Oh God, the morning’s humiliation was now complete. She took the pen she had been holding and jammed it in her palm.
But Range wasn’t finished with her yet. “Cassie, what’s the deal with this tropical storm in the Gulf? From the sound of it, we better get in position over there.”
She’d been avoiding it. If she didn’t bring it up, maybe it would go away. Yeah, right. But she didn’t want to think about the possibility of a hurricane. She wanted to see Hannah this weekend. Cassie was only thirty-nine, she reasoned with herself. Hannah was only thirteen. There was still time to make things right between them.
But in Miami, as in Washington before, work called the shots.
CHAPTER 9
The arrival of the Suncoast Broadcasting Company news crew added to the hubbub on Siesta Beach. Trudging through the sand and dripping with perspiration, the WSBC-TV news photographer-editor Brian Mueller followed his reporter. They couldn’t locate the kid who had found the hand, but they recorded an interview with a sheriff’s deputy and got reaction from people on the beach.
“I think it was a shark,” said one woman.
“This is a helluva way to start the day,” said a man who identified himself as a vacationing New Yorker.
The guy’s right, thought Brian. This was a crappy way to start what was going to be a long, long day. Once they got enough here, they’d have to hurry back to the station and put together the story for noon. Then the news director would have the bright idea that the piece should be updated for the six o’clock hour, so they’d scarf down some lunch, then go back out and try to find some new element to advance the story. Then rush back again to the station, edit and feed into the show. But that wouldn’t be the end of it.
Brian had to shoot that charity event at the Ringling mansion tonight where the Boys Next Door were going to play. He had to get all those society types arriving for cocktails on the Cà d’Zan terrace. He’d be lucky if he was home by midnight.
“They aren’t paying me enough,” Brian muttered under his labored breath as his reporter pointed toward the sheriff’s investigators walking away from the seawall, signaling that the photographer should get the shot.
Brian hoisted the camera up to his shoulder, aimed in the direction of the officers, focused, and recorded a shot that pushed in on the case an investigator carried. The hand was wrapped up in that case. Gross.
Nope, Brian thought, Suncoast wasn’t paying him enough to do the stories he had to drag himself out on. And certainly not enough for the twelve- and thirteen-hour days he routinely put in, or for the road trips that the news director expected him to make during sweeps periods. But the job did give him respectability. Brian liked to tell everyone he worked in the news business, though his larger source of income came from somewhere and someone else.
The flashy red sports car he drove signaled to his outside friends that he was doing quite well, but the people who worked in the newsroom with him were puzzled. Each had an idea of what the others were making, and Brian Mueller was not making enough at WSBC-TV to afford a Corvette and that prime condo he was renting right on the water. They didn’t know Brian made his real money moonlighting for Webb Morelle. Webb paid big and the work was enjoyable, but editing X-rated movies didn’t go over well with most folks. Pornography, exotica, adult entertainment, whatever you wanted to call it—if you mentioned that you worked on sex videos, people thought you were a pervert.
Not that a lot of those same judgmental people weren’t watching the porno flicks themselves. Webb was always boasting that pornography in the United States was bigger business than pro baseball, basketball, and football put together. Lots of people were watching, but no one admitted it.
“Hey, Brian, I think that’s him!” called the reporter, motioning toward a skinny kid walking from the direction of the road to the seawall accompanied by a whitehaired yet robust-looking man sporting a mustache and wearing the long-sleeved shirt, pants, and brimmed hat of a fisherman. When the boy and his companion reached the wall, they stopped, and Brian recorded a long shot of the boy pointing and gesturing as he talked to the old man.
The reporter approached the boy. “Are you the one who found the hand?”
Vincent nodded.
“Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
The old guy interrupted. “Who are you and who do you work for?”
For just an instant the reporter looked crestfallen, and Brian tried not to smile. The reporter liked to think that everyone in Sarasota watched him on television and knew who he was. Well, they don’t, buddy. Get over yourself.
