Макс Коллинз - No One Will Hear You

“Never been mistaken for him. Been taken for John Cho a few times... Ken Leung, once...”

“Could have been worse than pepper spray.”

“Yeah?”

She opened her purse and the butcher knife winked at Choi. He did not wink back.

Soon they were in the conference room, where (predictably) Jenny had beaten them. The little computer queen — in pale blue T-shirt, jeans, and ponytail — quickly and wordlessly hooked Carmen’s laptop up to the big screen.

Within five minutes, everyone had arrived, coffee distributed. No doughnuts or other goodies, though, not considering what they were about to watch.

Harrow came in last. He wore a yellow polo and jeans and looked far more alert than the rest, with the exception of Jenny. Of course.

“You’ll note again that no cameras are present.” He sat. “All right — let’s look at this damn thing...”

Chase said, “Where are the LAPD? This is evidence.”

“Lieutenant Amari, Detective Polk, and Special Agent Rousch are already at the crime scene.”

“Which is where?” Michael Pall asked. He was in a suit, whereas the rest were in whatever they could grab — T-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans. But at least he didn’t look so bright-eyed behind the Clark Kent specs.

“Griffith Park,” Harrow said.

Anderson blurted, “Hollywood sign again?”

“The observatory,” Harrow said.

“Griffith Park Observatory,” Pall said, as if tasting the words. Then: “Why there? Doesn’t make sense.”

When their profiler made an observation like that, everything stopped until he’d explained.

He did: “The Hollywood sign, the network doorstep, the Errol Flynn star, the Chinese Theater... they all have something to do with show business. What does the Griffith Park Observatory have to do with show biz?”

Chase said, “A lot of movies have been shot there.”

Choi said, “Yeah, right — Rebel Without a Cause.”

“No,” Carmen said. She’d known at once. “Griffith Park Observatory — where you go to see the stars.”

Harrow was nodding. “Which is what Don Juan and Billie Shears want to be — stars. Superstars.”

No one challenged the theory.

Choi said to Harrow, “Did your friend the lieutenant say whether there are any clues this time?”

“Nothing significant had turned up when I spoke to her half an hour ago. She said the observatory closed at ten last night, and isn’t open on Monday. Victim was on the front doorstep.”

Chase asked, “Who found the body?”

“Same security guard who found Wendi Erskine, and he’s being looked at hard. The victim has been tentatively identified as Erica Thornton — she was on a reality show called Survival Island.”

“I remember her,” Choi said.

“That’s a UBC show,” Carmen said. “Don Juan sticking it to us again?”

“Not just us,” Chase said.

“No,” Harrow said gravely. “Not just us... Okay, let’s get to it.”

Harrow nodded to Carmen, and she made a keystroke.

And then it began...

... the drugged nude woman on the bed, blade slashing, woman writhing, spraying blood, this attack even more brutal, more vicious than the others, over and over, again and again, knife arcing, flaying, the life literally bleeding out of the victim...

Carmen made herself watch.

She had viewed the start of it at home, before shutting the thing off and calling Harrow. Now the sheer ferocity of the attack shook her, terrified her. So incredibly savage was the slaying that even in this room full of people, she felt alone with her fear.

“You failed to grasp the inevitability of my ascension to stardom,” the now-familiar, processed, metallic voice said. “You insult me by suggesting this also-ran Shears is my equal. For this indignity, you must pay. How you will pay is my little secret — mine is a scenario with surprises yet to be revealed. Suffice to say my next lover will give you no alternative but to acknowledge that Don Juan is without question... the greatest lover of all.”

The video ended, the lights came up, and no one said anything for what seemed forever to Carmen. Thirty seconds.

Michael Pall said, “He’s devolving.”

No one disagreed.

Harrow asked, “What do we do about it?”

That the seasoned investigators around this table had no immediate response was almost as disturbing to Carmen as that video.

Choi said, “Yeah, I know the profiler lingo, too — he’s devolving, he’s accelerating. Well, we know he’s picking up speed. But we also know he’s playing us. That’s bullshit about us insulting him — he and Billie Shears are in it together.”

“But he doesn’t know we know that,” Harrow said.

Pall, brightening, said, “And that gives us a small advantage. He’s playing out a narrative, which would suggest an end goal — some spectacular surprise to really make him a ‘star.’ ”

“Maybe we already know that surprise,” Harrow said. “Maybe his big finish is to reveal that he and Billie are collaborators, or even lovers.”

“Maybe,” the profiler allowed. “But I would think not — this is building to a special kill... though what we do having going for us is, finally , we are a small step ahead. We know he and Shears are in cahoots. So do the LAPD and the FBI. We have to keep that knowledge out of the media.”

“We are the media,” Carmen said.

“No,” Harrow said. “Not anymore. We’re just a group of hard-ass investigators who are going to find and stop this bastard.”

That got a few smiles.

“You know,” Choi said, “I think I could stomach a doughnut about now. You know — like all hard-ass investigators.”

And that got a few laughs.

But Carmen neither smiled nor laughed.

She was seeing that blade arcing down...

For the two days following the discovery of the victim in the Griffith Park Observatory parking lot, the media had exploded with coverage of both Don Juan and Billie Shears. This pleased Billie very much. But there was an unpleasing wrinkle.

Though the link between the killers had apparently not been discovered by the LAPD and FBI (or for that matter, the Crime Seen clowns), an unfortunate collective moniker had been given the two killers — “The Odd Couple.”

The L.A. Times and its satellites weren’t guilty of this offense — a local radio station started it, and the national media picked up on it, with several twenty-four-hour news services using the nickname freely. This tabloid approach did have its pleasing aspects, as when one wild-eyed Fox commentator spoke of the Odd Couple being responsible for “fear gripping Hollywood.”

She did not, however, follow the commentator’s logic that somehow the Don Juan and Billie Shears killings represented “the sins of show business coming home to roost,” nor did she think a reference to her and her brother as “sick fame-seekers hoping to suckle at the reality-show teat” was in the least bit fair.

Still, what was the old press agent’s axiom? It didn’t matter what they said, as long as they were talking about you. Or what they printed, as long as they were spelling your name right. And now they were spelling it B-i-l-l-i-e, weren’t they? Ha!

Her brother had the video camera set up now, with Billie Shears’s latest — and very special — victim-to-be spread-eagled on the bed, hands and feet lashed to the frame with heavy, hurting cord.

Now that they’d entered Act Three, brother and sister for the first time were deviating from their established pattern — their “M.O.” as Crime Seen would have it. This time their special guest star was not drugged, though he was indeed out cold, and naked, of course, and about to feel Billie’s shearing bite... but he had not been so fortunate as to enjoy the ego-boosting attentions of a beautiful young woman who had picked him up in a bar.