Act III

 

Pete Raynor considered himself a good method actor.

 Under a false name, he once enrolled in an acting workshop taught by Susan Strasberg, and she called him “intensely focused.” She also told him he should complete his post-graduate studies and plan a career away from the footlights, because most actors spend their lives unemployed and scrimping to survive.

 Pete innately understood that this made actors, and others involved in the financially fickle entertainment industry, particularly susceptible to cash money persuasion.

 Years later, when first he conceived the notion of his own 'dream house,' he imagined not a house in total, but a series of rooms. Each would be designed to evoke a mood or enhance a state of mind – like sets in a play. Who better to help him birth this dream than the experienced, efficient (and cheap) crew members from a struggling local theater company?

 For months, he attended terrible productions of Shakespeare, Shaw, and O'Neill, all the while building a rapport with the actors and laborers of the Stockton theater company. They liked Pete; he spouted flattery and treated them to drinks and dinner whenever he passed through town.

 Pete knew people in the industry, people at Fox Reality and The Learning Channel, and he said he could probably get them some work doing dramatization clips, or maybe off-book (non-Union) set construction for above scale pay – provided they would sign confidentiality agreements about any potential projects.

 He pitched them a reality show set in a warehouse filled with theme rooms where “celebrities” would attempt to emulate normal, everyday life. They would take out the garbage, cook their own meals, pay bills, and attempt to engage in other scintillating simple activities, all the while being sabotaged by the production team.

 Watching them fail would provide the sadistic viewer with hours of dark, warped pleasure – it was bound to be a massive hit.

 Pete told them that Gary Busey and Janice Dickinson had already joined the cast, and his producer friend was still trying to boat Perez Hilton.

 It sounded disgusting, and completely plausible, so they bit down hard on the bait. Pete even provided them with a rented Ford truck for their tools, and arranged a group cover story about a wine country vacation.

 When Bruce and Harrison and Kelly arrived on the job site, they were surprised to see that Pete himself was shooting the dramatization clips, and that Pete - a world-class architect – had designed the sets for this silly show.

 Pete explained that without a guaranteed network pick-up, initial costs needed to stay low. He was doing this for fun and as a favor to his buddies – who were all terribly busy in Los Angeles and, sadly, could not visit for a while. The Stockton crew took Pete's cash and bought his story.

 Inside a massive warehouse in the middle of nowhere, Pete had laid out plans for a perimeter of rooms parallel to each wall. The building's center would house a master control production room.

 The guys expected generic, Wisteria Lane, suburban home-type rooms, but the set designs were fairly specific, some unusually so. One looked like a high school girl's bedroom from the 1980s, another like a sterile hospital room, and another like a posh hotel bridal suite. 

 The money was excellent, and Pete was his usual charming self, so they kept their mouths shut and their phones off (as per the production company's confidentiality agreements), bunked on site, and worked day and night until the project was complete.

 One room had a fake view of the Atlantic Ocean, courtesy of overhead LCD projectors, complete with 24 hour loops of beach sounds. It was... weird. Still, they didn't complain, and they finished the sets in short order. Amazingly, it only took about a week to rough out all the rooms. Pete said someone else would handle all the finish work and decoration.

 The only hiccups occurred when Bruce mislaid a hammer, and Kelly lost his cell phone while rolling out insulation in the warehouse ceiling. His friends tried calling the number, to no avail. Kelly must have left it set on vibrate, he reasoned.

 The hammer was no big deal, but no one mentioned the lost phone to Pete, since their confidentiality agreements contained explicit rules about communication while on the work site. After a day or so, it was forgotten and written off as a casualty of the job. No matter, they said. Each man should get paid enough to afford a few dozen phones, plus unlimited data plans.

 Pete threw them a wrap party after the final nail was set. They ate heartily and drank deeply, barely noticing when the normally convivial Pete chose to abstain.

 He thanked them for their work, toasted them with bottled water, and watched impassively as Bruce and Harrison drank strong table wine containing massive doses of potassium chloride, and suffered agonizing, fatal heart attacks.

 The last man standing was Kelly Unhak, a handsome, blond actor of twenty-three years. Young Kelly was spared, for he still had some work to do.

 At gunpoint, Pete made the weeping thespian dig two graves and bury the dead.

 He made him send text messages to the dead men's families and friends, things like: hey bb! wine ctry rawks! all going great, c u soon!

