Murder Take Two (2 page)

Looked pretty good to Yancy, except maybe that athletic pulling together on the way down. And she didn't scream. Surely Hollywood would want a scream, but that maybe got put in later. He moved closer to where he could see a little better over equipment and people. Not much blood; he was surprised by the small amount, almost none. He would have figured these folks to ladle on lots of artistic blood, made with Karo syrup and sugar and red coloring so it wouldn't poison the actor who had to let it dribble from the corner of his mouth as he died.

He watched Clem scurry across snarled tangles of cable. Fingers at her throat, she knelt and peered nearsightedly at the stuntwoman, touched an arm and sprang back. She covered her mouth and made a strangled squeal.

Yancy moved without thinking, a cop's conditioned response. Standing in front of Clem, he put a hand on each shoulder and stared in her face. She was sobbing and gagging.

He pivoted her to one side just in time for her to spew all over the straw. He anchored her by the waist. When she straightened, she clung against him, gasping and shuddering. He patted her back, made soothing sounds, and looked over her head to see what set her off.

No genius was needed to figure it. Clem lived in the world of make-believe, where nothing was what it seemed. Phony horror was dished out all the time; broken and maimed bodies strewed the landscape, features distorted into death masks.

Only this one wasn't make-believe. Kay lay motionless with the tines of a pitchfork through her chest.

2

“Pornography.” Mrs. Oliver, on the other end of the phone line, spat out the word as though it tasted bad. “Filth.”

“Yes, ma'am.” The sun glaring through the window slats left stripes on the desk that made Susan squint. She swiveled a half turn, putting her back to them. A fly circled and landed on the wall at knee level. She kicked at it; it flew to the ceiling.

“I was the one who had to scrub it off. And let me tell you, that was no easy job. It took hours. Hours, do you understand? Getting rid of that smut. I expect you to do something about this.”

Mrs. Oliver hung up before Susan could utter another “Yes, ma'am.” She swiveled around and replaced the receiver. The phone rang again immediately. Another art critic?

“It's the mayor,” Hazel, the dispatcher, said. “You want to talk with him?”

She did not. “Put him through.”

“Chief Wren,” Bakover said.

“Mr. Mayor.”

“What is going on with this vandalism?”

Well, let's see. Vandals will be vandals? Vandals for the sake of vandalism? Vandals unite? The fly landed on a stack of papers on the desk. From another stack, she rolled up a report and smacked the damn thing. With an irritated buzz, it took off. “We're looking into it.”

“Not good enough. It's upsetting people.”

Some people. Pornography being more or less in the eye of the beholder, there were those that were upset and those that were amused and those that felt honored to be chosen and those that said sometimes a garbage can was just a garbage can.

“You are perfectly aware these Hollywood people are in town. We don't want anything like this to offend them.”

She trapped a laugh in her throat by coughing around it. Hollywood? Offended by nudes? Oh, boy, it was this weather. Who was it who said this was the kind of weather when wives sharpened their knives and eyed their husbands' necks?

“Put a stop to this,” he said and hung up.

She replaced the receiver, rolled the report tighter, and chased the fly around the office, swinging wildly. It took shelter behind the blinds at the top of the window, buzzed angrily. Yeah, well, you think you got troubles.

She tilted the slats to get rid of the glare, then shifted folders until she got to today's
Hampstead Herald
and spread it open. Page two. Headline:
MAD PAINTER'S LATEST RAID.
There was a picture of a garbage can with a female nude tastefully draped in plastic grocery bags so as not to upset the delicate sensibilities of those who saw porn in the unclad human form. The mad painter—a reporter had come up with that one—hit only garbage cans, and left a nude figure—either male or female—equal opportunity salaciousness—and disappeared into the air.

Chase Reardon, San Francisco police captain and Susan's former boss, had drilled his maxim into her:
Evidence is always at the scene of the crime. If you didn't find it, you didn't search enough.
They'd better go more carefully through the garbage.

She picked up the phone and told Hazel she was going out to look at the scene of the crime.