“We’re with Suncoast News. I’m Tony Whitcomb. This is for a report on the noon news today, and I’m sure it will be on again tonight.”
The fisherman looked at the news pair skeptically, but the kid was champing at the bit to talk. “Come on, Gideon,” said the boy. “I’ll be on TV!”
“Maybe you should check with your mother first,” suggested the old man.
The boy hesitated and looked up at Whitcomb for his reaction.
The reporter glanced at his watch. “We’ve got to get back to the station, kid, so we don’t have a lot of time. How ’bout I give you my card and you call me and tell me if your mom doesn’t want you to be on TV?”
Gideon shrugged, and Vincent eagerly began to tell his story for the WSBC-TV camera. The boy made no mention of the ring.
CHAPTER 10
Just as the operator called to connect the Miami Bureau to the conference call with the Fishbowl in New York, Leroy Barry dropped his knapsack on his desk, unzipped it, pulled out a can of Coke, and popped open the flip top. He put the phone on speaker, hit the mute button, and settled back in his chair, lifting his feet up onto his desk. He wasn’t going to be called upon to speak, so he could relax.
The drill was the same every day. The conference call was designed to fill in the domestic news bureau personnel on what was being worked on throughout the United States and the rest of the world to air on the KEY Evening Headlines with Eliza Blake that night. The Los Angeles Bureau chief spoke first, listing what was going on in the western half of the country. Next came the South and North editors, speaking from their desks in New York on what they had on the agenda based on their calls with the Miami, Chicago, and Dallas Bureaus and information gleaned from the KEY affiliated local news departments in their regions. Then the Washington senior producer chimed in with what was going on in the nation’s capital. Range Bullock rounded out the call with news of foreign coverage and any Fresher Looks or special stories not mentioned by anyone else.
With a notepad and pen in hand, Cassie slid into the only other chair in Leroy’s cluttered office as the call began. It was a busy news day. Los Angeles had sent a reporter and crew to Montana to cover forest fires raging there. In the Northeast, West Nile virus was popping up again and a heat wave was smothering the northeast corridor. Washington had at least three stories that looked like they would make air tonight. The president was returning from a NATO summit meeting, the Pentagon was releasing new successes on the terrorist target front, and the attorney general was zipping around on personal business on a chartered private jet at taxpayers’ expense. Leroy thought he noticed Cassie cringe when it was announced that Valeria Delaney was covering that one.
“We have spectacular volcano eruption pictures from Mount Etna,” Range declared. “Fabulous flowing lava and scorched earth. Gerald Mazza will have a package from Sicily on that.”
Cassie noticed that Leroy was absentmindedly clicking his pen. A bad sign. He was eager to have a story. Leroy was always eager to have a story. He knew that a running list was kept in New York of the number of pieces each producer and correspondent put together. He also knew that having a high count would hold him in good stead come next contract negotiation. More important, his ego demanded that his packages regularly air. In the past five months his story count had dwindled, and they both knew why. The Bowl wasn’t using Cassie, and Leroy resented the hell out of the position tha
t left him in.
He angrily stabbed the button on the phone console, ending participation in the conference call. “With a little luck, that storm will keep building,” he said. “I can’t stand waiting around here. I want to cover some news.”
Cassie said nothing.
WILL CLAYTON took Cassie’s call as he had every Monday morning for the last six months, out of a sense of gratitude and obligation and perhaps to ensure that she wouldn’t go public. If the director knew that it was he who had given Cassie the information about Maggie Lynch, he would be finished at the FBI. But, so far, Cassie had refused to reveal the source of her information. Will wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
“How ya doin’, Cassie?”
“I’ll be much better if you tell me there’s something new.”
“I wish I could, Cassie. I wish I could. The director is on the warpath about it.”
“God, Will, I can’t believe you guys haven’t figured this out yet.”
