“It was kind of a strange deal. Am I going to get in trouble for this?” he asked. “I knew I was on someone else’s land. Cox told me, but she was paying a bucket of money for such a small study. I’ve got a kid in college, and I couldn’t pass it up.”
“I’m not interested in a trespassing charge,” I assured him. “This is a murder investigation. Just tell me how Miss Cox explained paying for the study on her own.”
“I offered to invoice the company, but she said not to. She said she didn’t want anyone to know about the work I’d done,” he said.
“I thought it was really strange when she said especially the folks at her company, Century Oil. Part of the money was payment for keeping my mouth shut.”
I couldn’t help wondering,
why?
Outside the arena, I’d noticed a tour bus near the freight entrance, bright pink with butterflies and Cassidy Collins’s name scrolled across the sides, surrounded by uniformed Dallas P.D. officers. Inside the lobby, our heels clicked on terrazzo floors, and sweeping arched windows framed the city’s ultramodern skyline. We had four hours until the concert, and in the arena proper all remained dark except a stage in the center of what was usually the Mavericks’ basketball court.
“Where’s the superstar?” I asked the Dallas P.D. sergeant who guided us in.
“The kid’s on the bus,” he said. “She’s supposed to be here any minute for a sound check. That Barron guy, her security head, said to wait here.”
With that, the sergeant left to make sure the equipment was in place for the door searches. Despite our instructions to stay put, David and I trekked down an aisle toward the stage, into a frenzy of activity. We’d already been informed that since she was playing in a sports stadium, not a traditional theater with all the equipment, Collins couldn’t put on her whole show. The arena didn’t have trapdoors to raise her up from below the stage or rafters to anchor her flying harness, so, both here and in Houston, there’d be no gold cocoon or Peter Pan act. Instead the Dallas set consisted of a rather spartan round stage ringed with footlights and a canopy of spotlights. Still, there appeared to be a lot to do, and last-minute checks were being done by a crew who all seemed preoccupied with the smallest details. As we drew near, we were abruptly stopped.
“Stage passes?” a man in a golf shirt and jeans with an identification card dangling around his neck demanded. The guy must
have been six-foot-five, the muscles in his arms bulging like a professional bodybuilder’s.
I opened my black suit-jacket, flashing my badge, while David flipped his wallet open to display his, and the guy nodded. “Mr. Barron is expecting you,” he said. “I’ll let him know you’re waiting.”
“Boss, that Texas Ranger is here,” Muscles said into a walkie-talkie the size of a cell phone. “The one you said to be on the lookout for, and a guy with an FBI badge.”
“On my way,” the answer crackled back.
“Show me how the audio’s fed into Miss Collins’s earphones,” I asked. Muscles nodded and led the way as we circled below the revolving stage. All around us workers double-checked electrical connections and repositioned props. Muscles stopped in front of three black tents set up on one side of the stage. Flaps were open, and inside I saw the kid’s wardrobe changes lined up on metal clothes racks and a fully stocked hair-and-makeup station. In the third tent, Muscles pointed out the mixer desk, a black panel the size of a small pickup truck bed, lit up like a passenger jet cockpit.
“Meet our audio guy, Jake,” he said. Jake, a kid adorned with silver earrings, two chin piercings, and a backward baseball cap, nodded, paying no more attention, everything focused on what he heard through his headset. Just then another mammoth of a man walked toward us, as immense as Muscles but dressed in a tie-less suit with narrow-framed sunglasses dangling from his unbuttoned shirt collar. He had one of those tanning-bed tans, unnaturally even, and brown hair bleached blond at the tips.
“Rick Barron,” he said. We shook hands, and I introduced David. “We’re glad you both came. Cassidy has been frantic waiting for you, Lieutenant. She should be here in a few minutes,” Bar-ron said. “But I want to review things with you first. Is everything set up, all the arrangements we discussed on the telephone?”
“Everything,” I said. “The search dogs are on their way to sweep the arena. The scanners are all in place at the doors. I assume you have the monitors I requested, to allow us to listen in on Miss Collins’s audio feed?”
“Yes,” he said. “And the recording device you suggested is hooked into the sound system, to record Argus’s voice if he breaks in again.”
“Great,” I said. “My understanding is that David and I will be positioned in this tent with your audio person.”
