Heather Graham - The Unholy

Madison tried to shut herself off, tried to focus on the victim.

Jenny?

But she didn’t feel the presence of anyone near her. She stood there alone in her little world, frozen. She could envision Alistair and Jenny coming here, Alistair walking ahead, Jenny sensing someone at her back, crying out desperately for help….

And then feeling a knife cut through her throat.

Madison gave herself a furious mental shake. She was in the tunnel; the murder had happened only a few feet from where she was standing.

But there was nothing here that wasn’t solid and real.

Jenny Henderson’s body was at the morgue. If she was hanging around the place she’d been murdered, hoping to communicate, Madison could feel no impression of her.

She walked a step closer to the blood, hoping that didn’t make her ghoulish. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the scene. Jenny must have coerced Alistair into bringing her to the studio. Jenny was an actress, a budding actress who needed every possible opportunity. No casting was done at the studio, but she probably believed she could learn something that might give her an edge when they were casting bit parts.

Had Jenny and Alistair paused to look at the tableaux? Or had Jenny’s mind been on her agenda—and Alistair’s mind on Jenny?

She took note of where the body had lain. There was a distance of perhaps twenty feet to the door. Alistair had walked ahead….

“All right,” Sean said, startling her. “Here’s how I heard the story from Eddie—how it was told to him by Alistair. Jenny convinced him to bring her over—she wanted to get into the studio, see the costumes and the Egyptian creatures. Or the mythical creatures the Egyptian priest, Amun Mopat, brought to life. And according to Alistair—” Sean paused, approaching the door that separated the tunnel from the studio “—he came this way, and turned.”

“And saw a monster—or the priest,” Madison said.

“Which means—” Sean paused again, walking to the display “—that the killer was in the tableau. As soon as Alistair passed by, the killer came down.” Sean moved up to the display, then got down, his movements silent. “The robed figure left his position and crawled over the velvet cord and attacked Jenny Henderson. He’d left Sam Stone and his femme fatale where they belonged as he stepped down to seize Jenny, and cut her throat.”

Sean was suddenly standing behind Madison.

For a moment, she could feel the fear, feel as if the killer’s breath touched her….

She felt his hands on her shoulders, and the other girl’s fear seemed to fill her. She could practically see—feel, touch!—what had happened.

Her throat closed; she could barely scream.

Alistair!

The sound didn’t leave her lips. She managed to step forward before she began trembling noticeably.

She almost slipped on the blood.

Deep in his own thoughts, Sean hardly noticed her.

“This place, the movie—they have everything to do with the murder,” he said, repeating what he’d told her before. “Everything.”

4

Madison stared at Sean Cameron, feeling frozen at first, and completely lost. There was nothing she could do here. She’d hoped there would be, but she felt nothing except cold and fear and dread. She could picture what had happened but she couldn’t see a face. She imagined the mannequin of the priest moving, saw him walking swiftly….

Saw him kill.

“Poor girl, poor Jenny Henderson—and poor Alistair,” he murmured.

“Alistair didn’t do it,” Madison said. Her voice was low, but her words were passionate. “It happened just the way you reenacted it. He was ahead of her and then he got to the door. Someone was already in here, waiting. Someone who knew that Alistair came to see the noir movies on Sundays, and someone who also knew about Jenny. Yes, it was taking a chance that Jenny would show up and that Alistair would fall in with her plans, but it wasn’t really that big a chance.”

“Someone—or the kid. The kid does tell it your way. But there’s nothing to exonerate him.”

Madison was startled by the voice of Benny Knox. He’d come in behind them. She’d been concentrating so hard, she’d forgotten he was with them.

“Yep, according to the kid, he walked to the door—and the thing came out of the tableau. I don’t know what the kid was on, but temporary insanity or whatever is probably going to be his best defense,” Knox went on.

“If he says that’s what happened, it’s what happened. Alistair isn’t on drugs, and he doesn’t drink. He’s a good kid—which is pretty amazing when you realize the money he has access to and how everyone tries to suck up to him because of what his father might be able to do for them!” Madison said angrily.

“Whoa.” Knox lifted a hand and took a step back in mock-horror. “Well, when they need character witnesses, they can call you to the stand.”

Madison tried to check her temper, but he continued quickly, “Look, I’m sorry. We are going to investigate. If the L.A. police weren’t determined on that, you can guarantee the FBI would be. But you’ve got to understand—you’re looking at a locked-room mystery here, and the thing is, if a room is really locked, the people in that room are the suspects. Nine times out of ten what you see is what you get.”

“What you see is a kid in shock and a brutally murdered young woman,” Sean Cameron said. “And I wouldn’t go counting on there being no other answer. For one thing, a costume is missing from the studio.”

“Missing?” Knox asked sharply.

“It’s not on the mannequin,” Madison said, “where it should be—where it was before I left the studio on Friday.”

“So it may just be somewhere else?”

“It’s the robe the priest wears,” Sean said. “That’s definitely worth investigating.”

Knox didn’t dismiss his words, but he didn’t seem too impressed, either. “That studio is filled with shelves and desks and nooks and crannies and…stuff. The robe may turn up easily. Yes, we’ll investigate—I’m sure you will, too, Agent Cameron,” he said to Sean. “I intend to go through all the steps on my end. I’m just telling you it isn’t looking good for young Archer. When you show me another way in and out of this locked room, I’ll be happy to reexamine the evidence.” He pointed to the tableau. “As you can see, those mannequins just stand there—they don’t move around. They don’t speak, argue or step down to commit murder. But you’re right. We have all kinds of hairs and fibers and plenty of blood. In fact, we’ve got forensics up the wazoo. We’ve checked the locks, we’ve gone over the security footage…and nada. So when you find something, let me know.”

As he finished speaking, they were all shocked by a noise from the tableau. Some piece of the little scenario had shifted. The three of them immediately looked over at the characters. There was Sam Stone, ready to race across the room to save his femme fatale. And there was the man in the robe, his fingers twined around the terrified woman’s neck. There was the sarcophagus and the snakes—cobras posed moving across the floor and in strike mode.

The scene had shifted, of course, because the crime scene techs had been up there, photographing, fingerprinting, moving things around. That obviously explained the odd, off-kilter look of the tableau. And yet…

Madison swallowed uncomfortably. Dianna Breen seemed to be gazing not at the mysterious man in the robes about to strangle her—but at Madison. Huge blue glass eyes seemed to stare across time and space.

For a moment—just for a moment!—she thought there’d been another presence in the tunnel.

Sean Cameron walked back toward and through the tableau. “Gravity, I guess. Something shifted from being handled by the crime scene techs.”