  “How you been, Kate?” Joe asked.

  I smiled. “I’m not sure, since you never call me Kate.”

  Now he smiled. “Sorry, I mean Buttercup.”

  “That’s better.” I thought about his question. “I’m…trying…” I took a breath. “I think I’m still trying to get my head back in the game.” I glanced into the conference room and saw that John Greer, Jeremy Spender, and the others I’d met with before were all there, along with several people I hadn’t met. I turned back to Dawson. “What do you know about what’s happening?”

  “Just that some kind of message from The Swarm has been intercepted. We’re supposed to get all the details inside.”

  “Anything further from Taylor?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing, since she’s been locked in a seven by eight foot cell twenty-four seven.”

  “Have we had any luck identifying her victims—the ones we found by the highway near Florence?”

  “Not as of yesterday but I heard an M.E. is supposed to be here, maybe shed some light on that.”

  Ten minutes later we took seats at the conference table. After some preliminaries about the taskforce being authorized at the highest levels by the directors of the FBI and Homeland Security, Greer mentioned that some of the people in the room were from the regional FBI offices, as well as Quantico. He then told us a medical examiner would be joining the meeting in progress for an update on the Florence victims.

  Greer then introduced a couple of agents who he said were central to our taskforce and had information about the latest developments. “Special Agents Dave Rooney and April Meade are with our Cyber Division in Quantico. I’ll turn things over to them to update everyone on where we stand.”

  Rooney began the discussion. He was tall, probably around forty, African-American, and handsome, with a build like a linebacker.

  “Yesterday, using encrypted information that we were finally able to decode from Janice Taylor’s phone when she was taken into custody, we learned that she had been in contact with a man named Nigel York. Mr. York is well known to us because of his past crimes involving hacking into the databases of several multinational corporations and military sites, and selling that information to the highest bidder. He spent six years in the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute before his release about six months ago.”

  The FBI agent used a remote and mug shots of York appeared on a screen at the far end of the room. The convicted felon looked like he was in his late twenties. He was pasty and thin, with the smug grin of someone who had no remorse for his crimes.

  “Don’t let Mr. York’s unassuming appearance deceive you,” Agent Meade told the gathering, taking over from Rooney. “He’s a brilliant and cunning psychopath who has absolutely no conscience about anything he does. He also has a history of violence and is probably armed.”

  York’s partner was younger than him. She was tall, with high cheek bones and thick brown hair that fell in soft curls to her shoulders. I thought about my own hair that was reverting to its natural unmanageable state, despite Robin’s best efforts. I pushed down my envy as she continued.

  “After piecing together the IP address of several individuals York’s been in contact with, he and those other subjects are ready to make good on Janice Taylor’s threats. The Swarm is coming and we have less than twenty-four hours to stop it.”

  Dawson spoke up. “Are these people that York’s been in contact with part of The Swarm?”

  Rooney answered. “No, we believe they’re Internet traffic funnels, directing The Swarm to act in unison and carry out Taylor’s orders.”

  “Do we have any idea what they’re going to do?” Jeremy Spender asked.

  “Better put on your beekeeper outfit, Jerry,” Dawson said. “They’re coming for you.”

  “That may very well be the case,” Agent Meade said, as Spender’s face flushed with anger. “But more precisely, they’re coming for all of us.”

  Meade used her remote, and we saw a map of the United States appear on the screen. Moments later, there were streaks of light aimed at what looked like nearly every major city in the country.

  “The lights you’re seeing are the projected paths The Swarm will follow. In a few hours they will detonate explosions in all fifty states, targeting the major cities within those states.”

  John Greer spoke up, asking a question that was probably on everyone’s mind. “Why are they waiting twenty-four hours to begin? Why don’t they use the element of surprise?”

