The International Press screening of Travesty of Justice 5: Personal Justice was nearly over and our producer and star, Joe Stewart, and his assistant, Michael McCalley, were nowhere to be found. There was no way of knowing their whereabouts, which meant searching for them was an annoying and probably futile task. Naturally I viewed it as a metaphor for my life.
I made the turn at Stage 20, where I saw a page staring vacantly into space, midway between the soundstage and the now-empty audience holding area. Inside the soundstage they were filming yet another pilot that likely wouldn’t be picked up. It was thankless work for everyone involved, including those in the audience, who were making around minimum wage—either through a temp agency or directly through the studio as part of its audience procurement service.
I knew a little about this because as far as I knew, attending audience shows at minimum wage for four hours at a time was my roommate Dan’s sole source of income.
Speaking of Dan, as I rounded the other side of the soundstage I heard his voice call out, “Hey Chris!”
I doubled back and saw him in the alley between the soundstage and the Prosser Building where Joe’s production company, Crosswaters Point, had its offices. He was seated in one of the dozens of golf carts used to get around the lot. Beside him was Heather, the young, blonde page he was then “dating.” Between them sat one of the caterer’s expensive porcelain plates, on which was the sushi Dan had collected at our screening.
(A lot of ToJ:PJ had been filmed in Japan, one of seven international territories where Joe was still the top box office draw. The “Tokyo Subway” sequence wasn’t quite as exciting as the “London Pursuit” sequence in the previous film, where Benjamin Travesty had to get across London while avoiding CCTV cameras, but it was still well staged.)
“We’re almost done; you can take the plate back.”
I decided to ignore his condescending remark. “Have you seen Joe Stewart? I can’t find him or his assistant.”
Dan’s face was somewhat sympathetic. “Why do you want to find him? All he ever does is bully you—”
“Michael and I have a very professional relationship,” I said for Heather’s benefit.
Dan made a pfft sound and waved his hand. “Heather knows all about you and Michael.”
Over the previous month and a half, Michael had used his position as Joe’s assistant to force me to engage in menial tasks only tangentially related to marketing, if at all (picking up dry cleaning and lunch orders for instance), to force me to do his job for him (arranging interviews for Joe and going over the copy for those interviews to ensure Joe was presented in the best possible light), shouting at and belittling me when I performed those tasks in what he considered an unsatisfactory way—and he had taken to calling me “Timid Timmy,” because of my temperament and the fact that he couldn’t think of a synonym for “shy” that started with “C.”
I’d confided his worst abuses to Dan because, well, I thought the least he could do after I’d let him live rent free in my apartment was to listen to me vent about my work problems without then blabbing about them with casual romantic partners.
“Oh, I knew all about it before I ever met Dan,” Heather said in a tone that managed to mingle sympathy, contempt, and glee. “I used to hang out with Mikey sometimes. I’d suggest you look for him in Joe’s trailer. But don’t just barge in—he uses it for… well, for romantic encounters.”
I shuddered. “Thanks for the advice.” I started to turn to leave, but Dan said: “Hold on a couple more minutes—we’re almost done with the sushi!” He stuffed an eight-dollar piece of eel in his mouth.
***
I hiked the quarter mile to Joe’s enormous trailer. It was provided by the studio when he was shooting pick-up scenes or when he had to be on-site for meetings or whatever. It was parked on the north end of the lot, near Stage 30, Mountaincrest’s largest soundstage. Once upon a time, classics like Holiday in Estonia and The Great Mildred filmed interiors there. Today it housed the sleazy daytime talker The Stacey Wilson Show.
The trailer was completely dark. There was no answer when I knocked, so I walked around to the other side and knocked on the back door. Yes, it had a back door. No answer there, either.
Well I’ve done all I can do, I thought, somewhat irresponsibly. It took me a good fifteen minutes to get back to the theater on the other side of the lot, by which time the screening was over and the lobby was filled with entitled journalists picking through sushi and swilling wine.
Philip, my boss and the imposing head of International Marketing, looked at me and drawled, “Why are you carrying a plate?”
Before I could think of an answer that wasn’t totally embarrassing, Joe’s producing partner Charyn Glenn sidled up and said, “Joe just called and said he can’t find Michael either. He’s on his way back now.”
When Joe again appeared in the lobby, he looked intense and agitated. Of course, he always looked intense and agitated.
One of the Hollywood International Press members—whom we called HIPsters—said something funny, apparently, because Joe began howling with laughter. I had no idea what had been said, but I knew his reaction was all out of proportion because no one had ever said anything so funny that it merited that response. Actors are dramatic by nature, taking any opportunity to practice their craft. The slightest event could provoke an outlandish, over-the-top reaction. Joe was more of an actor than most—which was one reason he was so successful. His dedication was legendary and ridiculous. He threw himself into his research, often to the point that he behaved as if he really was the international secret detective he portrayed in the ToJ franchise.
