13 Stolen Girls Read online

  Hughes finally struck a deal with Paramount for proper distribution. After that, it was like a cascade. Joshua Tree took over America.

  In the great tradition of Citizen Kane, the movie got skunked at the Oscars, losing out for best picture to a lightweight Sandra Bullock weepie. But in what would be hailed as the “Joshua Tree effect,” everyone involved in the project turned golden. Not just George Dannemoor, the director—who in the years after the film’s release heard his name compared to Spielberg’s—but also the screenwriters, the cinematographer, even the art director. The male lead, Radley Holt, rose to be one of the top-grossing stars in movies.

  What of the girl at the center of it? For Joshua Tree was Tarin Mistry’s film all the way. Her acting had a freshness, depth and delicacy that seemed impossible to pin down. She tore out her heart and wrung it dry over the audience. Like all great performances, hers conveyed a vision of what it means to be truly alive. Men and women alike fell in love. On a less grandiose level, Tarin’s look in Joshua Tree spawned fashion trends and a hairstyle craze.

  “Every second she’s not on-screen is wasted,” wrote the critic Jason Thorell, riffing on something Eddie Fisher once said about Liz Taylor: “Every second she’s out of the bedroom is wasted.” Ebert waxed poetic: “What is there not of this girl that is maddening to everyone in the world?”

  Best of all, the icing on the celebrity cake, Tarin Mistry was gone. She was the original gone girl. When Joshua Tree went wide, the American public clamored for its new crush. After people discovered that they couldn’t have her, their love turned desperate, tragic, obsessive. Tarin Mistry dream clubs formed, with membership supposedly limited to those whom the girl had visited, succubus style, in their sleep.

  She had recorded a song for the film’s soundtrack, a breathy number called “Me Without You,” but known universally as Tarin’s Song. She sounded like Marilyn singing to the president, only mournful. When her celebrity developed, fans cooked up multiple YouTube music videos. The one with the most hits matched the song with scenes of a dreamy late-night drive, with Mistry’s face fading in and out in the rearview.

  Baby I don’t know me without you

  No I don’t know me without you

  What was Tarin like? Everyone wanted to know. George Dannemoor characterized her as a frightened doe, ready to spook at any moment. Radley Holt, her co-star, recalled a memorably intense style of kissing.

  Police and journalists searched out the details of Mistry’s life and her disappearance. Bethlehem Gunion was born to a long-gone father and a half-crazed mother. She spent her childhood in the outback along the Colorado-Arizona border, drifting from one religious commune to the next. There were ugly hints of pastoral abuse. No family photos existed. The mother had burned them as heretical. Beth escaped at age seventeen to wash up in L.A., its shores already heaped with the bleached skeletons of countless aspiring actresses.

  About her disappearance, the facts were thin. She had only recently adopted her stage name. She lived without roommates in a tiny studio apartment in Laurel Canyon. An oddity among Angelenos, she didn’t drive. No real friends surfaced. Co-workers at the data-collection center where she eked out a living struggled to recall the girl. Two months after Joshua Tree wrapped, all traces of Tarin Mistry had…evaporated.

  Just another lost soul in America. The missing-persons effort materialized only later, when her celebrity demanded it. The trail had long since gone cold. The irony of this state of affairs—a girl unmissed until she became a star—played off the doomed romanticism of her performance in Joshua Tree. The mystery of Tarin Mistry became a thing. People wondered. They worried. They longed. How can you feel cheated of something you didn’t know you had?

  Dying is a famously good career move in Hollywood. It turned out that disappearing can be an even better one.

  —

  Some two dozen members of various law-enforcement and emergency-service agencies joined Remington at the site. Most of them were men. They arranged themselves in a ragged circle around the barrel grave of Tarin Mistry.

  There were more coming. A seismic disaster in Malibu, yes, well, that was huge. But unearthing the body of a young movie star, a Marilyn Monroe who had vanished on the cusp of fame—well, which duty would your average cop rather pull?

