The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  I wondered then what her life had been like. I realized she must have been one of the little girls I’d seen romping on the beach in one of the other movies, or the one laughing as she bit into the hot dog her daddy had just grilled for her. I imagined her growing up, as she realized who her father had really been, how she’d built a wall to protect herself from either loving him or hating him too much. And I thought about the film I’d just shown her; if it had been human, it would’ve just told her that Pop was a killer while we both watched her, waiting to see how she’d take it.

  She and the house both looked good, but I was glad to get back onto the crowded freeway and head home.

  * * *

  Back in San Bernardino, I filled Bob in on both meetings. He listened, then gave me the best news I’d had all day. “Dug this stuff out of some old boxes for you.”

  He tossed a stack of yellowing, brittle old magazines at me. I picked up the top one: it was a 1959 movie-star tabloid called Confidential, one of the real sleazebag rag sheets from the time. The cover had photos of celebrities looking drunk or bewildered, plastered against bright red and yellow backgrounds, while the nearby text shrieked something like “Why Sinatra Is the Tarzan of the Boudoir” or “James Dean Knew He Had a Date with Death!”

  In one corner was a photo of Lorna Winters, holding the hand of a young man in a suit, both looking like they wished they were anywhere else but near that camera lens. “Lorna Winters Steps Out with Director!” bellowed the text.

  “I bookmarked the article,” said Bob.

  I flipped to the piece of paper he’d stuck in. It was a one-page piece on Lorna Winters and David Stander, director of Midnight Gun. There were two photos: the same photo of Lorna and David Stander, holding hands, turning their heads away from the photographer, and a smaller inset of Lorna and a different man—​dark, handsome, with a toothy grin, who looked like a shark about to chomp. They were seated in an extravagant restaurant booth; the caption read “Lorna and Frank Linzetti, together in happier times.”

  The accompanying text speculated that Lorna had fallen for her director on Midnight Gun and had two-timed Linzetti, who she’d been involved with for a year.

  My gut performed an acrobatic flip. “Oh my God . . .”

  “Yeah,” Bob said, “so she dumps her mobster beau for this director, Linzetti flips out and sends his hired gun to take her out.”

  I thought for a second. “And the hired gun has to film it to prove to the boss that the job’s been done.”

  Bob nodded.

  I went home after that. Bob suggested we hit our favorite margarita joint, but I told him I was tired from the day of driving.

  That was a small lie. All I really wanted to do was go home and watch the film (my film) again. And again.

  I put it up on my television. The image quality wasn’t great blown up that big—​grainy, high-contrast, the result of a cheap transfer—​but it made details clearer. Now I could see a life jacket hanging on the railing at the left of the frame. A white blob at the right I knew had to be the moon, probably covered by a light fog. There was Lorna . . .

  I hit the DVD Pause when she came on so I could get up, come back with a bottle of tequila, then hit Play again. “What are you trying to tell me?” I muttered. “You’re hiding something from me. C’mon, partners don’t keep secrets from each other . . .”

  Lorna . . . beautiful young Lorna. What could she have been if she hadn’t had the bad luck to hook up with a bad-tempered gangster? She’d just made her first big studio picture, and she was good in it—​damn good. She could’ve been the next Kim Novak or Lauren Bacall. Hell, she was young enough that she could’ve been the next Jane Fonda or Faye Dunaway. She died at twenty, just as the wildest decade in movie history was in preproduction.

  I watched the film two, three, four times, getting progressively drunker. I watched over and over as she was shot—​that look on her face, that instant of shock, that spasmodic clutch at the lethal wound, that tumble over the decking. With enough tequila in me, I kept talking to the film, urging it to spill its secrets, to stop teasing me with the promise of revelations. “You gotta tell. C’mon, baby, spill . . .”

  I think I was on the fifth viewing when something pinged off the back of my sodden brain. Something wrong.

  I wound the scene back a few seconds, to the moment when Vincent Gazzo pulled out the gun. I got off the couch, not even caring that I spilled the half-inch left in the tequila bottle, and walked up to stand closer to the television.

