Dead Last (21 page)

Sawyer understood very well this was not the basis for a long-term relationship, but it was a wild turn-on while it lasted.

“What’s huger than huge?” she asked.

She shrugged out of her elastic cuffs and rolled over to face him.

“Monstrous,” Sawyer said.

Jacking herself up on an elbow, she squinted down at him. The sheets were damp. They’d kicked the quilt—the one Garvey had made for him before he headed off to Harvard full of ambition—to the floor. Around them Dee Dee’s collection of rubber toys was scattered across the dresser and the carpet. Pinks and blacks and flesh colors, mostly jumbos. One of them, a long skinny probe with a bulging tip, was still buzzing on a bedside bookshelf.

“Are you being sarcastic again?”

“This is gruesome, Dee Dee,” he said. “Over-the-top gruesome. Why do I have to explain that to you?”

“You’re not happy? This isn’t your wildest dream come true? The big come-from-behind finish. Don’t you get it? This is the
New York
fucking
Times, Good Morning America,
CNN, the tabloid shows. We’ll be making the rounds. The Nielsens will skyrocket.”

“Guy on CNN called
Miami Ops
‘an obscure third-rate crime drama.’”

“Any hype is good hype.”

“You can’t be happy about this, Dee Dee.”

“Why not?”

“It’s heartless. People have died. This is brutal shit.”

“You’re such a prig. The studio cuts off funds, we’re dead in the water, might as well be cancelled. Now this happens. Sure, it’s sad people died. Sure, sure, okay, I get it. And believe me, my heart goes out to them, and I’m sending their loved ones my thoughts and prayers. Hey, I’m not some cold bitch. But Sawyer, this is going to push us into the big-time.”

She prodded him in the ribs. Prodded him a second time.

Sawyer closed his eyes and ground his head into the pillow.

“God, you’re incredible. Lightning strikes, this amazing thing happens, and you’re glum. We’re all going to be crazy famous. This is what I’ve been working for, what you’ve been working for. We’re on the big stage. The paparazzi are staking out your mom’s house. I got plans for all that money that’s going to start pouring in. Oh, I got big plans.”

“Yeah, yeah. Our fifteen minutes have started.”

“Fifteen minutes?”

Sawyer rolled onto his side. Dee Dee stared at him blankly. Was she putting him on? Could she not know the Warhol line? Lately he’d been finding out more and more she didn’t know. Blank stretches in her education. Stuff that hadn’t bothered him a month ago, stuff he’d ignored, so lost in the fever of lust.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “The eyeballs will be there this Thursday, sure, that’s probably going to happen. The Expo Channel is going to light up like Christmas. We’ll hit Danson’s number, the studio will piss itself, yeah, yeah. But what about the weeks after that? After the ratings spike, then what? Is it going to take more murders to keep us going?”

“Look, once people start watching the show, see how good it is, they’ll spread the word.”

“Is it? Is it any good, Dee Dee?”

“What a party pooper. You’re absolutely zero fun.”

“This whole thing,” he said. “It’s sickening.”

“If you weren’t such a stud, I might have to dump you.”

“I can’t believe this. A woman got beaten to death with a baseball bat, everybody’s popping champagne.”

“I’m sorry for the poor girl, and for whoever else this maniac murdered. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Bad things happen. Bad people do bad things. There’s a lot of terrible shit in the world. Okay? I get it. I truly do get it.”

She trailed her fingers down his ribs, coasting past his navel. Sawyer was unresponsive, and as she reached his pubes he recoiled.

Dee Dee jerked her hand away.

“Hey, mister. Let me ask you something.”

Sawyer cocked his head her way and took her in.

“You ever fail at anything? Anything at all? Your whole life?”

“Once or twice.”

“Well, I’ve failed plenty,” she said. “And I’ve butted up against some of the ugliest shit there is in this world, stuff I’ve never told you about and never will. And this show, this thing that’s happening now, this is as close as I’ve ever come to making it. So okay, people died, well, that’s too bad for them. But there’s a lot of ways a person can die, okay, without actually dying.”

She swiveled around and from the bedside table she nabbed the remains of the joint they’d shared last night. With a huffy sigh, she scratched the Bic into flame, lit the roach, and sucked in a lungful. She didn’t offer a hit to Sawyer. Just drew the bright glowing weed down to her fingertips.