The pickup's fuel gauge hovered around empty. Not wanting to find herself without gas while hotly pursuing the mad painter (if she learned who he was and he ran) she U-turned into Pickett's service station. Kevin Murphy came from one of the service bays, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

“Ma'am?” He shook black hair from his face, stuffed the rag in a rear pocket, and tucked in the brown shirt with
PICKETT'S
stitched on the back. Sullen kid, high school football star, fire inside, so far no trouble.

He squeegeed her windshield, she paid for the gas and was headed for Ohio Street when the muttering radio caught her attention. She picked up the mike. “Wren.”

“Osey, Chief.” O. C. Pickett, her country boy detective, the youngest son of the service station owner, sounded hesitant and apologetic. “I'm at Josiah's barn. I thought you'd better know there's been an accident. A stuntwoman's dead.”

“Oh, shit.”

She didn't know she'd spoken aloud until he said, “Yes, ma'am.”

*   *   *

The sky, vast and blue and empty, stretched forever over the low hills. The midday sun of early June blazed relentlessly on the field of high grasses and goldenrod, struck sparks on boulders, and created shimmering heat illusions in the distance. Occasional hot gusts of wind whirled dust devils on the dirt road.

She kept the pickup at a moderate speed, no lights, no siren, not that it would make a difference. News traveled with the speed of lightning in a small town, and there would already be a crowd. Movies and actors always drew them, especially when the actors were in the megabucks category, as these were. Nick Logan and Laura Edwards.

When word had come that Hollywood was coming to Hampstead, Susan was the only person in town who wasn't thrilled. Her experience was—from directors and actors on down to cameramen, lighting techs, and grips—the whole bunch and their moviemaking was a gigantic pain in the butt. They moved in, took whatever they wanted, broke it, altered it, mangled it, and dropped it when they were finished. They pulled out and left the place trashed, like picnickers who left litter and breakage in their wake.

San Francisco—oh, yes, summer fog, cool ocean breezes—she leaned forward and plucked at the white blouse sticking to her back—was the site of many a movie. They'd even managed to close down the Golden Gate Bridge on one occasion she knew about. Irate drivers trying to get into or out of the city were not thrilled to be watching a movie in the making.

They did spread money around like syrup over pancakes. Which was, of course, why they were given the red carpet treatment and why the mayor was so ecstatic. He'd informed her that as police chief she was to make sure they felt welcome and to give them everything they wanted.

She rolled past the field where they'd parked their trucks and trailers, vans and cars, and drove on another quarter mile to old Josiah's barn. Good Lord, thinking like a native, referring to a piece of property by the name of a long-dead owner.

Josiah Hampstead, an early settler before Kansas was a state, made himself wealthy in land, cattle, and oil, got a town named after him, and late in his life donated some of that land for a college. The house was long gone, but the barn remained, a large weathered stone structure. Off to one side was a power and light truck—the generator that ran all those huge lights. Cables, taped to the ground, snaked inside the barn.

An empty squad car, overheads blinking, was parked parallel to the wide-open door. An ambulance, rear doors open and waiting, was pulled up behind. A dozen or so people stood in what shade the two tall cottonwood trees provided. Susan's arrival separated the media from the spectators and they rushed at her with mikes and questions.

She edged the pickup in beside the ambulance and slid out. Heat came up to greet her as though she'd opened an oven door. When she'd dressed that morning, she'd tried to strike a compromise between dignified businesslike and what she could survive in given the heat. Tailored white blouse and beige cotton pants was the best she could do. Linen jacket, if the occasion demanded. The pants were wrinkled and sweaty where her legs had rested on the driver's seat. She left the jacket on the passenger side. Hot wind caught her full-face and lifted her dark hair, blowing it straight back.

“Can you tell us what happened?”

“What's the name of the person killed?”

“Was this an accident or do you suspect foul play?”

“Is this going to affect the movie?”

“How long will the filming be stopped?”

“What happens when a death occurs in—?”

“I just got here,” she said. “I don't know anything yet.”

