Clara Loman’s disembodied voice was a church whisper. “There was only one cut. No hesitation wounds. Even if the killer paced out the walk to Peter Beck’s chair, he’d still have to find the man’s throat in the dark.”
“Yeah,” said Riker. “You’d have to fumble around. There’d be some warning. You put your hands on a guy in the dark, he’s gonna jump. He’s gonna say somethin’. . . . But that didn’t happen.” In the stillness that came with total darkness, the woman seated next to the victim could not have failed to notice a struggle, not with only the width of a chair’s armrest between her and Peter Beck. This would only work if they were looking for a razor-packing, killer bat—or some other freak of nature that could see in the dark.
Mallory spoke out from the void. “Loman’s crew missed more than the place cards.” The young detective clapped her hands. And there was light.
Riker turned to see Clara Loman’s back as the woman stalked off the stage, shrugging out of her coat, ripping off her gloves. And now her bare hands balled into fists.
Point taken.
• • •
The actors had been asked to give up only their stage costumes, but all of the crew’s clothing had been bagged by CSIs to be tested for the dead man’s blood and fiber. Now the two stagehands walked up to the footlights in stocking feet and clothes borrowed from a wardrobe rack. Joe Garnet was a boy with a bad case of acne. The other teenager, Ted Randal, had a round head atop a stick-thin body. In Riker’s shorthand notes, he had rechristened them as Pimples and Lollypop. And they had each earned a question mark after their names.
The theater was a limited job market, more so in hard times, and the detective had to wonder why the stagehand positions had not been filled by senior union men. A question mark also followed the name of the lighting technician, Gil Preston, another youngster with a union card.
Riker turned around to watch a uniformed officer shepherd a troupe of matrons down the aisle by the wall. These volunteer ushers wore plastic CSU booties and theater costumes. Hours ago, they had been written off as harmless theater groupies, but now there was just one more question. When they were assembled in front of the stage, the detective pointed toward four velvet chairs encircled with yellow crime-scene tape. “Did you ladies put place cards on any of those seats?” They shook their heads. “Did you at least see the place cards?” After more head-shaking, they were led away, all of them somewhat disappointed when told that they were not suspects. And they were sent home.
More people straggled onto the stage. No close fit of loaned clothing had been found for Bugsy. The gopher’s shirt hung tent-like, and the pant-leg cuffs were triple rolled.
The wardrobe lady, Nan Cooper, had exchanged her own muumuu for a loose black sheath that made her into a sexless stovepipe. Her red hair was teased into a frizzy ball, a lame attempt to hide balding patches. On this account, she now had Mallory’s interest. The young detective stared at the woman’s scalp, moving in close—closer. His partner would always stop to look at every odd thing. But the older woman only shrugged off this way too intimate inspection—and that got Riker’s attention. Though he had yet to speak with Nan Cooper, she now had her own question mark in his notebook.
Edging down the line, he stopped to face the lone actress in the play—a young one. Nothing in her eyes, true baby blues, registered as New Yorker savvy, and her face fit his cookie-cutter idea of a corn-fed cheerleader. Alma Sutter could only be a few years off the bus from Elsewhere, America, which was any town but this one. Loose blond hair waved down to her waist, and without the garish stage makeup, she seemed childlike. Nervous, too. The actress rocked heel to toe, considering his question of place cards. “No, I didn’t see them, either.”
Very breathy, very Marilyn Monroe.
And though she bore no other likeness to that long-dead film icon, Riker was just a wee bit in love. He knew this moment was a keeper—a kind of souvenir.
He moved on down the line to stand before two short, skinny actors named in his notes as Weirdo Twins. The identical Rinaldi brothers, Hollis and Ferris, were in their early twenties. They had a slack-jawed, stupid look about them, and their hair was chopped short, the sort of cut favored by caregivers in mental institutions.
“What about you guys? See any place cards?”