When she’d released everything from her lungs, she stabbed it out on the wooden tabletop. She rolled out of bed, crossed the room naked. In the nearby buildings Sawyer saw a dozen flashes, the voyeurs doing a quick refocus.

Sawyer lay back and looked at the light streaming in, at the clouds reshaping along the horizon. He knew the cop drill, and what was coming next.

While he listened to Dee Dee humming to herself in the dressing room, Sawyer considered his alibi. One that would be impossible to prove, and just as impossible to disprove.

Last night he left the sound stage at nine-thirty, a fact easily verified by several crew members. He called Dee Dee’s cell to set up a dinner date, but all his calls went to voice mail. Odd, but not without precedent.

So he returned to her condo, where he’d been living for the last few months. Didn’t ride upstairs, simply got his running shoes out of the trunk of his Honda, slipped into his shorts in the front seat, and went for a late-night jog in the muggy summer night. No security cams in the outside lot. Didn’t swing by the front and wave to Maury, the bellman, just ran off into the darkness.

Out on Brickell Avenue he ran south for a while, kept on running across the Rickenbacker Causeway, energized by the ocean breeze, the city lights, the black sweep of the bay. He watched the twinkling yachts cruising back to port and stopped at the apex of the bridge to catch his breath, then looked down at the iridescent water. He watched other joggers pass, watched cars flash by.

He’d seen no one, spoken to no one. Had jogged on the causeway for an hour, then taken a cool-down walk along Windsurf Beach, and wound up sitting there in the sand debating what he should do now that the show seemed to be finished.

No way to prove any of that. They’d have to take his word. Or not.

When he returned to his car after his run, his cell was ringing, and it was then he got word about the Zentai killer calling the newspaper. He’d thrown on a shirt and pants and taken the elevator up to Gus Dollimore’s penthouse and joined the others. That weird, restrained celebration.

Sawyer would have to defend this story, stay disciplined, keep it straight and simple and not let them find the smallest inconsistency. He scripted a line in his head, some righteous indignation:

“You think I copycatted my own show? You think I murdered a complete stranger for publicity? That’s insane. I’m not that desperate, man. TV shows fail all the time, and new TV shows are born, and writers go on writing.”

“Close the curtains,” Dee Dee called from her dressing room.

“What?”

“I said shut the curtains, Sawyer. Shut them tight.”

That was a first.

He rolled out of bed, padded to the edge of the window, and pulled the cord, no doubt sending dozens of devoted fans into shock.

“All right,” Sawyer called.

“Now lie down, close your eyes.”

Sawyer picked up Garvey’s quilt, refolded it, set it on the shelf beside the bed. He switched off the skinny vibrator that had been humming for the last hour, and lay down on the bed.

“Your eyes closed?”

“They’re closed.”

Sawyer stretched out on the sheets, propped his head on a pillow, shut his eyes. Waited.

“Are your eyes shut?”

“Shut,” he said.

He heard her slip into the room, heard her muffled breathing.

“Okay, you can look.”

Sawyer opened his eyes and found Dee Dee standing before him in a black Zentai suit. The Lycra hugging her so tight it showed every ridge of muscle, the perfect swell of her breasts, her nipples taut, the neatly barbered Mohawk of pubic hair, the slabs of muscles in her thighs.

“Look what I found, honey.”

Her hands were hidden behind her back.

“Not funny, Dee Dee.”

She stood motionless at the foot of the bed, crouched forward like some jungle creature about to spring.

“So let’s try it, big boy. Let’s see what it’s like. Huh?”

“Nothing doing,” he said. “Take it off.”

She inched down the side of the bed, slinking closer, her hands still hidden. Head lowered, rocking back and forth, an eerie cobra dance. Sawyer was growing mildly spooked.

“This isn’t cool.”

He shifted his legs, set his feet against the mattress, ready to dig in and thrust himself away. A chill rippled on his backside.

“Come on, goddamn it. Stop this shit.”

She crept forward another foot. Sawyer outweighed her by at least forty pounds, but Dee Dee had a crushing grip in both hands, and her core strength was astounding. From hours of Pilates and free weights and gymnastic work on the horizontal bar, and those pink rubber straps, she was all sinew and gristle, a body as sturdy, limber, and powerful as a python’s.

