Eleventh Hour

  Dane rubbed his forehead, dashed his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t get his brain around what she’d just said. It didn’t seem possible. He said finally, “You’re telling me that some asshole murdered my brother because he was following the script of some idiotic TV show?”

  “Yes. When the show was over, I watched all the credits and wrote down everything I could.”

  Dane dragged his fingers through his hair again, drew a deep breath, and said, “I’m going to order some coffee, then you’re going to tell me everything, every little detail. Oh damn, let me call Delion. You’re pretty sure about this?”

  “I’m positive. I just couldn’t believe it. I nearly woke you up, but realized that there wasn’t much of anything you could do at midnight. And you were so tired.”

  “It’s okay.”

  LOS ANGELES

  After arriving at LAX on the 9 a.m. Southwest shuttle from Oakland airport, where Nick was allowed through despite having no ID after Delion filled out papers in triplicate and spoke to two supervisors, Inspector Delion, Special Agent Carver, and the woman they introduced as Ms. Nick Jones, with no designation at all, stepped into Executive Producer Frank Pauley’s corner office with its big glass windows that looked across Pico toward the ocean. You couldn’t see it because the smog was sitting heavy and gray over the city, but you could see the golf course.

  Mr. Pauley was slightly built, tall, pleasant looking, and very pale. Surely that shouldn’t be right, Nick thought. Wasn’t everyone in LA supposed to be tanned from head to toe? He looked to be somewhere in his forties, and had a nice smile, albeit a nervous one when he met them. She couldn’t blame him for that.

  He shook hands all around, offered them coffee, and pointed them to the very long gray sofa that lined half the wall. It must have been at least eighteen feet long. There were chairs facing that sofa, all of them gray, and three coffee tables spaced out to form separate sitting groups.

  Frank Pauley said, waving toward the sofa, “I just took over. I inherited this office and all the gray from the last executive producer. He said he liked a really big casting couch.” He grinned at Nick, who didn’t grin back, and said, “You called, Inspector Delion, because you believe that the murders in The Consultant that played last night are similar to murders that were committed in San Francisco over the last week and a half.”

  “That’s right,” Delion said. “But before we discuss any more of this, we’d like to see the show, compare all the points, make a final determination. Ms. Jones is the only one of us who’s seen it so far.”

  “This is, naturally, very disturbing. Just a moment, please.” Frank Pauley turned to the gray phone, punched in a couple of buttons.

  Nick said, “Thank God you’ve only aired two of the shows.”

  Dane said, “We’ll watch both episodes, Mr. Pauley. If we’ve got a match with San Francisco, we’ll find out whether there have been any crimes that follow the first episode. We have no way of knowing whether the murderer would continue if you stop showing the episodes. But I presume the studio will announce that the show’s been canceled?”

  Frank Pauley cleared his throat. “Let me be up front here. Our lawyers have recommended that we immediately cancel the show and provide you with complete cooperation. Naturally, the studio is appalled that some maniac would do this, if, indeed, we discover that the episode does match the murders in San Francisco.”

  Dane said, “We appreciate it. Naturally you will have to be concerned about legal action.”

  “We always are,” Frank Pauley said. “They’re waiting for us in room fifty-one.”

  “Room fifty-one?” Nick said.

  “A little joke, Ms. Jones, just a little film joke. It’s our own private theater. We can see the first and second episodes now, if you wish.”

  Delion said, “Later, perhaps we can see the third episode as well.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Pauley said, waving a left hand that sported four diamond rings. Dane felt a man’s instant distaste. Hey, maybe four different wives had given them to him, one never knew, here in LA.

  They sat in the small darkened theater and watched the second episode of The Consultant. The city was Chicago, the church, St. John’s, the priest, Father Paul. Dane watched Father Paul as he listened to a man telling him about the murder he’d just committed—an old woman he’d bludgeoned to death, no sport in that, was there? But hey, she was another soul lost from Father Paul’s parish, wasn’t she? Two nights later, a black activist was garroted in front of a club, ah, yes, yet another soul lost from Father Paul’s parish, and what was the priest going to do about it? The murderer mocks the priest’s beliefs, claims the Church is the perfect calling for men who can’t face life, that the priest is nothing but a coward who can’t even tell a soul, because he’s bound by rules that really don’t make a whole lot of sense, now do they?

