Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

  “You have a famous face,” she said. “How many people spotted you downstairs in the lobby? How many of them saw you get on the elevator?”

  “Oh, I don’t need an alibi tonight. This time, I’ll be the one who discovers the Reaper’s next victim.” He held up her old business card and flipped it over to show her a personal note. “Recognize your own handwriting? I took this off the corpse of Agent Kidd. The wording is ambiguous, no names or dates, just a reminder that the appointment’s been changed from ten to eleven o’clock. I’ll say you invited me over, lured me here with the prospect of interviewing Victor. But then—what a shock—you killed him right before my eyes.” He looked down at his watch. “It’s close to eleven o’clock.”

  “I don’t know where Victor is.” And this was true. She had been unable to reach him tonight.

  “What a pity.” He pulled a small silver penknife from his pocket and opened the blade. The honed metal edge gleamed bright. “You can split hairs with this thing—razor sharp.” Zachary smiled in mock chagrin. “Oh, I lied about not having a weapon.”

  Removing the telephone from her lap, he set it on the floor. “Fine, don’t call Victor. I’ll just have to make do with you.” He rose to his feet and backed away from her. “More fun this way. Make me chase you around a bit. Up you go.” With a lifting gesture of the small knife, he urged her to rise. “How fast can a hunchback run?”

  Crazy Bitch sat behind Ian Zachary’s console, leaning into a stationary microphone and saying, “They’re coming, boys and girls.” She had cut off the pretaped interview to give the fans a moment-by-moment account of an unknown invader drilling out the lock on the studio door. “Is it the cops? Is it the Reaper? Stay tuned.” She laughed too loud, creating an electronic feedback squeal that drowned out the sound of the drill. Hysteria was toned down to mere giggles. “Yeah, like you’re gonna turn me off before that door opens. Oh, here they come.”

  There was an unintentional moment of high drama in the silence that followed. The door swung open, and Crazy Bitch had lost her voice, unable to adequately describe the scene before her eyes when tall Mallory strode into the room, wielding a wicked-looking drill and carrying the shield of a medieval knight. The blonde was moving forward with grim resolve.

  Could this woman be any more pissed off?

  Crazy Bitch thought not.

  Ian Zachary could not yet bear to part with his audience, or this was Johanna’s thought as she watched the small blade dip and rise to punctuate his words.

  “You have no alibi for any of the jury murders,” he said. “I was very careful about that. Curse of the grotesque. Poor baby, you spent all your evenings alone. And then there was Timothy Kidd, murdered in your reception room. Now Bunny’s crime scene was a piece of luck. I was counting on the neighbors to lead the police back to you. I never expected you to be there when they found the body.”

  Zachary turned away from her, thinking so little of her ability to fight back. After plumping up the couch pillows, he sat down and stretched out his legs on the coffee table. “Standing trial for murder isn’t the worst that could—”

  A knock on the door was followed by Riker’s voice yelling, “Jo, it’s me! Open up! I know you’ve got my gun!”

  Zachary, vaguely amused, pulled the revolver from his pocket. “This is his ? You stole a cop’s gun?” He inclined his head in the manner of a complimentary bow. “You’re an interesting woman, Dr. Apollo.” He waved the revolver in the direction of the door. “Let him in.”

  Johanna smiled, and he didn’t like that. “You’re afraid of Riker,” she said. “You’re the one with the gun, but you’d never open that door yourself. You don’t want to get that close to him.”

  The knocking was constant now and louder.

  “You were hoping he’d just get tired and go away?” Zachary crooked one finger around the base of a ceramic table lamp. “I think this might get his attention.”

  The lamp toppled to the floor, smashing to pieces. Riker’s knocking escalated to the bang of a closed fist, and he yelled, “Jo!”

  Zachary took aim at the door. “I can drop him from here if you like. Let him in, or I’ll shoot him right now.”

  “It’s a big gun,” said Johanna. “Powerful.” She stood up and moved between the door and the couch, blocking his aim. Behind her back, she could hear the savage kicks to the wood, but the dead bolt lock was holding. “You could get both of us with one bullet—if you’re lucky. But you won’t risk a shot through a closed door—not you, the pathological planner. What if you miss Riker? What happens to all that careful scheming? Improvisation is not your forte.”