“Yeah,” Barron said. “It was Cassidy’s decision. She wants to be able to see you from the stage.”
“That’s right, because I want you close,” a young voice said from behind. I turned and found Cassidy Collins, looking younger in person and without makeup than she did on the magazine covers, walking toward us. “I want to know you’re there, because if that Argus dude makes a move, you need to be close.”
“Cassidy, I was just explaining . . .” Barron interrupted.
“Yeah, I heard,” she said.
“As I gather you know, I’m Lieutenant Armstrong,” I said, holding out my hand to greet the kid. Whether or not she was going to show some manners, I was. “And this is Agent Garrity, with the FBI. They’re assisting us on this case.”
“That’s great,” Collins said, not even acknowledging my extended hand. “I don’t care how many cops you need. Bring in everybody. It’s cool with me. I want to get out of this stupid state alive. You need to get this creep outta my face. Understand?”
“That is, of course, our goal,” David said. At the moment, I was too annoyed to speak.
“Great, then we’re all in sync,” she said. “I’m headed onto the stage for the sound check. Lady Cop, when I’m done, you come with me to the bus. Make sure you’ve got your gun.”
“It’s right here,” I said, patting my blazer. I didn’t tell her who I
fantasized scaring with that gun, but instead said what was bound to be the first in a long line of such corrections, “But the name is Lieutenant Sarah Armstrong, not Lady Cop.”
“That’s great,” she said. “I’ll call you Sarah.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I started.
“Be here when I get back, Sarah,” she said. Ignoring my objection, she turned her back and quickly clambered up the wooden ramp that led to the stage.
Frowning at David, I put on a headset Jake handed me, and the audio started. David did the same, and within a few moments Collins’s backup band kicked in. They ran through a few bars of a song I didn’t recognize, and then Collins began to sing. All I could hear through the headset were the drums and backup singers. I motioned for Barron.
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “I can’t hear everything.”
“You’re hearing what you asked for, what Cassie hears. That’s a feed off her monitor,” he said. “Jake can plug in anything she wants, but all she likes are the drums and vocals, to keep her on time and in tune.”
“Oh,” I said. “Got it.”
David nodded at me and shook his head, and I figured he felt as out of place as I did. By then the dogs had arrived, and we could see them circulating with their handlers through the boxes and seats. “You can live your life, just do it right,” Cassie sang.
Sure,
I thought, my mind sarcastically adding,
if right is to be a spoiled brat.
I gave up on that thought, concentrating on the dogs scouting the American Airlines Center and keeping track of the goings on around the stage. I didn’t know any of the folks in the arena, but everyone seemed comfortable, like they belonged. The sound check went without a hitch, except for one time, for some unknown reason, when Collins snarled at the prop manager. He groaned and
whispered a rather colorful string of expletives as he walked past me. Moments later, Collins clomped down from the stage, motioning toward me. I sighed, handed my headphones to David, and we were off.
Inside the bus was dressed to the nines, as Mom likes to say, posh furniture covered in taupe suede and granite countertops in the small kitchen. Collins had a bedroom at the rear, which she lost no time in disappearing into the moment we entered the bus, slamming the door behind her. A plump woman dressed in black leggings and a big sweater introduced herself as Germaine Dunn, Cassie’s stylist, and apologized for the kid.
“Cassie’s been under a lot of pressure,” Dunn said. “Don’t take it personally.”
“To take it personally, I have to assume she realizes I’m a person,” I said. “That doesn’t appear to be the situation.”
Dunn let loose a hoarse, gruff, cigarette laugh. Her red-and-banana-yellow-streaked hair seemed to fit her come-what-may demeanor. The woman was so laid back, I figured it would take an elephant crashing through the trailer roof to surprise her. Still, her face was well lined, like she’d experienced more than her share of life’s disappointments.
“That girl always so polite?” I asked.
“No,” Dunn said. “She’s got on her best manners because she likes you.” I laughed, and then she went on. “Cassidy’s really not a bad kid, Lieutenant. I think most of the tough stuff is an act. She can be really sweet. She’s just been kicked around a lot in life, and she’s scared right now, more than she’d admit.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “So what happens now?”
“Cassidy rests for about an hour, gets up and eats a burger and
fries, and then the dressers come in and get her ready for her performance,” she said.
