Shadowtown

by Lutz, John

  Denton had access to the Edgar Grume costume. He was about the right height and weight, considering the sketchiness of the witnesses’ stories. And he had motive. He hated Lana Spence for jilting him, and he might have been surprised by Vince McGreery while trying to plant one of the threatening letters in Lana’s dressing room.

  There was circumstantial evidence pointing to Denton, all right. Plenty of it. Oxman had to keep reminding himself it was only circumstantial.

  “I saw on TV in the bar what happened at Lana’s,” Denton said. “Really, I had nothing to do with that. I’m not in the habit of running around in a vampire outfit—or in any other kind of costume.”

  “You haven’t asked me if Lana Spence is all right,” Oxman said.

  “That’s because the news report stated she wasn’t harmed.” Denton had raised his voice. He realized it, and he shook his head and laughed. “This is fuckin’ ridiculous. Am I your chief suspect, Sergeant?”

  “You’re climbing on the charts,” Oxman said. “Good night, Mr. Denton.” He turned and walked toward the door.

  “Oxman,” Denton said, stopping him. “Don’t let your emotions about Jennifer cause you to do something dumb. I warn you, if I’m formally charged I won’t hesitate to sue you and the city and the universe for false arrest.”

  Oxman turned back, his hand on the doorknob, and stared at Denton. He kept his anger in check by turning it into something cold and hard. “I noticed some bruises on Bonnie’s arms. They looked like handprints. You might be surprised by who files charges against you.”

  “Let me suggest you leave Bonnie out of this. She’s happy here with me, or she’d leave. She knows where the door is and how to use the knob.”

  “She probably isn’t thinking straight,” Oxman said.

  “Yeah, and neither are you, Sergeant.”

  Oxman stepped into the hall and slammed the door behind him.

  As he tromped toward the elevator, he tried to analyze his anger, to calm himself. What had really enraged him, he realized, was that Denton was right: He wasn’t thinking straight. And he knew why.

  Something had gained a grip on him and wouldn’t let go.

  A blossoming, genuine hatred for Zachary Denton.

  Myra Deeber—10:30 A.M.

  Myra got out of bed late, read People for a while over her coffee, then leisurely took a long, warm shower and got dressed. The seams of her pinstripe designer jeans were strained, and she had to lie on her back on the mattress and wriggle furiously to work the zipper. She decided to skip lunch.

  A little before noon, she changed her mind. She’d been back from shopping for only fifteen minutes when she hurried to the kitchen of her cluttered apartment and opened the refrigerator door. Her workday began at four-thirty, and she ate late suppers in the restaurant’s employees’ lounge, where there was only the choice between the weekly special and standard stir-fried with rice. This would be her last chance of the day for a reasonably tasty meal of her own choosing.

  She warmed a frozen cannelloni dinner in the microwave, along with half a loaf of garlic bread left over from yesterday. There was also some uneaten pecan pie, which she decided would be her dessert.

  After the cannelloni and bread were heated, she put them on the kitchen’s small, drop-leaf table, along with butter, parmesan cheese, and a generous slice of the pie. As an afterthought, she squirted some instant whipped cream onto the pie, swirling the gooey white mass into a heart shape. Then she poured herself a diet cola, unzipped her jeans, and sat down to eat.

  As she forked food into her mouth, she kept an eye on the microwave’s digital clock. It was almost time for the soaps to start. Myra would spend her afternoon immobile on the sofa in front of the TV, until it was time to leave for work.

  Even unzipped, the jeans were constricting, so after lunch she struggled out of them and put on her loose-fitting terrycloth robe and her toeless slippers. It was difficult to get really involved in the soaps if your stomach was cramping and growling.

  After adjusting the blinds so the living room was dim, she settled into the sofa and used the remote control to switch on the TV.

  With mild dismay she found herself caught between worlds, in a hemorrhoid-medication commercial. Then a major-league shortstop was so pleased with his Toyota pickup that he jumped straight into the air. If there’d been a ball up there to catch, it would have been the play of the game.

