Rage Factor

by Chris Rogers

  “Sarina, your mother has a right to know.”

  “She thinks I’ll grow out of it.”

  At sixteen, it’s possible to outgrow anything, Dixie wanted to tell her, including the burning enthusiasm of youth. But at any age it was heartbreaking for someone to squelch your dreams.

  “Are you sure your mother understands how strongly you feel about this?”

  Sarina opened the glass door that led to the skywalk and waited for Dixie to crutch her way in.

  “She doesn’t want to understand.”

  “Maybe we could talk to your father, have him reason with her. You did say he supports your working in film, as long as you don’t take up acting.”

  Sarina moped along, hands shoved deep in her pockets. “If I’d taken a cab this morning, my mother wouldn’t find out I’d talked to Duncan until my birthday.”

  “Don’t you think that’s being a bit hard on your mother?”

  “If she would only listen to me.” Sarina spread her hands to show the futility of being sixteen and knowing life was already slipping away. “Dixie, you mentioned E.T.—only the most often watched movie in the world. Movies like E.T. have real heroes kids can relate to. A story line that communicates values kids of all ages can latch on to and believe in. I want to be part of a team that creates such an impact.”

  Impact? She certainly knew how to hammer a point home. “Did you take debate in high school?”

  Sarina grinned. “Made an A plus.”

  Dixie admired the girl’s passion; wished, in fact, she could feel such passion again in practicing law. But Sarina might be selling her mother short, expecting Joanna to automatically veto an apprenticeship. Maybe if Sarina stayed closer to home…. “L.A. must have better facilities than Houston for studying special effects.”

  “L.A. doesn’t have Alroy Duncan.”

  A defeated sigh hissed between Dixie’s teeth. Her arguments were no match for Sarina’s bullheadedness.

  “Have you checked out the Houston universities, or are you pinning all your hopes on the mighty Duncan to make you the next Spielberg?”

  “There’re some good arts programs here. I can get accepted at one of them. And hey, I don’t expect to be another Spielberg or another Lucas or another Doug Trumbull, but that’s okay. I’ll settle for being me, because I’m good.”

  Not to mention humble. “Your little spectacle this morning fell flat,” she muttered, recalling the dummy in the hotel room.

  Sarina blushed. “An actor would’ve followed cues.”

  “And a stalker would’ve had you cold.” Dixie hated being in the middle of a family disagreement. But if the kid was willing to take regular college courses while she trained in special effects, where was the loss? Dixie realized then that she wanted the kid to get a shot at her aspiration. Maybe Belle could reason with Joanna.

  She’d scarcely ushered Sarina into Belle’s reception area when the attorney stormed out of her office.

  “Flannigan, where the hell have you been? I’ve been dialing your mobile phone until my fingers are raw. I left messages on your answering machine, even called Clear Lake to see if Parker had heard from you. I was about to start calling the hospitals.”

  “Hospitals?” After leaving Stoned Toad Productions, she and Sarina had stopped for a burger. She’d taken the cell phone along, but maybe it wasn’t working again. “It’s only two-thirty. Sarina’s mother won’t finish shooting until six. Why all the worry?”

  Belle stamped back toward her office, motioning them to follow. “Joanna received another card, found it between the pages of her script—and she swears that script hasn’t been out of her reach since she left the hotel. The stalker must be somebody close. Anyway, Joanna called the dentist’s office, found out what time you left there, and expected to catch you back at the hotel. I told her you stopped here after the dentist, but—why the hell didn’t you let me know where you were?”

  “Did you see the string of local attractions we’re supposed to take in?” Dixie waved Joanna’s list. “I didn’t realize we were on a tight leash.”

  Belle glared at Dixie. Then her anger seemed to cool.

  “I told Joanna not to worry as long as Sarina was with you, but she’s pretty frantic.” She looked at the girl and nodded toward the law library and conference room. “Why don’t you telephone your mother and ease her mind?”

  “Sure.” Sarina crossed to the door and stopped. “Don’t heap all the flak on Dixie, Ms. Richards. I asked her to show me around.” The door clicked shut behind her.