  In the fourth and final meeting, after two more murders, the priest loses it. He sobs, pleading with the murderer, raging against God for allowing this monster to exist, raging against his own deeply held beliefs, hating his own helplessness. The murderer laughs, tells him you live like a coward, you die like a coward, and shoots the priest in the forehead.

  Dane leaned forward and shut off the projector. He said to Pauley, “Your writers made a mistake here. A priest is bound to silence only when it is a real confession, that is, when the penitent truly means to repent. In a case like this, where the man is mocking the sacrament itself, the priest isn’t bound to silence.”

  Pauley stared at him. “But I thought—”

  “I know,” Dane said. “Everybody believes that. But the Church makes that exception. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be out in the hall.”

  The truth was, he couldn’t bear the show another minute. He leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, trying to get a grip on himself. But he kept seeing the man firing that gun, shooting the priest in the forehead.

  He felt her hand on his arm. They stood still, saying nothing, for a very long time. Finally, Dane drew several deep breaths and raised his head. “Thank you,” he said.

  She only nodded.

  Delion came out of the small theater. “You didn’t miss much. We have this big-shot consultant dude with some mythical agency in Washington, D.C., come riding into town—the guy’s real sensitive, feels people’s pain, all that crapola—he cleans the whole mess up because the local cops are stupid and don’t have any extrasensory abilities, and he can ‘see’ things, ‘intuit’ things that they can’t. It ended good except for five dead people.”

  Dane said, “He killed two more people in the show than he did in San Francisco.”

  “Yes. And maybe that means then that your brother didn’t stick to the script and that’s why the guy shot him after the two murders. Remember, your brother told Father Binney that he was going to make a decision that would change his life forever. There’s only one threat your brother could have made to shut this guy down.”

  “Yes,” Dane said. “Michael told the killer that he was going to tell the police about what this man had done.”

  Nick said, “And the guy had no choice but to shoot him. Father Michael Joseph wrecked the guy’s script. He stopped him.”

  “Your brother must have told him what he was planning to do on Sunday night and the guy had no choice but to kill him. The other two people in the show were a guy who owned a bakery and a prominent businessman. If it hadn’t been for Father Michael Joseph, there might be two more dead people in San Francisco.”

  “The guy kept saying that this Father Paul had lost another soul from his parish,” Dane said. “Do we know if the two victims in San Francisco attended Saint Bartholomew’s?”

  “They’re not on the membership list,” Delion said. “But if the guy was following the script, the chances are good that they did attend mass occasionally. That would tie it all up with a pretty bow, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Dane said, “it would. Not that it’s any help.”

/>   Delion just shook his head. “I don’t believe this. A damned script. The guy’s copycatting a damned TV script.”

  “Not copycatting,” Dane said. “Don’t forget, the murders took place before the show aired. Look, at least we know for sure the guy has to be here, has to be somehow involved with the show. No outsider would know the scripts that well.”

  Savich typed on MAX’s screen: Episode One of The Consultant—set in Boston, three murders: a secretary, a bookie, and an insurance salesman, about two to three weeks ago. “Dane, I’ll check—Hey, wait a second. Ah, Sherlock, who was reading over my shoulder, just said these murders were not in Boston, but actually happened two and a half weeks ago, in Pasadena, California.”

  “Bingo,” Dane said. “I’ll tell Delion and he can call the cops in Pasadena. Nice and close to Los Angeles.”

  “Dane, the guy’s officially taken this show on the road. You’re now formally FBI, working this case. If you want to use the San Francisco field office, call Bert Cartwright, coordinate with him. You will remain in charge of the Federal part of the investigation, all right?”