  Remington remained OIC, officer in charge at the scene. She felt like the little Dutch girl with her finger in the dyke, holding back the tide.

  Her main ally present was actually an on-again, off-again enemy, Deputy Sergeant John Velske, who worked out of the same Malibu substation she did. Remington knew that somewhere deep in his heart Velske, a longtime veteran of the sheriff’s department, still considered her a girl. As a detective investigator, she outranked him. That fact didn’t prevent him from patronizing her.

  A tortuous, well-traveled path of beaten dirt—one of the EMT guys christened it the Ho Chi Minh Trail—now led uphill from Big Rock Drive. A little Bobcat loader toiled toward the site, dragging behind it a trailer-hitched gas generator with a lighting-tower array. CAU 1, Crime Analysis Unit One, the top-tier forensic detail for the whole county, was suiting up in full hazmat to get to work. They hadn’t accessed the body in the barrel as of yet. Just getting started. It would be a long process.

  A half mile below the scene, an unmarked car pulled up and a couple of plainclothes detectives emerged. Even at a distance, Remington could read what they were.

  And who they were.

  She had expected these two, not quite so soon but eventually. Walter Rack and Paul Roone, aka Rack and Ruin, were the most celebrated, most decorated and most obnoxious detectives the Los Angeles Police Department had to offer. HBO’s True Detective miniseries was at least partially based on the pair. Or so the rumor went, probably spread by Rack and Ruin themselves.

  The two LAPD homicide cops had been the public faces of the Tarin Mistry investigation since forever.

  Rack and Ruin hiked up the Ho Chi Minh Trail together, stopping every once in a while to exchange pleasantries with passing cops and emergency workers. It seemed that the two knew everybody, and that everyone knew them. Even the LASD personnel they encountered granted them deference.

  LAPD versus LASD. Sparks of friction marked the interactions between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The LASD was responsible for the unincorporated areas within the five thousand square miles of Los Angeles County. The LAPD had jurisdiction within the city boundaries of Los Angeles itself. Whenever and wherever the twain met, there were difficulties.

  A couple of female EMTs had peeled off, and a CAU tech went out on an equipment run. That left Remington as the sole woman on the scene. She saw Deputy Velske greet Rack and Ruin with familiar ease. The dynamic duo from the LAPD climbed the last few yards up the slope.

  “Detective,” Walter Rack hailed her. His voice had a natural military crispness.

  Remington didn’t know what to say, so she introduced herself.

  Rack scowled. “Have we met? Are you Gene Remington’s kid?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I know your father from way back at the Parker Center. He’s a good guy. Tell him hello from me, will you?”

  Remington nodded. There was an awkward pause.

  “Any media around?” Roone asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Just wait.” Paul Roone sounded as if he looked forward to the prospect.

  “So.” Walter Rack nodded at the team of white-suited crime-scene analysts. “Are we sure it’s her?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “No science on it yet, though, right? So no positive ID.”

  “The necklace,” Remington said.

  Rack and his partner exchanged looks. Remington could see that they were itching to dig in. Like a pair of honey badgers. Roone kept edging around Remington to approach the barrel.

  She stood her ground. “Let the CAU do its job, gents.”

  Rack and Ruin matched wardrobes—expe
nsive, tailored, showy—as well as close-cropped hair. Remington tried to remember the last time she had encountered a police officer whose hair was longer than a half inch. The rest of the world might have moved on from the crew cut, but you couldn’t tell it by cops. A shorn head was the true badge of the tribe.

  Paul Roone got on his cellphone. So this is it, Remington thought. Who might he be calling, exactly? Her boss, the L.A. County sheriff? Rack and Ruin had plenty of friends in high places. Perhaps the district attorney? How about the U.S. attorney general or—what the hell—the president?

  “You’ve had your look-see,” Remington told them. “Can we just move back a little now?”

  Walter Rack took a step toward Remington. “You know how many hours Roone and I have got clocked on Tarin Mistry, Detective?”

