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A detective detached from the roped-off scene, approached Tess’s radio car, and introduced herself as DPS Detective Laura Cardinal.

“Did you find it?” Tess asked.

“Yes.” Cardinal held up the evidence bag containing the purple yo-yo.

The Desert Oasis logo on the yo-yo was clear in the bright-white light that eerily lit the scene.

“It was right where you said it would be, although it was hard to find—it fell into a crevice between those rocks.” The detective nodded toward the rocks close to the road. She looked tired from the long night, but her eyes were probing. Tess wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the detective. “How’d you know?”

“I saw him throw it.”

“The boy.”

Tess nodded. She didn’t say that she must have been too tired and shaken up after the crash to think about it until now. Her memory was her best asset, and yet it had taken awhile for her to realize the significance. “It was on a string around his finger. He was juggling that and the gun. So he pulled it off and threw it.”

Cardinal stared at her. “That’s quite some memory of yours,” she said.

“Some days are better than others,” Tess said.

Chapter Forty-One

I
N
G
ORDON’S PALATIAL
suite, Jerry and Gordon went over their plan. Fortunately for Jerry, Talia had decided to take a bubble bath. He’d sneaked out without telling her.

They went over the scenario the way it would look to the cops:

Max drives out into the Verde Valley to look at some property he’s interested in. On his way back, he sees a man and woman struggling at a roadside pullout. Max heroically intervenes. The bad guy shoots him and finishes off the woman and the girl. In a panic, the man dumps the woman’s car with the woman and girl inside. He does this by rolling it down an embankment—a half-assed attempt to hide his criminal act. He takes off in his own car, leaving Max dead by the side of the road.

“That’s what the investigators will think,” Jerry said. “Max dies a hero, trying to save the woman and the little girl.”

“I know all that.”

“When he doesn’t show up the next morning, you go looking for him and are shocked to find him dead at the rest area.”

“It still seems a little elaborate to me,” Gordon said. “Especially the part where we have to drive all those bodies to the scene of the crime. Anyone could see us.”

Jerry punched up Google Maps on his smartphone and chose the satellite option. “See? There’re a couple of trees back from the road, and some brush. Besides, we’ll only be there just long enough to arrange everything so it looks right for the cops.”

“Pretty convoluted,” Gordon said. “No wonder your screenplays never sold.”

Jerry said, “Are we going to stop now, Gord? I thought we agreed on this scenario. I thought you were with me on this!”

“I am.”

“You just have to be convincing when you discover him. You can do that, can’t you?”

“In my sleep.” Gordon paused. “You
do
know this isn’t just a screenplay, right? We’re playing for keeps. What we’re doing is
real
.”

“I know that.”

“We can’t have any witnesses.”

“I know that.”

“I’m talking about the actors—the woman and the girl.”

“I’m good with that,” Jerry said, and he was. He thought of them as collateral damage when he thought about them at all. It was unfortunate—no doubt about it—but he chose to block his feelings on that score, one reason he had a glass of Macallan scotch at his elbow right this minute. Max had to die a hero. His death had to be bigger than life, important—there had to be self-sacrifice. When you considered what Max’s estate would be worth, at least a billion dollars in the next ten years, there was no margin for error.

And so he concentrated on the plot points. “The main thing we have to do is make sure we get Max’s body there in a timely manner. According to Dr. DePaulentis’s paper, lividity becomes apparent within a half hour to two hours after death, which you will admit, is a pretty short time frame when we have to move him. So we’ve got to do everything we can to make it appear he died at the scene.”

“You’re sure there’ll be no blood?” Gordon said. “You can guarantee that.”

“There are no guarantees, Gord, but a twenty-two straight to the heart isn’t going to go anywhere. It might bounce around a little inside, but there’s not enough firepower to go through. That’s why we have to have a trained shooter.”

He didn’t say it, but there was a word for a killer who specialized in executions with the .22.
Assassin.

