by Sandra Brown
The werewolf still seemed to be looking at her.
Hungrily.
I could call Greg. If he wasn’t working, he’d come. He’d come save me…just as he had been determined to save Cassandra.
That sudden thought made her wince. Maybe Greg was with his ex-girlfriend now. Or, maybe, Ali had thrown away her happiness because she’d never really grasped his sense of responsibility. He’d told her once that as a homicide detective, he’d learned that it was only the living he could really help. Sure, the dead did deserve justice, and he could help get that justice for them. But it was those still in danger—whether from a perp or themselves—who still really needed help.
Thinking about Greg wasn’t going to help her now. Realizing that she’d only gone on a few half-witted dates since she’d left their apartment that night certainly wasn’t exactly good for her mind, either. Remembering the ruggedly handsome and rough-hewn sculpture of his face, and thinking that she’d never been frightened of anything with him around was not going to get her through the night. And, certainly, thinking about being in bed with him on a lazy day, his naked flesh next to hers, even the scent of him intoxicating, would not stop the shuffling sound from terrifying her now… .
She gave herself a mental shake. Oddly enough, thinking about Greg was helpful. She felt stronger, remembering his strength and determination, coupled with an even temper that always seemed to allow him to go forward.
What would Greg say now? she wondered.
She smiled to herself. Well, in all honesty, Greg would tell her to get out and get away, and call a cop. But then, he might also smile and remind her that her imagination was truly fantasmic, and that sometimes she had to live in the real world. Lord, there had been that one time when she had been working on the gauntlets for Knights and Aliens when he had stood behind her, fingers in her hair, knuckles brushing down over her cheeks while his whisper teased her ear, reminding her that the knights weren’t real, but he was, and he only had a few hours left before heading out for his shift.
They’d made love for hours then, and she had laughed and suggested they should actually make a movie: Homicide Cop and Prop Girl. Naturally, he’d be Supercop, and she’d have extra powers, and of course, he told her, she did have extra powers—what her lips did to his flesh was superhuman… .
That was then. This was now.
Yes, it was just that it was dark, and she was alone. What was benign by day seemed frightening by night.
So, the werewolf had the appearance of being about to pounce at any given second. And the damned zombie seemed to be watching her, too, as if it was about to salivate any minute. She’d had a part in creating them; they were damned good effects!
She heard the shuffling sound coming from the rear of the storage room again.
She was an idiot. She needed to get downstairs and get the hell out.
She couldn’t just run out; she had to finish work tonight—if she still wanted to have a job tomorrow. She could imagine trying to explain herself to Dustin Avery, her boss. “The zombie and the werewolf were freaking me out, Dustin, and I kept hearing this shuffling sound…so, let’s just put that umpteen-million-dollar shoot off a day. It’s Victor’s fault. He didn’t come back with dinner.”
For a moment, she was almost overwhelmed by the impulse to call Greg. No. She stood still, trying to turn every muscle in her body into steel with her mind; she couldn’t call Greg. Not now. Not ever.
He’d been the love of her life at one time. But she’d left him the night he’d left her—because his crazy ex had been hospitalized and arrested on another drug charge. She’d tried so hard to tell him that he couldn’t keep bailing Cassandra out; he’d assured her that it didn’t mean anything. He felt responsible. Cassandra had a little boy—not his—but he still had to hope that she could get straight and care for the child. Once Ali had left him, she couldn’t talk to him again. And she couldn’t just call him casually now. “Hey, sorry, how are you? Yes, I know I’ve ignored your calls. But I’m alone at the studios, and I think a coworker is trying to scare me into getting fired.”
No, she couldn’t do it. She had to be rational.
She heard the shuffling sound again, but when she felt the chills race along her spine again, she straightened, gritting her teeth.
Victor was a jerk and a prankster. When he’d left, the place had supposedly been locked. He’d had a key to get back in, and she’d been so busy sewing the last zombie shirt, she probably hadn’t heard him return. And now…Victor was trying to freak her out.
She wasn’t going to run. She was going to turn the tables on him.
