Gordon nodded. “Seriously, Jer. What about the DePaulentis plan? Maybe we should just go with the original—the way we planned it in the first place.”
“It could work.”
“But what about the sightings? There have been some. And that woman cop?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to go work on it.” He’d always been a good screenwriter—he was fast and he was good—and this was the ultimate challenge. If he just thought of it from that standpoint, as a mental exercise, as fiction, he could do it. His fingers almost itched. When the creative urge hit him, his fingers tingled and his gut roiled. He was primed. He stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“No time like the present.”
BUT AS THE night went on, Jerry realized that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And was this ever a sow’s ear. Talia huffed around the room, in between long-suffering silences. The room was plastered with Storyboard #1 through Storyboard #7, and none of them worked. The bed was covered with Storyboard #8. Talia now sat cross-legged in the doorway to the bathroom alcove, steaming.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Jerry? All these stupid scenarios—it’s ridiculous. Do you think this is a game?”
“There’s a story in here somewhere.”
She grabbed an 8 ½” x 11” sheet of paper taped to the minifridge and crumpled it up. “What’s this? There’s a secret cult that set him up to make him look like a killer because they didn’t agree with his politics? What kind of crap is that?”
“It’s just one in my chain of ideas.”
“Your chain of ideas.”
“Yes. When I start a project like this, nothing is off the table. I toss in every idea I can think of, because that stimulates creativity. It gets me thinking outside the box. Then I narrow it down to—”
“Oh, shut up.” She pressed the button for room service. “Can I get a massage at this hour?”
Before she left, she told him in no uncertain terms that he was never going to get laid again—not unless they fixed this. “I don’t care how you fix this. But I want him dead and I want his estate intact!” And she slammed out of the room.
AROUND 10:00 P.M., frustrated, stymied, depressed, Jerry turned on CNN. And there it was, an apparent re-airing of a press conference from earlier this evening. Sheriff Bonneville of Paradox, Arizona, speaking into the flashing cameras. Jerry didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear about Max’s rampage all over Arizona, or how many people they thought he’d killed now.
“The woman may be with a young boy, about ten to twelve years of age. The boy may be wounded.”
Jerry sat up, transfixed, listening to every word.
When the press conference was over, he rang Gordon’s line. Gordon sounded as if he’d been asleep. And he’d definitely been drinking, or maybe popping those peyote buttons again. “Wass?” he asked.
“Gordon, it’s our lucky day,” Jerry said.
“What’re you talking about?”
“We can do it, Gord. Plan A. We can get our money’s worth out of the DePaulentis thing after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Max isn’t wanted by the law. Near as I can tell, they’re after Shaun and the kid.”
Gordon’s voice changed: he was all business. “Get up here now, Jerry. We need to plan this.”
“See you in five.”
TESS MCCRAE WAS reissued her previous vehicle, the battered old unit with high mileage and an oil leak. Bonny sent her home because he wanted her “fresh in the morning.” And she was tired. Banged up from the crash, and worse, shaken by the sight of the woman walking on the highway, holding the boy. But instead of heading home, she drove onto I-17, going north. When she arrived, the crime scene was lit up like a night football game. The Department of Public Safety was hard at work, measuring the scene. Tess’s car sat on a flatbed tow truck, which pulled out as she arrived.
A detective detached from the roped-off scene, approached Tess’s radio car, and introduced herself as DPS Detective Laura Cardinal.
“Did you find it?” Tess asked.
“Yes.” Cardinal held up the evidence bag containing the purple yo-yo.
The Desert Oasis logo on the yo-yo was clear in the bright-white light that eerily lit the scene.
“It was right where you said it would be, although it was hard to find—it fell into a crevice between those rocks.” The detective nodded toward the rocks close to the road. She looked tired from the long night, but her eyes were probing. Tess wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the detective. “How’d you know?”
“I saw him throw it.”
“The boy.”
Tess nodded. She didn’t say that she must have been too tired and shaken up after the crash to think about it until now. Her memory was her best asset, and yet it had taken awhile for her to realize the significance. “It was on a string around his finger. He was juggling that and the gun. So he pulled it off and threw it.”
Cardinal stared at her. “That’s quite some memory of yours,” she said.
“Some days are better than others,” Tess said.
Chapter Forty-One
IN GORDON’S PALATIAL suite, Jerry and Gordon went over their plan. Fortunately for Jerry, Talia had decided to take a bubble bath. He’d sneaked out without telling her.
They went over the scenario the way it would look to the cops:
Max drives out into the Verde Valley to look at some property he’s interested in. On his way back, he sees a man and woman struggling at a roadside pullout. Max heroically intervenes. The bad guy shoots him and finishes off the woman and the girl. In a panic, the man dumps the woman’s car with the woman and girl inside. He does this by rolling it down an embankment—a half-assed attempt to hide his criminal act. He takes off in his own car, leaving Max dead by the side of the road.
“That’s what the investigators will think,” Jerry said. “Max dies a hero, trying to save the woman and the little girl.”
“I know all that.”
“When he doesn’t show up the next morning, you go looking for him and are shocked to find him dead at the rest area.”
“It still seems a little elaborate to me,” Gordon said. “Especially the part where we have to drive all those bodies to the scene of the crime. Anyone could see us.”
Jerry punched up Google Maps on his smartphone and chose the satellite option. “See? There’re a couple of trees back from the road, and some brush. Besides, we’ll only be there just long enough to arrange everything so it looks right for the cops.”
“Pretty convoluted,” Gordon said. “No wonder your screenplays never sold.”
Jerry said, “Are we going to stop now, Gord? I thought we agreed on this scenario. I thought you were with me on this!”
“I am.”
“You just have to be convincing when you discover him. You can do that, can’t you?”
“In my sleep.” Gordon paused. “You do know this isn’t just a screenplay, right? We’re playing for keeps. What we’re doing is real.”
“I know that.”
“We can’t have any witnesses.”
“I know that.”
“I’m talking about the actors—the woman and the girl.”
“I’m good with that,” Jerry said, and he was. He thought of them as collateral damage when he thought about them at all. It was unfortunate—no doubt about it—but he chose to block his feelings on that score, one reason he had a glass of Macallan scotch at his elbow right this minute. Max had to die a hero. His death had to be bigger than life, important—there had to be self-sacrifice. When you considered what Max’s estate would be worth, at least a billion dollars in the next ten years, there was no margin for error.