Dead Last

by James W. Hall

  “Exactly like that.”

  “So tell me, have you spread your seed to any other young girls? Do I have some half brothers or sisters I should meet?”

  “We were talking about the code.”

  “You were talking about the code, Tarzan. I was talking about you, my old man, my papa, my paterfamilias, my liege.”

  “You’re a smart young man.”

  “Am I impressing you, Dad? I very much want to impress you. Oh, yes. I want to earn your respect. So you can tell me how proud you are of me, and make me feel all worthy and noble and warm and gooey inside.”

  “We might get to that point sooner if you’d cut the shit.”

  “Oh, we’re a smart guy, are we? Tarzan, the quipster. Flexing his muscles and trotting out one-liners. Man, you’re a major cliché, Thorn. You’re like right out of some fifties Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet flick.”

  “You do your own makeup on the show?”

  That sat him back in his chair. He cocked his head and appraised Thorn with a flicker of wariness.

  “I have a makeup girl like every actor on the show.”

  “But you can do it yourself if you have to?”

  “What’s this about, Tarzan?”

  “It’s about a young woman who was beaten to death last night with a baseball bat. You ever seen someone beaten to death?”

  Flynn slid his gaze toward the TV set and was silent.

  “Can you do your own makeup? Say the makeup artist doesn’t show up one day and you have to impersonate someone special. Say it’s a girl you’re supposed to look like. Could you do that yourself? Make a latex mask like the one you were wearing the other day?”

  “What is this?”

  “This is a simple question. Father to son.”

  “Fuck the father shit, okay. Just leave that out of this.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Yeah, damn right I could do my own makeup. Give me twenty minutes, the right gels, powders, brushes, foundation.”

  “And the latex mask, the one you were wearing at the Floridian, did you make that?”

  “Am I being accused of something? Because if I am, I want to hear it straight.”

  “Did you make that mask?”

  “Are you asking me to incriminate myself?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Flynn pinched his earlobe, rubbed it between thumb and first finger.

  “I’ve done it a thousand times, made masks, worn eyelashes, mustaches, full beards. It’s my trademark. I’m a mountebank. Know that word, Tarzan?”

  “I do.”

  “Pick a star, Marilyn, Scarlett, Demi, Angelina. Ten minutes, I’m her.”

  “And Sawyer, is he capable of that?”

  “Sawyer? Eyelashes? Can Sawyer do makeup, make a mask out of latex or gelatin?”

  “Can he?”

  Flynn moved his chair back to its original position. Settled into it and stared across the room at the portrait of young, mischievous Garvey.

  “I wouldn’t know what Sawyer’s capable of.”

  “What about Jeff Matheson?”

  “What about him?” The jauntiness evaporated from his voice.

  “Would he be capable of applying makeup? Creating a mask.”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “As far as you know, does Jeff have any of those skills you have? To change his appearance. It’s a simple question.”

  “I really don’t know. We played around with shit like that when we were kids. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “You got into your mother’s makeup, you and Jeff?”

  “A few times. We were kids. Got into trouble. Mom started locking her bedroom.”

  Out the front window Thorn saw the shadow of a bird arriving, then the ibis appeared, fluttering to a delicate landing, followed by another then the rest of the flock, touching down in the grass that bordered the drive. They began to hook their beaks into the dirt, strutting a few steps and working the soil.

  For the moment all was quiet at the front gate. The reporters had returned to their trucks to monitor the airwaves for other stories, something darker than the Zentai Killer, something bigger, with a higher body count, a more appealing victim, or whatever it was they were always searching for, the fizzy next big thing to fill their bottomless appetites.

  “The code,” Thorn said. “What is it? How does the killer pick his victims in the show?”

  “Man, you just keep coming.”

  “I do.”

  “There is no code. That’s the twist.”

  “No code.”

