The Remake (27 page)

But as they opened Wright’s office door and parted the crowd of cops bunched around the desk, R.J. quickly saw that his bad luck was holding. It wasn’t Janine Wright.

It was Trevor, the remake’s director, the mean-faced little elf with the Limey accent.

He was lying on his back in the middle of the huge desk. He had a ball point pen rammed into each ear and each eye socket. A letter opener stuck out of his throat. One of those old-fashioned memo spikes was shoved into his chest.

The man’s pants were missing. He lay there in florid boxer shorts, his hairy pink knees accenting the argyle socks pulled up so high.

A trail of blood led down the front of the desk and over to a pool on the floor.

And the oddest touch of all was that the desk was perfectly neat—except for the small corpse in the middle. The memos and printouts were still neatly stacked, the potted plants were undisturbed, the pencil jar was upright—although it was mostly empty now, its job of holding pens upright taken over by the elfin dead man.

The blood was still dripping down the front of the desk. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t funny, but it made R.J. wonder at the killer’s weird sense of humor. He went over to where Portillo was talking to the technicians.

“Where’s the note?” he asked when Portillo glanced up at him.

“So far there is none,” Portillo said.

“So far…?”

Portillo nodded. “Yes. I am thinking the same thing. Every time but this one the killer has made sure we have the note before we discover the body. This time, no note. Why?”

R.J. rubbed his chin. “Either the note is delayed—Or he didn’t write one—”

Portillo smiled, a savage show of teeth. “Or he wrote the wrong one,
hijo.
”

“Excuse me?”

“The body is here, in Janine Wright’s office. So let us say our note writer comes to kill Janine Wright, with a note prepared bragging about killing her.”

“But Wright isn’t here and this guy is. So the killer says what the hell, whacks this guy instead.”

Portillo nodded. “Yes. Which means a couple of things, R.J. First, he’s extremely confident—”

“Which we already knew.”

“I suppose, yes.”

“More important, Uncle Hank, it means he’s wrapping up. He’s ready to hit Janine Wright.” R.J. returned the older man’s version of a savage grin. “And that means we’ve got him.”

There was a small clatter of footsteps and anxious voices behind them and they both turned.

Janine Wright was coming in, with Captain Davis hovering anxiously at her elbow.

“I promise you, Ms. Wright,” the captain was saying. “Every resource of the department will be devoted to catching this sick individual. I will take personal responsibility and leave no stone unturned—”

“Cut the crap, Davis,” Janine Wright said.

Davis stopped dead and R.J. thought he could see a small line of sweat pop out on his forehead. “Excuse me?”

Wright turned on the captain, glaring. “First lesson of politics, Davis. Never shit a shitter.” She turned away from Davis, leaving him gaping for air, and marched over to the crew from the coroner’s office. “How soon can you get this garbage off my desk?” she barked.

Anybody who makes a living poking at dead bodies is likely to be hardened. The people who do it for the coroner, even
more so. They pride themselves on the fact that they’ve seen everything, and can’t be shaken. But the technician Wright barked at actually did a double take before answering.

“I would have said another fifteen minutes,” the man answered. “But now I think we’re going to have to run a few more tests.” And he gave her a polite smile and turned away.

R.J.’s attention was yanked away from that scene in mid-snicker when he suddenly heard Davis at his elbow, chewing on Portillo.

Captain Davis was not pleased. He was so unhappy that he forgot himself and let Portillo and R.J. see that he was unhappy. While it made R.J.’s day to see the big bastard squirm, it wasn’t catching any killers, so the pleasure wasn’t as deep as it might have been.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Davis said, looking like he might cry. “I want to see a killer behind bars.” He glared around the room. “I at least want to know who it is.”

“I’ll accept your apology,” R.J. said, turning to face Davis, and he got a lot of satisfaction out of seeing Davis’s head swivel to face him, and the look of pure, powerless, meanness on the captain’s face.

“You’re not out of the woods yet, Brooks,” he snarled.

“As a matter of fact, Captain, I am out of the woods. And if you don’t get off my ass pronto—” R.J. leaned forward and tapped on Davis’s chest to emphasize his words. “—I think you’re going to find out just how good my lawyer is. Because he’s going to hit you with so many law actions you’re going to have to get a judge’s order to take a pee.”

Davis lost it. His face flushed bright red and he slammed his hands down on the desk. “All right, you smart-ass son-of-a-bitch,” he hissed. “If you know so fucking much, suppose you just tell me who did it and I’ll go pick him up!”

R.J. shook his head. “Can’t do that. Sorry.”

“Oh, you can’t do that.” The sarcasm was thick enough for a trowel. “You mean you haven’t figured out who did it yet? Been too busy buffing your nails?”

“Sure. I know who did it,” he said, and as he said it it occurred to him he
did.
Except… “The only problem is, he can’t have done it, either.”

“Why not?” Davis demanded.

R.J. sighed. “He has a perfect alibi,” he said.

“I can crack any alibi I ever heard,” Davis said.

“Not this one,” R.J. told him. “The man is dead.”

Davis just stared at him for a good long minute. Then he hissed out his breath and rolled his shoulders. R.J. could hear the knotted muscles cracking. He took a step toward R.J. and R.J. felt Portillo’s hand on his elbow.

“Let’s go, R.J.,” Portillo said softly. “The captain has enough troubles right now.”

R.J. stared at Davis for just a second longer, then let himself be dragged away.

Portillo walked R.J. down to the parking lot. “That’s a very good alibi, R.J.,” he said as they approached his car. “Unless you were just yanking the captain’s chain.”

“Wish I was, Uncle Hank.”

Portillo nodded, opening his car door. “Dead men very rarely commit multiple murders.”

