The 7th Month

  All three immediately nodded.

  “We get a lot of time in front of the director,” said Melissa, the brunette dressed as a detective. “Not to mention the experience of making a feature film. You never know. Stand-in today . . .”

  “Star tomorrow,” Natalie, the gorgeous blonde, finished for her. She trilled the word “star” in a way that indicated she’d practiced it before. Many times, D.D. would guess, probably while standing in front of her dresser mirror.

  “I play the victim that gets away,” Natalie continued, gesturing to her tightly fitted black dress, with matching hose and, of course, three-inch stilettos. “Tonight’s the scene where my character, the widow Deborah, first visits her husband’s grave to leave a red rose—it’s their anniversary. Except the Gravestone Killer attacks. She barely gets away.”

  Natalie tossed back her wavy blond hair as if to emphasize the drama of her narrow escape. Getting into character, D.D. figured, but already she had a feeling the thin, elegant blonde was the naturally dramatic type.

  “That’s scene one,” Don reported, from the doorway. “What they’re setting up now.”

  “Later in the movie,” Joe picked up, “the cops”—he gestured to himself and the other stand-in, Melissa—“decide to bait the Gravestone Killer by having Deborah return to her husband’s grave. That’s scene thirty-two, which we’ll film after scene one.”

  “Scene thirty-two?” D.D. asked. “Of how many scenes?”

  “A hundred and eighty-nine.”

  “Meaning baiting the killer obviously doesn’t work. What goes wrong?”

  Joe grinned at her. “You’ll have to stick around to find out.”

  She rolled her eyes. D.D. had done some digging into Donnie’s production company. She knew that the film had started shooting three weeks ago and that Chaibongsai had received one paycheck for two weeks of work. Meaning the cast and crew had had three weeks to get to know one another, form friendships, and, apparently, make enemies. Given that Samuel had been hired to help primarily with the male lead, she decided to quiz Joe first on Chaibongsai’s involvement.

  “You work with the cop consultant?” she asked him.

  “Chaibongsai? Nope. I’m just a stand-in. Authenticity is above my pay grade. He worked directly with Gary.”

  “What about hanging around on set?”

  “His territory was video village. The promised land. Again, we’re second team. We’re lucky to get the green room.”

  “Meals?”

  “Cast and crew eat together,” Joe granted. “But people are staggering in and out over the course of an hour, depending on their schedules. I sat next to Chaibongsai once. That was it.”

  “You local?” she asked him, then stretched out the question to include Melissa and Natalie as well.

  As a unit, they nodded.

  “What about others on set?”

  “Lighting and electrical,” Don spoke up. “Some of the production crew, including PAs. Craft services, hair and makeup. But most of the cast and crew flew in for the shoot. The director, Ron, has his own camera crew out of L.A., sound is from New Orleans, wardrobe from New York. Not sure about the rest.”

  D.D. looked at him. “Where’s everyone staying?”

  “A hotel in Boston that gives us a group rate.” Donnie shrugged. “It’s why we’re working such long hours. Cast and crew are here to get this done, then everyone goes home again.”

  D.D. nodded, frowning slightly to herself. A suspect pool from all over made life trickier. Who had Chaibongsai gotten close to in the past three weeks, and how had that led to his death?

  A new person entered the tent, headset clamped over his ears. “Second team, on set,” the kid announced, and all three stand-ins rose. “New shoot schedule: We’re starting with scene thirty-two, then scene one.”

  Donnie immediately appeared annoyed, hustling over to the kid. “Why the change?”

  “Stephanie’s running late.” The production assistant shrugged his shoulders. “Scene thirty-two starts with the detectives in action, so easiest to go there first. But director also wants Natalie, so we can work out lighting on the tombstone.”

  Stephanie must be the actress playing the widow, D.D. deduced. She made a mental note. One actress late to set. Just a movie star being a movie star . . . or related to the murder?

  The change in scene order didn’t seem to be a big deal, at least not to the stand-ins. Joe and Melissa shrugged, while Natalie seemed genuinely thrilled to be assisting with the lighting of a tombstone. Go figure, D.D. thought.

