“What’s that all about?” she asked.
“Roger Park, the esteemed producer of this sterling example of television programming. Seems he would prefer to meet with us in the comfort of his own personal trailer.”
Catherine guessed that was the two-story mobile leviathan she had noticed earlier. “I see. Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to inconvenience him. After all, it’s not like his brilliant show accidentally led to the death of one of his own employees.”
“Sounds like a typical Hollywood type to me.” Brass shrugged in resignation, as though it wasn’t worth raising a fuss over. They had more important things to worry about than picking a fight with some self-important TV producer. “What the hell. I can use the exercise.”
Catherine picked up her field kit. “Okay, let’s go.”
Leaving Pennington posted outside the makeup trailer, so that nobody would walk off with Jill’s bloodstained garments, they crossed the parking lot to the deluxe trailer. Catherine craned her neck back to take in its full height. She had processed one-family dwellings that were smaller than this rolling penthouse. Its looming, silver-gray exterior practically blotted out the sky. There were even outdoor awnings and a satellite dish.
Another uniformed officer met them at the entrance. “He’s right this way.”
The cop led them into a lavish reception area, complete with black leather couches, cherry paneling, hardwood floors, a fourteen-foot-high ceiling, and a fully-equipped bar. A plasma-screen television was bigger than the one in Archie’s A/V lab. Track lighting ran across the ceiling. A second-floor balcony, at the top of a spiral staircase, overlooked the reception area. An open bottle of Scotch waited atop the bar. Catherine didn’t blame Park for needing a drink, not after what had happened, but she hoped that he hadn’t hit the bottle too hard. They needed him sober. She glanced around, but did not see anyone.
“He was right here a minute ago,” the uniform insisted.
Movie posters and framed copies of Variety testified to the trailer’s show-biz roots. Occupying a prime position above the bar was a large canvass poster for a movie titled Zombie Heat. The lurid artwork depicted a hideous animated corpse posed atop the burning husk of a torched LAPD patrol car. The tattered remnants of a blue police uniform hung upon the zombie’s shriveled, mummified carcass. A ridiculously large bullet hole, blackened by powder burns, was placed directly in the center of his rotting forehead. Glazed white eyes peered out from sunken sockets. A skull-like visage bared jagged yellow teeth. Moldering green flesh was stretched tightly over his bones.
“He’ll stop at nothing for justice,” a tagline promised. “And brains.”
Catherine smirked at the poster. She had collected more than a few brains herself over the years—as evidence. Although hardly the avid pop-culture maven Greg was, even she had heard of Zombie Heat. The low-budget thriller had become a surprise sensation back in the spring. Lindsey had insisted on renting it, and Catherine had caught bits and pieces of it.
She hadn’t been impressed.
A toilet flushed and Roger Park emerged from an adjacent bathroom. Catherine caught a glimpse of a marble countertop and gleaming silver faucets. At first, the elusive TV producer appeared to have lost his mind. Oblivious to Catherine and Brass, he paced back and forth across the office, gesticulating wildly while seemingly arguing with empty air.
“What? Are you kidding me? It’s way too soon to be talking cancellation!” A Bluetooth earpiece explained his seeming psychosis. A glass of whiskey sloshed in his right hand. “I haven’t even spoken with the local fuzz yet.”
Brass cleared his throat. Park nodded at them, absently acknowledging their arrival, but carried on with his heated conversation. “All right, I can certainly see shutting down production for the time being, while we review our procedures, but let’s not pull the plug until all the facts are in. I mean, it was just a freak accident. What were the odds?”
Brass held up his badge. He glowered at the distracted producer.
Park got the message. “Look I gotta go. We’ll talk later. We’ll talk later.” He smooched the air. “Love you.” Switching off his earpiece, he finally greeted Catherine and Brass. “Sorry about that. Things are going crazy here.”
“Having a bad morning?” Brass asked.