  “Yes, all right, but the thing is, Savich, the killer has to be here in Los Angeles, someone working for the studio, someone working on this specific show, or with access to it.”

  “Yes, of course, you’re right. I’ll let Gil Rainy know—he’s the SAC down in LA—that you’ll be coordinating with him. But you’ll be calling the shots. I’ll make sure everyone’s clear on that.”

  “Thanks, Savich.”

  There was a brief silence, then a chuckle. “And that means you’ve got MAX at your disposal.”

  There was incredulity in Dane’s voice. “You mean you’re going to send MAX out for me?”

  “Get a grip here, Dane. Deep-six that fantasy. No, let me know what you need and I will—personally—set MAX to work.”

  “Oh, so I didn’t catch you in a weak moment.”

  “Never that weak.” A pause, then, “How are you holding up, Dane?”

  “Michael’s funeral is on Friday afternoon.”

  The words were spoken with finality, cold and frozen over.

  Savich said, after a pause, “Just call when you need something.”

  “Thanks, Savich.” Dane closed his cell phone and walked into the West LA Division on Butler Avenue. It was a big blocky concrete box with an in-your-eye bright orange tile entrance, evidently someone’s idea of cheering up the place. Truth be told, the building was old and ugly, but humongous, nearly a full city block, with a parking lot beside it for the black-and-whites. Across the street was another lot and a maintenance station. It was in an old part of town, with lots of weeds, old houses, and little greenery anywhere.

  Dane flipped open his shield for the officers standing at the front desk, got a nod from one of them, and walked to the stairs. He heard a loud mix of voices before he even saw the signs. He met Patty, a nice older lady who was a volunteer receptionist, kept chocolate chip cookies on a big plate on her desk, and tracked all the detectives. She told him they had three homicide detectives and Detective Flynn was inside with the two cops from San Francisco. Dane assumed Delion had just rolled Nick into the mix.

  He walked into the large room, much bigger than the homicide room in San Francisco. All the detectives here were stationed in this room filled with gnarly workstations and funky orange lockers against the rear wall.

  Patty had told him Detective Flynn’s desk was down three rows. He walked past a man whose shirt was hanging out, past a woman who was shouting to another detective to shut the fuck up, and then there was Flynn—impossible to miss Flynn, he’d been told, and it was true. He saw Nick sitting quietly in the corner, reading a magazine. Well, no, she wasn’t reading, just using it as a prop. What was she thinking?

  Dane walked up to Delion and told him, “The murders from the first episode of The Consultant, they were in Pasadena. Two, two and a half weeks ago.”

  Detective Mark Flynn didn’t wait for an introduction, just lifted his phone and started dialing.

  Ten minutes later, he hung up. He was about fifty, black, and looked like he’d been a pro basketball player until just last week. He said, “You must be Agent Carver.” The men shook hands.

  Flynn said, nodding toward Nick, who’d come up to his desk when Dane arrived, “The murders in Pasadena took place before, during, and just after the first show. They sound pretty much identical to the murders on the first episode.”

  “That would mean, then,” Delion said, “that our guy went back and forth to San Francisco, maybe he even flew back and forth a couple of times. Or drove, what with the waits at the airports. We’ll have to match the exact times of the murders in both cities.”

  “And then we check the airlines,” Flynn said. “Looks to me, boys, like we’re stuck with a real ugly case. What do you say we go back to the studio and round up everyone who had anything to do with those scripts? I’ll just bet the studio honchos are shitting in their pants, what with the possibility of lawsuits they’ll face from the families of the victims.”

  “They have assured us of their complete cooperation,” Delion said.

  Flynn said, “Well, that’s something. Hey, it’s kinda neat having a Fed around. You bite?”

  “Nah, never.”

  “That’s good, because I bite back,” Flynn said.

  Dane said, “I’ll be heading up our involvement with the local agents. Ms. Jones is a possible witness and that’s why she’s here with us. We want her to look at everyone who had anything to do with this show. Just maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “I say it’s the writer,” Delion said. “He dreamed it all up. Who else could it be?”