 He gave him a script – several melodramatic monologues about young lovers breaking up – and promised that a good performance would ensure mercy.

 Kelly Unhak acted his heart out, using his own fear like a true professional. He cried sloppy tears for the camera. He pleaded for the heart of a girl named Lindsay as if he would die without her love.

 Pete Raynor considered himself a good method actor. He appreciated how the kid enlivened the monologues by incorporating his own terror.

 Out of respect for the craft, when Kelly finished the last scene, Pete applauded. Then he fired three bullets into the actor's heart.

 “There's only room in my world for one happy ending,” Pete explained.

 Kelly's final facial expression conveyed horrified shock – organically, and right on cue. 

******

 

 Pete stood just inside the door of the bridal suite, where he soon hoped to become reacquainted with his intended.

 Between the soft lighting, luxury bedding, chilled wine and fresh-cut flowers, he believed he had thought of everything.

 Lindsay was coming around. Out of all the treatments he’d administered over the last twelve hours, she had woken prematurely only two times. The first time was during her initial treatment, and she rebelled. Her second unplanned awakening, during the sixth treatment, was far more heartening.

 Pete remained fixated on that second incident, replaying it over and over in his mind.

 She reached for me. She held my hand…and said my name.

 His joy overwhelmed him, and he lay down on the bed to rest in his simulated hotel room. This room had triple-thick walls and double insulation for maximum quiet. And yet, inside this room where you couldn’t hear traffic from the highway, or jets overhead… something was buzzing.

 Pete sat bolt upright and listened until he pinpointed the origin of the buzz – overhead, in the ceiling.

 He dragged the writing desk beneath the sound, stood atop it and bumped loose one of the drop ceiling tiles. Trapped between the tile and the bottom layer of insulation was a buzzing, glowing cell phone. Pete palmed it and looked at the incoming call number – which he instantly recognized.

 Without conscious thought, he tapped the ‘answer’ button, and silently waited on the line.

 “Hello? Mr. Unhak? Is anyone there?”

 That voice, that goddamned annoying vibrato chirp, sounded to Pete Raynor like a death knell.

 “My name is Cindy Thomas, and I write for the San Francisco Register. I was hoping to talk to you about Pete Raynor.”

 “No,” Pete said, and disconnected the call. He hurled the phone against the wall and ran from the room.

 Like a shot, he was back in the control room and punching up his GPS tracking program. During the last several weeks, he had placed small and relatively inexpensive location devices on a number of vehicles, for it behooved a villain to know where the law dogs (and their bitches) roamed.

 Every blinking green dot was right where it should be – clustered around the Bay – except for one. That errant little dot, representing one Cindy Thomas, winked at him from downtown Stockton.

 No. Twenty minutes away. No. She’s coming. No. She’ll ruin everything.

 “No,” said Pete. He slammed a fist against his chair arm.

 “No.” He raced out of the room, down the hall and into Lindsay’s latest cell – a nicely appointed bedroom with yellow walls and pale oak furnishings.

 Lindsay looked up in surprise. She remained cuffed to the run line (a steel cable bisecting the room along the ceiling) by one hand and one foot. These were second tier restraints, a concession because Pete thought they were making progress.

 And perhaps they were, since Lindsay didn’t appear to be up to anything. In benign confusion, she sat on the bed lazily finger-picking the simple dinner Pete left her – half a roasted chicken and some fries on a Styrofoam plate.

 Regardless, Pete still felt threatened by circumstance. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Do they know where we are?”

 Lindsay’s blood went cold; her face froze in what she hoped was a neutral expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 “Does anyone know where we are?” he repeated, louder this time.

 “I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lindsay said, and cowered a bit. “Explain it to me?”

 “No!” Pete shouted, and then held up a placating hand. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just… I wanted us to be alone. If we’re going to make this work again, we need time together, just us, with no distractions.”

 He began to pace in front of the open door; beyond him, Lindsay could see a hallway with a cement floor, and another open door leading to a room filled with monitors and computers and –

 “You know what? Don’t worry about it,” he said, with a sudden smile. “Enjoy your dinner, honey.”

 And with those words, simultaneously innocuous and sinister, he departed.

 Lindsay heard the heavy deadbolt throw on the door, heard his swift footsteps racing away down the hall. In the silence that followed, she also picked up something that sounded like a big garage door – steel on rollers – and the ignition of a large engine.

