by Chris Rogers
“You’re saying that in all of southern California there’s no college course for special effects?”
“Ancient theory—nothing hands-on. Nothing that keeps up with technology.”
“I take it your mother doesn’t approve of your career choice.”
Sarina rolled her eyes theatrically. “Totally unthrilled would be an understatement. She wants me to learn something sensible, become a computer scientist or a bone doctor, or like my aunt, God forbid, a lawyer.”
Dixie winced: during her own college years, law was considered a worthy profession.
“All mothers want something better for their kids than they had themselves,” she reasoned, not sure it was true, and certainly not speaking from experience. Her own mother had scarcely acknowledged having a child. “What does your dad say?” John Page would know the industry as well as anyone.
Sarina whirled from the door, sprinted to the corner, and scanned the side of the building.
“He says the only way to work in film today,” she called over her shoulder, “is by landing a job the industry can’t get along without.” She marched past Dixie to scan the other side of the building. “Writer, director—someone who won’t be history”—Sarina turned back and raised both hands to finger-quote—“‘after the bloom of youth is off her cheeks.’”
Dixie recalled seeing part of a new TV series with John Page playing second banana to a virile young hunk. She’d wondered at the time how the veteran actor felt relinquishing his leading-man position. Having started out doing stunts, he might sympathize with his daughter’s career choice. Only it wasn’t John Page who’d hired Dixie.
“What, specifically, do you plan to accomplish here?”
Sarina thumbed the doorbell. “Find out more about the industry? Get a dialogue going with a genius on his way to glorification? Learn some shortcuts?”
Hands shoved sullenly into her poncho’s deep pockets, the girl stared at the closed door. Dixie could feel her frustration.
“Look,” Sarina continued, “I may be only sixteen—practically seventeen—but I know what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. When Mother comes at me with this doctor, lawyer noise, asking why I don’t choose a sensible profession, I want to say that as far as I’m concerned, I was DNA’d for film when she popped me out of the womb. I might fake it by learning to mouth words like a lawyer, but I will never have it here.” She thumped her chest.
Dixie studied the kid’s intense gray eyes. There was quite a lot she apparently wanted to tell her mother but didn’t. Or couldn’t. The girl reminded Dixie of herself at sixteen-going-on-thirty-five. Dixie hadn’t been a whiz kid from a fancy school, but she’d spouted off just as volubly, just as emphatically, about law and justice, good and evil. Although her rose-colored glasses had long since scummed over, she still considered the laws that govern a nation important. Surely they were more important than strobes, explosions, and fake blood.
“Sarina, your mother has walked the walk. She knows how hard it is to make a name in Hollywood. I’m sure she only wants you to have the best future she can provide.”
“But she ignores what I want. She has some crazy notion I’ll ruin my life by following in her and Dad’s footsteps. What makes her think I won’t ruin my life anyway? Would she have stopped auditioning if her parents told her, ‘Don’t become an actress, Joanna, you’ll ruin your life’? Codswallop!”
“Maybe she—”
“You know how old Spielberg was when he snagged his big break? My age. He knew what he wanted and went for it—big time. I’m going to grab for what I want.”
Before Dixie could reply, the metal door swung open. A hulk of a man stood in the doorway, bits of modeling clay adhering to his full blond beard, hand extended in welcome, a good-natured twinkle in his sea-green eyes.
“So, you want to come in or what?” He shook hands without bothering to exchange names, his broad paw cool and dry. “You can’t read signs?”
“Uh—” Sarina said.
“Little sign under the doorbell? Says ‘Ring and Enter’?”
“Sorry—”
“There I was, making a face mold, you leaning on the bell, what am I supposed to do? Mess up an hour’s work? Couldn’t move until it set up, right?”
“Guess we didn’t notice the sign,” Sarina said.
“Come on back, but see the cables all over? Watch your step with that crutch, don’t give me grief with the insurance company.”
Dixie weighed the car keys in her hand and looked back at the Targa. They’d already made the long drive; what could it hurt to let Sarina schmooze with the great Alroy Duncan? Meanwhile, personal security jobs generally included a lot of time spent waiting, so she’d brought the stalker’s messages from the car. She could hole up in a corner and examine the notes.
