The Wheel of Darkness

“Come now, Mr. Wiley,” said Betty, with a sassy smile. “You can’t be serious. I have six grandchildren, you know.”

His eyes widened in surprise. “Six grandchildren? Who could have guessed?” The movie star winked again.

Betty Jondrow could find no words in response. Flushing to the roots of her hair, for the first time in half a century she felt that delicious sensation of being a blushing, virginal, confused schoolgirl once again, holding the hand of the captain of the football team.

“Let me sign that for you,” said Wiley, slipping the program from her hand, signing it with a flourish, and then moving on with a final wave to the group.

Betty raised the program and saw he had written, “To my favorite smokin’ grandma—Love and French kisses, Brad Wiley.”

She held the program in trembling hands. This was destined to be one of the high moments of her life. Wait until Willa saw

this

.

Wiley was gone and now the theater lobby was starting to fill with dolled-up cinemagoers. Betty came to her senses; she had better claim two good seats, and fast. Willa may have missed Braddock, but she still had time to see the premiere.

She showed her reserved ticket to the usher, went inside and found the perfect seat, right up front, and then claimed the next seat with her purse. The Belgravia Theatre was an extremely impressive space that took up much of the bow of Decks 2 through 5, very dark, trimmed in tasteful blue and amber neon, sporting plush, comfortable seats, a wide stage, and a deep balcony. Soon, despite its five-hundred-seat capacity and the late hour, the theater had filled. Within moments the lights dimmed and Braddock Wiley made another appearance, strolling out on the proscenium before the curtain, smiling in the glare of a spotlight. He spoke a few words about the film; told some amusing stories about the New York City production; thanked various producers, actors, writers, the director, and the special effects master; blew a kiss to the audience; and walked off. As applause filled the room, the 20th Century Fox logo appeared projected onto the curtains, and at that cue the curtains opened.

The audience gasped. Betty Jondrow put her hand over her mouth. There, hanging directly in front of the screen, was a brilliant bit of stagecraft—a remarkably realistic dummy of a dead woman, dripping blood, illuminated by the projector. The audience broke into excited murmurs at this unexpected piece of drama, which must have been specially arranged to spice up the premiere. The dummy had been hidden behind the curtain to shock the audience. It was amazingly realistic—almosttoo realistic.

The movie title came on, THE VIVISECTOR, the letters grotesquely illuminated across the body, with the word “VIVISECTOR” right on the chest, which indeed looked like it was the product of a botched operation. There were gasps of admiration from the audience at the clever, if revolting, juxtaposition.

Betty suddenly leaned forward. There was something familiar about the way the dummy was dressed—that sequined silk dress streaked with blood, the black pumps, the short blonde hair . . .

She grasped the seat in front of her, pulling herself to her feet.

“Willa!” she cried, pointing. “Oh my God! It’s Willa! That’s my sister! Somebody’s murdered her!” She uttered a piercing shriek that cut through the very air of the theater, then fell back in her seat in a dead faint. The image on the screen faltered, then went dark; and with that the audience boiled to its feet and began a screaming, hollering, helter-skelter stampede for the rear exits.

34

IT WAS APPROACHING NOON, AND PATRICK KEMPER WAITED IN THE medical officer’s quarters and tried to steady himself for what was to come. As a cruise ship security officer with thirty years of service, he thought he’d seen everything. Everything, including murder. But this went way beyond murder. Five hundred passengers had witnessed something savagely brutal. There was incipient panic aboard, not just among the passengers, but also among the belowdecks service staff, already spooked by the suicide.

Now he was faced with a hideously obvious fact: there was a homicidal maniac on board the Britannia , and he didn’t even begin to have the resources to deal with it. Back in Boston in his cop days, they had whole teams that dealt with evidence gathering; they had the hair and fiber boys, the toxicologists, the fingerprint guys and ballistics people and the DNA teams. Here, he had no resources. Nada. And the only other ex-cop on his security team had been an MP at an airbase in Germany.

To his left stood Staff Captain Carol Mason, a blessedly steady presence. LeSeur, more obviously rattled, stood on the other side. The ship’s chief medical officer—a capable but retiring internist from Johns Hopkins who relished the low-intensity, light-caseload attributes of shipboard medicine—looked the most rattled of all.

Commodore Cutter stepped briskly into the room, immaculate as usual, his face a mask of granite. Kemper glanced covertly at his watch: noon exactly.

Cutter wasted no time. “Mr. Kemper? Your report.”

Kemper cleared his throat. “The victim is Willa Berkshire of Tempe, Arizona. Recently widowed, traveling with her sister, Betty Jondrow. It appears she was killed with a single blow from a machete, a stage prop kept in some locked cabinets behind the stage.”

Cutter frowned. “A stage prop?”

“Yes. We don’t yet know if the murderer sharpened it or simply found it that way—nobody seems to remember what condition the machete was in to begin with. She was killed just backstage—there was a large amount of blood at the scene. It appears the time of death was about half an hour to twenty minutes before curtain time; at least, that was the last time Mrs. Berkshire was seen alive. After committing the killing, the murderer used some stage pulleys and hooks to raise the body. It appears—and this is moving into speculation—the victim was lured backstage, killed with a single blow, and quickly hoisted. The entire process may have taken as little as a few minutes.”

“Lured backstage?”

“It’s a locked, off-limits area. The killer had a key. And I say ‘lured’ because it is hard to imagine a passenger going back there without some good reason.”

“Any suspects?”

“Not yet. We’ve questioned the sister, who said only that she was to meet her sister at the theater ahead of time, hoping to get an autograph from Braddock Wiley. They knew no one else on board and hadn’t made any acquaintances—their goal, she says, was to be together, not meet men or socialize. She said they have no enemies, haven’t had any incidents or altercations on board. In short, Berkshire seems to have been a random victim.”

“Any sign of rape or a sexual assault?”

“I’m not a doctor, Captain.”

Cutter turned to the chief medical officer. “Dr. Grandine?”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Captain, this is really terrible, a shock to us all—”

“Any sign of rape or sexual