Deadly Delusions was a blueprint for murdering a spouse and blaming it on someone else. Finding someone marginal, pathetic, damaged, then portraying him as an obsessed fan. The guy in the screenplay was a scary-looking transient, but in spirit he was Booker Purlie. Poor Booker.
She saw him in the shower, propped on the heels of his tiny boots ...
She hugged her kimono tighter to her chest, feeling the chill spread through her vitals. She skimmed over several pages, noting the similarities, driven toward the end. Rain banged on something tin, poured off the porch roof onto the sodden lawn. Alex’s mouth was dry, the pulse in her throat scrabbling like a beetle trying to escape.
The killer closed in. The woman, quivering and mewling, was already defeated.
How could Caroline have agreed to play this role?
The killer stepped out of the shadows. Alex wasn’t surprised that it was the estranged husband, explaining calmly that her life insurance policy would take care of his gambling debts. He had an easy smile and a “confident air.” He was rational. Thoughtful, even.
Tom Hanks with a chainsaw.
Alex waited for the detective/love interest to come on the scene and save the romance writer from certain death.
Turned out, he was a hair too late.
Thunder crashed, startling her into dumping the script onto the floor. She closed her eyes, but still registered the flash of lightning that followed. In that flash, her mind formed an image, like a face looming out of a horror flick. Ted.
The golfer’s tan, the white-bread smile. She’d always assumed his smooth complexion came from a shallow personality; he’d never acquired the lines of worry or thought. But was it because he’d never known remorse?
She’d thought he was strange—fast and loose with the truth, disconnected from reality—but basically harmless. She’d rationalized that Ted must be a decent person because he was Caroline’s husband, and she had wanted Caroline to have something good in her life. But now she wondered if all along she’d been projecting her own grief and confusion over Caro’s death on him, seeing something that was never there.
Another ugly thought burrowed into her heart. Why had Ted wanted her to read his screenplay?
The description of the killer had been the best part of the whole script. The confident air, his infallibility. In a departure from the usual thriller ending, this killer had gotten away with it.
The phone yodeled at her elbow. Alex jumped, startling the cat, who dug her claws into her thigh. Close to mewling herself, Alex flailed for balance, this time knocking the Kleenex box to the floor.
She reached for the phone, then thought better of it. Let it ring. If it was important, they would leave a message at the desk.
The phone rang six times before it stopped, then began again almost immediately—ten, fifteen, twenty rings before subsiding into silence.
Hands shaking, Alex punched in the desk number. “I was in the shower. Did someone leave a message?”
“Let me see ... ah yes. Ted Lang, room 34. He asked how you liked the script.”
Alex set the phone down. Her skin seemed to shrivel, wrap tighter around her body. She walked to the window, peered out into the curtain of rain. Squares of apricot-hued light ran the length of the portal across the courtyard. At the far end, catty-corner from her own, should be Ted’s room.
As Alex watched, a shadow appeared in the window, diffused by the lampglow.
Staring out at her.
Alex pulled the curtains to and sat on the bed, trying to marshal her thoughts over the panicked drumbeat of her heart.
Twenty-three
It’s nothing personal, you understand.
—killer to his wife in the screenplay Deadly Delusions
Doug Childers dropped Deadly Delusions on Nick McCutcheon’s desk.
Jesus, that woman was a pest. If she wanted to make excuses to see McCutcheon, that was fine with him. But showing up on his doorstep just when he was about to kick back with a beer ...
He shook his head at the close call. Technically he was on duty, since McCutcheon had gone to New Year to talk to the county attorney about something or other.
Paranoid bitch. Wouldn’t even tell him what it was about, just handed him the script and told him to make sure Nick saw it and called her. As if he were Nicky’s messenger boy.
She looked like she had a cold, too. Didn’t she realize she was spreading germs? He’d probably already contracted it from the surface of the script.
Well, he thought as he watched her pull out in her shiny red Jeep, I’ve got the last laugh on you.
