Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 29

Shane's eyes were closed. Carmen put her hand on Shane's arm, gently.

"You're saying Gabe targeted Shane from the start, as a potential scam victim. He smelled money."

Carla shrugged. "It's a little more complicated than that. But yes, that's part of who he is. And as much as I hate that motherfucker, he did have some feeling for Shay, for his son. Gabe isn't 100 percent evil, just 80, 90 percent." She took another sip of her coffee. "I don't think he was targeting Shane, exactly. But the skateboard shop. According to the article it seemed to be run by this young hippy kid entrepreneur, and it looked like a cash business. Bunch of young people, stoners, skateboarders. I mean, talk about a flock of sheep just waiting to be fleeced, you know? That's how Gabe thought. He had this sixth sense about who was vulnerable. So, anyway, nothing happened for a couple days, and one day out of the blue he comes home from work and he says, 'I called Shane today. She says she wants to come up and meet us.' I said something like, okay, but are you planning something? And he says no, he just wants to meet her."

"That's not what he told me when we met outside the coffee shop," Shane says. "He said he was trying to decide whether to just stand me up. Like he wasn't sure he wanted to meet me."

"Uh-huh," Carla said. "And you were thinking about standing him up, right? So he read that in you, and then he adopted it, told you he felt the same way, right? Fed your own doubt back at you. Mirroring, although mirroring is usually unconscious. That's what he's good at. So now you two have something in common, you're both ambivalent about meeting each other. Only of course it was a lie on his part. He's not the type to get cold feet."

Shane's eyes were clenched shut.

Lauren spoke up. "Shane, listen to me. Shane, Shane, open your eyes. Look at me. Shane, this is what Gabe does. If you're feeling foolish and dumb, don't. He was taking advantage of you, but that doesn't make you the one who screwed up."

Shane turned to look at Carla. "He said you were the one who talked him into meeting me."

"I was the one who kept asking him if he was planning to scam you. I was the one who kept saying, don't do this. Meet her if you want to, but don't hurt her. That was what I told him. He said he wouldn't. And I actually believe at that moment that's what he thought. And then everything changed. You told us you were getting married, you were gay, you and Carmen had a little money but you could never afford a fancy destination wedding. And then you said the magic words. You said you had this rich friend who was paying for everything, and she had scads of money. And that's the moment everything changed."

Shane closed her eyes and a tear rolled down her cheek. She had been the one who set Helena up, right from the very beginning.

Carmen clutched Shane's arm. "Shane! Don't do this! I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. It wasn't your fault. Stop thinking that."

"Shane, Carmen's right," Lauren said quietly. She turned back to Carla. "When did you realize Gabe was planning something?"

"I didn't, not right away. We were at the dinner table. I was actually the one who said, hey, Whistler's not too far away, maybe we can go, and it was Gabe who pointed out we hadn't been invited. And then Shane specifically did invite us. I hadn't picked up on the whats-her-name woman being rich. I was thinking about Shane getting married in Whistler, how neat that would be. I'll be the first one to admit, when Gabe is planning something, I don't always pick up on it. He's good at keeping stuff inside his head. It's sometimes hard to tell what he's thinking."

"Yeah, that runs in the family," Shane said. It made everyone laugh.

"Okay, I think I'm ready for the next part," Carla said. "You said Gabe killed four people. Who was it? Are you really sure?"

"Yes, pretty sure. Very sure, at least on two of them. The first one we're positive about was Jenny Schecter. Do you remember her?"

"Schecter, Schecter. Should I remember her? Was she at the wedding?"

"Yes," Lauren said. "Here's her photo." She pulled out her cell phone, brought up the photo of Jenny that appeared on the jacket of her book, and showed it to Lauren, who leaned forward to look.

"She's pretty," Carla said. "I think ..." she turned to Shane and Carmen. "Was she sitting out on the deck that morning when you all went skiing? Gabe and I stayed on the deck. One of your friends stayed, too, and was talking to some French woman."

"That was Jenny," Carmen said. "I think she was introduced to you all, but in a bunch of about ten people, so that's why you might not specifically remember her."

"Was she involved with Gabe?"

"No, she was his victim. He was blackmailing her, along with a famous actress. I assume you've heard of Niki Stevens?"