  “It’s an existential joke. There’s nothing at the core. The killer leaves the obits behind at the crime scene to confuse the issue. Cuts the edges to make it seem like they’re important. But there’s no code. That’s supposed to be next season’s first big reveal. That is, when there was still going to be a next season. Cops and the Feds keep looking at the obits, studying them, trying to crack the secret, but there is no code. It’s all a hoax. There is no God. No wizard behind the curtains.”

  “Nothing at the core.”

  “That’s right, Tarzan. It’s an elaborate con job.”

  “But why? What’s the point?”

  “Hey, it’s a freaking TV show, man. There’s supposed to be a point?”

  Thorn looked over at Garvey’s portrait, her earthy smile.

  “So the killer’s a psycho. Doing whatever he feels. It’s all random.”

  “The killer is Dee Dee’s twin sister, Valerie. That’s revealed in the show coming up this Thursday. She’s got all the twisted genes in the family. You even watch the show?”

  “I’ve seen about thirty seconds.”

  “Maybe you should sit down and take a look so you’ll know what the hell you’re asking questions about.”

  “A twin sister is the killer.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Bad twin versus good twin.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the issue between them?”

  Flynn shook his head.

  “Got me.”

  “Bad twin trying to create her own identity? Be free? That the idea?”

  “Hey, that’s beyond my pay grade, pal. Ask Sawyer, he writes the shit. I’m just a humble reciter of words. A player upon the stage, a mere mummer dancing to another’s tune.”

  “How’s that feel, your brother pulling your strings? Putting words in your mouth, turning you into whoever he wants.”

  “I’m an actor. I’m used to it.”

  “But this is your brother.”

  Flynn stared at him and didn’t reply.

  “What tune were you dancing to last night around eleven?”

  Flynn stood up and marched over to the window and looked out.

  “‘What tune were you dancing to last night around eleven?’” He parroted Thorn’s tone and cadence precisely. “Where were you between the hours of eleven and twelve o’clock? Where indeed? Where was I? Let’s see, was that me, Flynn Moss, sprinting down the Miami boulevards in a black Zentai suit carrying a baseball bat? Oh, no, oh, no. Did I just incriminate myself? Did I buy a one-way ticket to the rock pile, the slammer, the pokey?”

  He pivoted back to Thorn and stabbed a finger at him.

  “Listen up, Daddy-o, if you and I are going to work together, you’re going to have to give me better material to come back on. Instead of this worn-out crap, right out of Cornball 101. It’s stale, hombre, past its sell-by date.”

  “You always try this hard? Or does this bullshit come natural?”

  Flynn raised his hands slowly and chopped the side of one into the palm of the other like a movie clacker.

  “And cut.”

  “Hold on, tiger. We’re just getting to know each other.”

  “We’re done here,” he said. “Finito.”

  His exit from the room had the same light-footed crispness Thorn had witnessed in the video when the therapist circled in too close to some painful truth.


  TWENTY-TWO

  SHEFFIELD SHOWED UP JUST AFTER two, knocking on the screen door. April and Garvey were in the maid’s room. Thorn could hear them quarrelling as he let Frank into the house.

  Thorn handed him the pinking shears in the plastic bag.

  “These are the scissors the killer used to cut out the obituaries.”

  “And how the hell do you know that?”

  Thorn explained about the ding in the blade, the corresponding notch in Rusty’s obituary.

  “Okay, that works,” Sheffield said. “Sheriff Hilton was one smart lady.”

  “She was.”

  “The fucker called in, gave the paper names and dates.”

  “I saw it on TV,” Thorn said.

  “Doing our work for us.”

  “Cranking up the volume,” Thorn said.

  “My guys had that already, except for the teenage kid in Lauderdale. African American. Alvin Jaspers. Gangbanger, rap star wannabe. Murder weapon left behind. A .357 Colt. No prints. All of them jibe with the obituaries. Paragraphs three, six, nine, three words in.”

  “That the full update?”

