Alter Ego

by Brian Freeman

  North of Sarasota, they headed onto the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay. The blue water seemed endless, sparkling under the bright sun. The high span of the bridge was unsettling even for Maggie, who typically didn’t worry about heights. Cab didn’t seem bothered by it at all. He weaved in and out of the lanes without slowing down. The barrier between them and the drop to the water whipped by only inches away.

  “So Tarla Bolton is your mother?” Maggie asked, peering nervously over the side. “You’re a Hollywood baby?”

  “Yes. Have you seen any of her movies?”

  “If I see one movie a year, that’s a lot, but it seems to me I caught one of her films on TNT a while back. An oldie. I think it was called Society of One.”

  Cab didn’t take his eyes off the road. “That was her breakout role. She won a Golden Globe. I was only about six years old then, but I remember a lot of parties.”

  “If I recall correctly, Dean Casperson was in that movie, too,” Maggie said.

  “You recall correctly.”

  He didn’t say anything more.

  The traffic on the St. Petersburg side of the bridge slowed them down, but they reached Clearwater less than an hour later. Cab navigated them into the underground parking lot of a high-rise condominium building steps from the beach. They took the elevator up. Tarla Bolton lived on a high floor.

  As they watched the numbers climb, Cab said, “I should probably warn you about my mother. She isn’t subtle.”

  “In what way?”

  “Pretty much every way,” Cab said.

  When Tarla answered the door, Maggie realized that he was right. She’d obviously just come from the pool. Her golden blond hair was damp. She wore a low-cut blue-and-white dress that left nothing to the imagination. Maggie would have given a kidney for the prospect of a body like that in her midfifties. Tarla pulled her son into a fierce hug.

  “Darling, I’m so glad you came to see me. I was devastated to get your call and hear about Peach. That poor, sweet girl. How are you? Are you okay?”

  “Not really,” Cab admitted.

  “No, of course you’re not. This is unbelievable. Would you like a drink? Let me get you a drink.”

  “A drink can wait. Mother, this is the detective I mentioned. Sergeant Maggie Bei from Duluth, Minnesota.”

  Tarla looked Maggie up and down with a sharp eye. She crossed her arms over her surgically enhanced breasts and cocked her head. “Minnesota? I thought there was nothing but Swedes eating lutefisk up there.”

  “We do have a lot of those,” Maggie said.

  “You look like you have money, dear. Do you have money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Money is a wonderful thing. It may not buy you love, but it will buy you plenty of sex, which is just as good. I don’t see any ring on that tiny finger of yours, so I assume you’ve already discovered that.”

  Maggie blinked and had no idea what to say.

  “Mother,” Cab said in a pained voice.

  Tarla laughed in a throaty, erotic way. She squeezed Maggie’s shoulder. “Don’t mind me, Sergeant. It’s my life’s mission to embarrass Cab whenever he visits me.”

  “And you succeed,” Cab replied.

  “Oh, look at you, all conservative. I’m afraid Wawa converted you to Catholicism without your telling me. Or worse, turned you into a Rubio voter.”

  Cab glanced at Maggie and discreetly rolled his eyes. Maggie found it hard not to smile, because she’d never seen a mother-son relationship quite like this one. She followed Tarla and Cab into the living room of the condo, where floor-to-ceiling windows made up the wall overlooking the Gulf and the blue sky. The view looked straight down twenty stories to the beach. The furniture was as white as the sand. She saw a glass sculpture that was probably a Chihuly. The paintings on the walls were mostly squiggles and lines.

  “Sit, sit, sit,” Tarla ordered them. “Are you sure about that drink? Maggie, what about you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Maggie and Cab took the leather sofa. Tarla sat in a glider chair, and she rocked back and forth repeatedly, and her fingers had a little twitch about them. Maggie realized that this millionaire actress was actually nervous, and most of her repartee was a way of covering it up. She wondered what could get under the skin of someone who’d conquered one of the toughest businesses in the world, and she knew the answer without Tarla saying a word.

  Dean Casperson.

