“This is important,” she insisted, pressing the phone against her ear. “I need your help one last time.”
The man snorted. “It’s always the last time with you.”
“I’ll pay you double,” Rosie swore.
“Not high enough.”
She looked up at the tears she couldn’t afford to repair in the ceiling of her Bug, then out the window, where the Namaste vegan restaurant sat innocently, despite having robbed her of all her cash.
Nellie Bly had gotten herself beaten in Bellevue Hospital for the sake of her story. Hunter S. Thompson had strung himself out on whiskey and dope. Joan Didion had chronicled her descent into blindness and multiple sclerosis, writing through her pain. Sometimes the truth required extreme prices that journalists had to be willing to pay.
“What if,” Rosie said slowly, “I threw in something extra?”
An hour later,Rosie rolled out of the back seat of Detective Fasiano’s car and zipped her jeans. Once she was decent, she leaned in to his open window and held out her hand.
“I believe you owe me something?”
Fasiano scowled. “Can’t even wait for the paint to dry?” But he dug in his glove box and handed her the file, stamped with the official seal of the LAPD.
She gave him a sunny grin. “Thank you.”
Fasiano gunned his engine. “You’re hot, Rosie. But I mean it when I say this: Don’t ever call me again.”
She walked away, lifting the file. “Pleasure doing business!”
For a meretwo dollars, you could drink drip coffee all day and watch tourists ogle the La Brea Tar Pits through the windows at the Rise ’n Shine Café. The Rise ’n Shine was an LA institution, a pro tip passed amongLos Angeles Timesreporters, who were notorious for appreciating a good deal on caffeine.
Rosie claimed her favorite corner table and spread out like the café was her home office, then read the LAPD’s case file on Georgia Sage’s murder from top to bottom. For two straight hours—four mugs of coffee—she tried to make sense of it. She’d expected to find telltale signs of Alden’s guilt; at minimum, a list of evidence the police had bungled, allowing the young killer to walk free. Classic police malfeasance. But the story the file told was very different.
Scout, Isabel, and a young man named Brooks Yardley, a first-year law student at USC, had been the ones to find Georgia’s body on the Bankses’ property. Rosie didn’t have siblings, but she could appreciate the horror of finding someone you loved splayed out the way the police photos depicted Georgia. The cops had responded to the 911 call remarkably fast—likely because of the high-value zip code—and they’d undertaken a thorough search of the Banks estate over the following days. The handling of the case had been by the book, if not better. In fact, it was one of the fattest files Rosie had ever seen, on account of all the witnesses. Close to two hundred people had circulated through the Bankses’ house that night, including catering staff, and the cops had talked to all of them.
She whistled at the legwork, then whistled again at the list of celebrity names. Like Deirdre had said, Hollywood was notorious for shielding its power players from consequences. That wasn’t new information—Rosie had been at J-school when the Reese Griffin story hit, and it had been obvious even to her how many people had to have known about his abuses for years without saying anything. Even so, the fact that so many people were aware a girl had beenmurdered at a Christmas party they’d attended—knew because they’d been interviewed by the police about it—and yet the storystillhadn’t been splashed all over the news gave Rosie a whole new appreciation for whoever had silenced it. It was impressive work. Clearly,someonehad favors to call in.
Witnesses claimed Georgia had stuck to Alden’s side throughout the night, disappearing from the party around midnight. The file noted that Easton had quickly assembled a team of high-powered defense attorneys for his son, which wasn’t surprising, but also that Alden had voluntarily submitted to a forensic exam, which was. He had no defensive wounds on his body. A tabula rasa.
Georgia’s autopsy had even less of a story to tell. The medical examiner concluded she’d died between midnight and two in the morning. Cause of death initially appeared to be strangulation—Rosie had lost ten whole minutes, mesmerized by the close-ups of deep purple bruises marring her chest and neck—but after further inspection, it turned out to be the wound on her head, the result of being hit with a large, blunt object. That object was never recovered.
Because Scout, Isabel, and this Brooks Yardley person had been so adamant that Alden was the killer, only one other suspect was ever considered—Yardley himself, who also voluntarily submitted to an exam and was also cleared. With zero evidence, Rosie was shocked to read the LAPD hadstillwanted to bring murder charges against Alden and was only stopped by a deputy district attorney who flat-out refused to take the case to court. She agreed with the DDA: there was no way Alden had killed Georgia. But if he was innocent, why the hell had he hanged himself?
She put on her over-the-ear headphones, pressed Play on her “Dig, Girl, Get Those Facts” playlist, and started typing. There was an elephant in this room, and its name was Easton Banks. She expected Google to return links to ABS Network upfronts and shareholder meetings, maybe a Wiki page—a standard CEO footprint—but what she got instead raised her eyebrows all the way to her hairline.
It looked like Easton had made quite a life change following his son’s death, quitting his job as network president and popping up a year later in a whole new realm: the culture wars. It suddenlyclicked—Rosiedidknow Easton’s name, just at the periphery of her mind, which was where she kept men’s rights activists.
Google exploded with hits. Podcast interviews, articles, recaps of his participation in panels titled “Modern Masculinity” and “Where Did All the Cowboys Go? The Disappearance of Macho in Media.” Article headlines claimed things like “Former Network Exec Says Men Are in Need of Protection,” and “Former ABS Network Head Argues Feminists Have Oversold the ‘Assault Epidemic.’” Rosie clicked through pages of results, and stumbled on a picture of Easton with his arm around Gabriel Knox, both of them on stage at a rally during Knox’s run for House of Representatives. The caption described Easton as a “longtime friend and campaign donor” of Knox’s.
What were the odds?
Rosie clicked Play on Easton’s interview with Joe Rogan.
“Look, Joe.” Easton’s voice was deep, the kind that immediately brokered authority. “I’m all for women’s rights, but in our post-MeToo age, we’ve gotten to a place where men need better protection from false accusations. It’s the Salem witch trials all over again, except it’s women throwing around harassment claims left and right, and men are immediately found guilty in the court of public opinion. Look what happened to my own son. He was accused of hurting a girl—”
Rosie clocked the way Easton didn’t saykilling.
“And even though he was completely innocent, and the cops agreed, those accusations wormed their way into his head. My son was sensitive.”
Creepy, Scout’s and Isabel’s statements had said.
“He didn’t have the best mental defenses, and he literally hanged himself. In my mind, the women who accused him are the ones who tightened that noose. This is why I’ve dedicated my life to fighting this new normal. Slinging around claims with no consequences? What happened to due process? The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves.”
