Video Kill

by Joanne Fluke

  It was seven forty-five by the time Erik drove out of the complex. He stopped to wait for a group of middle-aged women joggers to cross Overland Avenue, heading toward the running track at West Los Angeles College. One of them was his downstairs neighbor, Mavis Perkins. She was a Beverly Hills lawyer, the quintessential career woman, and she left for work each morning dressed in the height of fashion. Erik could have lived for several years on what she spent for her designer wardrobe, her hairdresser appointments, and her visits to the nail boutique. But this morning Mavis looked like a refugee from a thrift store in her baggy purple sweatpants and grubby orange T-shirt. She’d told Erik that she was jogging for her appearance, but she certainly didn’t care about her appearance while she was jogging. It didn’t make sense, but Erik had given up trying to figure out women.

  Erik turned the corner at Jefferson Boulevard and followed it past the new business parks that had sprung up almost overnight. As he drove east, the area grew more industrial, offices giving way to small factories and warehouses. He turned left on La Cienega and took the Fairfax cutoff. The traffic was a mess, as usual, and Erik was running late. He’d planned on eating breakfast out, but now there wasn’t time. He settled for a quick stop at a Winchell’s Donuts to pick up two maple bars for Tony, two cinnamon twists for himself, and a cup of coffee to go.

  The rest of the drive was easy, and Erik managed to swig down the stale coffee and eat both cinnamon twists by the time he turned on Hollywood Boulevard and parked in the Schwartzvold lot. He opened the office door at precisely eight-thirty to find Tony pacing the floor, clutching a copy of their proposal for Video Kill.

  “There’s a couple of maple bars in here with your name on them.” Erik put the bag on the desk and headed toward the coffee pot with the single-minded purpose of a true addict.

  Tony followed him. “Did you hear the news this morning?”

  “Nope.”

  Erik took his cup from the drainboard and wiped it meticulously before he filled it. It was a basic difference between the two men. Erik washed his coffee cup every night before he left the office and Tony hadn’t touched sudsy water since the last time Allison had dropped in.

  “And you didn’t take time to read the paper?”

  Tony was grinning broadly now, and Erik turned to look at him.

  “That’s right. I didn’t take time to read the paper. What’s with you, Tony? You’re acting like a cat with a mouthful of feathers.”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  Tony grabbed Erik’s arm and steered him into the reception area. Since they had no need for a secretary, it held two matching couches, a long wooden coffee table for spreading out papers, and a television monitor with a DVR on top. Tony pushed Erik down on the nearest couch and turned on the television to play the recording he’d just made. The stabbing last night had been almost identical to their first scene in Video Kill, and he could hardly wait to see Erik’s reaction.

  3

  Allison Rocca was wearing the apron Tony had given her two years ago when they had first moved to their new house in Studio City. It was a chef’s apron, much too large for her, with ribbon ties that wound twice around her small waist. Tony had personalized it with one of his messages, most of Tony’s gifts had messages, and Allison’s apron said MY BUNS ARE PERFECT in bold red letters.

  She opened the refrigerator, a gleaming steel model with a built-in ice maker, and took out a Tupper ware bowl filled with potato salad. Everything in the kitchen was new, from the six-burner gas range top to the double ovens and industrial-sized microwave built into the wall. The appliances would have put many restaurant kitchens to shame, and Allison felt a bit intimidated by the matching copper pans hanging on a metal rack over the butcher block work center and the variety of specialized utensils in its neatly divided drawers. Her most successful entrees were made with packaged ingredients and Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup.

  The party yesterday had been catered, but Allison had provided the potato salad. It was made from her mother’s recipe, and Allison had spent hours cooking potatoes, peeling hard-boiled eggs, and reading the Cuisinart instruction booklet to identify the proper attachments to chop everything up into the right-sized pieces. Allison’s potato salad had been the hit of the party. Even the woman from the catering service had asked for her recipe.

  Allison got out a lovely bone china plate and put a scoop of potato salad on the side, decorating it with three ripe olive slices and a sprinkle of Hungarian paprika. She was taking lunch to her mother today. Helen Greene’s appetite was failing and Allison was determined to come up with something that would tempt her.