“The worst.” Roger Park was a tanned smoothie wearing a light-colored blazer over a tight black T-shirt. Plastic surgery obscured his age. Frosted blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. A flashy gold watch glittered on his wrist. He popped an antacid tablet into his mouth, and washed it down with his Scotch. “Just wait until the lawyers get involved. I don’t even want to think about the lawsuits. This is The Crow all over again.”
Catherine got the reference. Actor Brandon Lee had been unintentionally shot to death during the filming of a supernatural action movie when a supposedly empty gun had proved to have a dummy bullet stuck in the barrel. As she recalled, the death was eventually ruled a tragic accident. No one had been charged, not even the poor actor who had pulled the trigger.
A good omen for Jill Wooten?
“Not exactly great publicity for your show,” Brass said. “Or is it?”
“You think we did this for ratings?” Park scoffed at the idea, which was admittedly a bit farfetched. “How dumb do you think I am? Between you and me, this disaster has probably killed Shock Treatment.”
“Not to mention Matt Novak,” Catherine reminded him.
“Right. Of course.” Park remembered to assume a more mournful tone. He nodded solemnly. “It’s a horrible tragedy for all of us. Matt had been with the show since the beginning. He was like family.”
Catherine wondered how much of the man’s grief was genuine. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” He looked them over, his gaze lingering on Catherine longer than she liked. “And you are?”
“Jim Brass, Homicide,” the cop identified himself. “And this is Catherine Willows with the crime lab.”
“Thank you for coming,” he said, shaking their hands. A sweaty palm betrayed his anxiety and made Catherine wish she had kept her latex gloves on. She pulled her hand away after he held on to it a few beats too long. He gestured toward a long leather couch, which was big enough to hold an entire team of CSIs, plus maybe a lab rat or two. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”
“All right.” She and Brass sat down on the couch. When Park wasn’t looking, she wiped her palm off on a seat cushion.
He refilled his drink at the bar. “Can I get either of you something?”
“No, thank you,” Brass said. “We just need some answers.”
“Absolutely.” Park turned on the charm as he sat down at the bar. “I can promise you our full cooperation with your investigation. I have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for all law-enforcement personnel. I mean, look at Zombie Heat.” He called their attention to the poster over the bar. “Beneath the blood and gore, it’s the story of Officer Zombie, a heroic police officer whose dedication to fighting crime extends even beyond the grave. No wonder the public embraced it the way they did.”
Catherine was impressed by how quickly Park had managed to turn a compliment into a plug for his own accomplishments. “Always nice to be compared to a brain-eating zombie.”
“Well, that’s just a metaphor,” he insisted. “For the toll the job takes on hardworking crime fighters like yourselves. It eats away at you, get it? I came up with that myself.” He raised his glass to his rotting brainchild. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re turning the movie into a TV show.”
Zombie Heat: The Series? Catherine resisted an urge to roll her eyes. Between Shock Treatment and this new project, Roger Park was clearly a one-man cultural renaissance.
“Congratulations,” she said politely. “I’ll have to tell my daughter.”
“You have a daughter?” He feigned disbelief. “Look at those cheekbones. I would never cast you as a mom.”
“Thanks, I guess.” Catherin
e wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed. Probably the latter.
Brass cut the charm offensive short. “Let’s get started. Where were you when the shooting occurred?”
“With the rest of the crew, watching the scene from behind the flatscreen TV prop, which was actually a one-way mirror.” A pained expression came over his face. “It all happened so fast. One minute, it was business as usual. Then . . . she shot Matt before we had a chance to stop her.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. This has never happened before.”
“That’s almost hard to believe,” Catherine said, “given the kind of stunts you pull.” She had been thinking about this ever since Greg had first described the show to her. “How do you expect people to react when they think their lives are in actual jeopardy?”
Park defended his show. “Well, the actual shocks only last for a couple of minutes. We always come clean before things get out of hand. Just when it looks like there’s no escape, the monster or somebody goes ‘Surprise! You just got Shock Treatment!’ You should see the look of relief on people’s faces when they realize it’s just a practical joke. They crack up, laughing—and are thrilled that they’re going to be on TV.”
