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“Yes, you can take her out. Thank you, Bogie,” Sean said.
Bogie walked her back toward the Black Box Cinema, one arm around her. They seemed to disappear before they got to the stairs.
“Where did this get us?” Madison demanded. Her eyes were narrowed. Accusing.
“To the world of illusion,” Sean told her. He stepped over the velvet cord into the tableau and walked through the scene, studying each character.
Kat and Madison stood there quietly, observing him.
“We need to watch Sam Stone and the Curious Case of the Egyptian Museum,” Sean muttered.
“I know you think the movie might have something to do with the murder,” Madison said, “but how? And are we talking about the original or the remake?”
“The original. Alistair was watching the movie. The killer knew he’d be watching it, and dressed up as one of the characters—as the killer in the movie, to be precise. ” Sean went from mannequin to mannequin. They were just that. Nothing flesh and blood about them at all.
But the killer had been flesh and blood. No question of that. So how had he gotten in and out?
Sean left the tableau, aware that Kat and Madison were studying him intently. “Okay,” he said. “Right now, we don’t know how the killer got down here. But he manipulated two minutes from the security video. I think he got in here somehow and that he knew where to hide. Kat, how much blood would he have on him if he caught her from behind? Would he be covered in it?”
“Not necessarily. Not if the blood spurted forward and he pushed her away from him immediately. I’m assuming he’d have gotten some on him. From the knife, certainly. And a sleeve probably would have had to have caught some. From what we’ve reconstructed of the attack, the flow of blood would’ve been forward. ”
Madison was still watching him, frowning. She moved from the position where Jenny had been seized toward the door that led to the studio. She shook her head, looking at Sean, a baffled expression on her face.
“Even if it was just a few drops…if the killer had gone this way, he’d have tracked blood. I can’t believe he escaped through the studio,” she said. “Surely, there would’ve been something here, some clue. ”
The crime scene unit had gone over the tunnel with fine-tooth combs. But they’d expected to find blood there. Spatter, spray…drops.
Because Alistair had run back through the tunnel to reach Bailey over at the studio.
Dropping low, Sean began to inspect the area of the tableau again. And it was then that he noticed the slight smear on the skirt of the Dianna Breen mannequin.
“He came back this way,” Sean said.
Both of the woman looked at him in surprise. “He came back this way,” he repeated, “and then…”
The backdrop was black. A black-painted plaster wall. Sean walked over and began to tap it. The sound was hollow.
“There’s something behind the tableau,” he said.
Standing next to him, Madison tapped, as well. They heard the same hollow sound, and she turned to him with large eyes. “But there’s nothing back there. We’re actually underground now, Sean. This is just a tunnel. ”
“We may be underground, and this may be a tunnel,” he said. “But there is something back there. Keep tapping, press on things—there has to be a release here somewhere. I know the killer came back this way. ”
They spent the next few minutes pushing, prodding, tapping the wall. They were still at it when Sean heard Logan calling out to him. The others had arrived.
“Logan! We’re in the tunnel. ” He stepped down and waited for Logan, Jane, Tyler and Kelsey to join them.
“You’ve done a great job getting along with Knox,” Logan said. “He was receptive to us and actually helpful. We have the notes from all the employee interviews, and he gave us lists of others we might want to question. That’s pretty good, considering how unusual it is that the FBI would be called in for one murder in his jurisdiction. ”
“He was a little annoyed at first. I guess he’s resigned, maybe even glad. Whatever happens, he won’t be the fall guy. ”
“So, you’ve found something?” Kat asked. “This is quite a place. And eerie—the tableaux are really excellent, and being down here is kind of creepy. ”
“A special-effects studio filled with monsters and surrounded by a cemetery,” Tyler commented. “And the work I’ve seen here is amazing. ”
Madison smiled at him. “It is an amazing place,” she agreed.
“The cemetery was always here,” Sean said. “If I remember correctly, the property was all owned by the previous owner—or his father. His father or grandfather, first. They donated the land for the cemetery in the late 1800s. The studio was built in the 1930s, right?”
“Maybe a bit later,” Madison said. “The early 1940s. ”
“Someone had a sense of humor,” Kat remarked. “Building a special-effects studio—known for fantastic zombies, mummies and vampires, among other creatures—beside a cemetery. ”
“Forget the cemetery for now,” Sean said. “There’s something behind this wall, and I want to know what it is. Or I should say—there isn’t something. If you listen, you can tell there’s no earth behind it. ”
“You think there’s some kind of hidden door here?” Logan asked.
