Chapter 12
Billie was still asleep when her cellphone rang the next morning and she grabbed
quickly to answer it, thinking that Alex might have been arrested, and Mickie was
calling her for help. She had dreamt about her all night, and woken half a dozen times.
Jason had pulled her close to him and held her, hoping to reassure her. She was afraid
that somehow Mickie would be implicated and arrested too. It was not impossible,
depending on how much she knew.
But the voice at the other end was unfamiliar and stirred a distant chord of memory,
and as she came fully awake, Billie realized it was Charlotte Carter, her friend Tom’s
mother, calling. She wondered if she was in California calling to say hello, and then a
ripple of fear ran through her as she sat straight up in bed. Jason was in the shower,
getting ready for work.
“Mrs. Carter, are you okay?” Billie asked her kindly.
“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “I got your number from your dad. I hope you don’t
mind.”
“Of course not. Is everything okay?” There was silence at the other end, and she
realized that Tom’s mother was crying, and she didn’t need to be told the reason why.
There was only one reason why Charlotte Carter would call her. Tears sprang to
Billie’s eyes and she felt as though the air was being squeezed out of her, and she
couldn’t breathe.
“I know Tom would want me to call you,” Charlotte said through her tears. “He was
killed last night, somewhere in Syria. I don’t think they told me where. I can’t
remember. They were on stealth maneuvers at night, to capture the home of a terrorist
leader, and a land mine exploded. Tom was killed instantly. They said he didn’t suffer,”
she said. “He died a hero’s death.” It seemed to comfort Charlotte, but it didn’t comfort
Billie. Tom had been her soulmate for twenty-one years, and still was, even though she
hadn’t seen him in a year and a half and hadn’t known where he was.
“I’m so sorry,” Billie said through her own tears. “I loved him so much. He was the
best person in the world. He was the only friend I had growing up.”
“I know, and I was so sorry when your mom died. She was a good person too.
They’re going to try to send what they can home when they clear the area. But they don’t
know when that will be. We’re not going to have a funeral. We’ll have a memorial
service when we have him back. I just wanted you to know. I hope you’re all right,
Billie. If you come out this way, please come and visit us. We don’t want to lose touch
with you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Carter, you won’t.” Tom was twenty-four years old, Billie had just
turned twenty-three. His parents were older than hers. They had had Tom in their midforties as a late surprise. And he was an only child. She knew that his parents were
close to seventy by now. Her parents had been much younger.
“We always hoped you two would get married one day, when you grew up. You were
such good friends.”
Too good to want to ruin it with romance, so they never had. Romances didn’t seem
to last, friendship did. It seemed safer to both of them not to risk what they had. They
had always agreed on that. He was like her brother and she was his soul sister. Now he
was gone too. All the people she loved were being taken from her one by one. Her
mother five years before, now Tom. Mickie had said she didn’t want Billie in her life,
and Billie believed her. Mickie didn’t want or need anyone, except Alex, for his money
and the opportunity he gave her, until she learned the truth. And her father didn’t care
about her, and never had. It made Jason even more precious, and she was pining for
Tom when she and Charlotte hung up.
Jason saw her face when he came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around
him. Her face was gray, she was so pale. Her eyes were huge and she was crying and
couldn’t speak or put down her phone. She was still holding it in her hand when Jason
came and sat on the edge of the bed and held her.
“Was that your sister?” he asked, hating Mickie for the pain she caused Billie, and
she shook her head, and couldn’t speak through her tears for a minute.
“It was Tom’s mother. My friend . . . Tom Carter, he was killed on a mission in Syria
last night,” she said, and choked on a sob again.
“I’m so sorry.” Jason didn’t know what to do to make her feel better. He went to the
kitchen and brought her a cup of tea a few minutes later and she took it gratefully and
sipped it, and set it down next to the bed.
He waited while she dressed and he drove her to work, and promised to call her
later. She hadn’t even been able to talk to Tom in the last year, but she thought of him all
the time. And now he would just be a memory and she would never hear his voice
again. The thought of it was nearly unbearable. Tom had been the only decent part of her
childhood other than her mother.
She kissed Jason in front of the hospital, and jumped out of the Jeep. She told him she
was okay when he called her at lunchtime, and she was in bed with her clothes on when
he came home from work. She knew she just had to get through the days now until the
pain was less acute, something she could live with. She had been through it with her
mother, but she had forgotten how agonizing grief could be. Every memory she had of
Tom was vivid. Every moment of their childhood came back to her. Every prank they
played and the jokes they told, the trees they climbed, the streams they swam in, the
cows they chased and horses they rode. The only prom they ever went to and she had to
wear an old dress of her mother’s because her father wouldn’t buy her a new one, even
though he bought a new dress for Mickie for prom every year, because she was the prom
queen and beautiful. Her father thought Billie was small and insignificant and didn’t
matter. Tom told her she looked gorgeous in her mother’s ugly dress. She remembered
the times they got drunk together, the science homework she did for him and the essays
he wrote for her. He would have been at her college graduation if he could have been,
and she had been so proud of him when she saw him graduate from West Point. Every
moment of their years together was sharply etched in her mind and on her heart. Never
to be forgotten and forever loved.
