The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4)

by Hill, Casey

  Mark Reed turned back to view the full scene. He pointed toward the door. ‘So the writer comes out for a smoke and the kidnapper’s waiting.’ He motioned closer to where the blood was drying. ‘The perp somehow draws him further out, probably to get Sheldon further away from the door.’

  Todd picked it up. ‘Once out here, the kidnapper pulls a weapon, most likely a knife based on the blood pattern. He threatens the guy, and nicks him. Then the two of them leave by the street entrance.’ He turned toward where the police were gathered.

  ‘Where the kidnapper had a ride waiting,’ Mark finished. ‘No one stopped them, no one reported anything strange. With the festival going on, there were double patrols in this area. I guess that’s why the DA’s so pissed. The department’s getting reamed for letting this happen.’

  ‘For this, but not for the movie murders?’ Todd couldn’t help himself.

  The detective scowled. ‘Hey, I just do what I’m told.’

  ‘I get it.’ Todd made sure his words implied just the opposite.

  But he wondered now about a connection between the film festival and Holly’s murderer’s obvious movie penchant. The murders had started around the same time as the festival came to town. Could the perp be directly involved in the movie business?

  His mind raced and he struggled to sound indifferent as he tried to draw out the detective for more details.

  ‘Maybe we should go talk to some of the other people at the festival. See if anyone in particular would benefit from Mr Sheldon’s sudden absence?’ he fished, though he wasn’t particularly interested in the screenwriter’s whereabouts. Unless it really did have something to do with the murders.

  ‘Among the things found in Sheldon’s hotel room was a letter from a producer he was working with, Toby Carpenter,’ Mark told him. ‘Apparently, he and Sheldon were in a bit of a tiff over some new movie. We’re going to talk to Carpenter now.’

  ‘I can take the letter to the lab if you like, get it analyzed,’ Todd suggested, finding the in he was hoping for, and suddenly taking a brand new interest in the disappearance of Drew Sheldon.

  ‘You could be on to something,’ Reilly heard Daniel say into the phone, and she wondered if Todd and the investigative team had made some kind of breakthrough.

  When he got off the phone, he filled her in on the conversation with his son.

  ‘Todd thinks the film festival being in town might be too much of a coincidence and given what we’ve just learned about the killer’s MO, I agree with him, The cops are all over this missing person investigation, but nobody seems to be asking these guys questions about a possible rogue film-maker in their midst.

  Reilly looked at him, recognizing that tone. ‘Thinking about flashing that investigator’s badge around the film festival, Agent Forrest?’

  Daniel picked up his keys and gave her wry smile. ‘We can pick up yours at the office on the way.’

  They decided to operate under the guise of investigating Drew Sheldon’s disappearance so as not to raise any suspicion. Todd had passed on the name of the film producer rumored to be in disagreement with the screenwriter and, having carried out some background information on the guy, they figured he was as good a place to start as any.

  Based on the way Toby Carpenter was now leering at her, Reilly suspected that the rumors she and Daniel had heard were true. Even after she’d introduced herself as an investigative consultant, the fifty-something executive producer had only taken his eyes off of her breasts to flick down to her hips once or twice. Although, she figured she was a bit older than his usual fare.

  ‘We’ve heard that you and Mr Sheldon were in a dispute regarding a movie,’ Daniel said, the expression on his face clearly communicating that he didn’t appreciate the way Carpenter was looking at his associate.

  ‘Not really.’ The producer didn’t take his eyes from Reilly. ‘I just told him that if he didn’t change the lead female role to a younger character, I wouldn’t produce the film.’

  Reilly scowled. She hated the movie business habit of giving older men romantic interests young enough to be their daughter. ‘Isn’t Bruce Reynolds playing the lead role? He’s forty-two. Just how young did you want his romantic interest to be?’

  ‘Honey,’ Carpenter said, leaning forward, ‘after that whole fiasco on Leno, Sheldon did a rewrite where Reynolds gets killed off in the first ten minutes. The character’s older brother comes in to avenge the murder and falls for his former sister-in-law.’

