by Declan Finn
McGauren sighed. “I hate to break this up, but IAD would like to chat with you.”
Ryan’s shoulders sagged. “I’ve still got a lady to protect.” He suddenly brightened. “How about we give them the flavor of this wonderful atmosphere…Ester, Morrie, would you mind playing tour guide?”
McGauren smiled. “I like you, you’re evil.”
***
Eric Gresham settled into his seat in the Javits Center, watching the large screen in front of him. The music videos for the conventions were always, at the very least, amusing, throwing together images you needed a certain mindset to put together with the lyrics.
Gresham recognized the first bars of Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.” He looked at…Matt Damon on the screen? And Richard Chamberlain. He quickly started laughing—the music was superimposed on images from The Bourne Identity, both the original miniseries and the new version. The lyric “I will remember you” sung as Damon’s head is sighted in a sniper scope. “Will you remember me?” sung as Jason Bourne, amnesiac, shoots people. He particularly enjoyed the lyric of “How clearly I first saw you smilin' in the sun” with the image of Bourne's face down in the ocean.
Eric was the only one laughing so hard he was in tears. In fact, people gave him strange looks throughout the video, wondering if he had lost his marbles.
It was followed by a Fluffy the Demon Slayer video done to the music of “Fangs for the Memories /Of Graveyards after dark / And stakings in the park /Of spinning kicks and Candlesticks /And Creatures in the dark/We hate you so much.”
The next music video was a Backdraft montage to the tune of “Into the Fire.” It was followed by “It’s Not Easy Being Green” covering a series of Ninja Turtle film clips, in addition to a “Dances With Werewolves” music video, splicing together old werewolf movie clips with images from a certain Kevin Costner production—if one weren’t paying attention, one would swear Costner was being repeatedly torn apart by werewolves. “I Will Always Love You” was a vampire video.
Another was a series of clips from Temple of Doom, showing someone’s heart ripped out of his chest—done to “My Heart Will Go On.” Someone had also spliced together “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” with Diamonds are Forever. There was a music video of “Time to Say Goodbye” featuring deaths of various villains in movie history.
The younger brunette beside Eric also gave him funny looks as he bellowed with laughter. Some days, he was just plain strange.
A new video was about to begin when Waldemar Janowitz rushed onto the stage. He spoke to the host for a moment before commandeering the microphone.
“I regret to inform you that access to the zocalo through the sports center will be cut off; I repeat, you can’t go through the sports center. We will, instead, have access through the side entrance. You’ll have to go all the way around the sports center, but you’ll be able to get in. As for any activities, you’ll be able to get through the side door nearest the student union.”
“What happened?” Gresham shouted from the audience.
“We had a little incident; there is no cause for alarm. Thank you, and enjoy your time.”
Eric looked at his watch. It was only 11:15 a.m. He started to rise when the brunette grabbed him, glaring at him. “Not. Now.”
“But Suz—”
“We are here to have fun, not shoot people. We get enough of that at work.”
The brunette stood and slinked over to the man directing the music videos as Janowitz prattled on. “You have some strange stuff here.”
He smiled. “You should meet the directors! One guy had The Lion King's jackals singing ‘uber alles,’ in a Jewish neighborhood; he was lucky to get out alive. Someone had Doctor Who’s telephone booth coming out of a wormhole to vaporize a space station, only the Trek matrix…um, conglomerate…sued. I have the only remaining copy. The tearing heart out stuff has also been done to ‘It’s the Heart that Matters Most.’ You gotta realize some of these people have too much time and money; you haven’t lived until you see the Creature from the Green Lagoon striding off with the Thing, or the G5 station committing an obscene act with DS9.”
***
Matthew Kovach sat on the stairs of the sports center, an EMT looking at his temple. The gash had been bloody, but so were all head wounds. The blood had already dried, resulting in a long dark streak of black-red crust down the right side of his head, pooling in the shoulder of his black polo shirt.
“Another shirt ruined, Matt?”
His gaze flickered to the young redhead he had loved since before high school. “Not sure, I’ll give it a rinse. I hear you got involved?”