  “Oh, no. This morning I sent a couple of my junior G-men over for a little surprise visit to the Ocean Club where everybody’s living, Sawyer and Flynn and Dee Dee and Gus, and they sat down and picked their brains for a few hours. They questioned some of the crew too just to keep our four primes from squirming too much. Got the whole skinny. ‘Where were you last night?’ ‘Where were you last Thursday night,’ you know, closing time at Sports Craze. Took prints for everybody.”

  “And?”

  “Fill you in while we drive. We got to move, time’s a-wasting.”

  “We need to talk to April first.”

  “About what?”

  “Doing an obituary for Monday.”

  Frank looked back outside at the three news trucks parked on the street.

  “What? Give the killer his next assignment?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Set a trap. Select a target, choose his weapon for him.”

  “It could work.”

  Frank shook his head.

  “No way. He can’t be that dumb. He’d know we were setting him up.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “He’s copying the TV show, for christsakes, basing what he does on whatever system the show uses. He knows we know that. He’ll see it coming a mile off.”

  Thorn flexed his right fist, then his left, the limberness coming back.

  “There’s no code in Miami Ops, Frank. The obits are just a red herring. TV cops studying the obits to figure out how they led to the victims, but that’s all a ruse. The killer’s playing with the cops, picking his victims at random. The obits aren’t a blueprint to anything.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Flynn.”

  “But our guy has a code. Three down, three in.”

  “Yeah. He’s using different rules.”

  “Rules he came up with on his own. Not from the show.”

  Frank kept staring out the window.

  “And we know his code, but he doesn’t know we know.”

  “If we have an edge, that’s it.”

  Frank stooped forward and fluttered his arms like a swimmer loosening up on the blocks.

  “I don’t like it. Even if he fell for it, there’s too many variables. We lead him somewhere, he makes our surveillance, gets spooked, he bolts. We never see him again. Or worse, he slips past, somebody dies, it’s on us.”

  “It could work, Frank.”

  “No, thanks. I’m staying old school. Track the fuckhead down, catch him napping in his spider hole.”

  “Look,” Thorn said, “there’s not much time. It’s got to be a Monday obituary. That’s the one he acts on. If April’s willing, she has to write the thing tomorrow. It’s got to be real, a real person who died. The asshole could check that out. If he realized it’s a fake, it falls apart. April has to tweak the writing, get the words we want in the slots we want them.”

  “No way. Not acceptable. Drop it.”

  “Hear me out, Frank. Say she does the obituary, it appears Monday. We know the guy’s not going to act on it till Saturday. That gives us a week to catch him. We do the shoe-leather drill, get all the forensics back, you have fingerprints to work with, blow up the videos, the other things on your list. That’s probably going to be enough right there. If somehow we can’t nail the guy in a week, this gives us a fall-back plan.

  “Get April to write it in a way that puts nobody at risk. Lure the asshole to the place of our choosing, nobody’s there except us.”

  Frank walked into the parlor, looked around, buying a minute. Sunlight was glazing the wooden surfaces, putting a golden frost on the coffee table, the chairs, the bookcases. Sheffield prowled the room, his fingertips drifting across the back of the chair where Flynn had sat. Stopping for a moment to look at Garvey’s portrait. That pretty lass with the naughty twinkle.

  From ten feet away, Frank said, “Go see if she’ll do it.”

  “It’ll work, Frank.”

  “No, it won’t. It’ll turn into another giant clusterfuck. Like everything you touch, Thorn. It’s your special gift.”

  “Better than no gift at all.”

  “All right, all right. Go talk to her.”

  Thorn walked into the dining room, calling out April’s name. She appeared at the door of the maid’s room, where Garvey was staying. He motioned for her to step close. Leave Garvey out of it.

  At a bay window in the parlor, he explained his idea.

  She listened without comment, staring out the window at the satellite trucks, at the flock of ibis, at Boxley lying in the shade. Thorn made his case as cleanly as possible. No emotion, no pressure. Write a real obit, but insert three words at the crucial spots; third, sixth, ninth paragraph, three words in. Where, who, and what weapon. When he was finished explaining, she shifted her eyes to his face, ten seconds becoming thirty, an awkward half minute. Then she turned away and walked back to Garvey’s room and shut the door.