  ‘So Sheldon was making all of the changes you wanted then?’ Daniel asked.

  Reilly wasn’t sure if he was trying to draw the producer’s attention from her or keep her from saying something she’d regret. Either way, it worked.

  ‘Of course.’ Carpenter shrugged. ‘In fact, I have a whole group of girls coming in to audition for me tomorrow. Why would I want Sheldon gone?’

  ‘Maybe because he told you that he’d never write for you again, you hypocritical ass-hat,’ said a voice from behind Reilly and Daniel that made them turn.

  A tall, slender young woman stood with arms crossed, glaring at Carpenter. Late teens, long dark hair and startling blue eyes, she was exactly the type of girl Carpenter usually went for. ‘Now, now, Kai, let’s not air our dirty laundry in front of outsiders,’ Carpenter said, his tone condescending.

  ‘Shut it, Carpenter.’ The girl turned her attention to Reilly and Daniel. ‘Are you two looking for my dad?’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ With one last full-body ogle directed first at Reilly and then at Kai, Carpenter turned and walked away.

  Reilly shuddered. ‘I feel the sudden need for a shower.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Kai said.

  ‘Your dad’s Drew Sheldon?’ Daniel asked.

  The girl nodded and stuck out her hand. ‘Kai Sheldon. He brought me with him this year to meet some people. I want to get into the industry.’

  ‘Screenwriting or acting?’ Reilly asked.

  ‘Neither.’ Kai shook her head and tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Stunts.’

  ‘Really?’ Daniel didn’t even try to hide his surprise.

  Reilly smiled indulgently at him. He sounded like her own dad. ‘Kai, can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt your father?’

  ‘You mean besides the slimy son of a bitch who just left?’ Kai shrugged. ‘It’s hard to say. Working with these people is like being in one giant high school, complete with the backstabbing and partner-swapping. Dad tried to stay out of it as much as possible, but there were always people pissed about something.’

  ‘Why did your dad decide to cut ties with Toby Carpenter?’

  ‘Like I said, Dad never liked to get involved, especially with rumors, but when Carpenter offered to put me in one of his films if I had sex with him, that was the last straw.’

  ‘When did you tell your dad what Carpenter did?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘I didn’t need to,’ Kai said. ‘My dad was standing right there.’

  ‘Oh.’ Reilly and Daniel exchanged glances.

  ‘Yeah.’ Kai nodded. ‘Look, that night, I went up to my room early. Dad was supposed to check in before he went to bed. He never did. The last time I saw him was here in the lobby after he told Carpenter he was through working with him.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ Daniel pulled out a card and handed it to Kai. ‘If you think of anything else, please give me a call.’

  ‘I will.’ Kai’s expression changed, the tough girl melting away to reveal a worried child. ‘Please, just find my dad.’

  ‘We’ll do our best.’ Reilly felt guilty. The poor girl had no idea their focus was on something entirely different.

  As they watched Kai walk away, Daniel said, ‘Somehow I don’t think someone like Toby Carpenter has any idea what’s going on in the real world. He certainly wouldn’t know anything about our killer.’

  ‘I agree,’ Reilly said. ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but if I had just been killed off
in a movie that was supposed to relaunch my torpedoed career, I might have a point to prove,’ Daniel suggested, and Reilly figured out where he was going with this angle.

  Could their killer be an actor with a grudge, bent on carrying out his own particular brand of revenge?

  CHAPTER 18

  He sat in the silence of his room. He’d had a productive week and deserved some time to sit and reflect. He sipped at the expensive Scotch in his glass. Things were starting to fall into place, and it was about time too.

  Everyone in the business was all about the overnight successes or the legacies.

  No one cared about the people like him who worked their asses off day in and day out. He’d worked extremely hard to get to this point and had put in his dues in every respect. And still he had to bow to somebody else’s vision, dance to someone else’s tune.

  Well, no more. He’d always been certain of his abilities, and now was the time to show the world how talented he truly was.