“Yes, but I can’t find any mechanism. ”
The rest of the team joined them, tapping, stamping on the floor, feeling for cracks in the wall’s surface.
“We could break it down,” Tyler Montague suggested. “We’d need to get some sledgehammers…. ”
Sean grinned. Tyler was as muscled as a linebacker. He could break it down.
“I think we have to find the trap door or whatever it is,” Sean said. “Or come at it from the other side. ”
“How do we get to the other side?” Madison asked.
“Do you remember I told you that the elevator in the studio could reach the basement?” Sean said. “We have to get Eddie to come over with the key that’ll take it down there. The tunnel connects to the studio here. There has to be another tunnel on the opposite side. I’m going to call Eddie and ask him to bring the key. ”
“And instead of breaking things down while we wait,” Logan said, “Madison can show the rest of us the studio. ”
“Of course. ” Madison gestured at the door. “We can go that way. I’m sure the forensics teams have gotten everything they can. ”
“They’re just waiting for us to finish in here,” Logan said. “Madison, if you would. ”
Madison glanced at Sean, almost as though she wanted his approval, and when he nodded, she led the others through the connecting door.
Sean found himself alone in the tunnel.
He stood very still for a moment. But he was truly alone. He didn’t know where Bogie had taken Jenny, but he was sure she was in good company.
No…there was nothing that hinted of a world beyond in the tunnel now. There was nothing at all, except for the sickening smell of blood.
* * *
Madison felt as if she was taking a tour group through the studio. Sean’s team members were careful and polite, oohing and aahing over the work they saw going on. Logan Raintree was more somber, asking her about lockdown and the current projects, particularly The Unholy.
“Anticipation can be the impetus that makes a movie score big at the box office,” Madison explained. “So, when we’re working on comic characters or some kind of movie monster—especially when there’s a nice budget, and it’s an important movie for a production studio—we go into lockdown. And you know that we’re working on the remake of Sam Stone and the Curious Case of the Egyptian Museum. ” She brought them over to her workstation. “Right now, I’m fabricating all the costumes for Sam Stone, who’s being played by Oliver Marshall. He comes here for his fittings. He was due back in this week for his last one. I don’t know what the sched
ule will be now, and I haven’t heard from Mike. ” She paused a moment, then began to explain. “In the movie, Sam is slipped some drugs, and the priest is able to make him believe that jackals and other monsters come to life. He battles that in his mind. We work with foam and latex and all kinds of materials to create them. ” She lifted one of the tarps covering her work. “He’s wearing typical contemporary clothing in most of the movie, but in the hallucination scenes, he has ancient Egyptian weaponry. Of course, a number of scenes are done with his stunt double. In the fight scenes, he’s got a helmet on, so you don’t see his face most of the time. When the stunt double’s working he wears a face shield. In this case, it’s easy. The helmet goes over…”
Her words trailed off as she raised a piece of black cloth. The material was so sheer it could go over an actor’s face and still allow him to see and breathe.
And when an actor wore a headpiece made of that material, he appeared to have no face at all. It worked extremely well for long shots when the stunt double was stepping in for the actor; sometimes, the character was too distant for the facial features to be clearly seen, and sometimes, the face could be digitized in.
She looked at Logan and swallowed.
“This…this is what the killer must have used,” she said in a hushed voice. “Both Jenny and Alistair said he had no face. If you had a headpiece of this stuff on under a hood, it would look like you were…faceless. ”
* * *
Sean went out to meet Eddie Archer when he’d arrived at the studio. He wasn’t alone; he was with a woman, and to Sean’s surprise, it wasn’t Helena LaRoux, his present wife. Eddie had come within minutes of being called, and he was accompanied by Benita Lowe, his ex-wife.
Benita was beautiful, but then Eddie was attracted to women who were showpieces. She was about five-foot-five, with raven-dark hair, deep brown eyes and exotic features. She was smart, too, and when it seemed that she was getting nothing but supporting roles and leads in B movies, she’d segued into producing and directing, performing only when she was offered a role she really wanted. Sean didn’t know what had really split the two of them up; there’d been rumors that she was unfaithful, according to Madison. But then, this was indeed Hollywood, and when there weren’t any good rumors to go around, some storyteller would invent one.
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