Catherine didn’t entirely buy the rosy picture Park was painting. “But nobody ever tried to fight back before? In self-defense?”
“We screen our victims very carefully,” he insisted. “No one with a criminal record, a concealed weapons permit, or a history of mental illness. Plus, the sets for the pranks are thoroughly vetted to make sure they don’t contain anything that might be turned into a weapon by a panicky victim. No beer bottles, letter openers, fireplace pokers, you name it. And the actors are all instructed to cut things short if it looks like the victims are about to go berserk. We just want to give people a momentary shock, that’s all, then let them off the hook. Usually, they think it’s a real hoot afterward.”
“Except this time,” Brass said.
“Clearly, Ms. Lusky misjudged her friend,” he said, wasting no time before throwing Debra under the bus. “As part of the screening process, we interview all of our accomplices in advance. Debra assured us that Jill was not the violent type. I guess she was wrong about that, and Matt paid the price.” He drowned his sorrows in another gulp of Scotch. “Like I said, a horrible, terrible accident.”
“I don’t know,” Catherine persisted. “Seems to me this show was a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Most of our victims are happy to sign a waiver in exchange for appearing on the show.” Park smirked. “People will do almost anything to be on TV.”
He had a point there. Catherine recalled some of the trashy reality shows she’d caught Lindsey watching on occasion. Wannabe celebrities making out in hot tubs with near strangers, eating bugs, taking lie-detector tests, stripping for prizes, and God knows what else. She supposed Park was right. A lot of people would overlook being scared to death for a chance at fifteen minutes of fame. Probably even Lindsey and her friends.
“We also have insurance to cover any possible accidents or lawsuits,” Park added. “Just a standard legal precaution. I never thought we’d actually need it.”
“Better hope your premiums are paid up,” Catherine said. She recalled the threatening calls Jill had received prior to her phony job interview. A crazy theory occurred to her. “Let me ask you something. Do you ever do anything to scare your victims in advance?”
Park seemed puzzled by the question. “I don’t follow. What do you mean?”
“Jill Wooten was being terrorized by an anonymous caller,” she revealed. “Did you and your people do that, to get her in the mood, so to speak? Make sure she was already on edge, so you’d be sure to get a good reaction from her?”
He shook his head. “That’s a brilliant idea, actually. But, no, we don’t plan that far ahead. We just rely on our accomplices to get the vic to the right place at the right time.” His casual references to “accomplices” and “victims” made him sound more like a career criminal than a TV producer. “And, of course, if we had known Jill was really being harassed by a stalker, we would have called the whole thing off.” He frowned. “I’m surprised Debra didn’t mention that to us.”
“She says she didn’t know about it,” Brass said. He moved on to another topic. “So whose bright idea was this whole ‘wax museum’ stunt?”
“That would be me,” Park confessed. He didn’t seem to be too broken up about it. “Shock Treatment is my baby. I’ve conceived and supervised probably ninety percent of our scenarios, including all of our most popular gags.”
Catherine remembered Greg’s enthusiastic recap earlier. “Like the flesh-eating disease episode?”
“Yep,” Park bragged. “That was one of mine.”
Lovely, she thought. She had seen necrotizing fasciitis in action before. It wasn’t her idea of entertainment.
“Are you the sole producer?” Brass asked.
“No, I have a partner,” Park admitted. “But she’s pretty hands-off when it comes to the day-to-day running of the show. After all, she’s got a lot more on her plate, you know?”
“Sorry, I don’t know,” Catherine replied.
Park blinked in surprise, taken aback that they didn’t know what he meant. “My partner is Tricia Grantley.” He waited in vain for them to catch on. “The studio exec?”
Catherine thought the name sounded vaguely familiar, but not much more than that. “Why don’t you fill us in?”
“My bad,” he apologized. “When you work in the industry, you sometimes forget that not everybody subscribes to Variety. Tricia is head of development at Lunara Pictures.” Leaving the bar, he strolled over to the couch, where he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. Inside was a photo of Park embracing a buxom African-American woman in a ruffled white dress. Park was wearing a tuxedo in the photo, his hair was still in a ponytail. “That’s our wedding photo, taken here in Vegas five years ago.”
