41. Obsessed

CHAPTER 41

OBSESSED

OLIVIA RODRIGO

I understand now why movies do these kinds of scenes in slow motion, because that’s how it happens. The world slows down and I can swear a clock ticks at half speed. The gun fires, and I watch the knife plunge into Ren as I burst forward. I’m sure I could run faster in quicksand. There’s no pain when I slam into Julie, sending us both flying through the window and out onto the front lawn. I don’t register the glass in my arm and face or the dislocated shoulder. My mind has only one thought.

Renate.

“LAPD,” someone announces behind me. I chuckle because it sounded so strange—the LA still in slow motion and the PD speeding through my brain while it catches up to real time. “Stay on the ground, hands out, now!”

“Chase!” Mills yells, running toward me as he waves off the cops and holds up his ID before he pulls me off Julie. “Where’s Ren?”

I watch the cops pile onto Julie, shouting about a gun as she regains consciousness. I’m trying to focus, but there’s something in my eye. Everything turns red, then blue, then red. Two ambulances pull in front of the house. “Ren,” I whisper, trying to remember. “REN!” I scream and he helps me to my feet. I fumble past the cops and back into the house, stepping over Luis’s body as I try to get to her.

“Medics!” Mills yells from behind me. “We need paramedics in here now!”

“Sunshine, talk to me.” I pat her bruised and bloody face and cradle her in my arms. Pongo’s on the ground next to her, licking her hand. “Come on Ren.”

“Mama?” she moans, turning her head from side to side, but her eyes are still shut. I check and find her mother sitting up, touching her forehead. “She’s gonna be okay. Don’t worry about her. Come on, show me those beautiful eyes of yours.”

Police yell about the house being clear and a pair of EMTs tell me I have to move, but I don’t want to. I need her to look at me. I need to know she’s going to be okay.

“Please, please open your eyes for me, Renate. I love you. I love you so much, you know that, right? Sunshine?”

Her eyes flutter open and focus on me. “Puppy?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here, my queen.”

“Who did that to you?” She tries to reach up to touch my face, but can’t move her arm high enough. “I’m gonna kick their ass.”

I reach up and wince at the glass shards in my forehead. Cyn’s going to kill me for that. “Hey, scars are sexy, right?”

Mills pulls me away so the paramedics can do their thing. He takes me over to the couch and I glance around at the glass and blood that litter the floor.

Another set of paramedics comes over to me, one working on my face, the other checks my arm, but I’m more concerned about Ren and her mother.

“We’ve got a gunshot here,” the paramedic says, and I glance down, not realizing he’s talking about me.

“Hey, aren’t you—” the other paramedic asks me, but I cut her off.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” She wipes blood out of my eye, clearing my vision. I stare at my arm as they wrap it, but it doesn’t feel like it belongs to me.

“Cool. You’re pretty fucked up, dude. Hope you’re doing a lot of action movies over the next few weeks.”

“I can’t even feel this shit.”

“It’s the shock. We’ll get you something for the pain at the hospital and make sure there’s no other damage.”

Someone’s screaming outside, yelling at the cops about her mom and sister. Mills disappears, coming back a few minutes later with a very pissed off Dani in tow. She runs over to her mother, who’s wide awake now and sitting on the stretcher as they take her blood pressure while she complains about the mess. She gives Dani an earful about her language until the EMT stops her and tells her she needs to stay calm.

Even with a knife wound, Ren tries to fight me about going to the hospital. When we step outside, we find Julie in custody and handcuffed to a stretcher. She screams about the glass in my face, and I’m tempted to walk over and point out the three-inch piece sticking out of one of her eyes. I’m pretty sure I’d puke if I stare at it for too long.

Mills stays behind to talk to the police, promising to bring Pongo to the hospital for me as soon as he’s done. The paps arrive just in time to watch me climb into one ambulance with Ren, and Dani into another with their mother. I’m sure they’re getting plenty of shots of my blood face and shirt. It should make them some decent money. I make a mental note to pick up the tabloids tomorrow to see just how crazy their theories get.

* * *

“Jesus, you look like hell. Tell me you’ve already called the plastic surgeon.”

“Nice to see you, too, Cyn,” I reply with as much of a smile as I can manage. “And yes, I called a place your assistant recommended when she dropped off coffee and a script for me this morning.”

A few people mill around the waiting room, but so far, no one has bothered me. My head throbs, and the lights are too bright for me to take the sunglasses off, so I’ve been sitting here, head against the wall and eyes closed. When the door to the operating wing opens, I turn my head to see if it’s her, or one of her doctors. So far, it’s been everyone but them.

