Chapter Twenty-three

Show day again—not another live show, strictly speaking, but because of Don Juan, Harrow would be doing live wraparounds. Decisions had yet to be made about just what he would say about—and to—Don Juan.

No studio audience, thank God. Harrow was in his office going over material for tonight, feeling the strain of a fast-moving, brutal week.

The team had been working very long hours since that body had been left as a grisly message on their doorstep. LAPD had quickly identified the victim, a dental assistant named Gina Hannan, by her fingerprints. Turned out in college Gina had been booked for disturbing the peace when she had been arrested at … a peace rally.

But Don Juan had already emptied Gina’s bank account into a Caymans one, and by the time Jenny tracked it down, the funds in the Islands had disappeared.

The video from the network’s security cameras revealed very little—a shoulder here, a blur of rear view there, killer walking away. He wore a baseball cap, jeans jacket, gloves, jeans, and work boots, and Jenny figured him at medium height. Dark shaggy hair.

Don Juan had cased the building well. He knew the holes in the cameras’ coverage and exploited them.

Though the delivery of the corpse was not caught on camera, there was footage enough to pinpoint the time—9:28 P.M. Downtown Los Angeles, around the UBC complex, was a ghost town Sunday evening.

Jenny hacked traffic cams for blocks without spotting Don Juan returning to his car. Security footage from UBC and its neighbors offered no indication the killer had parked out front when he dumped the body.

Pall and Choi helped Jenny check security footage of the parking garages within three blocks of UBC. Carting the body more than a relatively short distance seemed unlikely, and a parking garage would provide some shelter for whatever preparations were needed to transfer the corpse (wrapped in some fashion?) from a trunk or backseat.

Each tech took a garage and, finally, Jenny spotted something: a Ford Focus pulling out of a parking ramp nine minutes after the body had been dropped.

“Gotcha,” she said, blowing up a still frame to where she could make out the license number.

Frowning, Pall asked, “Who waits almost ten minutes before he leaves a crime scene?”

Choi put in: “And what the hell was he doing for ten minutes?”

“Nine,” Jenny said. “Calling the media?”

Her associates paused; then both nodded.

Soon she’d hacked the DMV to learn the plates on the Ford Focus were registered to a rental company’s silver Nissan.

Another dead end.

Like the card stuck in the flowers—a run-of-the-mill greeting, available in a hundred flower shops around the Southland.

The roses, on the other hand, were rare. Michael Pall was able to identify them as Black Pearls, an uncommon variety.

Utilizing interns and production assistants, Harrow’s team contacted the over seventeen hundred retail and wholesale florists in the greater Los Angeles area. None had received orders for that particular type of rose.

“He’s got to be getting them somewhere,” Harrow said to Pall and Jenny. “Either he has a rose garden, a greenhouse, or works at one. Find out who sells Black Pearl roses and start digging from that direction.”

Meanwhile, Amari was keeping Harrow posted on what was now being called the Billie Shears case—the gay angle of the first killing apparently a red herring courtesy of a killer, who was likely female.

Internet searches for Jeff Baileys generated just under one hundred thousand hits. The computer search for Al Roberts—the guest in whose room Danny Terrant died—yielded another forty-three thousand hits. A mountain of information to scale.

As he sat at his desk, morning of show day, Harrow didn’t have anything resembling a workable plan. Too much information was almost as bad as no information.

His cell vibrated—Amari.

“We have another apparent Don Juan victim.”

The bastard had finally made good on his promise. Double-feature indeed. …

Harrow felt sick. “Where?”

“7008 Hollywood Boulevard. In front of a coffee shop. Body’s sprawled across several Walk of Fame stars—including Errol Flynn’s.”

“Cute,” Harrow said bitterly. “Errol Flynn played—”

“Don Juan, yeah. Plus, she’s diagonally across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Our guy’s a showman, if nothing else.”

For this early in the day, he felt awfully weary. “Nude? Bouquet of roses? Same as before?”

“Almost. Brunette. And that damn card again.”

“And no one saw anything.” Not a question.

“Not that we know of,” Amari said. “I’m getting video from the traffic cams.”

“I can think of another difference—besides the hair color.”

“Which is?”

“Crime Seen didn’t get a video before the body was found.”

“Maybe he sent it to somebody else.”

“Or is he accelerating and getting hurried, even sloppy?”

“That sounds like wishful thinking.”

He sighed. “You want me down there, Anna?”

“No. No, there’ll be media, and while the chief likes us cooperating with you, discreetly, he doesn’t want the public to think the LAPD is leaning on a TV show.”