  “I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “Thirteen hundred, give or take,” Rack said.

  “But who’s counting?” Remington responded cheerfully.

  “Those are only the ones on the official log.”

  Roone covered the mic on his cellphone so that he could chime in. “Off the clock, it’s more like double that.”

  “We do it the old-fashioned way,” Rack informed her. “Thirteen hundred shoe-leather-shredding, evidence-collecting, false-lead-tracking, interview-recording hours. How many hours have you put in on her now, Detective? A couple? Three?”

  “Yet in all those hours you never managed to turn up a body, and here I am with one.” It wasn’t a great idea to alienate these two. But Remington couldn’t help herself.

  Johnny Velske moved over to hiss words into her ear. “Leave it alone. You finally made homicide. Now, don’t screw it up.”

  Roone handed her his cell. “Your C of D.”

  The voice of LASD chief of detectives, Tyler Lott, came over the phone. “Detective Investigator Remington?” All formal like.

  “Commander Lott.”

  “As of right now, I have to officially relieve you as officer in charge at the scene.”

  “Sir, I’m the one—” Remington began, but Lott cut her off.

  “I’m instructing you to cooperate fully with the LAPD representatives.” Lott didn’t sound happy about the situation.

  “Sir?”

  “This order comes from on high, Detective Remington.”

  Heavy cases such as Tarin Mistry are always worked with the bosses breathing down your neck, not to mention the mad dogs of the press. Trying not to feel bullied, Remington rang off. She handed the phone back to Roone, who wore a smug smile on his face.

  “You are relieved, Detective,” Roone said, pushing past her.

  “Gentlemen,” Rack called out as he approached the CAU techs gathered around the barrel.

  Anger surged in Remington. Sure, she had a bare six months of seniority in the LASD Homicide Bureau. Rack and Ruin were ensconced at the top of the LAPD food chain. It was just the way of the world. But she had made a promise to the dead girl. Who relieved whom didn’t matter. Neither did orders sent down the chain of command.

  With an impulse of bitter loyalty, she turned to follow the two LAPD dicks. She wasn’t going to let it go. She’d force a confrontation.

  Deputy Velske headed her off. “Not worth it.”

  “She’s not worth it?” Remington asked, tilting her head toward the steel drum.

  “God marks the fall of every sparrow. But you’re not God, Detective.”

  An insistent buzz sounded above the scene. The assembled law-enforcement officers gawked as a small news drone arrived to hover fifty yards above them. The whirring, quadruple-rotor disk the size of a garbage-can lid appeared out of nowhere, like an alien being or some emissary from the future. More and more these days, what was real came off as surreal.

  “TMZ.com,” read the white logo on the black plastic underbelly of the electronic bird.

  The report of the Tarin Mistry discovery must have leaked. News-camera drones had debuted on L.A.’s highly competitive media landscape (skyscape?) only in the previous few months. They were used mostly for traffic reports, but one had recently covered a high-profile drug-gang shoot-out down in Crenshaw.

  Remington herself had never encountered such a device before. Some pissed-off impulse moved her to draw her sidearm. She heard someone behind her—Velske, Paul Roone, or one of the CAU techs—call out, “Gun!”

  Remington lined up her shot and fired.

  The banging report rebounded off the steep canyonside to the north. Alarmed shouts and chatter rose from the disorganized platoon of sheriff’s deputies and plainclothes cops gathered at the scene. Discharge a weapon in the presence of armed law-enforcement personnel and you had better be following some sort of protocol or command.

  The drone took the hit, spun in a loopy circle, then clattered out of the sky.

  Chapter 3

  Rick Stills chose for himself the most recent of the fifty-plus missing-persons cases presented to the task force that evening, the sixteen-year-old only child of a single mom, pretty enough girl from her picture, three weeks gone. The mother herself sat opposite him now.

  “And, and, your daughter—” Stills stumbled, shuffling the missing-persons report on the scarred folding table set up for the event.

  “Merilee,” the mother said.