  “What did this latest note say?” Dixie asked.

  Belle tossed a plastic Ziploc bag across the desk.

  “It’s pretty much like the others.”

  Dixie extracted the card by one corner. No postmark on the envelope. The commercial message said, To my special Valentine … may you open your heart today and receive love in. The stalker’s note in blocky red letters read: I DREAM OF OUR FUTURE TOGETHER, JOANNA. SOON OUR DREAM WILL BE REALITY.

  Dixie slid the card back into the plastic bag. When she closed it, a puff of air whooshed out along with a familiar odor she couldn’t quite place.

  “Notice anything different about this one?” she asked.

  “Different how?” Belle glanced at the plastic-encased valentine. “You mean the writing? The language?”

  Dixie spread the facsimiles on Belle’s desk, then lined up the two valentine cards in their plastic bags. “Look at the dates. Only one of the seven cards, the fifth one, mentions Sarina. The first five cards arrived about ten days apart, the closest being four days. These last two”—she tapped the valentines—“arrived two days in a row. They both hint of an imminent meeting.”

  “You think the stalker’s closing in.”

  “Maybe. Valentine’s Day is Friday. Maybe the stalker discovered Joanna was leaving town, took vacation time to follow her, and purchased the valentines en route. The creep seems to have more freedom now to play hokey games.”

  Belle glared. “You don’t sound as if you’re taking this case seriously.”

  “Did you read these? This guy’s a joke.”

  “What? You think a sicko will only spout obscenities and satanic verse? We can’t ignore—”

  “I’m not ignoring anything. Only I’m wondering if Joanna hangs on to every piece of fan mail she receives. These early notes don’t threaten anyone. Why save them?”

  Belle flipped through the first three cards. “I see what you mean. Nevertheless—”

  “Nevertheless, we run down all leads.” The most recent card was the largest. Dixie explained about the codes on the back. “Both valentines are from a major publisher, but what about the others? Has anyone tried to locate the point of purchase?”

  “lean find out.”

  “The first five cards have a simplistic design and a West Coast style. If we’re lucky, the stalker bought them at a local art mart, a specialty boutique. Then picked up a valentine from a rack at the L.A. airport, the other valentine from somewhere here in town. What about fingerprints? Handwriting and ink analysis? Have these been to a lab?”

  Belle folded her arms and crossed to the window, patent leather heels thupping the carpet. A thick gray veil shrouded the view of Houston’s downtown skyscrapers. The attorney stared out at it, anxiety molded into her rigid back muscles.

  “What I’d like to do is turn this whole damn case over to the HPD. But Joanna wants it totally hush-hush. No lab.”

  “I know a damn good private—”

  “Even in a private lab, leaks happen. I have to respect the client’s request for confidentiality.”

  “You’re her legal adviser, dammit. Advise her. She might listen if she knows it’s the only way to protect Sarina.”

  “Give the woman some credit, Flannigan. Joanna may act like the typical gotrocks airhead, but she’s smart enough to know that every major police force in the country is understaffed and underpaid, that the last place to look for protection is the local cop shop.” Belle
picked up the latest card and studied it. “Joanna’s had a bad year. On every show, accidents happened—lost scripts, busted water pipes, a fire in her dressing room. Accidents, but it doesn’t take much to be dubbed a jinx.”

  “Okay,” Dixie relented. “Hush-hush. And … maybe Sarina and I should drive over to the film location. Let Mom wrap a wing around her chick, reassure herself the kid’s okay.” Dixie didn’t like hanging out in a crowd, though, where an assailant could pop up anywhere. “Afterward, we’ll split for someplace safe.” She gathered up the file contents.

  “Belle … Joanna’s hotel room was filled with flowers this morning. Any chance some of them came from the stalker?”

  “Possible. But when Joanna travels, Marty sends armloads of flowers.”

  “Marty? Her agent?”

  “To impress visitors, he says. Especially media. I can find out easily enough.” She skewered Dixie with a look. “You will let me know where you go?”

  “Yes. But I’d like to avoid these public places Joanna wants to send us to. One of Parker’s clients is hosting a private yacht party in Galveston this evening. It’s low risk. Invitation only.”

