It Happens in the Dark (4 page)

“That’s my
character’s
name,” said a voice from the wings. “
So
sorry.” The late arrival made his barefoot entrance, belting a long black robe as he joined the lineup. He was tallest among them—and no longer three hundred pounds overweight. The body padding had been shed; his cheeks were not bulging anymore, but gone to lean hollows; and the wild brown hair had been smoothed back into an eighties-era power ponytail. Now he put on the charming bad-boy smile that was his trademark.

Man, where have you been all this time?

This actor was Riker’s favorite gangster, his favorite cop and psycho killer. Before Axel Clayborne had disappeared from Hollywood, he had won critical acclaim just for leaving his house in the morning. Those famous hazel eyes were focused on Riker’s partner, and the movie star so obviously liked what he saw.

With no glimmer of recognition, Mallory passed by the actor to stand before a less important member of the theater company, a younger man, whose only distinguishing feature was a crooked front tooth. “You’re the head usher, right?” She held up an evidence bag. “We found this place card on Peter Beck’s chair—
under
his dead body.”

“Well, none of
my
people put it there.” The man bent at the waist, looking down the lineup, and he pointed to the gopher. “Had to be him.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Bugsy. “I never saw any damn place cards.” He nodded toward the stage manager, who stood beside him, three inches shorter without the cowboy boots. “Cyril gave me a velvet rope. I laid it across the armrests on Peter’s seat. The guy was a no-show last night. But tonight, I roped off the same chair—front row center. I’d
never
put Peter near the wall.”

Cyril Buckner rested a protective hand on the gopher’s shoulder. “Maybe someone from the audience—”

“We ruled out the audience.” Riker turned to the head usher and his girlfriend, the cashier. “And you guys, too. Go home.” When this pair had left the stage, the detective moseyed down the line of cast and crew, holding up a sheet of paper for all to see. “This is a statement from the lady who sat next to Peter Beck. She was one of the first people through the door tonight. Our victim was sitting on a place card, but the lady saw three more cards on seats in the front row. Somebody put ’em there
before
the audience was seated.”

“To keep those chairs empty,” said Mallory, “so a killer could sit down beside Peter Beck—and cut his throat. The cards disappeared before the lights came on again.”

And fifteen minutes ago, Clara Loman’s crew of CSI’s had found them.

“They were stashed behind a trunk backstage,” said Riker. “And all of you swore there was nobody back there who didn’t belong. No backstage visitors allowed—
ever
.” He was smiling, so amiable when he said, “We usually wait till we’re asked . . . but who’d like to lawyer up first?”

No takers.

•   •   •

Detective Mallory faced the famous barefoot actor in the black robe, the one who had signed his statement with the name of a character from the play.
Cute.
She hated all things cute. “Axel Clayborne?”

“You’re guessing, aren’t you?” The movie star’s smile was wry, for who among the six billion would need to ask his name? He belted the robe tighter around his lean body. “Sorry I’m late, but your people wanted my fat suit, and then they wanted autographs.” He seemed younger than his thirty-eight years, the age on his driver’s license. And he was entirely too relaxed.

Mallory stepped back a few paces to address the whole ensemble. “The blackout lasted forty seconds. Did any of you sense someone moving past you in the dark? Any sound or movement at all?”

Three of the actors raised their hands.

But not Axel Clayborne. “You’ll never get a right answer to that one,” he said. “The power of suggestion. Actors are very malleable people. We’re prized above every other profession for jury duty—so easily swayed.”

“I didn’t see
your
hand go up.”

His grin was wide. “Of course. That can only mean that
I
killed Peter. Seriously, could anyone have a better alibi? I was onstage the whole time. Me and Alma.”

“That’s how you made my shortlist.” Mallory turned to the androgynous redhead in charge of wardrobe. “You have a spare fat suit, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Nan Cooper. “I got two of every damn thing.”

“
Get
it!”

A minute later, the balding redhead reappeared, effortlessly carrying a huge bulk of foam encased in striped pajamas, and she laid it down at Mallory’s feet. The detective turned to Axel Clayborne, saying, “Put it on.”

He folded his arms and smiled—no, call it a leer. “You want me to
strip
? I’m only wearing jockey shorts under this robe.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “
Do
it!”

“
No.
I have to be . . .
seduced
.”

“Hey, Mr. Clayborne,” said Riker, “just get into the damn suit, okay?”

Mister?
Her partner deferred to nobody. She stared at Riker, but the film buff only shrugged and looked away.

