The Picture Kills (The Quintana Adventures)

by Ian Bull

  I nod, and we pull ourselves over the balustrade and onto the patio. We dart across the open marble without a sound. We pass empty chairs and tables covered with wine glasses, dirty plates and napkins blown by the wind. It’s more proof that everything ended quickly and the island is being abandoned.

  We reach the exact spot where I landed on that poor French Smoker and broke his back. Julia keeps going into the bushes. We creep behind a banyan tree next to the villa wall, and she points up at a window that is cracked open a notch. “This is the bathroom to his office. Boost me up,” she whispers.

  I cup my hand to hold her foot and I lift her. She stands up while bracing herself against the wall, jams her hand in the crack, cranks the window completely open, and pulls herself in. She sticks her hand out and motions for me to follow.

  I pull myself up and yank myself chest first through the open window and I have to put my hands out to keep from landing face first on the toilet lid. Julia grabs my arm and helps me get the rest of the way in. I’m glad there are thick curtains and plush carpet to muffle the noise.

  I peek through the bathroom door. His office is empty and the door is closed. We ease into the room. A computer with two screens and a multi-covered keyboard fill one side of the office.

  I hit the space bar on the colored keyboard and the sleeping monitors wake up and an image of Julia fills both screens. A silent clip plays. She’s sunlit in a beautiful dress, and the wind blows her hair as she stares off into the distance. She sees something and gets scared. It’s a perfect movie moment, until I realize it’s what they shot just yesterday on the veranda with the fan blowing, with the crew just six feet away. The clip finishes and her image freezes.

  “What are you doing?” she whispers.

  “Is this the whole movie?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “This is the edit system for the rough assembly. Now let’s go.”

  I scan the other side of the office. There’s a laptop computer, financial newspapers and a pile of investment returns. That’s the money side of the room.

  The answer to everything is in this office somewhere.

  Julia tugs on my arm. “Come on!” she whispers.

  I push through the piles of paper, scanning, analyzing, and remembering. He has accounts in several countries. He’s got stock and bond options at several exchanges. He’s probably gambling with big money…but is it his money?

  Julia exhales with frustration.

  I go back to the edit system and find a stack of paper next to the monitors. It’s the script, and the script break down, listed by shoot days. I leaf through it fast and get the basic story.

  On the last few pages, the heroine shoots her murdering husband before he can kill the New York cop. That’s the one scene that’s not checked off. That’s the scene Julia doesn’t have to shoot now, because that actor got on board the ship.

  I leaf through the script breakdown, which lists the actors and every prop and costume that each scene needs. I find Scene 29, the final climax. Written in the left hand column is “Ver1 and Ver2.” There is no Ver2 listed anywhere else in the breakdown, just for the final climax. What is Ver2?

  I grab the script again and go to the last page. The final scene—where the heroine takes the wounded cop and wounded killer back to New York—is crossed out. In small letters above that, in a tiny scribble, is written—Ver2: Risa KIA.

  The why comes to me in a flash:

  Ver2: Version 2

  Risa, the character

  KIA: Killed in Action?

  I look again at the other side of the office—the business side.

  “That’s enough. Let’s go,” she says.

  She signals that she wants Carl's gun. I pull it out of my front pocket, slip in a fresh cartridge and hand it to her. I pray that she’s as good as she says she is.

  She takes it and feels the heft of it in her hand. She racks it back like an expert—or a movie star who has played an expert. “Don’t be afraid to use it,” I say.

  I open the office door and peek out. There’s a back staircase, which must lead directly up to Julia’s room. If Trishelle is in her own room, she’s twenty-five yards further down that hall, directly over the kitchen.

  We ease up the staircase. It’s strange. We’ve heard and seen nothing, and that eerie absence suddenly makes my antennae stand up very high. I unholster my gun and I push Julia behind me as we get to the top of the stairs.

  I reach the second floor and turn left to go to Trishelle’s room. Julia joins me at the top of the stairs. As she passes, the door to her old room opens. A man with curly gray hair and wearing a linen suit steps out. He looks just like the man we saw boarding the yacht just a few minutes ago, the one she called Bernard. Julia freezes; she thinks it’s him too.