Frigging eco-terrorists were on the run now. Things weren’t going their way anymore, and that was the way it should be. Didn’t those tree-huggers know that man was given dominion over the animals? That was the Bible, folks, and it didn’t get any more righteous than that.
He’d just retrieved his open beer from the refrigerator when headlights swept across the swath of muddy dirt, reflecting needles of rain.
The beer was slippery from condensed water; it scooted out of his palm and he had to scramble to catch it, bumping his head on the edge of the counter. Everything went dim, like a brownout, before becoming unbearably bright.
It doesn’t mean anything, he said, not sure if he’d spoken aloud. But he felt as if he’d tried to swallow clay and it was stuck in his throat, right above the wild pumping of his carotid artery.
What he was looking at might very well be the end of his career. And just possibly, his freedom.
Doors slammed. Nick McCutcheon stood on the passenger side of the Arizona Game & Fish truck, Cindy Gallego on the other. Even from here, Doug could see their expressions were grim.
As Alex entered the courtyard of the Hotel Sonora, she was relieved to see that Ted’s light was still on. He hadn’t followed her to the sheriff’s office. He wasn’t lurking in the bushes either, as far as she could see.
She felt too lousy at this point to care. Her cold had reached the stage where she felt helpless, unable to cope with anything more difficult than sorting out which tissue she’d used to wipe her eyes and which was for her nose. From long experience, she knew this was when accidents happened. Usually they were minor; reaching for a jar in the refrigerator and missing, sending it crashing to the floor. Running into things like a cow who’s eaten too much loco weed.
If she was really so frightened of Ted, she should pack up right now and drive home to Tucson. That would be the sensible thing to do, providing he didn’t follow and run her off the road on some lonely stretch.
Actually, she still had trouble picturing Ted Lang as a craven killer. As a matter of fact, it made her giggle, although she knew it was nothing to giggle about.
She set the styrofoam cup of hot chicken noodle soup on the dresser, along with the CARE package she’d amassed from the Safeway. Throat lozenges, cold pills, three kinds of juice, more Kleenex, a Cosmopolitan (Alex had outgrown it years ago, but when she got one of her famous colds she reverted back to her college days, and besides, there was an article called “Those Sexy Law Men”). The cat didn’t even look up from her place on the TV. Alex could feel her nose dripping. She ran for the Kleenex box, tripped over a shoe, and went sprawling.
“No way am I going to make it home tonight,” she muttered. The idea of a two-hour drive in the dark and the rain was too much to even contemplate, and she knew that minor clumsiness here could have serious implications on Interstate 10. “Nuh-uh,” she said to the cat. “As Scarlett O’Hara would say, tomorrow is another day.”
She flailed for the remote, turned on the news, and sat through a number of boring stories, her eyelids drooping. Her skin felt like hot paper, and the soup tasted like salt. She was just about to turn off the TV when Brian Williams announced that Caroline Arnet’s body had been released from Mexico.
Sound bite from Ted. He looked like a broken-hearted little boy of forty. “At least now she’ll rest in peace.”
“Barf,” Alex muttered.
&nb
sp; “The funeral is planned for Tuesday,” Brian Williams said, his own eyes sad.
She flicked off the television and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Maybelle Deering was too excited to sleep, so when she awoke at four o’clock in the morning, she pulled on her clothes, made herself some instant coffee, and then went outside to face east and chant the Navajo hunting song.
Although there would be no killing, it was appropriate. The hunting song linked her to the animal, made them one. In it, she could apologize in advance for taking its freedom. This was a spiritual thing with her. She was part Indian, although the one-sixteenth Indian blood in her came not from the Navajo but from the Seminole. Close enough; Maybelle had never been a stickler for details.
After scattering pollen to the four winds, she hurried out to her battered Ford truck, her heart slamming in her chest. She’d be early, but that was why she’d brought her pillowcase and a headlamp. She could poke around for snakes in the meantime.