Later that day, Joe McCarthy, the head of the crime section at the L.A. Times and
Jason’s boss, had called him to his office. Jason assumed he’d gotten more damning
information on Alex Addison, and he went to Joe’s office promptly after the call.
“More news?” Jason asked, slipping into the chair across the desk from his boss.
“Did they get the warrant signed?”
“It’ll take a couple of days.” Joe smiled at him. “I’ve got good news and bad news. I
just got a call from upstairs,” which meant senior management.
“The police aren’t dropping the case, are they?” Jason looked horrified.
“Definitely not. You’ve done a great job on this investigation. It’s not over yet, and
I’m sure you’ll write a terrific piece on it. Prize-winning stuff.” Jason was touched by
what he said. “The bad news for me is it’ll be your last piece for the crime section.
They want you to follow this to the conclusion, but after that you’re done.”
“I’m being laid off?” Jason was shocked. He knew they were making cutbacks, but he
hadn’t expected them to include him.
“No,” Joe said. “They’re moving you to politics, and kicking you up to senior
reporter, with an office of your own. You could run that section one day, if Jack Bailey
would ever retire.” The head of the political section was the oldest department head at
the paper, a famous old reporter with a column of his own. “They tried to steal you a
year ago and I wouldn’t let them, so my apologies if you stayed in the crime division
longer than you wanted. You’re a damn fine reporter, Jason. You’ve already done a
great job with this investigation and we’re just getting started.”
Jason was stunned by the news of his transfer and the promotion. It was what he’d
been dreaming of for three years. Joe said, “I think Addison will plead when he gets a
deal and it’ll wrap up pretty quickly. You’ll be upstairs very soon. Congratulations!” He
held out a hand and shook with Jason, who was ecstatic. He thanked Joe profusely and
went back to his desk in a daze.
Jason told Billie about the promotion that night, and despite her grief over Tom, she
was happy for him.
On Friday morning, Dan Kelly called Jason to tell him that Alex had been arrested and
was in jail. He had been seeing patients when they came for him and took him out of the
house in handcuffs, and his patients and staff had stared at him in silent disbelief. Kelly
didn’t say if Mickie had been there or how she’d reacted. Maybe she was out, shopping
for some event.
The police were going to be searching the house and taking evidence with them. They
had kept one office person to open the supply closet doors for them. They had to call a
locksmith to open some of them, since only Alex had the combinations. They were
sending all the substances to the police lab for analysis, since none of them were
marked, and they would all be evidence.
Dan said that the arraignment was set for Monday, and exceptionally, the judge had
refused to allow Alex to post bail until after the arraignment, so he would have to spend
the weekend in jail. Jason wondered if Mickie was shocked, furious, or sympathetic.
Mickie wasn’t long on empathy at the best of times. She would be thinking of how
Addison’s fall from grace and exposure would affect her. His accounts had been frozen
by the judge so Mickie would have to post bail herself, or someone else would. No one
could pay his employees, unless the judge allowed money to be released from Alex’s
accounts to do so. But his medical office was closed forever. Dr. Alexander Addison IV
no longer existed. His patients who were so dependent on him would be in a panic.
Joe McCarthy asked Jason to write the preliminary article that day for the headline on
Saturday.
Billie couldn’t stop herself, when Jason told her Addison had been arrested. She sent
Mickie a text from the car on the way to work. It took her mind off Tom for a few
minutes. She just said, “I’m thinking of you, call if you need me. Love, B.” The response
from Mickie was swift. “I don’t need you, and never did. Did your boyfriend do this? If
so, tell him to go fuck himself and you too. M.” Billie knew from a lifetime of past
history that Mickie was incapable of human kindness. She could only fake it if she
wanted something. The rest of the time it was not in her skill set. She was everything
Billie had always thought she was, completely narcissistic, a liar, and cruel. She
wondered how Alex was showing up on Mickie’s radar, as friend or foe, someone to
love and support, or whether he had been erased off her radar the moment his bank
accounts disappeared. Mickie had never said she loved him, nor had he said it to her.
They weren’t capable of it.