  Tarla didn’t waste any time getting to the point. Her voice was sober now. Her nails tapped the table next to the Chihuly. “So, Peach. Was it him? Did he do it?”

  “Yes,” Cab said.

  Maggie leaned forward. “We believe we know the man who was responsible for Peach’s murder, but it’s likely he was a paid assassin. We have no evidence yet about who hired him.”

  “But Dean’s in town?” Tarla asked. “He’s filming there?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Then Cab is right,” Tarla said. “It was him.”

  Maggie looked at both of their faces. “You need to give me more than that. Cab said you knew something about the murder of Haley Adams from Fort Myers but you didn’t want to go public.”

  Tarla shook her head. “No, I didn’t know anything about Haley Adams, not directly. And you’re right, I didn’t want to go public, and I still don’t. But given what’s happened, I’m willing to tell you what I know. As of now, Cab is the only other person in the world who knows about this.”

  “Knows what?” Maggie asked.

  “Did you ever see the movie Society of One?” Tarla asked.

  “I did. Cab and I were talking about it on the drive up here. You were astonishing in that film.”

  “I was,” Tarla agreed without a trace of arrogance. It was simply a fact. “Back then, I was a nobody. A drop-dead-gorgeous nobody, but that doesn’t narrow it down in L.A. Dean Casperson was the same age as me, but he was already an international star. He was going to drive the box office for the film, and everyone knew it. Including me. I wanted that part. I knew it was a career maker, and I was right.”

  She was silent. Maggie said nothing. She noticed that Cab wouldn’t look at his mother.

  “I got it. Casperson helped me land the role. He made sure I knew that. He said he saw something special in me, and you know what? I truly believe he did. He was being completely honest about that. Whatever else I may think about Dean Casperson’s morality, he is a brilliant actor who’s utterly devoted to the quality of the art.”

  She paused again.

  “Something happened?” Maggie guessed.

  “Oh, yes. It was halfway through filming. I’d done most of my scenes. I was flying. I knew how good I was. Sometimes, on a film, you can feel the chemistry, that everything is coming together. That was true on Society of One.”

  Tarla closed her eyes.

  Maggie waited.

  “There was a party at the house Dean rented,” Tarla went on. “This was in the Hamptons. Very glamorous. I’m the first to say I drank a lot that night. But I know my limit, and I wasn’t anywhere near it. I remember Dean offered to show me the house. It was a beautiful place. It probably belonged to some Manhattan hedge fund billionaire. When we were alone upstairs, he poured me another drink.”

  She stopped. Tears filled her eyes, and she wasn’t acting.

  “I passed out. When I woke up, he was on top of me. The room was spinning. I can still remember the smell of his breath and the smoothness of his voice, telling me how beautiful I was, how good this was going to be. I was naked. He still had on most of his clothes. I was incapable of fighting back. Literally, I was unable to move my limbs. It didn’t last long, thankfully. And then he was zipping up and buttoning his shirt and telling me he was sure I was going to win awards for this film. As if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Ms. Bolton, I don’t know what to say. I’m very sorry.”

  “But you have doubts, right? I can see it in your face.
‘She was a wannabe starlet, she already said she was drinking too much, she owed her role to this man. If he wanted sex, would she really have said no?’ And the funny thing is, you’re right. I probably would have said yes if he’d asked me. That’s how things are done. But he didn’t ask. It wasn’t about sex for Dean. It was about power and control. Raping me is what turned him on. And knowing I couldn’t do a thing about it afterward.”

  “Did you tell anyone?” Maggie asked.

  “Not a soul. Do you think anyone would have believed me? Or if they had, do you think they would have thanked me for tearing down an icon? No, the only one who would have suffered was me. My career would have been over. I didn’t tell anyone until two years ago. That was when I told Cab.”

  “Believe me, she had to physically restrain me from going out and killing the son of a bitch,” Cab interjected.

  “Did you tell Cab because of Haley Adams?” Maggie asked her.

