“What happened at Dean’s?” Serena asked.
Aimee looked at the roses again. “What do you mean?”
“What did the two of you do?”
“We talked.”
“Upstairs or downstairs?”
“I don’t know. Both, I guess. Why does it matter?”
“You remember going upstairs?”
“I think so,” Aimee replied. Her voice was clipped and impatient.
“Did you have a drink?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“What did you drink?”
“Serena, what difference does it make?”
“Who got you the drink?” Serena asked. “Was it Dean? Was it a butler? Who?”
“I. Don’t. Remember.”
“Okay. But at some point you started not feeling well?”
“Apparently. I have no idea. I told you, everything in between is gone.”
Serena nodded. “Do you have a prescription for any sedative drugs like Xanax?”
“What?”
“It’s an antianxiety medication. Some people use it for insomnia.”
“I know what it is. No, I don’t.”
“Have you ever taken anything like that?” she asked.
“In my life? Yes.”
“When?”
“A few years ago.”
“But not recently?”
“No. I don’t understand why you’re asking me this.”
“Xanax was found in your blood,” Serena told her. “Do you have any idea how it got there?”
Aimee quickly looked away. “I have no idea.”
“The dose was dangerous, particularly when combined with alcohol.”
“I can’t imagine how it got there,” Aimee said.
“Did you take it yourself?”
Aimee was about to say no. Serena could see her mouth forming the word. Then she bit her lip and hesitated. “I told you, I don’t remember anything, so I have no idea.”
“Did you take anything before going to Dean Casperson’s house?” Serena asked.
Aimee frowned. “No.”
“Did you eat or drink anything before going over to his place?”
“I had dinner.”
“How long was that before you went to Dean’s?”
She shrugged. “A couple hours.”
“Did you notice any unusual physical effects during that time?”
“No.”
“So is it fair to conclude that the Xanax must have gotten into your system while you were at Dean Casperson’s house?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Look, Serena, none of this makes any sense. For all I know, the blood test was wrong.”
“You blacked out. You don’t remember anything. That’s consistent with the amount of the drug in your system.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
“Has anything like this ever happened to you before?” Serena asked. “A blackout of this kind?”
Aimee hesitated. “No.”
She was an actress, but Serena could see the lie in her face. “Are you sure?”
“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” Aimee insisted.
“I remember you telling me that your first big break in acting was in a Dean Casperson movie,” Serena said.
“So what?”
“I was wondering if you had any similar experiences while you were filming that movie with him.”
Serena could see Aimee growing more agitated.
“I told you, no.”
“What about other actresses? Have you heard any similar stories about these kinds of blackouts? Any rumors in the industry? Last time I asked you about that, you dodged my question. Why?”
Aimee closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. Then she opened her eyes and grabbed Serena’s hand. “Okay, look. I lied about the drugs.”
“What do you mean?”
“I took the Xanax myself.”
Serena exhaled in frustration. “Aimee,” she murmured, shaking her head. “What are you doing?”
“I’m confessing. I took it.”
“You said you didn’t have a prescription.”
“I don’t. That’s why I lied. I got it illegally.”
“From who?” Serena asked.
“Someone on the set. There are always people who can get you what you want. You know how it goes.”
“What was the person’s name?”
“I have no idea. Just some guy.”
“There were no pills found on your body. Where did they go?”
“I finished them. I threw the bottle away.”
Serena shook her head. Aimee had an answer for everything. “Why take the drugs?”
“Stress. Anxiety. This role has really gotten under my skin. What those women went through in the box? It’s horrifying.”
“I think you’re lying to me about the pills,” Serena said.
“I’m not lying. The drugs help. That’s the truth.”
Serena knew she wasn’t going to get Aimee to change her story. Dean Casperson had built a wall around himself, and no one wanted to challenge him. If you were a victim, you kept your mouth shut to protect yourself. If you talked, you risked a Hollywood shunning that ruined your career. There was no upside in coming forward. Only risk.
She leaned closer to the bed. “Jungle Jack says he drove you back to the rental house. You don’t remember that?”
Aimee’s lip curled with distaste. “Jack? No. If I’d been conscious, I’d have gone home with anyone but Jack.”
“He claims he dropped you off, you headed up the walkway, and he left. As far as we can tell, you never made it inside. For some reason, you ran off and collapsed in the snow. The tracks indicate you were alone.”
“It must have been the drugs,” Aimee said. “I hallucinated something.”
“Is there anything else that you remember? Anything else that comes to mind about what happened?”
Aimee closed her eyes. She exhaled, long and slow, until there was no air left in her lungs. She breathed in again, her chest swelling. Her whole body relaxed. She was silent for nearly a minute, not moving, not saying anything. Then Serena watched a spasm ripple through her torso like a seizure, and Aimee’s eyes shot open.
“Are you okay?” Serena asked.
“I opened the door to the house,” Aimee said, “but I didn’t go in.”
“Why not?”
“Someone was inside. I didn’t see anyone, but I knew someone was there. I could feel it. I sensed it. That’s why I ran.”