  As Allison stood back a bit to survey her work, she brushed back her naturally curly, reddish-blond hair. Since she’d allowed it to grow past shoulder length, it often got in her way. Brushing it aside with the back of her hand was a nervous gesture she’d developed lately, right along with tapping her fingers against the arm of the couch and jumping visibly every time the phone rang. She reached out to rearrange an olive slice and nodded in satisfaction. The potato salad not only looked appealing but also was made with sour cream dressing, a good source of calcium. Since her mother also needed a high concentration of protein, she arranged choice slices of turkey, rare roast beef, and ham in an overlapping design, topping each slice with a sprig of fresh parsley, rich in iron, from her greenhouse herb garden. She added a radish rose and a few crisp carrot curls, then frowned as she realized that yesterday’s guests had eaten the last of the kaiser rolls. There was no way she’d spoil her mother’s plate by adding a slice of Tony’s Bunny Bread.

  Tony’s favorite brand of bread was snowy white and tasteless, so fluffy that he could squash a piece into a marble-sized ball. Tony called these pellets “bread pills,” and Allison couldn’t hide her disgust when he rolled them between his fingers and popped them into his mouth. Tony regarded bread primarily as a vehicle to keep peanut butter off his fingers, and he had never understood Allison’s rhapsodies over brioche, pumpernickel, dark rye, and sourdough.

  Allison opened the freezer door and smiled as she spotted a package of brown ‘n’ serve whole wheat rolls. When she smiled, Allison’s pretty girl-next-door face turned into an object of stunning beauty. The transformation was almost magical as her brown eyes sparkled with golden highlights and her highly defined cheekbones lost their severity.

  When Allison had been an aspiring actress, long before she’d married Tony and given up that ambition, she had once been chosen for a deodorant commercial on the strength of that transformation. She’d been solemn for the first shot, breaking into a sudden smile as she’d held up the sponsor’s product. The director had told Allison that her appeal was subliminal. A woman watching the commercial might think that she’d be beautiful, too, if she used the sponsor’s deodorant.

  As Allison turned on the oven to preheat, she wished again that she could make a decent loaf of bread. After two abysmal failures that might have been hilarious if they’d happened to anyone else, Allison had tabled her attempts at bread making for times when Tony was out of town. She still remembered her first flop, and her delicate ivory complexion took on the bright rosy hue of embarrassment. She had mixed up the dough exactly as the recipe had directed and kneaded it with strict adherence to the instructions. Everything had gone along perfectly until she’d placed the dough in a warm place to rise for a few hours. Then she’d dashed out to pick up some crew socks for Tony, and while she was waiting for the clerk to ring up the sale, she’d run into her former agent. Would Allison please join her for lunch? There were some people she simply must meet.

  The restaurant was a show biz spot where people greeted each other in exclamations. Darling! You look stunning! It’s been simply ages! How marvelous to see you again! There was the usual flurry of near-miss kisses, the point of contact aborted at precisely the last second by a common concern for makeup. Allison found herself wedged in a two-person booth with four people. One of them was the same director who�
��d done her deodorant commercial. Was she still working? How about a high-budget toothpaste commercial? There was a casting call in an hour if she was interested. He’d take her in personally and introduce her, right after lunch.

  When Allison had arrived home after the casting session, which had turned out to be nothing but a cattle call, she’d found Tony pacing the floor impatiently, waiting to take her to dinner. They were meeting several big names and it was a command appearance. Could she be ready to go in ten minutes?

  Allison had been ready, they’d driven to the restaurant, and she’d spent the evening talking to the wife of a man who’d later turned out to do nothing for Tony’s career. Allison had forgotten her rising bread dough in the rush, and when they’d returned home, shortly before midnight, she’d tumbled into bed without even changing into her nightgown.

  Tony’s voice had roused her the next morning. Was she growing something in the oven? There was a white, pulsating mass in there that looked like it was trying to ooze out the door.

