“She asked for a statement.”
Carter leaned forward. “Tell her to call Lieutenant Sparks of the Oregon State Police.”
Jerri ducked out of the office and BJ picked up the list. “Mind if I make a copy?” she asked.
“Go for it. Once you get a printout of any employees who have m
oved recently, or quit, or taken a leave of absence, we’ll cross-reference it with our list of people who have rented or bought the movies, not just around here, but in the greater metropolitan area of Portland, maybe all of northern Oregon and southern Washington. If that doesn’t work, we’ll expand the search.” He crushed an empty cup and tossed the crumpled remains into his trash. “But I have a feeling this guy’s close.” His eyes narrowed as he thought. “And efficient. Maybe knows his victims. There wasn’t any sign of a struggle in the church, nor at the scene of the Olmstead accident, nor at the parking lot of Lou’s Diner. Either this guy somehow disables his victim without a struggle or blood loss or he cons them into helping him out. Remember Ted Bundy? Sometimes he wore a cast, I think, or bandages to disarm his victims, make them less wary.”
“Roxie Olmstead wrecked her car. No conning there.”
“He could be smart enough to adjust to each situation. If one way doesn’t work, he uses another.”
“Let’s hope he’s not smart,” BJ said, “but just lucky and that his luck is about to run out.” She grabbed the two sheets of Jenna Hughes’s fax and started to walk out of the room. “Oh, wait,” she said. “I thought you might want to know that there are a couple of lines from the poems that I came across on the Internet. Today. Tomorrow. Endlessly. It’s from a poem written by Leo Ruskin—have you heard of him?”
Carter shook his head.
“Similar to a New-Age Timothy Leary. Writes poetry that means nothing to me, but get this—the line was going to be used as a promo line for White Out, the Jenna Hughes movie that never was finished.”
Carter’s head snapped up. He drilled BJ with his eyes. “Wouldn’t she remember that?” he asked. “Her husband was the producer of that movie and it lost millions.”
“You’d think, but maybe she wasn’t in on that end of things, and then her sister was killed and her marriage fell apart. She could’ve blanked the whole business out, if she ever knew it at all.”
Carter felt a rush in his blood, a surge of adrenaline, the same excitement that he always felt when he was about to solve a case. This could be it. “Where is Ruskin now?”
“Still searching.”
“Find him. Find out all of his previous addresses. And when you start with the makeup studios and firms in L.A., start with the one hired for White Out.”
“Will do,” she said as she left the office and Carter’s phone rang. As he picked up the receiver, he hoped he’d just gotten lucky.
What was this?
Dear Lord in heaven, what was going on?
Lynnetta opened a bleary eye and shivered.
It was so cold…freezing…Her skin was probably turning a dozen shades of blue. Yet there was a dullness to her, as if her brain was filled with mud. Blinking, she slowly looked around the vast room…or was it a warehouse?…She couldn’t tell from her position in a chair, a recliner of sorts. Somewhere music was playing, but it sounded far away and when she blinked, she saw women standing on a stage. Half of them faceless, naked, bald, but three dressed, their hair combed, their faces…Lynnetta swallowed hard. They were all Jenna Hughes! No, that couldn’t be. They were likenesses of Jenna, strange mannequins.
What was this?
She rolled her eyes upward. Above her head was the long, stainless-steel arm of a dentist’s drill…shining bright in the dim lights. Glinting like pure evil.
No…this couldn’t be right. Something was wrong here. Very, very wrong. She had to get a grip or wake up or…She heard a sound, a soft rasp that set her teeth on edge.
She was groggy and certain that she, like Alice, had fallen down a rabbit hole. Everything was surreal. Bizarre. Topsy-turvy. She blinked again to clear her vision and her mind.
But it didn’t hone the dullness.
In her peripheral vision she saw him. The man who had startled her in the theater. But now he was naked.
Oh, no.
She remembered being in the theater under the stage. She’d heard a noise as she was putting away the dress she’d hemmed. Thinking the sound was just the cat nosing around where he shouldn’t, she’d called to him. As she’d rounded the corner to Rinda’s office, she’d come upon a man who had been waiting for her in the darkness. She’d thought he’d held a gun and had tried to run. But he’d grabbed her, placed the cold metal against her neck, then zapped her. Electricity had shot through her body. She’d crumpled, but he hadn’t been finished and slammed a needle into her arm.
Fear slithered down her spine as she tried to see him more clearly, attempted to recoil. But she couldn’t escape; she was bound to this damned chair and realized with a sickening feeling that she, too, wore nothing. Her skin was pressed against cold leather. Oh, Lord, was he going to rape her? Why? What had she done to deserve such a wretched fate?
Tears filled her eyes, but still, through the blur, she saw him, his genitals exposed, a tattoo she couldn’t make out upon his chest. He was holding something in his hand, something she couldn’t quite see.