“How’s she doing?”

“Better than expected, honestly. They’re setting her arm. Said it would take a few hours.”

“You know that wasn’t a script I sent over this morning, don’t you?”

I turn my head toward her, lowering the sunglasses and squinting my eyes against the light. The window to the face made me even more light sensitive. Or it’s the concussion. I hand her my cup of coffee and shift so I can pick up the envelope she sent over. I fight with it, swearing under my breath about the damn sling, so she takes the envelope and opens it for me.

“Convenient of you to get shot in the arm you dislocated. Or you’d need me to send a straw with your coffee.” She takes a sip of it and winces. “Fuck, how do you drink this?”

She hands me the stack of legal documents. Some have my name, some have Ren’s.

“I don’t understand.”

“Mills and I have been building the case against Julie for a few months now. Although she used aliases so we had a hell of a time tracking the real her down. At first, it didn’t make sense, but Ren cracked it. The brains, the muscle, and the bank. You should write this shit down, sell the screenplay.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Initially, we thought the role of brains belonged to Lawson, while Julie and Luis played the dutiful henchmen. But Lawson didn’t have brains enough for how complicated this web became. Too much to weave together for a guy paying off a stalker and a gang member using payroll checks.”

“You need to take a vacation, Cyn.”

“On your dime, baby. Anyhow, Julie only wanted you at first, but once she found out about Ren, she realized she needed help. Enter Lawson’s money and Luis’s gang affiliations.”

I nod and let that sink in. “How did she get those pictures of Cassie and I?”

“Well, maybe we can figure that part out later when we talk to Mills. He wanted you to see what they found in Julie’s apartment, but wouldn’t give me details.”

“Fun.”

She takes the papers back from me and sets them on the table beside her before brushing my hair out of my face. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m, uhm…I don’t think it’s hit me yet, Cyn. I mean, I’m already on the verge of losing my shit and I just want to get Ren and go home. Last night when we got here, I had to answer questions for her.” I stop, closing my eyes. “They asked if she could be pregnant and I—I?—”

“Chase?”

“Huh?”

“You’re going to be okay. So will Ren. Did they run the test?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“No. I mean, she’s—we’re not. But she could have been and we—what if…”

For the first time since getting to the hospital, I finally let go. It’s like a train came around a blind corner and crashed into me at full speed. I never had time to brace for it either, the full impact of everything from the last twenty-four hours. The last few months. The last four years. Everything I’d held together with rusty nails and rotted wood finally crashed down on top of me.

“Chase, when you’re both out of the hospital, why don’t you take some time?” Cyn says as the tears stop.

“Time?”

“Yeah, time. You’ve gone non-stop lately. Take some time. Take care of Ren, put a ring on her, show her you can do this. We can cut down your movies back, spread things out. I’ve watched too many of you go full tilt into work while trying to have a family, and it rarely works. You’re busting ass on movie after movie, and next thing you know, you’re at your kid’s graduation and you don’t know a damn thing about them.”

“Time. Yeah. Yeah, I’d, uhm, I think I’d like that.”

“I’m glad, because I rebooked both of you for three months in Europe as soon as Ren can travel again.” She puts the sunglasses back on my face and grins. “Coop, if you two ever have a girl, don’t name her Cynthia.”

I laugh—really laugh—for the first time in weeks. “Deal.”

My phone vibrates, and I struggle to dig it out.

Mills

I’m with the detective at the stalker’s apartment. We should talk.

Can it wait? Ren’s in surgery again.

Mills

Yeah, I’ll pick you up later today when she’s out.

* * *

It’s raining when Mills comes to the hospital. Harder than I’ve ever seen it rain in Los Angeles. It reminds me of storms on the East Coast when we’d be filming out there in Atlanta or Miami. It smells comforting yet unfamiliar, and I can hear Dr. Clay in the back of my mind. I stand under the downpour for a moment and let it wash over me before I climb into the car.

“You okay?” Mills asks as we drive down to the police station, handing me a towel.

“Yeah. Sometimes, it just fucking rains.”

“Ain’t that the truth?”

When we get to the station, two detectives greet Mills and me before taking us to a room in the back. I’m nervous because I’ve only ever filmed in police station sets, not actually been in one like this. Not even when Cassie died.

“Have a seat, Mr. Cooper. Coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’m bouncy enough as it is. Mills said you needed me to identify some things?”

“Have you had any keys or locks redone at your house in the last four years?”

“No. I had more keys made…oh, and I did add a lock on the pool house since my brother moved in.”

“Can I see your keys, Mr. Cooper?”