  Then “Ryan’s Hope” began.

  During the course of the afternoon, Myra would get up only three times. Once to use the bathroom, and twice to get soda and potato chips. It was a routine she’d followed for years. When she got to work later that day, the waitresses who hadn’t been able to watch the soaps would come to her so they could be filled in on what had happened. To many of Myra’s fellow employees, the characters on the soaps were as real as the supervisors who, in language sometimes hard to understand, ordered them to talk less and concentrate on their jobs. As real but less threatening.

  It was between the trip to the bathroom and Myra’s last snack timeout that something extraordinary happened.

  She was watching “Shadowtown.” Delia was in the cottage with Roger Maler. They were ensconced in the big soft feather bed and she was coaxingly and indirectly trying to get him to admit he was the father of Ivy Ingrams’s baby. Delia had been to the foster home yesterday, trying to obtain demonstrable proof that the child’s father was Roger, but the home’s director wouldn’t cooperate and was too old to be seduced. Delia was batting her eyes at Roger and talking about how terrible it must be for whoever had fathered Ivy’s child to have Ivy’s death on his conscience. How he was really innocent in Ivy’s decision to try to abort their child but must long for someone in whom he could confide his agony.

  Myra prayed Roger would be too smart to fall for the bitch’s treachery; after all, he was doing everything that could be expected, even secretly helping the foster home to arrange for the best possible adoption.

  Delia was twining the hair on Roger’s bare chest when a figure appeared in the window beside the bed.

  Neither Roger nor Delia realized the dark, caped form was outside the window, observing them from the shadows. The watching figure raised a clenched fist, as if in anger, then faded from the scene.

  Myra was leaning forward on the sofa, her own pudgy fists clenched. There was no doubt about the dark figure’s identity, shadowy and brief though his appearance had been.

  The watcher in the window had been Edgar Grume.

  What was this about? Myra wondered. She didn’t see at all how the resurrection (if that was the proper term for a vampire) of Grume in the show could be explained logically, even in a soap opera. Everyone knew that Grume had been destroyed, transformed into dust and discarded. Everyone knew that—what was his name?—Allan Ames was dead. What was going on here? Had the scene been a mistake?

  There was something eerie about it, the way Grume hadn’t appeared to be a planned part of the episode at all, the way Delia and Roger had ignored his presence, though it was obvious Delia would have seen him when she moved to kiss Roger.

  Myra ran the scene again in her mind and shivered. It was so real, yet unreal!

  Then a startling thought struck her. Had she only imagined seeing Grume on her TV screen? Had she finally become too engrossed in the world of the soaps, in the strange and deadly games being played in “Shadowtown”?

  No, she refused to believe that.

  Another explanation, then. It was almost easier, and definitely more comfortable, to believe the appearance of Edgar Grume was a genuine phenomenon, that other viewers had seen his image in the cottage window. That he—Allan Ames, or Edgar Grume—had somehow actually returned. If not to life, then to a reasonable facsimile on “Shadowtown.”

  Myra glanced over at People, and at her stack of National Enquirers. Far stranger things had happened. They were documented.

  The notion that Grume had returned to “Shadowtown” gripped her. She had to know what was goi
ng on. Had to find out if other viewers had seen Grume. What might soap-opera fans be saying about Grume’s weird insertion into the show? What might the producers of “Shadowtown” be saying? Was this simply a publicity stunt, written into the episode? Or was it something far more difficult to explain, far more unsettling, and deliciously thrilling?

  She punched the mute button on the remote control and scooted to the other side of the sofa, where she could reach the phone. In her haste, she knocked over a bowl of potato chips and some of them dropped between the cushions, but she ignored them. After leafing through the directory with trembling fingers, she dialed the number of Shadowtown Productions.

  She dialed it again and again.

  Again and again, she got a busy signal.

  Smiley Manders—1:15 P.M.