While the three of us watched Joe, my phone buzzed. For perhaps the first time ever, I hoped it was Michael. We needed help in wrangling Joe. When the press got the Full Joe, bad stories got out.
But. It was Dan. Probably wanted me to personally deliver him another plate of sushi. Well I wouldn’t do it!
“You’re back at the theater?” Dan asked when I accepted the call.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Good. Just so you know, the fuzz are on their way, but I had nothing to do with that.”
“’The fuzz’? What?” I sputtered.
“One of the pages found the body, on the other side of the Prosser Building. And they called security.”
Being very self-possessed, Dan sometimes spoke to you as if you already knew everything that was going on, even when you had no earthly idea. “Body? What body?”
“Michael’s.”
“Wha—? But—”
“I told you. Just stay there at the theater. And remember: This is the first you’re hearing about it.”
“Why did you say that? Of course this is the first I’m hearing about it!”
“Exactly,” he said. I could almost hear him winking over the phone. “Don’t worry… I’m handling things on my end.”
He hung up. I called him back, but it went through to voicemail. I was too agitated to trust myself to leave a message and anyway, Philip was eyeing me suspiciously. I trudged toward him with an unsavory sensation. This wasn’t all that uncommon after talking to Dan.
“You look particularly unsettled,” Philip understated.
“I—um. I am. I am—I um. I’m very—unsettled.”
“Spill.”
“Apparently, Michael is dead.”
“’Apparently’?”
“Dan said one of the pages found his body and contacted security.”
Philip paused, like he was considering some vaguely interesting piece of trivia. “We just saw him—when was it?”
“About halfway through the movie,” I said. “Maybe an hour and a half ago.”
“That’s right,” he nodded. “He went to the production office for something.”
“Yeah—then he called Charyn, maybe ten minutes later. That’s when Joe left. Then you sent me out after them, about… half an hour later.”
“How did he die?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Then I added, because Dan had planted the thought in my head: “This is the first I’ve heard about it.”
“Hm. Well, I’ll let Charyn know. We can let her relay the news to Joe. Unless of course—you’d rather do it?”
Sometimes, Philip had a very dry sense of humor.
If Michael was dead that was terrible, obviously. But Dan’s knowing, verbally winking way of telling me about it added an extra layer of foreboding.
While I was turning that over in my mind, two security guards walked in. They headed for Joe and I stood frozen, watching as one whispered in his ear.
Joe’s face twisted into a grimace of deep emotional pain. If you’ve seen his famous “Dad’s Been Shot” scene in Independence Dave, you have some idea of how he looked. “Aw—aw, no!” he howled.
Now he had an audience. Every eye was on him. He ran his hands through his sandy hair, and shook his head back and forth. “Oh no!” he cried out. He paced. He flared his nostrils, as if trying out different expressions of grief.
A security guard intoned, “Everyone—I’m sorry to tell you this—”
Joe put his hand on the guard’s shoulder and said, “Let me do it” in a sort of stage whisper I could hear on the other side of the lobby. He turned to face us, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. A tear trickled down his cheek. Clearly he was very, very moved. “I don’t know how to say this—I’m not sure I can say this…” His voice cracked. “Our assistant—no, more than just an assistant—a dear friend—Michael McCalley—is dead!”
There were gasps.
After a few seconds, when it seemed that Joe wasn’t going to say anything more—just stand there plaintively looking at the floor—the security guard said, “Since Mr. McCalley was here tonight, we’re going to have to ask you to wait in the lobby so the police can interview you about what you might have seen. You never know…someone here might have information that could break this case open.”
“’Case’?” a voice called out.
Solemnly, the security guard said, “Based on the state of the body, it appears that Michael McCalley was murdered.”
***
The HIPsters thought it was kind of fun to be held in the Mountaincrest Theater lobby while they awaited questioning. After all, it’s a beautiful facility (you’ve seen it double as the glamorous French hotel lobby in Three For Bucharest, for example), and we’d done it up with real Hollywood glamor—almost like a premiere. Then, the sushi and the wine ran out. At that point they realized just how inconvenient it was.
Finally, Detective Kelly Rose, the investigator in charge, made her way to me. She was about thirty years old, had long dark hair pulled back into a utilitarian ponytail, and wore a jacket and hip-hugger pants that flared at the ankles. “Chris Powell, International Marketing coordinator?”
“Uh—yes,” I sputtered.
“You seem nervous.”
“I am.” I’m almost always nervous. I am a nervous person.
