by Lisa Seidman
“Your problem is you’re trying to link the flood to Rebecca’s death. I don’t see why there has to be any connection.”
“To destroy evidence,” I said, but without much conviction.
“Are you seeing conspiracies everywhere, Susan?” Charles stood at the entrance to the bullpen, clearly amused. I flushed with embarrassment, grateful I hadn’t brought up his name in connection with Rebecca’s anonymous, keyless visitor.
Fortunately, Charles didn’t seem to expect an answer because he moved further into the room and handed Jennifer some pages.
“Script changes,” he told her. Then turned back to me. “Peggy’s in her office working on the second two acts. She’ll have them for you soon.”
I nodded, sick at heart, because I realized that if Peggy were back in her office, then she must’ve overheard me, too.
“Everyone heard you,” Sandy told me later when I went back to her office for a brief visit to fill her in on what happened.
“Ray and Winifred came back for lunch just as you were spouting off to Jennifer about broken water pipes and destroying evidence. I could even hear you in my office.”
My heart sank further. I hadn’t noticed that Winifred and Ray had returned from lunch, although Patrick had shown up a few minutes earlier, claiming he had a meeting with Ray. I could hear the low murmur of their voices from the wall separating Ray’s office from Sandy’s.
“I guess I should’ve just taken out an announcement in the Hollywood Reporter. Or. maybe Nikki Finke could write something up on Deadline Hollywood.”
“And maybe the murderer will step forward and apologize for causing everyone so much trouble and turn himself in.”
There was nothing I could say in response so I gloomily trailed back to my desk.
“It has to be Michael Keller,” Jennifer told me. “He was a pretty creepy guy.”
There was no denying that, but Zack, according to Peggy, hadn’t believed in Keller’s guilt. What had he known that the rest of us hadn’t? The police never mentioned whether Zack’s house had been ransacked prior to his “suicide,” and I wondered if Zack had been killed because he had undeniable proof of the murderer’s identity. But what was that proof and how did he get it? And more importantly, if the murderer didn’t find it, was it still lying around somewhere?
Taking my courage in hand, I approached Ray toward the end of the day. I tentatively asked him for permission to pack up Zack’s office, afraid he’d see through my excuse and realize I wanted to snoop around looking for clues to Zack’s death—and possibly his knowledge of Keller’s innocence. But to my relief, Ray thought packing up Zack’s things was an excellent idea and told me to go ahead.
I waited until everyone went home in order not to arouse suspicion and to be able to take my time. I unlocked Zack’s door with my master key, turned on the overheard fluorescent, and stepped inside. Jennifer had told me that Detective Wagner had made a cursory search of the office the day after Zack’s death while I was having lunch with Linda Ramsay. But as far as she knew, Wagner had found nothing. The office looked exactly as Zack had last left it. Old drafts of his script lay on his desk, new lines of inked-in dialogue squeezed between the old, laser-printed ones. On Zack’s couch—a horrid, clashing plaid that Linda had dug out of Romulus’s storage room—sat several scripts submitted by agents, an abandoned umbrella and an orange nerf ball. Zack had a toy basketball hoop clipped to the back of his door. I knew he liked to shoot hoops while working out a scene in his head. It looked lonely and abandoned, and I felt a pang of sorrow for Zack, suddenly missing his presence in the office.
The bookcase behind his desk housed three-ring binders filled with Babbitt & Brooks scripts starting from the year before. I flipped though several at random, but found no mysterious notes, veiled threats or revealing clues tucked between the pages. With a sigh, I shoved the last notebook back onto the shelf and turned to rummage through his desk. I went through each page of paper, scrutinizing the corrections, trying to translate Zack’s doodles. I put the old script pages in some kind of order and stacked them on a corner of his desk. Technically, they were useless and could’ve been thrown in the recycling bin, but I was too afraid I might miss something that would come back to haunt me later.
