by Jane Haddam
“This doesn’t take a genius,” Gregor told him. “The problem is simple. Carl Frank went to a lot of trouble to get rid of Steve Becker. He doesn’t seem to have gone to any trouble at all to get rid of Mark Anderman. And Mark Anderman might have refused to be gotten rid of, but if Carl Frank is Michael Bardman’s man on this movie, he could have gotten Anderman fired. And he didn’t. From what I’ve been able to find out, he didn’t do anything at all. Why not?”
2
Of course, Gregor thought, walking back to the center of town, there was always one thing Carl Frank could have done about Mark Anderman, and that was to kill him, or to get him killed. The problem with that would be motive, and the problem with motive in this case was that all of them felt completely inadequate to Gregor. It wasn’t that Gregor had illusions about murderers. He’d spent the better part of his career at the Bureau dealing with serial killers, and enough time since dealing with local police departments to understand without illusions that most people who killed did so with very little objective reason at all. Your average serial killer had a sexual itch he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help scratching. Gregor would have said that half the serial killers he had known had been mentally ill in the commonsense definition of the term, delusional, haunted by voices. The rest of them lived lives so disconnected from the everyday that they might as well have been aliens, but deeply insecure aliens, always convinced that the world looked down on them for their stupidity, always desperate to prove that they were smarter than the people who rejected them. That was true even of the ones it shouldn’t have been true of, which was why, when Gregor thought back on his life in behavioral sciences, the name that always came to mind was Theodore Robert Bundy. The average nondelusional serial killer was a nerdy nonentity or a pudgy loser. Ted Bundy was athletic, handsome, smooth. The average nondelusional serial killer was a constant failure in all things, large and small. Ted Bundy was an academic success, a man with a job in the governor’s office, a law student. It was as if Ted Bundy had been invented for Hollywood and the best-seller lists. He was the kind of killer who interested people because he was, in fact, interesting. It made sense to most people that a loser or an ugly would give in to rage and start lashing out.
Besides, they didn’t have to take that sort of person seriously, because they didn’t have to think of him as somebody like themselves. It made everything a lot easier for everyone if the general public could see crime as something committed by people so vastly different from themselves, so utterly unlike anybody they knew, that criminals were literally a different species.
Of course, most crime wasn’t committed by serial killers. Most crime was committed by ordinary people in the day to day, and most of the murders there made absolutely no sense at all. A couple of guys get into a fight at a bar and one of them has a knife. He probably never used the knife before, and he carried it only to make himself look cool to women. A guy stays home to babysit for his girlfriend’s baby and the baby cries. He can’t stand it and he can’t stand it and so he picks the baby up by the feet and bashes its head into the wall, and when he’s done he can’t even remember doing it. Real violence was not like the violence in Agatha Christie novels. It was just there, out in the middle of nowhere, with no rhyme or reason, committed in an instant, finished in an instant. People’s lives changed overnight. They ended whether the person you were talking about was the victim or the perpetrator. Often it turned out that the impetus was the same as the impetus for those serial killers who did not hear voices in their heads: the gaping nothingness of being nobody in particular, of trying to exist in the world with nothing and nobody to validate you. Gregor wondered if almost all crime might be like this, or at least if almost all violence might be. Maybe there was really only one motive, and that was the need to compensate for a deep and abiding sense of failure, a failure that went all the way down. He wondered how many people there were like that out there, and what they appeared to be on the surface. He wondered if his brain was beginning to freeze in the New England weather.