Jason’s headline article about the rise and fall and arrest of Alexander Addison was an
exquisite piece of journalism. There was no speculation, no guesswork, no judgment or
ventured opinion, just straight, pure reporting of the highest order. The revelation that
Alex was not a doctor, had never gone to Harvard or any med school and had no
medical license, and the charges he was accused of, were the essence of the piece. It
was an astounding article and when Billie read it, she was sure Alex’s patients and
most ardent supporters and investors in Bellissima would be in shock.
Roger Hodges had called his own lawyer for him and instructed him to post bail after
the arraignment, to keep his wife happy, and Marilyn had gone to see Alex in jail in
tears on Saturday afternoon. She and Alex had sat across from each other with the glass
between them, speaking through a phone, and they both cried. She was surprised not to
see Mickie there, and she wanted to know from Alex who had started this smear
campaign against him, and he swore he didn’t know.
Roger’s lawyer had a different story when he called Roger to fill him in on the
charges, explaining that five women had been disfigured by Alex’s treatments and the
substances he had injected into them, both counterfeit Botox and liquid silicone, which
was illegal and potentially lethal, and possibly other unsuitable substances which
remained to be seen. It was a sobering conversation, and it impressed Roger, along with
the other charges, that Alex had been a fraud, a charming, brilliantly impressive one,
who had pulled off an incredible scam. He was a hairdresser who began as a high
school dropout, had been posing as a Harvard-trained plastic surgeon for years, and had
gotten away with it. His luck had finally run out.
At Marilyn’s insistence, Roger agreed to leave the bail in place, but he was sobered
by the charges. Addison was clearly a sociopath, not just a criminal. Marilyn said that
Alex assured her that none of it was true. To keep peace in his already troubled
household, Roger agreed to what his wife wanted, but his attorney told him that
ultimately, Alex’s only choice was to plead guilty. The evidence was too damning
against him. And there was no doubt of his guilt.
Roger’s attorney made the appearance with Alex at the arraignment where Alex
pleaded not guilty, and bail was set at three hundred thousand dollars, which Roger
paid. He knew that life with his wife would be unlivable unless he did. It was a small
price to pay for peace, given her other justified grievances against him, including the
girl in Newport Beach.
Jason attended the arraignment as part of his story, and with some misgivings, Billie
went with him, in part so she would be there for Mickie if she wanted her. At first
Mickie was nowhere to be seen in the courtroom, and then Billie spotted her, far from
Alex and well behind him. Marilyn Hodges was in the front row, looking encouragingly
at Alex, stoic in a black suit, shirt, and tie, as he pleaded not guilty. It was over very
quickly once bail was set. He was returned to the jail until Marilyn paid the bail
bondsman, and she was at the exit from the jail when he was released. She had also
paid for a bungalow suite for him at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She had gone above and
beyond for him with her total faith in him. And as he walked out of jail, looking badly
shaken, he saw Mickie in the crowd behind Marilyn, waiting for him. He thanked
Marilyn profusely, hugged her, promised to repay her as soon as things were
straightened out, as he was sure they would be, then he walked toward Mickie waiting
for him in the distance, as Marilyn left.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say to Mickie when he stood in front of her.
She didn’t hug him as Marilyn had, but she was there. He had had no idea if he would
ever see her again. She hadn’t answered her cellphone when they let him call her.
“Now what?” was all she said to him.
“Where have you been?” he asked her.
“Where have I been?” she almost shrieked at him. “Not in jail.” She had read Jason’s
article two days before, on Saturday. She didn’t know what to say to Alex. He was a
fraud. She didn’t know what to believe now.
“Marilyn rented us a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Can we go there and
talk?” She nodded and he followed her outside to the car and driver she had hired to
come to court. She had paid for it with her personal bank account, which had a few
thousand dollars of her own in it, and some money Alex had given her. They seized
everything that Alex owned and had frozen all his bank accounts. Alex looked
respectable in his black suit, and he had a paper bag with his belongings in it. “Where
did you stay last night?” he asked her again.
“Wendy let me stay at her place. We both cried all night. We didn’t understand what
had happened until we read the paper on Saturday.”
“I thought you might have gone to your sister’s,” he said, very subdued as they got
into the car.
“My sister and that creep she lives with are dead as far as I’m concerned. They
started this. I’ll never see her again.”
“She didn’t start it,” Alex said quietly, as they rode to the hotel. “This isn’t her fault. I
knew it was coming and I didn’t want to face it. I don’t know how I got it, but I think I
injected some bad Botox into some women a few months ago. It nearly killed them.
