The woman looked at him for a moment, as if he had just told her it was a spaceship built for very, very small aliens. 'That's a telephone?' she asked.
'Yes, ma'am,' Byrne said. He held it up for her to see. 'It has a camera built in, a calendar, an address book.'
'My, my,' she said, shaking her head side to side. 'I believe the world has passed me by, young man.'
'It's all moving too fast, isn't it?'
'Praise His name.'
'Amen,' Byrne said.
She began to slowly make her way toward the driver's door. Once inside she reached into her purse, produced a pair of quarters. 'For your troubles,' she said. She tried to hand them to Byrne. Byrne raised both hands in protest, more than a little moved by the gesture.
'That's okay,' Byrne said. 'You take that and buy yourself a cup of coffee.' Without protest, the woman slipped the two coins back into her purse.
'Time was when you could get a cup of coffee for a nickel,' she said.
Byrne reached over to close the door for her. With a movement he would have thought was too quick for a woman of her age she took his hand in hers. Her papery skin felt cool and dry to the touch. Instantly, the images ripped through his mind- a damp, dark room… the sounds of a TV in the background… Welcome Back, Kotter… the flicker of votive candles… a woman's anguished sobs… the sound of bone on flesh… screams in the blackness… Don't make me go up to the attic… — as he tore back his hand. He wanted to move slowly, not wanting to alarm or insult the woman, but the images were terrifyingly clear, heart- breakingly real.
'Thank you, young man,' the woman said.
Byrne took a step back, trying to compose himself.
The woman started her car. After a few moments she waved a thin, blue-veined hand, and angled across the lot.
Two things stayed with Kevin Byrne as the old woman drove away. The image of the young woman who still lived in her clear, ancient eyes.
And the sound of that terrified voice in his head.
Don't make me go up to the attic… he stood across the street from the building. It looked different in daylight, a squalid relic of his city, a scar on a moldering urban block. Every so often a passerby would stop, try to look through the grimy glass-block squares that checkerboarded the front.
Byrne took an item out of his coat pocket. It was the napkin that Victoria had given him when she had brought him breakfast in bed, the white linen square with the imprint of her lips in deep red lipstick. He turned it over and over in his hands as he drew the layout of the street in his mind. To the right of the building across the street was a small parking lot. Next to that, a used-furniture mart. In front of the furniture store was an array of bright plastic bar stools in the shape of tulips. To the left of the building was an alleyway. He watched a man exit the front of the building, around the corner to the left, down the alley, then down a set of iron stairs to an access door beneath the structure. A few minutes later, the man emerged carrying a pair of cardboard boxes.
It was a storage cellar.
That's where he would do it, Byrne thought. In the cellar. He would meet the man later that night in the cellar.
No one would hear them down there.
38
The woman in the white dress asked: What are you doing here? Why are you here?
The knife in her hand appeared extremely sharp and, as she began to absently dig at the outside of her right thigh, it sliced through the material of her dress, splotching it with a Rorschach of blood. Thick steam filled the white bathroom, slicking the tiled walls, misting the mirror. Scarlet streaked and dripped from the razor-keened blade.
Do you know how it is when you meet somebody for the first time? the woman in white asked. Her tone was casual, almost conversational, as if she were having a cup of coffee or a cocktail with an old friend.
The other woman, the bruised and damaged woman in the terry- cloth robe, just stared, the terror building behind her eyes. The bathtub began to overflow, rippling over the side. Blood dappled the floor, pooling in a glossy, ever-widening circle. Downstairs, water began to seep through the ceiling. The big dog lapped at it on the hardwood floor.
Upstairs, the woman with the knife screamed: You're a stupid, selfish bitch!
Then she attacked.
Glenn Close hacked at Anne Archer in a life-and-death struggle as the tub began to overflow, flooding the bathroom floor. Downstairs, Michael Douglas's character-Dan Gallagher-took the kettle off the boil. Instantly he heard the screams. He bolted upstairs, ran into the bathroom, and slammed Glenn Close into the mirror, smashing it. They fought tooth and nail. She slashed him across the chest with the knife. They plunged into the tub. Soon Dan got the best of her, choking the life out of her. She finally stopped thrashing. She was dead.
Or was she?
And that's where the edit was.
Individually, simultaneously, the investigators watching the video tensed their muscles in anticipation of what they might see next.
The video jerked and rolled. The new image was a different bathroom, much dimmer, the light source coming from the left side of the frame. Ahead was a beige wall, a white slatted window treatment. There was no sound.
Suddenly a young woman rises to midframe. She is wearing a white, scoop-neck T-shirt dress, long-sleeved. It is not an exact duplicate of that worn by Glenn Close's character-Alex Forrest-in the film, but it is similar.
As the tape rolls, the woman steadies herself, centered in the frame. She is soaking wet. She is furious. She appears outraged, ready to pounce.
She stops.
Her expression suddenly turns from rage to fear, her eyes widening in horror. Someone, probably whoever was holding the camera, raises a small-caliber gun into the right side of the frame and pulls the trigger. The bullet slams into the woman's chest. The woman reels but doesn't instantly fall. She looks down at the widening intaglio of red.
She then slides down the wall, her blood painting the tile in bright crimson swaths. She slips slowly into the tub. The camera moves toward the young woman's face beneath the reddening bathwater.
The video shudders, rolls, then returns to the original film, to the scene where Michael Douglas shakes hands with a detective in front of his formerly idyllic home. In the movie, the nightmare is over.
Buchanan shut off the tape. As with the showing of the first tape, the occupants of the small room were stunned into silence. Every high they had felt in the past twenty-four hours or so-catching the break on the Psycho tape, finding the plumbing supply house, finding the motel room where Stephanie Chandler had been killed, finding the Saturn submerged along the banks of the Delaware-went out the window.
'This is one very bad actor,' Cahill finally said.
The word floated for a moment before settling into the image bank.
The Actor.
There was never any sort of official ritual when criminals got a nickname. It just happened. Whenever a person committed a series of crimes, instead of calling him the doer, or their unsub-short for unknown subject-it was sometimes easier to give him a nickname. This time it stuck.
They were looking for the Actor.
And it looked like he was far from taking his final bow. WHENEVER THERE WERE two homicide victims, apparently killed by the same person-and there was no doubt that what they had witnessed on the Fatal Attraction tape was indeed a homicide, and little doubt it was the same killer as the Psycho tape-the first thing detectives look for is a connection between the victims. As obvious as it sounds, it was still true, yet not necessarily an easy link to
