Melody looked stricken. “I’m Bunny?”
Rolf nodded, draining his champagne and refilling all their glasses.
“So I die.”
“Yeah, but you’re a main character throughout. Tons of lines.”
“And I’m Dylan, the crazy guy?” Sam asked.
“You got it. But we don’t really know if you’re crazy until the end.”
“I can’t wait to find out.”
“That’s the idea. I haven’t incorporated those visions you have of how people will die. I’m planning to work on them tonight, but I think it’s a solid gold addition that will really add to the uncertainty and anxiety over Dylan’s mental state.”
Sam swallowed some more champagne, soft and silky, with bubbles as soft as mousse, but it went down hard. “Yeah, it really would.”
“Let’s grab some sushi and get to know each other a little better. Oh, hey,” he grabbed a book off a credenza and presented it proudly. “Deep into the Dark. I pulled it from Pops’s bookshelf today, I knew I’d seen it before. Lynette Frolich, she’s your shrink?”
Sam took the book he saw several times a week on the shelf in her office. He’d only seen the spine, never the cover. It was glossy black with the title embossed in silver, each letter fading at the bottom until it was engulfed by darkness. A representation of dissolution and hopelessness, as depressing a cover as could ever be imagined given the subject matter. “Yes.”
“I read it this afternoon. You should read it, too, it’s a total mind fuck, all about PTSD. Did you get PTSD from your farm accident?”
“Yeah.”
“Dr. Frolich is pretty famous, at least in shrink circles. I might want to incorporate a character like her in the film, too. What do you think?”
“I’m sure she’d be really flattered.”
“Can you see now how integral you are to this movie? I mean, you’re literally rewriting it.”
Chapter Fifty-nine
REMY HAD TRACKED DOWN TWO OF the former felons who’d left their fingerprints on some truly repugnant items from the Rehbein, but they both came up zeroes. One had overdosed a month ago. The second had been thrown back in the can on drug charges and aggravated assault in March, before the Miracle Mile killings had even started. On to the next scumbag.
The third set of prints didn’t belong to a scumbag, at least on paper. They hadn’t popped because of a criminal history but because he’d served in the military. His name was Ronald Doerr, and his prints had been found on a scrap of paper near Froggy’s body. It was the lined notebook variety with wobbly letters and numbers written in blue pen: 3312NVY. Did NVY stand for Navy? That didn’t make a lot of sense, he’d been in the Army. A password? An address? A message? Maybe. Some serials liked to leave little notes and mess with investigators’ heads.
He expanded his search on Ronald Doerr, and his dim optimism faded to black. He’d been killed in action two years ago, so whatever 3312NVY meant, it didn’t matter because he definitely wasn’t a suspect.
A dead man’s prints at a recent crime scene. Curious, but not really such a mystery. Either Ronald Doerr had been in the building at some point and dropped a piece of paper or somebody who’d had contact with him had been.
He slurped his disgusting, cold, vending machine coffee while frustration festered. They had similar fibers from two scenes that were meaningless without a garment to match, and useless fingerprints. No witnesses, no suspects, no place to go—maybe not until the Monster killed again. But that was a really shitty, defeatist attitude that didn’t cut it with the three, possibly four, butchered women who deserved justice, not to mention Froggy. You had to keep moving, keep groping for a thread, any thread. They were out there, you just had to find them.
Expecting nothing, he plugged 3312NVY into a search. Stranger things had broken cases. It yielded a house for sale on Navy Day Drive in Maryland. He refined his parameters to Los Angeles and instead of an address found articles on a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine. He tweaked his search some more, and five minutes later he found 3312 Navy Street in Mar Vista. The owner’s name sounded oddly familiar, so he did a search on the police database and it lit up his computer. There was a BOLO out on the homeowner, courtesy of Nolan and Crawford.
It was easier to call than to run back to the Homicide pen, and Maggie picked up on the first ring. It bothered him that he was thinking of her hair and long legs instead of the reason he was calling, but he pulled it together before he spoke. “Tell me about Sam Easton.”
Hesitation. “His wife was murdered this morning.”
“He’s one of the runners Al mentioned.”
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t think he did it?”
“No. Why are you asking about him?”
“Prints popped on a scrap of paper from the Rehbein, and it had cryptic letters and numbers written on it. I ran some searches and his address came up as a possible match. I just saw the BOLO on him and it seemed like weird coincidence.”
“Who do the prints belong to?”
“Ronald Doerr, formerly U.S. Army. He was killed in action two years ago, so that doesn’t go anywhere. But when you find Easton, I’d like to talk to him.”
“Easton was Army, too. Maybe there’s some kind of a connection that can help you.”
“I’m hoping. Keep me in the loop, Maggie.”
“I will.” Nolan hung up and stared at the wall behind Crawford’s head, where a spidery crack from the last earthquake was metastasizing, creeping down toward the floor.
“Who’s asking about Easton?”
“Remy.”
“No shit? What’s up?”
“He said a weird coincidence.”
“Nobody believes in coincidences, especially not Remy.”
Chapter Sixty
UNLIKE ANY OTHER SPECIES ON THE planet, humans possessed the vexing capacity to dwell in the past or speculate about the future, which sometimes made life unreasonably difficult. Tonight, Sam was trying to embrace the gift of lesser creatures: the ability, the purest necessity, of living in the moment. Even in combat, your dense focus on survival was still influenced by your past and thoughts of the future; but if you were a mouse running from a cat, instinct was your only reality, your only tool. There was no past or present, and things became very simple.
He had become that mouse. Life was now and there was no cat, no hallucinations, no blackouts. His world was the drink in his hand, the numbness in his brain. He was being incredibly reckless; but the alcohol, tranquilizers, and the Shangri-La fantasy of the Hesse mansion dulled his mental anguish—the horror of Yuki’s murder, his fears about confronting Nolan and Crawford, the real possibility that he might be losing his mind. If Rolf knew how close his script paralleled reality, he’d be dancing a jig.
Rolf had opened up an expansive, luxe room that served as a bar-slash-club, as well stocked and appointed, if not better, than Pearl Club’s. Bauhaus was still droning, and Rolf was jerking around to the dark Goth music while he mixed drinks with exotic ingredients like crème de violette and Aperol. It seemed like every five minutes he was gustily pushing a new creation across the bar for their approval, particularly interested in Melody’s opinion since she was a real bartender. He was spilling more than he was serving now, and his eyes were bleary and unfocused. Like Melody, his former heroin addiction didn’t interfere with ardent alcohol use. Maybe it was a new trend in treatment.