"Not soon enough to stop it. That's what counts. I've started my interviews, concentrating on the actors first."
"Yes, the crime's steeped in theatrics. The method, the timing, the staging." More comfortable with the analytical distance, Mira ran the scene in her mind. "An actor or someone who aspires or aspired to be one fits the profile. On the other hand, the murder was clean, well produced, carefully executed. Your killer is bold, Eve, but also cool-headed."
"Would they have needed to see it happen?"
"Yes, I think so. To see it, under the lights, on the stage, with the audience gasping in shock. That, in my opinion, was as important to this individual as Draco's death. The thrill of it and the ensuing act. Their own shock and horror, well rehearsed."
She considered. "It was too well staged not to have been rehearsed. Draco was touted as one of the greatest actors of our time. Killing him was one step. Replacing him, even if only in the killer's mind, was an essential second."
"You're saying it was professionally motivated."
"Yes, on one level. But it was also very personal. If we look at an actor, or an aspiring one, professional and personal motives could be easily blended."
"The only one to tangibly benefit from Draco's death, professionally, is Michael Proctor. The understudy."
"Logically, yes. Yet everyone onstage or attached to that performance benefits. The media attention, the names fixed in the minds of the public, that indelible moment in time. Isn't that what an actor aspires to? The indelible moment?"
"I don't know. I don't understand people who spend their lives being other people."
"The work, the skill, is in making the viewing audience believe they are other people. The theater is more than a job to those who do it well, who devote their life to it. It is, just as your job is to you, a way of life. And on the night Draco was murdered, the spotlight shone a little brighter for everyone in that play."
"In the play, or involved with the play. Not in the audience."
"With current data, I can't eliminate audience members, but am more inclined toward a person or persons closer to the stage." Mira set her cup aside, laid a hand over Eve's. "You're concerned about Nadine."
Eve opened her mouth, shut it again.
"Nadine's a patient, and she's very open with me. I'm fully aware of her history with the victim, and I'm fully prepared, should it become necessary, to give my professional opinion that she isn't capable of planning and executing a violent crime. If she'd wanted to punish Draco, she would have found a way to do so through the media. She's capable of that, very capable."
"Okay, good."
"I've spoken with her," Mira went on. "I know you're interviewing her formally today."
"After I leave here. Just me, Nadine, and her lawyer. I want it on record that she came to me with the information. I can bury the statement for a few days, give her some breathing room."
"That will help." But Mira scanned Eve's face, saw more. "What else?"
"Off the record?"
"Of course."
Eve took a sip of the tea, then told Mira about the video disc in Draco's penthouse.
"She doesn't know," Mira said immediately. "She would have told me. It would have troubled and infuriated her. Embarrassed her. He must have taped it without her knowledge."
"Then the next line would be: What if he showed it to her when she went to see him the day he was murdered?"
"Housekeeping would have reported considerable damage to the suite, and Draco would have been forced to seek emergency medical care before his performance." Mira sat back. "It's good to see you smile. I'm sorry you've been worried about her."
"She was shook when we had our meet. Really shook." Eve pushed out of the chair, wandered to the mood screen, and watched the waves ebb and flow. "I've got too many people buzzing in my ears. It's distracting."
"Would you go back to your life as it was a year ago, Eve? Two years ago?"
"Parts of it were easier. I got up in the morning and did my job. Maybe hung out with Mavis a couple of times a week." She blew out a breath. "No, I wouldn't go back. Doesn't matter anyway. I'm where I am. So… back to Draco."
Eve continued. "He was a sexual predator."
"Yes, I read your updated report just before you arrived. I will agree that sex was one of his favored weapons. But it wasn't the sex itself that fulfilled him. It was the control, the package of his looks, his style, his talent, and sexuality used to control women. Women whom he considered his playthings. And through them, showing his superiority to other men. He was obsessed with being the center."
"And the illegal? A guy uses Rabbit on a woman because he doesn't think he's going to score with her. It takes away her right to choose."
"Agreed, but in this case, I would say it was just another prop to him. No different in his mind than candlelight and romantic music. He believed himself a great lover, just as he knew himself to be a great actor. His indulgences, in his mind, were no more than his right as a star. I'm not saying that sex doesn't play a part in the motive, Eve. I believe, in this case, you have layers and layers of motives, and a very complex killer. Very likely every bit as egocentric as the victim."
"Two of a kind," Eve murmured.
He had it figured. Actors, they thought they were so fucking brilliant, so special, so important. Well, he could've been an actor if he'd really wanted. But it was just like his father had always told him. You work backstage, you work forever.
Actors, they came and they went, but a good stagehand never had to go looking for work.
Linus Quim had been a stagehand for thirty years. For the last ten, he'd been top dog. That's why he'd been offered the head job at the New Globe, that's why he pulled in the highest wage the union could squeeze out of the stingy bastards of management.
And even then, his pay didn't come close to what the actors raked in.
And where would they be without him?
That was going to change now. Because he had it figured.
Pretty shortly the New Globe was going to be looking for a new head stagehand. Linus Quim was going to retire in style.
When he worked, he kept his eyes and his ears open. He studied. Nobody knew what was what and who was what to who in a theater company the way Linus Quim knew.
Above all, he was an expert on timing. Cues were never missed when Linus was in charge.
He knew the last time he'd seen the prop knife. Exactly when and where. And knowing that left only one window of opportunity for the switch. And only one person, to Linus's thinking, who could have managed it so slick. Could have had just enough time to stick the dummy knife in Areena Mansfield's dressing room.
It had taken guts, he'd give 'em that.
Linus stopped by a corner glide-cart for a late-morning snack, loading down a pretzel with bright yellow mustard.
"Hey!" The operator snatched at the tube with a hand protected with ratty, fingerless gloves. "You gonna use that much, you gonna pay extra."
"Up yours, wigwam." Linus added another blob for the hell of it.
"You use twice too much." The operator, a battle-scarred Asian with less than three months on the corner, danced in place on tiny feet. "You pay extra."
Linus considered squirting what was left in the tube in the man's pruney face, then remembered his upcoming fortune. It made him feel generous. He dug a fifty-cent credit out of his pocket, flipped it in the air.
"Now you can retire," he said as the operator snagged it on the downward arc.
He sucked at the mustard-drowned pretzel as he strolled away.
He was a little man, and skinny, too, but for the soccer ball-sized potbelly over his belt. His arms were long for his height, and ropey with muscle. His face was like a smashed dish badly glued back together, flat and round and cracked with lines. His ex-wife had often urged him to spend a little of his hoarded savings on some simple cosmetic repair.