The Unholy

“An old Western scaffold.”

“For The Unholy?”

“No, that’s the tail end of our last project—Ways of the West.” She gave herself a mental shake and turned toward the sewing machines and a rack of clothing. “Projects overlap, but you know that. Or sometimes we work on several at the same time. Right now, though, as soon as the scaffolding’s out of here, we’ll be doing nothing but The Unholy. Or…I assume we’ll still be working on it.”

“The world goes on, despite murder,” Sean said. He motioned to the far wall of the construction area. “And there’s the door that leads from the tunnel.”

It wasn’t really a question. She said, “Yes,” anyway.

He walked over but didn’t touch it. Madison followed him and saw powder all over the whitewashed floor nearby. Black powder.

“The police dusted here,” he said.

Madison felt a moment’s discomfort. Her prints were on that door.

“They’ll get a lot of prints,” she said. “Including mine.”

He looked at her, the curl of his lips gentle, slightly amused. “Elimination,” he told her. “They’ll take everyone’s prints for the purposes of comparison.”

“Elimination? But…you believe the killer works here, or is close to someone here? That means we’ve all known him or her…. Actually, any of us might have been killed.”

“No, I don’t think any of you could have been killed. The killer didn’t want the police running around looking for a murderer. The killer wanted them to arrest Alistair. His habits were known—he was being watched way ahead of time.”

“Are we going through there?” she asked, nodding at the door.

“No, we’ll let the police find everything they can with their forensic units. I’ll go into the tunnel soon. You don’t have to come with me.”

An uncomfortable sensation crept over her. A horrible murder had just taken place there, in the tunnel. She’d only seen crime scenes on television or at the movies. She didn’t want to see the real thing.

But she was here to help. Help save Alistair. He couldn’t be guilty—and Eddie had called her to assist this man who was somehow going to prove it.

She had to go to the site. If what she’d experienced during her life, the ordeals that had made it so painful, were worth anything at all, the one benefit might be that she could reach the dead girl. Did Jenny’s spirit somehow remain, although her mortal life had been stolen? If so, wasn’t she obliged to try to speak to the girl, to connect with her?

She shook her head, responding to Sean’s comment. “No…if I’m going to help you, I should go all the way.”

He didn’t reply. He was staring at the area around the door. Close to it on the left was another rack of costuming, while a supply of wood had been stacked up on the right. She began to wonder if anyone could have hidden behind the racks of clothing or the wood, staying out of sight of the video cameras. But if someone had been there, waiting, how had that person gotten into the building? Some of the construction crew had been working Saturday; she’d been off herself, as had most of the shop. Sunday, as far as she knew, no one had planned on coming in. So that would’ve meant the person had hidden behind the rack of clothing overnight, with the intent of killing someone who might or might not have been in the tunnel on a night when no one should have been there?

Or did she know the killer? Was it someone who walked among them, someone she saw on a day-to-day basis, worked with, laughed with?

“Let’s take a walk through the rest of the place,” he said.

Madison turned and headed back to the hallway, then passed by the reception area and went on to the offices. There were two on the ground floor, both conference rooms more than offices but supplied with computers, printers, screens and other work equipment. The walls were lined with movie posters; the hallway had two circular areas decorated with mannequins, all from different movies. There was an adolescent werewolf, a beautiful evil witch, a torn-up robotic trooper, a vampire complete with cape and golden eyes that seemed to follow you and a zombie, a poor girl from one of those “park by the lake and make out even though a dozen couples have already been killed there” movies. This girl had not done so well; she was missing most of her face, and the one blue eye that stared out at them was pretty gruesome.

Actually, with the exception of Myra Sue, their “creatures” rarely bothered Madison. She was accustomed to them. But there were a few mannequins in the offices that were far more upsetting. They were incredibly realistic. In the first office, there was one on an autopsy table, the sheet drawn up, eyes glazed and open, blond hair streaming around a beautiful face. She was the first victim in a murder mystery. In the second office, there was a mannequin of a beautiful, terrorized woman peeking out from the leaves of a bush. Neither victim had been played by a living actress; the work was so good, it just looked like they’d been real.

Entering the second office, Sean commented, “So Matilda is still here.”

“Matilda?”

He flashed a smile. “We dubbed her Matilda. She didn’t have a name, even in the script. She was just ‘devoured victim number one.’ But we all liked her when my crew was around, and we called her Matilda. She used to really creep out a lot of people. A guy named Harry Smith was working on digital back then, and he used to swear that he hated being in the office alone. He felt like Matilda was watching him.”