The walls of the huge room they entered stretched to a twenty-foot ceiling, with no permanent dividers other than a small cubicle that Dixie took to be the bathroom. A sharp chemical odor stung her nostrils. Duncan—at least she supposed this was the wizard himself—led the way, zigzagging around folding screens and makeshift curtains that sectioned off odd-shaped areas. Masks and body parts hung from exposed beams. In various dark corners stood hulking monsters, including the skeleton of a tyrannosaur, bony jaws near the ceiling. Past a miniature city strung along one wall, they reached a relatively clear work area. On a table a white model of Duncan’s face stared with empty eye sockets.
“I don’t have the mixture perfected yet, but look at this.” He grasped an edge of the mask and stretched it. “Practically tear-proof, see?”
“Uncredible.” Sarina bent close. “Good definition. What are you using, alginate?” She sniffed the rubbery material.
“Better than alginate—although it didn’t give me quite the high I got with older products.” He grinned.
“There’s no drip,” Sarina noted, examining the mask.
“Right! Come look at—” Duncan stopped to stare at Dixie as if seeing her for the first time. “Who’s she?”
“Uh—a friend with wheels,” Sarina said quickly. “She’s cool. Really.”
“You sure she’s not a spy? Here to steal my secrets?”
The twinkle had never left Duncan’s green eyes, and Dixie wasn’t sure if he was serious or just putting them on.
“I won’t even look,” she promised.
“Hey, if Sarina Page says you’re cool, you’re cool, right? Come on back.”
Duncan stepped behind a curtain. He must have flipped a switch, because Dixie heard a hollow hum as flashes of projected light hit the wall. But then the doorbell buzzed, reverberating in the steel rafters, and the projector clicked off again. Duncan stuck his head around the curtain.
“That’ll be the wardrobe tech from your mother’s set, here to pick up a headpiece. You folks can take care of yourselves for a minute, right?” He hefted a hat-size cardboard box.
Dixie watched him saunter toward the door. His casual reference to Sarina’s mother bothered her.
“Did he know you were Joanna Francis’ daughter when he agreed to meet with you?”
“Sure. Totally unsmart to have righteous connections if you don’t use them.”
“I thought your mother was shooting a western. Why would she need a headpiece?”
“SF western. Mother’s character is a xenomorph, traveling through time and space, transforming to fit in.” Sarina pushed the curtain aside and peered into the area where Duncan had been working. “Come on back, you’ve got to see this.”
Instead, Dixie watched the door open at the other end of the building. The woman who entered wore the standard “techie” gear Dixie’d seen at theaters—black jeans, black T-shirt, black jacket—over her squatty body. When she scanned the room, her piggish gaze landing on Dixie, she grinned broadly and waved.
“Dixie!” Casey James called, pushing her way past Duncan. “I knew you’d lead me to something juicy. Here I was, all set to spend the week trailing Joanna Francis around he
r set, maybe catch some smoochie-smoochie behind the scenes. First, I camp at the hotel, to find out who Joanna spent the night with, and who do I see driving up at crack of dawn? Now why, I say to myself, is Dixie Flannigan, bounty hunter, visiting Joanna Francis?”
As Casey crossed the long room, treading with care around the clutter, Alroy Duncan followed behind, looking perplexed. Dixie’s mind worked frantically. Belle had made it clear that Joanna wanted nothing about the stalker leaked to the press.
“Then you come out with the daughter.” A camera had appeared magically in Casey’s hand. “I’m thinking, drug problem? Kleptomania? What’s this kid into? And since Joanna’s film will be shooting all week, I can catch her anytime. But Dixie and the kid? Got to be a story there. Truth! So we arrive at this obscure point of interest.” The reporter waved a hand at their surroundings. “What’s the deal?”
“Casey, I’m glad you stopped by.” Dixie hoped her smile didn’t look as wooden as it felt. “I want you to meet my cousin, Sarina Page. Sarina, Casey James, freelance reporter. And this is Alroy Duncan.”
Sarina cast a cool gaze at Dixie, then slid it over to the reporter. Duncan plucked at his beard, as if his mind was already back on his work.
