Later, an actual gunshot would be dubbed in, in place of the soft pop of the blank shell in Rachel’s gun, and Zack watched Tony wrest the gun from her, waiting for the perfect moment in their struggles before he called, “Gunshot!” so that Tony would pull the trigger, fire the blank, and Rachel would fall back and grab the packet of fake blood concealed near her shoulder. It was now! “Gunshot!” he shouted and Rachel’s whole body gave a violent jerk as a gunshot exploded like a firecracker in the cavernous barn, echoing off the metal roof.
Everyone froze, momentarily immobilized by the unexpectedly loud sound where there should only have been the pop of a blank shell with a light load in it. Rachel slowly slid out of Tony’s arms and onto the floor, but there was no fake blood spreading across her arm from a fake shoulder wound.
“What the—” Zack began, already dashing forward. Tony was bending over her, but Zack shoved him away. “Rachel?” he said, rolling her over. There was a small hole in her chest, but only a trace of blood was seeping from it. Zack’s first coherent thought, as he shouted for someone to go get the ambulance and the medics while he felt frantically for her nonexistent pulse, was that this wound couldn’t be fatal: Rachel was scarcely bleeding, the wound was nearer her collarbone than her heart, and besides, professional medical help was only a few yards away, on hand on the set, as required under law. Pandemonium was erupting everywhere; women were screaming, men were shouting, and the crew was rushing forward in a suffocating crowd. “Stay the hell back!” he yelled, and because he couldn’t find a pulse, he started giving her CPR.
* * *
An hour passed while Zack stood just outside the stable doors, a few yards away from everyone else, waiting for some word from the hoard of medics and cops inside with Rachel. Squad cars and ambulances were parked all over the lawn and driveway, their eerie red and blue emergency lights whirling frantically in the still, humid night.
Rachel was dead. He sensed it, knew it. He’d seen death once before; he remembered how it looked. Despite that, he could not believe it.
The cops had already questioned Tony and the cameramen. Now they were starting to question everybody who’d been in there when it happened. But they weren’t asking Zack what he’d seen. He thought, as much as he was capable of rational thought, that it was very odd of them not to want to talk to him.
Above him a brilliant light began to sweep the area and he heard the loud whine of helicopter blades. He saw the bright red cross on the side of the chopper and relief poured through him; apparently they were going to airlift Rachel to the nearest hospital, which surely must mean the medics had gotten her vital signs stabilized. Just as the comforting thought took hold, he saw something else that made his blood freeze: The cops who’d cordoned off the entire area when they arrived were letting a dark sedan through. In the light from the descending helicopter, he could read the emblem on the side of the driver’s door: It said County Coroner.
Everyone else saw it too. Emily began to sob in her father’s arms, and Zack heard Austin’s savage curse followed by a comforting murmur of words from Tommy. Diana was staring at the coroner’s car with a pale, set face, and everyone else was just . . . staring at each other.
But no one was looking at him or attempting to approach him. In his dazed state, that seemed a little strange to Zack even though he preferred it that way.
8
THE ENTIRE CAST AND CREW were quarantined at their hotel the next day for questioning by the police. Zack spent the time in a restless stupor, while the police refused to give him any information and the news media spewed out a steady stream of it for the entire country. According to the NBC program he watched at noon, the gun that killed Rachel had been loaded with a hollow point shell, which was designed to break up and spread out on impact, inflicting total destruction in a wide area of the body rather than merely passing through it, which was why her death had been instantaneous. “CBS Evening News” provided a ballistics expert on their program who stood in front of an easel with a pointer and a diagram of Rachel’s body and explained to America exactly what damage the shell had done and precisely where it was located. Zack slammed the off button on the television’s remote controller, then he went into the bathroom and threw up. Rachel was dead, but despite the fact that there’d been no real warmth in their marriage, despite the fact that she’d intended to divorce him for Tony, he could not come to grips with her death or the gruesome, evil way it had occurred. The ABC 10 o’clock network news dropped a verbal bomb on him when it was announced that according to the autopsy report, which had just been released, Rachel Evans Benedict had been six weeks pregnant.
Zack sank back on the sofa and closed his eyes, swallowing bitter bile, feeling as if he was in the middle of a hurricane that was spinning him around. Rachel had been pregnant. But not by him. He hadn’t slept with her in months.
Unshaven and unable to eat, he prowled around his hotel suite, occasionally wondering if everyone else was being detained and if so, why none of them had come to his room to talk or commiserate or pass the time. The hotel switchboard was under siege from people in Hollywood trying to reach him, most of them, he knew, more interested in getting the dirt than expressing any real regret at her death. And so he refused to answer phone calls from everyone except Matt Farrell and spent his time wondering who in God’s name had hated Rachel enough to want her dead. As the hours passed, he suspected every single person on the set for one absurd reason or another, then he discarded that suspect and groped for another because his reasons for suspecting them were so impossibly flimsy.
In the back of his mind he was aware that the police might believe he had some very strong motives for murdering her, and yet the thought was so ludicrous that he remained steadfastly convinced that the police would realize that.