  “It’s a moot point, Doctor. Look at what he’s doing to that door.”

  She turned to see the wood splintering on one side of the lock. The frame was cracking, yielding, and there was only time to open the bottom drawer of the armoire before the door banged inward and Riker crashed into the room. He had one instant to register the weapon in the other man’s hand, and then Johanna made a mighty swing to bring the wine bottle across the back of his skull.

  Riker dropped like a stone.

  Crazy Bitch played the tape for a commercial break during the police-enforced interlude. Her eyes were trained on Mallory, who was evidently not Zack’s own private cop.

  One of the uniformed officers carried the drill into the hall and knelt down before the lock on the producer’s door. Inside the studio, the two police in street clothes stood before the booth’s window, admiring the sheet spread across it. Far from the effect of a cartoon ghost, the black slashes that stood for eyes were eerie. The thick glass was scratched but intact, and the remnants of a broken chair lay on the floor below.

  Detective Mallory walked toward the console, intractable as a slow train wreck in the making. She wanted an explanation—right now.

  “Zack did it,” said Crazy Bitch, so easily prompted by a vision of Mallory’s footprint on her face. “He left before the show started.” She affected a deep frown as she turned to the producer’s booth. “At least I think Zack’s gone.”

  Was she overdoing this? Yes, she must be, for the blonde had one hand on her hip, and, in the other hand, the drill was slowly swinging like a pendulum.

  “I’ve been playing pretaped interviews. You can’t have dead airtime. I could lose my job for that. So how do you like the show so far?”

  The drill crashed to the floor. The blond police braced both hands on the top of the console, leaning forward to communicate that Crazy Bitch should not to try her patience for one more minute.

  Lieutenant Coffey interceded, calling out, “Hey, kid, what happened here?”

  “I’m pretty sure Zack wanted to kill Needleman.”

  “The producer?” Coffey turned to face the draped window. “Is he in there now?”

  “Who knows? Well, Needleman’s door is always locked,” said Crazy Bitch, “so Zack tried to break through bulletproof glass. And that was really nuts. He even knows the glass is unbreakable, but there he is, red in the face, banging that chair against the window. Then he racked up a few hours of old canned interviews and ran out the door. But I really liked the tape he made tonight. So, after he left, I changed the—”

  “Shut up,” said Detective Mallory.

  The lieutenant was more polite, but just barely. “When Zachary left, was he carrying a weapon?”

  “No, not that I could see, but I wouldn’t take chances if I were you. I mean look at what he did to that chair.” She stared at the sheet covering the producer’s window. “Zack might be in there. If you kill him, can I still finish the show?”

  Ian Zachary stood over the inanimate body of Riker. “Well, that solves the immediate problem. Is he dead?”

  “I’m a doctor.” Johanna knelt on the floor, checking life signs and finding them strong. “I know how to place my shots.” The blow had split the skin of Riker’s scalp, and his blood was on her right hand.

  Zachary leaned into the hallway. “I love this town. All these people be
hind their closed doors. They don’t want to get involved. Ah, New Yorkers.”

  “They probably didn’t hear anything. The walls are very thick—just like Riker’s place. I know what you did to him, and that was a mistake. He had no idea you were the Reaper.”

  “Oh, the blanks? Yes, I suppose it was a pointless plan—but great fun. He actually fainted.”

  Johanna shook her head. “He scared you, didn’t he? Riker caught you by surprise that night, but you’d never go up against him with a knife. So you picked up the first weapon that came to hand, Mac’s gun—Mac’s bullets. No, that wasn’t planning, Zachary. That was just another mistake.”

  She looked up at him, only a glance to gauge the fall of his confidence, then her eyes were cast down as she stared at her hand, at Riker’s blood. “You can still walk away from this,” she said. “My fingerprints are on the bottle that hit him.”

  “He saw me point the gun at him.”