Mallory pulled out her gold pocket watch, an inheritance from her foster father, the late Louis Markowitz, whose name was inscribed on the back below the previous owners, older generations of police. Normally, in times of trouble with superiors, she pulled out the watch as a reminder of her ties to an old cop family, almost royalty in the NYPD. But tonight, she needed its stopwatch function.

Axel Clayborne dropped his robe to the floorboards to stand nearly naked and unabashed. There were old scars on his flesh, the marks of an eventful life. Conscious of her eyes on his body, he did a slow revolve to display a few fresh rakes of abrasion on his back. A woman’s claws had done that, but not in anger. His smile was still in place when he turned around to face her again. “Seen enough?” The actor leaned down to pick up the bottom half of the fat suit. He pulled on the pajama pants that gave him a belly and widened him, hip and thigh. Next, he shrugged into the thick arms of the top half. After securing the foam padding with Velcro straps, he buttoned the shirtfront over his expanded chest. Then he glanced at her pocket watch, asking, “How did I do?”

“I haven’t timed you yet,” said Mallory. “Go down to the audience and slit the man’s throat.”

With mock curiosity, he looked down at the front row, where yellow crime-scene tape ringed the area around the victim’s empty chair. “If you mean the dead man . . . who
used
to be there—”

“It’s called
acting
,” she said. “Now go kill Peter Beck.”

Axel Clayborne stood his ground. Was he waiting for her to say
please
? He flashed a sly grin, a
big
mistake. Mallory also smiled. Her blazer was slowly drawn open as her hands came to rest on her hips, every woman’s wordless way of saying,
You’re dead meat.
And, to back up that—
suggestion—
a large revolver, a .357 Smith & Wesson, was now on public display in her shoulder holster. Most cops carried streamlined Glocks, but this gun was more lethal in its looks, a virtual ad for stop-and-drop killing power—and playtime was
over.

Quick to guess that smart-ass charm was not his best option here, the actor bowed to her. And then, though his limbs were thickly padded, Clayborne moved with deep grace. Light-stepping like a dancer, he descended the stairs to the audience level, where he stood before the dead man’s chair and slashed the air above it with his right hand. Then he climbed the steps to take his place onstage. “Would you like to see me do it again? I’m sure I could—”

“You could’ve done it with your eyes closed.” The pocket watch snapped shut. “That foam padding doesn’t slow you down. And you had the easiest access to the dead man’s chair.” She stared at a taped
X
on the floorboards, a CSI’s mark for Alma Sutter’s position. “The actress would’ve had to walk around the brass bed and
you.
She couldn’t go the other way. The stagehands were moving props on that side. But you had no obstacles.”

“Yeah,” said Riker. “No worries about bumping into stuff in the dark. Works for me.”

Clayborne grinned, so pleased with himself.

No, there was more than that to the actor’s expression—something like an unspoken joke. And who was he smiling at now?

Mallory whirled around to stare at the stagehands, as if she had caught them doing something wrong. They were still in their teens, a guarantee of at least one or two illegal acts. The CSU re-creation of the critical blackout seconds had cleared them from the suspect list, but they were both antsy and ready to bolt. They had done
something.
“The way I hear it, you two were moving around a lot while the lights were out. Moving furniture, collecting props. . . . Neat trick in the dark.”

The pimpled stagehand shrugged, saying, “Naw, it was easy with—” And the other one elbowed him in the ribs. Those outside the teenage cult of youth, cops in particular, were considered too bone stupid to
possibly
read this as a signal to shut the hell up.

Riker graced them with an evil smile. “Easy with . . .
what
?”

“Night-vision goggles.” Clara Loman walked onstage, carrying a cardboard carton under one arm. “It’s easy when you’ve got the right toys.” The CSU supervisor dipped one hand into the box and pulled out an object of bright purple plastic sealed in a clear plastic wrapper. It looked like a child’s Halloween mask decked with chin straps and three green-glass eyes.

Loman pointed to the center lens positioned on the mask’s forehead. “This emits a beam of light in a spectrum invisible to the naked eye. But when you’re wearing the goggles, it works like a flashlight.” She turned to face the two stagehands, none too pleased with them. “You little bastards might’ve mentioned the goggles when we did that run-through.”

Riker also shot them an angry look. “Damn kids.”

The boys had only wanted to leave the theater early tonight—stuff to do, dope to smoke. And
screw
the cops. Why complicate things with helpful information that might delay their escape—
and
make them likely suspects?