She smiled brightly. “Couldn’t let my only Alois Boy Toy get shot up…again.”
“Where did you disappear to? Kate told me you vanished after beating up a Jedi.”
Moira sat next to him. “I ran, hoping to get one of them after me. Didn’t work.”
“That’s a bad thing?” Kovach asked his wife.
“Well, it would have saved Mr. Ryan a lot of trouble.”
“It was handled.”
“What was handled?”
Kovach and Moira, and even the EMT looked up. Maureen McGrail stood before them, hands in her pocket. “Did I miss anything?”
Kovach grimaced. “You could say that. Where were you?”
“Over by the Javits center, chasing what looked like Boyle and O’Riordan, but were really just two guys in Planet of the Apes suits.”
He sighed and looked at Moira. “Could we go home now?”
She glanced at the EMT, who nodded. “Sure.”
“Marvelous.” He looked at Maureen. “We’ll fill you in on the way to the car.”
***
Sean Ryan sat back in a chair, staring at the audience as though he honestly expected one of them to do anything. But the bad guys with guns are dead, and the Third Party—or should he be the “Second Party”, now that the Serbs have blown themselves up?—doesn’t make personal appearances. If everyone is dead, what do you make of the original incidents? Harassment? Why not? Coincidences happen. I don’t like it, but it’s true. Hell, maybe it was the Second Party all along, I’ll ask once I find him and beat him to death with a tribble.
Hmm, a hand grenade stuffed in a tribble…that’s an idea.
Ryan’s eyes flicked onto a flash of movement and he bolted from the floor to meet Inna at the entrance to the gym.
“I heard about what happened,” Inna breathed as she held him tightly. “I was with a client. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“Just bumps and bruises. There’re bloggers who'll want interviews, and I’m told Internal Affairs want to have their way with me.”
“But so do I,” she pouted like a greedy child wanting to hold onto a toy.
He grinned, but remembered previous times they had come close to making love. “Don’t start, Inna. Talk like that attracts bullets. Speaking of which, do you know something about a rehearsal on G5 that involved shotgun pellets?”
Inna blinked at the topic shift. “Yes, but we assumed it was union troubles; it was a non-union show, and they got a little rough some times.”
He nodded. Reasonable assumption. “Now for a question I need you to answer—did Mira have a miscarriage because of that little ‘gag’?”
Inna blinked, and gave a shallow nod.
Now I know why she fired so well during practice when I told her to pretend someone was coming after her child. She probably imagined putting a bullet into the one who killed her previous baby. I’ll have to kill this one, if only to keep her out of jail on murder charges. Then again, the series ended over five years ago! If this “Second Party” were after her, why would he wait so long? Perhaps there wasn’t opportunity. Opportunity for what, exactly? Murder? Removing remnants of his first, accidental, kill? Opportunity…
***
Andreas Sarantakos walked into the octagonal room from the other day, his eyes flickering around the room. All of the setups were sti
ll assembled for use, from Bwana the Demon Killer to the Harry Potter and G5 stands. Chairs were all put in front of the tables.
“Ah, Sarantakos, please, sit,” Ryan called cheerfully. “In front of the blowgun, please.”
Ryan flowed to the Trek table immediately opposite the door; he was no longer wearing the Desperado ensemble, but instead wearing the simple Ranger costume he had started the convention with. Mira Nikolic was seated behind him with Goran holding their child. Next to her was Inna Petraro. Caitlin Brown was seated next to Andreas, only on the other side of the blowgun. David Peters and Corbin Eielson were on the other side of the room. On the other side of Inna were Erin Green and Lee Kristoff.
“You’re all wondering why I’ve called you here…it’s because I’ve watched too many Thin Man films and I always wanted to say that line.”
Eielson glared at him remorselessly. Peters merely laughed.
“Could you hurry up?” Andreas asked. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”
Lee nodded. “I haven’t a plane for a while yet, but the old boy has it right—speed it up, man.”