  D.D. followed Donnie out of the green room to a brightly lit area containing a towering Styrofoam-carved tombstone and carpets of fake fog. Joe and Melissa took up positions behind real tombstones, detectives on the job. Natalie, as the widow, sank to her knees in front of the gray-painted foam masterpiece, her fingers coming to rest on a single red rose.

  Tendrils of fake fog immediately enveloped her, and this time, even D.D. shivered.

  Joe, Melissa, and Natalie started rehearsing the scene. Donnie led D.D. to video village, where they could watch the action live on camera. First thing D.D. noticed was that the stand-ins didn’t just hit marks, but delivered their lines with genuine inflection and emotion. Natalie in particular was very convincing as the young widow, grieving her husband’s tragic death without ever saying a word.

  When the first scene ended with Joe and Melissa leaping over tombstones, D.D. wanted to clap. Instead, the director yelled about needing another light by the tombstone while the director of photography grumbled that the camera man needed a different lens. Joe, Melissa, and Natalie simply walked back to their first marks and took up position again.

  And again. And again. And again. Same scene, performed a dozen times and counting, and they weren’t even filming yet. The glamorous world of moviemaking, D.D. quickly realized, was about as exciting as watching paint dry.

  D.D. sighed, rubbing her lower back absently as she struggled to get her bulk comfortable in the canvas director’s chair.

  Eight P.M. Full dark beyond the reach of the lights. Temperature already at forty and still plunging with mid-November glee. On set with a very nervous producer and a cast of one hundred and four possible murder suspects.

  This is where Samuel Chaibongsai had sat, day after day, scene after scene. Looking for blatant procedural inconsistencies. A former cop turned entertainment consultant. The job he used to do, the job he was now paid to do. One man, two occupational views.

  Then, she was struck by another thought. If scene one was about the murderer’s first attack, and scene thirty-two was about baiting the same murderer, then where was the actor, or even the stand-in, for the Gravestone Killer?

  Because suddenly, D.D. was staring at the whitewashed face of a demented man, looming out from behind the fake tombstone and raising an ax over Natalie’s bowed head.

  Murder is a full-body experience. Your pulse rate will spike, your skin flushes with heat, your palms dampen with sweat. Beforehand, it is not uncommon to have second thoughts, pre-party jitters so to speak. Once the process has started, however, crossing the street, sneaking into the backyard, prying open that never completely secured window . . .

  A calm will descend. A predatory Zen state, where the air tastes crisper, the smell of her shampoo registers sharper, while the sound of her first muffled scream, caught in the latex-covered palm of your hand . . .

  Sound and scent will become snapshots, frozen forever in your mind. A slide show of sensory indulgence, her panting breath, matching the equal racing of your heart, her kicking struggles, the corresponding flex of muscle and power in your own limbs. Her sheer, desperate need to escape. Your own equally compulsive, biological imperative to kill.

  You will feel stronger, hear better, smell sharper, taste finer, and see crisper than ever before. As long as you stay in control. No panic, no frenzy, no mistakes. Ride the ride to her last, gasping, gurgling breath. Killing is about power, but it is also about self-control.
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  Mentally prepare for the physiological overload. This is step four.

  Chapter 4

  D.D. was out of the director’s chair before she could stop herself. She wasn’t thinking about the fact that she was a very pregnant woman who should probably sit on the sidelines, hands folded primly over rounded middle. Instead, she saw danger and she responded as a cop. Out of her chair, moving across the hard-packed ground, registering the tang of chemical fog upon her tongue, the sound of a genuinely panicked scream in her ears.

  Gun out, hustling her awkward bulk around video village, beyond the glow of the klieg lights and into the dim shadows of the vast cemetery, where she would be out of the killer’s sight, while he would be fully illuminated in hers.

  Perhaps one second had passed, with the blond actress screaming, and camera crew still filming, while others around the set straightened up from texting, talking, loitering, and started to eye the scene uneasily.

  “No, no, no,” the stand-in wailed, hands up, defensively, twisting away from the looming figure.