She gave the werewolf a pat on the chest. “Work with me, okay?” she whispered. She smiled grimly, and, using the creatures and mechanics to hide her, she began to tiptoe back toward the rear of the storage room.
* * *
Not at all far away, Greg Austin was on a case.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Tony Martini whispered.
Something similar almost escaped Greg Austin; he managed to remain silent as he surveyed the scene.
Gravestones. Opalescent in the moonlight, some full of lichen and appearing so worn by time that those buried beneath them must have been long forgotten, some bearing funerary art that drew the eye with its sheer beauty. Angels with folded wings wept over freestanding crypts, and cherubs holding crosses looked up to the skies. The ground seemed overgrown, as if the cemetery had long been neglected, completely lost in time.
And then, of course, there was the dead man. The newly dead man.
At first, he must have been hard to see, even for film director Howard Engel.
Because there were corpses lying everywhere. Some were missing limbs. Most had decaying flesh, and bone jutted from torn shirts and worn pants.
They weren’t real. They had been set two days ago for the scheduled shoot in the graveyard. The graveyard, of course, wasn’t real, either. It had been put together by the wizards of Fantasmic Effects. Thing is, filmmakers never planned for a real corpse showing up in the middle of their zombie shoot. It was understandable that Tony was spooked by the fake graveyard. He wasn’t as familiar with special effects as Greg. And, of course, Greg was familiar. He had lived with Ali for a year; he had loved to see the flash of emerald in her eyes when she’d had an idea for a superhero costume, or an evil elf, or some other being of fantasy or horror.
He winced, looking back at the studio building where she worked. Well, she’d be off for a few days now. There would definitely be no filming here by tomorrow’s light.
He felt the same dull ache he always felt when he thought about Ali, and he winced, and forced the pain down. He was working.
“Do you think it might be the work of the Slasher?” Tony asked. Over the past year, four women had been found in a similar position, torsos bent over on top of their beds, as if they’d died saying their nightly prayers, throats cut ear to ear.
“This is a man. So far, the Slasher only kills women. And in their homes,” Greg said. “I’m not saying that it might not be, but we can’t come to any real conclusions right now.”
Was it the Slasher? He’d been following clues. They’d questioned dozens of suspects, but the killer used gloves, and he seemed to know exactly what he was doing, studying police procedure, evidence…hell, he didn’t leave a hair, a drop of fluid—anything.
Greg hunkered down by the real corpse. The man lay half in and half out of a hole that had been dug in the ground—not a true six-foot depth, but maybe three and half or four feet. He’d been wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt sporting a ravenous shark on the back. That seemed an irony now, because the slashes just lower than the gaping jaws made it appear that a shark had taken a bite out of the man. But Greg doubted the slashes on the back had killed him; it was the fact that his head had nearly been severed by a ragged blade and lay at an odd twisted angle on the ground, along with his torso, while his legs dangled over the dark pit of the grave. He could so easily have been a part
of the set!
Greg slipped a gloved hand into the man’s pocket and found his wallet. His California driver’s license identified him as Victor Brill of Topanga Canyon. In his wallet, Victor also carried nearly two hundred dollars, an ATM card and a Platinum American Express. Robbery didn’t seem to be the motive. But then, overkill was seldom in play when the motive was robbery.
Overkill was usually the work of a psycho.
Still hunched down, Greg looked around the area again. He shook his head. The crime scene units were going to groan aloud when they arrived on the scene what with the body parts everywhere, and fake blood spattered across the “zombie” areas where the creatures had apparently just dined on unwary mourners. He’d checked the ground for impressions in the fake landscape himself; footprints, telltale signs indicating the killer’s path. There was such a hodgepodge of horror on the set that it was almost impossible to tell anything.
Greg motioned to the police photographer hovering back at the edge of the fake graveyard. “Come on over. M.E. will be here soon, and I want a good photo record before we move anything else.”
The police photographer, a grim young woman, started snapping even as she made her way over.
Overkill.