“Cousin?” Casey looked skeptical.
“Distant,” Dixie added. “You know I’m adopted. But Sarina and I have always hit it off, and guess what she wants to be, Casey. A lawyer. Joanna asked me to show her around, fill her in on what a lawyer’s life is really about.”
Casey’s shrewd eyes worked over Dixie’s face as if trying to read something between the lines. Then she darted a piercing look at Sarina.
“Cousin,” she repeated. “What brings you two ‘cousins’ to a”—she looked at Duncan—“horror lab?”
“Just an errand.” Dixie nodded toward the box Duncan held tucked under one arm.
“Ms. Francis’ headpiece,” he explained, finding a stray bit of clay in his beard and tugging futilely at it. The alginate had evidently dried.
“Mr. Duncan was about to show us his work,” Dixie told Casey. “While it’s everyday stuff for Sarina, I’ve never been in a cinefex studio before. Fascinating place. Maybe you could use it in a story. Come see—”
“You’re putting me on, honey.”
Dixie shrugged. “Sorry. Guess it wouldn’t make very good copy. The monsters are all fake.”
“Kid,” Casey said to Sarina, “you want to know about lawyers, let me show you what’s what. I follow enough of them around to know the hairy details Dixie won’t tell you.” She headed toward the door. “Crap! Half the morning wasted.”
Dixie strolled alongside her. “Thought I’d take Sarina to visit a few of the more prominent law offices around town. Maybe spend some time at the courthouse. Give her a chance to see both sides. What do you think?”
“I think the girl’s nuts.”
Watching from the doorway as Casey climbed into a gray Toyota Camry, Dixie hoped she’d deflected the reporter’s curiosity. Casey James could be as tough to brush off as cat hair. But at least Dixie knew who’d been tailing them. And now, with only Alroy Duncan to worry about, Stoned Toad Productions might be the safest distraction Sarina could’ve chosen.
“I made my first film when I was fourteen,” Sarina was saying as Dixie joined them. The girl stood before a miniature castle, examining tiny windows and balconies. “Not much to brag about, totally unoriginal, but hey—it was hands-on effects work.”
“I hear you. My first film doesn’t tip a glass to what I do now.” Duncan flipped a switch. The castle windows lit up. “But I still get a grin when I watch it. Come see the shadow puppets we created.”
“We?” Sarina hunched alongside him.
“When business revs up, I use students from the local schools.”
Dixie’d seen enough, and she had a feeling Sarina’s fifteen minutes would stretch like cheap panty hose. Removing a stack of magazines from a canvas chair, she settled down with the file of faxed greeting cards and a small notebook.
The first card, postmarked in Los Angeles on December 22, bore a standard Christmas greeting, Wishing you good cheer at this special time of year. Beneath it, a blocky printed note said, GOD BLESS YOU, JOANNA. THE MESSAGE IN YOUR NEW MOVIE HAS GIVEN ME REASON TO LIVE.
Dixie didn’t see anything particularly threatening in the words, though the phrase “given me reason to live” seemed to indicate the writer was in an emotional state. She wondered what had prompted Joanna to keep the card and its envelope.
The second card, postmarked January 2, bore the stalker’s note, THIS IS OUR YEAR TO JOIN IN DIVINE UNITY, JOANNA.
Definitely more personal. The card was illustrated with a simple, stylized drawing of Father Time, similar to the first one. They appeared to be about the same size. Dixie wished she had originals instead of facsimiles. The logo on the back would identify the publisher. If they were purchased from a single location, the stalker could be one of the store’s regular patrons; the owner might remember him.
A stretch, she acknowledged, and if the publisher was one of the big houses, she hadn’t a prayer of getting a lead. But these card designs hadn’t the slickness she associated with Hallmark or Shoebox. Cases often turned on odd bits of information. She jotted identify pub. & purch. point in her notebook.
The third card was received on January 14, according to a penciled notation in a corner of the envelope. No postmark. The sun motif on the front looked to be the same style as the others. The commercial message read, Get Well Soon. The penned addition thundered, YOU MUST OVERCOME YOUR ILLNESS, JOANNA! YOUR ILLNESS IS MEN!