Her eyebrows raised; her green eyes were challenging. “You have reason to be nervous?”
“No! I mean. Well—yes—yes, I do, actually—someone I worked with has apparently been killed. On the—the lot where I work. I’d say that’s—reason to be nervous!”
“Mm-hm.”
She explained that Michael’s body showed that he’d been in a fight—there were cuts and bruises on his hands, and his neck was broken. She asked me if I knew of anyone who was having problems with him, who might want to hurt him.
I told her I knew of no such person. This wasn’t a lie, since the only person I knew of who’d had any problems with Michael was me, and I’d never wanted to hurt him. At least, not to death, anyway.
It was nearly four AM when I got home. Dan was in his bedroom, sound asleep. I knew he was sound asleep because I could hear his carefree snoring through the door.
I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking that I should have told Detective Rose about Michael’s bullying me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one—maybe he’d bullied someone else who’d finally had enough and fought back?
Then my alarm went off. Mechanically, I got up, took my shower, and went back to the studio.
Dan was still snoring away.
***
Philip had a look of utter consternation and dread on his face when I arrived. “This is bad,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s a witness who saw Joe murder Michael.”
“What??” I asked, startled.
“It’s all over the lot. Moreover, Joe’s only alibi is that he needed to ‘collect his thoughts,’ so he went for a walk around the lot, then to his trailer to relax.”
That alibi did seem flimsy. For one thing, how many thoughts did Joe Stewart have to collect? “Well,” I pointed out. “There’s security cameras all over the lot. So there must be footage of him going to his trailer.”
Philip shook his head, sadly. “Apparently there are blindspots, where the cameras don’t see everything. And there’s a very big blindspot behind Joe’s trailer. He says he went in through the back door.”
“Um,” I said. Not sure if I should mention that Joe’s trailer had been completely dark when I’d been there.
“You okay?” Philip asked, in a tone that suggested he really didn’t care.
“Yeah.” Joe must have gotten there right after I’d left, I decided.
“Good,” he said. “We’re already getting a lot of calls from HIPsters. I want to put you on those. No-comment them.”
No-commenting kept me so busy I could only call Dan once. He didn’t return my call.
It was after seven before I got back to the apartment. Dan was lying face down on the futon, snoring, mouth open, with a small puddle of drool on the cushion under his head.
I stood over him, too tired to fume. I kicked the futon frame. Then the mattress. Finally, I kicked his foot off the armrest. That managed to wake him.
“You’re rested?” I snarked. “Joe Stewart is the prime suspect in Michael’s murder thanks to an eyewitness.”
He sat up, rubbing his sleepy eyes. “I told you I was handling things.”
“Are you the eyewitness?”
He shrugged, modestly. “Yeah. I told the police that the person who did it had sandy hair, was about five-feet-six, well built with chiseled features and large hands, wearing tight black jeans that accentuated his tight bottom, and a tight black turtleneck.”
That was an absurdly accurate description of Joe Stewart. “And did you tell them that because it accurately describes the person you saw?” I asked, dreading to hear the answer.
Again he shrugged. “Something tells me you don’t really want to know the answer to that question.”
“I do want to know the answer! That’s why I asked it!”
“Okay. It’s not the person I saw.” He winked at me.
“Why did you just wink?”
“Look—Chris—I know that it was you who killed Michael.”
I stood there, stunned. It was so absurd I couldn’t even—I just couldn’t. It was—absurd. So absurd that—that I was stuttering even—in—even in my thoughts. “What?” I finally managed to articulate.
Dan’s smiling mouth opened as if to say something, but I threw my hands up and said, “No! No—don’t say anything! Stop! Tell me—explain to me exactly—tell me exactly what you saw. No more winking and smiling!”
“Okay. Fine,” he said wearily. “After dinner, Heather and I didn’t want to return to the show taping. You know how boring those things are. That’s why they have to pay people to sit in them! Four hours at least—and they film the same scenes over and over, and the audience has to keep laughing, like they’re seeing it for the first time.”
“Please don’t ramble. I—I hate when you ramble!”
“Geez. So-rry. Anyway. Heather was feeling kind of, you know, frisky. She wanted to go—be romantic on the Big City Backlot. Where they filmed that Fordota commercial with the young couple who’s just bought their first car? That one gets her right in the feelz…”
He looked at my face and went on: “Sorry. Right. Stick to the facts! Anyway. We snuck in the door to one of those fake brownstones. The one on the very end. We were there in the little foyer area? You know, each of those ‘brownstones’ has a little fake foyer in it, so when the door opens, it looks like it’s a real building, and not just a façade with an empty warehouse behind it.”
“I know how the Backlot façades work.”