It was actually not an easy feat to nearly sever a man’s head. The throat and neck were vulnerable, of course, but to slice through all the flesh, muscle and ligaments down to the bone, well, that took some effort. And anger.
What had Victor Brill done to have received such wrath? Or had he done anything at all? Was this the work of the Slasher?
Greg stood; old Doc Mabry was carefully maneuvering his way to the site.
“That’s the real goner?” Mabry asked him.
Greg nodded. “Old” Doc Mabry wasn’t that old. But, recently, a series of retirements had left him, at fifty, the oldest M.E. working in the area. He was tall, straight, fit, and could have easily passed for an aging character actor.
“Well?” Greg asked.
“I may puke,” Tony Martini said.
Puke would really foul up the scene.
“Tony, go over to Durfey, there. He was the first to arrive, and I think that’s Howard Engel, the director standing with him. Find out what Engel was doing out here alone this late, and how he stumbled on the real body. Ask him about this fellow, Victor Brill. He might work here with the special effects people.”
Tony nodded and moved away. Greg watched while Doc Mabry hunkered down himself, investigating the corpse.
“How long has he been here?” Greg asked him.
Mabry looked up at him, looked around the “graveyard,” and then back to Greg. “Less than an hour. The guy is still warm and pliable, Greg. Hell, he must have died two minutes before he was found.”
Greg wasn’t sure what suddenly caused such a sharp pain in his gut. He nodded at Mabry, and left him, walking over to the side of the lot where Tony was now interviewing the director, Howard Engel.
“Mr. Engel, I’m Detective Austin,” Greg said.
Engel nodded abstractedly, looking past him to the body.
“Sir, what brought you out here tonight?” Greg asked.
“Huh?” The director looked at him, obviously shaken and barely registering anything. He was a slim, ordinary-looking man. He’d directed some of the biggest moneymaking films in the business. Not great epics with amazing acting, but rather, low budget films that had made his studio a fortune.
“Sir,” Greg repeated, “what brought you out here? Were you worried about a shoot?” Greg asked, trying to be patient, but feeling a growing sense of unease.
“I…no,” Engel said, blinking and then focusing on Greg at last. Greg’s steady gaze seemed to make him snap to the present, and still, the man flushed. “I—I came to visit the graveyard.”
“Yes, the set,” Greg said. “Was there a rea—”
“No, not the set,” Engel said, pointing over the brick wall that led to the back and the parking lot of the studios.
The effects studio, where, by day, Ali worked, creating monsters—and sometimes, things of beauty. Ali had such a talent, and such a smile. She’d laugh when she was talking, and she’d snuggle against him. Sometimes he would think about the real monsters he came across when he worked, but she was always his refuge. He’d feel her against him, they’d make love, and he’d know again why life was worth living, and why his life’s work mattered, as well.
“The real graveyard. The cemetery, actually. I think it’s a graveyard when it’s next to a church, and a cemetery—”
“Mr. Engel,” Greg interrupted. He’d forgotten there was a little cemetery right in back of the studios.
“Why were you visiting it?” he asked.
“Stupid of me, I guess. I came out tonight because of Blake Richards.”
“Blake Richards—founder of the effects studio?” Greg asked.
Engel nodded. He swallowed and looked at Greg sheepishly. “I felt like he wanted me to visit him. I don’t know. It sounds crazy. I came out to visit his grave. He worked with me on the first movie I ever did. I hadn’t been out to the grave in a while, and we were going to be shooting here, tomorrow, so…It felt like he was calling me.” He paused, flushing again. “Well, I guess this is really going to make me look like a murder suspect, but I came out to say a little something at his grave.”
The odd thing was, it sure as hell sounded as if the guy was telling the truth. Greg had gotten pretty good, through the years, at sifting truth from lies.
“Hey! Detective!” Mabry called to him, standing by the corpse. “All right if I get him out of here now?”
“Yes, you may bring Mr. Brill to the morgue,” Greg told Mabry.
“Brill?” Engel said.
“The dead man, Mr. Engel.”