  A glisten on the floor caught his eye. In hindsight, he regretted stomping the ring into pieces. He’d just been so frustrated the other day and that old prop had seemed to mock him, reminding him that he was a hack. Now, he could see it for what it really had been: a reminder of just how far he’d come.

  As the amber-colored alcohol warmed him, he thought back through his recent body of work, as well as the scenes he’d used for practice, the ones that hadn’t turned out quite right. He’d decided to abandon the arrows idea for the moment – it was just too tricky. Not to mention messy.

  Perhaps he should have recorded everything, for posterity of course.

  He could even use it as a tutorial for anyone wishing to learn from him.

  When he’d first decided to take on this project, he knew he’d need to start slow to perfect his technique. First, he’d dabbled with assault to practice his editing, and then had moved on to the bigger stuff.

  While that couple at Belleair Beach had been his first foray into the world of chloroform, they hadn’t been his first kill. That honor had gone to a skinny teenage hitchhiker who’d called himself Rory.

  That one hadn’t been anything fancy. No camera, no elaborate staging. Just a quick and messy stabbing to prove that he had the stomach for it. The blood had been a real bitch to clean up though. In the end, he’d gotten frustrated enough to leave the car in a bad section of town with the keys in the ignition.

  He’d gotten better with the next one. The girl hadn’t been more than fifteen when she’d tried soliciting him. He’d been interested in a different sort of performance though. She’d even played along until she’d realized that he wasn’t acting. A raincoat and axe had served to make her his first movie homage. It had helped him understand the complexities of staging a scene with a less than willing participant.

  When he’d begun his research to decide what movies he wanted to improve, he’d had to take into account the nature of each story’s antagonist. For example, he wouldn’t be recreating anything from It even though the idea of ripping off a victim’s arm was compelling. He hated clowns. Always had. They scared the shit out of him.

  Movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and Alien also had to be eliminated due to being logistically impossible without CGI. And what was the point of realism if special effects had to be used?

  And of course the typical ‘phone call coming from inside the house’ babysitter-slash-sorority-house-slash-slumber-party-slash-prom-horror flicks were also out of the question. Too many unknown variables. Besides, he hated working with teenagers.

  When he’d started choosing his initial scenes he’d begun with the ones that didn’t require the antagonist to be on screen. Once he’d completed a couple of small acts, he’d moved on to the big one, the one he’d been waiting to use when he finally announced himself to the world.

  And what a debut the new and improved Hitcher had been.

  He’d originally intended to improve on movies that pissed him off, the ones that had inexplicable fan bases or were huge blockbusters while other more deserving films were ignored.

  Hence his most recent creative endeavors, though in truth that jaw-crunching scene from American History X needed no improvement, iconic perfection as it was.

  Still, fun to recreate.

  Now, as he mused on the recent realization that he actually liked being in front of the camera as well as behind it, he considered some of his previously disregarded scenarios.

  The hook-handed bad guy of urban lore had appeared in numerous frat-fests including I Know What You Did Last Summer and its godawful sequel. Perhaps, if he was feeling particularly adventurous, he could even try Silence of the Lambs? He smiled. Then again, perhaps not; even he wasn’t willing to go as far as to consume human flesh. And since the entire point of this exercise was that everything be real, changing out the meat would be a cop-out. Perhaps another scene from the movie would work better, something with a little less cannibalism?

  Although, he thought as he drained his glass, maybe it would be best to wait to do a reboot of such a classic. That particular one was a tough act to follow; maybe a bit more experience might be a good idea before tackling such an iconic role.

  He wasn’t completely narcissistic, after all.

  That being said, he had a letter to write . . .

  As Daniel and Reilly consulted the festival schedule to see where Bruce Reynolds might be, he asked. ‘Did you see the guy on Leno?’

  She remembered that she hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time, but the actor’s public meltdown had been reported in the Irish media too. High-profile star begins ranting about how his psychic had confirmed his past lives as none other than Abraham Lincoln and Gandhi. Yeah, that’ll cross oceans to be a headline.