I dig them out of my pocket and hand them over, watching him take a bag with a key in it out of a cardboard box and hold them up next to each other and sighs.

“This key.” He puts the bag down and taps on it with one beefy finger. “We recovered it from Julie Horowitz’s apartment.”

“That isn’t an alias?”

“No, but she had about a dozen IDs in different names, including Cassidy Landon’s. We also found clothes that are not her size. They were all kept in a lockbox under her bed, along with the jewelry and a stack of photocopies of a marriage license you applied for four years ago.”

He spreads a dozen or more photos in front of me, showing the inside of someone’s apartment. My brain tries to put together a puzzle, but the concussion slows me down. He lays out more photos of clothes, necklaces, and other personal items.

“Do you recognize?—”

“These.” I point to a necklace and a dress. I flip through the others, growing more frantic with each of them. All of them are Cassie's belongings. “I gave her these after she moved in with me. This ring she got from her mother. The dress, fuck, I got her that in…Paris.”

Next, he hands me photos of Cassie and I. “Ms. Horowitz admitted to selling a copy of the key to a known paparazzi. The one who took the nude images in your home. We found evidence that she snuck in, planted surveillance equipment, and took things that belonged to Cassie.”

“Why?”

“Her diary entries hint that she’s been obsessed with you since before Cassie’s death,” another detective explains. “Based on what we found, her obsession may have begun with Cassie in high school before shifting to you.”

“Coop, she’s been in your house. Numerous times.” Mills explains.

“The dogs?”

“Lulu isn’t exactly a guard dog, and Pongo goes with you most of the time.”

“What are you not telling me right now?”

Mills runs a hand through his hair before he sits in the chair next to me and faces me. “On the day Cassie died, Devin’s skates weren’t in his bag. Where were they?”

“I…don’t remember.”

“Would either of you leave skates without guards on concrete?” He pulls out one last picture. It’s my garage, Devin’s skates leaning against the back wall.

“Hell no. It can damage and dull the blades. I don’t… Mills?”

“She put them there, Coop. She made sure Devin would come back to the house so someone would find the body.”

“I want to talk to her.”

“What?!” the detective shouts. “No way, no way, man.”

“Please? I have to know.”

Mills pulls the detectives aside and they eventually agree to it. They put her in the room next to ours so they can watch through the two-way mirror. They explain this might be inadmissible in court, and I explain I don’t give a fuck. My heart and mind race when they escort her into the room and I finally see what I couldn’t see last night. She cut and colored her hair to match Cassie’s. I can see the polish on her nails and I recognize it as Cassie’s favorite. She’s even had plastic surgery to look like her.

She wanted to replace her—become her.

“I knew you’d come for me. I told them you pushed me through the window to save me. They don’t believe me. They don’t understand us.” She’s smiling again and I try not to shiver. It’s even creepier with the patch over her eye and the cuts on her face.

“Jul—”

“Cassie.”

“What?”

“I’m Cassie. The real Cassie.”

I take a deep breath and stretch my shaking hands across the table and take hers. “Sweetheart, I need to ask you something, and it’s important that you tell me the truth. Okay? We shouldn’t keep secrets from each other, right?” She nods, squeezing my hand. “What happened to the other Cassie? The one they found?”

“Oh, they’re trying to trick me.”

“The truth.”

“Oh fine, Teddy Bear. What do you want to know?”

“T-the phone call. When you tried to call me?” My mind flashes back, seeing her name on the screen and tucking the phone away, so sure I’d just call her back later. “Why did you call me?”

“To tell you that we could finally be together.” Her smile grows, and I want to pull my hand back. I want to throw up. “I waited for your brother to leave, and I went to your bathroom and cleaned myself up. I knew Devin would be back, so I had to hurry. When I finished, I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer. I wanted to surprise you, but the stupid cops came to check the house and ruined it. I hid in your crawl space.”

“Why did you want to hurt Cassie?”

“She stole from me, Chase. She stole my boyfriend in high school, and when we were roommates in college, she did it again. She said she didn’t remember, but she did. I loved you first, and she even stole you!”

I close my eyes, trying to focus and hold on.

“I went to your house that morning and brought her a coffee. I snuck into Devin’s room while he showered and put his skates in the gym so he’d find her, not you. The drugs took too long, so I helped her to the bathroom and slit her wrists.”

I pull my hand away, and the room turns red as the air becomes too heavy to breathe. I stand up, but my legs turn to jelly as time stands still. The door bursts open, and Mills pulls me out of the room as the detectives rush in.

I have one thought on my mind before I black out. Julie just confessed to murdering Cassie.