  “Yes, I was investigating Haley’s murder,” Cab interjected. “I knew she’d headed across the Sanibel bridge to a party she didn’t tell anyone about. I happened to mention it on the phone to Tarla, and she suggested, without giving me any explanation, that I find out whether Haley had been out to Dean’s estate on Captiva. I located two different witnesses who saw her there, but neither would go on the record. I didn’t tell Lala about it. I wanted to find out first why Tarla knew about this. That was when she told me what Dean had done to her. But she didn’t want to make a statement, and without that I didn’t have any evidence of anything. I just knew I was going to keep an eye on Dean Casperson. Sooner or later, I was going to bring him down.”

  Tarla stood up from the glider chair. Her smile had the look of cracked china. “If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I think I’ll shower and change.”

  Maggie waited until she was gone, and then she spoke to Cab softly. “I know what a terrible experience it was for your mother, but is there really any evidence connecting Haley’s murder to Dean Casperson? She was killed several weeks after the party.”

  “I went through the restaurant receipts at Tin City for the day Haley was murdered,” Cab replied. “Guess who had lunch there that day? Jungle Jack Jensen. Do you really think that’s a coincidence? If you ask me, Dean assaulted Haley at the party, and then Jack paid her cash to keep her quiet. Either she was planning to go public about it anyway or she was looking for more money. So they had her killed.”

  Maggie frowned. “And now Peach.”

  “Right, and now Peach. One murder may be a coincidence. Not two. And definitely not seven.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’m sorry, what? Seven?”

  “I’ve had two years to dig into Dean Casperson, Maggie,” Cab went on. “I’ve researched crime reports in every location where he’s done movies over the last thirty years. I found five other unsolved homicides or disappearances involving young women that occurred either during or within days after the filming. And those are just the ones I could find. If you ask me, it’s the tip of the iceberg. Dean Casperson is a serial killer by proxy, Maggie. He drugs young women, and he assaults them. If he smells any risk of them talking, he has them murdered.”

  Maggie thought about Peach and said, “Something doesn’t add up.”

  “What?”

  “Peach wasn’t at any of the parties. She was spying.”

  Cab nodded. “Right.”

  “So if Dean didn’t assault her, why is Peach dead?”

  “She must have seen something when she was watching the house,” Cab said.

  “Wouldn’t she have told you?”

  “Not necessarily. If Peach had one fault, it was that she was secretive. She didn’t like to come to me with half information or unproved theories. She wanted everything wrapped up with a bow. This time, she may have waited too long.”

  “So what did she see?” Maggie asked.

  “I don’t know, but you better talk to your friends in Duluth,” Cab replied. “If she saw something that was worth killing over, you may have another victim up there.”

  18

  Serena stared at the photograph of Peach Piper that Maggie had sent her in an e-mail. There was no question that Peach was the girl they’d found in the woods, but in this photo she was fresh and alive. She had blond hair cut in a Mia Farrow pixie style. Freckles dotted her forehead, and her face was small and almost perfectly round. She was tiny, skinny, flat-chested, the kind of girl who could have passed for a teenager if she’d wanted.

  What struck Serena most was the loneliness in Peach’s blue eyes. The photo showed her smiling, but her smile couldn’t completely hide the longing behind those eyes. She looked like someone who was alone in the world and had grown resigned to the fact that it would never change.

  It made Serena angry. She had a weakness for lost girls. She’d been one of them herself, which was one of the reasons she’d fought so hard to make sure Cat was not a lost cause. But for Peach, it was too late. That made Serena furious. Particularly if Peach had died because of the whims of someone rich, powerful, and untouchable.

  What did Peach see that got her killed?

  Maggie had called to ask that question. Peach Piper had been spying on Dean Casperson, watching his house night after night from behind the lenses of a Moonraker telescope. What did she see?

  Maybe another drugging. Maybe another assault. Maybe she’d seen what Casperson was really capable of. But if she’d witnessed an assault and rape at the house in Congdon Park, where was the evidence to back it up? And was that enough to call in a hit man to kill Peach?

