“Sure,” I said. “Even when the victim is being stalked by a homicidal psychopath who has killed before and has sworn to kill her. It makes perfect sense to suspect the boyfriend, and not the psycho stalker. At least,” I said, “it makes sense to you.”
He stared at me, and he thought he was going to say something else, some truly witty and withering put-down. But as we have all noted previously, Wit blossoms on a branch that is forever out of reach to D
etective Anderson, and so he just stared, and then shook his head again as he finally realized no bon mot was on the way. “You’re not out of this,” he said, and he moved away to bully Angel some more.
And I wasn’t out of it. Not by a long shot. I stood there for most of an hour and watched. Whenever he thought of it, Anderson would give me an intimidating stare, but other than that nothing happened.
I didn’t mind. In fact, I was glad that Anderson was in charge, instead of someone like Deborah, who might actually solve this murder, because I didn’t want it solved just yet. Whoever did this had done it to me as much as to Jackie. They had killed my whole beautiful future along with her, and thrown me back on the dung heap of cloying mundane hand-to-mouth existence in the slough of the petty, pointless life I had outgrown, and whoever did that to me, I would find them and make them pay. No, I didn’t want anybody finding this killer. Nobody except Me.
So I stood there beside the refrigerator and watched Anderson stump around, the very Classical Ideal of sound and fury signifying nothing, and I looked at the two or three small factoids I had about this killer.
First, I knew it wasn’t Patrick. But I was the only one who knew that, and somebody else could well have hoped to use the whole Psycho Stalker thing as a shield. They already had, in fact, if I assumed that the same person had killed Kathy. I thought only a moment, and then I went ahead and assumed it; Kathy’s eye had been taken, and there was no reason to do that except as a red herring. The same killer had killed them both.
So I had two events to provide me with clues. If I had been feeling optimistic, this would have cheered me up, because two murders provide twice as many clues. But I added up what I knew without any optimism; it was gone from me forever, leaving behind only a bitter residue.
Kathy had been a nonentity, almost a nonperson. I meant no disrespect for the dead, even though they couldn’t stop me if I did. But my short sweet time at the pinnacle of showbiz had taught me that a personal assistant was not even as high in the pecking order as the valet parking attendant, who might, after all, be an actor on the rise.
Kathy, though, had been a full-time professional gofer, and she could not possibly have the kind of high-octane enemies who would choose to kill her, especially not coldly, premeditatedly, and in such a vividly visceral way. But somebody had, in fact, killed her—and then taken her phone. Where she kept all Jackie’s appointments, phone numbers, contacts, etc. That implied—at least to me—that Kathy’s death was connected to something on the phone.
Even in Hollywood, very few people will kill to get an address or phone number—except, perhaps, the number of a really good agent. But in this case, that seemed unlikely; I was quite sure the phone had not been taken for any contact information. That left appointments, and that thought brought a small, dry rustle of interest from the Dark Detective nestled in his inner lair.
All right: The phone had been taken to hide one of the appointments. That meant that either one of Jackie’s upcoming appointments was worth killing to hide—or the appointment was not Jackie’s. It was Kathy’s phone, after all. Why shouldn’t she keep personal things on it, too? And if somebody made a date to meet her in her room at the hotel, and had gone there specifically to kill her, it made sense that he would take the phone away to hide the record of the date.
But wait: That made sense only if the killer knew Kathy kept all those things on her phone. And that meant it was somebody who knew her, and knew the way she did her job—and that meant it was either somebody from her past who flew in from L.A. just to kill her … Or much more likely, it was somebody here, now, involved in making this pilot. Somebody with a very strong motive for keeping Kathy from—what? Going somewhere, doing something, saying something …
A tiny little video clip popped onto the screen in Dexter’s personal viewing room: a few days ago at wardrobe, and Kathy slapping Renny, storming away from him, yelling something like, “Next time I’ll tell everybody!”
Another little clip: Renny staring at me as a dark and leathery shadow of a Something flaps its wings behind his eyes.
And another: Renny looking out at the audience at his special with that same look, a look I knew so well because it was a killer’s look, and I practiced every day to hide mine with convincingly meek fake smiles.
And Renny going after the heckler with an aggressive attack that could only be called lethal, flashing his true killer colors for all to see.
Renny.
It all added up: He had a motive, whatever the details were, and I knew he had that special thing inside that would make killing a simple and viable option. And so to hide this something, it didn’t matter what, he had killed Kathy—and then thrown up, according to Vince, when he saw the mess he’d made? But still killed Jackie, too, in spite of this revulsion, which he should not feel if he actually had a Dark Passenger?
The roaring freight train of Dexter’s Deduction slammed to a halt. It didn’t make sense. Nobody capable of routine murder could possibly throw up at the sight of what he’d done. And anyway, how did that connect to the most important fact, Jackie’s death?
All right, maybe it wasn’t Renny. But I still had two bodies, and I was sure they were connected. So I put Renny aside for a moment and tried to get the train back on the tracks.
Somebody, possibly not Renny, killed Kathy and took her phone to keep something from getting out. And then in spite of not enjoying it, which seemed a waste, they had killed Jackie. For the same reason? But they already had the phone, so why bother?
Anderson stomped by me and out the door of the trailer, and I looked over to where Angel was calmly, methodically combing through the area around Jackie’s body, directly in front of the big box of Kathy’s stuff. Somewhere a small brass coin dropped into a slot with a soft chiming sound, and I blinked.
I went over to Angel. He looked up briefly, then back to a chunk of carpet he was putting into an evidence bag. “Go away,” he said. “You are bad juju.”
“I need to see something,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Anderson might shoot me.”
“It will only take a second,” I said. “It’s very important.”
Angel rocked back onto his heels and looked up at me, clearly deciding whether I was worth the risk. “What?” he said at last.
I nodded at the big cardboard box behind him. “The computer,” I said. “Is it still in the case?”
He looked at me a moment longer, and then sighed heavily. He leaned over to the box, where the black nylon computer case perched on the top of the pile. With one rubber-gloved finger he flipped the case open. “No,” he said. “No computer.” He took away his finger and the case flopped shut. “Should it be there?”