They sent me registered letters and I ignored them. Five of them want to bring criminal
charges against me. There may be more, and they’ll sue me civilly. And we have a
bigger problem.” He looked at her and she could see that he was frightened. “We have
to make a deal with the guys from Hong Kong. The Koreans are going to want their
money back and we’ve spent a lot of it. The boat, the plane, some other things. I was
happy to get their money, but I don’t know how clean it is. They’re kind of a rough
group, and I think they may be in the drug trade. I have to pay them back. We need the
Hong Kong money to do that.”
“And do what? You’re not a doctor anymore. What are they going to pay us for? You
were a hairdresser, Alex, and you pretended to be a doctor. Are you insane?”
“Maybe I am, or I was. But it worked for a long time. My patients love me. Maybe I
can still do their Botox shots or some of the tamer treatments they rely on.”
“Alex, if what the paper said is true, you’re going to prison, and I’m not going with
you. I’m getting out of this mess.”
“Then why are you here now?”
“I don’t know,” she said as they reached the hotel. “Maybe I’m addicted to you. The
police left me a message. They want to talk to me tomorrow. What am I supposed to say
to them? I knew you did things you shouldn’t have. I lied too. I just didn’t know you’re
not a doctor. But they could charge me with fraud. I’m not going to prison for you.” They
had arrived at the hotel, checked in at the desk, and a bellboy showed them to their
room. It was an adorable bungalow, with all the lavish comforts of the Beverly Hills
Hotel and their own pool. The bungalow was costing Marilyn a fortune.
Alex poured himself a drink and sat down on the couch, and Mickie sat on the couch
opposite and stared at him, feeling that she was in over her head. He drained the glass
of Scotch and came over to sit next to her, and she didn’t stop him. She half wanted to
leave and half wanted to stay. She wanted to turn the clock back only days to when he
was a doctor and he was rich, back to the yacht in the Caribbean and the plane. She
didn’t want to be tied to a criminal, or go to prison herself. She wanted a lawyer and
didn’t have one to call.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her and kissed her, and the next thing she knew they
were having wild passionate sex. They couldn’t stop, and it felt like a death dance to
her now. They made love until they couldn’t breathe or move or talk, and then they fell
asleep in a tangled mass of sheets.
Mickie woke up two hours later and went to take a shower. She was awake all night,
thinking about him while he slept.
She had to go to the police. She wore the same clothes she’d worn to the arraignment
the day before. All her clothes were at the house in Bel Air, which she and Alex had no
access to now. She needed a lawyer to help her get out of this mess. Then she
remembered that one of Alex’s patients was an attorney whom Mickie had talked to
several times while she waited for her Botox shots. She went to the living room of the
suite, got the number from information, and called her. Her secretary came on the line
and put her through to Patricia Scott. She sounded calm and kind on the phone.
“I was hoping you’d call me,” she said smoothly. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Mickie said, with a trembling voice.
“How’s Alex? I saw the paper.”
“He’s a mess. And I swear I never knew.”
“I figured. No one did. He’s incredibly good at what he does. He probably believed
it all himself after a while.”
“I have to go to the police this morning. Will you come with me?” Patricia had a full
calendar, but she wanted to help Mickie. She was young, innocent, and in a terrible
situation.
“Yes, I will. I just have office appointments. I’ll have my assistant cancel them.
Where do I meet you?” Patricia wrote it down and thought of something she wanted to
ask Mickie, now that some of the lies had been exposed. She was sure there were
others. “How old are you really, Mickie?” Thirty-three had never rung true to her, even
though Mickie was mature and dressed the part.
“I just turned twenty,” Mickie said in a small voice.
“I thought it might be something like that. Let’s get you out of this. Is there anything
else I should know?”
“Not really.” Mickie couldn’t remember her own lies now, or even his. They had
seemed true at the time.
“I’ll see you at the police station in an hour. Don’t start talking until I get there.”
When Mickie got off the phone, Alex was awake. He looked as exhausted as she felt.
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, I have to talk to the police this morning. I just spoke with Patricia Scott.
She’s going to meet me there.”
“She’s a nice woman. I’m sorry, Mickie. This is such a mess. I never thought it would
blow up like this.”
“Yeah, neither did I.” She realized now that she didn’t love him. She never had. And
he didn’t love her. They had used each other and it got out of hand. She couldn’t stand
her sister, but she’d been right. Billie had sensed something off with Alex since the
beginning. Mickie never had. All she could see were the diamonds in the sky, and she
wanted to get them and grab them while she could. Alex had made it so easy to do that.
She didn’t care how many lies he told or how he bent the truth. He was doing the same
thing she was. But she had never hurt anyone, and he had.
