The other annie, p.1
THE OTHER ANNIE, page 1
THE OTHER ANNIE
BRIAN O’SULLIVAN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is merely coincidental.
THE OTHER ANNIE
Copyright @20224 Brian O’Sullivan
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 979-8-9853830-8
Published by Big B Publishing
San Francisco, CA
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission to the copyright owner.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of the book be photocopied for resale.
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Chapter 1
BOBBY MCGOWAN
“Her name was Annie Ryan. She was born on December 11th, 1983. And she went missing on December 24th, 1998. She hasn’t been seen since.”
I was talking to William Ryan, Annie’s uncle, at his palatial estate in the Hollywood Hills—the same house Annie had gone missing in all those years ago.
The room we were in, which William identified as his study, was the size of a small house and had views of the Pacific Ocean.
William had heard about my investigation into my mother’s murder and the eventual death of the man responsible for it, Conrad Drury.
Apparently, he was impressed because he had invited me to Los Angeles to pitch me on the idea of taking on another seemingly unsolvable case: the disappearance of his niece.
“So, how do you want to do this, Bobby?” William asked.
Bobby McGowan, that’s me.
“Why don’t you just tell me everything you know,” I said.
I pressed record on my phone and let William Ryan talk.
Annie Ryan was born in Los Angeles, the first child of Connor and Emily Ryan.
She had a younger brother born three years after her, but he died of SIDS at fourteen months.
Annie had already been the apple of her parents’ eyes, but she became everything to them after her brother's death. She was raised in Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, and her parents doted on her, sometimes to the chagrin of others in the extended Ryan family.
Connor and Emily often repeated Annie’s accomplishments in school.
If Annie memorized her multiplication tables quicker than her older cousins, her parents would let it be known. Once Annie could identify all fifty state capitals, they’d find a way to forge it into a conversation. This rubbed some relatives the wrong way, but because they’d endured the tragedy of losing their son, they let it pass.
For the most part, Annie lived up to the expectations she was burdened with. Being an only child, and a brilliant one at that, placed added pressure on her.
She excelled in school, achieving straight A’s during her freshman year of high school. To boot, she was a very pretty young lady, and everyone knew she would become a beautiful woman.
Annie wasn’t perfect, however.
She was a bit rebellious, and it sometimes gave her parents grief. Annie would ditch school once or twice a month and always used the same refrain when her father confronted her: “Maybe if I’d gone to school today, I’d have improved on my straight A’s. Oh wait, that’s not possible.”
Connor would tell Annie there would come a time when taking shortcuts would come back and haunt her.
“I’ll let you know when I hit that point,” she’d say.
Annie could be quite sardonic, but her parents chalked it up to being a teenage girl.
So, while Annie continued to be the light of Connor and Emily Ryan’s eyes, she wasn’t without a few flaws.
Then again, Connor hadn’t exactly been the perfect child himself. He was in and out of juvenile hall as a teenager, ranging from petty crimes like stealing beer to more serious things like spray-painting his neighbor’s home while they slept.
Connor would tell himself that maybe this was all karma and he deserved some of the grief he was getting with Annie.
But he certainly didn’t deserve what happened on December 24th, 1998.
No parent deserved that.
On the night in question, Annie attended a lavish Christmas Eve party at her uncle William’s monstrous house.
Over fifty people were there, the majority of whom were family. The rest were family friends, a few valet drivers, and two women who catered the party.
The party started at 4:30, and Connor and Emily arrived with their daughter a little before 5:00.
Annie was seen many times over the next hour, and several people saw her sit down for dinner at 6:00. At some point, she left the dinner table and was never seen again.
After dinner, the Ryans held their yearly tradition of Secret Santa, in which each family member was randomly chosen to buy a present for another family member.
Annie had bought a poster of The Backstreet Boys for Ginny Ryan, her sixteen-year-old cousin and the self-professed “Biggest Backstreet Boy Fan in the World.”
When only a few presents were left to exchange, Emily Ryan went looking for her daughter. Annie had been so excited about the present she’d bought that she knew Ginny would love it, so Emily was surprised that she wasn’t there to give her gift away.
After looking for ten minutes without luck, she returned and asked her husband to help her find their daughter. They weren’t alarmed yet. William Ryan’s house was huge, and it wasn’t uncommon for the kids to play in one of the many rooms or the expansive backyard. Annie was a good swimmer, so the pool and hot tub weren’t the immediate worries they would have been with young kids.
