I started with the first one, which described the last moments of Patsy Bennett’s life. It was definitely chilling, this diary of a psychopath.
To: [email protected]
From: Mary Smith
To: Patrice Bennett:
I am the one who killed you.
Isn’t that some sentence? I think so. Here’s another one that I like quite a lot.
Somebody, a total stranger, will find your body in the balcony at the Westwood Village Theater. You, Patrice Bennett.
Because that’s where you died today, watching your last movie, and not a very good one at that. The Village? What were you thinking? What could have brought you to the theater on this day, the day of your death, to see The Village?
You should have been home, Patsy. With your darling little children. That’s where a good mom belongs. Don’t you think so? Even if you spend much of your home time reading scripts and on the phone playing studio politics.
It took me a long time to get so close to you. You are a Big Somebody at your Studio, and I am just one of the nobodies who watches movies on video and Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. I couldn’t even get inside the big arched entrance at your Studio. No sirree.
All I could do was watch your dark-blue Aston Martin going in and out, day after day. But I’m a really patient person. I’ve learned how to wait for what I want.
Speaking of waiting, that incredible house of yours is hard to see from the street. I did spot your lovely children—a couple of times, actually. And I know with some time I could have found a way into the house. But then today, you changed everything.
You went to a movie, in the middle of the afternoon, just like you say you do in some of your interviews. Maybe you missed the smell of popcorn. Do you ever take your little girls to the movies, Patsy? You should have, you know. As they say, it all goes by in a blink.
It didn’t make sense to me at first. You’re such a busy little Big Shot. But then I figured it out. Movies are what you do. You must see them all the time, but you also have a family waiting for you every night. You’re supposed to be home for dinner with little Lynne and Laurie. How old are they now? Twelve and thirteen? They want you there, and you want to be there. That’s good, I suppose. Except that tonight, dinner is going to come and go without you. Kind of sad when you think about it, which is what I’m doing right now.
> Anyway, you sat in the balcony in the ninth row. I sat in the twelfth. I waited, and watched the back of your head, your brunette-from-a-bottle hair. That’s where the bullet was going to go. Or so I fantasized. Isn’t that what one is supposed to do at the movies? Escape? Get away from it all? Except that most movies are so dismal these days—dismally dumb or dismally dreary.
I didn’t actually pull out my gun until after the film started. I didn’t like how scared I felt. That was how scared you were supposed to be, Big Shot. But you didn’t know what was happening, not even that I was there. You were out of the loop.
I sat like that, holding the gun in my lap, pointing it at you for the longest time. Then I decided I wanted to be closer—right on top of you.
I needed to look in your eyes after you knew you’d been shot, knew that you would never see Lynne and Laurie again, never see another movie either, never green-light one, never again be a Big Shot.
But then seeing you wide-eyed and dead was a surprise. A shock to my nervous system, actually. What happened to that famed aristocratic bearing of yours? That’s why I had to leave the theater so quickly, and why I had to leave you undone.
Not that you really care anymore. How’s the weather where you are now, Patsy? Hot, I hope. Hot as Hades—isn’t that an expression?
Do you miss your children terribly? Have some regrets? I’ll bet you do. I would if I were you. But I’m no Big Shot, just one of the little people.
Chapter 18
NINE O’CLOCK, and all was not well, to put it mildly.
LAPD detective Jeanne Galletta’s handshake was surprisingly soft. She looked as though she could give out bone-crushers if she wanted to. Her orange short-sleeved turtleneck showed off her biceps. She was slim, though, with a strikingly angular face and the kind of piercing brown eyes that could make you stare.
I caught myself midstare, and glanced away.
“Agent Cross. Have I kept you waiting?” she asked.
“Not very long,” I told her. I’d been in Galletta’s position before. When you’re a lead investigator on a high-profile case, everyone wants a piece of your time. Besides, my day was almost over. Detective Galletta would probably be up all night. This case warranted it.
The mess had landed in her lap about twelve hours ago. It had originated at the West Bureau, in Hollywood, but serial cases were automatically transferred downtown, to the Special Homicide Unit. Technically, “Mary Smith” couldn’t be classified as a serial killer until there were at least four attributed murders, but LAPD had decided to err on the side of caution. I agreed with the decision, not that anyone had asked me for an opinion.
The media coverage on this one, and the subsequent pressure on the department, was already intense. It could go from intense to insane soon, if the e-mails to the Times got out.
Detective Galletta led me upstairs to a small conference room turned crisis room. It acted as a makeshift clearinghouse for all information related to the murders.