The killer wasn’t playing the Iraqi soldier anymore, but this was a better story and a much juicier role for him: Dr. Xander Swift. What actor wouldn’t kill for the part, so to speak, and to do this particular scene? In the theater, of all places. Delicioso!
The sidewalk in front of the august Kennedy Center was quickly filling with people that night. The crowd was mostly young, urban eclectic, confident, slightly obnoxious. Just about what you’d expect at a science-fiction stage adaptation of a short story, already once turned into a Hollywood movie. The difference was that the play had a big star actor in it. Thus the sizable crowd, though it wasn’t quite a sellout.
The killer—who wasn’t a star himself, not yet, anyway—assumed his role as Dr. Xander Swift as he approached the Kennedy Center. It was never too early to get into a part, was it?
A row of six swinging doors opened from the street onto a tiled ticketing area. Then four interior doors led farther into the theater’s carpeted lobby. He noticed everything and wouldn’t forget a single detail.
Almost believing that he was Dr. Xander Swift now, getting more deeply into the role, the killer moved no more quickly or slowly than the crowd surrounding him. Thick, tinted glasses, a gray-flecked beard, and an unassuming tweed jacket helped to keep him undetected. Just another theater lover, he was thinking.
Still, he couldn’t help having the slightest doubt about the rehearsal. What if he blew it? What if somehow he was captured tonight? What if he made a mistake at the Kennedy Center?
His eyes loitered, taking in a metallic silver poster in a glass case as he passed.
MATTHEW JAY WALKER
IN
WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE
The hot-shit Hollywood actor, with his name in black type above the title, was known for shoddily made but highly successful films. Absurd live-action comic books that cheated the customers out of ten bucks. He was the sole reason for the nearly sold-out performance tonight. Women especially loved Matthew Jay Walker, even though he’d recently married a beautiful actress with whom he’d adopted children from third world countries, the latest Follywood trend. They were living in Washington now so that they could “influence the government on matters important to the children of the world.” Did some people really talk—and worse, think—like that? Yes indeed, they did.
Inside the auditorium, synthesizer music set the tone for the evening. Dr. Xander Swift easily found his seat, 11A, on the far left aisle.
He was definitely getting into the part—good stuff, and very well played—if he did say so himself. He was positioned only steps from one of the four illuminated fire exits, but almost immediately, the location was irrelevant to him. He knew instantly that he would not be using the ticket he’d already bought for the same seat on Saturday night.
This was the wrong vantage point! All wrong! Dr. Swift had needed to see it firsthand to realize what was now so clear to him.
The symbolic murder had to take place not here but up on the stage itself.
That would be best—for the audience. And the audience was everything, wasn’t it?
At five minutes past eight, the theater went dim, then black. The synthesizer music swelled, and a heavily brocaded curtain rose slowly.
A wash of red light hit the stage, enough to send a collateral haze over the audience, where seat 11A was now empty.
Dr. Xander Swift had seen all that he needed to see for tonight—so he had left the theater. The murder was on—for tomorrow. Tonight was only a rehearsal, a walk-through. He wanted to play to a full house, after all. That was a requirement.
All in his honor, of course.
Chapter 23
THE NEXT DAY’S Violent Crimes meeting had only one, very important agenda item, at least from my point of view. Bree asked me to sit in, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be there. The meeting was heavily attended, standing-room only, and the place was buzzing with hot rumors.
Captain Thor Richter held up the start for the arrival of the deputy mayor, who was twenty minutes late and who spoke not a word the whole time he was there. The fact that Larry Dalton attended, however, sent a clear message on this one: Everyone’s watching the case. This was just what the maniac killer seemed to want, but it couldn’t be helped. No way could we disinvite the deputy mayor.
Bree started off by telling the group everything she and I had recently established. Our late-night stint with Jeffery Antrim had yielded a few more Abu Ghraib images but nothing else of real substance. Still, it was a good start, I thought. I assumed the killer had left it as a message for us. Or me?
“So then we opened our lens a little wider, for derivative elements elsewhere,” Bree said, and brought up a PowerPoint slide.
“Here’s a transcription of the speech the killer gives in the first half of the videotape. And this”—she changed slides—“is a speech from a 2003 video made by someone calling himself the Sheik of America.”
“Is it the same guy?” somebody in the back asked.
“No,” Bree said. “Actually, it isn’t. But he’s obviously borrowing from more than one source. Abu Ghraib. Now this. Statistically, the two speeches are about sixty percent similar.”
“Hang on a minute. Why do you insist it’s not the same guy?” Richter wanted to know. He had a snide way of making his questions sound like accusations.
I saw a brief flash of annoyance on Bree’s face, probably invisible to everyone else. “Because the Sheik was arrested last year. He’s cooling his heels in a New York prison,” she said. “Let’s move on, shall we?”