  Then he smiles and I know it’s not him. It’s Caballero. His hair has been dyed and he is dressed to look like Bernard. He takes the gun from Julia’s hand like he was plucking a flower from a bouquet.

  I try to get in front of her, but I’m off balance. In one fluid movement, Caballero kicks my own gun out of my hand. That’s the second weapon I’ve dropped. I must get it, but Caballero raises the handgun he snatched from Julia and shoots me in the chest. The bullet hits me so hard that it lifts me off the top step and I fly backwards back down the stairs.

  Chapter 46

  Julia Day 11: Sunday

  “Is he dead?” Xander asks.

  “If he’s not he will be soon,” Diego says. “We have both his weapons.”

  The lights click on. All the equipment is still in place, but with two cameras now. Black duvateen is draped over the windows, blocking out the daylight. The room is bright with tungsten light, ready to shoot some kind of scene.

  “Welcome back, Julia,” Xander says, stepping into the light. “We were going to improvise something with your friend, but since you made it back, we can finish the actual movie with you now.”

  In the folds of the curtains is a woman staring at the floor, her hair hiding her face. My heart sinks—it’s Trishelle. She’s in the torn sundress with the blood splatters that I’ve been wearing the last few days, and she has long blue bruises on her arms and legs. A blonde wig that matches my hair is on the floor next to her.

  She stares at me, her face dirty and streaked with tears, then smiles sadly.

  I rush to her, but Rolando grabs my arm and twists it and I fall to my knees. Xander grabs a chair and sits directly in front of me. He takes my chin and tilts my face up so I must stare into his eyes. “We have just a little bit more work to do.”

  “I will never do the last scene. You can’t finish it. People are on their way here now. Just let us go and disappear while you can,” I say, fighting to look brave.

  Xander smirks, like he has a huge secret that he’s been dying to share. “The last scene is almost completely shot. We shot the last dialogue with Bernard and Trevor last night while you were dashing around in the trees. We even did all the insert shots with the guns and knives. Trishelle was your body double. All we need are a few close up shots with you.”

  Caballero steps behind one camera and adjusts the focus. Diego yanks Trishelle to her feet, drags her behind him and hits her in the face.

  “No!” I yell, jumping to my feet. “Stop it!”

  Diego grins and hits her again. The red tally light starts flashing. Rolando is running the camera and he has me in a close up.

  “Don’t hurt her, please,” I say.

  “Now just say ‘him’ instead,” whispers Xander.

  “Don’t hurt him. Please.”

  Diego twists her arm. Trishelle cries out.

  “Again,” Xander says.

  “Please. Don’t hurt him,” I whisper.

  “Now shoot him,” Xander says, and he hands me a pistol. A prop pistol. I raise it and shoot it at Diego, and the blast from the blank echoes in the room. There’s a long pause before Rolando turns off the camera. Diego pushes Trishelle back into the curtains where she falls to her knee
s.

  “Scene done. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Xander asks.

  “Now let us go,” I say.

  “Sorry. You made your choice last night.”

  “No one will watch it. You won’t make a dime.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me whether anyone sees it. It’s just a distraction. It’s the second version that’s going to be a hit,” he says.

  “Second version?” I ask.

  “Call it the producer’s cut. The alternate ending,” he whispers.

  “No. You can kill me, and I won’t do it.”

  Xander laughs and then leans in close. “Killing you IS the scene, Julia.”

  It takes me a moment, but I grasp it. He grins, and the light behind him frames his head like a halo, sitting on top of a real-life Satan. The rest of the room darkens as my heart drops.

  His face softens with a fake look of pity. “Oh? So now you finally understand?” he taunts. “That’s been the plan all along.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  He grabs my chin again, hurting me. “I almost lost everything the year you left. After all I did for you, it was a nail through my heart. Then I had to watch you rise in Hollywood and become a good actress while all I had for my efforts was a half-finished film. It gnawed at me,” he says. “I’d relive our last afternoon together, the words you wrote burning into me. Then I’d stare at the footage we shot and imagine all the ways I wish you were dead.”

