Markham was silent, thinking.
“Would you like to speak with Karl?” Angel asked. “He’s the only bartender on call right now.”
“Yes, I would. But first I ’d like to see any business records associated with Rodriguez—your telephone number for him, pay stubs, a Social Security number for Ricky Martinez. I ’d also like to see what’s left of his act.”
“Yes, of course. But, I have to be honest with you, Agent Markham. We pay most of our employees in cash. That includes our performers. Helps with accounting and whatnot, if you know what I mean.” Angel smiled sheepishly. “I hope you’ll take into consideration how helpful I’ve been when you look into our business records. Last thing I need right now is the IRS breathing down my neck.”
“I understand,” Markham said. “No worries.”
Angel gave a sigh of relief and proceeded to make Markham a copy of his pay ledger. No pay stubs, no phony Social Security number for Rodriguez, just the name “R. Martinez” and the amount he was paid per show: fifty dollars.
Plus tips, Marla Rodriguez had told him.
Angel then led him behind the stage to the dressing room. The space was tight with the smell of body odor and stale hair spray; it was packed wall to wall with spangled dresses and bouffant wigs on Styrofoam heads. Angel brought down an old shoebox from atop the shelf. It was filled with makeup mostly, as well as a tube of glitter, a pair of cheap costume earrings, and a dirty bra and panties. Rodriguez’s wig was still here, Angel explained, but his dress and other accessories were gone—had been “adopted” by the other performers, he figured. Nonetheless, he assured Markham that he would try to track that stuff down, too. Markham informed him that he would have to call the forensic team to collect what remained of Rodriguez’s things. Some men from the Resident Agency would be by shortly, he added, but assured the nightclub owner that they would try not to cause too much of a scene.
Angel thanked him and slipped through the split in the curtains, leaving Markham alone backstage in the dark. He waited there until he saw the lights from the theater spill underneath the curtains and onto his shoes. Then, he stepped out onto the stage. Angel waved to him and disappeared through the door at the rear of the theater.
The Starlight Theater was barely a theater at all, Mark-ham thought. High ceiling, black walls, with only a dozen or so colored spotlights beamed down at its narrow, two-foot-high thrust stage. An electric piano and a sound system stood in the corner to the right; to the left, a handful of tables and chairs.
Markham walked to the edge of the stage and gazed out into the house. He counted the tables, the bistro chairs, and the barstools at the back of the theater and estimated the space could hold about a hundred people. He stepped off the stage and wandered aimlessly about the house. He soon arrived at the bar at the rear of the theater and sat down on one of the stools.
It was then he noticed for the first time the large, glittered sign above the stage: a pair of singing lips and a microphone inside a group of stars—all of it cradled by the word STARLIGHT in the shape of a crescent moon.
A crescent moon and stars.
“Oh my God,” Markham cried. “It’s all right here!”
His mind spinning, his heart pounding in his throat, Markham looked up to find a disco ball on the ceiling. He was off his stool in a flash—went straight for the big spotlight at the right of the bar, where he discovered a control board. He flicked on the small reading lamp—rows of sliding dimmers and switches labeled with electrical tape. He scanned them quickly, figured out the workings of the light board and flicked the switch labeled O-ride/Finale.
All at once the theater was bathed in darkness and in light—a spattering of cutout stars on the curtains; a swirl of shimmering diamonds that slowly picked up speed across the walls. Markham looked upward and instantly became hypnotized by the revolving disco ball. A flashback of a dream, of speeding toward a planet on a spaceship made of fire. Then suddenly the universe and the fire became a crowd—a sparkling theater of silhouetted applause, of music and laughter.
Markham sat down at the bar and stared open-mouthed at the crescent moon above the stage.
He finally understood.
Chapter 24
“I’m telling you I found it,” Markham shouted into his BlackBerry—traffic, a semi passing him on the interstate making it hard to hear.
“You don’t think it’s a coincidence?” Schaap asked on the other end.
“No. The murder sites mimic the dynamic of the Starlight Theater itself—the lips and the microphone inside the stars, the crescent moon. Vlad is literally responding to a message in the sky—perhaps even to a voice that he thinks is speaking to him.”
“Then you’re thinking the theater is where it all began?” Schaap asked.
“Yes. Maybe Vlad had some kind of epiphany there. Maybe something about Rodriguez’s performance set him off. Christ, Vlad could be a performer at Angel’s himself for all I know at this point. All I can tell you is that Rodriguez was the first because of his connection with the crescent-moon visual in the drag theater. I just know it.”
“But how the hell did you connect Rodriguez to Angel’s?”
“The possible homosexual connection to Canning,” Mar- ham lied. “I started canvassing the gay bars in Raleigh on a hunch. Started alphabetically and got lucky.”
Silence on the other end—the sound of Andy Schaap thinking, not believing him. Markham felt a pang of guilt about lying to his partner, but he would take Marla Rodriguez’s secret to the grave with him, no matter what.
“I also checked out the alley behind the club,” Markham continued. “That’s where the performers come and go. It’s dark back there, hidden, and has an adjoining parking lot and a broken-down fence through which the killer could’ve slipped in and out. If Vlad hit them there, if he neglected to pick up his bullet casings—”
“Forensic team is already on its way,” Schaap said. “I’ll meet them there in—”
“No, I need you back at the RA.”
“Why?”
“Just a hunch, but I think I may have discovered Vlad’s constellation, too.”
Chapter 25
“That’s incredible,” Schaap said, leaning in. “The stars line up almost perfectly with the murder sites.”
Markham removed his tracing of the Starlight Theater logo from the map on his computer screen. He held it up next to his BlackBerry and compared it to the picture he’d taken at the club.
“But Sam,” Schaap continued, “there are only three stars in that logo—one star, according to you, for each of the murder sites. If Vlad is following this schematic—that is, if he’s mimicking the pattern of the Starlight logo on the ground—one could argue that his killing spree is over.”
“You’re forgetting about the pair of lips next to the crescent moon.”
“You mean the lips could be thought of as a possible murder site, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“The lips are in roughly the same position as the star in the symbol for Islam. But, per your map, that would put a murder site almost in the center of Raleigh itself.”
Markham set the tracing and the BlackBerry on his desk—leaned on his elbows and rubbed his forehead, thinking. “Those lips and the crescent moon,” he said finally. “When I was sitting there in the theater it was as if something was speaking to me, too. I can’t explain it, Schaap, but I don’t think those lips are finished speaking to Vlad either.”