Their slow-moving eyes lacked focus as they shifted their weight from one foot to the other in unison, playing idiots to perfection. Riker waited for the Rinaldi boys to realize that his partner was standing behind them. So close. Could they feel her breathing on them? Yeah, and they also did the startle response in tandem. The runts turned to look up at tall Mallory, who folded her arms to complete a stance of no mercy. Damn, she was good at this; no one could do cold-and-bloodless like her. She stared them down with machine-green eyes, no life in them now, and she spoke with an eerie lack of inflection. “The play is over. Cut the crap.”
She had out-weirded them. Amateurs. The twins dropped the glazed look of brainless fools and actually stood at attention, just two ordinary guys with bad haircuts.
Riker sighed. Actors.
At the other end of this chorus line, Bugsy the gopher raised his hand as children do in class, and he said, “The twins like to stay in character. The roles they play—”
“Yeah, right.” More than likely they had only wanted to mess with him. Riker stood back from the lineup. One actor was missing, the older man, the fat one with a girth as wide as the brass bed at the center of this stage. “Where’s the big guy—Rollo?”
“That’s my character’s name,” said a voice from the wings. “So sorry.” The late arrival made his barefoot entrance, belting a long black robe as he joined the lineup. He was tallest among them—and no longer three hundred pounds overweight. The body padding had been shed; his cheeks were not bulging anymore, but gone to lean hollows; and the wild brown hair had been smoothed back into an eighties-era power ponytail. Now he put on the charming bad-boy smile that was his trademark.
Man, where have you been all this time?
This actor was Riker’s favorite gangster, his favorite cop and psycho killer. Before Axel Clayborne had disappeared from Hollywood, he had won critical acclaim just for leaving his house in the morning. Those famous hazel eyes were focused on Riker’s partner, and the movie star so obviously liked what he saw.
With no glimmer of recognition, Mallory passed by the actor to stand before a less important member of the theater company, a younger man, whose only distinguishing feature was a crooked front tooth. “You’re the head usher, right?” She held up an evidence bag. “We found this place card on Peter Beck’s chair—under his dead body.”
“Well, none of my people put it there.” The man bent at the waist, looking down the lineup, and he pointed to the gopher. “Had to be him.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Bugsy. “I never saw any damn place cards.” He nodded toward the stage manager, who stood beside him, three inches shorter without the cowboy boots. “Cyril gave me a velvet rope. I laid it across the armrests on Peter’s seat. The guy was a no-show last night. But tonight, I roped off the same chair—front row center. I’d never put Peter near the wall.”
Cyril Buckner rested a protective hand on the gopher’s shoulder. “Maybe someone from the audience—”
“We ruled out the audience.” Riker turned to the head usher and his girlfriend, the cashier. “And you guys, too. Go home.” When this pair had left the stage, the detective moseyed down the line of cast and crew, holding up a sheet of paper for all to see. “This is a statement from the lady who sat next to Peter Beck. She was one of the first people through the door tonight. Our victim was sitting on a place card, but the lady saw three more cards on seats in the front row. Somebody put ’em there before the audience was seated.”
“To keep those chairs empty,” said Mallory, “so a killer could sit down beside Peter Beck—and cut his throat. The cards disappeared before the lights came on again.”
And fifteen minutes ago, Clara Loma
n’s crew of CSI’s had found them.
“They were stashed behind a trunk backstage,” said Riker. “And all of you swore there was nobody back there who didn’t belong. No backstage visitors allowed—ever.” He was smiling, so amiable when he said, “We usually wait till we’re asked . . . but who’d like to lawyer up first?”
No takers.
• • •
Detective Mallory faced the famous barefoot actor in the black robe, the one who had signed his statement with the name of a character from the play. Cute. She hated all things cute. “Axel Clayborne?”
“You’re guessing, aren’t you?” The movie star’s smile was wry, for who among the six billion would need to ask his name? He belted the robe tighter around his lean body. “Sorry I’m late, but your people wanted my fat suit, and then they wanted autographs.” He seemed younger than his thirty-eight years, the age on his driver’s license. And he was entirely too relaxed.