She wasn’t sure that she would see him again. She didn’t want to come back to the
hotel. He was going to prison, and there might be a trial. It felt like this was the end. She
wanted to get all her pretty clothes out of his house, but she didn’t know how. Maybe
Patricia Scott would help. Alex couldn’t help her anymore. And what would they do
now until he went to prison? She wasn’t an ambassador anymore. He wasn’t a doctor.
She hated to have Billie be right. She and Jason were so smug and so sure. Mickie
didn’t want to go crawling back to her. She had to figure out something for herself. At
least she had the hundred thousand dollars in the bank that Alex had given her not to go
back to school, when she lied about Stanford. It was all she had now.
She didn’t feel guilty about lying to him. And she didn’t feel sorry for him. She didn’t
feel anything except sorry for herself.
“The police took everything,” he told her, looking bleak. “Will you stay at the hotel
with me?” he asked her, looking tragic.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what to do now.” She could go back to
modeling, but she didn’t want to. She had liked being with him, but she didn’t like the
way it ended, or what would happen now.
“What are you going to tell the police?”
“I don’t know anything about the treatments you give your patients,” she said to
reassure him. “And I believed you were a doctor.”
“Thank you. I’ll walk you out,” he offered. She had called an Uber and it was ten
minutes away. She was going to ask the police if she could take her clothes out of
Alex’s house. He had bought most of them, but he had given them to her.
They walked side by side down the winding paths of the hotel grounds to the wide
walkway at the entrance, and she stepped into the driveway. There was a white car with
two men in it parked across from them, waiting for someone. Mickie thought it was her
Uber, except for the man in the passenger seat, and as he opened the door and stepped
out, Alex pushed her away, and the man came straight for him, shot him twice in the
chest and once in the head, and jumped back in the car as Mickie stood in the driveway
covered in blood. Alex lay in a pool of his own blood as people ran to him, someone
screamed, and the car sped away. Nobody thought to stop it. They were all crowded
around Alex and he was dead, with part of his head blown away and his chest wide
open. Two people were holding Mickie up as she started to faint, and there was blood
splashed all over her face and arms and in her hair. All she had seen were two men in
the white car, and Alex had pushed her away as one started shooting, and then they were
gone. They sat her down on the ground, and then she heard sirens. There were police
everywhere and an ambulance came, and they put a tarp over Alex.
The police closed the entrance to the hotel, as it was a crime scene, and redirected
people to the side entrance. They led Mickie inside to a chair and gave her a glass of
water. She was shaking all over, and they took her to a room to lie down.
Lieutenant Dan Kelly was waiting for Mickie when the sergeant at the reception desk
came to tell him that her attorney was waiting outside at the front desk, and at the same
moment he got a call on his emergency line. He closed his eyes and shook his head and
told the sergeant to bring the lawyer in. He listened for a moment and spoke into the
phone he was holding.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Get the hotel video, names of witnesses. Keep the girl
there. Is she hurt? Fine,” Kelly said, and hung up as Patricia Scott walked into the room.
She was a nice-looking businesslike woman in her fifties. She looked at him pleasantly.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I didn’t want to disturb you. I’m waiting for Michaela Banks.
I’m her attorney, Patricia Scott.” Kelly stood up to acknowledge her and sat down
again.
“I’m afraid we have a situation. Apparently, Michaela Banks was at the Beverly
Hills Hotel with Alex Addison. There was a shooting five minutes ago. Addison is
dead. She’s uninjured but in shock. She was standing next to him when he was killed.
Two men in a car, one jumped out and shot him at close range in the head and chest, and
they sped off. We’ve closed the entrance to the hotel, but they got away. It all happened
very fast, execution style. We can see it on the hotel cameras. I’m afraid I need to go
over there. Do you want to go with me and see Ms. Banks, or be there when she speaks
to us?”
“Yes, I’d like that. The poor kid has been through a lot.”
“Is she a kid?” he asked. “I was told she’s in her mid-thirties.”
“I believe Alex Addison told people that so they’d think he had worked miracles on
her. She just turned twenty.” She threw Alex under the bus for Mickie’s sake. He was
dead now anyway, so it didn’t matter, and she wanted to play the youth card for Mickie.
Dan Kelly groaned as he stood up.
“I have a daughter the same age,” he said. “They get in one mess after another. They
say she’s pretty badly shaken up by the shooting.” He led the way to the emergency door
to the garage. A police driver was waiting for him, and he got in the front seat and
directed Patricia Scott to the back seat. They took off in seconds, with the red light
flashing and the siren on. They were at the hotel in six minutes, and the police on the
scene conferred with Kelly for a moment. Alex’s body was still on the ground covered
by a tarp, an ambulance was waiting to take him to the morgue, and police were keeping
bystanders away. They were putting up yellow tape to mark it as a crime scene. The
press were arriving. A TV network news van had just appeared, and reporters would be
there in minutes.