  “Yeah, that’s it . . . give it up . . .” I muttered as I hit Play again.

  There was the shot. There was Lorna grabbing at her chest—​

  There was no blood.

  I paused the image, trying to peer through the heavy digitized grain. Lorna’s hand looked pale, spotless. She was wearing a black dress, so with the poor quality I shouldn’t expect to see anything there, but . . . wouldn’t her fingers have been at least a little splattered? Wouldn’t blood have seeped through them?

  There was something else, though, and it wasn’t until I watched the movie again, from the start, at half speed, that I got it: in the beginning the boat left a clear wake, a V of white water.

  When Lorna was shot, the water behind the boat was still.

  The boat wasn’t moving.

  I fell back on my ass then, too drunk and too stunned to get to my feet. “You fake,” I snarled at the frozen picture on my screen, stopped at the point where Lorna was halfway over the rail, her delicate high-heeled feet no longer on the deck. “Goddamnit! You were fake all along! And I went along with you!”

  I stopped the player, slid the tray open, grabbed the disk, and hurled it across the room. It collided with a wall, bounced off, and hit the floor. I collapsed on the rug, wanting to howl over the betrayal. “Son of a bitch! How could you do this? I thought we were in this together.”

  I felt like the noir hero who gets set up and knocked down by a dirty partner. I almost called Bob to tell him, but instead I passed out.

  * * *

  I woke up in bed the next morning with no memory of having dragged myself there. My head throbbed with the agony of a thousand exploded blood vessels, although three glasses of water and two cups of coffee helped. A little.

  I did call in then, to tell Bob I was running late. “It’s a fake,” I told him, “a goddamn fake. She’s not really shot, and she flips into calm water. The boat’s not even moving.”

  “Well,” Bob said, “it’s still a newly discovered piece of Lorna Winters film. I say we talk to the owner again, see if she’ll consider selling it.”

  I got into the shower after that. As warm water sluiced over me, easing the pain in my head, I thought. I still wanted to know what the film represented—​a promo reel for a new movie? A gag? Vincent Gazzo had died a while back, so we couldn’t ask him, and his daughter knew nada. Frank Linzetti had also died, in 2009, in a federal prison where he’d been serving time for money laundering. Wherever Lorna Winters was—​dead or alive—​remained unanswered. That left one person who’d been involved with the whole thing back in 1960: the director David Stander.

  I turned off the water, wrapped a towel around myself, and practically ran to get my phone. A few seconds later I had the facts about Stander: He’d made a few more movies for Columbia but had never really hit it big. He found more success in television and had directed every show from Bonanza to MacGyver before retiring in 2008. He’d married his secretary, Nora Chilton, in 1962, and they lived now in the Cheviot Hills area of Los Angeles.

  Bob had a friend who worked in the office at the Directors Guild; one little white lie to his friend about wanting to film an interview with David Stander got us his phone number. I called it that afternoon.

  When a man answered on the first ring, I asked, “Is this David Stander?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Mr. Stander,” I began, hoping I sounded convincing, “my name is Jimmy Guerrero. I’m working on a documentary abo
ut Lorna Winters, and I was wondering if it might be possible to meet for a brief interview?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  No explanation, no excuse . . . but he also didn’t hang up, so I pressed on. “Oh, that’s too bad, because we’ve got some newly discovered footage of Miss Winters that we were hoping you could shed some light on.”

  “What kind of footage?”

  “Something filmed privately. It shows Ms. Winters on a boat, and . . . well, it looks like she gets shot.”

  There was a pause. Then Stander said, “Where did you find this footage?”

  “It belonged to a man named Vincent Gazzo.”

  Another long beat. When Stander finally spoke again, he said, “I can meet you at five p.m. today.”

  He gave me his address. I told him I’d be there and hung up.