I sound like one of those women who does crime analysis on television, he thought, and then, since that was the worst insult he could make about anyone, he tried not to think about it. He had been walking for only a little while, but the town was already in front of him. If he stayed on the road he was on, he would curve along the beach to the Point. If he turned inland and went right, he could make his way to the hospital, where paparazzi were still hanging out in search of… whatever. He turned to the left instead, and reached the beginning of actual blocks and actual town, which could be distinguished by the fact that there were sidewalks. There were not a lot of sidewalks in Oscartown. He passed a small bakery that seemed to be closed up for the winter, and two clothing stores that definitely were. He came out on Main Street and looked up and down it. He had no idea where the paparazzi were now, but they were not in front of the Oscar-town Inn, and they were not in front of the little bar where everybody went when they weren’t filming a movie or doing whatever else people did here. Gregor looked up at the bar’s sign. It was only a few feet in front of him, much closer than the inn. He turned and looked back the way he had come. It wouldn’t be that long a walk for anybody. It wouldn’t be that long a drive, even in a bad snowstorm. He’d been exaggerating the difficulty of getting around. When he had tried to imagine this scene, everything had been farther apart.
He turned back to Main Street and made his way up it to Cuddy’s. He looked through the windows and satisfied himself that there was not much of anybody inside. So far, he had been very lucky not to be caught up in a maelstrom of publicity, but he had no idea how long his luck would last. He went into the bar and looked around. There were two men at the bar proper, and nobody at all at any of the tables. He didn’t want to sit at the bar. He always felt silly doing that, and it was too public. He found a table at the back and sat facing the bar and the bar’s door to the street. He could see everything from where he was, even though there was nothing to see.
The waitress must have been bored, because she arrived almost before Gregor was all the way into his seat.
“Good morning,” she said. “What can I get you? We don’t do food here in the morning, but we do pretty good coffee if you don’t want that mocha latte whipped cream with sprinkles stuff.”
The waitress was young and bouncy and looked as if she had never had a moment’s worry that she might not be the most important thing in the universe. Gregor looked at the two men at the bar. They were both nursing coffees. In New York, he had seen men sit at bars and drink at eight o’clock in the morning, drink steadily and with purpose, as if this were a job they expected to get paid for.
He turned back to the waitress and said, “Coffee would be excellent. No cream. No sugar. Just coffee.”
“Great. And I’m really glad you don’t want that mocha latte whipped cream stuff. I mean, really. It’s dessert. It’s the coffee equivalent of a drink with a little umbrella in it.”
The waitress went off. Gregor tried to judge her age, and came up with “younger than Donna Moradanyan,” which didn’t mean much of anything. He assumed that the drinking age in Massachusetts was twenty-one. It was in most states since the federal government had started to tie transportation funding to making sure the legal age was no lower. If the waitress was twenty-one, she had to be in college, or finished with it, or one of those people who had never gone.
Gregor got out his cell phone and opened it up. He turned it on. It promised him there was service. He tried the automatic dial thing and screwed it up somehow, he wasn’t sure how. He could never get the technology straight. He punched in Bennis’s number and listened to the ringing, which sounded far away, although he had no idea why that would be the case. The waitress came back and put his coffee down. He thanked her and, just then, heard Bennis pick up.
“Gregor?” she said.
Gregor hated caller ID. It made everybody sound psychic, and he did not believe in psychics.
“Gregor?”
Bennis said again.
“I’m here,” Gregor said. “I’m sitting in a bar called Cuddy’s, at ten o’clock in the morning, having coffee. I’ve had a very odd day.”
“Already? I’m surprised there’s a bar called Cuddy’s that’s open already. Or is it like New York, where they can open at eight and serve alcohol straight through?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “I’m having coffee. Everybody here is having coffee. The place is absolutely pitch dark. Let me ask you something. Why have all the paparazzi disappeared?”
“What?”
“The paparazzi have disappeared,” Gregor said. “Yesterday, they were everywhere, and I mean everywhere. They were crawling out of cracks in the sidewalks. We couldn’t get away from them except by locking ourselves in rooms, and then they were right outside. They stormed the emergency room where Marcey Mandret was yesterday after she did something to herself, I don’t know what. They were at the press conference. They were at the scene where Kendra Rhode died before we were. And now they’re nowhere at all.”
“Ah,” Bennis said. “Did I hear something about the paparazzi ruining the crime scene? I mean, where Kendra Rhode died?”