  “Please, Xander,” I say, trying to interrupt, but he covers my mouth with his hand.

  “Then an idea came to me—what if you died in the climax of our film? Really died? That would be a surprise ending. And how much would people pay to see it, if they could watch a well-known Hollywood actress, a real celebrity bitch, being killed in the final scene of a real Hollywood movie? I’d pay a lot. It turns out, many other wealthy people want to see my producer’s cut too. Who needs a studio when we live in the digital age?”

  “I hate you.”

  “Well, I love you.” he says. “Your fans have already signed up for an exclusive Internet download. It’s a select audience—only two hundred people. But they pay well. A million dollars each. I’ll make two hundred million dollars within a week. I wanted last night to be my wonderful final memory of you, but when the money arrives, that regret will disappear.”

  Rolando yanks my arm, tugging me to my feet. Trishelle sobs. Rolando’s outfit and makeup make sick sense now. Rolando now plays my murdering husband instead of Bernard, and now he will kill my character Risa—and me.

  “You’ll never get away with it. People will find out.”

  “No, they won’t. They want to believe the story in the tabloids, a story that’s still being written. Our dream project wraps today. Next, we will vacation together on my yacht, but you will drown in a tragic accident that will leave me heartbroken. More tabloid covers will publicize your untimely death and my pain. It’s all novelty promotion that will make the producer’s cut that much more valuable.”

  Diego puts his gun to Trishelle’s head and gestures for her to stand, cooing and whistling as if he were coaxing a small, scared animal out of a hole. She rises and rocks on her heels, catatonic.

  “Your perceptive photographer is the only one who figured it out, but he and his friend aren’t leaving the island. Everyone else will write the story I pay them to write.”

  “Not everyone will believe it,” I insist.

  “Enough will. And I can live comfortably in many places in the world where no one cares. And eventually, everyone will stop caring.”

  “What about Trishelle?” I ask.

  “No one is looking for her. She’s obedient now and does what she’s told. I will let her live as long as her good work continues—and you finish yours.”

  Diego motions for Trishelle to undress. Trishelle unbuttons the sundress, letting it drop to the floor. She’s naked except for a pair of panties, and she instinctively covers her bruised breasts with her arms and hunches over, trying to disappear.

  “Get dressed, Julia,” Xander urges, as if I was a daughter late for school.

  Trishelle can’t look at me. I unbutton Steven’s shorts and let them drop, and then pull his T-shirt over my head and kick off the oversize shoes. I stand there in my filthy black bikini.

  This is the moment I’ve been trying to avoid for the last two weeks, and I walked right into it. My heart beats so fast that it hurts inside my chest.

  Diego kicks the dress toward me. He pushes the gun hard against Trishelle’s temple and then uses the same disgusting cooing noises and finger gestures to get me to put the dress on. I want to kick him in the face and knock all his teeth out, but I know I’d have to watch Trishelle die in front of me if I did. I step into the sundress, pull it on, and button up the front.

  Diego sits behind the second camera and Rolando steps forward.

  “This is your final scene, but one of Rolando’s first. I promised him a showcase for his unique talents, and he’s been very patient. He brings such passion to his work, I know he’ll be the true breakaway star of this production.”

  Xander clicks the “on” button. Diego clicks on his camera as well.

  “Shall we get started?” Xander asks.

  I have seconds to live. In the face of my hopelessness, I do what comes most naturally to me. I open my big mouth and let him know what I think. “Hey Xander,” I laugh. “You getting excited back there? I bet you’re getting your first real hard-on without a blue pill in years.”

  He doesn’t answer. I can’t see his face past the hot white lights, but I see his silhouette shift.

  “You’ve nothing to say, you sick fuck?” I ask. “Everything I wrote on that mirror is still true.”

  “Time to die, my love. Rolando, enjoy.”