Zack’s drawers held the usual office detritus. The top one housed loose paper clips, rubber bands, ballpoint pens without caps, and script brads. The middle drawer held neatly stacked pads of yellow legal-sized paper on which Zack used to write his scripts. The third drawer was empty, and I studied it contemplatively, wondering if it had once held the alleged missing clue.
But, eventually, I closed it with a sigh, although I have to admit that I did check for secret cubbyholes and false panels. Zack used an ordinary metal desk, dented and worn from use over the years but without the hoped-for Gothic accoutrements. In searching for a clue, I had inadvertently straightened out the desk. The piles of script pages sat neatly in one corner, a Babbitt & Brooks coffee mug, which held pens, pencils, and magic markers, sat in another. In the center were a three-hole punch, stapler, and Zack’s engagement calendar. Like me, Zack was a technophobe, preferring the old-fashioned method of writing dates down rather than plugging them into his smartphone. I slid the calendar across the top of the desk to look at it more closely. I remembered catching Zack looking at mine the day before his death and finding it turned toward the week of Rebecca’s murder. I flipped through Zack’s, wondering what entry he thought mine had that his didn’t.
There were no incriminating names or phone numbers listed on the day that turned out to be Zack’s last. Nothing the day before— or even the week before. A lunch with Peggy, notations of various story meetings under particular times. No coded entries. No breakfast dates with a murderer (unless Peggy …? Nah!). If he had dined with Zack, wouldn’t the murderer have taken Zack’s calendar? Would Rebecca have put down a meeting that turned out to be with a murderer? But she always told me what meetings she was going to have, and I always penciled them in my calendar. No one had stolen my calendar. It was too badly damaged by the busted water pipe.
Suddenly I froze. I hastily turned Zack’s calendar back to the day after Rebecca’s death. But, of course, he didn’t have the entry I was looking for. Only my calendar had that.
I sat in Zack’s chair, not wanting to move. In spite of all my questions, in spite of all my searching, I realized I absolutely did not want to know who the killer was. Not this killer. Because I knew this person. This was not some abstract evil that had swept down and snuffed the life out of two people I knew. This person was real. This person had talked to me. And now this person might possibly want to kill me.
Stiffly, I rose from my chair and exited the office. I crossed the now deserted bullpen. I moved toward the storage closet near the front entrance, opened the door, and yanked on the cord that turned on the bare, thirty watt bulb. My carton of damp desk supplies still sat in the center of the room where I had placed it after the flood. My desk calendar sat on top of the pile, the pages crinkled from water but the writing still legible. I grasped the calendar by its center metal rings, and took it back with me to my desk. I sat down and stared at it, not wanting to read the page, praying that what I knew I would find there would somehow not be on it.
The calendar page staring up at me was the day of Rebecca’s death. After the trauma of finding her body, being questioned by the police, then going to the set, I had never turned it over to the next day. I did so now. The ink had run a little but the name was still legible. I stared at it, realizing I had missed a clue in Rebecca’s office when I had gone into it before Keller’s arrival. I remembered when Zack first started acting funny and finally understood why. He had just realized who the murderer was but needed proof. But was my battered, crinkly, ink-stained calendar enough proof to send a murderer to jail?
I sat there and wondered, and then the lights went out.
END OF ACT FOUR
ACT FIVE
1.
It
was just like in a horror movie, but of course I didn’t think that at the time. I actually didn’t think much of anything at first, too frightened to move. Granted the construction workers had been messing with the electrical system for months, creating havoc with power surges, but they always left at five, and now it was past seven. I knew this was not the construction company. This was Rebecca’s and Zack’s murderer. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that this person was now coming after me.
The bullpen was pitch black; the natural light from the window in the front door didn’t penetrate the gloom of the office. I thought about rising from my chair and feeling my way down the corridor and the exit, but just as I was about to make my move, I sensed a presence materialize in the hallway between Rebecca’s and Ray’s offices.
“Susan,” a voice said, and I almost screamed in shock. Then, surprisingly, “I’m sorry.” I heard the soft jingle of keys as he moved into the bullpen.