  “That’s not a problem. Side effect of concussion—it can wipe out ten or twenty minutes of memory, and Riker only saw you for a second. But what if he did remember? So what? He knows I’m the one who stole his gun. You can say you took it away from me, that you saved him from the Reaper—me. Don’t you see? You don’t need one more dead body to make the case. Just pick up the phone and call 911. The story’s more believable if you’re the one who makes that call.”

  “You’re good, Doctor. And you’re right. Your little plan might work. But that would still leave the loose end of Victor Patchock.”

  “He won’t make a credible witness in court.”

  Zachary was no longer listening to her. His smiling eyes were lit with some new inspiration. “You have a much more interesting choice now.” He pointed the gun at Riker. “I can kill him—or you can get Victor Patchock over here. Pick one.” He waved the gun from side to side. “Who lives? Who dies? Up to you.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Johanna, as if Riker’s life meant very little to her. She rose from the floor, the bottle still gripped in one hand. “First, I’m going to wash up. And then I’m going to pour myself a drink.” She turned toward the bathroom, fighting down the impulse to look back at Riker and see which way the gun was pointing now.

  “Dr. Apollo? Hold it! I’ll tell you where you can go and when.”

  “Then shoot me.” She turned around to face him. “No, you can’t do that, can you? A gun—that’s not the Reaper’s style.” She took one step toward him and raised the bottle as a reminder that she had just brought down a bigger man, a better one. “Now how do you like your chances with that tiny knife? Like I said, Zachary, you’re no good at improvising. And there’s another flaw in your plan. That business card with my personal invitation? That note is in my secretary’s handwriting,” she lied. “I haven’t seen that woman since Timothy died. Do you want the police to find that card in your pocket? No, I didn’t think so. While you’re burning that little piece of evidence, I’ll be washing up.” Bottle gripped tight in her right hand, she left him standing there and closed the bathroom door behind her.

  “No, I said Zack might be inside.” Crazy Bitch stared at the recently opened door of the producer’s booth. “He really wanted to get in there.”

  “But you’re the one who glued the locks shut,” said Mallory.

  “Yeah, just in case he was in there. Well, he’s crazy, isn’t he?”

  “And you didn’t want anybody to know that you were running the show tonight.” Mallory inspected the interior, then pointed to the sheet spread across the window. “Is that your work?”

  “How could it be? The producer’s door is always locked.”

  “But you had a key, didn’t you?”

  Crazy Bitch gave her a wobbly smile as she backed up to the door of the studio. “The commercial break is over. I have to get back to my show. It’s my show now.”

  “Just a minute.” Jack Coffey appeared behind her, blocking her backward exit. “Where can we find this guy Needleman?”

  “Probably home in bed. It’s a school night.”

  Mallory loomed over the shorter woman, willing her to make sense with a glare that promised unspeakable violence if sense was not immediately forthcoming.

  Crazy Bitch hurried to explain that Needleman was the station manager’s nephew. “He’s only fourteen years old.”

  “A payroll scam,” said Mallory. “So the station manager pockets the extra paycheck?”

  “You didn’t hear that from me, okay?”

  “Tell me how you know,” said Coffey.

  “Well, the station manager goes home at six. So it was my job to unlock the producer’s booth after Zack left for the night. A couple of real producers use it for the morning shows. I was told it was a joke, just a way to get back at the bastard and drive him nuts. And that was fine with me, but I didn’t believe it. If that was true, why not just give the other producers keys of their own?”

  Lieutenant Coffey seemed smug as he turned on Mallory, saying, “Good reasoning. I might give this kid your job.” Crazy Bitch sensed a note of payback in his voice as he rested one hand on her shoulder, saying, “Go on, kid. Tell us how you cracked the payroll scam.”

  “I screwed the hundred-year-old bookkeeper. He gets a cut from the producer’s paycheck—and he told me.”

  Mallory missed the moment of the lieutenant’s disappointment. Her head was turned, listening to the whispers of a policewoman. And now she ran down the hall. Lieutenant Coffey turned to the officer. “What did you say to her?”