When they still couldn’t find her, Connor and Emily returned to the living room and asked some other family members when they’d last seen Annie. Three different kids told them they’d seen Annie when they first sat down for dinner but that she’d gotten up from the table about ten to fifteen minutes after dinner started. None of them had seen her since.
At this point, Connor and Emily started to grow concerned. They checked the pool and the hot tub to be safe, but Annie wasn’t in either. They checked each of the eight bedrooms, but still, nothing. They walked outside and yelled Annie’s name to no avail.
They talked to the valet drivers William Ryan had hired and asked if they had seen a young girl run off. None had.
They talked to the two women in charge of catering the event, but they hadn’t seen anything either.
Connor went to William and his wife, Penny, and asked if they could think of any place that hadn’t been checked. They couldn’t.
People were starting to get frantic.
What had started as a Christmas party had turned into a search party - the worst kind of party.
Another half-hour went by without a trace of Annie.
Finally, with no other options, William Ryan, at the behest of his brother Connor, called 9-1-1 at 8:36 p.m.
Although not the oldest member of the extended family, William Ryan had become the most recognized face and, for all intents and purposes, its de facto leader.
There were a few reasons for this.
One, William was the most charismatic member of the Ryan clan. If you walked into a room and all eyes were on one man, it was almost inevitably William Ryan speaking. He was handsome—which didn’t hurt—but it was more the easy confidence in which he spoke that made him so charismatic.
The second—and more important—reason was that William Ryan was the most successful member of the Ryan family. He’d started a production company in Hollywood in his early thirties, which grew in stature during the 1980s and 90s, eventually putting out blockbuster movies starring Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, and Denzel Washington, among others.
William was raised in a small, three-bedroom house, where he and Connor shared a bunk bed until William was thirteen and Connor was eleven. His lone sister, Sophie, was blessed with her own room, and the sometimes feuding brothers were jealous. William’s father worked in construction, and his mother was a stay-at-home mother. Money was tight for the family of five.
William excelled in school and attended USC on an academic scholarship, graduating Magna Cum Laude at the ripe old age of twenty-one. He had majored in marketing, but instead of joining a marketing firm, he was hired by the William Morris Agency, one of the biggest talent agencies in the world.
He quickly advanced in the company, and by his late twenties, some people thought he was the one truly running the place. At thirty-one, he’d built up quite the client base within William Morris but abruptly decided to leave and start his own agency.
A few of his clients left William Morris and joined him, and several of those who didn’t initially join did in the years that followed.
By thirty-five, William Ryan was worth ten million dollars. By forty, he was worth over twenty million. And by the time his niece Annie went missing on Christmas Eve of 1998, he w
“And why does all this matter?” I asked William Ryan.
He’d been incredibly forthright about himself. Some might say too much so. Calling himself charismatic, handsome, and even extolling his virtues over the rest of his family. It was alarming.
“Because I’ve always worried that Annie was abducted because of my success. No one else in the family had any money worth speaking of.”
“But you never got a ransom note or anything signifying that her disappearance was about money?”
“No, but I thought maybe that had been the intended plan. And then things went awry.”
By using the word ‘awry,’ I knew he meant that Annie had been killed before they could follow through with a ransom request.
“Who would have wanted your money?” I asked.
“Who didn’t want it?”
“Are you referring to family?”
“God, I hope not. The only thing that could make this worse than it already is would be if a family member were involved.”
“Well, wasn’t the party almost exclusively family?”
“There were friends of the family, the valet drivers, and the women who catered the event. The rest were family.”
He grabbed a piece of paper and slid it across the table to me.
“This is a list of everyone who was at the party.”
I looked down at the sheet of paper. It was intimidating.
He’d separated it into four categories.
Family, of which thirty-nine people were listed. Friends, of which there were seven. Valet, which had three people. And caterers, of which there were two.
Fifty-one people to look into. Fifty-one alibis to confirm. Fifty-one motives to check out.
Making things even more challenging, Annie had gone missing over twenty-five years ago.
“So, do you want to take the case?” William Ryan asked.
“Am I investigating this as a missing person’s case or as a murder?”
“Wherever it leads you, Bobby. But I imagine it’s, sadly, the latter.”
I didn’t respond for quite some time.
“Well?” he prodded.
As daunting as it sounded, I was also fascinated. It was like solving a massive jigsaw puzzle.
I probably should have taken my time; maybe thought about it for a few days.
Instead, just like when I reached for my family’s photo album, I made an impulsive move.
“I’ll take the case,” I said.
Chapter 2
When I finished my meeting with William, he suggested I meet with a man named Earl Razzle.
I’d heard of him. Everybody had.
