The 7th Month

room.”

“Meals?”

“Cast and crew eat together,” Joe granted. “But people are staggering in and out over the course of an hour, depending on their schedules. I sat next to Chaibongsai once. That was it.”

“You local?” she asked him, then stretched out the question to include Melissa and Natalie as well.

As a unit, they nodded.

“What about others on set?”

“Lighting and electrical,” Don spoke up. “Some of the production crew, including PAs. Craft services, hair and makeup. But most of the cast and crew flew in for the shoot. The director, Ron, has his own camera crew out of L.A., sound is from New Orleans, wardrobe from New York. Not sure about the rest.”

D.D. looked at him. “Where’s everyone staying?”

“A hotel in Boston that gives us a group rate.” Donnie shrugged. “It’s why we’re working such long hours. Cast and crew are here to get this done, then everyone goes home again.”

D.D. nodded, frowning slightly to herself. A suspect pool from all over made life trickier. Who had Chaibongsai gotten close to in the past three weeks, and how had that led to his death?

A new person entered the tent, headset clamped over his ears. “Second team, on set,” the kid announced, and all three stand-ins rose. “New shoot schedule: We’re starting with scene thirty-two, then scene one.”

Donnie immediately appeared annoyed, hustling over to the kid. “Why the change?”

“Stephanie’s running late.” The production assistant shrugged his shoulders. “Scene thirty-two starts with the detectives in action, so easiest to go there first. But director also wants Natalie, so we can work out lighting on the tombstone.”

Stephanie must be the actress playing the widow, D.D. deduced. She made a mental note. One actress late to set. Just a movie star being a movie star . . . or related to the murder?

The change in scene order didn’t seem to be a big deal, at least not to the stand-ins. Joe and Melissa shrugged, while Natalie seemed genuinely thrilled to be assisting with the lighting of a tombstone. Go figure, D.D. thought.

D.D. followed Donnie out of the green room to a brightly lit area containing a towering Styrofoam-carved tombstone and carpets of fake fog. Joe and Melissa took up positions behind real tombstones, detectives on the job. Natalie, as the widow, sank to her knees in front of the gray-painted foam masterpiece, her fingers coming to rest on a single red rose.

Tendrils of fake fog immediately enveloped her, and this time, even D.D. shivered.

Joe, Melissa, and Natalie started rehearsing the scene. Donnie led D.D. to video village, where they could watch the action live on camera. First thing D.D. noticed was that the stand-ins didn’t just hit marks, but delivered their lines with genuine inflection and emotion. Natalie in particular was very convincing as the young widow, grieving her husband’s tragic death without ever saying a word.

When the first scene ended with Joe and Melissa leaping over tombstones, D.D. wanted to clap. Instead, the director yelled about needing another light by the tombstone while the director of photography grumbled that the camera man needed a different lens. Joe, Melissa, and Natalie simply walked back to their first marks and took up position again.

And again. And again. And again. Same scene, performed a dozen times and counting, and they weren’t even filming yet. The glamorous world of moviemaking, D.D. quickly realized, was about as exciting as watching paint dry.

D.D. sighed, rubbing her lower back absently as she struggled to get her bulk comfortable in the canvas director’s chair.

Eight P.M. Full dark beyond the reach of the lights. Temperature already at forty and still plunging with mid- November glee. On set with a very nervous producer and a cast of one hundred and four possible murder suspects.

This is where Samuel Chaibongsai had sat, day after day, scene after scene. Looking for blatant procedural inconsistencies. A former cop turned entertainment consultant. The job he used to do, the job he was now paid to do. One man, two occupational views.

Then, she was struck by another thought. If scene one was about the murderer’s first attack, and scene thirty-two was about baiting the same murderer, then where was the actor, or even the stand-in, for the Gravestone Killer?

Because suddenly, D.D. was staring at the whitewashed face of a demented man, looming out from behind the fake tombstone and raising an ax over Natalie’s bowed head.

Murder is a full-body experience. Your pulse rate will spike, your skin flushes with heat, your palms dampen with sweat. Beforehand, it is not uncommon to have second thoughts, pre-party jitters so to speak. Once the process has started, however, crossing the street, sneaking into the backyard, prying open that never completely secured window . . .

A calm will descend. A predatory Zen state, where the air tastes crisper, the smell of her shampoo registers sharper, while the sound of her first muffled scream, caught in the latex-covered palm of your hand . . .

Sound and scent will become snapshots, frozen forever in your mind. A slide show of sensory indulgence, her panting breath, matching the equal racing of your heart, her kicking struggles, the corresponding flex of muscle and power in your own limbs. Her sheer, desperate need to escape. Your own equally compulsive, biological imperative to kill.

You will feel stronger, hear better, smell sharper, taste finer, and see crisper than ever before. As long as you stay in control. No panic, no frenzy, no mistakes. Ride the ride to her last, gasping, gurgling breath. Killing is about power, but it is also about self-control.

Mentally prepare for the physiological overload. This is step four.

Chapter 4

D.D. was out of the director’s chair before she could stop herself. She wasn’t thinking about the fact that she was a very pregnant woman who should probably sit on the sidelines, hands folded primly over rounded middle. Instead, she saw danger and she responded as a cop. Out of her chair, moving across the hard-packed ground, registering the tang of chemical fog upon her tongue, the sound of a genuinely panicked scream in her ears.

Gun out, hustling her awkward bulk around video village, beyond the glow of the klieg lights and into the dim shadows of the vast cemetery, where she would be out of the killer’s sight, while he would be fully illuminated in hers.

Perhaps one second had passed, with the blond actress screaming, and camera crew still filming, while others around the set straightened up from texting, talking, loitering, and started to eye the scene uneasily.

“No, no, no,” the stand-in wailed, hands up, defensively, twisting away from the looming figure.

“Cut,” the director yelled. “I need to see her face. Again, but this time, turn toward the camera!”

Except Natalie was now garbling hysterically in some foreign language, while the white-faced man brought the ax down hard, just missing the blonde’s head as he sliced off a chunk of foam tombstone.

D.D. looped out far right, trying to line up a shot. But a hundred and four crewmen seemed to translate to a hundred and four obstacles. Cameras, lights, dollies, equipment, tombstones . . . Couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot.

“Cut, cut, cut!” the director yelled. “Hey, why’s he attacking my tombstone?”

Natalie was staggering to her feet, hands still over her head as she screamed more words D.D. didn’t understand. The blonde seemed to have recovered slightly. Less hysteria, more rage as she faced off against her