The manager led the lieutenant and Patricia Scott into the hotel after that. They had
taken Mickie to a suite, and a police officer was handing her a glass of ginger ale to get
some sugar into her. She looked very pale, and was still covered in blood. The officer
retreated into the background when the lieutenant appeared, and Dan Kelly sat down
across from Mickie.
“You’ve had a rough morning, Ms. Banks,” he said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I’m
Lieutenant Kelly.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes, he is. Do you remember what happened?”
“I was waiting for an Uber, to come and see you. I spent the night here with Alex after
he was arraigned. He walked me out. We walked into the driveway. There was a white
car waiting with two men in it. I thought it was my Uber, but there were two men in the
car. We were just standing there, and one man got out and shot Alex a bunch of times,
maybe three or four. He jumped back in the car, and I don’t remember, I was feeling
kind of sick, I think they drove away.”
“That sounds like a very accurate description. It’s what my men said too, and what
the doorman reported. Did you recognize the men?”
“No. They just looked like regular men in a white car.”
“Do you remember what they were wearing?” She thought about it, and seemed to
calm down while she talked to him and sipped the ginger ale. Patricia Scott sat quietly,
listening carefully.
“I didn’t really see the driver. The one who shot Alex was wearing like a black
baseball jacket, you know, zip up, maybe a black shirt and black pants. And he had a
face mask on, like people wore during Covid.”
“Short hair? Long hair?”
“Short.”
“Anything else?”
“He had a gun. I think he had on blue or black running shoes.” He sounded like a
million other people on any street.
“Do you think you could talk a little about Alex now, and I can spare you a trip to my
office?” She nodded. “Did he ever tell you or hint that he wasn’t really a doctor?”
“Never. He told stories about his residency at Mass General, and med school at
Harvard. And he acted like a doctor.”
“Did he ever do treatments on you?”
“No, he said I was too young. He loved being a doctor. And he loved his patients.”
There was no expression on her face as she said it. Her face was still smeared with
Alex’s blood.
“Did he describe the treatments he did on them?”
“Not in any detail. Sometimes he’d say so-and-so is here for her Botox shot. But he
never described the treatments, and I wasn’t there when he gave treatments, only once
or twice for easy stuff, like when they were waiting for the numbing cream to take effect
for their Botox shots. He liked it when I talked to the patients in the waiting room to
relax them and be friendly. He wanted me to go to parties with him, red carpet and that
kind of thing. He said I was his ‘ambassador,’ but that’s all I had to do.”
“Did he pay you?”
“A little in the beginning. After that, he paid things for me. He paid me for the
modeling at first, and a fee to be his ambassador. But eventually he just paid for my
clothes.”
“How did you meet him?”
“He hired me through my modeling agency to be in his ads when he was opening his
center. He liked the way I looked so he used me as the face of Bellissima.”
“Did you do a brochure for him too?” he asked her casually.
“I think so. I don’t know. I never saw it.”
He pulled it out of his suit jacket and handed it to her. “Have you seen that before?”
She shook her head. He had grabbed it off his desk before leaving his office. He pointed
to the before and after pictures. “Have you seen those two photos before? Can you
describe them to me?”
“I’ve seen those photographs when we took them, but not together like that. The
normal one he said was for the brochure. The other one was a joke, the photographer
took it to show me what I’d look like when I’m old. He did it on his computer. I thought
it was funny. I didn’t think he would use it. It’s really ugly.” Dan Kelly and Patricia
Scott exchanged a smile. Mickie’s definitions of “really old” and “really ugly” were
definitely a youthful point of view.
“Did he tell people you were older than you are?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did he tell you why?”
“He said he didn’t want people to know he was dating someone my age. I was
nineteen.” Mickie knew exactly where she was going. It no longer mattered. Alex was
dead. She was alive.
“When did you start dating him?”
“On the last day of the shoot for the brochure and ads. He wanted to take me out to
celebrate how well it went. I went home, and he showed up at the apartment I shared
with my sister. She graduated from college in May, and she came out here to be with me.