  Frank was in the foyer, phone to his ear, when Thorn returned. He clicked off and tucked the phone inside his blue jacket.

  “Well? What’d she say?”

  Thorn pinched the front of his polo shirt and fluttered it to cool himself.

  “She’s going to think about it.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  NINETY-TWO DEGREES AT TWO IN the afternoon. A sheer blue summer sky, glassy waters. In his white yachting trousers, white tunic, canvas slip-ons, and captain’s hat with gold stars, Gus Dollimore was at the helm of Pretty Boy, a Hatteras GT he’d been leasing since Miami Ops premiered. Sixty-two feet, ninety thousand pounds, 1,900-horsepower twin diesels. A superindulgence. He’d used it in the last few months to entertain local celebrities, politicos, visiting studio guys, a couple of rock legends living on the beach, a pro tennis star, some Heat players, the new Dolphins QB. They’d partied, traded business cards. Gus never heard from them again.

  You had to be delusional to think you’d catch anybody’s attention in Miami with fancy cars and boats. Like whispering in a South Beach night club and expecting to be heard. Nobody in this town was impressed by anything. They’d seen better. Always something glitzier, bigger, faster, louder. But Gus kept trying, convinced this was a piece of the success puzzle. Glam it up.

  Gus was hauling ass, taking them beyond the lighthouse at Boca Chita, twelve miles south of Key Biscayne, heading out to deep water. Up on plane, making forty knots with the full race diesels running smooth.

  Midsummer party boats filled the bay, the sandbars jammed with boozed-up kids and loud music. But as they pushed farther into the open ocean, things thinned out. Only a handful of vessels scattered to their south and east.

  Dee Dee was below in the salon, downing shots of Bacardi to keep her stomach calm—still jittery from the FBI grilling.

  Gus drew back the throttle levers and the yacht settled to a gradual halt, its huge wake catching
up, wallowing the ship for a few seconds.

  “What’re we doing, Gus?”

  “It’s Dee Dee,” he said.

  “What about her?”

  Gus had dialed back the bluster. Talking so low, Sawyer had to step close, his shoulder brushing Dollimore’s.

  “You’re going to have to grit your teeth on this. It’ll be painful. More for you than me, but it’s going to hurt us both.”

  Gus scanned the surrounding waters. A few go-fast boats ripping up the quiet sea a mile away, a trawler heading out, and two freighters a few miles away in the shipping lanes.

  Gus nudged the throttles, got Pretty Boy idling forward.

  “You don’t look good, son. What’re you, still spooked from going one on one with a federal agent?”

  “Damn right I’m spooked.”

  “I can see why,” Gus said. “You got some ’splaining to do, boy.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Dallas, for starters. You give them your bullshit story, Danson stood you up?”

  “I told them the truth. Danson made an appointment, didn’t show.”

  “They ask you about Atlanta? Atlanta on the tenth. Weekend that guy got his throat sliced. An obit on the table beside him.”

  Sawyer stepped back.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” Gus said, “I remember now. I got it marked on my calendar. That was the weekend you were scouting locations on the Gulf Coast. I’m sure you got ways to verify you were in Sanibel.”

  “That was your doing, Gus. You sent me on that trip.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t drag me into this. When they get around to asking, I got to give them the truth. You got a wild hair, thought we should shoot some locales outside Miami, break the pattern. I wasn’t hot about it, but I suggested some places. You rejected mine, picked the west coast, decided to do a spin through Sanibel or Marco Island, search out some fresh backdrops.

  “Hey, I may not be Fellini, but I’m thorough as shit. I write it all down. Where everybody is, what they’re doing. That’s the show runner in me, pal. Got to keep track whether we’re all rowing together or somebody’s going off in some counterproductive direction.