Insidious (28 page)

There was an instant of hot silence. Alexander half rose, leaning again toward Savich, this time nearly snarling. “You and I both know this banishment from my home is your doing, Savich. I won’t forget it.”

Gardener laid his hand on Alexander’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Alexander.”

Savich said, his voice matter-of-fact, even gentle, “Agent Hamish will escort both of you out of the building. Thank you for coming.”

Savich and Sherlock watched them walk down the long hall to the elevator. Sherlock said, “That went about as expected. He didn’t do it, Dillon. He’s perfect for it, from his supercilious nose down to his Gucci tassels. Makes you want to run with the evidence and try to nail him to the wall. But he’s not a moron. It’s all too pat, too convenient, and wheeled right up to our doorstep and dumped so we’d have to step in it. Makes me nuts.”

Savich cursed, nothing really nasty, but still, it surprised her. He was upset. “And someone went to a great deal of trouble to make us believe he’s guilty. So here we are, twisting in the wind. Sorry, sweetheart, I lost it.”

She hugged him. “I think I heard Sean say something like that under his breath just the other day. No worries.”

Savich lightly ran his fingertips down her cheek. “My heroine of JFK. It has a nice ring to it.”

“I sort of like it, too, but one has to be modest, you know?” She kissed him. “There are too many threads dangling to deal with tonight. Tomorrow morning we’ll have the videos. Maybe we’ll see who pushed Delsey into traffic.”

“If Delsey’s smart, she’ll go back to Stanislaus and put all of this behind her.”

Sherlock didn’t think she would and knew Dillon didn’t think so, either. The heart wants what the heart wants. All too true. She’d watched Delsey and Rob in Captain Ramirez’s office. Even though Delsey was furious with Rob, there was still something between them, something deep and urgent, maybe even something lasting. She said, “You know Sean’s over at Lily and Simon’s house for a sleepover. I always think the house feels different without him. I know I’ll keep listening for him—those little snorts he makes in his sleep, his bare feet padding to the bathroom.”

“Tonight, Lily and Simon will hear the little snorts and the padding feet.” He pulled her against him, brought her close. Since they were alone, she leaned up and nibbled on his chin, then kissed him, whispered in his mouth, “Let’s go home, Dillon, and make everything right again with the world.”

He looked down at her beloved face. “What a nice idea,” he said.

49

SANTA MONICA

THURSDAY EVENING

Gloria Swanson knew if she ever got famous enough to write a memoir, this day would rank right up there with winning her first Oscar.

She’d been called back that morning for a second audition for the role of Detective Belle DeWitt in
Hard Line
, a new HBO cop series, slated for release in January. It was the part she’d been waiting for since she’d moved to L.A. two years ago, and she knew she’d nailed it. She kept staring at her cell phone, willing it to ring. Euphoria didn’t come close to how she felt, until she took that call from Detective Arturo Loomis of the Santa Monica police warning her she was on a list and could be the Starlet Slasher’s next victim. He told her the smart thing to do was to leave town for a while. Like that would ever happen, not when the gold ring was nearly on her finger. Besides, she wasn’t the kind to run away.

She cursed herself for not getting a gun when she’d first arrived in L.A., but thanks to Detective Loomis, she’d get one now. She drove her Toyota to East L.A. and bought a .22 revolver from a street kid who’d knocked a hundred bucks off the price for the butt-ugly little gun because she was so beautiful.

One of her long-ago boyfriends in Toledo, a bad boy her parents
knew nothing about, had taught her how to ride a hog, roll a joint, and how to aim and shoot a pistol. No way was she going to be number seven on that madman’s hit list.

She’d known Deborah Connelly, sure, she lived only two streets away, but not much more than to say hello. She hadn’t particularly liked Deborah, a holier-than-thou sort of girl, playing the good girl in a town where it paid to know when to accept an offer and to know who was doing the offering. She had to admit she’d been surprised when Deborah got her role in
The Crown Prince
. Well, she hadn’t finished it, had she? Gloria felt a stab of guilt and said a prayer for Deborah. It was too bad no one had warned her.

