Dead Last (32 page)

Sawyer wasn’t sure whether Dee Dee’s fall overboard was a suicide or a fall. Frank didn’t bring up the third alternative, just let Sawyer talk.

Dee Dee had seemed strange lately, but not particularly depressed. She’d been drinking heavily that afternoon, so it easily could’ve been an accident. Sawyer, the scriptwriter, came up with a scenario. She might’ve come out onto the deck for some fresh air, but instead of it making her feel better, she’d looked out at the rising and falling horizon, her seasickness had turned worse, and she’d puked over the side; had leaned out, lost her balance, and tumbled in.

She didn’t swim, wouldn’t even go into the wading pool at the condo. Maybe it happened like that, an accident. A slip. And if she’d called out for help, even right below them, twenty, thirty feet away, Gus and Sawyer wouldn’t have heard her calls over the engine roar, the blast of wind, their own voices. And they were hauling ass most of the time, forty knots, they’d be a mile away in a minute or so, enough time for Dee Dee to slip below the surface.

The way Sawyer told it, the last time either of them saw Dee Dee alive was when Gus went below to relieve himself. According to Gus, she was watching TV, sucking on a bottle of rum, feeling queasy from the rolling seas and pouty like she got sometimes. Telling Gus he was making a big mistake, taking a cruise on a day when they should’ve been hanging at the condo waiting by the phones for the media schedulers to call about appearing on the morning shows.

Moody, testy, but not suicidal, Sawyer said. Though, yes, she had been behaving suspiciously in the last few weeks. And there were other things that made her father and her boyfriend start to worry she might be involved in these killings. Gus and Sawyer had talked it over and decided they had to share their concerns with the authorities. A hard decision they’d made out on the yacht.

What were those other suspicious things? Frank wanted to know. And then once he’d heard them, he wanted to hear them again, and then again.

For one, Dee Dee surprised Sawyer just that morning; before she came into the bedroom for more hanky-panky, she’d hollered for him to shut the blinds, something they never did. Never? Frank asked it blandly. As if he’d heard that one a hundred times, exhibitionists putting on a show for the voyeurs in adjacent condos. Never, Sawyer repeated, we never shut the blinds, then repeated it again as though he didn’t quite believe it himself. Never.

When Sawyer had the blinds closed, Dee Dee strolled out in a black Zentai suit and hunched over in a threatening pose, hands behind her back as though she was hiding a gun or a baseball bat. It rattled the kid.

Thorn kept watching his son, listening for the squeaky giveaway in his voice, waiting for the telltale swallow, a lump of worry that wouldn’t go down, some revealing sweat glistening on the upper lip, anything that would suggest Sawyer Moss was doing anything but telling the flat honest truth.

Thorn saw, heard, smelled nothing of that sort. From where he sat the young man seemed to be earnest, tender, and tough. Sawyer was shocked and pained by Dee Dee’s drowning, but his reaction seemed proportional. Not trying too hard on anything. Not trying to convince, or overexplain. Getting a worried crinkle in his forehead when he recounted his growing misgivings about the girl he was shacking up with.

It wasn’t just the Zentai suit. It started way before today.

How she’d been behaving for a while, beginning right after she learned
Miami Ops
was in danger of being cancelled. The very day, in fact, she found that out, she’d just finished doing a scene in which she’d strangled an old geezer in a hospital bed and left behind an obituary on his bedside table. Dee Dee was playing the part of the show’s Zentai Killer. Two days after strangling Slattery, the real-life murders started with the death of the elderly gentleman in Hialeah.

Was there a connection? Sawyer didn’t know. He couldn’t believe it at first, but now he wasn’t sure. Maybe Dee Dee was that desperate after all. Maybe he didn’t know her as well as he thought. She was superobsessive about her career, about succeeding in the business.

He admitted he felt guilty about all of this because the Zentai storyline had all been his idea. He’d just stumbled across the Lycra suits somewhere while surfing the Web, he couldn’t even recall where now, and decided to try to work them into the show. The suits were creepy and distinctive, and in retrospect he thought maybe it was one of the things that helped sell the series to the studio in the first place.

Sawyer apologized for going down that blind alley. He knew this wasn’t about him. Not about him, but about what Dee Dee did, and maybe why she did it. Overcome with guilt, sensing the cops closing in, sensing that her own father and lover were starting to suspect.