  There was something wrong with the woman’s eyes. They looked at Rick without seeing him. It felt eerie. He could not imagine what she was going through. Hope was like spilled blood, he decided, bright when fresh, darkening with time.

  “Yes, Merilee,” Rick said. “Ms. Henegar, is that how you pronounce it? When was your last contact, Ms. Henegar?”

  There were dozens of detectives and prosecutors gathered at the old Grand Olympic Auditorium in downtown L.A. In the past, the landmark theater had been the city’s prime venue for boxing and wrestling matches, then later on for concerts and raves, but it was now the headquarters of a Korean Christian denomination. The church had offered the facility to the district attorney’s office for the present event, held under the auspices of the Los Angeles County Task Force on Missing and Exploited Youth.

  “LACTFOMEY,” the unfortunate acronym on the letterhead read. Then, below that, atop a list of names, “Rick Stills, Esq., Director.” Prominently positioned, just below the D.A. herself.

  Janiece Baez, the present district attorney for Los Angeles County, had requested that Stills head up the task force as a personal favor. He was a star attorney and equity partner in the powerful law firm of Buffum, Buffum, Oatman & Stanfill. LACTFOMEY—an abbreviation, Stills believed, that had awkward associations with breast-feeding—was the kind of prestige public-interest appointment that furthered a lawyer’s career. His firm gladly lent him out.

  The Grand Olympic had to be the saddest place in the world just then. Seated in the auditorium were about a hundred hollow-eyed people, all haunted by the disappearance of loved ones. Stills had argued with the district attorney against the arrangement. Why do it all at once like this? Why not let them assume their losses were personal, private and special?

  “County and city authorities processed ninety-seven hundred and sixty-three missing-persons reports last year,” D.A. Baez had announced in her opening remarks. She had characterized the evening as a “mission reset” of missing-persons investigations. To Rick Stills, the event more resembled a cattle call.

  It wasn’t illegal for people simply to disappear. Walk away, leave that annoying family or abusive hubby behind, go out for cigarettes and never come back. Who hadn’t dreamed of it at one time or another? But a “voluntary” disappearance wasn’t the issue with the cases up for a reset that evening. These were abductions of adolescents or young adults, every case a missing child between twelve and twenty-five.

  “We have representatives here from the Sheriff’s Detail on Missing Persons and Unsolved Cases, the LAPD Adult Missing Persons Unit, county-welfare services and public-school authorities,” Baez had said. “This task force is dedicated to taking a fresh look
at the disappearance of your loved ones.”

  Baez had paused, and with a glance sought out Layla Remington among the assembled lawyers and detectives. “The recent press coverage surrounding the Tarin Mistry case has focused the public’s attention on the problem of missing and exploited youths,” she continued. “We will use that new awareness to help us find those whom you have lost.”

  A collective sigh arose from the audience when Baez mentioned Mistry’s name. The parents attending the event had desperately hoped their missing children would be found alive and unharmed. Now they were all dealing with the mental image of a dead girl in a barrel.

  Nine-thousand-plus missing-person cases. Eight-thousand-plus classified as “voluntary.” Nine hundred and ninety-six listed as missing “under suspicious circumstances.” A hundred and twenty-nine of those investigated as everyone’s worst-case scenario, “stranger abductions.” Families, witnesses, investigating detectives had been brought together that evening for a round of interviews, questioning and hand-holding.

  Stills had assigned himself the reset of Merilee Henegar’s case, retrieving that particular file folder from the pile for no particular reason other than the fact that it was relatively new. Some of those present were searching for children who had been gone for years, even decades. The victims were neither dead nor alive. All were simply vanished.

  Merilee Sharmon Henegar, six months shy of her seventeenth birthday. A sometime student at Indian Hills High School up in Conejo Valley, where a guidance counselor’s report indicated that Merilee had been increasingly unhappy. Rick Stills had a general awareness that many children are unhappy in high school. He himself had breezed through his teenage years as a popular and high-achieving student.