Her cell played the theme from
Happy Days
. It was her agent, Austin DeLone. Casting had called to offer her the part. He was as euphoric as she was, as her parents would be when she called them with the news. She bought a bottle of good champagne, opened it in her living room, drank deeply, and let emotion wash over her. She turned on some music and drank as she danced, right out of the bottle.

Finally, she was on her way to being a star. The part of Detective Belle DeWitt was perfect for her. She was hot and smart and street savvy. So what if Gloria was sleeping with the producer? He was easy enough to please, the old horndog. And he hadn’t been toying with her, he’d gotten her the audition, probably thrown in a good word for her. It was the way of the show-business world, something her parents couldn’t begin to understand or accept. Her agent hadn’t believed they’d even let her in the door, but they’d ushered her in, openly admired what they saw—a caramel-skinned, six-foot gorgeous Amazon with perfect white teeth, thanks to her dentist mom.

It was her first big break. Sure, she’d scored some small roles, mainly because she was so striking, but nothing that put her in the lights. She got a waitressing job at
Burgundy’s
, the current “in” café in
Beverly Hills, fully aware that every important producer dropped in for lunch at one time or another. She was careful about who she went out with, who she slept with. She was sure the men realized she was using them as much as they were using her. It didn’t matter, everyone was happy, especially Gloria, especially now. She was about to be Detective Belle DeWitt, a badass cop in Baltimore. Was Belle short for something else? She’d have to ask.

Would Detective Belle DeWitt be her breakout role? They’d even asked her if she liked her character’s name when she’d done her second audition, and that had made her glow.

An old geezer on the showrunner’s team, a genius with a camera, she’d been told, claimed he’d filmed the original Gloria Swanson when she’d roared through Hollywood back in the day. He asked if she was related, since she looked so much like her, and he’d laughed and laughed at his own joke.

She drank more champagne from the bottle, rubbed her mouth. She wasn’t hungry, her stomach was too jumpy.

She thought again of Deborah and wondered if she should make an appearance at her funeral. It meant she’d have to be nice to Doc, that boring stick-in-the-mud doctor Deborah had been practically engaged to, who’d hated that Deborah was an actress. If he had such a burr up his butt about it, why had he wanted to marry her? Yes, she’d go. She owed Deborah that.

She was pretty buzzed when she started her nightly ritual. She closed all the draperies, checked every window, dead-bolted the door, and set the burglar alarm, installed thanks to her parents.

When she was finally in bed, the AC set on high and her new .22 beside her on the bedside table, she settled in and picked up the latest copy of
Vanity Fair
and tried to concentrate, but all she could see was a future photo of herself, proudly holding up her Baltimore PD badge. Looking hot, of course.

It was a quarter to one in the morning when she finally closed her eyes.

WAKE UP, GLORIA
.

Her eyes flew open and she was fully alert. Her heart was pounding, the covers tangled around her legs. That voice, it was loud and clear. It was Deborah’s voice shouting at her to wake up, but Gloria knew that wasn’t possible. She shook her head. A dream? Sure, she’d been thinking about Deborah and she’d dreamed about her, that made sense, but she was wide-awake now, her champagne buzz gone, and she was scared. She looked at her bedside clock. 1:59.

She grabbed her .22 off the bedside table, felt the cold steel against her fingers, her palm. And waited, listening for all she was worth. She heard something. No, her brain was playing tricks on her because she was scared. She hadn’t heard anything, it wasn’t possible. But she clutched the gun to her chest, not moving.
You have a gun; he can’t kill you. Don’t make a sound, just breathe, listen, focus
.

And then she heard it, the sound of the window slowly sliding up in her second bedroom, nearly noiseless, but she knew the sound. Why hadn’t her state-of-the-art alarm gone off?

She hadn’t actually believed the serial killer would come, even after Detective Loomis’s call. How many hundreds of wannabe young actresses were there in L.A.? And how could she have gotten on that madman’s hit parade? At least she wasn’t asleep, and she had a gun. No way was he going to slash her throat, no way was she going to be his seventh victim.