Or hell, maybe she just fell overboard. Maybe it was that.

Going back to his growing mistrust of her, Sawyer described the previous night when the Zentai Killer called the
Herald,
and the Oklahoma sheriff was killed, how Dee Dee was nowhere to be found. Didn’t answer her cell. Wasn’t at the Merrick gym in the Gables, where she spent long hours on the machines; not at dinner, not with Gus, missed a date with Sawyer. Same thing when he was away in Dallas. She said she’d switched off her cell.

And there was that time when they were leaving the airport after the Dallas trip, and she told Sawyer she wanted him to write more murders into the scripts. She said she liked killing people. The more he went over these last few weeks, the more troubled he got.

Like the hours in the aftermath of Buddha’s murder. Dee Dee was elated. Lit up by the prospect of major media attention. Ghoulishly overjoyed the show was going to be a hit. She knew exactly what she was going to do with all that cash. Not even a hint of empathy.

And then there were the weekends. She’d been disappearing lately, cell phone switched off. Sawyer had worried she might be fooling around with some guy, but then he started thinking about the killings, all of them taking place on the weekends.

It didn’t sound like much to Thorn. Maybe a tad narcissistic and amoral on the girl’s part, but he suspected it was more or less typical of show biz people, along with other terminally ambitious types whose career arc was their highest concern.

He listened and waited for something that would nail it down, prove beyond any doubt that Dee Dee was the killer. Wanting this to be the certifiable conclusion so he could escape and return to his island life and start rebuilding. Tie some new flies, start searching out the latest spots where the big daddy tarpons were hiding.

Listening to Frank and Sawyer going at it for hours, his mind wandered to that great blue heron on the roof of a shop in the industrial park. A bird out of its natural element. Looking forlorn and dead tired. Thorn identified with that big gawky bird, a kindred spirit, both of them displaced from their habitat.

Then it gut-punched him, made him groan. He was never going to be able to retreat completely to Key Largo. No complete separation from Miami ever again. He had two grown sons, and that blood connection with Sawyer and Flynn was never going away. Like it or not, he was bound to this rancorous city for as long as those two chose to live here.

How about Gus? Frank was asking Sawyer.

“What about him?” Sawyer sounding shifty for the first time.

“He and Dee Dee close? Like, do they have a happy, healthy, normal father-daughter thing going?” Frank was fiddling with his recorder, his eyes on the tiny machine in what looked like a gambit—trying to distract from the question’s weight.

“I’m in no position to judge normal father-offspring relationships,” Sawyer said.

Thorn leaned back in his chair, waiting for the kid to look over at him and acknowledge the zinger. He didn’t. He kept his eyes on Sheffield, who kept his eyes on his little recording gizmo.

“Dee Dee ever mention anything weird going on between them? Tension, disagreements, problems of any kind?”

Sawyer worked his lips, then seemed to catch himself. Letting his mouth relax, giving Thorn a quick look to see if he was paying attention. Thorn sent him an encouraging smile.

“I guess they had issues like any parent and child,” Sawyer said. “Nothing out of the normal range.”

“Nothing out of the normal range.” Frank looked up from the recorder.

“That’s right.”

“When you last saw Dee Dee, she was drinking rum, down in the salon, did she say anything to you? Indicate how she was feeling.”

“She said her stomach was upset. She was feeling woozy.”

Sawyer shifted in his chair. His butt probably hurting as much as Thorn’s from sitting three hours solid.

“You need some coffee, a sandwich? I can order something up.”

“No, nothing. I’m fine.”

“So we’re talking about Gus. Him and his daughter. You never sensed anything going on there that made you uncomfortable?”

Sawyer looked down, shook his head.

That was a lie, that silent head shake.

Thorn could see it so plainly he wanted to take the kid by the arm and give him a rattle to get him back on track, remind him that he was dealing with a professional interrogator who’d spent his life listening to dirtbags lie. If Thorn could spot it, Frank had spotted it for sure.

“So, okay,” Frank said. “We’re almost done.”

Sawyer breathed in and out, keeping his face neutral, eyes on Frank. But Thorn could see his mother’s sympathetic nervous system betraying him, the color stealing up his throat into his cheeks.