Two days after her death, Zack answered a knock on the door to his suite and glared at the two tall, grim-faced detectives who’d questioned him yesterday. “Mr. Benedict,” one of them began, but Zack’s patience and temper had been strained past the breaking point.
“Why in the living hell are you bastards wasting your time with me!” he exploded. “I demand to know what progress you’re making finding my wife’s killer—”
He was so enraged that he was caught off guard when one of them, who’d walked into the suite and positioned himself at Zack’s back, suddenly shoved him into the wall, grabbed his wrists, and jerked his hands up behind his back. Zack felt the cold bite of the handcuffs at the same time the other one said, “Zachary Benedict, you are under arrest for the murder of Rachel Evans. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney—”
9
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE jury, you’ve heard the shocking testimony and seen the incontrovertible proof . . .” Alton Peterson, the prosecuting attorney, stood perfectly still, his piercing gaze moving slowly over the faces of the twelve Dallas County jurors who were about to decide the outcome of a trial that had generated a holocaust of public attention with its scandalous revelations of adultery and murder among Hollywood’s superstars.
Outside the courtroom, the halls were packed with reporters from all over the world who were waiting to discover the latest titillating developments in the trial of Zachary Benedict. Once, the media had fawned over him, now they reported every detail of Zack’s fall from prestige with even greater relish, serving up each juicy morsel of conjecture and allegation to fascinated Americans, who digested each tidbit along with their dinners and the evening news.
“You’ve heard the proof,” Peterson reminded the jury more emphatically as he continued his final summation, “the unimpeachable testimony from dozens of witnesses, some of whom were actually Zachary Benedict’s friends. You know that the night before Rachel Evans was murdered, Zachary Benedict discovered her naked in Anthony Austin’s arms. You know that Benedict was enraged, that he attacked Austin and had to be dragged off the man. You’ve heard testimony from guests in the hotel wh
o were in the hall outside Benedict’s suite and who heard the loud argument that ensued. From these witnesses you know that Rachel Evans told Benedict that she was planning to divorce him and marry Anthony Austin and that she intended to gain half of everything Zachary Benedict possessed in that divorce. These same witnesses testified that Benedict warned his wife, and I quote . . .” Peterson paused to glance at his notes, but it was all for effect, because no one in the courtroom could forget that threat. Raising his voice for emphasis, he repeated, “I’ll kill you before I let you and Austin get half of anything!”
Gripping the railing around the juror’s box, he searched each rapt face. “And he did kill her, ladies and gentlemen. He killed her in cold blood, along with the innocent, unborn baby she carried! You know he did it and I know he did it. But the way he did it makes this crime even more revolting, more heinous, because it shows the kind of cold-blooded monster Zachary Benedict is.” Turning, he began to pace, recapping the way the crime had taken place, working up to his conclusion: “Zachary Benedict didn’t murder in an unpremeditated rage of passion like your ordinary killer. No indeed, not him. He waited twenty-four hours so that his precious movie could be finished first, and then he chose a method of revenge that is so bizarre, so cold-blooded it makes me gag! He put hollow point shells in a gun, and then at the last minute while they were filming the end of that movie, he changed the way the script had been written, so that his wife, not Anthony Austin, would be shot during their fake struggle!”
Alton paused and gripped the railing again. “None of this is conjecture on my part. You’ve heard the testimony that proves every word: On the afternoon of the murder, while the rest of the film crew was on a break, Zachary Benedict went into that stable alone, ostensibly to rearrange some things on the set. Several people saw him go in there—he admitted it himself—yet no one on the film crew could think of a single thing that looked different when they returned to the set. What was he doing in there? You know what he was doing! He was switching the harmless blank shells, which a production assistant testified he had put in the gun himself, for deadly hollow points. I remind you once again that Benedict’s fingerprints were on that gun. His and his alone, left there no doubt by mistake, after he’d wiped the gun clean. And once all his preparations were made, did he finish the gruesome deed and get it over with like an ordinary murderer? No, not him. Instead of that,” Alton turned to face the defendant, and he did not have to feign his loathing and revulsion as he said, “Zachary Benedict stood beside a cameraman in that stable, watching his wife and her lover embrace and kiss and fondle each other, and he made them do it over and over again! He stopped them each time his wife was ready to reach for the gun. And then, when he’d had enough ‘fun,’ enough sick vengeance, when he could no longer prolong the moment that the script called for—the moment when his wife was supposed to reach for the gun and shoot Tony Austin—Zachary Benedict changed the script!”
Twisting around, Peterson pointed a finger at Zack, his voice ringing with loathing. “Zachary Benedict is a man who is so corrupted by wealth and fame that he actually believed himself above and beyond all the laws that apply to you and to me. He believed you’d let him get away with it! Look at him, ladies and gentlemen of the jury—”
Compelled by Peterson’s booming baritone, every single face in the crowded courtroom turned in unison toward Zack, who was seated at the defendant’s table. Beside him, Zack’s chief defense attorney hissed without actually moving his lips, “Damn it, Zack, look up at the jury!”
Zack raised his head and complied automatically, but he doubted that anything he did was going to make a difference in the jury’s collective minds. If Rachel had set out to frame him for her murder, she could never have done a better job at making the “evidence” point to him than he had done on his own.
