“I’m at a police station in Opal. I was arrested. You’re my one call.”
“I’ll have somebody get you out of there. Is Sean with you?”
“Um, no,” he said soberly. “I don’t think she’s going to make it, Dayle.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guy whose confession we taped, he was hiding a gun. He shot her. It was hours before the cops picked us up. They took Sean to the hospital just a while ago. She lost a lot of blood. The paramedic said she didn’t have much of a chance.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Dayle.”
“Oh, God, no….” Tears came to her eyes, and she started to tremble. Dayle took a couple of breaths. “Okay. Find out what you can about Sean and—and let me know. I—I’ll have someone get you out of there, Nick.”
Dayle hung up the phone, and wiped her tears. As if in a trance, she moved to the vanity, pulled off her wig and hair net, then shed the jacket. She went to the trailer door. She was supposed to lock it, stay inside until the police showed up. Instead, she opened the door and came down the trailer steps. The police and studio security hadn’t arrived yet.
Ted Kovak stood beyond the sound equipment—near where Beverly had assembled the visitors. Dayle started toward him. He was scowling at the old man in the seersucker suit. Ted didn’t see Dayle until she was right on him.
“You son of a bitch!” She slapped him hard across the face.
Everyone on the set stopped to gape at them. Ted reeled back, startled. “What the hell—”
She slapped him again. “Murderer…”
He took another step back and put up his hands to defend himself. But she swatted at his arm, then connected again across his face with another forceful slap. “Goddamn you and your hypocrite friends! How many good people have you killed? Tony Katz and Leigh, Maggie, my friend, Sean…”
Ted grew more furious with her every slap. He glared at Tom, who retreated back with the other stunned bystanders on the set. Ted seemed ready to shoot Dayle himself. She clawed at his face, drawing scratch marks above his left eye and down his cheek. Finally, he pushed her away. “You crazy bitch!” he snarled.
“It wasn’t enough for you to kill these people,” she hissed. “You had to shit on their memory too. You made Leigh look like a drug addict, and you dug up those stag films Maggie McGuire did back when she was struggling. Think about their families….”
She lunged at him again, swinging her fist. But Ted dodged her and reached for his gun. He glared at Tom. “Kill her, goddamn it!” he growled. Only a few people might have heard him over the noise and chaos.
Tom was one of those few. Yet the words still echoing in his head had been spoken a moment ago by Dayle Sutton:
“What are you going to do, Ted?” Dayle said, gasping for breath. She clinched her fist. “Are you going to shoot me in front of all these people?”
His face bleeding and nearly purple, Ted glared at his employer. He aimed the gun at her heart. Someone screamed.
Dayle Sutton spit in his face. “Go ahead and shoot, you lowlife, sorry son of a—”
She did not get the last word out. The loud gunshot silenced her.
Tom Lance had raised his semiautomatic, aimed carefully, and squeezed the trigger. He put a bullet through Ted Kovak’s right eye.
Twenty-six
The police and studio security had a lot of questions for the old man who had wandered onto Soundstage 8 with a concealed gun. But after saving Dayle Sutton’s life, Tom had some leverage. He was a hero, and people wanted to believe him. His story didn’t stray far from the truth. He was recruited against his will to assassinate Dayle Sutton by an extremist group. They threatened to kill him if he didn’t cooperate. He gave a not entirely accurate description of Hal Buckman, hoping his SAAMO contact could elude authorities for a while. As long as Hal was on the run, Tom figured his story was safe. In his telling, Tom had never intended to kill Dayle; he’d shown up on that movie set to protect her. When asked why this group had singled him out as their assassin, Tom explained: “I was very close to Maggie McGuire once. These people were going to pin her murder on me.”
No fake ambulance ever arrived. Tom knew he’d done the right thing. His picture would be on the front page of the evening edition—sans the glasses and fake mustache. Blinding camera flashes went off inside the soundstage while Dayle Sutton thanked him. She didn’t seem to recognize Tom from the failed audition. She shook his hand, and hugged him. The photographers would use that shot for the news story, he knew.
Leaving the soundstage with a police escort, Tom watched members of the press shoving one another to get closer to him. “Tom, over this way, please! Tom, just one picture! Over here, Tom!” He smiled as the shutters clicked. At last they wanted him.
Dennis Walsh arrived at Soundstage 8 in time to see two attendants carrying out the draped corpse of Ted Kovak. He also caught a glimpse of the hero of the hour, Tom Lance, as they escorted him to a police car.
Back in his fraternity days, Dennis had learned how to trap a frat brother in his room by squeezing a penny between his door and the hinge near the latch. The pressure against the latch made it impossible to pull the door open. He employed the same trick on Laurie Anne, incarcerating her in the bathroom—only he raised the ante by tossing out her clothes, the towels, and that ugly pink shower curtain. She was trapped in there, wet and naked. Dennis phoned the police about her involvement in a conspiracy to commit murder, then left the apartment unlocked for them.
Laurie Anne was violent, hysterical, and still quite naked by the time the police were reading her her rights and offering her a robe.
At that same moment, Dennis struggled through the crowd outside Dayle’s trailer. Dayle stood on the steps by her door with reporters firing questions at her. Dennis had only one question for his boss. He wanted to know if he still had a job.
Though still dressed in her “old lady” tweed suit, Dayle must have had someone perform a quick touch-up on her face and hair, because she looked every bit the movie star, standing by her trailer. She saw Dennis in the crowd and waved at him. “Dennis, please, I need you!” she called.
He worked his way up to the steps. She grabbed his arm, then pulled him into her trailer. “Thank God you’re here,” she sighed. “You have to get rid of these reporters for me. I’ll talk to the police, but that’s it.”
Dennis gave her a wary look. “So I’m not fired?”
“God, no.” Dayle said, her voice quivering. “I’m not dumping you just because you made a mistake. You’re my friend, Dennis.” She gave him a quick hug. “Listen, more than anything, we have to track down Sean Olson. She’s in a hospital somewhere around Opal. I need to know if she’s still alive.”
After making his one call, Nick Brock was cuffed to a desk in the Opal police station. He was covered with scratches, dried sweat, and dirt.
He and Sean had been lost in those dark woods for nearly three hours. Her strength and determination amazed him. In the second hour, Nick held her up. The only peep out of her was when she mumbled incoherently to someone named Dan. Limp as a rag doll, she pressed on. But she began falling so many times, he had to carry her the last couple miles.
They stumbled upon the highway at around three-thirty in the morning. Nick covered her with his jacket, then sat by the road and waited for a car. In two hours, he counted only six cars—each one speeding by. He tried flagging them down. But who would be dumb enough to stop at this hour—in the middle of nowhere—for a crazy man covered in blood? It became light out. Sean’s face had a blue tinge, and her every gasp for air was a death rattle.
Somebody in one of those automobiles must have called the cops, because two patrol cars came up the
