Studio Murders
(The sequel to Privilege)
by
John Waters
with
Bud Stigall
A love triangle goes bad on the movie set for Secret Desires when a determined killer prowling Crystal Dreams Pictures brutally murders two Academy-Award-Winning stars under exclusive contract with the Hollywood studio.
Lance Vaughn, a handsome leading actor in his late-twenties, is rising to the top with unprecedented speed. Vaughn’s fairytale romance with Natalie Baldwin, the film’s makeup artist, begins to fade when his stunning, late-twenties co-star, Kela Ryan faces the critical decision to play her part opposite Vaughn and to become his lover. Kela is making an unprecedented comeback from her bimbo-esque behavior that led to a three-month stay in rehab after losing custody of her two kids and her career tanking.
When Vaughn doesn’t show up for publicity photos the morning after the mega-budget picture wraps, Natalie, along with Bobby Hatch, the film’s soft-spoken, mid-forties producer, and Zach Crowe, the flamboyant, late-forties director, rush to Vaughn’s house to find out why. There they find Vaughn in the guesthouse of his Bel Air mansion, dead.
Seasoned LAPD detectives Al Tyler and Rob Murray find a .38 caliber revolver next to the body. Although known within the police force for their never-ending bickering among themselves, this time they agree about one thing: the position of the body is inconsistent with a suicide, and the victim’s head was “placed” on a tan Pima cotton towel.
In his early fifties, Don Packard, the coroner, dark-haired and round-faced, with a ruddy complexion, rolls the body over and is certain the cause of death is one gunshot wound to the back of the skull just above the hairline. He further suggests that Vaughn knew his assailant because there was no forced entry, no signs of a struggle. Suddenly, a small shiny object catches his eye. It’s a loose diamond. After checking Vaughn’s jewelry box, and not finding a stone missing from any piece, the logical assumption is that it belongs to the killer. Judging by the quality of the diamond, he or she has some serious money.
Within hours of the discovery of Vaughn’s body, Tyler and Murray reluctantly arrest Jake Baldwin, a detective with LAPD, one of their own. The next day Jake’s daughter, Natalie, thinks of only one person who could possibly beat the rap against her father — Grant Westmore, Jake’s former partner on the Job.
Jake, a highly decorated veteran detective, finds himself charged with the murder based on circumstantial but troubling evidence: the gun found at the crime scene is his. After Grant recommends his girlfriend, Carmela Gambini, as defense counsel, Jake is free on a one million-dollar cash bond put up by Grant.
As the days pass in Grant’s exhaustive search for the real killer, Vaughn’s co-star, Kela Ryan, is found murdered in her Beverly Hills estate. At the crime scene, Marlene Wilson uncovers a startling fact: Kela died in the same manner as Lance Vaughn. Except this time the killer did not leave behind the murder weapon.
Within minutes, Grant finds that Jake has an ironclad alibi in the Ryan case, which is why Ellen Porter, the high and mighty Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney, does not file charges against Baldwin in the Ryan matter.
Grant, Marlene, and Carmela soon discover two serious flaws in the case against Jake Baldwin. Though Jake is black-haired, the police found no black hair at either crime scene; and though Jake is right-handed, the coroner is certain the killer in each slaying was left-handed.
In the meantime, Tyler and Murray feel the slayings may be the work of a financially motivated serial killer, since Vaughn had top billing and the producer paid Vaughn the most money, with Ryan next in billing priority and salary. Along with Tyler and Murray, Fujiko “Fuji” Nakamora, Jake’s pudgy-faced, loyal partner before his arrest, keeps a close watch on Dean Young, the young, up-and-coming actor who ranks third in pecking order in both billing and money.
As the investigation nears week three the real doer places complications in Grant’s path by stacking motives against Bobby Hatch. A few days later, Tyler and Murray arrest Hatch, only to find that his polygraph test indicates he is not the murderer.
Meanwhile Grant and Marlene consider that Lauren Hatch, the producer’s drop-dead-gorgeous wife, may be a suspect, too. After all, she is left-handed and has the same color hair found in a brush at Vaughn’s house. Unfortunately for Jake, three days later the police also clear Lauren.
This leaves only one obvious suspect: Natalie Baldwin’s newest boyfriend, Tommy Farley, the film’s blond-haired property master who as such has access to guns. Days later, the police arrest Farley, but after a sleepless night, Marlene isn’t at all convinced Farley is guilty of both murders.