“That sounds like a paraphrase.”

“Yeah. I skipped the colorful qualifiers. You’re a Midwest boy. Tender sensibilities. … Keep you posted.”

“Please.”

He had barely clicked off when Dennis Byrnes stormed in, unannounced.

“Morning, Dennis.”

Byrnes arranged himself in the visitor’s chair opposite Harrow, sitting straight, trying to assume his natural superiority despite being stuck on the wrong side of the desk.

“I need your word,” he said.

“About?”

“You have to stay on script tonight.”

“Where Don Juan is concerned, yes, understood. But we haven’t finalized it yet.”

“I expect you and the writers to have something to me by two o’clock. Lucian Richards at legal needs to clear it, and he says that will take time.”

“Two o’clock might not be practical.”

“Why is that?”

“There’s been another Don Juan murder.”

“Christ!”

Harrow filled the exec in.

“So you want to cut it closer to the wire,” Byrnes said, thinking, “since this is breaking news. … Okay, I’ll talk to Richards. Everyone is agreed that no portion of any of these videos can be shown on the air—third one hasn’t shown up yet?”

“No.”

“For once I wouldn’t mind if the competition had it instead of us. This is dangerous, J.C. Delicate. The network’s financial life could be at stake.”

“So are the lives of innocent women—three have died so far.”

“Don’t go self-righteous on me. I’m a husband and a father, not a monster. A lot of people depend on this network for their living, I’ll have you—”

Harrow stopped him with a raised palm. “Understood.”

Byrnes nodded crisply, rose, then stopped at the door. “Listen, J.C. I want your word—don’t go adlibbing us into another crusade.”

“Last time I did that, your precious network made a fortune.”

“Just don’t. We’ll behave responsibly, we’ll behave professionally … and if you and your people, working with the LAPD, can bring this bastard in, I’ll revel in it. I’ll see to it you a get nice fat bonus, just … tonight? Stay on script.”

“Sure. Soon as we have one.”

Byrnes closed his eyes, nodded. “When we have one.”

He was gone.

Show day was a pain for Harrow—as star and executive producer of Crime Seen, he had to view and approve edits of segments, a process that took many hours, often right up to air time. With live segments on tap, he also suffered through script read-throughs and (eventually) hair and makeup.

Today, after lunch, he sequestered himself back in his office for a session of answering fan mail.

Usually, he wouldn’t mess with this on show day, but he needed a distraction. Though most of his business and personal correspondence was e-mail now, fan mail remained the old-fashioned, snail-mail variety—fifty or so letters a week still came his way, sometimes more.

He escaped into the task, finding it oddly relaxing, reading half a dozen letters, mostly requests for autographed photos; just one marriage proposal this week.

The next letter had his name and the network’s address computer-printed on the envelope with no return address. Within was a single sheet of white bond with a short message, probably off the same laser printer.

He wished he hadn’t touched it, but he had.

The “trophy”-taking aspect of Billy Shears (as the media was still spelling it) had been withheld; the letter writer apparently knew what he—or she—was talking about.

Setting the thing back on his desk, cognizant of where he had touched the paper, his first call was to Laurene Chase, their in-house crime scene investigator. She could bag it and tag it.

“I want everybody else on this,” he told her on the phone. “I know it’s show night, but I’m the only one going on live. I want every kind of test on the letter, plus let’s invent some new ones.”

“You don’t think there’s any way this could be a hoax?”

“No, I don’t. And after you read it, you won’t, either.”

His next call was to Amari.

“Nothing for you yet,” she said. “Spent most of the day at Errol Flynn’s star.”

“I just got a fan letter.”

“So you’re popular.”

“From Billie Shears.”

“Hell you say! … And you didn’t know what it was, so you got fingerprints all over it.”

“Not all over it. On it.”

“I’ll grab Polk and be right over there.”

“Good,” he said. “Laurene’s coming up to bag it.”

“Twenty minutes,” she said and clicked off.

Eighteen minutes later, the two detectives entered his office.

They both read the letter in its new cellophane home. They also studied the envelope.

Polk said, “He’s a little vague about the trophy.”

“Seems pretty suggestive to me,” Harrow said.

“If we send it to the lab,” Amari said, “we won’t know whether it’s authentic for weeks—even if I put a rush on it.”

Harrow shrugged. “I know where there’s a pretty good crime lab.”

“Is that right?”

“And you’ll go right to the front of the queue.”

Polk was frowning, but Amari wasn’t.

She said, “I have the go-ahead from the chief himself to work hand in hand with you and your team.”

“So the answer is yes?”

