Sacred Evil

Page 27

Whitney jabbed him in the elbow as Sherry Blanco’s face whitened. No, he didn’t want her to walk the streets shaking; he did want her to give a damn that women were dead.
“The point is,” he continued, “they were brutally murdered. And we need any piece of information, no matter how trivial, that anyone can offer to help us catch him.”
Sherry leaned forward then, pale, and looking somewhat contrite. “Honest to God, Detective, I just never spoke with Virginia Rockford during the day. But that site was creepy.”
“Really creepy when it turned dark,” Missy said. “The lights aren’t all that great down there, you know. I mean, the real lights, the streetlights, not the set lights. If anyone moved on the street, it cast giant shadows over the stage flats that were up. We had all kinds of facades going during the day, but they were mostly just painted wood, put up and pulled down for the shots.”
“We will be using the exterior of Blair House for a number of green-screen shots we took that day,” Angus explained slowly to Jude, his tone indicating that since Jude wasn’t in the film business, he was most probably dense. “That means that we’ll edit the image of Blair House into the action shots.”
“I think I got it,” Jude said. “We had an eyewitness down in the area when Virginia Rockford was filmed. The eyewitness saw a man in a cloak, or a coat with caped shoulders, on the street.” Inwardly he winced. “He was carrying a medical bag—and wearing a stovepipe hat, or something similar. Was there an extra on the set in that attire that day?” he asked.
They all looked at each other. “Everyone’s in period costume. The movie is called O’Leary’s and it is about the destitution and dire situations in Lower Manhattan and how it was cleaned up at the end of the nineteenth century,” Bobby said. “But no one had any kind of medical bag, I don’t think,” he said, looking at Angus Avery.
Avery sighed. “Detective, I just don’t think you understand the scope of what went on that day. Sets went up, and sets came down—that meant hundreds of crew members. We had gangs fighting in the streets. That meant more than a hundred extras. You must know all this—the police have lists of every single person hired that day.”
“And a number of the extras would have worn that kind of cloak and hat,” Jude said.
“But I don’t remember that the costumer gave anyone a medical bag—or that anyone in Wardrobe handed any of the extras any kind of medical bag,” Bobby said.
“I’ve told you, though, that I wished I’d never chosen that location,” Angus said, shaking his head.
“Why did you choose the location, Mr. Avery?” Whitney asked. “Feeling the way you do about it—I mean, you were the one to tell us about the structure that had been there before the recently demolished building.”
Avery lifted both his hands and rubbed his fingers together toward the ceiling. “Money! Everything in film is money. We could set up easily, and break down easily, and the city was willing to rent it for a song. If I could only go back…”
“But the woman found this morning wasn’t on the set and wasn’t in the movie,” Sherry said. “So, Angus, for you to be upset with yourself over the location isn’t at all necessary. You’re not to blame. The killer was out there.” She walked over to the director, and gave him a consoling hug.
Jude knew that he wasn’t getting anywhere that evening. He stood and told them gravely, “Thank you all for meeting here and speaking with us. The station number and my cell is on my card. Please, if you think of anything that can help us, call. Day or night.”
“Of course!” Avery said, standing. It almost seemed as if he was shaking Sherry Blanco off as he did so.
Avery looked around the room. “We’re done here,” he said, wanting the extras, his two stars and Sammy Vintner out—leaving him alone.
There was an awkward pause as everyone stared at Jude in silence. He nodded, looked at Whitney and turned to head out of the room and to the elevators.
“Avery wants them all out,” Whitney said.
“Yes, I got that feeling,” Jude told her.
“But it seems they all want to talk to one another.”
“So, we’ll wait and watch them,” Jude said.
“Where will that get us?”
“I’m not sure, but let’s see who leaves first.”
Downstairs, they went to Jude’s car parked on the street. He slid into the driver’s seat and she walked around to the passenger’s side.
They had barely closed the doors when Samuel Vintner came out and strode in the direction of the subway.
Not sixty seconds later, Missy and Jane came out together.
Next, Bobby Walden. Jude picked up his cell phone and pressed a single digit. “Sayer, you’re near the hotel?”
“Yes, in back of you about a block,” Sayer told him.
“Bobby Walden is out.”
“All right. I’m tailing him.”