It was stupid, really. Her house wasn’t that much farther from the canyon than the Crocker place, but Rollie insisted on this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Maybe he felt safer on his own ground.
She had her doubts about Rollie. Hoped he hadn’t scared the poor thing half to death. He’d suggested using dogs, but she’d told him no way—she wouldn’t pay him if he did. A snare or nothing, and he’d better damn well not have hurt the merchandise.
That was his word, not hers. It was a shame she had to do business with people like that; they reminded her of some of her father’s friends. Didn’t give a damn about the animal.
Well, she did. She’d spent enough money to make this cat feel right at home. The habitat was almost finished. It would be bigger and better than the open-air cat exhibits at the Desert Museum.
When you considered all its natural enemies, not to mention man, the jaguarundi was lucky.
She felt like a balloon that had slipped its tether and had floated off into the sky. There was no better feeling. Even her wedding day, forty years ago almost to the day, couldn’t compare.
Of course Dwight had been a worthless drug addict. She wasn’t surprised when he was found with his head in the oven of a roach-infested apartment in Detroit two months after the annulment.
No, this was the greatest day of her life. Even the knowledge that she could never share her greatest triumph with another soul didn’t dim her joy.
Creosote bushes smelled fresh and sweet from the recent rain. The desert waits, she thought to herself. Inscrutable, patient, the desert waits like a chess player for the next move. No one she’d ever known had beaten the desert at its own game.
That was why she had to show it respect, the reason she scattered the pollen and sang the old songs. To placate the desert. After all, they were friends, like a sailor is friends with the sea. But that did not mean the desert wouldn’t eat her alive, as the sea had swallowed ships and sailors whole.
A thrill arrowed through her stomach as she turned from Devil’s Hearth Road onto the dirt track leading up to the machinery shed. She glanced at her watch. Maybe she should go down near that old bunkhouse; it looked like a good place for snakes. She was careful, parking in the mesquite bosque, screened by the thick growth.
The bunkhouse, its warped boards painted chocolate brown, had seen better days. Scabby white window sashes framed only emptiness, and desert shrubs grew up out of the floors of the long room. At one end, a rusted cot frame rested against the wall beside the open doorway. Beyond, the ground sloped down to a dry wash littered with white rocks—rotten granite. Right there, just before the drop-off, looked like a good place for rattlers.
Maybelle picked her way carefully through the rubble. The sun hadn’t yet made it over the hill; the landscape was rendered in shapes of gray. She leaned against the door frame and stared down at the wash, spotting an exposed crevice in the rocks that looked promising. It would be tough getting to it because the talus looked unstable. She rested a gloved hand on the black, alligator-rough trunk of a gnarled mesquite and glanced around, looking for a way down. That was when she noticed the motorcycle.
It was almost obscured by overhanging mesquite branches and partially covered by an army blanket, but Maybelle knew it was a good bike. In fact, it was a Harley.
“I’ll be damned,” she muttered, scrambling and skating down the slope toward it, bouncing off stunted mesquite trees as she went.
She slipped on some loose rock and fell, catching her weight on one outstretched hand. “Shit!”
A warped section of plywood lay only an inch or two from her hand, making a nice overhang for a rattler’s retreat. As she watched, a triangular head appeared, forked tongue flicking. Before she could react, the snake lunged at her like a jack-in-the-box.
The glove was leather and the diamondback rattler had been emerging from its hole, so he wasn’t able to make a real strike. Maybelle realized this as she fell back on her haunches and scooted back up the hill on her butt, her heart racing like a Formula One engine.
That had been close. She’d been bitten by a rattlesnake before—had lost a chunk out of one leg to tissue necrosis—and she didn’t want it to happen out here. Not on today of all days.
Gingerly, she gripped a root protruding from the rotten granite, and used it to push herself up.
The root gave under her weight, crumbling with the dry, brittle snap of a chicken bone. Her feet slid out from under her.
She glanced down and saw that the root was not a root at all, but a desiccated human arm.