“If there was a crime scene,” Gregor said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know. Yeah, they got there before anybody else did and they ripped the place apart. There’s not going to be any uncontaminated evidence of what happened. It was a fair mess.”
“My guess is that they’re looking to stay out of trouble,” Bennis said. “They do get into trouble, you know, Gregor. They get into a lot of it. After the Princess of Wales died, for instance. They get sued. They get prosecuted sometimes. There have been some pictures on the Internet this morning—”
“Yeah,” Gregor said. “I’ve seen them. Everybody’s seen them. Marcey Mandret is fascinated with them. I suppose I don’t blame her.”
“Yes, well, one of them shows what has to be a criminal act. I mean—”
“I know,” Gregor said. “I was there. And I mean I was there when it happened. I haven’t had to see a photograph of it. Stewart Gordon got the guy out of there and nearly beat him up.”
“Well, he could be prosecuted for that,” Bennis said. “I don’t mean Stewart, I mean the guy. Well. If the prosecutor wanted to push it, he could be in a lot of trouble. So my guess is that the vast majority of these guys are just making themselves scarce for a few days until the outrage wears off. Most of them have probably already got money pictures enough to last a few weeks. And there will be time to get more. This story is going to last forever.”
“I haven’t seen the news. I’ve been afraid to look.”
“They’re treating it like the start of World War III,” Bennis said. “Nine-eleven wasn’t as huge as they’re making this. It’s everywhere. Are you really going to solve this murder? You’ll get offered your own show on Court TV.”
“I don’t want my own show on Court TV. Tell me something else. People who work around people like Kendra Rhode, people who do publicity, for instance, or who work for the studios—”
“Kendra Rhode wasn’t connected to a studio,” Bennis said. “You know that, don’t you, Gregor? She made a music CD but she had to pay to have it put out herself. She’s one of those people.”
“One of what people, this time?”
“For God’s sake, Gregor, I grew up with girls like this. It’s not true that you can’t achieve anything if you’re born with money, but it is true that you can’t if you act like a spoiled brat. Kendra Rhode expected her name and her family and her cash to get her everything automatically, without actually having to work at it. And what happens in a situation like that is that nobody takes you seriously, and the public really doesn’t like you. I saw the video of one of the singles off that album. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t any worse than the stuff Arrow Normand does, or Britney Spears, or Jessica Simpson. Standard pop crap, but catchy enough. But practically nobody bought the album. It sold less than most midlist books. Which is saying something.”
“Did anybody like her?” Gregor asked. “I can’t seem to find anybody who did. Even the people who were supposed to be her friends don’t sound very friendly. They mostly sound afraid of her, even now that she’s dead.”
“That, I couldn’t tell you,” Bennis said. “There’s a reason I walked out on all that twenty years ago, and a reason I’m still out. You will notice that you’re not getting married anywhere on the Main Line.”
“Tell me about the people who work for these people,” Gregor said. “Do they hate them too? Do they resent them? Are they celebrities manqué?”
“I’d expect it depends on the person,” Bennis said. “A lot of them just have a job. Some of those can be good jobs to have. Some of them not so much. Why?”
“I’ve got to go see a man who’s supposed to be standing in for the Man,” Gregor said. “The guy who is Michael Bardman’s spy on this movie. The guy who has had to deal with all the nonsense these people have put out. The guy who is most likely to have had a standard motive for wanting Mark Anderman dead, and Kendra Rhode in the bargain. And I can’t get a reading on him at all.”
Chapter Four
1
The photographers started to creep back around noon. There were only a few, and they were keeping their distance, but Annabeth Falmer could see them from her kitchen window, hiding behind cars, shoving themselves against driftwood at the start of the beach, waiting. By then she had not only Marcey Mandret but Arrow Normand in her living room, and Arrow Normand’s mother, who she thought was one of the most unpleasant human beings on the planet. Annabeth understood the photographers. They were trying to make a living, and they made a better living the more aggressive they got. Only a very few of them could have “special relationships” with celebrities that would let them get exclusives just for being who they were. Annabeth wouldn’t for a moment excuse their behavior just because of that. Everybody had to make a living, and most people managed to do it without being crude, rude, objectionable jerks. It was just that she understood it, and she didn’t understand Arrow Normand’s mother at all.