  Allison had let out a genuine cry of alarm and rushed to open the oven door. Her bread dough! She’d forgotten all about it! As the cold morning air had hit the warm yeasty mass, it had given a dying sigh and deflated, leaving huge, stringy patches of gloop all over the inside of the oven. When Allison had tried to clean up the mess with a wet sponge, it had spread like paste, taking total possession of the oven. Tony had sat at the kitchen table and laughed, sipping his coffee and making references to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

  An entire year had passed before Allison had worked up the nerve to try it again. Her second attempt had showed no tendency to rise at all, so she’d popped it into the oven anyway, hoping for the best. Tony had come home just in time to see her take her loaves out of the oven, two squat, brown bricks that fell from the pan with a solid thunk. He’d laughed at the dismayed expression on her face and cracked one of his usual jokes. Why didn’t she bake a couple more batches so they could build a fireplace? Allison had smiled good-naturedly, but she had given up on the fine art of bread making.

  Allison’s face grew solemn as she thought of her husband. Things had changed since they’d moved into their expensive new house, and just last week, when she’d tried to discuss the distance that was growing between them, Tony had shrugged it off. He’d insisted that Allison was looking for a problem where none existed. Everything was fine. She was probably depressed because of her mother. He’d feel the same way, in her position.

  Allison knew Tony was partially right. Visits with her mother were emotionally draining, and it took all of Allison’s strength to smile and keep up a stream of amusing chatter while she sat in a chair by the bed and watched her mother slowly die. Some afternoons, when Allison came home from the convalescent center, it took hours to shake her feelings of depression and helplessness. She seldom went out anymore, preferring to stay by the phone in case her mother suddenly took a turn for the worse. She watched endless hours of television, switching from channel to channel, hoping for something intriguing enough to take her mind off the woman who lay dying in Bel Air thirty-five minutes away.

  When Helen Greene had first gone to the doctor, sixteen months ago, Allison had refused to accept the diagnosis. She’d urged her mother to go for a second opinion, a third opinion, and then a fourth. After the fifth specialist, her mother had stopped all that nonsense. Helen Greene knew she had terminal cancer and she didn’t need more doctors to confirm it. Allison would just have to accept the inevitable.

  Helen had stayed in her own home for as long as she could, and then sold the house to pay her medical expenses at the convalescent center. The sale had gone through a year ago, and Allison suspected that her mother’s money had run out. When she had questioned Tony about it, he’d told her to let him worry about supporting the family.

  In many ways Tony was an old-fashioned man. He had handled their finances from the start, and Allison admitted that it was probably wise. She’d never been good at budgeting. She knew their elaborate home was a financial drain. The mortgage payment was high, but Tony had told her to leave that to him. He’d said that in show biz you had to spend money to make money.

  They’d moved into their new house right after Free Fire had been released. Tony had been sure his future as a screenwriter was assured, and they’d opted for the top-of-the-line, four-bedroom Colonial at Studio City Estates. They had spent the previous eight years of their marriage in a tiny Los Angeles apartment, and neither Allison nor Tony had anticipated the upkeep that was necessary on such a large home. There were gardeners, pool maintenance men, a pest control service, and, over Allison’s objections, a weekly cleaning crew. Allison still felt guilty about the cleaning crew—she’d been raised to believe that a woman should take care of her own house—but Tony had insisted. To alleviate her guilt Allison went into a flurry of dusting and vacuuming before the crew arrived so they wouldn’t think she was a bad housekeeper.

  While she waited for the dinner rolls to brown, Allison switched on the kitchen television. The announcer was saying something about a stabbing in Hollywood and she half-listened as she tidied up the kitchen. In the middle of the report, she took the rolls out of the stove, wrapped two of them in aluminum foil, and put everything into a basket for carrying, including the pan of double-fudge brownies she’d picked up at a local bakery. Even if her mother didn’t eat them, she could dole them out to the nursing staff.

  Methodically, Allison locked up the house. There were four sets of sliding glass doors leading to the pool area, two side doors, one double front door, and the attached garage door. Then she got into the silver convertible that Tony had bought her for her last birthday and backed carefully out onto the circular driveway.

