“No. We got there in time.” Serena shook her head and glanced across the room at Stride. “Another thirty seconds and I think our lives as we know them would have been over.”
Stride said nothing. He knew what she meant. If they hadn’t arrived in time — if Dean Casperson had gone through with the rape and Stride had found them afterward — he wasn’t sure he would have been able to stop himself from pulling the trigger when he put his gun to Casperson’s head. As it was, it had been a close call. He could still feel the violence in his veins.
“I’m worried about what comes next for Cat,” Stride said. “The media focus on her is going to be ferocious. I don’t know if she’s ready for this. The whole world is going to know who she is. Her past will be in every magazine. Then there’s the trial, too. If the county attorney can’t do a plea bargain, Casperson’s attorneys will try to shred her on the stand.”
“Cat’s tough,” Maggie reminded him.
“What she did took guts,” Cab added. “She succeeded where everyone else failed. She took Dean Casperson down all by herself.”
Stride caught Serena’s eye. That was Cat, full of contradictions. He wanted to lock her in her room and keep her safe, he wanted to scream at her for being so stupid, and he wanted to tell her how proud he was that she would sacrifice herself to right a wrong that had been going on for decades.
Serena sat down at the conference table. “Meanwhile, we still don’t know where Aimee Bowe is.”
“I don’t think Jungle Jack was involved,” Maggie told her. “We asked him about Aimee after he started talking, and he said he and Mo didn’t have anything to do with it. I think he’s telling the truth on this one.”
“I agree,” Serena replied. “I don’t see what Dean, Mo, or Jack would gain by staging a sick copycat of what happened eleven years ago.”
“Except Aimee echoed the movie script when she made the audiotape,” Stride pointed out. “Why do that if whoever took her had nothing to do with the movie? What’s the message?”
Serena shook her head. “Aimee told me Art didn’t do it. Maybe she’s giving us a clue about who did.”
The room was silent for a while. Then Maggie spoke carefully, as if she knew she was on shaky ground. “Serena, you weren’t around here back then. You didn’t know Art. We dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’ on that investigation.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t. You still could have missed something. It happens.” She got out of the chair and slipped on her winter coat. “I’m going to the hospital to check on Cat. Then I’m heading home to go over the Leipold case files.”
Stride nodded. “I’ll be there soon, too.”
Serena left the room, her face grim.
Cab’s phone started ringing, and he left the room to take the call. Stride and Maggie were alone, but the past was in the room with them. They’d spent hours in a room like this eleven years earlier, when they were tying Art Leipold to the murders. They stared at each across the table.
“Do you think Serena could be right?” Stride asked.
“About Art? No. Either it’s a stalker or it’s a copycat.”
“I wonder,” he mused. “I don’t like to think about it, but is it possible we were played back then? Did someone hate Art Leipold enough to set him up?”
“Do you have someone in mind?”
Stride frowned. He did have someone in mind, and he didn’t like where his thoughts were taking him. There was only one man who was linked to both Art Leipold and the movie.
Before he could say anything more, Cab came back into the room.
“Mo knew we were coming,” he told them. “Someone tipped her off about Cat’s video and Jack’s arrest.”
“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.
“That was Lala on the phone. When they got to Casperson’s estate in Captiva, Mo was already gone. The staff doesn’t know when she’s coming back. If she knows we’ve got Jack in custody, she knows we’re coming after her, too. And she’s got the resources to hide anywhere in the world.”
44
When Stride finally got home, the man he was looking for was already there. Chris Leipold was huddled in one of the Adirondack chairs on his porch. The writer was as white as the snow, and he’d obviously been drinking. A half-empty bottle of brandy was still in his hand. He stared at Stride through bloodshot eyes. His speech was slurred by the numbing cold, the lingering effects of his virus, and the dulling effects of the alcohol.
“It’s over,” Chris said. “It’s done.”
Stride sat down in a chair next to him. He glanced over his shoulder through the cottage windows. Inside, the lights were on. Serena was already home.
“What are you doing here, Chris?” Stride asked.
“It’s over,” Chris said again.
“What is?”
“The studio’s pulling out of The Caged Girl. The movie’s dead.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.”
“Five years of work up in smoke in five hours. Now I’m the guy who wasted tens of millions of dollars and got nothing to show for it.”
“It’s not your fault that Dean Casperson is a sexual predator.”
Chris shook his head. “You don’t know Hollywood.”
Stride tried to feel bad, but he’d hated the idea of this movie from the beginning. There was no value in celebrating evil. “Be honest with me, Chris. Did you know what was going on?”
The writer turned his head slowly. “About Dean?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Everyone knew. Do you think it’s only him? Every actress has a story about someone in this business. They swallow it down and smile and pretend it never happened. It’s what women everywhere do with powerful men.”
Stride wished that Chris was wrong. But he wasn’t.
“I’ve asked you this question a hundred times,” Stride said, “but I’ve never really gotten an answer. Why did you want to do this movie, anyway? Why did you write a script about what Art did?”
“I already told you; the movie was never about Art.”
“Except it is,” Stride said. “We both know that.”
“I cast a nobody to play Art. I cast Dean Casperson to play you.”
“Yes, thanks for that,” Stride replied drily. “Tell me the truth. How did you really feel about your father?”
Chris took a long time to reply. Then he said, “I loathed him.”
“Even before the murders?”
“Yes. He was a son of a bitch. All my life, he made sure I knew that he was Art Leipold and I was just a mediocre reproduction. A genetic copy made on bad carbon paper. I was never going to accomplish a fraction of what he did. He was a news anchor. I was a nobody.”
“That must have hurt,” Stride said.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve paid a lot of shrinks a lot of money over the years to deal with that. And yes, you’re right, that’s why I did the movie. Sure it is. I wanted to show him up once and for all. I wanted the world to see who he was. A nobody. A cruel, sadistic nobody. Now look what’s happened. Art gets the last laugh. I tried to destroy him, and he destroys me instead.”
Stride stood up and extended a hand. “Come on, Chris, let’s go inside.”
“I should go.”
“You’re in no condition to drive. You can sleep it off on our sofa.”
He helped Chris out of the chair and opened the cottage door. The house was drafty, the way it always was. The lights in the living room were low, and he could hear Serena working in the dining room beyond the great space. He guided Chris to the red leather sofa and draped him across it. He covered him with an afghan. Chris was asleep almost immediately.
Stride joined Serena in the dining room, where the lights were brighter. He kissed her, then went to the kitchen to get another Coke, but the caffeine was losing its punch. He was tired. He took a seat next to Serena and scanned the research she’d been doing. The dining room table was covered with his files and notes from the Art Leipold murders. She’d pulled their television into the room, too, and set it up near the windows. Frozen on the screen was a still of Aimee Bowe from one of her scenes in the movie.