Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

“Your wife mentioned someone who passed away?” he said.

Casperson looked at him as if he’d forgotten that Stride was there. “What? Oh, yes, I often do things for Make-A-Wish. This eight-year-old boy with cancer, Tommy Ford, wanted to be in a movie. So I arranged for him to have a little role in the last film I did. A scene with me. It’s not out yet, but I managed to get an early copy to his parents so they could all watch it together. I’ve tried to FaceTime with Tommy every month to see how he is.”

“That’s a very gracious thing to do,” Stride said.

“Oh, how could I not? If you don’t give back on the things you get in life, what’s the point?”

Stride could see that Casperson was genuinely affected by the boy’s death. He watched as Casperson idly rolled balls across the billiard table and then grabbed a cue and began shooting them one by one into the various pockets. His mouth was grim. His aim was perfect, and the crack of the cue with each shot was angry. He acted, again, as if he were alone.

“I don’t mean to bother you at a difficult moment,” Stride said, “but I do have a few questions.”

Casperson looked up blankly. “Questions?” Then he put down the cue and focused. “Of course, sorry. Please, go ahead.”

“Did you have some kind of party here at the house last Saturday?” Stride asked.

“Saturday? Yes, probably. I don’t pay a lot of attention to individual days on location, but I try to get the cast and crew together as often as I can. It brings everyone closer, which makes the process go more smoothly.”

“Who was here?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. Most of the film people and probably some locals. I don’t get involved in any of that. Usually I put in an appearance, have a drink, and then go upstairs to read.”

“Did anything unusual happen at the party?” Stride asked.

“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”

Stride pulled his phone from his pocket and made his way to the photograph of John Doe. “Does this man look familiar to you? Do you know him?”

Casperson peered at the screen. “No. Chris showed me the same photo, but I’ve never seen him before. Pretty gruesome, whoever it is.”

“Someone saw him here at the party on Saturday,” Stride said.

“Here? That man? Well, I didn’t see him myself, but that doesn’t mean anything. Who is he?”

“We don’t know.”

“Then why are you interested in him?”

“We believe he was using a stolen identity,” Stride said without giving more details.

“Well, I’m sorry I can’t help. Is that all, Lieutenant?”

“There’s one other thing,” Stride told him. “This may be unpleasant, but the woman who calls herself Haley Adams also doesn’t appear to be who she said she was. And we believe she’s been spying on you.”

Casperson leaned on the pool cue. “Spying?”

“She had a telescope focused on the master bedroom upstairs.”

Casperson took a step backward in surprise. He twirled the cue in his fingers and then chalked it. He didn’t say anything for a while. “Well, just when you think people can’t stoop any lower,” he murmured.

“Did you have any idea what she was doing?” Stride asked.

“None. She seemed like a nice young woman.”

“Forgive the question, Mr. Casperson, but in looking into your bedroom, would she have seen anything?”

Casperson shrugged. “Me reading Tippi Hedren’s autobiography? Tippi and Hitchcock. Wow.”

“Nothing else?”

“That’s as exciting as it gets around here, Lieutenant.”

“Have there been any problems on the set? Any issues with the tabloids or the paparazzi?”

“No more than usual. The tabloids don’t bother me and Mo too much. If you don’t want a dog to bite you, you keep it fed. We give them interviews. Exclusives. Candid photos. In return, they don’t run stories about transgender Venusian mermaids swimming in our Captiva pool.”

“Well, that sounds smart,” Stride said.

“It’s self-protection. Anything else?”

Stride removed the page of Florida driver’s license photos from his pocket. “I wonder if you could take a look at these pictures and let me know if any of these women look familiar to you.”

Casperson found reading glasses in his back pocket and positioned them at the end of his nose. He eyed the pictures one by one. He noticed the names, too. “These are all Florida women named Haley Adams?”

“Yes. Are any of them the Haley Adams you knew on the set?”

Casperson took a look at them again and shook his head. “No. At least I don’t think so. Oddly, I was never entirely sure what Haley really looked like. She looked different to me whenever I saw her.”

“What about the last picture on the page? It’s a woman named Haley Adams who lived in Fort Myers. Do you recognize her? Even if it wasn’t from the set.”

Casperson’s eyes flitted to the page, but his review looked perfunctory this time. There was no reaction on his face. For a chameleon like Casperson, the lack of expression looked out of character. “No. Sorry.”

“Are you sure about that?” Stride asked.

“I am.”

Stride took the paper back and filed it in his pocket again. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Casperson.”

“Of course. I’ll walk you out. You might get lost in this place.”

Stride followed Casperson on the twisting route back through the house, and when they reached the foyer, the actor pulled open the front door, letting in a frigid blast of winter air. Neither of the men shivered.

“Oh, one quick question,” Stride said as he stepped onto the porch. “I’m not very good with my Florida geography. Where is Fort Myers in relation to Captiva?”

Casperson smiled, but his eyes looked as cold as the Duluth morning.

That was the moment Stride realized they were going to be enemies, not friends.

“It’s close, Lieutenant,” Casperson told him. “Very close indeed.”

Aimee Bowe was in the box.

There was dead silence on the set. Serena watched from the rear wall of the warehouse, where it was dark and cold. They were nowhere near the rural lands where Art Leipold had his hunting cabin. Instead, they were inside a giant empty building steps from the frozen water of the Duluth-Superior harbor. Shipping had closed for the winter, and a film company renting warehouse space was a welcome source of off-season cash.

The movie version of the cage where Art kept his victims was built with one side open for filming, but otherwise the interior details were shockingly real. Jonny had shown her crime scene pictures, which were enough to make her shiver at the thought of being trapped there. The straw floor. The filth. The steel mesh. The tiny claustrophobic space that made you feel as if the walls were closing in on you.

Aimee didn’t look like Aimee today. There was nothing sexy or glamorous about her appearance. Her skin was made up to look pale and drawn, to emphasize the bones in her face. Her fingers were covered in fake blood, as if she’d tried to claw free of the box, the way all the victims had. Her clothes were dirty and frayed, and she huddled in one corner, shivering. She yanked at her hair.

The cameras rolled.

The look that took over Aimee’s eyes alarmed Serena. She knew the woman was acting, but she felt terror emanating from her anyway. Aimee mumbled in hushed, disjointed words, too low for Serena to hear. Then Aimee screamed out a wail of frustration and fear and threw herself against the wall. She beat on it with her fists and tore at it with all the futility of a moth beating against glass. She fell back and kicked the wall with her bare feet. More fake blood — Serena hoped it was fake — seeped between her toes.