“Give us a break, will you, Cassie? We don’t have all that much to work with. Three cases. That’s it. Maggie Lynch in February, the one before that last November in Miami, and the one this spring in Louisville. The guy is really spreading things out.”
Cassie thought of the details of the latest attack, in May. The same M.O. as the others. A young woman, followed home at night, waking to a knife at her neck, the grotesque clown’s face breathing into hers.
“The makeup could have been purchased anywhere, and the airline rosters didn’t show any name recurring on flights from those cities on those dates,” Will continued, defending the bureau’s investigation. “The best leads we have come from the victims’ statements. The fact that the duration of each attack increased with the victim’s passivity, that he promised not to hurt these women if they complied, and asked them to tell him that they loved him—all of this suggests to us that he is a compensatory rapist.”
“What’s that?” Cassie interrupted.
“It means he’s not your everyday scare ’em, tear ’em attacker. We think this guy’s core fantasy is that the victim will actually enjoy the rape and fall in love with him. Because of his inadequate personality, the rape assuages the doubts he has about himself. The big problem is that when this clown’s—excuse the pun—when his need for reassurance arises again, it will be time to go out and find somebody else to make him feel better about himself.”
At the end of their conversation, Cassie hung up in frustration. This rapist had to be caught, before he savaged another woman’s life. And if he was found, she might, please God, be able to stop feeling so guilty.
CHAPTER 11
With Lou-Anne on her way to the hair salon and the kids escorted by the mother’s helper to story hour at the library, Webb Morelle had the spacious multilevel condo to himself. He poured a third cup of coffee, lacing it with half-and-half and three sugars, cut a generous wedge of iced coffee cake, grabbed a paper towel for a napkin, and lumbered down the steps from the kitchen that led to his home screening room. Webb lowered himself onto the huge sectional sofa, clicking the remote control as he raised his pajama-clad legs onto the marble coffee table.
The opening credits popped onto the big screen encased in the custom-built wall unit. “Merilee We Roll Along,” proclaimed the title. “A Web of Desire Production.”
Webb loosened the sash of his silk bathrobe and settled back into the plush cushions to enjoy the show. The surround sound created an acoustic environment that made Webb feel as though he was experiencing the action on the screen. He smiled, becoming increasingly certain at each grunt and groan that Merilee We Roll Along was going to be another big moneymaker.
This was the second video in which Webb had cast Merilee as his star. The first, Merilee, Merilee, Merilee, Life Is But a Dream, had been the best-selling video Web of Desire Productions had ever had. Webb didn’t kid himself that the script he had written was the secret to the movie’s success. Nor was it the dry ice machine that made the misty clouds enveloping the actors as they went through their contortions, nor that shredded angel costume that Merilee wore. The secret was Merilee herself, and her cloud of dark hair and tawny velvet skin that stretched over a tight body that didn’t quit. It was Merilee with her deep brown eyes and playful expression that dominated that video. The camera loved her, and she loved the camera right back.
Webb watched the giant screen now as Merilee wrapped herself around her partner in porn, Van Jensen. No doubt about it. This would be another hit, even if it turned out to be the last time Merilee starred for Web of Desire Productions.
He clicked off the video, tossed the remote on the table, and laid his head back to rest on the top of the sofa. Webb stared at the ceiling and the multicolored mural painted there. Lou-Anne had paid a pretty penny to have those entertaining scenes depicting Sarasota’s circus history. Trapeze artists and elephants and ring-masters and clowns, all under the big top. The source of inspiration for some of the many video stories that had made the Morelles millionaires. Lou-Anne often used this room to entertain the ladies from her various social committees. If those women only knew what really paid for all the catered luncheons down here and the thick carpet on which they parked their Ferragamos.
