“Thank you so much, Jeffrey,” Angela told him gravely.
“I didn’t know,” Greta whispered. “Jeffrey, if you do wake up, you can come to your dad and me!” she said, picking her son up and cradling him to her. She looked at Jackson and Angela. “We are fierce about bedtime—mornings come early, and we have school and work and . . .”
Her voice trailed.
“We understand. And Jeffrey has been helpful,” Jackson said. “Thank you.”
“Very helpful,” Angela assured the little boy, smiling.
They thanked Greta again and left their cards.
“So, the killer dresses up like the grim reaper or whatever in a hooded cape,” Jackson murmured.
“And another reason you’re thinking he’s just getting started?” Angela asked.
“Possibly.” He paused, shaking his head. “A black SUV. We have a black SUV. There are . . . there are hundreds if not thousands in our area,” he said wearily.
Their phones buzzed simultaneously causing them to look at one another and check their messages.
Barry sent an email. They had an identification on their corpse.
“Gerard Greenway,” Jackson murmured.
Angela looked at him and said, “Supervisor of Special Effects, Foxy Films.”
“And so, he became a special effect,” Jackson murmured.
“We have something to go on,” Angela said. “We need that poem,” she added, quickly switching her phone screen to email.
True to his word, Barry had sent them the poem that had arrived at the newspaper. She read aloud.
“ ‘Twas right before Halloween
And all through the land
Creatures were appearing,
Gruesome and grand,
Witches and goblins and scarecrows, oh, my!
Skeletons, mummies, werewolves, no lie!
And what to my wondrous eye should I see
Blood and guts coming straight at me!
And blood and guts coming straight at thee!
So many ghastly ghouls on this night,
How many to see before the light!”
“Interesting. He must be planning a terrible end game,” Jackson said, frowning.
“Because he’s given us a clue to his identity, one so good we just need to get started at Foxy Films,” Angela said.
Jackson nodded. “I don’t think our problem is going to be finding out who he is. The problem is going to be stopping him before Halloween truly becomes a night of the recently-living dead.”
Chapter 3
Jackson sat in an office at the headquarters of Foxy Films, speaking with Owen Asbury, whose title was ‘Supervisor of Creature Effects.’
Gerard Greenway had been his boss.
Asbury appeared to be truly devastated by his employer’s death. But the company was in the middle of filming a horror flick with the improbable title of “Mermaids VS. Vampires.” He was younger than his late boss, late thirties, or early forties, with a wild shock of brown hair that fell over his forehead when he wasn’t nervously pushing it to one side.
Budgets had to come in on a film like this, Asbury had explained. Or else ‘low budget’ would turn into ‘no budget.’
“I can’t believe it,” he said for what might have been the tenth—or twentieth--time. “We were starting to get worried. Gerard was never the type to skip work—especially with no notice. But we were at a stage where I was doing the supervisory work, and he had said he might take a few days off before Halloween since he’d been working around the clock. Seriously, weekends mean nothing in this business—and he’d be the man to okay the time he wanted to take. He didn’t say he had decided yes, he was going to take time off and I was in charge, but we all assumed at first he had gone off and figured we’d all know. When I couldn’t reach him, I did call the police the other day, asking about filling in a missing persons’ report, but I didn’t want to get trouble started for him if . . . I should have done it!”
“I don’t think reporting him missing would have changed his death,” Jackson said. “Because of Halloween and the circumstances, an autopsy was begun soon after his body arrived at the morgue. The medical examiner estimates he’s been dead five days. Do you know who would have wanted him dead?”
Asbury winced. “He was tough. Because he was a perfectionist. But he was good; he’d tell his people, too, when he thought they did well. Our films are low budget. The company was put together by two actors, a casting agent, a scene designer—and Gerard. Gerard always said low-budget didn’t mean sloppy work. It meant the work was really held to higher standards. And there are a lot of people out there who just don’t get into the amount of digital effects being used all the time. Sure, digital is great—you can do things now you couldn’t do before. But filmmakers overdo it, too. Gerard loved effects. Real effects. And . . .”
His voice trailed.
“He was made up like a special effect piece for Halloween after he was killed,” Jackson said. He shook his head and leaned in a bit and asked, “Can you think of anyone who could have done this? Someone here, someone in the field who had an argument with him?”
“Are you looking as me?” Asbury asked in returned, horrified. “You think I could have done this to Gerard?”
“No. I don’t. Unless, of course, you wanted to murder him for his position?”
“I still wouldn’t be one of the founders!” Asbury protested. “Yeah, I may get his position, but—God, no!”
“Someone was unhappy with him,” Jackson said. “What about your other special effects personnel? Or someone else here, impatient with his perfectionism. Maybe someone at a rival company or perhaps someone who didn’t get a job here.”
Asbury truly looked lost. “It’s not like . . . well, I mean, everyone knows tons of stars! The actors, even the directors in a movie. But most people don’t even know or