  I got dressed, went into work, and asked Bob for the rest of the day off. When I told him why, he closed the door to his office, sat down behind his desk again, and said, “Jimmy, what if Stander watches the film and then tells you he doesn’t know anything about it?”

  I started to say, “So what if he does?” but I realized it would be a lie. Bob was right; David Stander was the dead end. If he couldn’t—​or wouldn’t—​supply an answer, it would hurt. Bad. “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “I think . . .” Bob trailed off, trying to find the words. “I think you might be counting on this too much.”

  It was true. The film was like a living thing for me, a partner who whispered promises, who offered the reward of giving me that shot in film history I hadn’t earned otherwise. I could be the one who brought one of Hollywood’s greatest secrets into the light. If my own talents—​or lack thereof—​as a filmmaker couldn’t give me fame, maybe this could.

  “Maybe,” I said to Bob, a guy who was me with twenty years added. “But don’t tell me you don’t want to know too.”

  He shrugged. “’Course I do.”

  * * *

  I left early, given traffic on the 10, and made Cheviot Hills by 4 p.m. I killed time just driving—​past the massive 20th Century Fox lot, past what had once been the MGM lot, past the Westwood cemetery. I figured the last was the only one I might ever have a shot at getting into.

  Finally 5 p.m. approached, and I headed to the address David Stander had provided. I negotiated my way past manicured lawns and houses that had once been middle-class but were now homes to millionaires. I pulled up and parked before a lovely two-story Tudor-style, with a rose garden leading up to the front door. It was 4:55 p.m. I took my iPad and a copy of the disk—​in case he wanted to see the film on his own TV—​and walked up to the door.

  “Don’t let me down,” I whispered to the disk.

  My knock was met a few seconds later by a man in his eighties who was still straight and trim, wearing casual slacks and a polo shirt. Even with thin gray hair and lines in his face, I recognized him from the tabloid photos, when he’d been holding Lorna Winters’s hand.

  “Mr. Stander,” I said, extending a hand. “I’m Jimmy Guerrero.”

  He took the hand but released it too quickly—​he wasn’t comfortable with any of this. “Yes, Mr. Guerrero. Come in.”

  David Stander had kept himself in good shape; he still moved well, with only a slight slowness to his gait as he led us to an entertainment room. But he was tense—​too tense for this to be a casual interview. He turned to me before a large television screen and said, “May I see the footage you mentioned?”

  I handed him the DVD. He put it into a player, turned it on, and stayed standing to watch.

  As the scene played out, his expression changed, or should I say opened—​he moved from anxious and guarded to noticeably shaken. As Lorna Winters fell into the sea, he collapsed into a padded armchair.

  I asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Stander?”

  “Yes, I . . .” He broke off and looked up at me. “What is it you really want, Mr. Guerrero?”

  “Please, call me Jimmy.” I told him everything then: about BobsConversionMagic.com, about my sad attempt at a Hollywood career, about how much I loved Lorna Winters, about what those few minutes of film meant to me.

  When I finished, he nodded and rose. “Jimmy, my instincts tell me I can trust you. Besides, this has gone on long enough.”

  “What has, Mr. Stander?”

  He turned to leave. “Excuse me a moment.”

  Stander was gone only a few seconds. I heard soft conversation from another part of the house; after a minute he returned with a woman. “Jimmy, I’d like you to meet my wife, Nora.”

  I started to extend a hand—​and froze, too shocked to move.

  I was looking at Lorna Winters. Older, yes; aged, yes. But she was still beautiful, with those unmistakable high, broad cheekbones and chilled blue eyes. Her hair was silver, but she still wore it long. She reached out and grasped my hand, and when she spoke it was with Lorna Winters’s husky-around-the-edges voice. “Jimmy, I’m so pleased to meet you. David tells me you’ve brought us something quite special.”

  I was speechless as David started the DVD again. She watched it silently until the onscreen Lorna flipped over the railing, and then she laughed. “I still remember how cold that water was.”

  David said, “Probably my finest accomplishment as a filmmaker.”