“Then they film the interiors on soundstages—” he went on.
“Will you stop being so pedantic and tell me what you saw?”
“I’m setting the scene. We were in that foyer—on the east end. Near the Prosser Building.”
“The building where the Crosswaters Point office is located,” I clarified.
He scowled disapprovingly. “Now who’s being pedantic?”
“Go on,” I sighed.
“Well, Heather and I were in the fake foyer, by the window. The curtain’s pretty flimsy, and I could see outside, sort of toward the Prosser Building. I saw Michael walk past, and that’s when you stepped out of the shadows from the alley between the soundstage and the building.”
“It wasn’t me,” I insisted.
“Right,” he winked.
“Stop winking! It really wasn’t me!”
“Oh, I know,” he said, in a tone that suggested that he did not, in fact, know. When I made no response he went on: “So. Anyway. Michael walked past, then I saw a guy who looked like you step out of the shadows in front of Michael. Michael kind of stopped walking, then he started again. Then he stopped. The guy who looked like you had his hands up, sort of like you were pleading with him—”
“It wasn’t me.”
He nodded. “The way you put your hands up when you want someone to calm down, but really you’re trying to make yourself calm down, you know?”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Well, then… things started getting especially interesting with Heather.”
“Ugh.”
“She likes to bite—”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
“See? The way you put your hands up just now, when you said ‘Okay, okay’? That’s how the guy who looks like you put their hands up.” His voice had an annoyingly triumphant tone.
“So you got distracted. Is that all you saw?”
“Well, as Heather and I were finishing, I happened to glance out the window again and I saw the guy who looks like you dragging Michael to the other side of the building.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone then?”
“I thought it was you! Besides that, I didn’t know Michael was dead. For all I knew, he’d passed out and you were trying to revive him or something. Also, I was feeling kinda drowsy. You know how I get after…”
“No, I don’t, and I don’t want to know.”
“Well, I get drowsy. And we’d had all that sushi.”
I sighed. “Was this person you saw wearing the same clothes as me? Was he my height and build? Did you actually see his face?”
He studied me as if seeing me for the first time and coming to a disappointed conclusion. “You know how bad the lighting is on the lot at night. I couldn’t see faces so much. I guess the person I saw didn’t so much physically resemble you as… hm… he was sorta… he had a sorta defeated walk.”
“What?”
“He moved as if he was carrying the weight of the world on him. Like he’d been beaten down by life and had no hope of ever recovering.” This seemed to please him and he went on: “That’s it. They moved like they were hopeless.”
“And that’s why you thought this person was me?”
“That’s what I said. He looked like you. So to protect you, I described Joe Stewart.”
“How could you do this?” I muttered.
He looked almost wounded. “That’s what friends are for—”
“No! That’s not what friends are for! Friends are not for protecting murderers!”
“So you are guilty!” he said smugly. “I knew it!” He patted me on the shoulder.
“No! But you—I’m just saying—I mean—you thought—I’m not guilty!”
“Sure,” he said. And winked. Again.
“We need to go to the police.”
“If we have to tell them why I ‘lied,’ they’ll start looking at you, Mr. Timid Timmy. And you don’t have an army of lawyers to protect you the way Joe does. And after all you’ve done for me—letting me stay here even though I don’t always make my half of the rent—I wanted to try to protect you.”
Dan rarely paid his half of the rent. Or the grocery bill. Or the utilities. Or the internet. Or the cable. And referencing my own generosity or gullibility or whatever it was that afflicted me was dirty pool. I can’t stand confrontation, and I didn’t want to bring up how much money Dan “owed” me, under any circumstances. “All right. Fine. Um. But this is still wrong, and the guilt is going to kill me if I don’t do something.”
He pffted. “You always feel like you need to ‘do something’. The police are ‘doing something’. Forget it.”
He actually made a good point. The police were professionals. Joe had lawyers. It would all work out. I just needed to stop feeling so guilty and move on.
***
The next morning as I pulled into my space in the parking structure, my phone buzzed. In my line of work, I get calls from all kinds of people—often very important people that I needed to impress for the sake of Mountaincrest’s films, and so I didn’t have the luxury of screening calls.
“Hey. This is Detective Kelly Rose. We met the other night—you remember, when your coworker was murdered?”
“I—yes—I remember that,” I stammered.
“You coming to the lot today? I’m here now and I’d like to talk to you about a few things…”
As her voice trailed off into menacing ellipses I felt a rumbling panic that started in the pit of my stomach and cascaded throughout my body in teasing and punishing waves. She was onto Dan’s lie… And now I was about to be accused of murder! It was insane! Why hadn’t I called her to clarify? Because I was nervous? Well—pretty soon I was going to be really, really nervous! In jail!