  The attorney eyed Dixie searchingly. “How does Parker feel about your working this job?”

  “He didn’t say much, beyond promising to take Mud to the beach.”

  Belle grimaced. “Anyone who can make friends with that ugly dog must be a master harmonizer.”

  “Meaning I’m the one causing all the problems?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Actually, it does seem like everything I do lately stacks another brick in the wall between us.”

  “He worries about you, Flannigan. You’re in a dangerous business.”

  “It’s what I do. I’ve been independent too long to start playing Jane to his Tarzan.” She looked out at the skyline, toward Clear Lake. “Anyway, that’s not the real problem. We’re just so different.”

  “Opposites attract.”

  “Right. God must have been laughing when he set up that dichotomy.”

  Dixie slid all the greeting cards and facsimiles back in the file folder. She had her own sources for checking fingerprints and handwriting, sources that could be counted on for secrecy. She intended to use them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Codswallop!

  Sarina plunked down the phone and unzipped her tote bag on the conference table. As she extracted a gray spiral notebook, she studied the room. Totally unthrilling. Brown dead-cow chairs. Books everywhere.

  She opened her notebook to the first clean page, more than halfway back, then rummaged through her bag for a pen. Fire Dweller blocked everything, so she lifted him out and carefully placed him on the table. Granite table. Must weigh as much as a TransAm. Hernia time, bringing it up to the forty-seventh floor.

  Finding the pen, she snatched up the notebook and flopped on the floor. Would nor sit on dead cow.

  Dear Dad, she wrote. She’s done it again. Trashed my life. Rips on me every minute and

  She reread what she’d written, set the notebook aside, jumped up, and strode to the window. Yards below, and some distance away, a news helicopter circled to land on a nearby building. Sarina leaned across the humongous table, grabbed her tote, and rummaged until she found her Datman. She queued up sound number 142 and punched the on button. Instantly, the room filled with the whoop-whoop of a helicopter’s blades. She lowered the volume, so it wouldn’t carry past the heavy wooden library door, then feathered the sound to sync with the helicopter circling below.

  A digitized simulation would’ve taken the bird down slower, less wobble, maybe circle once for form and drama. Sarina became one with the sound, lessening the volume as the copter descended, cutting it completely the instant after the wheels hit the helipad. Perfect!

  She dropped the Datman back in her tote and sat down again with the notebook. She scratched through “trashed” and wrote “devastated.” Dad would never see it, but she respected his opinion, and he disliked colloquialisms. She scratched through “rips on” and wrote “criticizes.”

  I know you want me to be patient, but life won’t let me. The best part of my art is happening now, right now, and if I can’t find a place to express it I know Til fly apart like an exploded squib.

  Sarina slapped the notebook down on the carpet and squinted at the puppet on the table. Fire Dweller was as good as any rod puppet ever built. Smooth action. Micro movement. She had to make Dad understand.

  Seventeen is six months—almost seven months—away. What if I lose the touch? What if my talent dries up like an open jar of alginate?

  Dropping her pen beside the notebook, she jumped up and circled the table to inspect the bookshelves. Law books. Somewhere in those books there had to be a law against a parent trashing—devastating—her daughter’s future.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Joanna’s director was loud, fat, and had an ego problem. Dixie guessed he was pushing fifty. If he lived to be fifty-one, if he didn’t croak from emphysema or a heart attack, and if no one murdered him, he should consider himself on overtime. The scene had gone through twelve takes since Dixie’s arrival. Each time the director yelled CUT, his hypertension intensified, the blood vessels in his throat and temples throbbed like convulsive snakes.

  Production was ALREADY behind schedule, the fat man explained, and NO, MS. Francis could NOT spare a moment to talk to MS. Flannigan. And if MS. Flannigan didn’t make herself scarce immediately, he would be elated to have her bothersome self escorted off the set. Dixie might’ve reminded him that the “set” was actually a public street, which the city had temporarily cordoned off for the production company’s use, and as a tax-paying citizen, she could launch a protest the likes of which he’d never seen. Instead, she decided to “make nice,” a strategy her Irish adoptive mother had promised would reap greater rewards than otherwise.