  “You made this . . . ?”

  Nodding, Stander said, “You see, Frank Linzetti had gotten his nasty hooks into Lorna. He was an evil, abusive son of a bitch—​when she showed up for our first meeting on Midnight Gun, she had to wear oversized sunglasses because of a black eye.”

  Lorna sat down nearby. “That was because I’d just tried to leave him.”

  David sat on the arm of Lorna’s chair and took her hand; the way she smiled at this simple motion was testament to not just their love but their care for each other. “We fell for each other,” David said, “and Frank found out. He threatened me first, but I told him I didn’t care. That was when he sent Vincent Gazzo. Fortunately, Gazzo liked Lorna, so we were able to buy him off.”

  I thought about that. “You bought him off . . .”

  “Not with money—​I didn’t have enough of that. But I had my family’s house. We got creative with some paperwork and made it look as if Vincent had inherited a house from an uncle, but really it was what I gave him to help us make that movie.”

  “His daughter still lives in that house. So you convinced Linzetti that Lorna was dead.”

  Stander nodded. “Then it was just a matter of getting her a new identity and keeping her out of the limelight.”

  “Which,” Lorna said, “I was happy to do. I missed the acting, but not the rest of it.” She looked at me and frowned slightly, then handed me a tissue from a box on a nearby table.

  I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

  * * *

  Because Linzetti was gone and it was safe at last, they let me reveal everything. Not long after the big news broke, the American Cinematheque held a tribute to Lorna, and she invited me as her special guest.

  I know this will all fade soon, that Lorna will get her privacy back and I’ll be just a guy making old movies into DVDs again. Still no Hollywood breakthrough for me, but that’s okay, because I’ve got something better.

  And I’ve got a three-minute movie to thank for that.

  JOHN SANDFORD

  Girl with an Ax

  FROM From Sea to Stormy Sea

  The girl with the ax got off the bus at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Gower Street and started walking the superheated eleven blocks down Gower to Waring Avenue, where she lived by herself in a four-hundred-square-foot bungalow with an air conditioner designed and manufactured by cretins.

  The girl was slender, with wheat-colored hair cut close over high cheekbones and pale blue eyes, bony shoulders under an unfashionable blue shift from JCPenney. She had a nice, shy smile that could light her face when she let it out; she wore cross-training shoes chosen for their durability, and golf socks
.

  The ax was heavy in its hard case and banged against her leg as she carried it down the sidewalk. She’d spent all morning and half the afternoon at the Bridge recording studio in Glendale, and her amps were still there, along with two less valuable guitars.

  Her name was Andi Holt.

  The name, the pale eyes, the shy smile, and the wheat-colored hair were all relics of her Okie ancestors, who’d come to California out of the Dust Bowl. Andi knew that, but she didn’t care about it one way or another. They were all dead and long gone, buried in cemeteries that bordered trailer parks, along with that whole Grapes of Wrath gang.

  * * *

  Gower Street ran down the side of the Paramount Studios lot, but like most native Angelenos, she didn’t care about that either. To care about Paramount would be like caring about Walmart.

  Waring made a T-intersection with Gower, and she took the right, tired with the day’s work and the bus ride, which had required three changes. She’d be riding the route in reverse the next morning, for the last session of this set. Her car’s transmission had gone out, and she was temporarily afoot in Los Angeles. She could have called an Uber for the ride, but money was money and the bus was cheap.

  Andi lived a few houses down Waring, a neighborhood of tiny bungalows worth, now, absurd amounts of money. She didn’t own hers but rented it, for what was becoming an absurd amount of rent. Somebody once had told her that Waring Avenue was named after the inventor of the Waring blender and she’d believed it—​why would anyone lie about something like that?—​but when she’d repeated the story, she’d been ridiculed: the street was actually named after a long-dead band leader named Fred Waring, who had nothing to do with blenders.

  But the guy who told her that story had been massively stoned on some primo Strawberry Cough, so she’d never repeated the Fred Waring story.