“You can feel like our characters are watching you,” Madison said. “The studio’s always done great work. And when it’s great, it looks real.”

“I agree.”

Sean left the office, and for the first time, Madison felt that “Matilda” was watching her and she, too, hurried out.

In the second hallway circle—complete with vampire, witch and slasher-movie victim—Sean paused for a moment, then headed to the hall with the elevator and the emergency exit that led to the fire escape outside. He didn’t touch the door; he saw that the police had dusted here, too. Instead, he returned to the elevator, then saw that the police had dusted there, as well. “We’ll take it.” He pushed the button and they waited for a moment, listening to the whir of motors.

When they were inside the elevator, he said, “Did you know there’s a key to get to the basement—or the end of the tunnel?”

“What?” Madison asked, surprised. As far as she was aware, the elevator only went down to the main level. There were two buttons to push in, for the first and second floors.

Sean pointed to a little metal piece where a key could be inserted. “The elevator can go to the first and second floors and to the basement…or to the tunnel entrance. As far as I’m aware, no one’s used it—except for Eddie Archer, maybe—since Eddie’s owned the place. I think there’s only one key and he has it. But I saw the plans once, and this elevator will go to the basement. I wonder if Eddie thought to mention that to the police.”

“I don’t know if he did,” Madison said. “I have my keys with me, of course. And I have keys to almost everything, but not the elevator.”

“I don’t want to try getting down to the basement yet. I’m going to ask if anyone’s checked it out. For now, we’ll stay clear until the crime scene units have gotten what they need.”

Upstairs, the basic floor design was the same. They passed by a circle of prop creatures and came to Eddie’s office—home to several charming little gnomelike beings from a children’s fantasy movie—and then moved on to the large office occupied by Mike Greenwood, managing artist of the studio. Mike liked aliens, and his office was filled with sci-fi and space creatures and miniatures of a spaceship that appeared several stories tall on film.

A window in the back of his office looked over the rear of the property; it was high enough that the cemetery in back with its historic family vaults and funerary art could easily be seen. Sean paused there, gazing out.

“Peace Cemetery,” he murmured, glancing at her. “Did it ever disturb you to work in the midst of a cemetery?”

“No,” she said curtly, perhaps too curtly.

“That’s an old, old place.”

“And still accepting burials,” Madison said. “I think Eddie loves that it’s there. He says it’s a place where history and contemporary life meet.” She hesitated a moment. Eddie knew she had a sixth sense, as he called it, because of the cemetery, because of the times they’d walked there together—and the day he’d caught her talking to a ghost. “There are dozens of stories about the cemetery, secret burials and, of course, ghosts. Naturally, it’s got a reputation for being haunted.”

“Most cemeteries do,” Sean said. “Eddie told me once that if he ever had time between the projects that paid the bills, he’d love to do a documentary on the cemetery.” She had the uneasy feeling that he was looking inside her soul. Good Lord, Eddie hadn’t told him she was some kind of a freak who talked to ghosts, had he?

“Does it mean anything to you?” she asked. “The cemetery being there?”

He shrugged. “Right now? I see it as a place where a killer could escape—that’s what I see. Let’s keep going, shall we?”

They returned to the first floor and stopped at Bailey’s station. Sean thanked him and asked, “You’re not working around the clock now, are you?”

“No, but I’ve always taken on the Sunday evening shift. You know how Eddie Archer loves his cinema. And it’s not even like we have break-ins or anything of the kind, but I take over for Winston Nash at five in the afternoon on Sundays and work until morning. Today I’m in because I was already here, and because I’d do whatever I could for Eddie Archer.”

“And Nash didn’t report anything?”

“No, Nash said it was quiet as a tomb all day. I saw Alistair when he went into the Black Box.”

“Did you see when Ms. Henderson showed up?” Sean asked.

Bailey flushed. He shook his head. “But she knew I was here. Even if I weren’t, there’d still be a guard watching over the place. I think she parked on the other side of the cemetery—well, that’s where they found her car—and came around through the graveyard. The front of the cemetery is only on the one side, but the graves stretch around to the back. I assume she slipped around the building. We must’ve caught her entry on the security cameras, but I admit I wasn’t watching that screen when she got in. From what I understand, Alistair told his father that Jenny Henderson said he’d forgotten to lock the front door.”