  Rolando kicks me hard in the back and I land face first on the bed. I spin and try to kick him, but he blocks my leg with his arm, punches me in the gut and then jumps my chest with both knees, knocking the wind out of me. Xander laughs behind the camera. Before I can gasp and get air in my lungs, Rolando sits on my stomach and grabs my throat hard, crushing my windpipe.

  “Slow down, take your time,” Xander says. “I want choices for the edit bay.”

  Rolando lets go with one hand while still crushing my throat into the mattress with his other. I feel my face grow huge with the trapped blood pumping in my brain. I want to breathe, but I can’t. Then he lets go just enough so that I get a gasp of air, then tightens it again. The tingling in my legs fades away as I lose feeling below the waist.

  Rolando pulls out a switchblade. The metal gleams in the light. I watch his face change. He’s in a zone of deep pleasure...his bliss.

  Chapter 47

  Steven Day 11: Sunday

  I bounce hard off the marble on the ground floor. I try to gasp but I can’t—the bullet knocked the wind out of me long before I hit the cold stone. My chest aches and I instantly know I have broken ribs, but I’m not dead.

  Thank God for bulletproof Kevlar. Then I spot the Angry Poker aiming at me with my own Taurus 92 and I roll fast. Bullets penetrate my vest in front and back, and then one hits a soft spot right above my right hip.

  I roll into a downstairs hallway and the door slams above me. I prop myself onto my knees and elbows and suck hard, but I still can’t get air into my lungs. I feel like I’m drowning.

  Then something catches and my lungs re-inflate again. Pain shoots through my body. Yes, I have a broken rib and a hell of a bruise. I pant, forcing my lungs to push past the pain. I touch my hip and blood rushes through my fingers. The bullet went straight through the meat of my love handle. I press on it trying to get the blood to stop, but it doesn’t do much.

  I look around. I need a weapon, a plan, a bandage. Something….

  I get to my knees, then my feet. I limp down the hall and into the main entrance. What’s here that I can use? A plant, a footstool, a rug and a mirror. Nothing. I limp down the main hallway and see the kitchen. There mus
t be something there.

  I rush in. The kitchen was abandoned after the final morning meal. Serving trays half full of eggs, bacon, fruit and danish are strewn across the metal countertops. I rifle through drawers and cabinets and find cooking utensils and pots and pans. Again, nothing I can use. I spot the knife blocks and yank out the carving and cooking knives. This is still not enough.

  I find dishtowels and jam them in the top of my pants to sop up the blood. I find an industrial roll of plastic wrap for sealing up leftovers and I tear off long strips and wrap them around my mid-section to hold the dishtowels in place. It will be enough to stop the bleeding a little, I hope. On the next counter I find three boxes full of blue metal water canisters with black plastic twist tops. The name Betrayed in Paradise is printed on the side with a drawing of a palm tree and a gun. There must be thirty of them, most of them still half full of water.

  I find the walk-in freezer. There’s nothing in there but frozen meat and fish, and bags of ice. I open a styrofoam container on the bottom metal shelf and find two whole mahi mahi fish still sitting on cakes of dry ice, caught fresh, flash frozen in these containers and then brought here. Their dead eyes stare up at me through the cloud of carbon dioxide hovering in the bottom of their coffin.

  I look at the cloud of gas, then glance at the metal water canisters on the kitchen counter...and the idea comes to me.

  I yank out the Styrofoam carton from the bottom shelf and heave it onto the metal countertop. Pain shoots through me, but I push it into the back of my mind. I toss the fish into a sink, find metal tongs in a utility drawer and stab at the ice slabs at the bottom of the container. I need to make as many small chunks of dry ice as I can—small enough to fit inside the mouth of a metal drinking canister.

  I find four kitchen aprons and tie them together to form a sling that I can carry across my shoulders and back. It can carry ten canisters easily. I find ten canisters still filled with a little water, twist off their tops and line them up on the counter like I’m back in high school chemistry. I drop in as much dry ice as I can fit into each of them and watch the trailing gas vapors rise from each open top, like smoke rising from idling train engines. Frozen CO2 is expanding from solid to gas, and once I twist the tops on I will have four minutes or less before they explode and start flying like gas powered hand grenades.