R.J. sighed. “Yeah. Thing is, nobody else could possibly have done it.”

They looked at each other across the blue roof of the car for a moment.

“Tell me,” Portillo said.

CHAPTER 33

Casey was too busy to see him. She was on several long distance lines at the same time, scrambling to bring in a new director to take over the picture.

R.J. sat in a small waiting area, next to a framed art gallery poster and a small end table stacked with old film industry magazines.

A few feet away stood a water cooler. It gurgled every time somebody walked past. After sitting for an hour and a half, R.J. was ready to gurgle himself.

He was trying to stay cool and understanding. He was working hard at respecting the fact that Casey was at work and had a job to do. He was also just about to go ballistic.

The new murder and his talk with Portillo had left him with a sense of urgency, and sitting here like some kid trying to pitch a screenplay to an important film producer was eating away at his nerves.

The killer had been using R.J. as a screen. Portillo had agreed that there was no doubt about it. All along, wherever
R.J. went, the killer had followed, building a mocking frame-up, leading on the cops, making them believe R.J. was guilty. Whatever his reasons, whether he had some secret grudge against R.J. or was just indulging his twisted sense of humor, the killer had been trying to stick it all on R.J.

That was over. The killer had slipped, and R.J. was in the clear. Portillo and R.J. were both sure that meant the killer was about to make a final run for his twisted goal line.

Before he did that, R.J. had to stop him. And before he could do
that,
he had to either put this stupid idea to rest or prove that dead men really do commit multiple murders.

And that meant leaving Casey in the line of fire one more time.

He couldn’t do that, not without talking to her first. He had to make her see that her danger was real, that she had to take it seriously. And he had to make her see, too, that he was on her side, trying to understand what she wanted and support her in it.

But the longer he sat on the hideous molded-plastic-and-steel-frame chair with the secretaries smirking at him, the more his temper chewed up all the pretty things he wanted to say.

He had thought about simply pushing his way past the willowy USC boy Casey had guarding her door. The kid crouched behind a desk the size of a small car with a haircut that showed most of his skull and hid his eyes.

R.J. was pretty sure he could fold the kid up and stuff him in the trash can without wrinkling his suit coat. And he wanted to do just that, wanted it so badly his teeth hurt. Just put the kid in a drawer of that desk, slide into Casey’s office, and unplug her phone. Make her talk to him.

He was also sure that if he did that, it would be the last conversation she ever had with him.

He sighed heavily and picked up a glossy year-old magazine. He tried to pretend for the fourth time that he really cared about one of last summer’s sure-fire box-office hits that
had never made it. He’d never heard of the movie, nor of its star.

He put the magazine down and picked up another. There was an article there he’d only skimmed twice, about why screenwriters never get the respect they deserve. It was written by a screenwriter. There were four mistakes in grammar in the opening paragraph.

He had just gotten to a carefully reasoned argument that screenwriters were more important than directors so they should get more money, when a cloud resembling some kind of fruit tree smell wrapped around him. He looked up.

The USC kid was standing there, probably looking at him from underneath all the hair. “She’ll see you,” he said.

R.J. stood. “Swish me in there,” he said.

The kid stood his ground. “I know martial arts,” he said.

“I don’t care if you know Marshal Tito. Fly me in there, Tinkerbell.”

For a minute the kid thought he was going to say something else. Then he changed his mind. He whipped away, his bangs flopping, and R.J. followed the gleaming, shaved back of his head a few feet down the hall and into Casey’s office.

“Thanks, Bryan,” Casey said, dismissing him. R.J. felt his head clouding over at the sound of her voice and he barely noticed Bryan leave. “Hello, R.J.,” she said. “Quit gaping and sit down.”

“Was I gaping?” he asked, swinging into a chair that made his back ache just to look at it. “I guess I wanted to remember you the way you were.”

She tapped her fingers on the desk. “I don’t have a lot of time,” she said.

“No, you don’t. So far everybody else close to Janine Wright is dead. It’s a safe bet that you’re in the line of fire.”

She stared at him, then sighed. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“It may be my only virtue,” he said.

“So what am I supposed to do, R.J.? Lock myself in a bank
vault?” She shook her head. “I have a job to do. You may not approve of my job, and it may not be that important in the big picture but it’s what I do, and I’m going to do it.”

“Casey—”

“No, R.J., listen for a moment. Just listen.”

He closed his mouth and took a deep breath. He looked across the desk at her. For the first time since she’d come out here she didn’t look like she was hyperventilating. She was calm, centered, rational—she looked like Casey again. The sight made his heart hammer.

“I’m listening,” he said with a tongue that was suddenly too thick.

“R.J., I’m sorry we blew up like that at lunch the other day. I think we both assumed some things we maybe shouldn’t have.”

He blinked. “Well, that’s—”

She held up a hand to cut him off. “Let me finish. I appreciate your concern for my safety. I believe you when you say I may be in danger. But if I let this killer tell me what to do, I’m just giving in and letting a bully push me around. I won’t do that.”

“Casey,” he said.

“No. I’ll be careful, R.J., but I won’t hide. And I can’t have you following me around all day.”

“I know that,” he said. “But I can’t let anything happen to you.”

She shook her head. There was a slight smile on her face, but he couldn’t tell what it meant. “That’s not your job,” she said.

“Yeah, it is. It’s the only really important job I’ve got.”

Her lips twitched, and now he could tell. It was a real smile. Not a big one, but the first she’d given him in a long time. “In that case,” she said, “you need a life, sport.”

“Look who’s talking. Miss Power-Suit Executive.”

“That’s
Ms.
Power-Suit to you, ace.”