Mallory stepped back a few paces to address the whole ensemble. “The blackout lasted forty seconds. Did any of you sense someone moving past you in the dark? Any sound or movement at all?”
Three of the actors raised their hands.
But not Axel Clayborne. “You’ll never get a right answer to that one,” he said. “The power of suggestion. Actors are very malleable people. We’re prized above every other profession for jury duty—so easily swayed.”
“I didn’t see your hand go up.”
His grin was wide. “Of course. That can only mean that I killed Peter. Seriously, could anyone have a better alibi? I was onstage the whole time. Me and Alma.”
“That’s how you made my shortlist.” Mallory turned to the androgynous redhead in charge of wardrobe. “You have a spare fat suit, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Nan Cooper. “I got two of every damn thing.”
“Get it!”
A minute later, the balding redhead reappeared, effortlessly carrying a huge bulk of foam encased in striped pajamas, and she laid it down at Mallory’s feet. The detective turned to Axel Clayborne, saying, “Put it on.”
He folded his arms and smiled—no, call it a leer. “You want me to strip? I’m only wearing jockey shorts under this robe.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Do it!”
“No. I have to be . . . seduced.”
“Hey, Mr. Clayborne,” said Riker, “just get into the damn suit, okay?”
Mister? Her partner deferred to nobody. She stared at Riker, but the film buff only shrugged and looked away.
Mallory pulled out her gold pocket watch, an inheritance from her foster father, the late Louis Markowitz, whose name was inscribed on the back below the previous owners, older generations of police. Normally, in times of trouble with superiors, she pulled out the watch as a reminder of her ties to an old cop family, almost royalty in the NYPD. But tonight, she needed its stopwatch function.
Axel Clayborne dropped his robe to the floorboards to stand nearly naked and unabashed. There were old scars on his flesh, the marks of an eventful life. Conscious of her eyes on his body, he did a slow revolve to display a few fresh rakes of abrasion on his back. A woman’s claws had done that, but not in anger. His smile was still in place when he turned around to face her again. “Seen enough?” The actor leaned down to pick up the bottom half of the fat suit. He pulled on the pajama pants that gave him a belly and widened him, hip and thigh. Next, he shrugged into the thick arms of the top half. After securing the foam padding with Velcro straps, he buttoned the shirtfront over his expanded chest. Then he glanced at her pocket watch, asking, “How did I do?”
“I haven’t timed you yet,” said Mallory. “Go down to the audience and slit the man’s throat.”
With mock curiosity, he looked down at the front row, where yellow crime-scene tape ringed the area around the victim’s empty chair. “If you mean the dead man . . . who used to be there—”
“It’s called acting,” she said. “Now go kill Peter Beck.”
Axel Clayborne stood his ground. Was he waiting for her to say please? He flashed a sly grin, a big mistake. Mallory also smiled. Her blazer was slowly drawn open as her hands came to rest on her hips, every woman’s wordless way of saying, You’re dead meat. And, to back up that—suggestion—a large revolver, a .357 Smith & Wesson, was now on public display in her shoulder holster. Most cops carried streamlined Glocks, but this gun was more lethal in its looks, a virtual ad for stop-and-drop killing power—and playtime was over.
Quick to guess that smart-ass charm was not his best option here, the actor bowed to her. And then, though his limbs were thickly padded, Clayborne moved with deep grace. Light-stepping like a dancer, he descended the stairs to the audience level, where he stood before the dead man’s chair and slashed the air above it with his right hand. Then he climbed the steps to take his place onstage. “Would you like to see me do it again? I’m sure I could—”
“You could’ve done it with your eyes closed.” The pocket watch snapped shut. “That foam padding doesn’t slow you down. And you had the easiest access to the dead man’s chair.” She stared at a taped X on the floorboards, a CSI’s mark for Alma Sutter’s position. “The actress would’ve had to walk around the brass bed and you. She couldn’t go the other way. The stagehands were moving props on that side. But you had no obstacles.”