 Someone’s looking for us. Local cops, maybe? I don’t know how the hell they managed to rattle his cage, but he’s moving to head them off. I need to move, too, before he gets back.

 She counted ten, took a deep, slow breath to quiet her thoughts, and urged her hands into action.

 She peeled back the skin and meat on the chicken and removed a partially cut wishbone. The thick join at the top was still intact, and that was the part she needed. If she eyeballed the key and the antique silver cuffs correctly, the bone end and key head should match up almost…

 Lindsay slipped the chicken bone into the shiny cuff lock, turned it gently clockwise, and felt a faint click.

 Perfectly.

 She swiftly picked the ankle restraint and left the cuffs dangling from the run cable. The door of dead-bolted oak was not a viable exit, and she didn’t waste time on it. Instead, she ripped off the bottom half of a bridal gown she was clearly never meant to wear. She shook out her legs, did a couple of quick stretches, and climbed onto the tall dresser.

 She reached overhead and bumped loose one of the drop ceiling tiles. Her hand searched through rough, itchy insulation until she found the edge of a ceiling joist.

 Okay, old bitch. Let’s see if you’ve still got some hops.

 She bent at the knees and jumped high enough to grasp the joist edge, and the rest was a kicking ruckus of legs and bare feet and puffs of pink insulation. It wasn’t pretty.

 Inspector Lindsay Boxer – heavily drugged, scared half crazy, and wearing the bustier of Emily Hogan’s ruined wedding dress – was making a break for it.

 Now if I can just manage to not fall through the ceiling...

******

 

 After a very confused and angry three-block sprint away from the playhouse and back to her car, Cindy Thomas calmed down enough to attend some basic human functions.

 She found a coffee shop ladies’ room and freshened up a little. A splash of cold water revived her tired eyes. A few wet towels cleaned sticky flop sweat from her neck and arms.

 Cindy addressed herself in the mirror, told herself that panic would get them nowhere. So what if some dumb actor didn’t want to talk about Pete? So what if he was rude and abrupt, and apparently didn’t care that his buddy was a serial killer and kidnapper and general, all-around human detritus?

 “Screw you, Kelly Unhak,” Cindy grumbled. “You could have at least said, ‘no, thank you.’”

 She flung a wet paper towel at the mirror. Lindsay was much better than she at this cool, flip, cavalier stuff. Cindy well and truly wanted to scream, then cry… then have Lindsay walk up behind her and hold her very, very tight, and say that it was all just a bad dream.

 The tears were coming – she could feel them burning just below her skin – and she slapped her palm against the cold porcelain sink.

 “Keep it together,” she told herself, and harshly pushed the tears back down. “You can fall apart once she’s home.”

 Diligent Officer Tim evidently heard noises; he knocked at the bathroom door and asked if she was okay.

 Cindy lied that she was fine. She returned to the coffee shop, where she and her escort enjoyed the world’s most awkward ten minute diet soda date.

 There were no safe topics. Just looking at the little reporter, Dietz could tell that anything he said about Boxer or Raynor would cause her pain. Nothing about the inspector’s fate was certain, but the dread was choking-thick and he had to try something.

“I got their addresses,” he said. “Those three guys you were calling, I got their addresses.”

 Cindy squinted at the lanky, sort of cute copper. “Mrs. Fein said she didn’t have them.”

 “Guess she lied,” Dietz offered with a shrug. “She gave me her phone number, too. She needs a life drawing model.”

 Cindy grimaced and looked away. “You know what that is, right?”

 “Naked posing stuff?”

 “Yeah. Naked posing stuff.”

 Dietz shrugged again. “It’d be worth it, if we find Raynor at one of these addresses.”

 Cindy dropped a ten on the table and they stood to leave. “It certainly would.”

 A block from Cindy’s car, they passed a vacant storefront bordering an alley.

 Pete Raynor emerged from that alley, grabbed Tim Dietz by the hair, and pushed an eight inch hunting knife through his throat.

 One heartbeat later, he fired a barbed tranquilizer dart into Cindy Thomas’ back; she dropped before her breath became a scream.

 He dragged a stumbling Dietz around the alley corner and left him propped against the wall, choking on his own blood.

 He hoisted Cindy over a shoulder, laid her in the truck bed and covered her with a heavy tarp.

 Pete Raynor was on his way out of Stockton, a mere thirty seconds after the attack began.

 He turned on the CD player and tapped the steering wheel, drumming along with Def Leppard.

 ******

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