  Agent Meade gave him an answer that sent my anxiety level off the charts. “They want chaos. As I speak to you, news of this event is going viral on the Internet. The Swarm wants to kill people, but it wants something else even more. It wants widespread panic and fear. These are domestic terrorists at work and they want nothing more than for every city in America to erupt with violence before they act.” The agent glanced at the map with the streaks of light indicating the projected targets. “What we’re looking at is nothing less than a cyber-swarm.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The room was silent as the group took a moment to process what we’d just been told. A cold fear gripped me. I remembered what Janice Taylor had said to me when I’d been held captive by her and one of her disciples in a church basement a few months back, her words about there being a turning point coming to the world.

  “It is the beginning of the end. The others, those who are left of the original seven, will begin a killing spree and signal their followers to kill. That is the change in the world, the transformation that is coming. It will be the end of civilization as you know it. It will also signal my rebirth, my personal metamorphosis.”

  Those words were never clearer to me than in this moment. We weren’t just looking at a serial killer, someone intent on doing harm to those she perceived as doing harm to her. We were looking at domestic terrorism in its worst form. Janice Taylor and the others didn’t have an ideology or a creed they wanted to spread. They wanted nothing less than the destruction of society and everything it stood for. They wanted total anarchy.

  “This twenty-four hour period before they begin to detonate their explosions,” Joe Dawson said. “How do we know about that?”

  “Because of this,” Agent Rooney said. He used the remote to activate a website that appeared on the screen. “This went live a few hours ago. It’s already had thousands of hits and the message is being picked up by all the news services.”

  The website began as a black dot on a white screen. In seconds that one dot divided into hundreds and then thousands of identical dots as the familiar sound of a swarming beehive could be heard. When the screen was completely covered by the dots and the buzzing sound became overwhelming, it turned black and then fell silent. The screen then dissolved into white letters that formed three words:

  WE ARE COMING

  The message went on to say that at midnight tonight detonation devices would be exploded in every major city across the country. It told the reader that the coming annihilation could not be stopped, and to prepare for the worst. It was both frightening and simple in its threat.

  “As you can imagine, we’re already beginning to see some civil unrest in the metropolitan areas,” Agent Rooney said. “In some areas, there are large numbers of people trying to leave the cities. As the day progresses, we expect there will be more violence and looting.”

  Greer jutted his chin toward the website. “Why can’t we take this thing down, find out who’s behind it?”

  Meade answered. “We’re using every tool in our arsenal to try and do just that, but the site has multiple robust firewalls. We believe the host server is out of the country, also configured with firewalls and malware if anyone tries to hack into it. So far, it looks impenetrable.”

  “How does Nigel York fit into all this?” I asked.

  “Our experts believe that he’s directly responsi
ble for the website. The subroutines in some of the code appear to approximate what he’s used in the past.”

  “So let’s get the son of a bitch,” Dawson said. “String him up by his little nuts, and make him give us the password to take it down.”

  “First we would have to find him,” Agent Meade said. “York is on federal probation but has absconded. He was last seen in the Lawrence, Kansas area, where his parents live. We’ve got agents in that area. We’ll also be sending a tactical unit from this taskforce there after our meeting ends.”

  “Do we have any idea about what targets they’re going after in the cities?” Jeremy Spender asked.

  “We can only assume it will be large gatherings, with a potential for mass casualties. We’ve alerted local law enforcement, but, as you can imagine, the target pool is vast, and…” Meade checked her watch. “…we’ve got less than fifteen hours left.”

  I glanced back at the website, the warning was in bold lettering, and gave voice to something I dreaded. “I’m willing to go back to Janice Taylor, try and negotiate with her to stop this.”

  “We’ve already worked through her lawyer,” Agent Rooney said. “Taylor is refusing to talk to anyone, including you.”

  “Why are we letting her call the shots?” Dawson asked. “I say we drag her ass out of her cell, Use any means necessary to get her to tell us what we need to know.”

  “Even supermax prisoners have rights,” John Greer said. “You know that can’t be done.”

  Dawson said something about his willingness to act on his own and accept the consequences for his actions if someone would turn their back for a few minutes. Greer dismissed what he’d said outright.