Ryan did not nod, but bowed. “Certainly, yer lordship—I forget, are you a Lord? …Anyway, we had a little shootout not too long ago; anyone know why?”
Eielson snapped, “They were after Mira, of course; I’d rather they went after you.”
Sean smiled. “Perhaps. However, what if I said they were after both her and me? They’re a few cartel guys I busted up a while ago.”
Brown looked at him intently. “The dart gun was about you?”
He shook his head. “The cartel folks were the bad guys Erin and Lee here took down yesterday—Zorro. The dart gun was someone else; that, the antabuse in the salad, and the mugging of the wizard yesterday, were all part of something bigger. They were part of a campaign planned for over five years—a plan to cover up a murder.”
Everyone, including Mira, looked at him strangely. “What murder?”
Ryan couldn’t look at her. “Several years ago, Mira had a miscarriage caused by a ‘prank.’ That person is in this room.”
Eielson stood and growled. “That isn’t murder! A fetus isn’t a person!”
Erin Green, mother of three children, narrowed her brows and her eyes flickered dangerously. “Settle down before you get slapped.”
Mira nodded. “Indeed.”
Inna smiled. I didn’t even know “indeed” could carry menace before.
Sean added, “Tell it to Scott Peterson.”
Eielson didn’t even acknowledge the exchange. “I write murder mysteries, and I’m offended by this setup!”
He nodded. “Yes, but imagine the problems that would ensue such an incident—‘Actor Causes Death Of Co-Star’s Baby”. That wouldn’t go over well for anyone’s career, don’t you think, Ms. Brown?”
Caitlin rose. “What are you talking about? I had nothing to do—”
Sean beamed. “And sure, did I say you had? Besides, you had far better motives, or at least more recent. You’re an agent now, Caitlin. You represent Susan Christiani, a co-star of Mira’s; if Mira was unavailable, Christiani would have her salary for the G5 movie go up. Taking percentage of her salary means your cash flow would improve—that’s why, I suspect, you wanted Inna to take Mira off your hands. Conflict of interest meant you needed to choose one. You had something to gain from any harm that came to her. Our boy had something to hide.
“This killer used some highly unorthodox methods of trying to kill Ms. Nikolic. The antabuse depended on her getting it, and drinking like the typical European—wine is served like any other drink—and it would affect dozens of others in the attempt. The dart was random, and it would have been lucky to clear the room, to hell with actually getting Mira. The mugging was more deliberate, but still had a telltale sign of randomness…our would-be killer didn’t check who it was, he only saw the colors of the robe and assumed. However, what I’d missed was that this killer wasn’t picky about even getting Mira—otherwise, he would have checked who he mugged, and tried to killed her outright instead of leaving it to chance. Also, this killer did things that were meant to be demoralizing—I can’t think of something much worse than puking your guts out after downing antabuse, or nearly being whacked by a poisoned dart. This was a soul killer, a poetic sociopath who wanted to grind her down before death, on the assumption that sooner or later, the blind man with a machinegun approach would work.”
“Rather dismissive, aren’t we?” Eielson grumbled. “Sociopath is a general term for people who scare shrinks! That says nothing.”
“Usually, but I mean this person feels no connection to the rest of the human race, no moral obligation to do anything for anyone, and truly egocentric.” His gaze fell on Andreas. “This person can’t feel anything for other people absent some sort of loss on his part, so he has to become a perfect actor, in order to bear a resemblance of humanity.”
Andreas shifted. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing, I’m just defining my terms. Make no mistake, this isn’t someone who was born crazy, but chose to be crazy. This person has all of his rationality; remember how serial killers tortured small animals when they were young? They did it rationally. At the moment, there are anywhere between thirty and forty serial killers running loose in this country alone; all of them are sociopaths, not schizos. They’ve chosen to do this, that doesn’t make them irrational. This person doesn’t care what happens to whom, as long as he gets his way—as long as Mira suffers, and he gets away with it. He also doesn’t mind if I get bumped off as well.”
Lee Kristoff felt like pricey wallpaper, and fought the urge to yawn. “What do you mean?”