  “Cut,” the director yelled. “I need to see her face. Again, but this time, turn toward the camera!”

  Except Natalie was now garbling hysterically in some foreign language, while the white-faced man brought the ax down hard, just missing the blonde’s head as he sliced off a chunk of foam tombstone.

  D.D. looped out far right, trying to line up a shot. But a hundred and four crewmen seemed to translate to a hundred and four obstacles. Cameras, lights, dollies, equipment, tombstones . . . Couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot.

  “Cut, cut, cut!” the director yelled. “Hey, why’s he attacking my tombstone?”

  Natalie was staggering to her feet, hands still over her head as she screamed more words D.D. didn’t understand. The blonde seemed to have recovered slightly. Less hysteria, more rage as she faced off against her attacker.

  Then, a fresh wave of fog rolled over the scene. Natalie disappeared, the white-faced figure along with her.

  To D.D.’s left, charming stand-in Joe Talte suddenly materialized, vaulting over tombstones, hurtling himself straight toward the cloud bank. D.D. mentally calculated his trajectory and put herself on an opposing course, the second arm of the vice, now closing in on the ax man.

  Her gun was useless given the crowd, so she kept it low to her side as she hustled her bulky form around the tombstones, approaching from behind. She was counting on Joe to get to the scene first. If he could get the ax man down, then D.D. could cover him with her weapon.

  A fresh gust of wind. The fog cleared just in time to show Natalie staggering back while her attacker turned and fled toward the rear of the cemetery, Joe in hot pursuit. The ax man ducked behind a large oak tree, dodging left, then appeared again straight in front of D.D.

  Gun up. Acrid taste of fake fog. Damp smell of fresh-turned earth. Shocked expression of one white-faced fleeing man, suddenly confronting a very large, pregnant woman with a flapping black overcoat and rock-steady Glock 9.

  “Halt, Boston Police.”

  “Wh—wh—wh—oomph!”

  Joe Talte had arrived. He leapt through the air, wrapped his arms around the ax man’s shoulders and took him down. Both men fell hard. Joe got up first.

  The stand-in drew his sidearm. At the last second, he seemed to remember it was only a prop. Hastily, he holstered it again, then glanced around to see if anyone had seen him.

  “I got him,” D.D. spoke up, voice loud, authoritative.

  Joe glanced behind for the first time, spotting her. He nodded once, curt acknowledgment, then stood aside, given her official capacity and, better yet, her real handgun.

  She noticed that his breathing had already settled, and that his hands remained in front of him, legs spread shoulder-width apart for balance. If ax man came up, Joe would be taking him down again.

  Ax man didn’t try to get up. Instead, sprawled on the ground, he groaned.

  D.D. stepped closer to Joe.

  Her heart was pounding too hard from the short burst of adrenaline. She could feel a stitch developing in the left side of her stomach, not to mention a now sharper ache in the small of her back. Running after the ax man hadn’t been a great idea. Bending over to cuff him would be an even worse one.

  The baby had spoken. Time to stop playing cop and return to the business of being a mom.

  She had a couple of zip ties in her coat pocket. She held them out to Joe and let him do the honors. Later, she hoped Alex and her boss would be pleased with her common sense. In the meantime, she noted that Joe didn’t need any instructions in how to use zip ties to restrain a grown man.

  With the attacker’s hands secured in front of him, Joe hefted the groaning suspect to his feet. And D.D. found herself face-to-face with a vampire.

  “It was my girlfriend’s idea,” Will Kent was lamenting ten minutes later, sitting in a cold metal folding chair in the middle of the green room, hands still tied, security guard looming at his shoulder. Six feet tall, probably one eighty, with a face painted chalk white, natural eye color obscured by jet-black contact lenses, not to mention a set of presumably fake fangs pressed into blood red lips, the wannabe actor looked like a freak show and talked with a lisp.

  D.D. and Joe had led him back to the set to discover the crew in disarray, Natalie unharmed but in hysterics, and the director studying the outtakes to see if any of them might be usable.