“Yeah,” said Riker. “No worries about bumping into stuff in the dark. Works for me.”
Clayborne grinned, so pleased with himself.
No, there was more than that to the actor’s expression—something like an unspoken joke. And who was he smiling at now?
Mallory whirled around to stare at the stagehands, as if she had caught them doing something wrong. They were still in their teens, a guarantee of at least one or two illegal acts. The CSU re-creation of the critical blackout seconds had cleared them from the suspect list, but they were both antsy and ready to bolt. They had done something. “The way I hear it, you two were moving around a lot while the lights were out. Moving furniture, collecting props. . . . Neat trick in the dark.”
The pimpled stagehand shrugged, saying, “Naw, it was easy with—” And the other one elbowed him in the ribs. Those outside the teenage cult of youth, cops in particular, were considered too bone stupid to possibly read this as a signal to shut the hell up.
Riker graced them with an evil smile. “Easy with . . . what?”
“Night-vision goggles.” Clara Loman walked onstage, carrying a cardboard carton under one arm. “It’s easy when you’ve got the right toys.” The CSU supervisor dipped one hand into the box and pulled out an object of bright purple plastic sealed in a clear plastic wrapper. It looked like a child’s Halloween mask decked with chin straps and three green-glass eyes.
Loman pointed to the center lens positioned on the mask’s forehead. “This emits a beam of light in a spectrum invisible to the naked eye. But when you’re wearing the goggles, it works like a flashlight.” She turned to face the two stagehands, none too pleased with them. “You little bastards might’ve mentioned the goggles when we did that run-through.”
Riker also shot them an angry look. “Damn kids.”
The boys had only wanted to leave the theater early tonight—stuff to do, dope to smoke. And screw the cops. Why complicate things with helpful information that might delay their escape—and make them likely suspects?
Mallory glanced at her partner for a wordless conversation of her raised eyebrows and his slow shake of the head. What else might have been missed in Loman’s rush to bag the evidence and run? How could the night-vision goggles have gone overlooked for hours?
Clara Loman held up her carton and pointed to a line of bold type that listed six headsets to the box. “We only have five.” Hubris incarnate, she announced, “If the missing goggles were backstage, my crew would’ve found them.” And now, with a special glare for Mallory, maybe anticipating fresh doubts, more insults, Loman said, “Nobody carried them out of this building tonight. Everyone from the audienc
e took off their coats when my people checked them for blood splatter.” She hefted the pair of night-vision goggles in one hand. “You can’t fit this in a pocket, and I know the cops were checking purses.”
“There aren’t any more goggles,” said Cyril Buckner. “There were only five pairs in the box when we got them.”
Mallory turned to face her lineup of suspects. “Which one of you bought them?”
No one answered. Heads were turning side to side, shoulders shrugging, and finally Bugsy said, “Must’ve been the ghostwriter.”
Yeah, right.
“That reminds me.” Mallory turned to the woman from Crime Scene Unit. “Did you find the chalk yet?”
Chalk? What chalk? That much could be read in the graying diva’s startled eyes. Had this woman’s harried crew even mentioned to her what was printed on the slate before she arrived at the theater?
“Our prime suspect’s the only one who uses the blackboard,” said Mallory. “He left me a message tonight. I know your CSI’s got pictures of it. . . . So, where’s the chalk?” Even a trace of it would have been helpful, maybe a dusting in the lining of a pocket. “Your guys did look for it, right?” Wrong. Now she could read Clara Loman’s thoughts as a stream of four-letter words.
SUSAN: Puddles of it? Whose blood?
ROLLO: My mother’s, my aunt’s. Granny’s blood and the blood of my sisters.
—The Brass Bed, Act I
The collar of Axel Clayborne’s pajama costume was soaked with sweat as he baked in the thick foam padding. Nine times, Mallory had run him up and down stairs in the dark to murder an invisible man in an empty theater seat, all the while clocking him, prompting him to go faster. She was very thorough in all things—including payback.
It Happens in the Dark - M11 Page 3