"She's the one who's always in and out of rehab. Like me." She laughed, and Carmen, Shane and Lauren smiled. "Yeah, we talk about her in the rehab world. She's a rehab poster girl. And now that you mention it, I vaguely remember something about her being connected to a murder in Hollywood, and a big scandal about a movie about lesbians and all. I remember it, but I didn't follow it much. I was just getting out of rehab myself somewhere around then. Was that Jenny?"

"That was her," Lauren said. "Gabe had been blackmailing both Jenny and Niki, ten thousand bucks a month from each, for five months. They balked on the sixth month's payment, and three days later Jenny was murdered on the deck of the house next to hers, where there was a small social gathering. She was pushed or accidentally fell off the deck, and hit her head. She was unconscious but still alive. But then she was pushed into the swimming pool, and she drowned. We're not sure whether being pushed off the deck was accidental or not. It could have been. We are completely sure that being rolled into the pool was homicide. You should also know that Gabe appeared to have been stalking Jenny and Niki for some time before the blackmail. He had videos and sound recordings of Jenny and Niki sneaking around LA having sex."

"Really? That's odd."

"Why is that?"

"Gabe was never all that technically inclined. He wasn't a computer geek, or even close. He could do simple stuff, like everybody, take pictures with his cell phone. He could play games with Shay on his PlayStation, and stuff like that, but he wasn't especially good at it. Shay always beat him, and not because Gabe let him. I don't know. Maybe Gabe learned to do that kind of stuff after we broke up at Whistler. But before that, no. If he needed something looked up on the internet he usually asked me or Shay to do it. I don't know. Staking out people, following them, maybe. Making secret videos and recordings, no. But I could be wrong. Who else do you think he killed?"

"A person named Max Sweeny. You probably met him at Whistler, too. What you also need to know is that Max was transgender. He was a woman named Moira and at one time was Jenny's lover. Then some time in the year or so before Shane and Carmen's engagement Moira started transitioning to Max. He hadn't completed it by the time Jenny was murdered, and he needed money for top surgery. But here's two things we find interesting. First, we don't have a good handle on why Max was murdered; we only know that he was. The second thing is, Max was an expert at all things having to do with computers. We have wondered if Max was somehow involved in Gabe's blackmailing of Jenny and Niki. We don't have any real evidence, just the suspicion."

"How was he murdered?"

"One night about six months after Jenny was killed, Max was run down and killed by what was supposed to look like a hit-and-run driver on the side of a high-speed four-lane highway outside of Bakersfield. There was alcohol and oxy in his bloodstream. The thing is, he appears to have been run down by his own car, which is missing and has never been found to this day. Max drank, but he wasn't known as any kind of heavy drinker, and he did grass, but he was never known to do oxy. He was on a lot of meds for his transition. We've wondered about suicide, but there was no note, and no sign of anything suggesting it. We don't know why he was wandering down the side of a four-lane at 2 in the morning, drunk and stoned. He had thrown up on the other side of the highway a couple hundred yards away. So why did he cross the four-lane and start walking back toward the way he'd come? We think he was driven there, got out or was pushed out of the car and was being chased, set up for the hit-and-run. Kind of an amateurish attempt to make it look accidental, or maybe suicide. Kind of like Jenny's murder was made to look accidental, too."

Carla closed her eyes. "Gabe, you sure stepped in the shit this time." She opened her eyes. "You said there were four murders."

"Yes. When Jenny got tired of paying the blackmail she hired a private detective to try to find out who the blackmailer was. About three hours before Jenny was murdered the private detective sent her a text message identifying the blackmailer as Gabe. Jenny and the PI communicated by burner phone text messages. We never found Jenny's phone, and a week later the PI was tracked down on vacation in Ensenada, Mexico. He'd gone out sport fishing offshore. He and the Mexican skipper of the charter boat were never seen again. So what we have is Jenny's murder, and then after it a second murder, and then two missing people, one associated with Jenny and one somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time. And we don't believe in that kind of coincidence."

Carla thought for a moment, then said, "Are you supposed to be telling me all this stuff?"

"No," Lauren said.

"Why are you?"

"To show you how serious this is. How serious we are."

"And get me to tell you if I know where he is."

"Yes. Do you know?"