In that first instant, Maybelle’s disbelieving mind told her it was just a dirty old root that looked like an arm. But then, as if someone had pressed the remote control clicker on a slide projector, the scene shifted and she knew it was human, had to be. She could see the ragged denim armhole above the stringy laths of a shoulder that had once been muscular; she could see the faint tattoo of an eagle with a snake in its talons on something very close to parchment. She saw fingers, too, like twigs, and the big ugly Harley ring on one of them, clinging to a few remaining bits of brown flesh.
Colored dots swarmed behind her eyeballs, and she thrust herself to her feet and vomited into a clump of canyon ragweed.
The mystic, the Indian part of her spoke up: this was a bad omen. A very bad omen for the most important day of her life.
As it turned out, she was right on both counts.
Twenty-four
I know this is a bit out of the ordinary, but I’d like to play myself. I think it will lend a sense of reality to Fallen Angel: The Caroline Arnet Story. It’s what the fans would want.
—Ted Lang to Disney, negotiating the film rights to his biography of Caroline Arnet
He didn’t give ditching the rental car a lot of thought; the car and the inconvenience it represented was nothing in the scheme of things. He’d already abandoned one vehicle successfully, so why not another?
All he knew was, he wanted the motorcycle. It was his; he’d earned it. Someone less sure of himself would worry that its presence might incriminate him, but he was pretty much invincible.
Nothing so far had happened to challenge that notion. He’d been untouchable, even though he’d taken some pretty bad risks. It was almost as if he walked on water, the cops floundering out there in the deep somewhere, just trying to stay afloat.
But Elvis Bardeaux wouldn’t just leave the car, you can be damn sure about that, a voice said in his head. That bothered him. His counterpart, the character he himself had perfected, would have been more circumspect. Especially in the first draft, or Scotty Peters wouldn’t have left any loose ends, but didn’t they say that truth was stranger than fiction? And a hell of a lot easier.
Ted had taken half the nitpicking details out of the script. The killer was always covering his tracks, pondering each move like a chess player, second-guessing the cops. As a result, the action had suffered. Not only that, but Scotty had saved the heroine at the end, just like every predictable movie since Cecil B. DeMille first yelled thro
ugh a megaphone.
Hardly ground-breaking stuff.
He nursed the Infiniti down the road toward the bunkhouse. It was still dark, but there was a blush of peach over the mountains. Wind rattled the ocotillo like sabers and slipped a delicate hand through the open window to finger his Izod shirt. Nice and cool.
Time was getting short. Now that Caroline’s body had finally been released, there would be a huge funeral day after tomorrow, just a million of her closest friends. He would help the studio organize a candlelight vigil. The actual funeral itself would be televised on a special Larry King Live at Forest Lawn. The vice president was coming.
Looked like Alex Cafarelli was going to get a pass after all. The idea left him vaguely melancholy. He was beginning to think of her as a necessary part of what he’d begun to term “blood art.” The finishing touch on his canvas.
Of late, he saw himself as less a predator than an artist. Oh well, he’d have to be content with a triptych—Angel, Caroline, and Booker Purlie. It had been a sort of work in progress, so to speak. Christo wrapped the Reichstag; he worked with human clay.
It was a damn shame really. Alex Cafarelli distrusted him, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why. Somewhere along the line, he had miscalculated. Yes, admit it. He had assumed he could read her as he read everybody else, and he’d overplayed his hand. She wasn’t about to go anywhere with him now.
He sighed tremulously.
Better to think of something else. Newsweek, People, Larry King. No time for self pity. There was a lot of work to be done.
Caroline was the next Marilyn, and it would be a cottage industry tending to her memory. It wouldn’t be easy, being keeper of the flame.
Of course, soon people would come to realize that he was the real genius, the power behind the throne. At first, he would be content to remain in Caroline’s shadow, but sooner or later, the truth would come out. And then there’d be a helluva lot of revisionist history being written as people realized it was Ted, not Caroline, who was the creative genius.
The Desert Waits Page 25