“Answer is yes. Use that kid Anderson as our conduit, to protect the chain of evidence, but the answer is hell yes.”

“Good.”

She frowned at him, not angry, just serious. “Listen, J.C.—Chief Daniels phoned Captain Womack personally today. Now that Don Juan appears to have killed three times—prerequisite for bringing in the FBI—the chief had to call in the Behavioral Science Unit. They’ll have agents here tomorrow.”

“Just for Don Juan, or Billie Shears, too?”

“That I can’t tell you. I can say—as you see by my eager willingness to get help from your TV show lab—I am feeling flexible. Normally the FBI is about my favorite thing next to stomach influenza. But right now anything that helps get these two evil assholes off the street is fine by me.”

“Agreed.”

She arched an eyebrow. “In the meantime, what does Don Juan want?”

“Attention,” Harrow said without hesitation. He didn’t need Michael Pall to feed him that.

“Okay,” she said calmly. “If Don Juan wants attention … why not give it to him?”

“How exactly?”

“On tonight’s show, announce that the FBI is coming in to lead the Don Juan investigation. Turn the heat up a little.”

“Last time we turned up the heat, a dead body wound up on my doorstep.”

“Last time you turned up the heat by ignoring him. This time, let him have all kinds of attention from J.C. Harrow and Crime Seen. Maybe he’ll get cocky and make a mistake.”

Harrow frowned. “Well, we’d love him to make a mistake, but we don’t want another innocent woman paying for it.”

Amari was shaking her head. “What I mean is … tell Don Juan he needs to communicate with you now, so you can help him tell his story. That the FBI will insist on taking Crime Seen out of the equation.”

Harrow called in Michael Pall for his opinion.

“We have precious little forensic evidence,” Pall said. “I’m starting to think the only way we’ll catch this guy is to smoke him out. You don’t need to be a profiler to know this one’s a narcissist of the first order. He thinks he’s the world’s greatest lover—what more do you need?”

When Harrow ran it past Byrnes, the executive’s only complaint was that he hadn’t gotten the word soon enough to plug it on the UBC nightly news.

Everyone was in agreement—the show would deal with Don Juan by announcing that the FBI would soon join the investigation. Amari (and Polk) went happily off to arrange for that Killer TV crime lab work.

Harrow retired to his office. He read the latest drafts of his script, okayed them, sent them along to Byrnes. With still an hour till air, just killing time, he returned to his interrupted fan mail. After that, he decided to at least check his e-mail account.

Very few people had this address and fewer still used it, since everybody knew Harrow rarely checked it. Mostly what he got was jokes from his Iowa buddies.

One name and subject line did catch his attention: a message from Carmen, the subject line reading Re: Don Juan, with an attached file.

Carmen was high on the list of those who knew how rarely Harrow checked his e-mailbox.

He phoned her.

“I didn’t send you an e-mail,” she said. “You’d never read it.”

“That’s what I thought—thanks.”

He ended the call before she could question him.

Then he phoned Jenny Blake. “Can you come to my office?”

“Shouldn’t you be in hair and makeup?”

“I think I have an e-mail from Don Juan.”

Her response was the click of a hang-up.

He tracked down Amari and Polk. Soon they and the rest of the team, including Carmen, were in his office. Bad news traveled fast.

Half were seated across from Harrow’s desk, the rest standing. Harrow was on his feet, Jenny in his chair at the desk with the laptop before her.

Polk said, “So you really think it’s from him?”

Whether he was asking Harrow or Jenny wasn’t clear.

Jenny said, “Date is today, but the time is one forty-seven a.m.”

“I was in bed then,” Carmen said. “I did not send that.”

No one had accused her of it, but she seemed a little rattled. After all, the last Don Juan video had come in via her e-mail.

Jenny downloaded the file, then played it.

Like the others, it showed a beautiful drugged woman being made love to.

When Amari saw the woman’s face, she said, “That’s her—Hollywood Boulevard victim.”

She was a brunette, her hair longer than Ellen’s, but with the same type body as Harrow’s deceased wife. Another woman he couldn’t save.

When she screamed, Harrow made himself watch.

Then when the blade flashed into the screen, there was a millisecond of red (not blood—cloth?), and the blade came in from a different angle. Though the woman was still centered in frame, the camera was more to her right now.

As usual, the metallic voice of the killer came on. “A promise is a promise, Mr. Harrow. Next week, would you like to try for four?”

“Something’s different,” Pall said.

“Very different,” Harrow said.

“What?” Laurene asked.

“That camera moved. Don Juan has an accomplice.”