SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13
I head back to myapartment taking a deliberately complex route, bending back on myself several times, slowing and changing roads whenever I feel a car too close behind or if I notice one following for more than a block. I’m half expecting someone to swoop in and snatch Emily’s phone and laptop from the seat beside me. I try not to think about the fact that wherever Emily is, she has no phone, no wallet, and no car. I try to shake the thought of the actress who jumped from the sign and her carefully stacked possessions. Her broken lifeless body lying undiscovered in the Hollywood Hills.
At the back of my mind I know my elaborate route home is ultimately useless as whoever hired Joanne already knows where to find me; they sent her to my apartment two nights ago, after all. I texted my address to Emily’s phone. I curse myself for not asking Joanne if she had been the one using Emily’s phone to contact me or if I’d been speaking to someone else via those texts.
Even though they most likely know my address, I’ll still be safer back at the apartment with its CCTV protection and Miguel and Lucy keeping a watch than out here. It would be so easy for someone to carjack me right now, driving down dimly lit roads; they’d leave no trace except my abandoned car. And at this stage I’m under no illusions that my car wouldn’t disappear, too, just like Emily’s. There are no doubts in my mind that given half a chance, LA could swallow me whole in one night.
As I pull into the Ellis Building’s brightly lit porte cochere, I feel the tension in my shoulders release slightly. I catch sight of Miguel wandering over to greet me, and his small talk buoys me as he helps wrangle my long-forgotten gifting-suite bags toward reception. Still, I’m careful to keep one bag in particular close, feeling the reassuring weight of Emily’s things digging the cloth straps of a gifting tote sharply into my shoulder.
—
Up in the apartment Iturn on all the lights and pull the curtains, blocking out the bone-white sign looming in the distance over LA.
I unfurl the cables and plug in Emily’s laptop, laying out her phone, her photo, and Joanne’s padded envelope on the glass coffee table. Then I grab a notebook and pen.
I look down at my stolen goods, a sliver of doubt creeping into my resolve. I remind myself that all I want to do is speed things along. Because once I hand over Emily’s keys to the police tomorrow, it could take them days, weeks, to get the correct permissions to enter her apartment and start to look for her officially. If I can just find something useful to tell or show them tomorrow, then we could be one step closer to finding out what happened to Emily four days ago and where she is now.
But where to start. It’s not like I’ve done this before. I’ve researched a role but never a person. I realize my heart is still racing from the drive back; I need to calm down first. I head to the fridge to grab a quick snack, and crack open a beer to steady my nerves. The vague remembrance that I have the most important screen test of my life on Monday wafts through my mind, but then I still don’t have any scenes to prepare so I’m not technically able to work on it yet. I promise myself that as soon as the scene numbers arrive, I will focus entirely.
I sit down on the floor in front of the coffee table, pull the notebook closer, and ask myself the question: why do people disappear? I jot down the word:accident.Then add:(rushed to hospital)?But quickly cross it out. If Emily had an accident in the brief slot of time between my leaving the studio and my returning to it, I’m sure somebody at the casting studio would have noticed, somebody would have helped her, and an ambulance would have been called. But no one batted an eye when I got back to the casting office—Emily had simply dissolved into the ether.
No, something else must have happened. Perhaps something odd happened in the casting itself. I jot down:audition room.After all, strange things happen in auditions all the time. I struggle to imagine what could have tipped hers over the edge to the extent she’d just up and vanish. There’s no way of knowing what was said in that darkened room, though, as each casting suite was soundproofed. Which isn’t unusual, the last thing a casting director wants to do is to hand, say, Steven Spielberg a bunch of audition tapes with another actor’s muffled screaming in the background. Filming is ninety percent waiting for background noise to stop, so soundproofing at studios is essential. Nothing to be suspicious of in the slightest, but then most actresses don’t disappear after going into casting rooms to tape.
I recall the final scene of that Mars audition: everyone who auditioned ripped out a desperate animal roar into space and nobody in the waiting room heard a peep. Anything could happen in that room and we wouldn’t have known. That’s the point of soundproofing. I shudder at the thought.
And now that I think about it, the casting studio receptionist didn’t seem to have any idea who was coming and going from the rooms. I feel the blood drain at the idea that someone who wasn’t supposed to be there could have gotten into that room with her. And I remember her pleas for me to go first. Did Emily have a feeling something was wrong, is that why she was so keen to switch places? Yes, her parking meter had run out when I got there, but it had been on empty for a full twenty minutes before and yet she made it seem urgent. But I said I’d go feed her meter and she went in. If I had agreed to go first, would I have disappeared in her place?
I try to remember the casting director. She was in her mid-twenties, short, with a kind, round face. Hardly intimidating. I think she said her name was Claire, but I could definitely be wrong about that.
I scrawl the nameClaireout on the notepad. While I’m guessing she had nothing to do with Emily’s disappearance, she might have been the last person to see her after me. She can confirm whether Emily made it in to that audition room. She might even know what happened after.
Because there’s the strong possibility that something stopped her from going in. I think of the excuse Joanne-as-Emily gave for disappearing—of her getting a phone call about an injured boyfriend—and while I know it’s just a story she came up with on the spot, it’s entirely plausible that a phone call did drag the real Emily away. An urgent call that would require immediate attention. My eyes flick to her phone on the table.
I know exactly when she disappeared, so all I’d need to do is check the last call before then. Emily even told me she was expecting a call after her audition. Perhaps that call came early.
I pick up her phone and gingerly tap the screen. A passcode keypad appears.
I stare at the screen hopelessly, my own blank expression reflected back at me. I have no idea what her code might be and I’m guessing there’s no way to bypass it. I scrabble over to my own bag on the couch opposite and pull out my phone. I googlebypass iPhone locked screen.
A couple of hokey videos about unlocking come up. I watch one until it becomes obvious it’s nonsense then head directly to the Apple website instead.
The website tells me it is possible to bypass the locked screen but if I do that it will wipe the whole phone. Which obviously is the exact opposite of what I want to do. There’s also an option of trying to retrieve her call log through iCloud on her laptop, and for a moment my heart skips a beat, but as I read on it becomes clear I would need her iCloud password to do that—which I also do not have.
That only leaves trying to guess the six-digit number and I’m reminded of a horror movie I once watched where the hero, needing to open a stranger’s phone, simply holds it up to the light; as he tilts it we see the fingerprint traces of a code on the phone screen. Then he traces the fingermarks and the screen opens. Easy-peasy.
Apprehensive, I raise Emily’s iPhone screen toward the light and tilt it.
The screen is a mess of indecipherable finger smears impossible to read. I console myself with the fact that though I can’t open it, I can hand it over to the police tomorrow. Perhaps they’ll have a way of accessing her call log that I don’t. But the idea that I might never know if they do spurs me on in a different direction.
I put the phone to one side and spin around her laptop. I might not be able to see her call log but I know I can read her iMessages from her computer.
I take a breath and depress the power button, praying that, now charged, it still works.
The screen flares to life. I inhale sharply as the Apple symbol appears and then opens onto her home screen. No password protection. I let out a little cheer in the silence of the apartment and allow myself another slug of cold beer as I watch the desktop icons load.
Emily’s desktop settles. It’s a mess, crammed with script files, self-tape thumbnails, and casting breakdowns. Compared with my relatively ordered laptop, Emily’s is enough to break me out in hives.
I click on the iMessage icon on the dock and for the first time something actually works. All of Emily’s text messages appear on the screen.