  Then Serena remembered: John Doe hadn’t come to town to kill Peach. He was already here.

  According to Curt Dickes, John Doe was at the party at Casperson’s house on Saturday night, helping a drunk girl into his car. Peach must have seen both of them through the telescope.

  Who was the girl?

  Was she dead? And if so, where was her body?

  Serena got up from her desk at police headquarters. She stretched her long arms over her head. It was already early evening. She was tired, but she wasn’t ready to go home, because she felt she was close to unraveling something. She went to the vending machine and bought herself a Snickers bar. She unwrapped and ate it as she leaned against the wall. The sugar revived her. She wandered back toward her desk, but then she detoured to Max Guppo’s desk, which was just outside Stride’s empty office.

  Guppo was still at work. Like Maggie, he always seemed to be there. However, Guppo, unlike Maggie, had a life. He’d been married for twenty-five years and had five daughters, a house, a boat, and everything that made a native Minnesota boy happy. He was the most Christian of Christians she’d ever met.

  “Hey, Max,” Serena said, dropping into the chair in front of the desk.

  Guppo took his eyes off his monitor. He typed at a speed that seemed incongruous with his thick fingers. He had an oversized slab of homemade meat loaf on a paper plate in front of him, and he picked off large chunks with a plastic fork. A piece of apple pie waited for him under plastic wrap.

  “Hey, Serena,” he replied. He held up the plate of meat loaf. “Want a bite?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “What’s up?”

  She explained what Maggie had told her. “I’m trying to figure out why Peach Piper got killed. This Bolton guy in Florida thinks it must be because Peach found something linking Casperson to another assault. We know John Doe took a girl out of Casperson’s party last Saturday, and the girl was either drunk or drugged. That girl has to be our victim. And John Doe was not a chauffeur. If he was there, the girl’s dead.”

  Guppo’s round face scrunched into a frown. He leaned back in his wheeled chair, which was a risky maneuver. The chair made noises of protest under his weight. “Except nobody’s missing,” he said.

  “Are we sure about that?” Serena asked.

  “Well, there aren’t any reports. If a local was missing, we’d know about it. It would have been reported by now.”

 
Serena nodded. Guppo was right. “Yeah, girls don’t just go missing around here without somebody noticing. What about someone from the Twin Cities? Maybe she drove up here for the day and got an invitation to the party.”

  “Alone? And she didn’t tell anyone where she was going?”

  “It happens. The filming of the movie got a lot of play in the media. Everybody knows about it down there.”

  Guppo’s fingers flew on the keyboard. He spent five minutes loading and scrolling through multiple screens. Then he shook his head. “Good thought, but I can’t find a missing person report anywhere in Minnesota that looks even remotely promising. Frankly, a young woman disappearing like that in January would be big news. There would be headlines.”

  “Well, thanks for checking, Max.”

  She got up again and went back to her desk. She tried to put herself in the mind of Peach Piper, sitting alone in a cold, empty house in Congdon Park. She was eating Chinese food on a Saturday night and staring through a telescope at Dean Casperson’s house. If she saw an assault, then what? There was no missing person. No murder. No report of rape. Yet if it was worth killing Peach to keep her quiet, there had to have been another crime. Another victim.

  John Doe was there. He helped a girl into the Impala. He was a hired killer; he didn’t just take her home.

  What happened to that girl?

  Her mind bounced from idea to idea. She thought about the secrets of someone like Dean Casperson. She thought about John Doe and Peach Piper and their lives intersecting. She thought about a single deer crossing the road in the middle of a blizzard and launching the entire investigation.

  She was hungry, and that made her think of Chinese food again. And that made her think about Saturday night again.

  Saturday night.

  Girls don’t just go missing around here without somebody noticing.

  Serena’s eyes bolted wide open. She got out of her chair and wove through the cubicles back to Guppo’s desk. She sat down and repeated the same thing to him: “Girls don’t go missing around here without somebody noticing.”

  Guppo chewed his meat loaf and stared back at her, confused. “Right, but nobody’s missing.”