Sean whirled on Corbin. “Eielson, you know what a Twelve-Step poison is?”
He waved it away. “You’re lucky if you make it twelve steps.”
“Have you ever heard of any real-life examples?”
“No.”
“I didn’t say name any, do you know if they exist or not in real life?”
Eielson shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
Sean looked around the room before looking at Eielson again. “You heard his answer, Andreas? Caitlin? All of you?” He snapped back to Eielson. “I was counting on you to shoot your mouth off, and you hung yourself better than I could have.”
Ryan walked over to the Trek table and lifted a ruined book from the chair behind it. It had been seriously shredded, but the pages could be read. “An entire section dedicated to real life Twelve-Step poisons, introduction by Corbin Eielson, editor of the Writer’s Book of Poisons and Other Malevolent Objects. You’ve heard of plenty of those poisons, Mr. Eielson, but you couldn’t resist the urge to mouth off, could you?”
Sean tossed the book aside. “Your mouth is what did you in, you know. Remember the awards? You said ‘you wonder why people want to kill you.’ You weren’t talking to Mira; you were talking to me. In fact, just now, you said you believed the guys who shot at us were after Mira, so how could you know somebody was after me unless you were; and going after Mira was in part because of me, wasn’t it, Corbin? Just like the Cartel, you wanted to beat me on my turf, but for you, there were bonus points for getting Mira—you killed her child, and a death during the commission of a felony is felony murder. In addition, for that motive to be valid, her child’s murderer would not have had any opportunity to get at Mira before—she hasn’t done any conventions with you until now. Oh, P.S., I checked: each of the ‘pranks’ on the set of G5 coincided with one of your divorces; stress has driven people to do all sorts of things, including serial murder….and I hear your current wife has filed papers.”
Eielson rose slowly, his pudgy body quivering with rage. “You can’t prove any of this. You can’t even prove I hurt that wizard.”
He sighed happily. “Yes I can. When I told Caitlin about what Mira was going to wear, you were the only other person within earshot, and so you’d know ahead of time exactly what Mira was going to wear, which happened to match the Hogwarts reject.”
Ryan said, “I’m having her G5 costume brought in so she can show off at the next two events—the genre display panel and the actor’s studio after that.”
Eielson wandered by, shooting Ryan a vile look as he muttered obscenities.
Brown nodded. “Understood. That always looked great on you.”
Corbin balled his hands into fists. “And the dart gun?”
“The dart gun operator will remember you. Caitlin and Inna can confirm it, since the man behind the blowgun talked with you just before you left.”
The man behind the blowgun chatted with Caitlin Brown and Inna Petraro, grateful for having someone to talk to aside from certain rude individuals who offended everyone everywhere they went (Eielson had only just left).
Mira nodded. “I also remember him near the blowgun. He grabbed it, I believe. He said the man hadn't held it properly.”
Corbin Eielson was busy harassing the man behind the blowgun, grabbing it, bellowing that he wasn’t holding it properly; after all, didn’t he know Eielson had been married to an African Princess once?
“I’m sure you could get access to one of the poisons you wrote about, Mr. Eielson,” Sean added. “Antabuse couldn’t be too far behind, right?”
Eielson laughed at that. “ You couldn’t trace it if you tried. I would’ve gotten it through AA. …”
The murderer just realized he told Sean Ryan where to trace the bottles; he doubted the confidentiality of Alcoholics Anonymous would hold if he had used their drugs as weapons.
Corbin turned away from Ryan, stopped, and swung back around, a gun in his hand. “It’s amazing what you can do when you drift through the middle of a war zone. I’m betting you didn’t even notice when I lifted this after your pathetic little shootout.”
Corbin tried to point the gun at Mira, but Ryan had been edging himself in front of her and Goran since he began talking. “I’ve also got a gun. And I have little regard for my own safety.”
Eielson grinned. “But I doubt you’ll risk drawing down on me, should I have my gun pointed”—he swiveled the gun in Inna’s direction—“at someone else.”
Ryan glared, but did nothing.