Gloria slipped out of bed, molded her pillows into her shape and covered them with lots of blankets, and that made sense since the room was cold from the full blast of the air-conditioning. She backed away and slipped down to her knees behind her ancient red velvet chair, a present her grandmother had given her for luck in LaLa Land. She concentrated on stilling her breathing, slowing the wild pounding
of her heart. She was used to doing that each time she performed, but this was real and it wasn’t the same. She realized she’d forgotten her cell and ran on bare feet to the bedside table, pulled her cell out of its charger, fell to her knees and crawled back behind the big chair. She fumbled, finally managed to press 911. She heard the operator’s calm voice asking what was her emergency and she whispered, “The Starlet Slasher is in my house. Hurry, please hurry.” She punched off, not wanting him to hear her, knowing her address would show up on the operator’s screen.

Would the cops get there before he walked into her bedroom? Her heart was still beating so loud she wondered if he’d hear it as he came closer. She heard a board creak. He was in the hallway, outside the bathroom. Would he hear her breathing? Would he smell her fear and know she was awake? He could have a gun as well as a knife. Would the lump in her bed fool him at all or would he start shooting?

He was outside her bedroom door. She heard his breathing, slow and easy, as he pushed on the partly opened door. She felt the air change as the door swung inward, though she hardly saw it because it was very dark. She knew he was looking into her bedroom, toward her bed. He stepped into the room. She saw the brief flicker of a small flashlight, aimed directly at her bed, at the lump beneath the covers, then it was dark again. He didn’t want to take the chance of waking her up.

Gloria kept swallowing bile she was so scared. She could barely see him in the narrow shaft of moonlight coming in through the small opening in the drapes. He was tall and thin, but that was all she could see. He was wearing a cap pulled down low and something covered his face. Goggles? To hide his face? That wasn’t in any of the news reports. And then she realized it was to keep from being blinded by blood. Her blood.

He walked very quietly toward the bed. If she’d been asleep, she’d
never have heard him. When he stood beside the bed, he bent forward, reached out his left hand toward the pillow where her head would be, and he raised his knife, ready to slice it across her throat.

Sirens shrieked in the distance. Her breath whooshed out. She jumped to her feet and fired, and she kept firing, staring right at him, focused, as she’d been taught, pulling the trigger slowly, steadily, though she was nearly blind now with fear and shaking form the adrenaline pumping through her. She fired until the revolver was empty, and she kept firing, and the small .22 clicked and clicked.

50

“I’m Detective Arturo Loomis, Santa Monica Police Department. I called you today to warn you about the killer and to suggest you might want to leave town for a while.” He showed her his badge.

Gloria looked up at a scruffy-looking man in tight jeans and a Lakers T-shirt faded from too many washes, wearing ancient sneakers with no socks on his big feet. “Yeah, I remember you. I couldn’t leave town, but your call sent me right out to buy a .22. You and the gun saved my life.” Arturo heard only a slight tremor in her voice. She was trying to keep it together.

He straddled a kitchen chair, crossed his arms over the back, and scooted it close to her. He studied her a moment. She was gorgeous, young, and she looked exhausted, crashing from the adrenaline high, but she was trying to be tough, and Arturo liked that. “I like cats,” he said, and nodded at her red-and-white cat-covered pj’s.

She blinked, swallowed, and he saw a ghost of a smile. “I do, too. I had to leave Lola at home with my parents.”

“My tabby’s a bruiser named Hank, jumps on my chest when he wants me to get up.”

She stared at him. “His name’s Hank?”

Arturo smiled, studied her amazing face. “Hank and I live only a quarter of a mile away, that’s how I got here so fast. When you’re ready, tell me what happened.”

She’d rehearsed it, he realized, like a part, and so her recounting was straightforward and precise. “It seemed like he was standing over my bed forever, but I knew it had to be only a couple of seconds. It was the weirdest thing, but I was frozen, couldn’t move. Then we both heard the sirens and he jerked up and everything inside me broke open, and I emptied my gun at him. A minute later I heard two officers banging on the front door, yelling at the top of their lungs, to scare him, I guess, if he was still here. But he wasn’t. I told them he’d probably jumped out the window. I might have shot him, I don’t know. They immediately went after him, but I guess they never saw him, and then you were here.”

Arturo waited a moment, but she said nothing more. He saw her swallow, fist her hands. He said calmly, “There are a lot of us here now, looking for him. They’ll be speaking to neighbors, checking garages, any empty houses. If he’s still around, they’ll find him.” He pulled her empty .22 out of his jacket pocket.