“We searched the house,” Serena told her. “It was empty.”
“Then whoever it was left before you got there.”
“It could have been the drugs.”
Aimee shook her head. “No. I remember now. Someone was waiting for me. They were going to take me. Kidnap me. Put me in the box.”
“In the box?” Serena asked. “Like in the movie?”
“Like in real life. They’ve been watching me for weeks, getting to know my life, waiting for the right opportunity.”
“For weeks?” Serena said. “Aimee, you haven’t been in town that long.”
Aimee blinked in confusion. She looked as if she wanted to protest, but she knew Serena was right. “Okay, maybe what I was seeing was someone else. Maybe it wasn’t me.”
“Not you? What are you talking about?”
“Sometimes I channel other people and I don’t even know it.”
“Channel other people?” Serena asked.
“I see through their eyes. Look, I know you don’t understand, I’m just telling you what happens to me sometimes. Was there any kind of crime committed in that house? Even if it was years ago?”
“Not that I know of,” Serena replied.
“It wasn’t where one of Art Leipold’s victims lived?” Aimee asked.
“No. Definitely not.”
“Well, I can’t explain it, but I felt someone in the house. I knew what they were going to do to me.”
“But you didn’t actually see anyone? Or hear anything?”
“No, but I knew I was going to end up in the box. And I ran. It’s okay if you don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that,” Serena said. “You said yourself that this role has taken a toll on you. And you were drugged.”
Aimee gave Serena a sad smile. “You’re not the first person to think I’m nuts. Premonitions. Mental connections. Half the time I don’t really understand what any of it means myself.”
“I believe that you’re upset,” Serena said. “I’ll check your house again and see if I can find any evidence that someone was inside. In the meantime, get some rest. When the hospital releases you, I’ll take you home myself.”
“Thank you, Serena.”
Serena squeezed Aimee’s shoulder and got out of the hospital chair. She headed for the door, but before she could open it, Aimee called after her. “Could you thank Cat for me, too?”
Serena turned around slowly. “Excuse me?”
“Cat. Tell her I said thanks.”
“For what?”
“For saving me.”
“I never said Cat did anything at all,” Serena replied.
“You didn’t have to. I know she was there. Somewhere in my head, I can see her out on the roof. Cat on the roof; that’s pretty funny when you think about it.”
“Aimee, if you remember something—if you know what really happened—”
“I don’t,” Aimee insisted. “I already told you, I don’t remember a thing. I just know she was there.”
30
“Jonathan Stride, meet Cab Bolton,” Maggie told him.
Stride shook hands with the tall blue-eyed detective, whose linen suit and loud purple tie looked in perfect shape despite a three-hour plane ride and the long drive from the Minneapolis airport. It was hard to imagine this man as a former homicide investigator. Cab’s gelled blond hair and diamond earring looked better suited to a Miami nightclub than to a grubby police conference room filled with paper coffee cups and pizza boxes. Stride felt as if the entire city had been invaded by aliens, first from Hollywood, now from Florida. Their knowledge of Minnesota probably began and ended with Fargo.
“Welcome to Duluth, Cab,” Stride told him. “Cold enough for you up here?”
As if Cab could read his mind about Fargo, the man replied with a nonchalant smile, “You betcha.”
“I appreciate your making the trip. Maggie says you know Dean Casperson a lot better than we do, and right now we could use all the help we can get. Casperson thinks we can’t touch him.”
“He’s probably right,” Cab replied. The man didn’t hide his directness, and Stride liked that. “Casperson has been at this a long time without a whiff of suspicion. He’s not afraid of us.”
“Well, maybe you can help us even the odds,” Stride said.
“I will if I can, Lieutenant, but the detective you really needed on this case was Peach Piper.”
“I know this is personal for you. I’m sorry about Ms. Piper.”
Cab tilted his head in thanks without saying anything more. Stride could see that he was open about some things but not about grief.
They all took their seats around the conference table. Stride. Serena. Guppo. Maggie. And Cab Bolton. Maggie and Cab sat next to each other, and Stride sensed an unusual dynamic between them. It was as if Maggie had one foot in Duluth and one foot in Cab’s more glamorous Florida world. Serena obviously sensed it, too. She studied them across the table and made an under-her-breath comment that Stride missed.
He grabbed a square of Sammy’s pizza from the box on the table and popped the tab on a can of Coke. “So where do we stand?” Stride asked them.
“This won’t come as a surprise,” Serena began, “but Aimee Bowe has nothing to say about an attempted assault by Dean Casperson. She claims not to remember a thing about what happened at his house. Plus, she says she took the drugs herself. So she put Casperson completely in the clear.”
“Do you believe her?” Stride asked. “Could our—witness—have misinterpreted what was going on between them?”
Serena shook her head. “I don’t think so. Aimee’s lying. Whatever she does or doesn’t remember, she simply won’t implicate Casperson. She thinks it’s career suicide.”
Cab interjected from across the table: “This has been part of Casperson’s playbook for years. He exploits young actresses. He figures they owe him something for helping their careers. According to my mother, it’s an open secret in Hollywood but no one wants to say anything on the record.”