  “I gave her a message from Detective Janos,” said the police officer. “Her car was stolen. Some firemen got the license plate number after the car hit their truck. They saw the thief driving south.”

  Johanna stood before the sink, looking down at the pimpernel Riker had drawn on the palm of her hand. She washed away his flower and his blood.

  After leaving the bathroom, she walked into the kitchen, pulled down a wineglass from a rack on the wall, then rummaged in a drawer. The noise attracted Zachary. He was at her side when she pulled out the corkscrew.

  The muzzle of the gun was pressed to the back of her head, yet her voice was perfectly calm. “Sorry,” she said. “Looks dangerous, doesn’t it?” She held up the twisty metal and made a show of inspecting it. “So sharp.” Johanna walked past him, pretending that the gun did not exist. She sat down in an armchair and plunged the tip of the screw into the cork of the wine bottle. “Your plan is falling apart.” She twisted the corkscrew by a full turn, driving it deeper. “Wondering how many other mistakes you made?”

  And now she noticed her crime-scene bag open on the floor by the couch.

  Zachary pulled on one of her disposable gloves, then picked up a rag and proceeded to clean Riker’s revolver. “Tell me what you think of my new plan—my improvisation. First I shoot you in the head. You see? I can be flexible. Then I put the gun in your dead hand and shoot poor Riker in the heart.” He held up his gloved hand. “When the police arrive, yours are the only fingerprints on the weapon. A clear case of murder and suicide. That works so nicely with all your guilt for those dead jurors.”

  “You’re making this too complicated,” she said, twisting the screw deeper. “More mistakes.” She pulled out the cork. “I washed Riker’s blood off the bottle. I hope you don’t mind me tampering with your evidence.”

  He made a long reach across the cocktail table and ripped the bottle from her grasp. “No problem. There’s still a blood-stain on the label. I think that’s enough to point the way for the police. How dumb can they be? Incidentally, you have excellent taste in wine. The last time I saw this vintage—”

  “Was the night Timothy saw you in the liquor store. That’s when you thought he’d pegged you as the Reaper. And that’s why you killed him.” She gave him a benign smile. “You can’t fob that off as just another detail in your great plan. You killed him because you panicked. One more murder might be dicey. You’ve botched so many things.”

  He leveled the gun at her face.
“Are you sure you want to piss me off?”

  “Not my intention—just a symptom of something called the Stockholm syndrome.”

  He nodded. “Hostages bonding with their kidnappers. I don’t see the—”

  “There’s more to it. The hostages actually work with the kidnappers. You see, it’s in their best interests to help the kidnapper get the result he wants so the victim can survive. That’s why I’m going to help you fix your errors—like the one with the business card.”

  “No, you’re stalling for time. Waiting for reinforcements? Do you actually believe that Riker would tell another cop he’d lost his gun to a woman? Absurd. No one is coming to your rescue. Time to make a decision, Dr. Apollo.” He walked to the kitchen and pulled another goblet from the rack on the wall. On his way back to the couch, he paused to nudge Riker’s body with his foot, then moved on to pour some wine into Johanna’s glass and more into his own.

  “Are you sure you want to drink that?”

  “Are you insane?” He held the bottle high. “It’s impossible to find this vintage anymore.”

  That might well be true. She had inadvertently cornered the market with her collection. “What if the wine is poisoned?”

  His glass hovered in midair, and his face was also frozen.

  “You’re not sure, are you? Lost your edge?” She sipped from her wineglass and assumed what she hoped was a Mallory smile.

  Perversely, he found that reassuring, and tipped back his own glass for a long draught. “You still believe you can talk your way out of this?”

  She nodded and drank her wine. And he drank.

  “Just as I remember it—fabulous.” His gaze fell on Riker’s body. “Too bad. I actually liked that man.”

  “He’s not dead yet,” said Johanna.

  “He’ll be dead soon enough, Doctor. And it’s all your fault, you know. All those murders. If only you’d hung that jury when you had the chance. It would’ve taken one vote—yours. If you’d voted guilty, my plan would have died right there in the courtroom. You see that now, don’t you? All your fault. And now poor Riker has to die.”