Mallory glanced at her partner for a wordless conversation of her raised eyebrows and his slow shake of the head. What else might have been missed in Loman’s rush to bag the evidence and run? How could the night-vision goggles have gone overlooked for
hours
?

Clara Loman held up her carton and pointed to a line of bold type that listed six headsets to the box. “We only have five.” Hubris incarnate, she announced, “If the missing goggles were backstage, my crew would’ve found them.” And now, with a special glare for Mallory, maybe anticipating fresh doubts, more insults, Loman said, “Nobody carried them out of this building tonight. Everyone from the audience took off their coats when my people checked them for blood splatter.” She hefted the pair of night-vision goggles in one hand. “You can’t fit this in a pocket, and I know the cops were checking purses.”

“There aren’t any more goggles,” said Cyril Buckner. “There were only five pairs in the box when we got them.”

Mallory turned to face her lineup of suspects. “Which one of you bought them?”

No one answered. Heads were turning side to side, shoulders shrugging, and finally Bugsy said, “Must’ve been the ghostwriter.”

Yeah,
right.

“That reminds me.” Mallory turned to the woman from Crime Scene Unit. “Did you find the chalk yet?”

Chalk? What chalk?
That much could be read in the graying diva’s startled eyes. Had this woman’s harried crew even mentioned to her what was printed on the slate before she arrived at the theater?

“Our prime suspect’s the only one who uses the blackboard,” said Mallory. “He left me a message tonight. I know your CSI’s got pictures of it. . . . So, where’s the chalk?” Even a trace of it would have been helpful, maybe a dusting in the lining of a pocket. “Your guys did
look
for it, right?”
Wrong.
Now she could read Clara Loman’s thoughts as a stream of four-letter words.

SUSAN:
Puddles of it? Whose blood?

ROLLO:
My mother’s, my aunt’s. Granny’s blood and the blood of my sisters.

—
The Brass Bed
, Act I

The collar of Axel Clayborne’s pajama costume was soaked with sweat as he baked in the thick foam padding. Nine times, Mallory had run him up and down stairs in the dark to murder an invisible man in an empty theater seat, all the while clocking him, prompting him to go faster. She was very thorough in all things—including payback.

The actor appealed to Detective Riker. “Am I being punished?”

“Oh, yeah.”

The stagehands had also been kept late, but not just for penance. Riker had finally resolved the problem of kids in union jobs that should have gone to senior men, and it had the stink of deep financial trouble. Thanks to nepotism, the teenagers had signed on with Lollypop’s uncle and Pimples’s dad, a seasoned prop master. The older men had elected not to take a cut in pay, and they had found work elsewhere. Gil Preston’s story was much the same. He had originally been hired as the lighting director’s assistant. And Bugsy, the gopher, was also doing the job of the stage manager’s laid-off assistant.

This was Broadway on a shoestring.

The crew had been cut by more than half, and so a question mark still remained after Nan Cooper’s name. Why lose all those people and keep a wardrobe lady on salary?

•   •   •

Mallory looked up to the catwalk and yelled, “Gil! Lights!” And there was instant darkness.

Axel Clayborne resumed his blackout position on the brass bed, covering himself with a blanket that could have hidden the small murder kit of a straight-edge razor, goggles and place cards. He did this very smoothly for a man who could not see.

But she could—aided by night-vision lenses.

With the turn of her head, Mallory aimed the green light of her third eye at the blind stagehands and called out to them in the dark, “Garnet! Randal!” They stiffened up, their sightless eyes gone wide and spooked, believing that she was standing in front of them—as she softly padded around behind the boys to touch the backs of their necks and whisper, “You’re dead.” She ripped off her goggles, yelling, “Lights!”

Blinking at the sudden brightness, the teenagers spun around to face her.

Frightened much? Oh,
yes
.

She squared off against them. “So . . . you two are moving props on the stage. . . . A man’s being murdered in the audience.” One hand went to her hip. “And you don’t
see
that?”

“Well, no, we wouldn’t,” said Garnet, the pimple-faced boy. “When we wear the goggles, we keep our eyes on the floor.” He nudged his friend. “Remember that last dress rehearsal?”

“Yeah,” said Randal, the thin one with the round head. “This idiot PR guy tested his camera flash during a blackout scene. The damn goggles magnified the light a zillion times. It was like lookin’ into the sun. I thought I was gonna go blind.”