  Later the actor’s public relations people had claimed Reynolds had been suffering from exhaustion and over-medication for a sinus condition. While subsequent interviews had been done with poise and little excitement, the man’s career had yet to recover.

  ‘Says here he’s supposed to be signing autographs.’ Daniel pointed on one of the festival maps posted every few feet. ‘Here.’

  As they wove their way through the crowd, Reilly made a mental note to boycott Toby Carpenter movies in the future. She’d dealt with her fair share of lecherous men – it kind of came with the territory being a woman in a mostly male field – but this had been the first time that she’d felt like someone had actually succeeded in undressing her with his eyes.

  Daniel pointed. ‘Right there.’ He flashed his investigator’s badge at the security guard and stepped behind the table.

  ‘Mr Reynolds?’ Reilly asked.

  ‘No comment,’ Bruce grumbled as he scrawled lazily across a head shot. The woman he passed it to looked disappointed. Reilly couldn’t say that she blamed her. Finding out that one of your celebrity idols was a douche-bag in reality was never easy.

  ‘We’re here about Drew Sheldon.’ Daniel put his badge closer to Bruce’s face.

  ‘Oh, that again.’ Bruce leaned back in his chair, looking up at Daniel with an insolent grin on his once handsome face. The last few years of hard living hadn’t been kind. ‘I heard he’s missing.’

  ‘He is.’ Daniel kept his voice mild. ‘Know anything about it?’

  Bruce laughed. ‘Like I already told the cops, I barely have enough money to pay my bills. I certainly wouldn’t waste a dime of it to pay someone to take him out.’

  ‘Who said anything about him being taken out?’ Daniel asked. ‘As of now, he’s considered missing. Unless there’s something you’d like to share.’

  Bruce shrugged. ‘Only that I wouldn’t see any reason to keep a hack like Sheldon around.’

  ‘Hack?’ Daniel said. ‘From what we understand, Drew Sheldon is one of the most sought after writers in the business.’

  ‘Yeah, because he’ll bend over and take it.’ Bruce’s smile disappeared. ‘He cares more about money than about the integrity of his work. The guy’ll do anything to make a buck.’
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br />   ‘Whereas you’re in it for the craft?’ Reilly indicated one of the movie posters on the table. Bruce Reynolds’s biggest blockbuster had been slammed by the critics as being ‘so brain-dead that a zombie toddler could’ve produced a finer piece of work’. Reilly had seen it while on a blind date back in Dublin. The guy had loved it. That had been their only date.

  ‘Look, what do you want?’ Bruce’s swagger dissolved into petulance. ‘I already told the cops everything I know.’

  ‘I know that you had a reason to be angry at Sheldon, to want revenge. After all, he wrote you out of what was supposed to be your comeback role.’ Daniel was smooth.

  ‘Maybe I do have a reason to be angry,’ Bruce said, ‘but I don’t have the money to do anything.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have done something yourself,’ Reilly said.

  Bruce snorted. ‘Yeah, right. I only play the action hero. I’m not much of an action guy in real life.’

  Not really any shock there, Reilly thought. Then, taking her cue from Daniel, she changed her tone. ‘On an unrelated note, we’ve also been hearing rumors about someone posting movie inserts online – taking famous movie clips and splicing in their own newly shot footage. Have you heard anything about that?’ She deliberately left out the fact that the clips in question were famed murder scenes.

  ‘Movie inserts . . .’ Bruce looked more interested than worried. ‘Hadn’t heard, but that sounds like a good idea to me.’ He shrugged. ‘Have you seen some of the crap that gets called “classic” these days? Whoever it is, if you find them, give ’em my number. I could use the work.’

  ‘Will do,’ Daniel said, meeting Reilly’s gaze, which she took it as a cue to move on.

  ‘And as for people who had issues with Drew Sheldon, you should be checking out Wesley Fisher,’ Bruce said, now giving a dazzling smile to the pretty thirty-something who approached his table.

  ‘Who?’ Daniel asked, turning to him once again. He glanced at Reilly and she shook her head. She didn’t recognize the name either.