“We’d be back in Los Angeles already if it wasn’t for the filming,” Mrs. Normand said, her voice sounding like a television turned all the way up on speakers that had started to go bad. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard they were going to go back to filming the day after tomorrow, but I talked to Carl Frank, that son of a bitch, and they are. Maybe Arrow could get some kind of medical exemption. You’re a doctor, right? Stewart Gordon called you doctor? Maybe you could give Arrow a note and we could get out of here.”
Arrow was sitting in the big club chair. Her mother was sitting at one end of the couch. Marcey Mandret was sitting at the other. Annabeth found herself wishing that Stewart had not gone off to do whatever it was he had to do, because at least he could find a way to talk to this woman. Oddly enough, Annabeth was having very little trouble talking to Marcey and Arrow, who seemed to be mostly young. Arrow was also deeply and profoundly stupid, but there was no malice in it, and she always seemed to be trying very hard. Mrs. Normand looked more like a caricature than a human being. Her hair was long and bright blond. Her makeup would have made more sense on someone fifteen years younger and several shades lighter complexioned. Her nails were several inches long and so red they would have glowed in the dark. Annabeth put the big tray of tea things and cookies and little cakes on the coffee table and then retreated to a straight-backed chair that she didn’t usually consider comfortable. Right now, its principle distinction was being on the other side of the coffee table from all the rest of them, and that was comfort enough.
“Well?” Mrs. Normand said. She sounded annoyed. “Will you give Arrow a note so that she can skip the filming this week? I mean, you do talk, don’t you? A couple of minutes ago, I think I even heard you.”
Deep in the club chair, Arrow stirred, looking mulish. “She isn’t that kind of doctor,” she said. “And Mama, I told you, I don’t want to skip the filming. We onl
y have another week before we’re finished—”
“If we all show up on time all the time and we’re ready,” Marcey said from the couch.
“And I don’t want to have to do this anymore,” Arrow said. “If I skip, I’ll just have to come back and do it later.”
“What do you mean she’s not that kind of doctor?” Mrs. Normand said. “Do you mean she’s some kind of shrink?”
Annabeth Falmer had never used the “doctor” in front of her name except at academic exercises, where other people insisted, and this was why. Now she drew her chair up to the coffee table and began to pour out, starting with Marc-ey’s cup, because she’d spent enough time with Marcey to know what she wanted. She tried to remember how Arrow Normand and her mother had ended up in her house, but it was a blur. Stewart had thought it would be best “under the circumstances,” but she wasn’t sure what the circumstances were, and she had no illusions about this house’s security against rampaging paparazzi. For some reason, Mrs. Normand took the situation as given, so Annabeth thought that must be something, she didn’t know what.
Marcey liked her tea with enough honey in it to re-create a beehive. Annabeth fixed it and handed over the cup. Marcey took it as if she were taking a life preserver, and then she drank half of it off in just one gulp. Annabeth didn’t know how she did it. The water was scalding. She didn’t seem to care. Annabeth looked at Mrs. Normand again. Arrow might be stupid, but her mother was something worse, ignorant and proud of it, and angry as hell.
“I don’t understand,” Annabeth said, without meaning to—she hadn’t meant to speak aloud at all, “why all of you are so angry all the time. You’d think you’d be ecstatic. You’re young. You have more money than most people will ever see. You’re famous. I ’d have killed for half of that at your age. But you don’t seem to like it.”
“Oh, God,” Mrs. Normand said. “She is a shrink. That’s just what we need. A shrink. Maybe we can get a psychological note. Maybe we could have you checked into the hospital for exhaustion.”