Throughout the entire investigation, the police, along with Grant and his crew, have glossed over one person: Natalie Baldwin. Carmela doesn’t want to believe the possibility that Jake’s daughter is capable of two cold-blooded murders, but she finds it increasingly hard to deny.
Grasping at a faint hope that Marlene is wrong about Natalie, Grant orders a full-court press to find out one way or the other. However, sure she now has the right suspect, Ivanna Wolfe begins the official paperwork on Farley.
Wolfe is about to complete her charges against Farley, when Marlene identifies Farley as having been at the store where the two Pima towels were purchased. Adding to what may only be circumstantial the salesperson also remembers that a “foxy blonde” whom Farley called “Natalie” had accompanied him to the store. At Marlene’s request, she also looks up the sales slip, only to discover that Natalie used her credit card to make the purchase.
Stunned, but still hungry for more concrete evidence against Natalie, Grant, Carmela, and Marlene call upon SID to take a closer look at the diamond found under Vaughn’s body while Tyler and Murray search Ryan’s house and Fuji maintains surveillance on Natalie. Under a microscope, SID discovers a blood splatter that matches Vaughn’s DNA and markings consistent with a stone from a necklace, ring, or bracelet.
Teetering on the thin blue line, Grant contacts Farley to determine what time Natalie is due home from the studio because he wants to search their house. Farley tells Grant he needs to leave for work in a few minutes but that he’ll leave the backdoor unlocked. Not wanting to spend much time inside the house during his somewhat questionable search, Grant insists that Carmela and Marlene join him so the trio can spread out and take different rooms.
Carmela hits pay dirt in the den when she finds a tennis bracelet with one stone missing hidden behind a picture of Natalie along with her mother and father a few months before her mother had died in an automobile accident. Holding the bracelet in her hand, Carmela points to the clasp. Noticing that it’s broken, Grant figures the clasp must’ve snapped open while Natalie was in the process of killing Vaughn, and the diamond which was probably lose already, came out when the bracelet fell onto the floor.
Now, with the proverbial smoking gun in hand, Grant tells Jake he’s in the clear, but Natalie is the killer and she’ll be arrested before end of day.
Jake’s world is shattered, and with his heart breaking, he feels compelled to telephone his daughter. When he reaches Natalie at her home, he pleads with her to let him take her into custody. She agrees, but asks him to meet her at their favorite coffee shop in the mall.
Still lost in disbelief at Natalie’s brazen actions, all three LAPD detectives join Grant and Marlene in the hunt for Jake and Natalie at the mall. Grief stricken, Jake watches Natalie’s final desperate moments. Before anyone can move a muscle, Natalie touches a revolver to her temple, and speaks sotto voce, “Forgive me, Daddy.”
A heartbeat later, she fires. Natalie shudders violently and plummets backward, blood and brain matter oozing through her long blonde hair from the cavernous hole on the side of her head and the stench of gunpowder and the coppery smell of blood hanging in the air.
Grant flinches from the deafeningly explosion, staring into Natalie’s still open, glazed-over blue eyes. Jake kneels next to Natalie, Grant’s comforting arm resting on his old friend’s shoulder. Looking at his daughter’s body, Jake feels nauseated as Natalie’s head leaks a crimson pool onto the ground.
A moment later, Jake passes out.
Later in the afternoon, Jake accepts heartfelt condolences from a number of family members and friends who live in the immediate vicinity, various uniform and plainclothes police officers from the Job, and nearly twenty members of the cast and crew from Secret Desires.
Choking back his emotions, Jake opens an envelope and removes a hand-written note Natalie had given him minutes before she took her life. He shares the note with everyone.
In the note, Natalie confesses to having killed Vaughn and Ryan. She regrets using her father to cover her actions and she’s sorry she disappointed him as a daughter. She also explains that she had planned to kill Vaughn weeks ago. It seemed to be a foolproof plan until she forgot Jake’s gun at Lance’s house. That’s when she came up with the idea to hire Grant because she knew Grant would be able to beat the charges against her father.
After his arrest, she fell into a deeper mental state. She had nothing left to do but kill Kela, thinking it would distract the cops. As it turned out, Grant is smarter than she figured, and her house of cards collapsed.
She signed the note, “Natalie,” then below it, “your loving daughter today and in the hereafter…”
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Copyright © 2008 John Waters. All rights reserved.