“Um,” I said, calmly. “I—just pulled onto the—I’m in the parking structure—I’ll be over in a couple of, um—minutes.”
“Cool,” she said with deceptive calmness. “See you soon.”
I crossed Gower and entered through the pedestrian entrance. This was the same side of the lot on which the pilot had been filming the night of the murder, near the Prosser Building.
Detective Rose was waiting, wearing sunglasses and what seemed to be the same outfit she’d worn the night of the murder. She held a tablet in her hand. Her lips curled into a smirk.
By way of greeting she said: “I’ve been looking over the lot—particularly at the cameras.” She started walking in the direction of the Prosser Building; assuming she wanted me to follow, I fell in beside her. “We have footage of you making your way down here—then you double back and go down the alley, and you’re out of sight for a couple of minutes.”
My heart started pounding harder. Why was she investigating me? Despite Dan’s absurd allegation—I was no murderer! “I—um—I stopped to talk to a friend while I was out…”
She turned to me. “Your roommate, Daniel Sullivan. Who just happens to be our eyewitness.”
“That’s something I—I mean. I meant to—to—”
“What’d you and Mr. Sullivan talk about?” Her brusque manner had me feeling intimidated and disoriented.
“Sushi,” I said. Then explained, stammeringly.
“Mm-hm. Why didn’t you mention that our eyewitness is your roommate?”
“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” I said. Because I still had Dan’s stupid admonition in my head. “I mean—last night was the first I heard about it. I mean—I didn’t know.”
“Mm-hm. You seem nervous again.”
“I’m being grilled by a police detective about a murder…”
She chuckled. “I’m not grilling you. We’re just out for a stroll.” She stopped, and pointed at the Hudson Building. On the corner, at about the second story, sat one of the small domed cameras that dotted the Mountaincrest lot. “So that camera there… it picked you up as you left the alley and headed north…”
“Toward Joe’s trailer.”
She nodded. “Three minutes later, Dan and a young female, Heather Baker, left the alley and headed east… toward the Big City Backlot.”
“Um.”
“Yeah,” she said. “’Um.’ Anyway. Let’s go this way.” She pointed northwest and started walking. I followed alongside. She tapped the tablet screen and then held it out so I could see.
There was me, walking in the semidarkness of the lot at night.
“It’s funny how bad the lighting is on this lot at night.”
“Yes,” I stammered. “The—um, the energy efficient lights they use aren’t always—don’t always keep things all that well lit.”
“Between the lighting and the camera blindspots, it’s making things a bit difficult for me in my investigation. Do you know about the blindspots?”
“I’ve heard about them.”
She nodded. “I talked to a security guard. They’re caused by a combination of the lot’s odd layout, budget restrictions, and Intellectual Property issues. There’s a lot of stuff on the lot that isn’t supposed to be photographed. But that being said, about seventy percent of the lot is covered by security cameras.”
“Um.”
She went on, as if she (thankfully) hadn’t heard me: “I mean—you’d have to be really serpentine about it, but—it’s possible that a highly motivated and knowledgeable person could make their way from one end of the lot to another while keeping in those blindspots, and not be seen on any camera.”
“Um. But I didn’t,” I felt compelled to say.
She was back to tapping on the tablet, and stopped again. “You know, I’ve been thinking—your roommate gave an almost absurdly accurate description of Joe Stewart as the killer…”
“That’s not how I’d put it.”
She turned the tablet toward me. There was an image of Joe Stewart, walking down one of the pathways between two buildings. I realized that, in fact, we were now standing in roughly the same spot in which Joe was in the image. “There’s Joe, captured by that camera right above us.” She nodded toward the camera set about the second floor of the Palmer Building.
“Um,” I said. That building was the lot’s second oldest, and had been renovated ten months ago—what a mess that had been!
She tapped the screen a few more times, then turned the tablet back toward me. “And this—do you recognize this person?”
It was Michael, also captured by the same camera.
“We’ve really been working hard, going through all the security footage from the lot. I noticed that this particular camera caught both Michael and Joe walking through the lot that night—but I also noticed that it captured someone else…”
I felt my heart pounding in my chest and my palms dripping sweat. I rubbed them on my pants casually, so she wouldn’t see. I had no reason to be nervous! She turned the tablet screen back toward me.
There was an image of a figure walking in a sort of crouch, head bent down so his or her face wasn’t visible, although it appeared to be daytime. The person wore dark clothes—either brown or dark blue pants and a dark jacket.
I felt relieved to see that it wasn’t me.
“Here we have someone walking right underneath this camera at 6:54 PM—that’s just before the screening started, right?”
“Right.”