He knew his wife was mortified at the thought of the socialites finding out what he did for a living. She demanded Webb’s secretary answer the office telephone with the generic “Production Company.” She insisted that they make contributions to many of the local charities, which were all too happy to accept his fat checks. She told anyone who asked that her husband made motivational sales videos for corporate clients. Yeah, right, thought Webb. They’re motivational all right. The biggest motivators of all.
God, there was money to be made in this business! He’d bet that though he’d barely made it to graduation, he was making more now than most of his Ivy League classmates who had graduated at the top of their class and worked at the nation’s most prestigious law firms and corporations. Funny how life turned out. Twenty years ago he’d taken that part-time job at the off-campus video store, and the rest was history. The English major found that he spent a good deal of time answering the questions of customers who wanted to know how to tell one adult videotape from another. The VCR was starting to find its way into more and more American homes then, and Webb was sure its popularity was driven, to some degree, by the easier and more anonymous access it offered to porn. Before home video, pornography had a much smaller audience, mainly men, who sneaked into sleazy movie houses and took care of business under their raincoats. The VCR made it easy to watch porn in the privacy of your own bedroom. At the same time, the spread of AIDS was frightening many men—and women—from sallying forth into the world for their sexual adventures. For many watching porn equaled safe sex.
Webb saw an opportunity and seized it. He was sure there would be a huge market for adult videos. Why spend his time sweating over the great American novel, unsure that he would ever find a publisher to print it or an audience to read it? That was for the guys who didn’t care if they ate or not. Webb knew he wanted the good life, and the good life cost plenty. If he could write and produce his own adult movies, he’d always have an audience for his creativity, and at the same time he could make a fortune.
He’d started by conducting a verbal survey of his fraternity brothers on what they’d like to see in a porno flick. Cheerleaders and pretty coeds in short skirts and tight sweaters seemed to be the prevailing preferences. He then scribbled out a rough script about a nerdy-looking guy who went to class and fantasized about a beautiful girl who sat in front of him. Next Webb sought out a couple of kids from the wrong side of the tracks who were anxious to make some money and willing to do what the script called for, dressing the guy in a Dartmouth sweatshirt and the girl in a tight T-shirt. He shot his first movie with a camera he “borrowed” from the school audiovisual department. Dee Dee Does Dartmouth became a fraternity row hit.
While other classmates were doing internships at the companies and bro
kerage firms in which they hoped to find jobs upon graduation, Webb spent his summer before senior year writing and sending away for college sweatshirts. Yolanda Does Yale, Happy Does Harvard, and Pia Does Princeton were dubbed and distributed by winter break. America sure was the land of opportunity.
As Webb’s life had progressed, so had the porn. The Ivy League series had led to Office Girls as he pumped his friends for their thoughts about the women they worked with in their first jobs. There was an endless pool of fantasies about secretaries and co-workers and supervisors set on the office desks and in boardrooms of corporate America. Next Webb developed the Scales of Justice series, full of actresses playing attorneys wearing only suit jackets and stiletto heels and judges with surprises under their flowing robes.
Now, two decades and many movies later, Webb’s business empire included a state-of-the-art production studio in Sarasota, an Internet website, and a distribution warehouse in Miami to fill the thousands of orders that poured in every month. He’d chosen to locate in Sarasota in part because he hated the cold northeast winters but also because he wanted the option of shooting outside all year round. The location had afforded him another rich stream of ideas. His Circus series was wildly successful, and Fishermen and Golfers were big hits as well. It was amazing how creative his actors could be with fishing rods and seven irons.
Webb was enthused about his latest project. Velvet Nights in Venice. He’d written the script, inspired by the Venetian architecture of Cà d’Zan and the velvety skin of Merilee. Tonight the plans were all in place to shoot on the terrace of the old Ringling mansion at a fund-raiser being held for literacy projects. What a joke! Brian Mueller would shoot video for Suncoast News, and all the society swells would be eager to have their mugs shown on the eleven o’clock news supporting the worthy cause. Little would they suspect that the outtakes would be used to open Webb’s next video.
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