Fatal Pose

by Barna William Donovan

  Emily had been scarred enough by the event, both physically and psychologically, to be institutionalized ever since. Today she was confined to the Fleming Psychiatric Institute in Pomona.

  Laura, however, was interviewed at least three times by the Snowflake police following the death of a local kid named Billy Webb. The cops, it seemed, thought Billy was the victim of a retaliation killing by one of the women who had been raped. But he was a wrongful retaliation victim, the cops and the newspapers made clear. Someone in Snowflake had turned avenger, and they killed the wrong man. Laura and Emily Preston were the last rape victims before Billy Webb’s murder. Billy, though, had an airtight alibi for the time of the rape.

  As Gunnar finished reading Kelly’s report, he saw a lot of circumstances over which a person could be blackmailed. Provided that Brad Holt somehow got ahold of some solid evidence tying Laura to Billy’s killing.

  CHAPTER 54

  Laura realized that somewhere along the way, she had lost count of the hours her heart had been beating virtually out of control. Her body was producing adrenaline at what appeared to be a superhuman rate. Her chest shook, her arms and her hands quivered.

  Stress kills. Such strange, disjointed, yet at the same time wholly appropriate bits of medical trivia flashed across her mind.

  This state of a sustained panic attack could not have been tolerable for a human body for too long. Not even a superbly well-maintained, healthy body like hers could keep this up indefinitely.

  Indefinitely? she wondered. How long was indefinitely? How long would she be destroying herself like this?

  The next disjointed thought skittering through her head was adrenaline junkie. Such a stupid phrase, she thought, contemplating those idiots who spent their time risking life and limb skydiving and extreme snowboarding and bungee jumping. Maybe a momentary shot of adrenaline as you left the airplane could have been fun, she conceded, but there was no way anyone could possibly get addicted to the way she was feeling now.

  But ever since she entered this partnership with Monty Montgomery, panic had been ruling Laura’s mind. Brad Holt had once tried to destroy her life, take away all that she had, then Gunnar Marino followed, and now Montgomery would take his turn.

  Laura stared at the radio relay consoles set up in her den. The devil’s bargain with Montgomery. She, too, could keep track of everything Marino did in his office, but Montgomery might have arranged the noose around her neck for it.

  Sure, Monty played the role—he pretended to believe her, he pretended to accept her claims that Marino was an opportunistic con man—but it could just as well have been a façade. She had made a fatal error hiring him. She was certain of it.

  With every passing moment Marino spent in his office, discussing the case with his secretary, his investigators, his girlfriend, Laura’s past would be laid out in front of Monty if he was listening to these conversations somewhere if he had set up a duplicate of this listening console somewhere else.

  “Stay away from Montgomery.” The word had come from Bob Holbrook earlier today, starting a chain reaction of panic. “You and I need to review all the security and investigative work he’s done for the WBBF over the last few years. Word is, he’ll probably try and cut a deal with the D.A. Whatever they’re investigating him for, he might try and sleaze his way out of it by ratting out some clients. We need to know he can’t hurt us with anything.

  At the time, Laura had almost asked Holbrook, “With what, Bob? Information on the illegal performance enhancers you’ve been supplying the top WBBF pros?”

  And if Montgomery was going to start ratting people out, he was sure to start talking about her as well if these listening devices of his hinted in any way at Laura and Billy Webb back in Arizona.

  Now, for something like the fiftieth time, Laura’s hand slipped into the deep pocket of the oversized sweatpants she had been wearing at home all day. Her palm found and wrapped around the butt of the Smith and Wesson .38. Just like when she was contemplating shooting Holt.

  She had murdered two people already. The thought chimed through Laura’s mind. She had taken two lives, and she was thinking about taking a third.

  One of them did not deserve it. One did, and the third….

  Monty was a garbage man. He traded on removing the inconvenient dirt from other people’s lives, even if that dirt removal sometimes included strong-arm tactics. Even when it involved violence.

