A knife flashed through the frame and slashed into the woman’s throat, severing the carotid artery. Blood spurted and a weak gurgling scream reminded Harrow of a rabbit’s cry when a hawk swooped in and carried it off. Then the scream dissipated amid more gurgling and the struggle for air as a victim drowned on her own blood...
Kate recoiled from the computer, and Byrnes had to catch her.
Harrow, though, remained glued to the screen, watching this beautiful young woman grasp feebly at her neck, trying to hold in the spurting blood, turning her fingers runny, smudgy scarlet. She only grew weaker, her attempts more feeble...
Then she was gone.
“Don Juan again. When I love a woman, she has been loved so completely, so well, that she has no more reason to live. Nothing else to look forward to, since I never repeat myself — no woman is worthy of receiving my love twice.”
“Sick,” Kate said, looking like she would be.
“I do apologize for making demands — I know producers do not like to be bossed around by talent.”
Harrow and Byrnes shared an awkward glance.
“You will cast me as your new star on Crime Seen, or I’m afraid, face the consequences. Give me my rightful glory, my proper respect... and air time... and I will keep my fatal seductions down to one a week.”
Harrow frowned.
“But if you do not accede to my demands... let’s call them ‘requests,’ we are all friends here, collaborators... I will have to accelerate the frequency. Now, you may be asking yourself if you have just witnessed a master of special effects... no. This is real. This is realism. By way of proof, you will find the body of my latest lover within twenty-four hours. She will serve as proof that I am sincere.”
Harrow said, “My God — he’s not kidding. It is a goddamn audition tape...”
“I will expect your answer on this Friday’s show, or next week you will meet two of my satisfied lovers. The week after, three lovely women will die on camera... and I have the stamina and will power and seductive skills to expand to daily conquests if need be. So it’s up to you, UBC. And to the star of the show — J.C. Harrow? I have this personal message.”
“Bastard,” Harrow said.
“Don’t be envious. My popularity will soar — it will exceed your own. But jealousy is beneath real artists like ourselves, Mr. Harrow. You know... and I know... that a true hero is only as strong as his adversary. And now you have a worthy one.”
Carmen’s laptop went blank, and the audio ended.
Feeling like he’d been poleaxed, Harrow said, “Where in the hell did this come from?”
“Cyber tip line,” Carmen said. “Came in as an attached file.”
“Is it real?” Byrnes asked.
Verging on hysteria, Kate said, “It looks real! It looks terribly real!”
Carmen said, “Effects on screen — like the Saw movies, and those Rob Zombie ones — they look real, too.”
“I missed those,” Harrow said dryly. “But like Don Juan himself said — those aren’t special effects. Not in my opinion, anyway.”
Kate leaned into Byrnes, who put an arm around her, a protective father standing there, just shaking his head.
“Get Jenny on it,” Harrow said to Carmen.
Byrnes finally found his voice. The tanned exec was now blister pale. “My God... we created a serial killer.”
“No, Dennis,” Harrow said. “We didn’t.”
The network president stared at him blankly, his mind obviously awhirl.
“Dennis, a killer like this? He’d be at it whether we had a show or not. In his twisted mind, Crime Seen provides a rationalization — it tells him that his actions are somehow acceptable.”
Byrnes pointed to Carmen’s computer, the way the Ghost of Christmas Future pointed at Scrooge’s headstone.
“You meet the parents of that young woman,” he said, “you think they’ll give a damn about semantics? ‘Don Juan’ said he wanted to star on Crime Seen, and that’s all people will hear.”
Well, Harrow thought, at least Byrnes hadn’t reacted by saying they had a new ratings sensation on their hands. But it would have been more encouraging had the exec acknowledged that they just watched a young woman die. On screen.
Byrnes was saying, “Kate, get legal on the phone and get them the hell up here.”
Steady in the storm, Harrow said, “Dennis — there’s something far more important to do first.”
“What could possibly be more important than protecting the network’s ass?”
Harrow held Byrnes’s gaze. “Assuming that film is real? We need to call the LAPD, and help them get this madman off the street.”
Chapter Ten
Nursing an abiding anxiety neither would have admitted to the other, Lieutenant Anna Amari and Detective LeRon Polk stood in the parking lot above the Hollywood sign, at the edge of the hill, looking down. Next to them loomed the black truck of the LAPD bomb squad.
The vehicle looked like a fire engine, but rather than hoses and axes, its cabinets were filled with the tools of the bomb-disposal craft, the robot with the tank treads used for observation and disposal, and the suits of the technicians who actually disarmed the bombs.
Sergeant Platt of the bomb squad had provided Amari with a headset, so he could communicate with her while he worked on the suspicious control box just outside the Hollywood sign’s fenced-in area.
Below, Platt knelt before the metal box as if in prayer (Amari wondered if prayer was constant in that phase of the process). But his hands weren’t in prayer mode — they held a ten-inch vitamin-pill-shaped XR-150 portable X-ray machine.
Polk said, “What’s he doing? Should this be takin’ this long?”
She covered her headset’s mic. “He’s x-raying the S.O.B. And, yes, he should take as long as he feels necessary. Would you rather he rush?”
“He can take all day,” Polk said, backtracking. “We safe up here?”
“Hide behind the truck if you like.”
Polk’s expression said, That’s not fair, and it wasn’t, but she saw him glance at the truck, as if considering the offer.
Down the hill, Platt rose in slow motion and stepped back the same way.
In her headset, Amari heard, “We’ll develop the picture, then we’ll know if we have a problem or not.”
“That a lengthy process?” Amari asked.
She didn’t run into bomb-squad situations much on the sex crimes beat. Actually, this was a first.
“Not long,” Platt said, and he turned and climbed up toward them.
Platt might have been an astronaut in his olive drab spaceman-style suit. When he finally reached the top, he handed off the XR150 to a colleague, not so attired, and pulled off the hooded helmet with its clear plastic visor. He stood before them dripping sweat and grinning, a guy with a military-short blond crew cut and friendly, regular features.
“I’m pretty sure there’s something in there,” he said. “We’ll know in a few minutes.”
Amari nodded.
“Probably a good call,” he told her, “bringing us in.”
Perhaps feeling bad for being short with her partner, she told the bomb squad guy, “It was Detective Polk’s idea. I’d’ve got us both blown to hell.”
Platt nodded to Polk. “Better to have a good head on your shoulders, son, than to get it blown off.”
She could see Polk was trying not to show he was proud of himself. She’d had worse partners.