Engel shook his head. “That’s not Victor Brill. I think Brill is still working, up over in the studios.”
“The studio is closed,” Greg said. The knifing pain in his gut suddenly seemed more vicious.
“No, they, uh, needed to finish up a few of the zombies for tomorrow.” He looked at Greg, his face as ashen as Tony’s. “Victor Brill is their top finisher on the creatures.”
“I’m sorry, we found his ID. That was Victor Brill,” Greg said.
Engel shook his head. “Brill is a dark-eyed fellow of about thirty.”
“So, he’d be in the studios?” Greg asked.
“Yeah.” Engel smiled. “Working with Alison. She’s going places, you know. Great girl. I—”
Greg didn’t hear more. He felt so gut-stabbed that he nearly bent double.
Ali.
A killer called the Slasher was loose in the area, and Ali was in that building. Working with Victor Brill, whose ID had been found on the corpse.
He left Engel standing there openmouthed, raced to the brick wall, and leaped over it. Going through the cemetery was the fastest way to reach Ali. He vaulted over the fence and landed hard in the grass. It would only take a minute to dial his cell. Noticing the tremor in his hands, he grabbed a nearby vault to steady himself. Yet as he did so, he felt a hand on his back, steadying him. There was no one there.
In large, embossed letters on the iron grating of the tomb were two words, one name.
Blake Richards.
Greg stared at the tomb. “She’s got to be all right!” he whispered.
The cell phone was ringing.
“Answer, Ali, answer!” he prayed aloud.
* * *
Dolls.
Ali suddenly felt as if she’d been pitched into a remake of Indiana Jones, except that she was the explorer, and the bane of her life was dolls, not snakes. Fantasmic Effects created amazing dolls. Dolls as real as life, large or small. Sexy Suzie, the doll that had come alive in the thriller Real Doll was standing in front of Bobo, the mock-up for Emil Lasher, the actor in Death by Clown.
She heard the noise again. She almost laughed aloud. The sound was coming from Bobo’s feet; his motor was on, and he was trying to move, but he was blo
cked in by Suzie and another doll, one that was covered by a large sheet. She started to reach around Bobo to find the machination cord, but before she could do so, her phone rang. She hit the reply key. “Hello?”
“Ali?”
It was Greg’s voice. She knew it, of course, the moment she heard it. Her blood seemed to run instantly like molten lava and her knees felt weak. Had she willed him to call her? she wondered. No, such things didn’t happen.
“Ali, its Greg.”
“I know. Hey, nice to hear from you.” Casual, she warned herself. Don’t tell the guy you’ve been eating your heart out for him since you packed up and left.
“Get out of there,” Greg said.
“What?”
“Get the hell out of there,” he told her.
“Greg, I’m working. I’m at the studio.”
“Yes, get the hell out.”
She’d started to jerk the sheet off the life-size doll next to Bobo. It fell away as she frowned, thinking that Greg had to be far away, that something had happened near her apartment in Burbank.
“Ali!”
She didn’t answer him. At first, she stared in surprise. The doll next to Bobo seemed to be that of a Mexican Day of the Dead skeleton. Then she realized that it was clad in black, with the skeleton painted on the fabric. She couldn’t remember a film in which they’d used such a doll, but… .
“I’m here, Greg,” she said, puzzling over the doll.
And then it moved. It didn’t click, whine, or whirr. It moved, raising its arm and its hand, and in the hand was a knife, blood dripping from it… .
The arm lashed out suddenly, sending the phone flying from her hand.
“Victor, stop it!” Ali cried out angrily. “You’re not going to scare me off this job!”
“No?” he asked, cocking his black-and-skull-clad head to an angle. “Then I’ll just kill you,” he said cheerfully.
* * *
Greg told himself he was a rational man, a trained cop. He had a gun; he knew what he was doing. He’d call for backup, but first, he’d get to the studios. He was already at the brick wall that lined the back parking lot. He set his arms on the ledge of the wall and hiked himself up; his arms were shaking and he fell back. Cursing, he hiked up again.
