She looked at the blank TV screen, wrinkled her forehead and said, "Darkman reminds me of a guy at the theater. I mean, he's completely different. He's built different, he looks different, but he sort of has… the aura of Darkman. He moves like Darkman, sometimes."
"Okay. Don't move."
He hurried back to the spare bedroom, looked around and spotted the Xerox of Redon's Cyclops still lying on the bed.
"Close your eyes," he told her, when he got back. "I'm going to hold a paper in front of your face. I want you to look at it for a second, no more, then close your eyes again. You're trying for a momentary impression… Open your eyes when I say 'Open.' "
"Okay…"
He held the Xerox in front of her face and said, "Open."
Her eyes opened but didn't close again, and after a little more than a second, he whipped the paper behind his back.
"Jesus," she whispered. "I feel like a fuckin' Judas."
"Who is it?"
"It could be Carlo Druze. You saw him the first day you were at the theater. He was the guy practicing onstage."
"I knew it," Lucas said. The thrill of it ran down his spine, and he shuddered. "He's the goddamned juggler, right? The guy you never see without makeup. I knew I'd seen him."
"I feel like…"
"Fuck that," he barked. "You saw your friend Elizabeth. You want to look at this woman up in Maplewood? We think he used a screwdriver on her…"
"No, no…"
"Are there any good photos of him at the theater? Publicity stuff, anything?"
Cassie nodded, but tentatively. "He's a very scarred man. He doesn't like photo sessions. Sometimes he uses cosmetics to cover up… but he's most comfortable in stage makeup. That's how you usually see him in the publicity shots. Full makeup. I don't know if there'd be any raw photos…"
"Can we get in?"
She hesitated. "I could get us inside the building, but the office is locked. And letting you go through the files… I don't know."
"C'mon, Cassie," Lucas said, a little less harshly. He reached out and touched her. "You can keep the plans for the fuckin' revolution. I just need a photo of the guy…"
"All right," she said. Then, following him back to the bedroom, she added, "I feel like a shit for saying this, but I keep thinking of more things… Carlo didn't like Elizabeth and she didn't like him."
Lucas, pulling on a shirt, said, "Was she planning to fire him?"
Cassie shrugged. "Who knows? The feeling was, she didn't like him because of his looks. As an actor, he's not bad."
Lucas stopped and looked at her: "Could Druze do this? Is he capable of it? Killing people?"
She shivered. "Of all the people I know… yeah, I'd say he's the most likely. But not with passion. I don't understand the eyes. If he wanted to kill somebody, he'd just do it, and walk away."
"Huh. Interesting," said Lucas. He put on a sport jacket, then dug through the bottom drawer of his bureau, found a leather wallet and stuck it in his jacket pocket. "Let's go look." • • • On the way across town, Lucas said, "When I saw him that time at the theater, I asked you where he was when Armistead was killed. You told me he'd been around all afternoon."
"Yeah…" Her forehead wrinkled. "He was around. But people come and go all the time. Run across the street for a cinnamon roll, down Cedar for a cheeseburger. Nobody notices. The theater's only ten minutes from Elizabeth's house."
"But your impression was that he'd been around…"
"Yeah. I really can't remember, though… A cop interviewed him the day after, maybe he'd know."
"But if he killed Armistead, how does the phony phone call fit?" Lucas asked. "We figured the killer was calling to find out if she was at work…"
"Maybe… this sounds stupid, but maybe somebody was just trying to get a free ticket?"
"That's usually what fucks up an investigation, trying to find a reason for everything," Lucas admitted. "But the call was odd. I still think… I don't know." They parked in front of a rock bar and looked across the street at the theater's dark windows.
"I don't like this," Cassie said nervously, looking up and down the street. "People come in and out of here all the time. And if anybody found out, I'd lose my job. For sure."
"I doubt it," Lucas said, smiling at her. She didn't like his smile. There was an edge of cruelty to it. "Things can be arranged."
"Like what?"
He looked past her at the front of the theater. "You'd be surprised how many building, zoning and health violations you can find in a place like that. I doubt an old theater could survive, if somebody really wanted to tote them all up."
"Blackmail," she said.
"Law enforcement."
"Sure," she said, with distaste. "I don't think I could live with that."
She got out of the car and led the way across the street. The theater was dark, but as she opened the door with her key, she called, "Hello? Anybody here?"
No answer. "This way," she said in a hushed voice. They crossed the lobby in the weak light from the street and started down a hallway. Cassie patted the left wall, found a light switch and turned on a single hall light. Lucas followed her to a red wooden door. She tried the doorknob and found it locked. "Damn it. I was hoping it'd be open," she said.
"Let me look," Lucas said. He took a small metal flashlight from his jacket pocket, knelt at the lock, shined the light into the crack between the door and the jamb, turned the knob as far as he could, then turned it back.
"Can you open it?"
"Yeah." He took the wallet, a trifold, from his pocket. He opened it, laid it flat on the floor and slipped out a thin metal blade.
"What're you doing?"
"Magic," he said. He put the blade in the crack between the door and the jamb, and rotated the blade downward; the bolt slipped back. "Shazam."
The office was small, untidy, with lime-green walls, a metal desk with a phone, four chairs, a bulletin board and file cabinets. A faint smell of mildew and old cigarette smoke hung in the air. As Lucas put his lock set back into his pocket, Cassie stepped to one of the file cabinets and pulled open a drawer. Hundreds of eight-by-ten photos were jammed into manila folders. She took out two, a bulging pair, and laid them on the desk.
"He'll be in these," she said. She started going through them, tapping Druze's face wherever she found it. "Here… here… here he is again."
"He's good at avoiding the camera," Lucas said. He took several of the photos and held them under the light. Druze was always in stage paint or makeup. Sometimes his face was obscured by a hat; at other times by a hand gesture.
"Here's the best one so far," Cassie said, flipping a photo out to Lucas.
Troll, he thought. Druze had a round head, too large for his body. And although he was wearing makeup, there were obvious changes in his skin texture, as if his face had been quilted together. His nose was shortened, ruined.
"That's the best," Cassie said, finishing with the pictures. "But, ah…" She glanced at another file cabinet.
"What?"
"If we can get this other cabinet open, we could look through the personnel files. There may be a straight head-shot… The cabinet's always locked."
"Let's look," Lucas said. He glanced at the lock on the cabinet, took a pick out of the wallet and had the lock open in less than a second.
"That's fast," Cassie said, impressed.
"For office file cabinets, you get more of a master key than a pick," Lucas said. "I'm not that good with the picks."
"Where do you get them?" she asked.