“Okay. You’re secure here with the guards outside. I’m heading back to the arena. I’ll pop in later to escort her to the stage.”
“No,” Germaine snapped, looking alarmed. “Like I said, Cassie’s scared. She’ll freak if you’re not here. The kid may act tough, but she really is spooked. We promised the world to get her here. We told her that you and the other cops would protect her, no matter what.”
That’s great
, I thought.
No pressure here
.
I considered what had to be done inside the stadium and reasoned the others had it covered. To make sure, I called David. Once he reassured me that everything was on schedule, I took my jacket off, claimed the seat opposite the stylist’s, slumped back into the chair, and stretched out my legs, one gray lizard-skin cowboy boot propped up on the other. With all the commotion at the ranch, I hadn’t had a bunch of sleep lately. There was enough security in the surrounding area to protect a president, so I figured I was entitled. That was before I looked over at Dunn and thought maybe there was a better way to spend my time.
“So tell me about the superstar,” I said. “Anything you think I should know.”
“Well, since you asked, like I said, you have to give the kid a break, Lieutenant,” she said. “Cassie acts tough, but she’s just a sixteen-year-old who’s lived the life from hell.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed. I’d read all the celeb rags, with pictures of the mansion and Cassidy standing in her closet, the size of my living room. “I guess a fortune to spend any way she wants and the adoration of millions can be tiring.”
The woman smacked her lips in disapproval. “That may be how she’s living, but that’s not Cassie. I don’t know a lot about the kid, she keeps her past to herself, but my impression is she came from
nothing, no money, no one to rely on. I know her mom died, and I haven’t heard her mention a father,” Dunn explained. “The only thing that made a difference was that Cassidy could sing. No one gave that girl a free ride. She’s had to scrape for everything. That tends to make most kids a bit harsh.”
“Tough breaks,” I said. “Hard way to grow up. So she doesn’t have any family?”
“I don’t think so. If she does, I’ve never heard about or met any of them,” Dunn said. “I guess all of us, the crew, we’re the closest she has to a family, but even with us, she keeps a distance.”
I nodded. “Have you got any theories about this stalker, this Argus?” I asked.
“Wish I did,” she said. “Cassie’s hard enough to work with on a good day. All this going on, she’s a volcano.”
“Have you ever heard his voice? Seen any of the text messages or e-mails?”
“Never heard him, but Rick showed the e-mails to me,” she said. “At first I wasn’t too worried. I figured he was just another kook. But the guy hasn’t given up. He’s obsessed with her.”
“Where’d Cassidy grow up?” I asked.
“Somewhere in northern California, I think,” Dunn said. “She told me once that when her mom died, she took the little money they had and grabbed a bus for L.A., figuring she’d get a job singing. She was eleven. Somehow she made it to the city with a couple of hundred bucks, but some teenage thug stole from her. She lived on the street until a woman figured out the kid didn’t have a home and took her to CPS. From there, she went to her first foster home, and then on to the next. That’s pretty much the whole story.”
Listening to Dunn, I was starting to feel my disdain for the kid melt away. Maybe I was being too harsh. Still, she’d do well to work on her attitude.
About then, there was a knock at the door and Barron came in.
“Looks good out there,” he said to me, and then he turned to Dunn. “Germaine, we’ve got a group of kids from one of those special schools who want to see Cassie. Five girls, oldest about fourteen. I’m going to keep them outside. When she’s up, shout at me.”
“Will do,” Dunn agreed.
Barron left, and I picked up a magazine and leafed through it. I called home and checked on everyone at the ranch. So far, so good. Warrior was eating well and Emma Lou had calmed down now that she had her foal close. Strings was over with his guitar, and he and Maggie were in the shed singing for the horses. Wish I’d been there. That must have been a sight.
Ninety minutes before the concert, a delivery service brought Cassie’s hamburger and fries, and Dunn knocked on the kid’s bedroom door. She did that twice, then went in and woke her, reminding me of trying to get Maggie up on a Saturday morning, when she figured she could sleep in.
Cassidy came out with her long blond hair piled on top of her head wearing a torn-off T-shirt and jeans, and plopped down in an armchair. She said nothing, just tore into the burger and fries like she hadn’t had a meal in a month.