  Laura’s hand fastened around the gun harder and harder.

  Could she go through with it? Could she convince herself it was different than Holt had been?

  She looked toward the window. Around the edges of the drapes, she could see how late it was. It was nearly dark outside. Montgomery would come by the house again soon. He wanted to check the audio receivers.

  When the phone rang, she nearly shot a hole in her leg from the sudden jolt the surprise noise sent through her body. She checked the caller ID first and saw that the call was from her office. She had taken the day off, claimed what “must have been a twenty-four-hour bug.”

  “Hello?” she answered the phone.

  “Laura?” It was Anabelle, her secretary.

  “Yes, Anabelle. What’s happening? Are you still at the office?”

  “Just finishing off those memos you wanted done before the Malibu Pier photoshoot tomorrow. But I’ve had the TV on in here, and I couldn’t believe what they just showed on the news.”

  Short of a terrorist attack using biological or nuclear weapons, Laura couldn’t imagine what the TV could have been playing to warrant a call like this. “What is it?” she found herself snapping at Anabelle.

  With a conspiratorial tone, Anabelle said, “So David Montgomery is no longer a headache for anyone.”

  Laura stopped breathing.

  “He’s dead,” Anabelle said.

  The first thing Laura wanted to do was shake her head and snap out of what was bound to turn out to be a painfully disappointing dream. Turns of luck like this did not happen in the real world.

  “What’s that?” she muttered into the phone.

  “I know, I couldn’t believe it,” Anabelle said. “It just blew me away. But he’s dead. It was right on TV. His car went out of control or something, and he went over a cliff on Mulholland.”

  Only moments later, Laura couldn’t remember what she had said to Anabelle after her description of the news story. Laura melted onto her sofa, spent, ragged, every last reserve of energy gone from her body. First, she laughed. She let out wracking, delirious peals of weak, wheezing laughter.

  Then her tears started flowing, and she sobbed.

  CHAPTER 55

  Gunnar took a morning drive to Malibu because more people were concerned for his safety.

  He had gotten a call from Laura Preston after she, too, heard the news of the break-in at the Foundry gym. She wanted to know if the perpetrators were trying to get into his office. Was he there when it happened? Was it tied to the Holt investigation? Did he think someone else from Holt’s underworld business connections tried to intimidate him away from the case?

  Laura, apparently, was “curious and concerned.” Although she had to make a visit to a Women’s Muscle World swimsuit photoshoot in Malibu, she invited Gunnar along.

  Driving toward Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway, Gunnar got a call from Erika. Just as she had predicted, the autopsy on Holt was inconclusive. The body had been sitting in the ground for way too long. They couldn’t find any definitive traces of poison in him.

  “Another possible lead blown to hell,” Gunnar muttered as he kept thinking of the implications of Erika’s call and approached the photoshoot on the Malibu beach.

  Surrounded by a group of the WBBF’s A-list female bodybuilders, Laura Preston waved at Gunnar with one hand while gesturing orders and directions to the photographers and lighting crew. The theme of the swimsuit layout was
going to be “Female Muscle Stars in the Tinseltown Galaxy.” It was a piece of wishful thinking suggesting muscular women were the new glamour goddesses in the world of Hollywood celebrities. The site of the shoot was close to the Malibu Colony enclave of stars’ and directors’ beachside homes. The magazine piece, Laura assured, would inform the readers of this, as well as the significance of the specific section of the beach they were working on. Their camp had been pitched by the famed Deal Maker’s Rock. This was the spot where the Colony’s stars and producers liked to take their ocean-side constitutionals as they forged multimillion-dollar deals.

  “Thank God all will be well,” Laura said, sounding quite sincere after Gunnar briefed her on the Foundry incident and Sherry Branigan’s recovery. “Have you heard anything from the police?”

  Her concentration, though, seemed to be on Christy Gilmore some twenty feet away and the photographer circling her. The man with the camera snapped pictures of her as she lay down and rolled from her back onto her front, and collected a sparkling coat of sand on her thickly-oiled body.