Whitney sat quietly at his side. “Bobby Walden?”
He looked over at her. “His alibi had him home alone. He said his driver picked him up and brought him home, and when the task force queried the car company, the driver verified that he’d brought him straight home. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t go back out. He’s a principal in the film, and the girls said that Virginia Rockford thought she had a hot date with him. I’d just like to make sure that he does go home and stays home tonight.”
She was quiet. They were both hoping that the killer didn’t strike again that night. They waited.
“So, Sherry Blanco is sleeping with the director, and not her costar,” Jude commented.
Whitney laughed softly. “And see, you didn’t even have to major in film to figure that one out, Detective!”
“But he didn’t seem to want her clinging to him,” Jude commented.
“Maybe she got him to change his mind,” Whitney said lightly.
“Well, I do imagine she could be persuasive,” he said.
“Oh?” Whitney queried, a teasing note in her voice.
He turned and looked at her, and smiled suddenly. The tension of the past two days had seemed monumental. Though his job meant much more than just something to do for a living, sometimes he had to remember that he was still kicking and breathing himself.
“Not my type at all,” he assured her. “That girl has a streak of ambition sharper than a blade and she’s… I don’t know. I imagine her walking around her own house in little heels that click on the floor with some kind of a froufrou yappy dog in her arms, making sure at all times that everyone around her knows that she’s a movie star. I don’t think that she’s stupid—she just doesn’t care about the rest of the world.”
“Interesting! And harsh,” Whitney said.
“And how would you describe Miss Blanco?” he asked.
“She might keep a cat instead of a froufrou dog,” Whitney said. “A Persian, perhaps. Or a designer cat.”
“Designer cats exist?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
He leaned back, still smiling.
“I do believe that Sherry Blanco was having a thing with the director, but I’m willing to bet that the ‘thing’ is no more,” Whitney said. “She is scared, and I think she’s trying to be honest. And it’s better that she’s honest than act as if she’s lost her best friend.”
“She’s still too ambitious for me.” He laughed. “What do I know? I have some friends who have worked Broadway, and they’re all really nice. Sherry Blanco doesn’t seem to be nice.”
“Some actors and actresses are nicer than others. And some cops are nicer than others,” Whitney pointed out.
“Touché!”
Whitney turned to him. “What difference does it make if Sherry Blanco was sleeping with Angus Avery? The fact that he can act like a lecher wouldn’t make him a murderer.”
Jude said quietly, “No.”
“Then?”
“It might show where alliances lie. She was ready to throw Bobby Walden to the wolves tonight. We were supposed to believe that he had planned to meet Virginia Rockford.”
“You’ve spoken about an accomplice,” Whitney said. “Do you believe that Sherry Blanco could be that person?”
“No. But I believe that if Angus Avery needed an alibi, Sherry Blanco would lie through her teeth for him, smiling and fawning all the while,” Jude said.
“Ah, but when you’re an actress, you need to know the directors, not so your fellow actors,” Whitney said.
“Right. Directors cast movies, not actors.”
A few minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was Ellis Sayer.
“A limo picked Bobby Walden up at the cross street and drove him straight to his place up by the park. I saw him get out and go into the building.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll have a patrol car sit on him,” Sayer told him.
“Yeah, let’s keep an eye on him tonight,” Jude agreed.
“Done,” Sayer said.
He hung up. Whitney was frowning in thought.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“Old Shakespeare,” she said.
“What?”
She looked at him. “Carrie Brown, the American victim who was killed in like manner to the Ripper victims… What I was thinking was that they called her Old Shakespeare because she was always quoting Shakespeare, and she either performed in the theater at some time, or, at the very least, had experience with plays in one way or another. She seemed to have been well educated, even if she had become an alcoholic and a prostitute before she died. Maybe the killer isn’t targeting prostitutes, but actresses—or would-be actresses!”
9
Whitney debated mentioning the fact that they hadn’t eaten; it was late.
She was tired and hungry, and she was curious about anything that the team might have found in the foundations of the House of Spiritualism, but she also felt as if she had been saturated with the sadness and horror of the murders. Bobby Walden had been taken home that night; Angus Avery had spoken at a dinner. That didn’t mean that one of them hadn’t driven back downtown. She needed a break to clear her head and step back, and wonder just what it might all have to do with the past.