  Manders sat glumly behind his desk, staring blankly at the report of last night’s activities at and around Lana Spence’s apartment. What the fuck was going on? The stack of morning newspapers on the floor near his chair asked essentially the same question. Only they weren’t as interested in the answer as Manders was, because for the news media the story meant added circulation; for Manders it meant added headache.

  Wiping a hand down his long face, Manders closed his eyes, opened them, and tried to see the world more optimistically. It didn’t work. And where the hell were Ox and Tobin?

  He was about to go out into the squad room and see about the delay, when there was a perfunctory knock on the door and the two detectives walked into the office. They looked tired, worried, and haggard. Manders was sure cops aged faster than the general population.

  Tobin leaned a shoulder against the wall near the window, watching Manders. Oxman stood at ease squarely in front of the desk, his weight evenly distributed on both sturdy legs.

  “You really chase a vampire down all those flights of stairs, Ox?” Manders asked.

  “Turns out I only thought I was.”

  “Is the protection in place for Lana Spence?”

  Oxman nodded. “I checked it on the way over here. That’s why I was late. She lives in an apartment that’s easy enough to isolate, and we can escort her back and forth to the studio without too much trouble. Protection’s tight, and right now Lana Spence is afraid and careful. But she’s gonna get restless and do something unpredictable sooner or later. That’s the kind of woman she is.”

  “E.L. knows her inside and out,” Tobin said wryly. Manders saw Oxman shoot his partner a cautioning glance. If looks could kill, Tobin would be at least critically injured.

  “Is it still strictly police work with Miss Spence?” Manders asked Oxman.

  “Just that, sir. Artie’s seen too many soap operas.”

  Manders was satisfied. Oxman seldom called him “sir” unless signaling that business was business. “Why do you think she called you to come see her?” Manders asked.

  “To thank me for what we’d done for her. Lassiter was found dead and everybody thought we had this mess cleared up.”

  “Just to thank you?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  Manders leafed through the report on his desk. He scanned the notes on Oxman’s conversation with Zachary Denton. “What about this Denton?”

  “I don’t trust the bastard,” Oxman said.

  Manders picked up an uncharacteristic invective in Oxman’s voice. He wondered about it, but he set his curiosity aside for the moment. “You think he was the one who pulled the knife on Lana Spence?”

  “I’m not sure.” The admission seemed to hurt Oxman.

  “He was in the vicinity.”

  “But that was an hour after the vampire showed up on Lana Spence’s doorstep,” Tobin said. “And he had a reason for being there. Or so he says. My feeling is, if it was Denton he would’ve been long gone from the neighborhood by the time Ox thought he spotted him on the street.”

  “What do you think, Ox?”

  “I think he could have laid low after running from the apartment building, ditched his vampire costume, and I saw him when he was on his way home.”

  “Too much time had passed,” Tobin reiterated.

  “Maybe,” Oxman said. He seemed unwilling to give up on Denton.

  “Another Edgar Grume costume’s missing at Shadowtown,” Tobin said.

  “No surprise,” Oxman said.

  “There might be no connection between last night’s incident and what happened before,” Manders said. “I mean, maybe Lassiter was the one threatening Lana Spence, and we have now some different kook who likes to dress up and play Dracula.”

  “You believe that?” Oxman asked, reading him.

  “No. It was the same guy. But we need to make a link to be sure of the connection between this and the previous acts. Like with cigarettes and lung cancer. Because there’s an off chance we might be wrong.”

  “We oughta dig deeper than before,” Tobin suggested.

  Manders’s droopy face creased in a smile. “Exactly. I want you and Ox to explore Lana Spence’s past thoroughly.”

  “Meaning the men in her life,” Oxman said.

  “Of course. All except Calvin Oaks. Missouri authorities say the Keepers of the Covenant swear Oaks hasn’t left the sanctuary in months.”

  “Keepers of what?” Tobin asked.

  “Covenant. That’s the religious cult Oaks joined after Lana Spence was finished with him.”

  “What kind of covenant?” Oxman asked.