The line “overcome your illness” sounded vaguely familiar. Hadn’t there been a pop psychology book, Overcoming Your Illness Through Positive Mental Attitude?
Four days later the star received a second get-well card. On the blank area inside, the stalker had printed and underscored, NO MORE MEN, JOANNA! IF YOU HAVEN’T THE STRENGTH TO PRESERVE YOUR PURITY, I MUST HELP YOU. YOUR DAUGHTER WILL SACRIFICE FOR YOUR SINS.
Preserve your purity? Somebody had been watching too many bad movies. Dixie couldn’t imagine anyone taking this stuff seriously. According to one of Dixie’s FBI contacts at Quantico, every celebrity attracted stalkers. The issue they all talked about at parties was, “How many stalkers do you have this week?”
But a mother would think twice before dismissing that last line. The words “sacrifice” and “sins” smacked of religious fanaticism. Dixie knew from her prosecuting experience that a religious fanatic was the worst sort of crazy, often driven by voices and portents. Logic was useless against such delusion.
Still, the stalker’s messages were laughable for the most part. What had raised Joanna’s hackles enough to hang on to those first three? Dixie jotted why keep early cards???
The final greeting bore only the single word Congratulations! with no illustration. Inside was printed, I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT, JOANNA. NOW WE CAN BE UNITED. This One, dated February 2, sounded as if the stalker approved of Joanna’s actions for the two weeks preceding her trip to Houston.
As Sarina’s voice drifted near, Dixie glanced at her watch, then added to the file the valentine Joanna had received on her flight from L.A. The card was half an inch larger than the facsimiles and looked more expensive. Dixie wrote in her notebook why change card style?
“Being an effects artist isn’t a game with me,” Sarina was saying.
She and Alroy Duncan stood near one of the computer stations. He was checking out the kid’s rod puppet.
“Effects artist—I’m glad you put it like that,” he said. “I won’t take on a dilettante, thinks she’s Ms. Somebody Special. I won’t have you screwing up one of my jobs just to show off.”
“I won’t screw it up,” Sarina vowed. “I’ll pound away for sixteen hours straight—laser shootouts, nickel-a-frame blood-and-gore slasher films, pornographic cartoons, anything. When I’m done, it’ll be exactly the way you want it.”
The pair shook hands. Dixie had a sinki
ng feeling something had just transpired that she didn’t officially want to know about.
Chapter Fifteen
“You’re putting me in a rotten position,” Dixie shouted, to be heard above the clang, screech, and vroom of afternoon traffic. They were parked once again in the garage across from the Transco Tower. She scooped up the file folder that held the stalkers messages. She wanted Belle to find out if Joanna’s L.A. attorney had traced the five greeting cards to their point of purchase.
Sarina slammed the passenger door and slouched ahead toward the skywalk. Dixie couldn’t help liking the kid, with her damn-it-all determination to follow a dream, but in good conscience she couldn’t keep quiet about the deal Sarina had made with Alroy Duncan.
She caught the girl’s poncho, drawing the lanky teenager into protection range.
“Now that you’ve seen Duncan’s studio, don’t you think it makes more sense to find a school that teaches—”
“There is no school. What you saw was it. That’s what it looks like.”
“But wouldn’t it be smarter to get a well-rounded education first? Something—”
“It would be totally unsmart to pass up a chance with Duncan. Do you know how long I’d have to kiss up to get as good an offer in LA?”
“What about something to fall back on in case your movie career takes a dip?”
“Are you kidding? Film is forever! People need movies to lift them from the sludge of everyday life.”
“That’s a worthy outlook, Sarina, but…” Dixie shrugged, remembering the bug-eyed, eight-legged, reptilian-faced creature hovering just inside Duncan’s door. “Can you really take rubber masks and two-headed lizards seriously?”
“You think a film has to be serious to be worthwhile? What about Star Wars? You think Lucas didn’t create value with that film—beyond the obvious box office megabucks? You think it won’t be remembered?”
Dixie had seen Star Wars nine times, had rented the video only last week to watch with Ryan. She liked movies that left her smiling.