“Another time,” said Garnet, “somebody next to me lit a penlight. Messed me up for the whole scene. Your eyes need recovery time when you get blinded, and we ain’t got any. It’s all split-second moves. The goggles
gotta
come off before the lights come back on.”

“Or we’re screwed.”

“Yeah. So we don’t take our eyes off the floor.”

Mallory turned to the actor on the brass bed. “And there goes your alibi.” She hunkered down to look at the theater diagram laid out on the floor. Maybe the stagehands had no time to do a murder in the audience, but they
knew
something,
did
something.
What?

She waved them away. “That’s all for tonight. You can leave.”

As the teenagers hustled down the stairs and made a fast retreat up the aisle, Riker turned to Axel Clayborne, another offender who could have enlightened them earlier and saved them some time. “We’re done with you, too. Everybody
out
!”

Her partner was no longer starstruck. He was pissed off.

When the detectives were alone on the stage, Riker sat down on the brass bed. “You
know
it wasn’t just the kids. The whole pack of ’em decided not to tell us about the goggles. And they weren’t protecting the stagehands. Those two couldn’t have done it.”

Mallory held up the folded sheet of newsprint with the only review of the first performance. “Wouldn’t you think more than one critic would’ve turned out for the opening of a Broadway play?”

“We’ve had lots of canceled openings,” said a soft, breathy voice from the wings. “Nobody knew if the curtain would go up last night.”

Alma Sutter had been sent home an hour ago. And so it was a surprise to see her step through the open door in the scenery. The actress approached them with halting steps, a touch of fear and other guilty signs of a sin-ridden Catholic schoolgirl on her way to confession—and then, of course, straight to hell.

•   •   •

Flanked by her audience of two detectives, Alma sat on floorboards, her legs dangling over the edge of the stage. “Peter Beck was a very nice man. He was always good to me. Then the play changed . . . and Peter changed.”

She could tell they had already heard several versions of this story tonight, and they were sick of it. By their glances and signals, Alma followed a silent conversation of cops. The man, with only the rise of one flat hand, stayed his partner’s objections to going slowly. Detective Mallory’s expression of ennui—and the brief opening of her blazer to expose a weapon—let him know that she would prefer to extract information at gunpoint.

The actress recoiled as if this last part had been said aloud.

The man, the
nice
detective, smiled at her. “Take your time, kid.”

Kid? On this cue, Alma struck an attitude of little-girl-lost, lacing her fingers in prayer, eyes cast down.
Shy
child. “The ghostwriter’s changes started with the Fat Man’s Ballet. It was
wonderful.
” Her lashes fluttered up, eyes wide with imitation wonder. “And Peter saw that, too. He didn’t have a problem with it. But then the ghostwriter started rewriting all the lines. Every rehearsal was a screaming match until Peter walked out. He didn’t even come to the opening. So I was surprised to see him out front tonight.”

Detective Riker scribbled in his notebook and then asked, “What time?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes before curtain. I was standing behind the—”

Mallory leaned in close—
too
close. “You
saw
those place cards on the chairs.”

Not
a question.

Confession time. “Yes. . . . I should’ve told you. I’m so sorry.” Alma looked down at her dangling shoes, aiming for shame.
Bad
little girl. “I was really nervous . . . but that wasn’t the first time I saw the cards.” Ah, she was out of trouble now. They liked that part.

“Okay,” said Riker. “So the
first
time you looked at the audience, did you see anybody else out there?”

“There’s always somebody out front. The ushers for sure. But not the stagehands. I would’ve remembered them. They dress in solid black so you don’t see them moving props onstage. Except for that total blackout tonight, there’s emergency lights and exit signs. With any light at all, white skin shows up in the—” Oh, she was losing the female cop to boredom. “Well, anyway, that’s why the stagehands wear black ski masks and gloves.”

Detective Mallory looked to her partner. “Loman missed that, too.”

“Alma,” said Detective Riker. “Cut to the good part. What’s eating you?”

“A friend of mine
died
tonight.”

“Your boyfriend,” said Detective Mallory, who would have heard all the backstage gossip by now.

“We were
friends
, but I auditioned. It’s not like Peter
gave
me the role.” Was she believed? Alma turned from one cop to the other. No and no. Well, this part they would believe: “We had a falling out.”

“A fight,” said Riker.

“With a razor,” said Mallory.

“Oh,
God
, no! Just shouting. He was so paranoid. He thought we were all against him. But that wasn’t true. Everyone felt sorry for Peter. The ghostwriter destroyed him.”

“By changing the play?”

