“Enough,” the captain growled.
“We’re pressing charges,” said Faust, the security guard. “This is the third time we’ve caught this officer stalking Ms. Sage. You assured us she would be monitored.”
Grey’s chest hollowed. “Third time?”
Suddenly, it clicked: Why Ellis couldn’t access any of the case files connected to Scout, why she’d needed Grey to get them. Why she’d seemed so surprised and grateful when Grey believed her. Had Captain Xie paired her with Grey so Grey could babysit her?
“If you and your people ever swing for Scout again, you better pray you don’t miss.” Faust thrust an accusatory finger at the captain. “Otherwise, you’re going to have America’s highest-paid attorneys out for your blood.”
“You and Ms. Sage have our deepest apologies,” the captain assured him. “On behalf of the LAPD, I promise this will never happen again.”
“Scout’s guilty!” Ellis shouted. “Tell them, Grey.”
But before Grey could answer, the two officers searching Ellis’s car opened her trunk and staggered back. “Captain,” one of them yelled, while the other doubled over, clutching his mouth.
“Hold her,” Captain Xie insisted, before he marched to Ellis’s trunk, Grey hot on his heels.
He peered inside. “For god’s sake,” he whispered. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Ellis’s trunk was littered with images of Scout torn from magazines or printed from the internet. That was what all thoseNational Enquirers andNew York Posts must’ve been for. There was a disconcerting coil of rope, black gloves, and bleach shoved into a corner. And worst of all—the smell that made Grey’s stomach turn—in the center of the trunk were four white bags full of putrid trash. Q-tips, molding bread, sheets of torn-up, handwritten paper. That day in Ellis’s car, when she’d smelled something decomposing: This was it.
Before Grey could stop him, Faust marched to the trunk, grabbed one of the bags, and upturned it, spilling the contents everywhere. He seized a crumpled looseleaf paper covered in scribbled lines, lyrics or a poem. “This is Scout’s handwriting. Your cop is stealing her trash.”
Grey spun to Ellis, unable to articulate the depth of her betrayal.
“We needed every advantage we could get,” Ellis protested. “There could be clues in there—”
Ellis’s ranting turned to white noise as the truth finally sank in, right there outside Scout’s jasmine-covered walls, with uniformed officers swarming and the LA sun beating down on her: There was no secret group of women getting revenge on the people who’d wronged them. Grey had wanted there to be a deeper story, wanted possibilities like that to exist for her own complicated reasons, but ultimately she’d been suckered by a disturbed woman hiding behind a detective’s badge. She’d gone from having the best track record in robbery-homicide to failing spectacularly in front of her captain. To inheriting the sins of her father.
The scent of the rancid trash in Ellis’s trunk finally hit her with overwhelming force, mixing with her disbelief. Grey bent over and retched into the grass.
It’s the revenge of the cheerleaders, the dolls, the horse girls and butter faces. Revenge of the sluts, the prudes, the 7s-in-Chicago-but-5s-in-LA, the earth mommies, the hysterical femmes, the gold diggers, the weaker sex. We’ve voted and marched and burned our bras and said me too. We’ve said stop hurting us, and may we own our bodies, please? But we’re no longer asking. When the lights go out and darkness falls, Our Ladies will come.
—Artifact No. 1. Photo of spray-painted graffiti outside a bank in Chicago. Artist unknown.
Where did the name Our Ladies of the Dark come from? It seems the term was first used not by the women themselves, but by graffiti artists in the Midwest. Later, online groups, perhaps picking up on it, referred to themselves by the variants “Our Ladies of the Dark Country” and “Our Ladies of the Dark Decade.” And, of course, those opposed to the women’s aims have always branded them the more derogatory “Hot Girl Murder Club.” We may never know what Sage and her contemporaries intended to call themselves, if their intention even matters. After all, who you are to history is rarely within your control.
—Frances Vogel, “Our Ladies of the Dark: A History,” PhD dissertation presented to the UCLA Department of History
Chapter 9Isabel, the Rising Star
TEN YEARS EARLIER, NEW JERSEY
Snow fell in Clark, New Jersey, on the day of Georgia’s funeral, settling on the grass around the grave site and dusting the wood of her coffin as it hung suspended over the empty rectangle they’d cut into the ground.You finally got your snow, I told her, then wondered if the compulsion to talk to my friend who was no longer here would ever leave me.
At least a hundred people had come to pay their respects. Georgia was only a year out of high school, and the memory of the studious, well-mannered salutatorian—the universally liked girl who’d been voted Most Likely to Succeed—was still fresh. Our principal, teachers, and former students still living in town had come, plus everyone from church.
We gathered around her coffin in thick dark jackets, mittens, and wool hats, the elderly sitting in chairs, the Sage family standing in front. Mrs. Sage looked like she’d aged a decade. Mr. Sage stared into the cemetery grounds like he was lost. My parents were in the back, but I stood shoulder to shoulder with Scout, Brooks beside me, holding my hand and trying not to shiver in his too-thin California jacket.
The pastor began to speak, his deep voice loud against the hushed silence of snowfall. A woman I vaguely recognized as Georgia’s former history teacher let out a choked sob. It echoed, growing louder as the woman hunched over and wept into a tissue. Even with my back to the crowd, I could sense the glances being exchanged. Mrs. Sage watched the woman with color rising in her cheeks.
Scout simply stared ahead. She hadn’t spoken all day. It had been two weeks since we’d found Georgia and spent all night in the policestation, but in that short time, something had changed in her that was deep and foundational. I could sense it, but I didn’t know what to call it.
Mrs. Sage’s phone started ringing, a shrill trilling that made the pastor pause. She dug into her purse, and when she pulled out the phone, her eyes widened.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, backing away from the grave. “I have to take this.” She turned to her husband and whispered, “It’s the detective.”
Scout and I had been back to the LA station twice to give the cops every name we could think of who could serve as a witness, not just to the party but to Alden’s obsessive crush. The medical examiner had finished his tests and the forensic techs had combed the Banks mansion. We were now waiting on an update in Georgia’s case—specifically, on the charges the LAPD were going to bring against Alden.
