Nobody Knows (7 page)

Cassie said nothing.

WILL CLAYTON
took Cassie’s call as he had every Monday morning for the last six months, out of a sense of gratitude and obligation and perhaps to ensure that she wouldn’t go public. If the director knew that it was he who had given Cassie the information about Maggie Lynch, he would be finished at the FBI. But, so far, Cassie had refused to reveal the source of her information. Will wanted to make sure it stayed that way.

“How ya doin’, Cassie?”

“I’ll be much better if you tell me there’s something new.”

“I wish I could, Cassie. I wish I could. The director is on the warpath about it.”

“God, Will, I can’t believe you guys haven’t figured this out yet.”

“Give us a break, will you, Cassie? We don’t have all that much to work with. Three cases. That’s it. Maggie Lynch in February, the one before that last November in Miami, and the one this spring in Louisville. The guy is really spreading things out.”

Cassie thought of the details of the latest attack, in
May. The same M.O. as the others. A young woman, followed home at night, waking to a knife at her neck, the grotesque clown’s face breathing into hers.

“The makeup could have been purchased anywhere, and the airline rosters didn’t show any name recurring on flights from those cities on those dates,” Will continued, defending the bureau’s investigation. “The best leads we have come from the victims’ statements. The fact that the duration of each attack increased with the victim’s passivity, that he promised not to hurt these women if they complied, and asked them to tell him that they loved him—all of this suggests to us that he is a compensatory rapist.”

“What’s that?” Cassie interrupted.

“It means he’s not your everyday scare ’em, tear ’em attacker. We think this guy’s core fantasy is that the victim will actually enjoy the rape and fall in love with him. Because of his inadequate personality, the rape assuages the doubts he has about himself. The big problem is that when this clown’s—excuse the pun—when his need for reassurance arises again, it will be time to go out and find somebody else to make him feel better about himself.”

At the end of their conversation, Cassie hung up in frustration. This rapist had to be caught, before he savaged another woman’s life. And if he was found, she might, please God, be able to stop feeling so guilty.

With Lou-Anne on her way to the hair salon and the kids escorted by the mother’s helper to story hour at the library, Webb Morelle had the spacious multilevel condo to himself. He poured a third cup of coffee, lacing it with half-and-half and three sugars, cut a generous wedge of iced coffee cake, grabbed a paper towel for a napkin, and lumbered down the steps from the kitchen that led to his home screening room. Webb lowered himself onto the huge sectional sofa, clicking the remote control as he raised his pajama-clad legs onto the marble coffee table.

The opening credits popped onto the big screen encased in the custom-built wall unit. “Merilee We Roll Along,” proclaimed the title. “A Web of Desire Production.”

Webb loosened the sash of his silk bathrobe and settled back into the plush cushions to enjoy the show. The surround sound created an acoustic environment that made Webb feel as though he was experiencing the action on the screen. He smiled, becoming increasingly
certain at each grunt and groan that
Merilee We Roll Along
was going to be another big moneymaker.

This was the second video in which Webb had cast Merilee as his star. The first,
Merilee, Merilee, Merilee, Life Is But a Dream
, had been the best-selling video Web of Desire Productions had ever had. Webb didn’t kid himself that the script he had written was the secret to the movie’s success. Nor was it the dry ice machine that made the misty clouds enveloping the actors as they went through their contortions, nor that shredded angel costume that Merilee wore. The secret was Merilee herself, and her cloud of dark hair and tawny velvet skin that stretched over a tight body that didn’t quit. It was Merilee with her deep brown eyes and playful expression that dominated that video. The camera loved her, and she loved the camera right back.

Webb watched the giant screen now as Merilee wrapped herself around her partner in porn, Van Jensen. No doubt about it. This would be another hit, even if it turned out to be the last time Merilee starred for Web of Desire Productions.

