Nate chuckled. “Lots of bad leads for me, too. But I have high hopes for this one. He spoke about Suzanna and Lucile like friends, not just people he’d made a deal with. He might know more about them than the students do.”
Laura nodded, leading the way out of the precinct. “Let’s hope he can point us in the direction of the killer – and help us figure out how Gypsy Sparks fits into the whole picture.”
Because, if he didn’t, Laura knew, time was getting on. Soon, it would be mid-day. Mid-day would lead into the afternoon, and then swiftly on into the evening. And if all they still had to go on by then was a confusing web of cross-accusations and missed calls from drama students, then they were not going to be in any position to stop the killer from taking his fourth victim in four nights.
And that, Laura was determined, was never going to happen on her watch.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Laura and Nate got out of the car outside a photographic studio, made obvious by the full-length portraits displayed in the floor to ceiling windows of the ground floor. They were actually a little bit terrifying, blown up larger than life as they were. Each of them depicted different men and women holding emotive expressions - a frown, a laugh, a cocky e
yebrow raised.
If they had had any doubt that they were in the right place, all of the coding here clearly screamed that this was a place for actors to come and get their headshots.
A bell above the door jingled gently as they pushed it open, and within seconds a gray-haired man with a sprightly build emerged from behind a door. He was more youthful around the eyes than his hair suggested, and he looked at them with obvious inquisitiveness.
“Are you the agents I spoke with on the phone?” he asked.
“Yes,” Nate said, showing his badge and then holding out a hand for the man to shake. “I'm Agent Nate Lavoie, we spoke on the phone. This is my partner, agent Laura Frost.”
“Great to meet you,” the photographer said. “Guy Andrews. I was really glad when I got your call. It's terrible, what happened to Suzie and Lucy. I can't believe it. If there's anything I can do to help, I'm only too glad.”
“Well, anything you can think of might be useful,” Laura said. “We're really looking for any lead we can trace down that might point us to someone who had a reason to kill these women. Even if it doesn't seem like a logical reason to us. As they were both acting coaches, we were thinking that their students may hold the answer – and I gather you may have known many of them?”
“Oh, yes, certainly,” Guy said. He held out a hand towards the door he had come through and then began to lead them through it. “If you’ll come this way, I can take you through my archives. I’m much better with pictures than words.”
“Of course,” Nate said, leading Laura behind Guy through to a much bigger, more open space. Here they could see the hallmarks of a studio: white backdrops, large lighting rigs, monitors and cameras sat on tables. One of them was obviously a permanent desk, with a large computer setup including several monitors. Guy led them here, quickly turning on the screen in the middle and beginning to click rapidly through folders.
“Actually, there was one person who came to mind right away. I don't know if you've heard about anything about him yet,” Guy said, seemingly satisfied when he clicked up another folder and then sat back in his chair to look at them. “He was referred to me by Lucy, but I gather he never actually ended up going to any of her classes. They knew each other from another walk of life, some other work she had done, I think. I think he had a small part in an advertisement campaign, it went to his head. He thought he was the be all and end all, but of course he wasn't. They never are. Anyway, as I understand it, he ended up going to classes with Suzie instead.”
“That's very interesting,” Laura said. “Do you know what his name was?” Internally, she was praying that it was not the same named they had heard before - Caleb Rowntree. Given that they had already cleared him from the investigation, this could easily be one more dead end. But if Guy had stopped at pictures of a Black man with a buzzcut and a noticeable scar to the left side of his face for any reason, Laura hoped it was because they were looking at a new suspect.
“It should be in the file,” Guy said, clicking around again. “Yes, here we are. His name was Spike Greendale. Stage name, I think. Bit of an odd one.”
“And was there anything about his behavior in particular that made you think he might be suspicious?” Nate asked. “Other than being a bit big-headed?”
“Oh yes,” Guy said. “So, as I said, it was Lucy who referred him to me for the headshots. Gave him a nice discount, too. Anyway, we come to take the shots, and everything seems fine. But when I do the review with him one week later, showing him all the edited files to choose from, he throws a fit. Decides that they all make him look fat, or they haven't captured his best side. I mean, it was all just rubbish. You can see for yourself; the shots weren't that bad. He looks exactly the same in person. I can't control how a person looks. Anyway, he wasn't happy. He threw an angry fit with me. If I hadn't told him to get out of the studio, I think he might have ended up hitting me.”
“Have you witnessed or heard of any other violent behavior from this man?” Laura asked, quickly scribbling down the name in her notebook.
This was starting to sound more promising by the second.
“No, nothing else. I just know that if he was able to leave his rag that way with me, I'm sure he could do it with someone else. Someone who told him he didn't really have the talent, maybe,” Guy said. He shook his head sadly. “He was exactly the kind of man that you could imagine hearing about on the news a few years later as being a serial killer or something. I just wasn't expecting to hear it quite this soon.”
“Thanks very much for that information,” Laura said. She was about to nod to Nate to see if he was ready to go, when it came to her mind again. “Oh, by the way. We wondered if you might know about somebody else - a woman by the name of Gypsy Sparks?”
“Oh, sure,” Guy said, leaning back in his chair. “I know Gypsy. Why, is she wrapped up in all of this too?”
“Sorry,” Laura said, gaping at him. “You do know her? In what context?”
“Well, the same as all the others,” Guy said. “I did her headshots, years ago. And then she went into coaching, and I used to get referrals from her as well. That was years ago though. I heard she got out of the business.”
“She certainly did,” Laura said. In her mind, the comment was a rather dark one, but of course Guy couldn't know the hidden meaning behind what she was saying. He didn't yet know that she was dead. “So, how long ago was this exactly?”
Guy thought for a moment. “Oh, probably... eight years ago? I'd have to look back in my records to remember the last time I had a referral from her. I didn't exactly get a lot, because she was only doing the one-to-one work. I get a lot better business from the coaches that do the big classes, because they can refer tons of people at once. Anyway, on the other hand, the people who can afford the one-on-one coaches usually tend to spend more on their upgrade packages, so I don't mind. How is she wrapped up in all of this, then?”
Laura bit her lip for a moment. She was going to have to tell him, she could see. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Gypsy actually died last night. We are investigating her death in conjunction with the other two.”