She moved in with me. He came to the apartment and waited outside in his car. He
really wanted me to go to dinner with him, so I did. I didn’t want to be rude or hurt his
feelings. He’d been really nice during the shoot and paid me a lot. It took five days. We
had dinner and he said he could really help with my career and introduce me to people,
and movie producers, if I would go to parties with him and be seen with him, like a
date. I’d been modeling here for a year, and waiting on tables since I finished high
school. His was the best job I ever had. He paid me twenty thousand dollars for five
days, through my agency. We had a lot of champagne at dinner and I got a little drunk,
and he took me back to his place after dinner, instead of my apartment. And I think we
had more champagne, I can’t remember. I don’t know what happened after that. He
wanted to have sex with me, and I did. I think I passed out from the champagne, and he
wanted me to do it again the next morning before he took me home. So I did.” She
looked momentarily embarrassed, as the lieutenant watched her closely. “I went home,
and he came to our apartment again. He wanted me to go out with him.
“He invited me to a big movie premiere, and he kept saying he could help me, and I
wouldn’t have to wait on tables anymore, which sounded pretty good. I liked him. He
was nice to me. At first, it was like we were dating, and then he wanted to have sex all
the time, and he would tell me to go shopping and buy whatever I wanted. He liked me
in sexy clothes. He wanted to have sex a lot, more and more, like five or six times a
day, and he wanted me around so he could do that. He asked me to move in with him in
October, and my sister had a boyfriend by then, and they were dating, so I wound up
staying with Alex a lot, and it was easier just moving in with him. But once I moved in,
he wanted to have sex all the time. He would come upstairs sometimes between patients
and tell me to hurry up, or he would want to have sex with me all night long. Once I was
living there, he wanted me to do weird kinky stuff, like tie him up, or hurt him, or put
weird things up me, and I didn’t know how to get out of it by then. He kind of made me
his sex slave. It was embarrassing. He would tell me I could go shopping at Chanel if I
let him do weird stuff to me.” She hung her head in shame. “So I did. I never had clothes
like that before and he let me buy whatever I wanted. Or he’d make me walk around
naked all the time, or he’d come on my face, sorry . . .” She hung her head again. “He
needed it all the time.”
“Did he actually get you parts in a film or modeling jobs, like he promised?” Kelly
asked her.
“No, he never did. He liked being in the press with me a lot, though, as long as I
didn’t tell people how old I was. I told him I wanted to go to college, and he paid me a
hundred thousand dollars not to, so I could just be at the apartment, available to him. My
sister was really freaked out about my being with him, but I didn’t know how to get out
of it, and I liked all the clothes I got. I never told her about all the sex.”
“Where’s your family, Michaela?” he asked her.
“My mother died six years ago, when I was fourteen. And my father is . . . well, he
hasn’t been okay since my mom died. He drinks all the time. I grew up in Iowa, we have
a dairy farm. I left after high school. My mom was dead and my sister was away in
college, and my dad was drunk all the time at night, so I left and came here to act and
model. I did a lot of trade shows and waitressing. And then I met Alex. Before that, I
had to do a lot of waitressing when I didn’t make enough modeling. It was better when
my sister moved out here last May after she graduated, so we could split the rent. I had
two roommates before, but they left.”
“Where did your sister graduate from?” He was just curious.
“MIT. She works at Cedars-Sinai. Her boyfriend is a reporter at the L.A. Times.” And
then it clicked for Dan Kelly that this was Jason Bell’s girlfriend’s sister he had
referred to. It all made sense now.
“Do you remember meeting any Asian people with Alex, people who might have
invested in his center?”
“Yes,” she said clearly. “They were Korean. He told me it was a very important
dinner. He took me. There were three men. They never spoke to me all evening, just
among the men. I was kind of there for decoration. A few days later, he said they were
giving him ten million dollars to open a center in Dallas. But he didn’t do it. He leased
a plane and we went on a two-week cruise on a yacht he chartered in the Caribbean for
two million dollars. I think he spent some more of the money but I’m not sure. A couple
of weeks ago we met with some people from Hong Kong, who were much nicer. They
talked to me too. They wanted to invest twenty-five or thirty million dollars in a big
beauty center in Hong Kong and they wanted Alex to create it for them, but I don’t think
they made the deal yet.”
“I think the men who killed him today may have been sent by the Koreans, because of
the money he spent, and that he got exposed as being a fraud and not a doctor,” Kelly
said. “It’s just a theory, a possibility we’ll explore along with some others. You’ve been
very helpful, and I’m sorry you’ve gone through such an ordeal. There are some bad
people out there, Michaela. You need to watch out for them.” He said it to his daughter
all the time. Then he turned to Patricia. “Ms. Scott, may I speak to you for a moment,
and Michaela can rest for a minute? Thank you for speaking to me,” he said kindly to
Mickie, and left the room with Patricia Scott right behind him.