“So you never knew about Gus making skin flicks, him and Dee Dee in bed together.”

Frank’s own fastball down the middle worked its magic.

Sawyer’s head sank, chin ducking to his chest.

“Gus ever tell you about those movies?”

“He did.” Sawyer slowly raised his head.

“And after he told you, you kept on working with a scumbag like that? It didn’t sour your romantic feelings for Ms. Dollimore?”

“He just told me this afternoon.”

“Just today? While you were on the boat?”

“That’s right.”

“Before or after you realized Dee Dee was missing?”

“Before.”

“What did he say exactly?”

Sawyer recounted Gus’s confession. Dirty movies, the girl didn’t protest. He’d started when she was seven years old.

“And when you heard that coming out of his mouth, you didn’t pick him up and heave him overboard?”

“I came close,” Sawyer said.

“Why’s Gus pick today to confess something like that to the guy dating his daughter and writing his TV show? That strike you as weird timing?”

“Not really. Everybody’s under so much stress, the show, the killer. I assumed he was unburdening himself. Taking some of the blame for how screwed up Dee Dee was. Like he was trying to understand what could’ve turned her into a killer.”

“Yeah, maybe it was that,” Frank said. “Gus taking blame.”

“I’m not sure what you’re driving at.”

Frank took a minute, glancing around the room, letting the young man squirm. Then he turned back to Sawyer with a benevolent smile.

“Hearing your girlfriend got her sexual initiation from her daddy, sure, it’s natural enough you’d be ready to throw the old man overboard. What I’m curious about is, how did it make you feel about Dee Dee? Normal reaction I’d guess would be shocked, disgusted. This is going to be hard to recover from. Not easy to get back in the saddle.”

“Screw you.”

“Sorry,” Frank said. “Bad word choice. The question is, would you get over something like that, resume a normal, healthy relationship with her?”

“That’s irrelevant and immaterial.”

“So we’re going to do some lawyer talk now?”

“Make your point.”

“Okay, okay. How should I say this? All those suspicions you had, worrying maybe this woman you were involved with was not the sweet young thing you thought she was, let’s put that together with the discovery that she’d been abused on film for years before you met her, all that coming together at once, it strikes me as a pretty combustible cocktail.”

“Is there a question here?”

“Did you throw Dee Dee Dollimore overboard?”

Sawyer drew a breath, shifted in his chair, drew another breath.

“No, I did not. I absolutely did not.”

Thorn studied the young man’s profile. He wasn’t flinching, was showing only pure indignation.

“So, let’s say I believe you. But am I right about the other thing? Hearing about your girlfriend’s ugly past, didn’t that sort of turn you off?”

“Dee Dee was a victim. I’m sorry for what she suffered.”

“Sure, sure, that’s the right thing to say, Mr. Moss, but I want to know how you felt when you heard about this porn business. Did it revolt you, make you doubt Ms. Dollimore’s past truthfulness? Did you start to question your own judgment?”

“Maybe some of that.”

“You think that could’ve been Mr. Dollimore’s intent?”

“I don’t follow you. Why would it be?”

“Oh, now, come on, you write this television stuff, right? You know how nefarious and double-dealing people can be. That’s your stock in trade. Thinking about it now, do you believe Dollimore might’ve been intentionally pushing your buttons, poisoning your feelings for his daughter, getting you worked up to provoke you into doing something you might not do otherwise?”

Sawyer rubbed one hand against the other as if he felt something sticky on his palms.

“I didn’t throw Dee Dee over the side. I did not do it. How many ways can I say it?”

Frank said, “Is Mr. Dollimore more than a boss to you? Like maybe he’s a father figure, something like that.”

Sawyer looked up from his hands and eyed Frank, then Thorn.

“Now what are you implying?”

“I think you’ve got an idea what I’m implying. Like maybe when Gus went down to take a piss, he didn’t take a piss at all, but he tossed his little girl over the side. Maybe telling you about your girlfriend’s dirty movie past, that was a way to prep you, turn you against her. So when he comes back up and confesses he pitched Dee into the deep blue, you’re softened up. That’s what I’m wondering. Would you take a bullet for the guy? Would you go along with that, knowing what he’d just done?”