As she took another half step, Sawyer sat up, poised to hop sideways, make a break for the bathroom, when her left hand appeared from behind her.

Empty.

Then she took another step and her right hand flew out. In it she held a black square of material. Underhanded, she tossed it at him, and it fluttered open on his chest. A matching Zentai suit.

“Okay, bad boy. Let’s you and me field-test this baby.”

“Christ almighty.”

“What? Did I scare you? You think I was coming for you like I did for Slattery?”

“You can’t let anybody see you like that. It’s incriminating as hell.”

She eased down on the bed beside him and Sawyer felt a shiver pass through his gut. This black specter. Not Dee Dee, but her absence, her shadow half. Sawyer’s heart was bumping. Her body shape was even more pronounced without the distraction of her features. Its crisp lines, its haughty sexuality, the aggressive tilt of pelvis, the vulnerable swan’s neck and proud lift of chin. Absent her coquettish eyes, lush mouth, and sculptured cheekbones, the essence of Dee Dee was intensely primal, a woman stripped of her singularity, yet somehow more magnetic.

She stroked a Lycra hand across his bare thigh. Part silk, part rasp.

To his surprise, his cock had firmed. Racing blood, inflamed nerves.

“Hey, not to worry, Sawyer. I would never murder you, babe. I need those words you give me. I need you more than ever, now that I’ll be a star.”

She had a Lycra hand on his cock, starting a slow pump, when Sawyer’s cell rang on the bedside table.

“Leave it.”

Sawyer leaned over, checked the ID.

“It’s Flynn.”

“Leave it, sweetie. Dee Dee’s got you in her grip.”

He lay back and tried to give himself over to the strange sensation, that sleek material riding up and down his length.

The phone rang again. Sawyer turned his head.

“Now it’s Gus,” he said. “Something’s going on.”

Dee Dee released him and made a pouty huff.

Sawyer answered, listened, set the phone down.

“Okay, so what is it?”

“Get out of that suit right now.”

“What?”

“FBI’s in the lobby. We’re assembling downstairs in five minutes.”

SEVENTEEN

THORN WAS UP BEFORE THE
sun that Saturday morning after laboring through a night of vivid, jerk-awake dreams whose particulars whisked away in the seconds it took him to walk into the bathroom, leaving behind only hazy after-images of Buddha Hilton and two young boys playing on a grassy lawn, tossing a ball back and forth and back and forth while Thorn watched from some hovering distance.

Where those dream images originated was clear enough. The walls of the garage apartment were covered with framed snapshots of the towheaded twins, Flynn and Sawyer, shirtless at ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen in a variety of settings but almost always doing something outside and together: rowing boats, playing tug-of-war with a heavy rope, dressed in matching seersucker suits for Easter services, playing bocce ball and horseshoes, tossing a Frisbee, shooting arrows side by side at straw-filled targets, romping with a succession of large mutts.

There were also shots of them standing alongside various men. A swarthy Cuban gentleman figured prominently in several, a red-haired fellow with a freckled forehead showed up in almost as many, and there were other men who’d apparently held shorter tenures in the Moss household. As he browsed the images Thorn was struck by a repeating pattern. In all the shots that featured the Moss twins and their mother’s apparent boyfriends, the brothers invariably stood at attention, stiff and awkward as if posing in a police lineup. Their postures and their matching forced smiles made it clear these male invaders into the Moss sanctuary never stood a chance.

Then there were the half-dozen prom night photos with an impressive collection of young ladies in ball gowns. Flynn preferred buxom, hot-blooded playmates with theatrical eyes and bold smiles and racy evening wear. Girls who appeared more fully ripened in both body and worldly experience than he.

Sawyer’s dates were mostly dark-haired, understated, trim young women, often as tall as Sawyer or taller. April look-alikes with pale skin and long limbs and easy smiles.

The previous night when April showed Thorn the room, she seemed startled to find so many photographs hanging there. She apologized and acted ill at ease, telling Thorn she’d not been up there in several months, since the day Sawyer moved out to live on his own. It was he who’d decorated the room, framed and hung the snapshots, a sentimental kid, she said. A boy preoccupied with his past.

When she opened the closet door, they found it crowded with the boys’ abandoned clothes. Mainly faded polo shirts and battered jeans and some dark suits and button-down dress shirts—Sawyer’s corporate uniform, April explained, worn during his brief career as an attorney.