Catherine recognized the deluxe wedding chapel at the Bellagio. Tricia Grantley clutched an enormous bouquet. Rose petals were strewn before the altar. Weddings at the elegant chapel could easily run $15,000 or more. She had once processed a triple homicide there. A jilted girlfriend had brought a shotgun to the reception.
“You make a lovely couple,” she said.
“Thank you.” He took his wallet back. “That was her I was talking to when you came in.” A wince implied that the call had not gone well. “Needless to say, she’s deeply concerned about today’s unfortunate accident.”
Catherine took a second look at the Zombie Heat poster. Noting that it was a Lunara production, she guessed that Tricia Grantley had greenlit her husband’s film. Catherine hoped that Park’s high-powered Hollywood connections wouldn’t complicate their investigation. Vegas liked to portray itself as a studio-friendly town; all those movies and TV shows were good advertising and poured plenty of revenue into the local coffers. As did partying movie stars and their entourages. All we need, she fretted, are some Hollywood high-rollers putting pressure on the mayor and the sheriff to wrap up this investigation quickly.
“Did I hear that you’re suspending production?” Brass asked.
“That’s right,” Park said. “While we conduct our own internal investigation into what went wrong, and wait for the official verdict as well.” He stared morosely into his drink. “I just hope we’re not gone for good. For our audience’s sake, that is. I would hate to deprive our loyal fans of their favorite show.”
“Of course,” Catherine said sarcastically. She was sure Greg would appreciate Park’s concern.
“In the meantime,” Brass asked, “where are you staying in Vegas?” He glanced around the luxurious trailer. “Not here, I assume?”
He could do worse, Catherine thought. The mobile mansion rivaled plenty of top-dollar hotel suites. Assuming you didn’t mind living in a parking lot.
“I have a penthouse suite at Caesars Palace,” Park revealed, “when we’re not on location. The rest of th
e cast and crew are booked into a motel north of the Strip.”
It’s good to be the producer, she thought.
“I’m going to need that address as well,” Brass said. “You understand that nobody involved in this incident should leave Vegas until our investigation is completed. We may have more questions later on.”
“No problem,” Park said. “As it happens, we’re going to be shooting the pilot for the Zombie Heat series here anyway.” He grinned at the prospect. “Gotta love Vegas. It always makes great TV.”
“Sure,” Catherine said. “As long as nobody gets hurt.”
“That’s not going to happen again,” Park insisted. “Once is more than enough.” He took out a smartphone and checked his messages. “Speaking of which, I hate to rush you, but are we almost through here? I really need to deal with this crisis. Everybody and his brother wants a piece of me.”
“Just a few more questions,” Brass said. “Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to hurt Matt Novak?”
“Are you kidding? Everybody loved Matt. We’re one big happy family here.”
“What about away from the show?” Catherine asked. “Did he have any enemies?”
“Not that I know off. Matt was a single guy, with a couple of ex-wives, but no real drama.” Confusion wrinkled his surgically-smooth countenance. “Why are you asking anyway? We know who shot him and why. That girl freaked and pulled a gun.”
“We just need to examine every angle,” Catherine explained. “Had you met Jill Wooten before?”
“No, just her friend.” He helped himself to another antacid, as though his gut was not enjoying this interview. “I still haven’t met her, really. She was pretty hysterical the last time I saw her. The paramedics took her away.”
“What about her and Novak?” Brass asked. “Are you aware of any prior relationship between them?”
“She didn’t even know who he was! He was wearing a hockey mask, remember?” A flicker of impatience eroded his easy manner. “Look, I understand that you folks have to ask these kinds of questions, and I appreciate your diligence and commitment to the truth, but, honestly, there’s no big mystery here. We shocked the wrong person and she killed Matt in what she thought was self-defense. You’ve got the footage. See for yourself.”