Earl Razzle was a private investigator to the stars and a famous one at that. And really, he was more than just a PI. He was like a confidant, PI, and best friend all rolled into one.
He had been on the news many times over the years, usually with a famous star sitting next to him. And Razzle would inevitably steal the show.
He was loud, entertaining, and fearless. His dark, spiky hair went in all different directions.
Razzle had to be in his mid-fifties by now, but there wasn’t a gray hair to be seen. I’m sure some dye was involved.
His tan was always on point. His clothes, always impeccable.
With Earl Razzle, the look was half the thing.
He looked like a rockstar and acted like one as well. For all intents and purposes, Earl Razzle was the rockstar. He was certainly more interesting than most of the famous people he represented.
Earl would smile at the camera with his big pearly whites and explain why the tabloids had it all wrong. His client was a golden god who could do no wrong. His client - who had been caught with a prostitute - was just doing research for his upcoming movie where he played a pimp. You get the idea.
The unintentional comedy at his press conferences was off the charts.
The public loved Earl. This well-tanned handsome man with the whitest of teeth, explaining why his likely nefarious client was a pillar of the community.
And while William Ryan was more of a behind-the-scenes guy and not exactly famous, his money was as green as theirs.
I headed down to Razzle’s office in Beverly Hills.
The same Beverly Hills where I’d be living for the next month.
After I agreed to take the case, William booked me into a room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It was June 1st, and he reserved it until the same date in July.
When that time came to a close, William and I would jointly decide if it was worth continuing my investigation. He would inevitably make the final decision—he was the one with the checkbook, after all.
William stated that a week or two wouldn’t be long enough to investigate this complicated case, and I tended to agree with him.
He asked if I could start right away, and I told him I didn’t see why not. I told him I could drive back to Santa Barbara later that night and return with clothes, toiletries, etc.
He was ecstatic that I both took the case and agreed to start immediately.
I couldn’t check into the Beverly Hilton until two p.m., so, with an hour to kill, I parked my 2015 Honda Civic - boy, did it stand out in Beverly Hills - and walked to Earl Razzle’s office.
To my surprise, once I told his secretary my name, she immediately escorted me to his office. William must have called ahead.
The man I’d seen on T.V. numerous times extended his hand.
“Earl Razzle,” he said.
His tan was on point. Razzle was the George Hamilton of Celebrity PI’s. I reminded myself that I was only thirty-two and too young to make George Hamilton references.
“Bobby McGowan. It’s nice to meet you,” I said.
Besides Razzle himself, my view was of Rodeo Drive, a street full of Tiffany’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and other places I’d never shopped at. Amongst all these high-end stores was Earl Razzle's office.
He noticed my eyes wandering.
“Not a bad location, right?”
“Not too shabby,” I said.
“Here, take a seat.”
During my previous investigation, I was used to sitting in uncomfortable chairs across from police officers who were equally uncomfortable.
Not here. Not now.
Razzle - that couldn’t be his real last name - led me to a huge, three-piece black leather couch. It was comfortable as hell. He pulled up a portable black loveseat and sat next to me. This had to be the most informal meeting I’d ever had.
“I’ve been told you’re here about the Annie Ryan case?”
“I am.”
“William Ryan called me and said you might be coming.”
I nodded.
Razzle immediately started talking again. I imagine Razzle could filibuster for hours if you didn’t get a word in.
“Annie Ryan is one of the cases that has always irked me,” he said. “I can’t believe I never discovered what happened to that young girl.”
I was getting a case of deja vu. I remember Mark Patchett, the detective assigned to my mother’s murder, also telling me that my mother’s case was the one he could never get out of his mind. The one that got away.
“Why did this particular case stick with you?” I asked.
“Because of the family. Connor and Emily lost their only daughter. Their only remaining child. And the extended family was never the same. As I’m sure you noticed, William Ryan is still consumed by it to this day. The guy is now in his early seventies, and it’s still all he thinks about. He used to host raucous family functions, which have basically become non-existent. I guess you can’t blame him. Everyone would be throwing a suspicious glance at other members of their family. No one knows who killed or abducted Annie on the night in question, so everybody has their own opinion on who did it. I feel like everyone is a suspect in one way or another.”
“Did you ever land on one specific suspect?”
“I landed on twenty. That’s the problem. No one really had an alibi. If you were there, you were a suspect. People claimed they never left the dinner table, but then someone else would say they saw them use the bathroom. This case is like watching fifty people play telephone, where everything changes the more you talk to them, and nothing is as it seems.”
