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.”
“Of course,” Knox said. His voice was harsh, and Madison looked over at him. Maybe the hard-boiled just-the-facts detective was a little on edge himself.
Madison tried to define exactly how the tableau had changed. The police and technicians apparently hadn’t uncovered anything they considered evidence; they’d left the scene almost as they’d found it. But it had changed. And Dianna Breen still seemed to be staring at her with horrified eyes.
Last night, those realistic glass eyes had witnessed a murder.
“No sign of the weapon yet, right?” Sean asked.
“No. Before you arrived today, two dozen of our guys—the best at their jobs—went through the studio. We needed that many, which won’t surprise you. The place is a hotbed of fake weapons and fake blood and fake—well, you name it.” He shook his head. “But no, we don’t have the weapon yet.”
“So, how are you figuring that Alistair murdered the girl, fell in the blood, passed out, came to and got emergency help and somehow hid the weapon?” Sean asked him.
“Here’s the thing, Agent Cameron. The kid was here alone. We have experts still going through all the surveillance. He claims