However Max fell when he was shot on the soundstage, they would have to be careful to transport him in the same position. Jerry had timed the drive from the soundstage to the pullout, which was only twenty minutes away. The timing would be tight, but the likelihood that Max would be in full livor mortis was actually pretty slight. When the heart stopped pumping, the blood would settle into the organs and sink to the lowest points, but the whole process could take up to twelve hours to be complete. Any changes within that time frame, Jerry thought (he
hoped
—DePaulentis hadn’t been entirely clear on this point) would likely not be remarkable enough to puzzle a forensic pathologist.

But to be on the safe side, Jerry had driven out to the pullout and removed all the rocks and debris from a ten-foot-by-ten-foot area of dirt, the place where Max might conceivably fall.

They’d just have to deliver Max there in a timely manner.

Jerry took another sip of scotch. “As far as livor mortis goes—”

“Livor mortis?”

“It’s another word for
lividity
. How the blood sinks to the bottom of a person when he dies. Remember? Anyway, we don’t have to worry about the woman and the girl, especially if we just shove them in the backseat of their car like the bad guy would do. Any way they land is fine. Especially after we roll the car down that hill.”

They went back to the beginning. When the woman and her daughter arrived at the mall, they would be ushered onto the soundstage. Max would be there, hopefully still disoriented from over twenty-four hours in the isolation tank, and easy to manipulate.

They’d shoot him first, two to the heart with a .22. The mother would be next, and the little girl last, since she would be easiest to kill.

“How far do we go with the mother?” Gordon asked.

“Pants off—I told her they can wear casual clothes, so I’m guessing it’ll be pants. And maybe her underwear. Maybe tear something, but we have to make sure to use gloves. We don’t want to leave any hair follicles or microscopic bits of skin, dander, anything like that. And jumpsuits. Whoever places them where they need to be has to wear a jumpsuit and a shower cap over a hairnet. Use the precautions in the DePaulentis plan.”

“And where are we going to hide whoever’s going to do it, do you think, Jerry? If the mom and the kid see some guy in a jumpsuit, rubber gloves, and a shower cap over a hairnet, alarm bells could go off. People have a sixth sense about things. We’re no different from animals, when you come right down to it. We can sense danger. We don’t want this to be a mess, Jerry.”

They would put the mother and daughter in the car and drive them out to the pullout, then a half mile farther on, push the car over the embankment. They would transport Max to the site in the box truck.

“Careful to keep him in the same position,” Jerry stressed.

“Agreed.” Gordon got himself a drink and sat down again. “I’m worried about that twelve miles to the pullout. That’s a lot of time on the road.”

“No it’s not.”

“Two cars? Transporting three bodies? Any time on the road is dangerous. Someone could see us.”

“What are they going to see, Gord? Someone driving by. It’ll be dark by then. All they’ll see is headlights, and who notices what kind of cars are on the road anyway? Do you know that the least reliable evidence of guilt comes from eyewitnesses? Eyewitnesses, generally speaking, suck. Part of that time they’ll be on the road, they have to go past the RV park…Don’t look at me like that, Gord, it’s no big deal.
Night
, remember? And Max’s car will go about a half hour later, so they’re not even seen together on the road. Trust me. Nobody’s going to notice a thing. The mother and daughter will be covered up, and Max will be in the cargo truck.”

Jerry added, “The main objective is to make sure Max is laid out just the way he hit the floor on the soundstage. That could be a dangerous window of time—but it’s a short one. And we’ll be doing it when it’s dark. We straight on this?”

“We’re straight.”

“Good.”

Chapter Forty-Two

C
ONCENTRATE
.

Max knew how easily he could lose all sense of time and space, and worse, his own identity. It wasn’t just disorientation. The word disorientation was nothing compared to what he knew would happen to him. He couldn’t feel his hands, his feet, he couldn’t smell anything, he couldn’t hear anything, he couldn’t see anything. He felt nothing against his body, no pressure at all, as if he’d been wrapped in cotton wool. There was no point of reference. He knew he’d lose all sense of time, he knew he would lie suspended in the darkness, lost, desperate, unable to hear his own cries for help. And he knew it would come on him fast. The hallucinations would take over and he would be completely lost. He needed to concentrate. He bit his lip so he could feel something. The sharp pain, the taste of blood. It helped. He needed to think about one thing. One word, one mantra—a chant that would keep him sane. He flailed around for a word, any word, for that one clear thought, but panic began to consume him.

