Fun and Games

O’Neal made one last visual sweep of the hotel room. No fibers had been left behind, no trace of them whatsoever. This was familiar turf—he’d worked dozens of hotel jobs before. He felt like he knew how to hit the Reset button on a hotel room better than career maids did. No trace of them was left. The only evidence left behind told the sad tale of…

Charles D. Hardie, a police consultant turned house sitter turned raging alcoholic, finally breaks with reality once he crosses paths with his favorite movie star, Lane Madden.

Hardie has been to Hollywood before and spies on Madden whenever possible. He takes another house-sitting assignment because he knows she’ll be in town—he’s been reading about her in the entertainment rags. Friday night Hardie follows her back to her Venice apartment after a party in Brentwood, then all the way through the mountains, past Mulholland Drive, and down the 101.

But he’s too eager. He brakes his rental vehicle too fast, causing an accident. Panicked, he loads Madden into his car, then flees the scene. His unbalanced mind creates a “hero” fantasy where he’s saving her from unknown attackers—just like in the action movies featuring Ms. Madden.

Hardie brings her to the house he’s been hired to watch, up in the Hollywood Hills. Madden tries to escape, at one point even stabbing Hardie. Enraged, Hardie beats her savagely and sets the house ablaze and then forces Madden into a landscaping-company van just up the hill, then drives down to Hollywood proper to continue his psychotic fantasy.

Believing this a date, Hardie forces Madden into the famous Musso & Frank, much to the shock of the staff—but no one summons the police, because Madden is well known for exhibiting strange behavior in public. Madden, to her credit, tries to play along, hoping to defuse the ticking time bomb that is Charles Daniel Hardie.

But the ruse breaks down. Hardie brings her back to a hotel in Los Feliz, breaking into a room, where he proceeds to beat and eventually strangle Madden to death. The police find him on the floor of the hotel room, paralyzed with shock, still rambling about these “Accident People” who were trying to kill her.

Mann wasn’t exactly proud of the narrative. It was far from her best work, and there were holes galore to plug (the flight times, accident reports, rental-car damages to duplicate). But there were no easy narratives once Hardie had injected himself into the narrative so audaciously and publicly. So the narrative was rewritten to give him a supporting role. Hell, Mann was giving Hardie immortality. From now on, Charles Daniel Hardie would be mentioned in the same breath as Mark David Chapman and Robert John Bardo and Anthony Gary Silvestri. Names that would be uttered in celebrity circles for years to come; Hardie would become a spook story, a cautionary tale.

And considering the dirty laundry Hardie had left behind in Philadelphia, it was doubtful people would fall over themselves to clear his name. Trying to prove otherwise would dredge up a lot of shit that the city would prefer stay buried.

Now it was time to summon the police and make their way to the real job—the one that, until this morning, she’d thought would be the tricky one. Not the case. Compared with the miracles her small team had had to perform during the past fifteen hours, this would be relatively simple. They didn’t even have to do anything. Just sit in the van with O’Neal and let things happen.

“We good?”

“All clear,” O’Neal said.

Mann knew she couldn’t touch Hardie, even though she longed to smash his eyes back into his skull with her fists. Instead she contented herself with stooping down, lifting his chin with gloved fingers, and saying:

“See ya in Hell, tough guy.”

25

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that,

you’ve got it made.

—George Burns

THE DRIVE into L.A. from Barstow was pretty boring.

Dusk started creeping across the land, the sun receding and fading away into a smoky gray. They didn’t say much—“Jane” staying in character, of course, and “Philip” wanting to save his energy.

He drove because Philip Kindred always drove and they wanted to make sure it was clear that it was Philip Kindred behind the wheel all the way from Barstow to L.A. But the actor behind the Philip Kindred identity was tired of driving, wanted a little rest. This was a demanding role, both mentally and physically. And the forced torture session at the gas station this morning had taken a lot out of him.

Plus, he had to admit—he was more than a little jealous of the actress playing the role of his sister/lover Jane, who basically was able to sit around just watching everything happen. What a gig.

Not that she didn’t cram as hard as he did. The job came up midday Wednesday; by that evening he was shaking hands with “Jane” and holing up in an anonymous hotel room in Flagstaff, AZ, reading through the piles of reference material and photographs and recordings about the infamous Kindreds. Plenty creepy stuff, but kind of a thrill, too—even the man playing Philip had to admit that.

Part of the cram session was getting to know the actress playing Jane and becoming comfortable with each other—familiar. The real Philip Kindred had a habit of touching Jane whenever possible, as if to claim her by physical touch or to reassure her. They kissed until it felt natural, familiar. They listened to the Kindreds’ favorite music (1960s orchestra pop and psych rock LPs that their dead parents kept around—“Crimson and Clover” especially— over and over and over), watched clips of their favorite movies (1980s slashers, 1990s teen sex comedies, 2000s torture porn), stared at the crime scene photos, and touched each other some more. Not that anyone would be quizzing either of them. But the more immersion the better.

The truly surreal thing was watching the Truth Hunters Special: The Kindreds as it was broadcast live Thursday night. As usual, ultimate family man Jonathan Hunter introduced the show, but he seemed even more somber than usual—almost like he knew what was coming Saturday night.

“Kind of creepy,” the man playing Philip muttered.

The woman playing Jane, staying in character, said nothing.

(See! She didn’t even have to learn any lines!)

Most of the show featured reenactments from previous installments, focusing on two sad sacks who didn’t look much like the real Philip and Jane Kindred at all. Which was really fucking insane, considering that Philip and Jane Kindred were notorious for abducting innocent victims, then forcing them to play out—reenact, if you will— scenes from their favorite horror movies. At gunpoint. So, as the man who was playing Philip watched the screen, he recognized the occult link between them all: he was watching a reenactment of another reenactment, and he himself was preparing to perpetrate still another reenactment—only one that everyone would think was real. All of it made his head hurt. He wished he could twist the cap off a cold beer.

But no booze of any kind: the Kindreds were teetotalers.

(Which just went to show you how seriously nuts these people were, he thought.)

And the man playing Philip would have loved to point out this strangeness to the woman playing Jane, but what could she do—nod? Shrug?

The show ended with Jonathan Hunter’s usual plea for the truth, that if you have any information that will shed some light on this case, please don’t hesitate to contact a Truth Hunter either by phone or e-mail or Facebook, and be sure to follow all Truth Hunters updates on Twitter…