He clicked off the video, tossed the remote on the table, and laid his head back to rest on the top of the sofa. Webb stared at the ceiling and the multicolored mural painted there. Lou-Anne had paid a pretty penny to have those entertaining scenes depicting Sarasota’s circus history. Trapeze artists and elephants and ring-masters and clowns, all under the big top. The source of inspiration for some of the many video stories that had made the Morelles millionaires. Lou-Anne often used this room to entertain the ladies from her various social committees. If those women only knew what really
paid for all the catered luncheons down here and the thick carpet on which they parked their Ferragamos.

He knew his wife was mortified at the thought of the socialites finding out what he did for a living. She demanded Webb’s secretary answer the office telephone with the generic “Production Company.” She insisted that they make contributions to many of the local charities, which were all too happy to accept his fat checks. She told anyone who asked that her husband made motivational sales videos for corporate clients.
Yeah, right
, thought Webb.
They’re motivational all right. The biggest motivators of all
.

God, there was money to be made in this business!
He’d bet that though he’d barely made it to graduation, he was making more now than most of his Ivy League classmates who had graduated at the top of their class and worked at the nation’s most prestigious law firms and corporations. Funny how life turned out. Twenty years ago he’d taken that part-time job at the off-campus video store, and the rest was history. The English major found that he spent a good deal of time answering the questions of customers who wanted to know how to tell one adult videotape from another. The VCR was starting to find its way into more and more American homes then, and Webb was sure its popularity was driven, to some degree, by the easier and more anonymous access it offered to porn. Before home video, pornography had a much smaller audience, mainly men, who sneaked into sleazy movie houses and took care of business under their raincoats. The VCR made it easy to watch porn in the privacy of your own bedroom. At the same time, the spread of
AIDS was frightening many men—and women—from sallying forth into the world for their sexual adventures. For many watching porn equaled safe sex.

Webb saw an opportunity and seized it. He was sure there would be a huge market for adult videos. Why spend his time sweating over the great American novel, unsure that he would ever find a publisher to print it or an audience to read it? That was for the guys who didn’t care if they ate or not. Webb knew he wanted the good life, and the good life cost plenty. If he could write and produce his own adult movies, he’d always have an audience for his creativity, and at the same time he could make a fortune.

He’d started by conducting a verbal survey of his fraternity brothers on what they’d like to see in a porno flick. Cheerleaders and pretty coeds in short skirts and tight sweaters seemed to be the prevailing preferences. He then scribbled out a rough script about a nerdy-looking guy who went to class and fantasized about a beautiful girl who sat in front of him. Next Webb sought out a couple of kids from the wrong side of the tracks who were anxious to make some money and willing to do what the script called for, dressing the guy in a Dartmouth sweatshirt and the girl in a tight T-shirt. He shot his first movie with a camera he “borrowed” from the school audiovisual department.
Dee Dee Does Dartmouth
became a fraternity row hit.

While other classmates were doing internships at the companies and brokerage firms in which they hoped to find jobs upon graduation, Webb spent his summer before senior year writing and sending away for college sweatshirts.
Yolanda Does Yale, Happy
Does Harvard
, and
Pia Does Princeton
were dubbed and distributed by winter break. America sure was the land of opportunity.

As Webb’s life had progressed, so had the porn. The Ivy League series had led to
Office Girls
as he pumped his friends for their thoughts about the women they worked with in their first jobs. There was an endless pool of fantasies about secretaries and co-workers and supervisors set on the office desks and in boardrooms of corporate America. Next Webb developed the Scales of Justice series, full of actresses playing attorneys wearing only suit jackets and stiletto heels and judges with surprises under their flowing robes.

Now, two decades and many movies later, Webb’s business empire included a state-of-the-art production studio in Sarasota, an Internet website, and a distribution warehouse in Miami to fill the thousands of orders that poured in every month. He’d chosen to locate in Sarasota in part because he hated the cold northeast winters but also because he wanted the option of shooting outside all year round. The location had afforded him another rich stream of ideas. His Circus series was wildly successful, and Fishermen and Golfers were big hits as well. It was amazing how creative his actors could be with fishing rods and seven irons.