“Then at 8:36 PM, the mystery many comes running back…” She tapped the screen and the image started moving. The person’s head was still down, his movements were strange—a sort of jerky trot. “…And we haven’t been able to find him again. There’s lots of footage to go through, with all the cameras.” She sighed.
Before I could say anything sympathetic in response, I got a text from Philip: Where are you? Red alert! All hands on deck we’re mtg w dumbestic Crosswaters and CEO conf rm NOW!
“Dumbestic” was what we sometimes called our counterparts in Mountaincrest’s Domestic Marketing department. We had a rivalry that wasn’t always good-natured, but that wasn’t worth going into right now. “I—um—I have a meeting to go to…”
She nodded. “You mind if I tag along? I’d like to show this image to some other people. Maybe someone knows who this mystery person is…”
***
In fact, someone did recognize the “mystery person.” Charyn Glenn said it resembled a man named Thomas Wilson, who’d worked as a Line Producer on the last ToJ film.
“This was someone that both Michael and Joe knew?” Detective Rose asked, obviously interested.
Charyn’s face got red. “Yes. In fact, Michael—slept with Thomas’s wife.”
That got Detective Rose’s notebook out. “You didn’t think to mention this earlier?”
“Well… Michael probably ruined several relationships.”
Detective Rose eyed her skeptically. “If you know of any others, I’d like to hear about them. In the meantime, do you know why Thomas was on the lot?”
Charyn shrugged and eyed the rest of us awkwardly. The meeting had taken a truly strange and uncomfortable turn. “I haven’t seen or heard from him in over a year and a half. He didn’t take the breakup of his marriage very well. He started drinking and… I don’t think he’s worked in all that time.”
“All right,” Detective Rose said in a disappointed tone. “I guess I’ll have to find out why he was on the lot.” With that, she dismissed herself.
It was difficult to stay focused on work. Especially as this new revelation put things very much up in the air. We mapped out two different marketing strategies—one that emphasized the presence of the man who appeared in nearly every scene of the film, and one that left out all mentions of him entirely. But, really, at this late date, all we could do was either pull the film from release, or blast social media with sock puppet comments about how great the movie was, regardless of the legal status of its star.
When the meeting ended, I went back to my desk and Googled Thomas Wilson and Sandy Wilson. Thomas Wilson had a mediocre list of credits on the Internet Film Directory Network. That screen was up when Heather approached my desk. She was in a short skirt and sweater combination that was much more flattering than her page uniform. Without a word she sat in the chair beside my desk and crossed her legs.
“Hey,” she said.
“Um. Hello.”
“Dan said you wouldn’t mind talking to me about your work here in marketing. That’s what I’m really interested in. Dan said that—well, that you kinda owe him…”
“I owe him?”
“Yeah. He did you a favor…”
She was obviously referring to his lies to the police. Which was rich, but that was just Dan being Dan. Unfortunately, Dan was Dan a lot. “I’m—sorry, but this isn’t—”
She started to pout and bat her eyes, but her attention was caught by my computer screen. “Hey—that’s Tommy,” she said.
“You know him?”
“Yeah. He attends tapings all the time. Kind of a loser. But then, most paid audience are.”
“So… He’s on the lot a lot?”
She nodded. “Oh, sure. When The Stacey Wilson Show is taping he’s here like, every day.”
Which seemed like information Detective Rose would be interested in hearing.
***
It was huge news when Joe Stewart was officially cleared of all suspicion and that the police were now looking for Thomas Wilson. To capitalize, Dumbmestic arranged for a press conference at the Turndown Theater on Wilshire the next day.
They insisted on having me there. More than that, they insisted on having me actively participate in the press conference. After all, I was the Mountaincrest marketing executive who’d “broken” the case.
I stood with Charyn at the back of the dais, well behind the podium. I wished I could have gotten farther back. Tustin, maybe. My heart was racing and my palms were sweaty. Stretched out before us were dozens of reporters and photographers from dozens of international and domestic outlets. Thankfully, with the overhead lights pointed directly in my eyes, they were all just faceless blobs.
Charyn put her hand on my waist. “Nervous?”
“N—no. Of course not,” I lied. Suavely.
“Joe and I think you’d be a perfect replacement for Michael. Whatever you’re making now, we’ll double it.”
“Um,” I said.
She smiled. “You don’t need to answer right away. Think it over.”
Suddenly Joe, beaming, leapt onto the dais and charged for me. Instinctively I flinched, but I thought I covered it well. (Until I watched the footage later, of course—how embarrassing!) He reached out and squeezed my hand as we shook. He put his left hand on my right shoulder, and squeezed that, too. It hurt. He had a hell of a grip.
I winced and he said, “Sorry—I don’t know my own strength.”