"No. No idea at all. I haven't seen him since Whistler. When I got back from there, I had a bad couple of days. Then I took Shay to LA to drop him off at Shane's. When I got back up here, all Gabe's stuff was gone. He cleaned out the apartment. I didn't have much of value, but what little I had he took. Left me my clothes and stuff, of course, because there wasn't enough money in it to mess with. I woke up three, four weeks later in a jail cell covered with my own puke. I did some time, rehabbed, relapsed, did more rehab. That one seemed to take. I've been clean and sober twenty-seven months."

"I hope you stay that way," Lauren said. "I hope this business doesn't fuck it up."

"No, it won't. I don't care what happens to him. He deserves everything he gets. If you need to shoot him, fucking do it. Don't hesitate to pull the trigger."

"I'll keep it in mind," Lauren said. "Shane told us Gabe worked in a lumber mill, hurt his back, and then drove a truck for a beer distributor."

"Yes, that's right. Well, mostly right. The part about hurting his back, I wasn't around then, and I don't know how much of it's true or whether that was some scam. He sometimes said his back hurt, but it never seemed to stop him from doing anything. He was driving for a beer distributor when Shane came to visit us."

"He ever work anywhere else?"

"Yeah, he drove a truck for some people out in the wine country. You know, those vineyards. Taking cases of wine from the vineyards and wineries to the distributors and liquor stores around the state. Trouble is, it was seasonal, so that's one reason he switched to beer distributors, 'cause that's year round. But he liked the wine business. He started learning about it. The various kinds, you know. Names of vineyards. All that. Gabe was always bright, and he liked to learn stuff, except computers. Maybe he thought it would be useful for a scam some day, I don't know."

"I know he had a commercial driver's license, from Oregon DMV. It's expired."

"Yes, he had an Oregon CDL. You need it to drive those kinds of trucks."

"Tell me this: If he isn't in Oregon, where else would he be? What parts of the country did he talk about? Where did you guys go?"

"You know the answer to that as well as I do."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he spent a lot of time in LA, right? Stalking Niki and whats-her-name. Jenny."

"Yes, that's right."

"And he liked wine country. Vineyards and wineries. Driving for them. That's where I'd look. Wine country."

"There's no driver's license or CDL in his name in California. None active anywhere with that name. Got any idea what name he'd use?"

"Did you search for variations? When we were doing scams he'd use names like Mack Gabriel, Mick Gabriel, Gabe McCarran, like that. He said he didn't want to risk using a name he might not recognize right away, like if someone called him Bob, and he'd look around, wondering who Bob was."

"No, I haven't looked," Lauren said. "We've been busy since we found out it was him."

"Well, that's what I'd do. Look for name variations, and look in wine country."

"What can you tell me about Shay?" Shane asked quietly. She and Carmen had been quiet, but now everyone turned to look at Shane. She was slouched in her folding chair, her baseball cap pulled low over her face. Someone who didn't know might have thought she was napping, but Carmen knew better.

"I'm really sorry about what happened, Shane, truly I am," Carla said, just as quietly. "The last I saw him was at your house. I ... I did the best I could, which I'll be the first admit wasn't very good at all. But ... well, I don't know how much you know about addicts like me. We have a tough enough time taking care of ourselves, let alone someone else. I understand your mother ... your mother abandoned you when you were a kid, is that right? Gabe told me that."

"Yeah," Shane said. "That's right. I was nine. And you abandoned Shay when he was twelve. The curse of the McCutcheons. We're pretty disposable." It was far from Shane's nature to be sarcastic, and Carmen was surprised to hear Shane say something like this.

"I'm sorry," Carla said again.

Lauren thought it was time to jump in. "Where would we start looking for Shay?"

"You think he had anything to do with what Gabe was doing?"

"No idea at all. There's been no sign of him in anything so far. But we won't know until we find him."

"Please god, I hope he's in Florida or England or someplace far away from all this," Carla said.

"You and me both," Lauren said. "Any reason you said Florida and England?"

"No, just popped into my head. I should have said Colorado."

"Why Colorado?"

"Shay had a thing for Colorado. He's never been there, at least not when I knew him, but he was always talking about it. That song by John Denver, Rocky Mountain High, that was his favorite song. You know what? If Shay isn't with Gabe anymore, I'd look for him in Colorado."

"All right, we'll do that." Lauren turned to Carmen and Shane. "Anybody got anything else?"

Uncharacteristically, Carmen said nothing.