Webb was enthused about his latest project.
Velvet Nights in Venice
. He’d written the script, inspired by the Venetian architecture of Cà d’Zan and the velvety skin of Merilee. Tonight the plans were all in place to shoot on the terrace of the old Ringling mansion at a fund-raiser being held for literacy projects. What a joke! Brian Mueller would shoot video for Suncoast
News, and all the society swells would be eager to have their mugs shown on the eleven o’clock news supporting the worthy cause. Little would they suspect that the outtakes would be used to open Webb’s next video.

Mueller had his instructions. He would take care to get extra video of the guests taken from angles that didn’t show their faces. He’d get lots of long shots and back shots of the gowned and tuxedoed partygoers clustered on the Italian marble terrace sipping cocktails and champagne on a warm summer night. The Boys Next Door would be playing, keeping everyone smiling. Festive material indeed to set the scene for the movie that would take off as two of the revelers steal away for a tryst in the side garden beneath the bronze statue of the naked babies Romulus and Remus with their wolf mother.

Of course, the core of the movie would be shot later. Merilee and Van would shoot that in the protected studio, and then the scenes of thrashing would be edited to the terrace party material to look as though it had all happened the same night. To make the transition seamless, Webb planned to have his stars mingling with all the aboveboard types during the cocktail hour. He’d spent a small fortune on Merilee’s dress, but he hadn’t minded one bit. He’d loved watching her model it for him last week. Her smooth shoulders gleamed over the strapless lamé gown. Her brown eyes sparkled as she twirled in delight, tossing her dark hair. She was a natural for this business, but as Webb viewed her in the designer attire, he knew that under a different set of circumstances, Merilee could make it in the respectable
world as well. She carried herself with her chin raised, erect and graceful. There was soft Latin beauty to her face. It was just an accident of birth that had led Merilee to this line of work. An accident of birth and the fact that she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But she sure wasn’t dumb. When she found out how many copies her first video had sold, she was right in there, threatening to leave if Webb didn’t give her a cut of the profits on the next one. No way that was ever going to happen.

Webb rose from the sofa, walked over to the wall unit, and took the video from the player. He needed to get dressed and drive to the office. He had to go to Plan B and get Gloria up to speed. Fortunately she was the same size as Merilee and could slip into the form-fitting gown.

Yes, Gloria would have to step into Merilee’s role, because his beauty had been missing for several days now.

Leroy Barry clicked through the Sarasota website looking for a place to use as a base of operation when they covered what he hoped would be a rip-roaring, raging hurricane. He had a list of criteria. First off, he wanted to be near something visual. The ocean was preferable, with a pier or jetty that the waves could crash on. Lots of swaying palm trees would be a plus as well.

But Leroy had special, technical concerns. The satellite truck they would be using had to be parked in a protected area. The camera set up for live shots should be kept dry. A hotel suite with sliding glass doors to the terrace would work fine for the latter concern. Cassie could go out on the terrace and get blown around in the wind and pounding rain while the cameraman, Felix Rodriguez, could shoot, nice and dry, from inside the room.

Leroy had been to Sarasota several times before. As he scrolled through the hotel listings, he remembered there was an inn with terraces and covered parking facing
a marina on Sarasota Bay leading out to the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, there it was. This should work out fine. All those boats tossing about in the angry waters would be just out their window. He dialed the number and booked two rooms on an upper floor and two downstairs, all facing the marina.

They had to get going on the drive across state. These tropical storms could turn into hurricanes even when the weather service wasn’t really expecting them to. Giselle was gathering speed quickly, and Leroy didn’t want to get caught with his pants down. And what did they have to do anyway? New York wasn’t putting them on TV for anything else. If this kept up, someone up there might have the bright idea that there was no need for a Miami Bureau. For the umpteenth time Leroy resented the hell out of being saddled with Cassie Sheridan.

Go figure. Once, being Cassie’s producer was one of the most prestigious spots for any of the
Evening Headlines
producers. Working with her ensured that your work would be regularly on air. You’d have a shot at Emmy and Peabody Awards. But no more. That was too bad for Cassie, but he had to make himself valued by the powers that be. He couldn’t be tainted by his association with her.