Think!

He couldn’t.

Think think think think think.

But nothing came. Nothing.

Amazing to think he’d once used drugs and alcohol to blur his senses, to disorient himself.

And then, from somewhere, it came to him, one tiny word. Freeze.

Freeze
. The word Gordon had used against him. Programmed into him: Freeze.

What was the opposite of “Freeze”? Don’t Freeze. He backed it up with another thought. If they tell you to freeze, don’t. Don’t freeze. Move. And move fast.

His lips formed the words. “Freeze, Move.” He made no sound, but he could feel his lips moving. They still belonged to him. He kept moving his lips:
Freeze, Move
. Over and over.
Freeze, Move. Freeze, Move. Freeze,
Move!

He started to drift, lassitude spreading to his arms, his legs, his whole body. Had to fight against it, hold on to those two words by the most tenuous thread, as if he were tethered to a balloon.

When they came for him, when they got him out of here, he knew what he would do.

MOVE.

III: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Chapter Forty-Three

J
ERRY WAS HAVING
a late lunch outside on the deck when Gordon walked up, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

Breaking the mood completely.

“I was thinking,” Jerry said. “There’s that ramp down to the loading dock at the outlet mall, where the big trucks go in. With the high wall? That’s where we can hide the truck, the woman’s car, and Max’s—”

“Shaun’s a no-show.”

“What?”

“She’s still missing. Which
means
, we don’t have a shooter.”

“Missing? Maybe she’s embarrassed because she couldn’t find Max. I sure hope you’re not going to pay her anything. Some assassin she turned out to be. Hell, I’ll do it,” Jerry added. Right now he felt as if he could do anything.

“You’re not a real assassin.”

“She wasn’t much of one either. What do you think, she decided to go on vacation in the middle of a job?”

“We don’t know what happened.”

“No, we don’t.”

Gordon said, “We need a real shooter. Someone who can drill him from a couple of feet away with a .22, straight through the heart. It sounds easy, but it’s only a .22. You can’t do that. I can’t do that. Most people can’t.”

Jerry understood what Gordon was saying. The .22 was a deal-breaker. They wanted a small, clean wound, not only to avoid copious amounts of blood that would impede their ability to stage the body elsewhere, but also in case the paparazzi managed to pay their way into the morgue and snap photos. A big, bloody hole would ding Max’s market value. “What about Dave Finley?” Jerry said.

“Can he shoot?”

“He’s a stunt man. He can do all that kind of stuff. He certainly would do a better job than we would.”

There was a commotion by the pool.

Jerry shaded his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“Dave’s putting on a show as we speak. We’re keeping the paparazzi back, but they’ve got the telephotos out in force. They think they’re getting some good shots. If I do say so myself, he looks good in that white Speedo. Hale and hearty—healed of his addiction and ready to reunite with his wife.”

“And baby.”

Gordon said, “Don’t remind me.”

“He look different to you?” Jerry asked.

“Max?”

“No, Dave. He looks…I dunno. Almost like he’s had some work done.”

Gordon stared at him. “Work done?”

“You know, a tuck here, a snip there.
Work.
He looks, I know this is going to sound crazy, but the more I see him, the more he seems to look like Max.”

“He’s his stunt double. Of course he looks like Max.”

“I suppose…” It wasn’t important. “So what happens next?”

“Dave’s going to climb into the Cadillac Max rented and drive off into the sunset.”

Jerry pictured grainy shots of Max behind the wheel of the car, maybe hiding his face a little, not willing to give the paps a good shot.

Perfect. “You think he can pull it off?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Jerry said, “You know Max screwed Dave’s wife.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m counting on.”

Chapter Forty-Four

S
HAUN HAD BAILED
from the truck just as it hit the guardrail. This had been more luck than anything else—she’d shoved the door open, and before it had a chance to slam back on her, managed to dive for the asphalt. She’d caught it exactly right, the guardrail slowing the truck for just an instant.