He turned and stepped to the podium, breathed a deep, heavy sigh, and gave the cameras a serious look. “I am thrilled to be out from under the cloud of suspicion that’s hung over me the last few days. But this feeling is softened by the fact that Michael was killed, and the man who is responsible has disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Thomas had gotten onto the lot as a member of the Stacey Wilson Show audience, and taken advantage of his knowledge of security camera blindspots to hide out without being seen. After getting his revenge on Michael, he’d snuck off the lot again, and gone into hiding. So the theory went.
Joe continued: “I want to thank the police for being so thorough in their investigation. But I also want to thank Chris Powell, of the Mountaincrest International Marketing Department!”
He turned toward me, smiled, and began clapping. The “reporters” in the audience did the same.
Abashed, I raised a hand in acknowledgement. A very sweaty, trembling hand.
Back into the microphone, Joe continued: “Chris is the—I guess you’d call him the Marketing Detective. We’re thinking of creating a character based on him to join the Benjamin Travesty Incredible Excursions team in the sixth Travesty of Justice movie—which will start filming next fall!”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. About having a character based on me, I mean. There was definitely going to be a sixth ToJ. In the last few days, the tracking for the new movie had gone from the low teens to the mid-sixties. If the projections held, it would be Joe’s biggest domestic opening ever (not adjusted for inflation).
“Anway. Woo-hoo!” he laughed. “Why don’t we have Chris come up here and say a few words, huh?”
Oh please no, I thought. No no no no no no no.
I felt his hand on my shoulder. A very strong hand. Forcing my body toward the microphones. Beyond the microphones, from somewhere behind all the lights, I could hear some light applause and the movement of people.
Now my mind was racing: All of us wandering the lot had been captured by one camera in particular, installed during the renovation of the Palmer Building about six months after the fourth ToJ had filmed its pickups on the lot. I remembered in one of Joe’s interviews—for EntertainMe Weekly—Joe had talked about his preparation for that movie’s “London Pursuit” scene. He’d practiced on the lot.
I had a genuinely mad idea. It almost made sense except for one problem that I couldn’t resolve. So I decided to just say something banal, then return to Charyn’s side.
“Um,” I said, into the microphone.
“We’re gonna call his character ‘Timid Timmy’!” Joe called out. The insulting name that Michael had called me. Which meant that the two of them had probably shared some laughs at my expense.
Which made me mad. My mouth started speaking: “It—um—it means a lot for Joe to—um—introduce me like that. Joe is a true movie star and very dedicated to his—um, his—you know, his acting. That dedication probably helps him—I mean—he can use that research—um. Sorry. Joe does a lot of—of research for his roles.” I was so nervous!
“Oh yeah!” he agreed, earnestly.
“Well, the mistake that we made was in assuming there was only one murder on the lot last Tuesday. In fact, there were two. Well—I mean, there was one murder, and one other death. Maybe the other death was an accident and maybe not—I—um, I don’t know—”
The milling about had stopped and a stunned silence descended on the room.
Suddenly Joe was standing beside me. “Let’s give Chris a big hand everybody—”
“What do you mean two murders?” a voice called out.
“Yeah! This sounds like breaking news!” another shouted.
Joe whispered in my ear, “You be very, very careful. There could be serious consequences for you if you say the wrong thing.” But Joe, being an intense guy, “whispered” so loudly that his words were clearly picked up by the microphones.
Joe took only a step back. I could feel his eyes boring through me. I wiped sweaty palms on my pants.
Dan pushed his way onto the stage, a powdered donut in one hand and a bottle of Snapple in the other (he’d been at the craft services table). He positioned himself beside me. “Give it to ‘em, Chris!” he said, taking a bite of donut.
It was somehow—reassuring to have him there. Even more reassuring: I saw Detective Kelly Rose standing beside the dais, eyeing me with interest. I hadn’t realized she was there.
“There was—a witness who saw Thomas confront Michael. It’s true that Thomas had been waiting for him all day on the lot,” I said, holding desperately to the podium. Like my life depended on it. “He knew Michael would be there, because of the screening. He also knew about Joe’s trailer, since his wife had slept with Michael in it. So he probably—he camped out in that trailer waiting for the screening to start. Then he snuck over there so he could watch from a distance… Then when Michael left the screening, he followed him. I don’t know what happened, obviously—since the two people involved are now—dead. Um. Sorry, I’m not very good at this…”
“You’re doing great,” Dan said, patting my shoulder with his powdered donut hand. Then he turned toward the crowd, pointed to himself, and said, “I’m the eyewitness! But I kinda got it wrong. See, I was distracted because—”
“Please,” I said, raising my hands. “Um. Anyway. There was a fight—during which—um, Thomas was killed. That’s why—Michael’s hands were all bruised and—and so on. The eyewitness saw Michael dragging Thomas’s body, and just assumed it was the other way around when Michael’s body was found. So then Michael called Charyn, who sent Joe to find him. Maybe to help him. And then, um—”
It was at this point I started to realize that actually accusing Joe of murder could be very dangerous to me professionally and physically. “Well, Joe… found Michael. And then, um, well, something happened to Michael that caused him to get his neck snapped.”