“Look at him,” Alton Peterson commanded with renewed fervor and fury, “and you’ll see what he is—a man who is guilty of murder in the first degree! That is the verdict, the only verdict, you can return in this case if justice is to be done!”
* * *
The following morning, the jury retired to debate their verdict and Zack, who was free on $1 million bail, returned to his suite at the Crescent, where he alternately considered trying to make a run for South America and trying to murder Tony Austin instead. Tony seemed like the most logical suspect to him, yet neither Zack’s lawyers nor the private detectives they hired could turn up any damning evidence against him except that he still had an expensive drug habit—a habit that he would have been better able to indulge if Rachel had lived to marry him after divorcing Zack. Furthermore, if Zack hadn’t decided at the last minute to change the script, Tony, not Rachel, would have been the one shot. Zack tried to remember if he’d ever mentioned to Tony that he didn’t like the ending as written and was thinking of changing it. Sometimes, he thought out loud and bounced ideas off others without remembering he’d done it. He’d written notes about changing the ending in his copy of the script, and he’d left the script lying around, but all of the witnesses denied having known anything about it.
Like a caged tiger, he prowled the length of his suite, cursing fate and Rachel and himself. Over and over again, he went through his own lawyer’s closing statement, trying to make himself believe Arthur Handler had been able to sway the jury from convicting him. Handler’s only real, only plausible defense had been that Zack would have had to be a complete fool to commit so blatant and bizarre a crime when he knew every scrap of evidence was going to point directly at him. When it came out during the trial that Zack owned a large gun collection and was fully familiar with various types of guns and shells, Handler had tried to point out that since that was true, Zack would have also been able to switch the shells without leaving a clumsy fingerprint on the gun.
The idea of trying to make a run for South America and then vanish revolved around in Zack’s mind, but it was a lousy idea, and he knew it. For one thing, if he ran, then the jury would decide he was guilty even if they’d been going to acquit him. Second, his face was so well known, particularly now with all the press coverage of the trial, that he’d be spotted within minutes wherever he went. The only good thing he could count on was that Tony Austin would never work in films again, now that all his vices and perversions had come out in the trial and made headlines.
* * *
By the next morning when there was a knock at the door, frustration and suspense had twisted every muscle of his body into knots. He yanked the door open and frowned at the only friend he had ever trusted implicitly. Zack hadn’t wanted Matt Farrell at the trial, partly because he was humiliated and partly because he didn’t want the taint Zack now carried to rub off on the famous industrialist. Since Matt had been in Europe until yesterday negotiating for a company he was buying, it had been easy for Zack to sound optimistic when his friend phoned. Now, Zack took one look at his friend’s grim features and knew that he’d already discovered the dire truth and had obviously flown to Dallas because of it.
“Don’t look so happy to see me,” Matt said dryly, walking into the suite.
“I told you there was no reason to come here,” Zack countered, closing the door. “The jury’s out right now. Everything is going to be fine.”
“In which case,” Matt replied, undeterred by his unenthusiastic greeting, “we can while away the hours playing some poker. O’Hara’s putting the car away and arranging for our rooms,” he added, referring to his chauffeur/bodyguard. He shrugged out of his suit coat, glanced at Zack’s haggard features, and reached for the telephone. “You look like hell,” he said as he ordered an enormous breakfast for three sent up to the room.
* * *
“This sure is my lucky day,” Joe O’Hara said six hours later as he scooped a handful of winnings from the center of the table. A huge man with a prizefighter’s battered features and a wrestler’s physique, he hid his private worry over Zack’s future behind an attitude of boisterous optimism that fooled no one, but some
how made the tense atmosphere in the suite more bearable.
“Remind me to cut your salary,” Matt said wryly, looking at the pile of money accumulating at his chauffeur’s elbow. “I shouldn’t be paying you enough to sit in on a game with these stakes.”
“You always say that whenever I beat you and Zack at cards,” O’Hara replied cheerfully, shuffling. “This is like the good old days in Carmel when we used to do this a lot. Except it was always nighttime.”
And Zack’s life wasn’t hanging in the balance . . .
The unspoken thought swelled in the heavy silence, broken by the shrill ring of the telephone.
Zack reached for it, listened, and stood up. “The jury’s reached a verdict. I have to go.”
“I’ll go with you,” Matt said.
“I’ll bring the car around.” O’Hara put in, already reaching for the car keys in his jacket pocket.
“It’s not necessary,” Zack said, fighting down his panic. “My attorneys are picking me up.” He waited until O’Hara had shaken his hand and left, then he looked at Matt and walked over to the desk. “I have a favor to ask of you.” He took a formal document out of the drawer and handed it to his friend. “I had this prepared just in case something goes wrong. It’s a power of attorney granting you the absolute right to act on my behalf on anything that pertains to my finances or assets.”
Matt Farrell looked down at it and his color drained at this proof that Zack obviously thought there was at least a fifty-fifty chance he’d be convicted.
“It’s just a formality, a contingency plan. I’m sure you’ll never need to use it,” Zack lied.