Davillia put down her thermos and approached the stage, her bracelets jingling. She wore an emerald-green kimono with a long string of multicolored beads. Lee imagined her bedroom closet full of dozens of various colored kimonos.
“Sara, darling, start that speech again, will you?” she cooed in her affected accent. “But this time really let your emotional reaction to his strange behavior fuel your entrance more-all right, lovey?”
Sara nodded and they went back to the beginning of the scene. Davillia returned to her chair and her coffee, delicately plucking off pieces of muffin, using her fingers with their long, brightly painted nails. Sara entered from the wings and stopped abruptly when she saw Antipholus and his servant. Glaring at them, she flung her arms out angrily. Her face reddened as she sputtered her lines furiously.
Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown: Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects; I am not Adriana nor thy wife.
When Sara had finished the entire speech, Davillia leapt to her feet, clapping her hands like a child.
“Yes, yes-that’s it! Brava-see what I mean?”
“Yes,” Sara said, blushing and looking pleased with herself.
Lee studied the other actors onstage. Mindy’s understudy, the young woman playing Luciana, looked on with shy appreciation, and Keith Wilson was smiling broadly. Ryan Atkins stared at Sara with an expression of entranced adoration on his freckled face. His pale blue eyes brimmed with emotion.
Lee spotted Ryan’s brother, Danny, watching from the wings. The look on his face was very different-his features were frozen in a mask of intense disapproval. Without changing his expression, he wheeled about and disappeared backstage.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Caroline Porchowsky stepped into the hallway from the overheated apartment and locked the door behind her. She slipped on the lime-colored wool coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck. It was one of those bone-chilling February days, the kind that eats right through to your core, though the apartment was so hot she had carried the coat into the hall before putting it on. She felt a little guilty for taking her roommate’s coat without asking, but it was such a lovely color, and Sara wouldn’t be home for some time. Caroline was only going to slip across the street to the bodega and pick up a few things, and she would be back before her roommate returned from her restaurant job.
Normally Sara didn’t work on Tuesdays, but she had been called to fill in for another waitress who had taken ill. Sara had worn her other winter coat, the gray down jacket with the red lining, so Caroline decided it wouldn’t do any harm to use the green coat. Besides, it was a rare opportunity-Sara rarely wore anything else this time of year, and could usually be seen a block away in her bright green coat. So Caroline snatched the chance to wear the coveted garment, just this once.
She often wore her roommate’s clothes without asking. There was something delightfully wicked about getting away with it. Lately Sara had been asking questions that made Caroline think she had begun to suspect, but Caroline always denied her accusations. The clandestine nature of it was half the fun-if she asked permission, the whole thing would lose its appeal. She was very good at acting innocent-or thought she was-though she worried that Sara, being an actress, could see through her wide-eyed protestations.
Still, she enjoyed the game, and as she pulled the collar tightly around her thin neck, she sighed with pleasure. This particular shade of green went so well with her eyes, she thought-the coat really looked better on her than on Sara. She was pulling on her leather gloves when she thought she heard the soft click of the front door latch. She peered down the narrow flight of stairs but didn’t see anyone in the tiny foyer of the tenement building.
Caroline piled her hair up inside a gray wool beret, slid on a pair of sunglasses, and proceeded down the steep staircase, clutching the banister as she went. There was a loose step right before the landing, and she looked down to make sure of her footfall.
She never saw the attack coming. Her first awareness of it was the sensation of the cold metal as it slid into her gut, perforating her small intestine. She made no sound except for a single guttural grunt as she sank to her knees. She stared down in disbelief and astonishment as thick dark blood pulsed from her body. Only then did she look up into the face of her attacker. Curiously, her face held an expression of wonderment rather than fear, as though she was bewildered that anyone could want to do such a thing to her. By then it was too late-life was draining from her body with every beat of her heart.
She was still alive when her attacker fled the building, walking quickly in the direction of the subway. But by the time he reached the platform, she was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“No mask this time,” Elena Krieger said. “But otherwise the same MO?”
“Yep,” said Butts. “She was ambushed in the foyer of her building, run through with a single stab wound, and left to die.”
“It wouldn’t have taken her long to bleed out from a wound like that,” said Lee.
They were staring at crime scene photos taped to the bulletin board in Butts’s cramped office. The call had come in about Caroline’s death a little after noon, and now it was nearly four. Her body was already at the ME’s office, and the three of them were back at the precinct awaiting the autopsy results. Not that they expected to learn much from it, though there was still a thin hope of some trace evidence turning up on the body.
“Why no mask this time?” asked Krieger, studying the photos. Poor Caroline lay on her back, her unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling of the drafty lobby where she had taken her last breaths. Her bright green coat was stained with crimson blotches of dried blood. A pair of sunglasses lay to one side of the body.
“Could have been he was in a hurry because he was about to be discovered,” Butts replied. “Or-”
“He realized he had killed the wrong person,” Lee finished for him. “Caroline Porchowsky was Sara Wittier’s roommate.”
“So when he saw that he had the wrong person, he abandoned his plan and fled?” said Krieger. “Without leaving his ‘signature’ behind?”
“Right,” said Lee. “The signature only had meaning for his intended victim. Caroline was a mistake-the wrong place and the wrong time.”
Krieger shook her head. “Poor girl.”
“Either that or he heard someone comin’ and cleared out fast,” said Butts. “Either way-” The phone rang, and he snatched it up. “Yeah? No kiddin’? Okay I’ll be right down.” He hung up and turned to the others. “They think they got DNA this time. I’m goin’ down to the lab.”
Lee looked at his watch. “It’s almost time for rehearsal. I’m going over there.”
“Okay, see you there,” said Butts. “I won’t be long. I’ll send Sergeant McKinney in the meantime.”
“Did you manage to reach Sara?” asked Krieger.
“They said at the restaurant she was going to rehearsal straight from work.”
Krieger’s eyes widened. “So she doesn’t know yet?”
“No, and that’s the way we’re going to leave it,” said Butts. “Don’t worry-we’ve still got a patrol unit watchin’ her.”
“If the killer is in the cast, when she turns up alive, his reaction should give him away,” Lee explained. “ If he didn’t realize he had made a mistake at the crime scene.”
“But these are actors,” said Krieger. “They should be good at hiding their real feelings and pretending, no?”
“Even the best actor won’t be able to suppress a micro-expression of astonishment,” Lee replied. “That’s what we’re counting on.”