Just inside the big sliding door, two paramedics in navy blue jumpsuits leaned against the wall, arms crossed. One glanced at her and gave a brief shake of his head. No need for urgency.

Despite the wide doorway, the interior was gloomy. The barn was cavernous, easily over three stories high: hayloft overhead in the rear, above that a steep-pitched ceiling with rough-hewn beams. On the ground, box stalls ran the length of one side, on the other were open stalls. Actors and crew were contained inside these with White and Demarco riding herd. Cameras, lights, snarls of cable, and dollies cluttered the large open area in the center. Just below the loft, on a layer of straw, the dead woman lay on her back, the tines of a pitchfork jutting through her chest.

Susan picked her way closer, careful to stay back from Osey Pickett taking photographs. Dr. Fisher waited patiently for him to finish. She studied the victim. Young, no more than twenty, she judged. Cascade of blond hair, one errant strand across her still lips, eyes slitted, but not enough to tell color. Alive, she would have the attractiveness of youth, health, and fitness. All that had been taken by death and now she was gray and flat. The heavy theatrical makeup seemed a mockery. She wore tight black pants, a white knit shirt with a scooped neck, and black ankle boots with fringe up the back.

When Osey finished snapping pictures, Dr. Fisher drew on latex gloves and knelt for a close look at the body. Susan took out her notebook and made a rough sketch even though Osey would be doing the same. Habits from her years on the San Francisco force stuck with her.

She backed carefully away and left them to it. Yancy was waiting for her at the edge of the cleared area. “Ma'am,” he said quietly. His tentative tone made it clear he was wondering whether an ass chewing was coming his way.

She'd like to chew somebody's. This would come down like an avalanche on her and her department. The movie crowd might make trouble, the mayor would be furious and worried. More media would turn up. She was beginning to understand why the brass was so quick to jump on someone. Sheer frustration.

“What happened?”

“Her name is Kay Bender,” Yancy said. “The stunt double for this film.”

Oh, my. Film, not movie. He'd been infected with showbiz.

“She did all the risky stuff for Ms. Edwards.”

If there was anything to be thankful for about this, she could be thankful Laura Edwards wasn't lying dead with a pitchfork through her chest. A stuntwoman would rate a paragraph in the back pages of the newspapers, maybe a brief mention on television news. Only
Hollywood Reporter
would care. The media would still come, anything touching Laura Edwards was news, but they might not descend like locusts as they would if she'd been the one killed.

Susan made quick notes while Yancy gave a clear, concise account of what had occurred, ending with Ms. Edwards asking him to her trailer. “When Kay fell, I had Mac call nine-one-one.”

“Mac?”

“Laura Edwards's driver. I prevented anybody from going over there and secured the scene. I wouldn't let them move her. That meant they had to stop filming. Fifer, the director, got furious. I got a cold whisper that I had no idea what I was costing him.” Yancy paused, giving her the opportunity to yell, if she was so inclined.

“Go on.”

“I think he wanted to shove the body aside and get on with the movie. I told them all to move over into those stalls along the side there.” Yancy nodded. “I figured that's the best I could do. Everybody's been in and out of them all day anyway, and at least I could keep an eye out till backup arrived. Fifer refused, said he'd be in his trailer. Short of cuffing him to a manger, there was nothing I could do.”

“Was there any reason to make you think this was more than an accident?”

“No.” He hesitated. “The director kept yelling it was a tragic accident and I was being an asshole.” Yancy took a slow breath. “Damned if I can figure what this movie is about. Laura Edwards was supposed to be thrown backward across that railing”—he nodded up at the loft—“with the bad guy choking the life out of her. Then Kay Bender, the stuntwoman, would take over. The rail breaks and down she goes.”

He shifted his weight to his other foot. “Down below they would have it set up such that when she fell she wouldn't get hurt. Except, Ms. Edwards wouldn't leave her trailer.”

The star having a fit, Susan thought. Not a rare occurrence.

“The stunt coordinator then insisted he wanted to work something out and the director agreed. The railing broke. There wasn't supposed to be a pitchfork under it.” He shrugged. “I didn't want to take any chances.”