  Detective Flynn just gave Delion a mournful look. “Sorry, son, but the writer—poor schmuck—yeah, he could be the one to start the ball rolling, maybe come up with the concept, a couple of show ideas, maybe even a rough draft for the first show, but is he our perp? You see, depending on the show, there can be up to a dozen writers with their fingers in the plot. Then there’s all the rest of those yahoos—the director, the assistant directors, the script folk, the producers, the actors, hell, even the grip. I know all this because I live here and my kid is an actor. He’s been on a few shows so far.” Detective Flynn drew himself up even taller, if that was possible. “He’s a comedian.”

  “Which shows?” Nick asked.

  “He was on Friends and Just Shoot Me.”

  Nick nodded. “That’s fantastic.”

  Flynn smiled down at her from his six-foot-six height and said, “I wonder how many more episodes of The Consultant it would have taken before someone somewhere noticed.”

  “Needless to say,” Dane said, “they’ve stopped the shows.”

  “The studio heads might be morons,” Flynn said, “but not the lawyers. I’ll bet they had conniption fits, ordered the plug pulled the instant you guys called.”

  Nick said, “How do they select which episode is played each week? Or are they aired in a specific sequence?”

  “Since this show isn’t about the ongoing lives of its main characters,” Flynn said, “I can’t imagine that the order would be all that important. Normally, though, I understand that they’re shown in the order they’re filmed. We’ll ask.”

  Delion said, “Then that means our guy knows which episode is going to play next. And that means he’s here in LA for sure.”

  “Yeah, over at Premier Studios,” Flynn said.

  TWELVE

  Premier Studios was on West Pico Boulevard, just perpendicular to Avenue of the Stars. Across from the studio was the Rancho Park Golf Course. Dane was surprised at the level of security. There was a kiosk at the entrance gate, armed security guards, and dogs sniffing car interiors. Past the initial kiosk, the driveway was set up with white concrete blocks forming S-curves to force cars to drive slowly.

  Detective Flynn flashed his badge and told them that the Big Cheese was expecting them, at which point the woman smiled, checked her board, and said, “H
ave at it, Detective.”

  There were giant murals painted on the studio walls: Marilyn Monroe in Seven Year Itch, Luke fighting Darth Vader in Star Wars, Julie Andrews singing in The Sound of Music, and cartoon characters from The Simpsons. There was also advertising for new shows. Nick stopped a moment to stare at the building-size paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant.

  “They’ve been up forever,” Flynn said. “Neat, isn’t it?”

  The head of Premier Studios, who was second only to the owner, mogul Miles Burdock, was on the fifth floor, the executive level of a modern building that didn’t look at all fancy and was close to the entrance of the studio lot.

  The Big Cheese’s name was Linus Wolfinger and he wasn’t a man, Pauley told them when he met them in his office on the fourth floor, he was a boy who was only twenty-four years old. He believed himself a genius, and the arrogant Little Shit was right.

  “Does this mean you don’t like him?” Delion said.

  “You think it’s that noticeable?”

  “Nah, I’m just real sensitive to nuances,” Delion said.

  “The problem,” Frank Pauley said, waving that hand with the four diamond rings on it, “is that the Little Shit is really good when it comes to picking story concepts, and God knows there are zillions pitched each season. He’s good at picking actors, at picking the right time slots for the shows to air. Sometimes he’s wrong, but not that often. It’s all very depressing, particularly since he has the habit of telling everyone how great he is. Everyone hates his guts.”

  “Yeah,” Delion said. “Even as delicate as I am, I can sure see why.”

  “Twenty-four? As in only two dozen years old?” Detective Flynn asked.

  “Yep, a raw thing to swallow,” Frank Pauley said. “On the other hand, most of the top executives in a studio are only around for the short term—maybe three, four years. You can bet their entire focus is on how much money they can pocket before they’re out. This is a money business. There are simply no other considerations. You’ll have an executive producer getting his paycheck, then he’ll decide to direct a show and that means he gets another paycheck. It’s all ego and money.”