Jeffery Deaver - Death of a Blue Movie Star

But then she thought: Why not?

Whycouldn't she make the film?

Sure she could.

And remembering something that Nicole had said, about the blues, suddenly the title for her film came to mind. She thought about it for a minute and decided that, yes, that was it. Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star.

The elevator arrived. Rune stepped in, rested her face against the cool brass plate holding the buttons and sent the car on its journey to the first floor.

I Just look like you know what you're doing and he won't stop you; he'll let you right in.

Life is all a question of attitude, Rune knew.

She was wearing a blue windbreaker. On the back, in white, were the lettersny. She'd stenciled them on that morning with acrylic poster paint. She kept the Sony Betacam on her shoulder as she walked past the uniformed policeman standing in the lobby of Lame Duck Productions. She nodded in a distracted way, cool, a civil servant nod, confident he'd let her pass by.

He stopped her.

"Who're you?" he asked, a guy who looked like-what was his name?-Eddie Haskell on LeaveIt to Beaver.

"Film unit."

He looked at her black stretch pants and high-top Keds.

"Never heard of it. What precinct you out of?"

"State police," she said. "Now, you don't mind, I got five other CSs to do today."

"What's a CS?" Eddie didn't move.

"Crime scene."

"CS." He was nodding. "Shield?" he asked.

Rune reached into her purse and flipped open an ID wallet. On one side was a bright gold badge and on the other was an ID card with a sullen photo of her. It gave her name as Sargant Randolf. (The man who sold her the ID an hour before, in an arcade in Times Square, had said, "Your name's Sargant? My generation, they named kids weird things too. Like Sunshine and Moonbeam.")

Eddie glanced at it, shrugged. "You gotta use the stairs. Elevator's broke."

Rune climbed to the third floor. The scorched smell assaulted her again and turned her stomach. She stepped through the door into what had been an office. She lifted the heavy camera and started shooting. The scene wasn't what she expected, wasn't like in the movies where you see a little smoke damage, chairs knocked over, broken glass.

This was pure destruction.

Whatever furniture was in the room had been blown to shreds of wood and metal and plastic. Nothing was recognizable except a blistered file cabinet that looked as if a huge fist had slammed into it. The acoustical tile on the ceiling was gone, wires hung down and the floor was a frozen black sea of paper, trash and chunks of debris. The walls were crisp bubbles of blackened paint. Heat still rose from piles of damp black cloth and papers.

She panned slowly.

This is whereShelly Lowe's life ended. This is how it ended. Inflames, and-

Avoice behind her asked, "What do you think?"

The camera drooped and she shut it off.

She turned and saw Sam Healy, standing in another doorway, sipping coffee from a blue deli cup. She liked that. Asking what he'd asked, rather than "What the hell're you doing here?" Which is probably what he should've been asking.

Rune said, "I think it looks like Hades, you know, the Underworld."

"Hell."

"Yeah."

Healy nodded toward the hallway. "Why'd he let you up here?"

"I reasoned with him."

Healy walked up to Rune and spun her around slowly, looking at the letters on her back. "Cute. What're you, impersonating a bus driver?"

"Just shooting some tape."

"Ah. Your documentary."

She looked at a small suitcase on the floor next to him. "What're you doing here? I thought the word was, keep your distance. Remember the word?"

"I'm just a grunt. I collect the evidence. What the D.A. does with it is his business."

She looked at a number of plastic bags sitting next to his attache case. "What kind of evidence've you-"

Another voice cut through the room. "That's her."

Eddie the cop.

It was that kind of emphasis onher that Rune had heard before. It usually came from teachers, her parents and bosses.

Rune and Healy looked up. Eddie was with another man, heavyset. He looked familiar. Yeah, that was it-at the first bombing, the theater: Brown Suit.

"Sam." He nodded at Healy, then said to Rune, "I'm Detective Begley. I understand you're with the New York State Police. Could we see your ID again, please?"

Rune frowned. "I never said that. I said I wanted to do some tapesof the state police. For the news."

Eddie shook his head. "She showed me a shield."

"Miss, you know it's a crime to have a badge?"

"It's a crime for some people to have a badge."

Healy said, "Artie, she's with me. It's okay."

"Sam, she can't go flipping shields around." Begley turned to her. "Either open your bag or we'll have to take you to the precinct."

"The thing is…"

Eddie took the leopard-skin bag and handed it to Begley. He rummaged through the dull-clinking carnival of junk. He searched for a minute or two, then grimaced and dumped the contents out on the floor. There was no badge.

Rune pulled out all her pockets. Empty.

Begley looked at Eddie, who said, "I saw it. I know I did."

Healy said, "I'll keep an eye on her, Artie."

Begley grunted, handed her bag to Eddie and ordered him to fill it back up.

"She had a shield," he protested.

Begley said to Healy, "Got a positive ID on the body from dentals. It's that Lowe woman all right. Nobody else hurt. And you were asking last night about her phone call?"

Healy nodded.

"The security guard doesn't remember who the message was from. And the phone company's still running pen registers, trying to find out who called who. As soon as we know anything else we'll let you know."

"Thanks."

Begley left. Eddie finished refilling Rune's bag. With a cold glance at Rune he too left.

Rune turned and saw Healy reading her ID.

"You spelled Sergeant wrong."

She reached for it and he lifted it above her reach.

"Begley's right. You get caught with this, it's a misdemeanor. And wising off to a cop'll get you the maximum sentence."

"You picked my purse."

He slipped the fake-leather wallet into his pocket. "Bomb Squad's got steady hands." He finished his coffee.

Rune nodded after Begley. "You were asking them to check out phone calls and things? Sounds to me like you're more than just a grunt."

A nonchalant shrug. "You leave the camera off and I'll show you what I got."

"Okay."

They walked to a crater in the concrete floor. Rune slowed as she got close. Streaks of white and gray led outward from it. Above them was a black mess of a dome where the explosion had destroyed the acoustic-tiled ceiling. In front of Rune was the gaping hole where the outer wall had been.

Healy pointed to the crater. "I measured it. We can tell from the size how much explosive there was." He held up a small glass vial with cotton in it. "This has absorbed the chemical residue in the air around the site. I'll send it over to the police lab in the Academy near Second Avenue. They'll tell me exactly what kind of explosive it was."

Rune's hands were sweating and her stomach was knotted. This is where Shelly had been standing when she'd turned to make her call. This is where she'd been standing when she died. Maybe in this very spot. Her legs went weak. She backed away slowly.

Healy continued, "But I'm sure it was composition four. C-4 it's usually called."

"You hear about it in Beirut."

"The number one choice among terrorists. It's military. You can't buy it from commercial demolition suppliers. It looks like dirty white putty, kind of oily. You can mold it real easily."

"Was it like hooked to a clock or something?"

Healy walked to his attache case and picked up one of the plastic bags. It contained bits of burnt metal and wires.