"I don't," Shane said quietly. Then she looked at Carmen. "But you do. And you'd like me to leave the room."

"Yes. I'm sorry, Shane," Carmen said.

"It's okay. This is getting to be a habit. Anyway, I need a smoke." She got up and left the room.

"Carla," Carmen asked when Shane was gone, "how did Gabe really feel about Shane?"

Carla slowly gave a small, tight smile. "I was wondering when somebody would ask something like that. Okay. What did Gabe think about Shane." She paused to consider. "I think ... at the end of the day ... he didn't give a rat's ass, one way or the other. Emotionally. But he was curious about her. I guess in a sort of clinical, analytical way. He'd had a kid a long, long time ago, so what did she look like? Him or her mother? How did she turn out? Is she going to be a problem? Is she going to want something from him? Is she angry at him? Does he have to be careful about her? That was how he was thinking."

"Anticipating problems. Or wondering if Shane would ever become one," Lauren said.

"Yes. But the magazine article implied she was doing okay financially. So that didn't seem to be a future problem. Kind of the opposite. It wasn't, 'Is she going to hit me up for money.' It was, 'How can I get something from her.' See, Gabe was a user. He used people. That's what he did. And he was good at it."

"How did he feel about gay people, lesbians. What did he think about Shane being gay. About marrying me, for example," Carmen asked.

Carla said, "Oh, Gabe doesn't give a shit about gay people one way or the other. Gay, straight, black, white, old, young, Hispanic, Muslim, Chinese, Martian, handicapped. They all had the same thing in common, as far as he was concerned."

"Potential victims of a scam," Lauren said.

"Bingo. Not your first rodeo, is it?" Carla said. "Mine, neither. Yeah. So, to answer your question, Carmen, I don't think Gabe would have cared if Shane was going to marry Ted Fucking Bundy."

"So how did he feel about Shay?" Carmen asked.

"That's a lot more complicated. Yes, I truly believe he loved Shay. I mean, he kept Shay with him from what, the age of four, until at least age twelve, right after Whistler, and maybe longer. I don't know anything about when or how they split up. But during the eight years we three lived together, Gabe was a reasonably okay father, believe it or not. I've love to tell you what a son-of-a-bitch Gabe was as a father, but it wouldn't be true. Now, he wasn't the World's Best, or anything. But he wasn't the World's Worst, either. I mean, fuck, he was way better than mine ever was.. But now I have a question for you guys, or I guess you, Carmen. I've always wondered, how did Shane and Shay get along? And what happened? About all I know is that after a couple months Gabe came and took Shay away from her."

Carmen nodded. "As you know, I wasn't around for any of that, but you know, I kept in touch with everybody but Shane, not right away, but after a few months I'd start hearing about things. Jenny or Alice would tell me stuff if I asked. The short answer is this. At first, when you dropped Shay off, Shane was pissed and didn't know what to do, as you might imagine, but she came around pretty quick, Alice says. She and Shay bonded. She wasn't like his new mom, or anything, but she was like this really cool big sister. You know, she did garden around the house, they played video games together, they knew all the same music and stuff, and they were both skateboard fanatics. Shane even had her hair salon at this cool skateboard shop that was in that magazine article you read about. Shane got him into school, and Shay made friends with one of his classmates, and then Shane hooked up with that kid's mother, a single mom named Paige. They had a relationship for a while, and then it went south, like Shane's relationships always do. I know that might sound catty, coming from me, but nobody would dispute it. Anyway, one day Shay fell off his skateboard and broke his arm. Shane was strapped for money at that point because most of her savings were tied up in the skateboard shop, and she needed money for Shay's medical bills for the broken arm. So she took a job she didn't want, as a model for Hugo Boss underwear. Have you ever seen those ads? The theme was "You're Looking Very Shane Today," and showed Shane topless and wearing just a pair of tighty-whities."

"I was in bad shape myself right around then," Carla said. "I wasn't following any trendy fashion magazine stuff. Shane in tighty-whities, huh? Wow."

"She was doing what she had to do, to make ends meet and take care of Shay," Carmen said. "I have to admire her for that."

"Oh, me, too," Carla said. "I didn't mean to sound critical. I bet we can all think of a hundred things she could have done in Hollywood that would have been a thousand times worse. SO then what happened?"