  “No, not yet,” Gunnar said. “Although there’s been a string of break-ins at the shops in the area.”

  Laura looked at him now, still very concerned. “People like that are bound to get caught sooner or later, don’t you think? Working in the same area, doing the same thing over and over.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Unless they’re not the same people that broke into the other businesses,” Laura said strongly.

  Gunnar saw Christy Gilmore rise into a kneeling position now, smile seductively, wink, and flex a peaked, sixteen-inch bicep.

  “If it’s the Holt case, you mean,” he said.

  Laura gave him an intense, probing look. Her glance seemed to ask if he was quite serious in not believing that theory. “You don’t think so? People from Holt’s criminal world?”

  “I’m not sure, actually. I doubt it.”

  Laura turned back toward the photoshoot. Christy had now retreated out toward the waves. She was lying in the wet sand but positioned so that an incoming wave washed over her and removed the sand her glossy skin had collected before.

  “Interesting,” Laura told Gunnar without looking at him. “Why do you have your doubts?”

  “Say it was the same person who killed Holt on stage. This break-in thing just feels different. It’s somehow sloppier.”

  Laura was silent for a moment, watching the photoshoot. “I think I see your point,” she said at length. “But maybe they just got unlucky this time. With the owner’s wife being there.”

  Now it was Gunnar’s turn to choose his words. Laura was right, of course. “Maybe,” he said simply.

  “Well, what I wanted to let you know was that I was glad to hear nothing tragic happened. And, of course, I wanted to know if this might have some bearing on the Holt case. On what kind of information you’re dredging up about a WBBF athlete.”

  “We’ll see what the cops turn up on the break-in.”

  “Before you can draw conclusions?”

  “Before jumping to conclusions.”

  Laura didn’t reply but suggested a couple of poses and camera angles as two more models joined Christy.

  “So what’s your opinion, Gunnar?” Laura asked suddenly and threw a glance over her shoulder. Her tone had lost some of its edge.

  “What’s that?”

  “Our swimsuit special. How does it look?”

  “Quite nice, I must say. Quite nice indeed,” Gunnar said and grinned.

  After a slight beat, Laura said, “Do you know, at first I would never have imagined this could be your style.” She punctuated it with a slight laugh.

  “Oh, I know,” Gunnar said and chuckled himself. “I remember the museum.”

  “But I did apologize for that.”

  “No hard feelings,” Gunnar said lightly, throwing his hands up.

  “The funny thing was that there I stood, trying to explain something about empowerment to those kids, and not a single one was getting it. You, on the other hand, you understand everything this is about.”

  Gunnar gave an easy shrug when Laura’s eyes seemed to be studying him.

  “They, of course, have been shaped and indoctrinated by the feminine standards of a sexist dominant media,” Laura said, her gaze drifting back to the muscular models posing for the cameras. “All I can try and do is use what limited time and resources I have with the WBBF’s publications to counteract this onslaught of destructive, misogynistic images of bimbos and air-headed teen queens and anorexic-chic fashion magazines and images of weakness and stupidity and vapidity.”

  “Wow,” Gunnar said, making it sound like he was taken aback by the speech, as in fact, he was. “Onslaught of the dominant media standards? Now that’s pretty deep. My girlfriend’s a bodybuilder, you know, but I never really went that deep in analyzing—”

  “Oh, but I think you have,” Laura said and looked him in the eye again. There was a crafty, knowing smile inching its way onto her lips. “You see, it took me a while to realize what a cunning man you really are, Gunnar. You must be superb at what you do. Detective work and investigation.”

  “I need to put food on the table.”

  “You have this overgrown frat boy, jock impression going on, but that’s not you at all, is it?”

  Gunnar played it cool by just laughing and shrugging.