“And his wife is living in denial about all of it,” Maggie added. “Mo wouldn’t hear a thing against Dean. To her, he walks on water despite his infidelity. She puts all the blame on the actresses, not on him. They’re all just manipulative bitches trying to get ahead.”
“Rochelle Wahl wasn’t an actress,” Stride said. “She was a fifteen-year-old girl. Is that part of his pattern?”
“The underage part?” Cab said. “No. But Haley Adams wasn’t an actress, and neither were the other women who were murdered when Casperson was filming in various cities. He just likes young, beautiful women. If Rochelle was attractive, Casperson would have put the moves on her. He also would have been terrified once he found out how old she was. If there’s one thing that could destroy his public reputation, it’s having sex with an underage girl. Fans don’t have a lot of tolerance for that, even with superstars.”
“Do we have anything more that could actually tie Rochelle to Casperson? Have we found anybody who saw her at Casperson’s place?”
“Nobody will admit it,” Serena told him, “but I found circumstantial evidence that she was there. I reviewed the medical examiner’s report about the contents of her stomach. She ate sushi the evening before she died. Including uni, which you’re not going to find among the California rolls at Super 1.”
“Uni?” Stride asked.
“Sea urchin gonads,” Cab added helpfully.
Stride repeated that phrase very slowly. “Sea . . . urchin . . . gonads.”
“Yes, really quite good if you can get past the texture,” Cab said. “It has sort of a custard consistency. Imagine a saltwater flan.”
Guppo took a look at Stride’s face, which was a mask of disbelief, and smothered a laugh.
“Anyway, nobody flagged it at the time, because the death didn’t look suspicious,” Serena went on, “but I checked with the catering company that did the party at Casperson’s place. They had a whole table of sushi set up. Including sea urchin.”
“Which isn’t enough on its own to prove anything,” Stride said.
“Exactly. For now, the only other evidence we have is what Curt Dickes told me. He saw a girl who matched Rochelle’s physical characteristics getting into a car with John Doe outside the party. Unfortunately, he couldn’t identify her.”
“Plus, it’s Curt,” Stride added. “Not everyone’s favorite witness.”
“Yeah, that, too,” Serena said.
“So what’s your theory about Peach?” Cab asked them. “How did she fit into this? She was only there to keep an eye on Casperson and see if she could get evidence of his sexual assaults.”
“Well, she was watching the house on the Saturday night when Rochelle Wahl died,” Stride said. “If she saw Rochelle and John Doe together—and then saw the news about Rochelle’s death—she may have put it together and started digging into it. If that got back to Casperson, he would know he had a big problem.”
Cab nodded. His mouth was a grim line.
“Have we found out anything more about John Doe?” Stride asked.
Maggie pushed a manila folder across the table. “We still have no direct ties to Casperson, but the coincidences keep piling up. We already have John Doe linked to Peach’s murder and the murder of Haley Adams in Florida. Cab also identified at least five other murders or disappearances of young women in areas where Casperson was filming. One of those was a woman who vanished in Nashville. The Ten
nessee police had a witness who saw a man waiting in a car near where the woman was last seen, and they had a police artist draw a description. Guess who it looks like?”
Stride opened the folder. The artist’s sketch inside was a perfect likeness of the John Doe who died in the car accident on Lavaque Road. Right down to the black cowboy hat.
“But we can’t identify him?” Stride asked. “No actual name? No background?”
“No; he’s still a ghost.”
“What about John Doe’s local contact in Duluth? They were communicating by burner phone.”
“The burner phone hasn’t come online since the last call from John Doe,” Guppo told them. “The only other call in the phone records was that Sammy’s Pizza order, but we don’t have any records to nail down who made it. We’ve tracked down most of the store’s delivery drivers. The film people have generated a lot of business this month, but nothing we could tie specifically to the phone call.”
Stride rocked back in his chair. He wasn’t happy. “Anything else?”
There was silence in the room.
“Well, we’ve got barely two days,” he went on. “We better get busy. Once the film crew wraps up and leaves town, the odds of our putting together a case are next to zero. If that’s true, Dean Casperson is going to get away with murder again.”
*
As the meeting broke up, Maggie felt Serena tug on her sleeve and pull her away from the others in the room.
“So?” Serena whispered in her ear. “Anything you want to tell me?”
Maggie grinned. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Come on, is it that obvious?”
“It is to me.”
“Well, I’m going through the breakup blues with Troy, and Cab’s doing the same thing with his ex. We figured we might as well enjoy a little physical therapy together.”
“I’m sorry about you and Troy,” Serena said.
“Yeah, that’s on me. As usual.”
Serena shot a quick glance across the room at Cab Bolton. “He’s easy on the eyes, that’s for sure. He doesn’t exactly fit in Duluth, though, does he? I can’t see him diving into a tater tot hot dish.”
“Um, hello,” Maggie pointed out. “Does someone remember walking off the airplane from Vegas in her baby blue leather pants?”
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