  Besides, it wasn’t the rude director pushing Dixie’s trouble alert button. It was the equipment poised to crash down from a building, or trip someone, or short out and fry anybody standing in a rain puddle. It was the unfamiliar crew. It was the teeming crowd—some of the watchers permanently fixed at the perimeter, others stopping and moving on, the mass pulsing like a giant amoeba.

  So while she and Sarina waited for Joanna to get a break, Dixie studied faces as if through a camera lens. She wanted a mental snapshot of every crew member and onlooker: one of them was quite likely Joanna’s stalker. She dug out the notebook from her jeans pocket and jotted ideas as they occurred to her. The first note read, Find out if fat direc. wanted Joanna on film. He certainly seemed to be unnecessarily rough on his star actress.

  On their way downtown, Dixie had stopped to photocopy the stalker’s messages and to ship a set by overnight mail to Les Crews, her FBI contact at Quantico. A profiler, trained by the agent credited with inventing the field of medical criminology, Les had developed almost as many credits as the guru himself. If anyone could suggest a “type” to watch for, it was Crews.

  Joanna, dressed in a skimpy frock, stood beyond the barricades, hugging herself against a harsh wind and silver drizzle. A ragged awning snapped and bellied over her head. A lighting crew fussed with fill lights. Several yards farther along the sidewalk, a Hollywood killer in a western-tailored suit and lizardskin boots smoked a cigarette.

  The crowd pressed close behind the barrier. The atmosphere buzzed with expectancy, everyone waiting for the director to yell ACTION. Spectators wanted to hear the zing! of bogus bullets, the screams of the killer’s prey. Dixie just wanted to be elsewhere.

  Sarina’s habit of darting off to chat with friends increased Dixie’s uneasiness. The teenager knew everybody in the film crew and slipped among them like a shadow in her gray attire. Workers from surrounding buildings, suburbanites who’d read about the shoot and driven in to rub elbows with celebrities, students, novices scooped up as extras—all had their eyes fixed on Joanna Francis. Dixie hoped a break would come soon when Sarina could check in wi
th Mom. The less time spent among film people and their unpredictable fans, the better.

  Then a face popped into Dixie’s view that made her heart leap: Parker. He must’ve talked to Belle.

  He squeezed through the throng and joined her at the perimeter rope.

  “Thought you’d be on your way to the boat,” Dixie said. “I’m glad you stopped by.”

  “I didn’t like the way we left things.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Guess working for a famous film star is more exciting, anyway, than a boat ride,” he said flatly, watching Joanna huddle beneath an awning.

  “I’m not here for excitement. I’m here because someone threatened a client and her daughter.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t come to argue.” He kissed her forehead, squeezed her shoulder, and let his hand linger there. “Don’t suppose you found someone to take over for a while this evening?”

  Dixie regarded him in his spiffy navy blue blazer and camel slacks, a tan raincoat draped casually over his shoulders. He looked terrific.

  But she had committed to staying at Sarina’s side, warding off potential danger, until the girl was tucked safely in bed, where hotel security took over.

  “What if she went along?” Dixie suggested.

  He glanced at Sarina, a few feet away, talking with a techie. “Is that the girl?”

  “Looks like a lost puppy, doesn’t she?”

  “You have a reputation for picking up strays.” He smiled and wiggled his eyebrows. “Lucky for me.”

  Dixie knew he was considering all the possible ramifications of taking Sarina to the ribbon cutting. The weight of his hand felt good. In companionable silence, they watched the action unfold as the film resumed shooting.

  “I don’t understand why anyone would choose to be a screen actor,” Dixie whispered.

  “Money? Fame?”

  “Fame only lasts until a new face comes along, and there isn’t enough money on this continent to make me put up with what she’s endured the past half hour. Look at that dress she’s wearing. How she keeps from turning as blue as the silk is a mystery.” The temperature was falling rapidly. The wind gusted the misting rain under even the largest umbrella. From a trailer labeled WARDROBE, a red-haired techie hurried across the lot with a slicker to wrap around the star’s shoulders.