  “That’s right, Gunnar,” Laura said and laughed along. “I know you’re a good sport, but I must apologize again for jumping to a bad conclusion. I really thought you were quite dense the moment we met. But you’re not dense at all. Quite the contrary.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “And let me tell you something about what we’re doing here,” Laura said and pointed toward the women bodybuilders with her chin. “Did you know that Brad once told me this was all a waste of time? The women’s division of the WBBF. That we should shut it down altogether.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes, he did. That’s why I never would have gone into any sort of partnership with him using the WBBF to help him produce that woman-hating smut of his.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Let me ask you something straight, Gunnar,” Laura said, fixing him with an intense stare. “Just what exactly is your connection to Brad? What’s going on with you and this case?”

  For a moment, Gunnar wasn’t exactly certain how to reply. It was the basic question he had asked himself so often already. Something he hadn’t known the answer to until just recently.

  “You’re two men who are mirror-image opposites,” said Laura. “Yet here you are, poking and investigating something no one cares about.”

  “Could we talk about Brad over lunch, maybe?”

  CHAPTER 56

  Laura took Gunnar to lunch at the Marmalade Café in the Malibu Country Mart on Cross Creek road.

  “Well, this is quite an interesting situation we find ourselves in, isn’t it?” Laura said at length, absently poking around at the salad in front of her, studying Gunnar as he recounted his background and Marine Corps acquaintance with Brad Holt. There was a very strange sort of fascination beaming off her face.

  Gunnar couldn’t help but return a quizzical, raised eyebrow. He chose not to reply, as her statement sounded open-ended. He wanted to let her complete the thought.

  “We can’t seem to escape the shadow of a man we both believe to be a complete bastard,” Laura said.

  “Would you say that’s darkly ironic?” Gunnar asked. Actually, he felt Laura’s statement was overly melodramatic, speaking of getting caught in the long shadow of a dead man. But then again, she was still right.

  “Darkly ironic?” Laura asked, following it up with a sour little laugh. “There’s a touch of poetry in that. Not entirely amusing, I must say, under the present circumstances.”

 
Gunnar sipped some of the hazelnut-flavored coffee he’d ordered. “Well, I’m in his shadow because…business, I guess. But so were you through the WBBF. Didn’t you say he had big plans after he would have won the Sun State?”

  “Not Girls in the Buff kind of plans,” Laura said very evenly.

  Smoothly, Gunnar thought. She seemed determined to keep him from thinking he could slip her up at any time soon.

  “No,” Gunnar said and nodded, hoping to sound honest and let her think he was conceding the point. “I believe you,” he insisted. “But how did you feel working with him? Knowing what kind of an asshole he was?”

  “What do you think?” Laura said and paused, staring at him with a stern gaze. Somehow she even sounded hurt, vulnerable as she replied. “The truth is, I’m doing what I am today because I’ve met one too many assholes like Brad Holt in my life.”

  “Oh?”

  “The testosterone heads. The players. And, I have to add, it’s quite off-turning when people who are anything but try to play that role.” Her voice was very sharp, very pointed as she obviously chastised Gunnar.

  He could feel, but couldn’t control, the little smile that crept into the left corner of his lips. He sipped some coffee to hide it but nodded at Laura and said, “I’ll remember.”

  “In a way, all the Brad Holts of this world really create more strong women,” Laura said, then paused. There was something that could have been called a smile on her face, but something very dark, something infinitely angry and unforgiving. “That would be…,” she said slowly, groping for the right words to go on.

  “A paradox,” Gunnar offered.

  “A paradox. I like that. Well, let me ask you. Before you said your girlfriend is a builder, and you think we’re all damaged goods—you, me, everyone. Why did she start doing it? And that’s still Dr. Erika Lindstad. She’s your girlfriend, right?”

  “You know that?”

  “Maybe you didn’t realize you ended up in one of our magazines many years ago. Sort of like a passing mention,” Laura said and paused to smile at Gunnar. Her look was in some ambiguous middle point between genuine good humor and cold-blooded mockery. “Sorry. But you were mentioned in a story about Erika.”