Patrick Hager. I didn’t need to see his face to know that it was him. The calendar gave him away. Patrick must have known that as well, because he didn’t try to disguise his voice. Which did nothing to reassure me. It meant I would be dead before I could call the police.
And yet, I still couldn’t move. In all those mystery books I liked to devour, the heroine was always able to keep the murderer talking while she figured out a way to escape. But I forgot how to talk in those first, frightening seconds. If I opened my mouth at all it would be to take great, gulping gasps of air because, suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
“Susan?” he said again. I remained at my desk, head bowed, unable to look at him.
“What happened to chivalry?” I finally managed to say. My voice sounded resentful, as if I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to betray my belief in him.
“Give me the calendar, please,” Patrick said, ignoring my question. Even though he asked politely, I shook my head no. I still felt mad that this was happening to me—and from someone I had actually liked!
“Susan?” I realized Patrick couldn’t have seen me shake my head. He was probably as blind as I was. So instead of answering, I curled my fingers over the center metal hooks that kept the calendar pages in place, and slowly stood up. A part of me that had conveniently removed itself from the emotions of the moment noticed that my hands were shaking.
Patrick must have sensed my movement because his shadow detached itself from the corridor entrance. I could hear his heavy breathing and knew that if I didn’t do something quickly, I would be dead before I hit the ground. My first instinct was to slide under my desk and curl there fetus-like until Patrick went away. But this wasn’t a nightmare in which I could just wake myself up to make the bogeyman disappear. I felt Patrick’s warm breath on my hair, and without thinking, I abruptly swung the calendar in his face.
Contact! I heard Patrick’s surprised grunt of pain and then I ran. My aim was to reach the writers’ corridor and the basketball court beyond, but I still couldn’t see anything and my nose slammed into the wall of Peggy’s office. I grunted in pain myself, tears springing to my eyes. I could hear Patrick knock aside my desk chair and come for me once again. The corridor was only a few feet to my right, and I rolled around the side of the office and ran like hell. Patrick was right behind me.
The basketball court was somewhat lighter since high, dusty windows were set above the huge double doors. But, unfortunately, the sun had set and there wasn’t much reflection from the moon. The double doors, I knew, would be locked, the only other exit being the narrow plank that led to the other warehouse. I skidded on the slippery wood floor, my high heels almost causing my ankle to twist and spill me to the ground. I couldn’t run very quickly in my short, tight skirt, and I had to pause to take off my shoes in order to keep going in my stocking feet.
“Susan,” Patrick said again, as he exited the writers’ corridor. “It’s over.”
“No,” I said out loud, and shot out my arm as if to wave him away from me. I forgot that I was holding one of my shoes, and I could feel the heel hit Patrick’s eye. I guess the calendar in his face hadn’t been sufficient warning to stay away from my waving arms.
“Shit!” he said. “Oh, fuck!”
I had never heard him curse before and the words brought back my sense of unreality. I shot off toward the plank leading to the other warehouse.
Enough light came from above to show me the plank and to prevent me from falling over the side. Unfortunately, Patrick had been in this warehouse many more times than I had and probably knew its ins and outs in his sleep. I wasn’t thinking too much about where I was going or what I was going to do once I made it to the other warehouse. I suppose I thought I’d try to find an exit, but aside from the twin set of double doors I really didn’t know of any other escape routes.
I ran past the production offices, supposedly closed and locked for the week’s unexpected hiatus, but now open. Patrick must have hidden there, waiting until everyone else went home, and I knew his office would not be a great place to hide. So I made a quick turn and found myself in the large, open area that served as the show’s soundstage. Patrick had since recovered from the clunk in his eye, and I could hear his running footsteps behind me. I found myself next to the set of the Babbitt & Brooks law office, and, following my earlier instincts, I ran behind one of the sheet-covered desks, crawled under the dust cloth and curled up in the dark, comforting space of the desk underneath.