  “I mean, I was busy the day of the audition,” the twenty-year-old continued to whine/lisp, “and my schedule’s lousy anyway for callbacks. So Rhonda said I should sneak in, show you what I can do.” Will glanced at the director, Ron LaFavre, his gaze hopeful. At some point during the tousle, probably when Joe Talte had body slammed him, Will had bit his lip with his prosthetic fangs. The blood smeared on his chin lent a nice touch to his costume.

  “A vampire?” the director said.

  “Well sure. Vampires are hot, you know. Exactly what you need to make this movie pop. Anyone can be a Gravestone Killer. A vampire, on the other hand, really rocks. Besides,” Will added belatedly, trying to scratch at his leg with his tied hands, “my werewolf costume’s at the cleaners.”

  “A vampire,” the director said.

  “How’d you get in the cemetery?” D.D. wanted to know.

  “Backside. There’s a hole in the fence. Most of the locals know about it.”

  “When’d you enter?”

  “Shortly after six, before the grounds got too busy. I made a little shelter by a row of bushes. Been hanging out in my sleeping bag for hours, you know, just trying to stay warm until it was time for action.”

  “How did you know it was time for action?”

  “Heard the director yell action.” Will looked at D.D. as if she were an idiot. “It’s a cemetery. Sounds travels.”

  D.D. frowned at him. “What about the real Gravestone Killer?” she asked him.

  “What about the real killer?” the kid said.

  “Did you see him? Maybe interfere with his ability to show up on set?” D.D. looked around the green room, at the director, who had a faraway look on his face; at Donnie Bilger, who was clutching a cup of coffee for dear life; and at Joe Talte, who’d asserted himself into the situation with such authority, no one even questioned his right to be here. “Isn’t the Gravestone Killer part of the scenes on the schedule tonight? Has anyone seen him?”

  “A vampire,” the director said again.

  Don was frowning, looking at Joe as if he would know.

  “Haven’t seen him around,” Joe muttered. “Mark Smerznak is his name. And yeah, he should be here.”

  “I’ll have a PA check his trailer,” Donnie said, already sliding out his cell phone and exiting the green room.

  No sooner had the producer exited than Natalie came striding in. D.D. gave the blonde credit. She had her chin up, her hair tossed back, and man, could she cover ground in three-inch heels.

  Natalie marched straight up to the vampire-costume
d kid, and without looking at the director, the security guard, D.D., or Joe, slapped the kid hard across the face. Kid rocked back. When he righted himself, he had a fresh drop of blood on his split lip.

  Natalie spat, said a word which needed no translation, then sailed grandly back out of the green room.

  “Well,” D.D. said.

  “A good actress knows how to exit,” Joe agreed.

  The kid shook it off. He returned his attention to the director. “So . . . did I get the part?”

  Ron Lafavre stood. He ignored Will, addressing the security guard instead. “Toss him. And don’t let the gate hit his ass on the way out.”

  Then Ron turned to D.D. and Joe. “A vampire!” he declared, and strode from the tent. He was quickly followed by the security guard, dragging a dejected kid in his wake.

  “Stupid girlfriend,” Will muttered.

  “Stupid you,” the security guard corrected.

  The tent flap closed. Only D.D. and Joe remained.

  D.D. took a seat.

  Joe took a seat.

  “Is it just me,” she asked, “or all movie people crazy?”

  “Movie people are crazy.”

  She nodded. Made sense. She sat back, rubbed the sides of her aching belly. Then she said, “So, how long you been a cop?”

  Of course, killing only takes so long. Sooner or later, the deed is done. Maybe you’re exultant, cranked up on power and adrenaline. Maybe you’re eerily calm. You once had a problem. Now, you don’t.

  There remains, however, a key issue before you: What to do with the body? Leave it in the open, risking the discovery of any evidence you unwittingly transferred? Or dispose of the remains in some manner that buys you time, perhaps even calls into question that a homicide has occurred? The “missing wife” versus the murdered spouse. While this undoubtedly sounds like a safer strategy, moving a body involves its own dangers, including the risk of being spotted by witnesses, let alone transferring yet more evidence.