  Manders leaned back and pursed his lips. That was a question he hadn’t considered. Maybe the group of zealots Oaks belonged to had for some reason worked vampirism into their ceremonial stew. Weirder things had occurred. Twisted religion could twist the people involved in it. In fact, that was the basic idea. “I’ll have Missouri send me some information on the Keepers,” he said.

  “Plenty of Lana’s former lovers should still be around New York,” Oxman said. “All the ones who didn’t get into movies or West Coast television.”

  “Find them,” Manders said. “Hold them up to the light.”

  Tobin grinned. “Vampires can’t stand light.”

  Manders ignored him. “The pressure’s on us to get this one off the books,” he said to both detectives. He didn’t tell them about the phone call from Killbrellan, his contact in the commissioner’s office. Killbrellan had told him in a veiled way that if this Lana Spence case wasn’t resolved soon, Manders would find himself driving a desk in Traffic. One with a steering wheel and engine.

  After Oxman and Tobin left, Manders tried not to think about how his career had become linked with the McGreery-Lana Spence case. He’d thought they’d gotten lucky when Lassiter’s body was found. That should have been the last of the threatening notes, and of the real-life drama of “Shadowtown. “The case would have faded in the news, and within a month or so it would have been mentioned only in show-business magazines and supermarket tabloids.

  Manders lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, then leaned back and stared at the exhaled smoke wending its way to the ceiling. He’d thought Fate was through fucking with him and making life difficult, but it seemed Fate had ideas of its own. Fate kept piling it on, seeing if Manders would break. Fate was one cruel cookie. Manders wondered if Fate was a he or a she. Probably a she, he decided. One that looked very much like Lana Spence.

  At least for now, the telephone was quiet and Fate had ceased sticking pins in Manders.

  A few hours later there was a knock on the door and Sergeant Felstein stepped in. His hair was mussed and he looked overwrought. He had a yellow pencil with a broken point propped behind his left ear. “I could use some help answering the phones, sir.”

  Manders put down his cigarette in the ashtray. “Help? Phones? Why?”

  “Calls keep coming in,” Felstein said. “Seems a lot of people saw a vampire on ‘Shadowtown,’ and they want to ask us about it.”

  “What do you mean, a lot of people? What kind of people would get excited over a television vampire.”

  “This vampire was supp
osed to be dead, sir, even dead as vampires go, only he turned up on the show and nobody seems to have an explanation for it, not even the show’s producers. He appeared outside a window in one of the scenes, and he wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere in the show. Nobody can explain it. The people phoning in are mostly Lana Spence’s fans, wanting to know what we’re doing to protect her.”

  “And you’re telling them? …”

  “That we’re doing everything we can. Anything else you want me to say?”

  Manders felt his stomach turning sour, and his piles itched. He wondered if tension had anything to do with piles.

  He said, “Tell them she’s wearing a garlic necklace, and all our men are carrying sharpened stakes in holsters.”

  “You gotta catch a vampire in his coffin to use a sharpened stake,” Felstein said, “but the garlic might work.”

  Manders said, “Get the fuck out.”

  Sy Youngerman—1:30 P.M.

  “Manny Brokton is scum,” Youngerman said to Harry Overbeck.

  Overbeck was pacing Youngerman’s office at Shadowtown Productions, occasionally slamming fist to palm, as he was in the habit of doing when excited. “He’s still our best bet to cast someone quickly, Sy. And don’t forget we need some leverage, in case Lana gets a wild hair up her ass to leave the show. Then if we threaten to fire whoever Brokton comes up with this time, he might agree to talk sense into Lana and make her stay.”

  Youngerman studied his rumpled partner and wondered if Harry had been on something today. “When’s Lana ever listened to sense? When’s she ever listened to any voice except the tiny, tiny one in her skull?”

  “Okay,” Overbeck said, finally standing still. He’d actually created a scuffed path on the thick carpet. “You got a point there. But we need to take advantage of all this Edgar Grume publicity, and what better way to do it than to cast another vampire in the show?”