I stopped and stared blankly at the crowd. I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat, and I was sure the microphones must be picking it up.
“Um,” I said, vaguely. “An intense person coming upon a scene like—well, if an intense person saw what Michael had done—an intense person might lose their temper. Maybe.
“And if they’d lost their temper, and—um—did stuff—they might not be totally certain that they’d kept to the security camera blindspots around the lot. So they’d have to wait for the police to go through the footage to be sure there was nothing of the original confrontation between Michael and Thomas, or of—um—that intense person doing stuff.” See? I hadn’t accused Joe of anything!
Nevertheless, Joe didn’t appreciate my caginess. I happened to catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye: Those big, strong hands that had (allegedly!) snapped Michael’s neck were balled into terrifying-looking fists.
“Once they were sure there was no incriminating footage, they could safely point an accusing finger at Thomas. Then they’d get a big promotional push out of it—this press conference, for instance—and all suspicion would evaporate from—from, um—from, you know… from a certain person.”
“A guy who looks like Joe Stewart!” Dan said, triumphantly. Sadly, I was the only one there who could appreciate the in-joke, and I was too nervous to laugh.
Joe said, “This is bizarre! You’re crazy!”
“Wait,” Dan said, sipping from his Snapple and ignoring Joe who was standing right beside him. “Sorry—I don’t mean to step on your big reveal but I see two problems with this. First: Why would the guy who looks like Joe Stewart not just leave Thomas’s body there, so it would look like Michael and Thomas killed each other? Second, I happen to know for a fact that Thomas couldn’t have done it, since he’d been in a car accident a couple of weeks back. He broke his hand and hurt his back. At the last taping I saw him at, he was all hunched over—” He paused and his eyes got wide. “He was walking like he was defeated!”
And that was what had bothered me. “Whoever killed Thomas knew that no one would believe someone with his injuries could have snapped Michael’s neck!” I squealed triumphantly. “So they used their knowledge of the lot’s security camera blindspots to navigate their way back to—um, a convenient trailer—to hide Thomas’s body so it could be disposed of later. But they hadn’t counted on an ‘eyewitness’ identifying a guy who looked like Joe Stewart as the killer—so they had to re-adjust their plan!”
When Joe Stewart, insane rage in his eyes, lunged for me, the security people weren’t sure what to do. I can’t blame them. Joe was one of the biggest stars in the world, while I was—well, I was Timid Timmy. Luckily, Dan was there to tangle him up long enough for Detective Rose to jump onto the dais, gun drawn, and take charge.
With Joe in custody, the police searched the lot from top to bottom, starting with the infamous trailer. Eventually, the entire story came out: Thomas had hidden out in Joe’s trailer all that day—he’d gotten a key from his ex-wife. The rest was mostly as I’d guessed. Michael, Thomas, and Joe had known about the blindspots thanks to their work on the previous ToJ film; but they hadn’t known about the new camera, which was why all three of them had been seen on it.
Amazingly, I kept my job. I was certain that publicly accusing the studio’s biggest star of murder would be very bad for my career. But given Joe’s arrest, Mountaincrest decided to cash in on the film’s insurance policy. They probably made more than they would have if the movie had actually been released. Hollywood accounting being what it is and all.
But the night of the press conference I was still a wreck. I couldn’t stop shaking as Dan and I ate shawarma and (at Dan’s insistence) re-watched it. “Right here, this moment—look at Joe’s face! That’s when he realizes you’re about to nail him!” He sounded proud.
“Um,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.
Ricky Sprague is the scripter of the Moonstone Kolchak graphic novel DAWN OF THE DEMONS (publication date July 2018) and the forthcoming graphic novels GUT-SHOT and CAGE OF NIGHT from Short Scary Tales (hopefully appearing later in 2018). His stories and articles have appeared in ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE, MYSTERY WEEKLY, MAD, and CRACKED, among others. He is the author of the novels WHIMSICAL DR SHOE, ARSOLE FANTÜME GENTLEMAN IMMORALIST, and LIVE IT DOWN. His short animated films have screened at festivals worldwide, including Spike & Mike’s, Sydney Underground, L.A. Shorts, and Dragon*Con.