“By writing a
better
play. You see? It
had
to be suicide. It wasn’t the weather that wrecked our turnout. A star like Axel Clayborne would’ve brought out fans, even in a blizzard. But Peter had his lawyers shut down our preview and every scheduled opening night. They killed all the ads—newspapers, radio, TV. You can starve out any Broadway play without ticket sales. A lot of people got laid off. The legal fees were
huge
, and—”

“But none of you wanted Beck to
die.
” Mallory’s sarcasm was delivered deadpan.

“What for? Yesterday the judge sided with us. He let the play open last night. And we got a great review because of that lady in the audience. She was so scared, she had a heart attack and dropped dead.”

“What a lucky break.” Riker was no longer the nice detective.

“But don’t you see? That’s why Peter showed up tonight. If he couldn’t starve the play, he could give it the ultimate kiss of death—a playwright committing suicide after the first act.” Alma bowed her head for the closing line. It had taken her the better part of an hour to come up with it. “The play was
killing
Peter . . . so he killed the play.”

Life could be so simple if the police would only allow it.

“All of you followed the ghostwriter’s changes.” Detective Mallory said this as an accusation heavy on sarcasm. “Someone you’ve never even met, never—”

“Oh,” said Alma. “He left another message on the blackboard. It’s for you.”

•   •   •

Riker watched the actress’s back as she walked away. It seemed like everyone her age was stoned on something. In her case—wandering eyes, slow reaction time—a sedative was an easy guess. It would have been helpful to know if she had popped any pills before the murder of Peter Beck, a kill that had required speed and good reflexes.

As his partner followed Alma Sutter into the wings, a sound from above made him tilt his head back to see the eavesdropper. Even without bifocals, Riker had no trouble following the track of the youngster’s wide eyes. Gil Preston was fascinated by Mallory.

It was easy to forget when he was around. The lighting guy, shy string bean, kept the distance of a schoolboy with a hopeless crush. His gaze stayed locked on Mallory until she was out of sight, disappearing through the door in the stage set. And now he saw Riker watching him.

The stage lights went out.

The detective followed the glow of a lamp through the scenery door, and he joined the two women in the wings by Buckner’s desk. Mallory was staring at the new message on the blackboard—written with the chalk that Loman’s crew had never found. By now, it had walked out the door in somebody’s pocket. But not Alma’s. The actress’s pockets were turned inside out when his partner returned her coat, saying, “Go home.”

When Alma Sutter was out of sight, Mallory reached up to a shelf near the desk and pulled aside a canvas tarp that had covered the stage manager’s laptop, all but the tiny dot of its camera lens. With taps of the keyboard, she raised the camera’s view of the black slate, a moving picture of uniformed officers and CSIs walking by. She sped up the motion to make the foot traffic faster, and then—the screen went black.

“Damn,” said Riker. “He jammed the laptop signal?”

Mallory pressed one finger over the lens. “Sticky. Our guy’s low tech. He came up on the laptop’s blindside and put tape over the lens.” She turned toward the sound of a scuffle on the stairs.

Riker heard footsteps behind the stage set. And now Bugsy was walking toward them in the scruff-of-the-neck custody of a uniformed officer, who said, “I caught him coming out of a dressing room. He’s got a bedroll stashed up there.”

When Riker had dismissed the officer with thanks, he turned a smile on the nervous gopher. “It’s okay, Bugsy. You can stay the night . . . but I guess we can scratch that flophouse address you gave us.”

The little man drifted to Mallory’s side, looking up to her as his higher power. She pulled a roll of bills from a back pocket and peeled off a twenty, saying, “Get something to eat.”

Riker was touched. Would this gesture pass for empathy with the homeless gopher? Well, no. But it would have made her foster mother so happy, this hopeful sign of late-blooming humanity—Mallory feeding her pet.

The money disappeared into Bugsy’s back pocket. His eyes dropped to the moving picture on the laptop screen. The camera blackout had ended, and people were passing by the lens again. “Oh, we tried that. Tried every damn thing to catch the spook. Nothin’ worked. One time, I sprinkled talcum powder on the floor. The ghostwriter left a message—but no footprints. I bet the guy’s got his own camera planted somewhere.”

“Maybe.” Riker looked up to the high-hanging litter of scaffolding, pulley rigs and weights, pipes and spaghetti loops of rope, cable and wire. “But who’s got a year to go look for it?” He turned his attention back to the new blackboard message. This time, no name was mentioned—or needed. It was an apt description. “What’s it from? Shakespeare?”