I needed a plan. I knew that if I were to survive, I would have to control my panic and be craftier than Patrick. Which might not be as hard as I thought, in spite of my scattered thoughts and numbing fear. Obviously, his goal had been to count on my frozen surprise once the lights went out and kill me on the spot. My panicked, unthinking flight had unnerved him and left him without a back-up plan. Or so I hoped.
But the bottom line was I was stuck in a warehouse most of which was unfamiliar. I couldn’t imagine fumbling around the sets, seeking an exit, without making a sound and subsequently getting killed. I had to get back to my side of the building and the front door. While Patrick could have locked it on the inside with a deadbolt key in order to trap me, I was counting on his not having done so.
As unit production manager, Patrick had a key to every lock in the warehouse. But he kept the set belonging to the writers’ side in his desk. If Rebecca was expecting Patrick on the night of her death, then of course she’d ask Sherman to keep the front door unlocked—so that Patrick could get in.
But I didn’t have time to put all the pieces of the murder jigsaw together, even though I knew what most of them were. While I was trying to master my breathing and control my panic, the rest of me had been on the alert for any sound of the killer. I had heard him dash across the plank after me—the keys on his belt an incongruous musical accompaniment—but I had turned the corner and ducked under the desk before he had time to see me. However, he must’ve stopped in his tracks the instant I disappeared because all was quiet around me. Even the night time sounds of creaking walls and settling floorboards were mysteriously absent, and with a shudder I imagined Patrick creeping around the sets, listening as carefully for me as I was for him. I prayed that he would make some sort of sound, trip over a loose nail, bang his shin against a piece of cloth-covered furniture to clue me in on where he was and how I could safely get away.
My breath rasped in my ears and I had to pee. My heart had slowed from its initial adrenalin rush, but I was still too afraid to crawl out from under the desk. For all I knew Patrick was right in front of me, waiting for me to make the next move. I could easily have stayed under the desk overnight, waiting for daylight and my returning coworkers. Except the next day was Saturday and not even the cleaning crew would show up until Monday morning. I had to make my move sometime between now and then or face death from a burst kidney and/or dehydration. Neither thought was any more pleasant than my death at the hands of—
A sound! The soft jingle of keys, sounding fainter and fainter until it finally stopped. Either
Patrick had taken the keys off his belt loop or he was too far away for me to hear them anymore. In any event, the keys had sounded far enough away for me to make my move. Patrick had probably counted on my heading for the double doors and had moved deeper into the warehouse than I had actually gotten. I slowly poked my head out from under the cloth and looked around. There was hardly enough light to see three feet in front of me, but fortunately, my night vision had checked in and I could look around me with more confidence.
Large pieces of furniture loomed over me from the darkness but nothing looked remotely human. I quietly rose from under the desk, brushing away pieces of dust and lint from my skirt from force of habit. Although my skirt was black, I wore a white blouse with matching black trim and knew the white probably made me visible from miles away. But there was no way I was going to take off my shirt and run through the warehouse in my underwear. So I crossed my fingers in the hopes I wouldn’t be seen and, still clutching my shoes, moved quietly out of the lawyers’ office, walking smack into a light pole.
Both the pole and I lost our balance and crashed down together with a mighty thunk. I had walked into a thin, steel, movable pole that the electricians used to string up lights. Normally sandbags kept the poles in place, but I supposed the departing electricians hadn’t thought that necessary for the week’s unexpected hiatus. I had clunked my forehead pretty hard into the pole and still lay dazed on the ground when in the distance I heard the pounding of footsteps and the clanking of those damn keys.
Patrick arrived as I staggered to my feet, and he paused to regard my plight. I thought he would say something like “Gotcha,” or “I’m sorrier about this than you,” but instead he said, “Is milady Susan terribly injured?”
Patrick’s face was a pale, formless blob above me, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he had lost his mind.
“Patrick,” I began. But he interrupted me.
“What did you do with the calendar, milady?”