  Allison didn’t think of the news flash again until she was walking up the brick steps of the convalescent center. The newscaster had said something about a disc the killer had left at the scene. Now she wished that she’d listened more carefully. The whole thing reminded her of the movie idea that Tony and Erik had pitched last year.

  Tony was on the phone with Alan Goldberg, and Erik half listened as he paged through their Video Kill treatment. He was still sickened by the account he’d seen of the murder. Sharee Lyons, the young victim, had been stabbed repeatedly. The thought of the killer planning the whole scene, setting up his video camera on a tripod in the bathroom, and cold-bloodedly capturing her death was gruesome.

  Erik remembered the morning, almost two years ago, when Tony had first approached him with the Video Kill idea. Both men had been intrigued with the possibilities. Erik recalled using words like promotable and high concept as they’d settled down to work out the logistics. It had been fun spicing up Tony’s “hot” idea with bits of evocative dialogue guaranteed to sell the project. Then it had been pure fiction, a wild flight of fancy. Now that their idea had become a grisly reality, it had turned into something else altogether, something revolting, something evil, something that Erik wasn’t prepared for at all. He felt almost as if their idea had been stolen and violated in some unspeakable way.

  Tony laughed, and Erik tried to concentrate on the one-sided conversation. He caught phrases like If we’re lucky, he’ll do it again and Let’s just hope the police don’t catch him right away. Naturally, Erik was glad that Cinescope was interested in Video Kill. He certainly could use the money. But Tony seemed to be totally ignoring the fact that a brutal crime had been committed.

  Erik barely noticed as Tony said his good-byes and hung up the phone. He didn’t look up until he felt Tony’s hand on his shoulder.

  “What’s the matter, Erik? Are you turning squeamish about doing this movie?”

  “Of course not.” Erik frowned. “It’s your attitude, Tony. You’re completely forgetting a girl was brutally murdered and the killer is loose. It’s a cause for alarm, not celebration.”

  “The Killer Is Loose?” Tony began to grin. “Cause for Alarm? You really ought to take up writing movie titles, Erik.”

  Erik made a disguste
d face. He knew Tony was trying to distract him with jokes, but it wouldn’t work this time.

  “All right. They’re movie titles. So what? I still object to your attitude, Tony. Here we are, using this girl’s murder for our own ends, and you’re, well, you’re so damn happy about it!”

  Tony cocked his head to the side and gave Erik a long, level stare.

  “Aha! I think your sense of Lutheran morality is kicking up again.”

  “That’s not it.” Erik sighed deeply. “I want to sell Video Kill every bit as much as you do, but I can’t believe you had the audacity to tell Alan that we’re hoping the killer will strike again.”

  “Did I say that?” Tony looked stunned. “Oh, hey, I didn’t mean it that way ! I mean, I wasn’t thinking about the murder itself. I was just excited about what it would mean to us.”

  Erik gave in. Tony looked genuinely contrite.

  “All right, Tony. We all say things we don’t mean. I just don’t think we should gloat over this thing, okay?”

  “Sure. Honestly, Erik. I wish that actress hadn’t been killed, but she was. And even if we do take advantage of it, that can’t change what’s already happened. Right?”

  “Right. Did you say Sharee Lyons was an actress?”

  “Yeah. She’d been to a couple of cattle call auditions, but she hadn’t landed anything yet. I guess that part was on before I recorded it.”

  After a beat of uncomfortable silence, Tony got up and headed back to his own office. Erik shut off the television and went to his laptop. There was work to do. He still had to make a couple of changes in the fourth act of Alan’s detective script and print it out.

  As Erik worked, his sense of outrage faded a bit. It was common for L.A. girls to claim they were actresses whether they were or not. If you drove down Sunset and talked to any hooker on any street corner, nine times out of ten she’d tell you she was just doing tricks on the side until she got her big break in show business. Sharee Lyons could have been out earning the rent last night when she’d picked up some weirdo. There were a lot of sick people on the streets.