I finally sat down close to him. “Mr. Griner—will you relax? Please.”
“Pretty easy for you to say,” he shot back, and then almost immediately said, “Sorry. Sorry.” He put two fingers to his forehead and rubbed between his eyes. “I’m high-strung to begin with. Ever since I was a kid growing up in Greenwich.”
I’d seen this kind of reaction—a mix of paranoia and anger that comes from getting blindsided the way Arnold Griner had been. When I spoke again, I kept my voice just low enough that he’d have to concentrate to hear me.
“I know you’ve already gone over this, but can you think of any reason you might be receiving these messages? Let’s start with any prior contact you’ve had with Patsy Bennett, Antonia Schifman, or even the limo driver, Bruno Capaletti.”
He shrugged, rolled his eyes, tried desperately to catch his breath. “We might have been at some of the same parties, at least the two women. I’ve certainly reviewed their movies. The last was one of Antonia’s, Canterbury Road, which I hated, I’m sorry to say, but I loved her in it and said so in the piece.
“Do you think that could be the connection? Maybe the killer reads my stuff. I mean, she must, right? This is so incredibly bizarre. How could I possibly fit into an insane murder scheme?”
Before I could say anything at all, he threw out another of his rapid-fire questions.
“Do you think Antonia’s driver was incidental? In the e-mail it seems like he was just . . . in the way.”
Griner was obviously hungry for information, both personally and professionally. He was a reporter, after all, and already reasonably powerful in Hollywood circles. So I gave him my stock reporter’s response.
“It’s too early to say. What about Patsy Bennett?” I asked. “Do you remember the last time you wrote about one of her films? Something she produced? She still produced films occasionally, right?”
Griner nodded; then he sighed loudly, almost theatrically. “Do you think I should discontinue my column for now? I should, shouldn’t I? Maybe I better.”
The interview was like a Ping-Pong match against a kid with ADD. I eventually managed to get through all my questions, but it took almost twice as long as I thought it would when I had arrived at the Times. Griner constantly needed reassurance, and I tried to give it to him without being completely dishonest. He was in danger, after all.
“One last thing,” Griner said just before I left him. “Do you think I should write a book about this? Is that a little sick?”
I didn’t bother to answer either question. He went to Yale—he should be able to figure it out.
Chapter 16
AFTER THE INTERVIEW, I slouched out to Arnold Griner’s desk to touch base with Paul Lebleau, the LAPD tech in charge of tracing Mary Smith’s e-mails.
He tapped away on the keyboard of Griner’s computer while he spoke to me in a rapid-fire patter. “Two e-mails came through two different proxy servers. First one originated from a cybercafe in Santa Monica. That means Mary Smith could be one of a few hundred people. She’s got two different addresses. So far. Both just generic Hotmail accounts, which tells us nothing really, except we do know that she signed up for the first one from the library at USC. Day before the first message.”
I had to concentrate just to follow Lebleau. Did everybody out here have ADD? “What about the second e-mail?” I asked him.
“Transmission didn’t originate in the same place as the first one. That much I can tell you.”
“Did it come from the L.A. area? Can you tell me that?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“When will you know?”
“Probably end of the day, not that it’s going to be much help.” He leaned forward and squinted at several lines of code on the screen. “Mary Smith knows what she’s doing.”
There it was again—she. I understood why everyone was using the pronoun. I was doing it, too—but only for the sake of convenience.
That didn’t mean I was convinced the killer was a woman, though. Not yet, anyway. The letters to Griner could represent some kind of persona. But whose?
Chapter 17
HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR VACATION so far, Alex? Having a lot of fun?
I took copies of both bizarre e-mails and headed out for a meeting with the LAPD. The detective bureau on North Los Angeles Street was only a quarter mile from the Times offices—a Los Angeles miracle, given the cliché that it takes forty-five minutes to get anywhere in the city.
Oh, the vacation’s great. I’m seeing all the sights. The kids are loving it, too. Nana is over the moon.
I walked slowly, rereading the two e-mails on my way to LAPD. Even if the writing was persona-based, it had come from the mind of the killer.