Patricia followed him outside the suite and they conferred in the hall. “The guy is
lucky he’s dead, he’d have a sex slave case on his hands. For God’s sake, she’s a kid off
a farm in Iowa, and he had her prostituting herself for shopping while he made a sex
slave of her. He’s every parent’s worst nightmare. I can’t prove it yet, but I think his
Korean associates got him for blowing their money and not delivering the goods, and
turning out to be a fraud. And I’ll bet you there was money laundering involved,”
Lieutenant Kelly said, looking irate at what Mickie had told them.
“Michaela wanted me to ask you if she can have her clothes from his apartment. She
brought all the clothes she owned when she moved in, and everything he bought her is
there,” Patricia, her attorney, asked in a businesslike tone.
“She earned them. They were gifts to her, if you can call it that. Give me a time and
I’ll have two of my female police officers there and she can take everything that’s hers.
Everything else is going to be sold for the benefit of the women he damaged.”
“In his defense,” Patricia Scott said fairly, “I never knew that he was turning
Michaela into a sex slave for shopping money, but I was a patient, and he was one of the
best doctors I’ve ever gone to. He was amazing.”
“He had the skill apparently, but not the training, the degree, or the license, and I
don’t think those five women would agree with you. But clearly, he was very
convincing. A true sociopath.”
Patricia wondered if all of Michaela’s story was true. She had always looked very
happy whenever Patricia saw her. But anything was possible. Some people appeared
normal and had strange addictions, and apparently Alex Addison was one of them. Still,
Patricia had always been pleased with her treatments. She was there to help Michaela
get her things back, and get her through the interrogation, and she thought it had gone
very well. Michaela had handled it masterfully. She had been open and straightforward
and hopefully honest. And Alex was dead now. What Michaela said about their sex life
would do him no harm. None of his nurses were bringing MeToo charges. Alex had
been assassinated, and he had left five women disfigured for life. Michaela was getting
to keep all her clothes. The lieutenant thanked her and went to talk to his men. And he
was sure that Jason Bell was in the crowd of reporters outside. Patricia told Michaela
that her wardrobe was safe. She did a little dance around to celebrate it, and looked
like the kid she was. She didn’t seem heartbroken over Alex’s death, but if what she
said was true, who could blame her. She was free now. Mickie said she wanted to pick
up her clothes the next day.
The police told her she was free to go, and she booked a room at the Beverly
Wilshire, on Rodeo, so she could shop to her heart’s content until she figured out what
to do next. She had Alex’s hundred thousand dollars to coast on for a while. She thanked
Patricia, took an Uber to the Beverly Wilshire, and checked in.
Dan Kelly called Jason when he got back to his office. The story was going to be on the
news at six o’clock. There had been a bulletin on the one o’clock broadcast that there
had been a fatal shooting at the Beverly Hills Hotel and one man was dead, but no
further details were available at the time.
“I assume you were at the hotel.”
“I was,” Jason said.
“My personal guess is it’s the Koreans he did business with. Apparently he was
blowing their money, and when he got exposed as a fraud, they must have taken care of
it. It’s the most logical conclusion,” Dan Kelly said. “And I spent almost two hours with
Michaela Banks, who must be the person you mentioned to me earlier, your girlfriend’s
sister. The bastard turned her into a sex slave for shopping money. He was a piece of
work. We’re done with her. I’m going to let her keep all the clothes he bought her. The
victims will get whatever assets he has split evenly among them. A judge has to
approve it. But if he has no heirs, it won’t be a problem. She had an attorney with her,
oddly enough, a patient of Addison. And I hope Michaela has better luck and better
judgment next time.”
“So do we,” Jason agreed.
“I’ll keep you up-to-date on the details, so you can write the conclusion. He sounds
like a sociopath to me,” the lieutenant said, and hung up, and Jason reported the latest
news to Billie when he called her.
“I think they were an even match,” she said sadly about Alex and Mickie. “I think he
may have been the sex slave, if I know my sister. She comes out smelling like a rose
every time. Did she have an attorney with her?”
“Yes, apparently a patient of Alex’s who agreed to help her. And she gets to keep
everything he bought her. The rest will be sold for the benefit of the victims, since there
won’t be a court case now. His investors are the losers. It’s an incredible story. It really
is amazing that he pulled it off for as long as he did, and never had a mishap till now.”
Jason wondered if Billie was right, if Michaela had tailored the story to her benefit,
so she was the victim, and walked off with everything Addison gave her. Something told
him that Billie was right. She knew her sister, and it rang true to Jason too. Even after
seeing her lover murdered, she kept a cool head, and took care of herself.
Two officers met Michaela at the apartment the next day, and they used all of Alex’s
luggage to pack her extensive wardrobe. She had to get a van to take her back to the
Beverly Wilshire. And she had taken the business card she wanted out of one of her
evening bags. She remembered exactly where she had left it.
