CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nothing good ever came from calls before sunrise.
She fumbled for her phone on the unfamiliar nightstand. When she found the vibrating device, the screen’s harsh blue glow cut through the pre-dawn darkness. The call was from Detective Hayes.
“Paige,” she answered, her voice thick with interrupted sleep.
“There’s been another murder.” Hayes’ words tumbled out in a rush, his tone urgent and raw. “At The Velvet Screen Theater.”
Riley sat upright, sleep evaporating. Another murder. Just as she and Ann Marie had predicted.
“Crystal Keene,” Hayes continued before she could respond. “The film critic. Found chained to a projector in the booth. Strangled.”
Riley swung her legs over the side of the bed, bare feet connecting with the hotel room’s carpeting. “When?”
“Sometime last night. Projectionist found her about an hour ago. Says he was knocked unconscious yesterday evening and woke up bound in a closet. When he managed to free himself she was beyond any help.” Hayes paused, and Riley heard what it cost him to say the next words.
“You were right. About there being more victims. About this being connected to Hollywood history.”
Riley didn’t allow herself even a moment of satisfaction at the vindication. Being right meant someone else was dead. “The scene—it was deliberately staged?”
“Like something out of a goddamn movie,” Hayes confirmed. “The projectionist recognized it immediately. From some old film noir called The Broken Window.”
“I know it,” Riley said, moving toward the bathroom, phone pressed against her ear. She flipped on the light, wincing at the sudden brightness. “A film critic is murdered in a projection booth and chained to the projector.”
“Look,” Hayes said, his voice dropping into something that sounded almost like an apology. “I need you and Agent Esmer at the scene. Now. Whatever’s happening here, it’s beyond anything I’ve dealt with before. These... theatrical murders.”
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she promised. “Text me the exact address.”
“I’ll be waiting at the entrance,” Hayes replied, then disconnected.
Riley set the phone down on the bathroom counter and splashed cold water on her face, forcing her mind to compartmentalize.
One crisis at a time. Here in Atlanta, someone was murdering people in ways that evoked cinematic deaths.
Back in Virginia, Leo Dillard remained a threat to April.
Both situations demanded her complete attention, an impossible division that left her feeling insufficient.
Her phone buzzed with Hayes’ text containing the address. Then Riley called Ann Marie’s room.
The younger agent answered on the third ring, her voice alert despite the early hour. “Esmer.”
“There’s been another murder,” Riley said without preamble. “Crystal Keene at The Velvet Screen theater. Hayes wants us there ASAP.”
“I’ll be ready in five,” Ann Marie replied, no trace of smugness in her voice despite their theories being confirmed. Like Riley, she understood that being right about murder predictions was a hollow victory.
“Meet me in the lobby,” Riley instructed before ending the call.
She quickly brushed her teeth and changed into black slacks and a navy blouse.
Professional. Authoritative. A costume in its own way, armor against the world’s darkness.
She gathered her weapon, badge, and the small notebook she always carried, tucking them into appropriate pockets and holsters.
The familiar weight of the gun against her hip provided its usual cold comfort—a reminder of both her authority and its limitations.
A gun was useless to a life already taken, no help against threats hundreds of miles away.
Riley checked her phone once more for messages from Bill or April.
Nothing new since their video call last night.
She told herself this was good news—no crisis had erupted overnight—but the silence offered little reassurance.
Absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence, especially when it came to someone like Leo Dillard.
With a final glance around the hotel room to ensure she hadn’t forgotten anything essential, Riley hurried out of her room.
As the elevator descended toward the lobby, her mind was already imagining the scene that awaited them.
Crystal Keene chained to a projector, another life extinguished to satisfy some decades-old grievance.
And perhaps most disturbingly, the killer seemed to be following a script that only they fully understood.
***
In a short time, Riley was driving the sedan through Atlanta’s empty pre-dawn streets.
Beside her, Ann Marie studied something on her phone, the blue light illuminating her features in the darkened car.
The city seemed suspended in that liminal space between night and morning—when most of the nocturnal had gone to rest but most of the diurnal had yet to stir—lending an eerie stillness to their journey.
“He should have listened to us yesterday,” Ann Marie said, breaking the silence. She looked up from her phone, where she’d been reviewing notes on The Broken Window. “If Hayes hadn’t been so fixated on Hartley, maybe Crystal Keene would still be alive.”
Riley slowed for a red light despite the absence of other traffic. “We should have pushed harder,” she countered. “Insisted on pursuing the HUAC connection even without his approval.”
“You think he would have budged?” Ann Marie asked, skepticism evident in her tone.
“Probably not,” Riley admitted. “But we could have kept digging independently.”
The light changed, and Riley pressed the accelerator, the car’s engine humming as they continued through the sleeping city.
Behind her professional focus, fragments of her interrupted dreams flickered through her mind.
She couldn’t recall the specifics, only the overwhelming sense of dread, the way her subconscious had merged her anxieties about April with the dangers of the current case.
In the dream, the face of Leo Dillard had somehow blended with the faceless killer they pursued in Atlanta, both threats somehow becoming a single menace.
Riley tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
Compartmentalization had always been her strength—the ability to seal off personal concerns while working a case, to prevent emotional contamination of her professional judgment.
But those boundaries were eroding, the walls between her roles as mother and FBI agent becoming increasingly permeable.
“Riley?” Ann Marie’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Riley replied automatically, then caught herself. Ann Marie deserved better than platitudes. “Just finding it harder than usual to keep the personal and professional separate.”
Ann Marie nodded, understanding in her eyes. “With Leo Dillard targeting April while we’re hundreds of miles away, I’d be more concerned if you weren’t struggling with that.”
The GPS directed them to turn right, and Riley guided the car onto a narrower street lined with older buildings. Up ahead, she saw the flashing lights of police vehicles, their red and blue pulses marking the location of The Velvet Screen.
“Looks like the whole department showed up,” Ann Marie observed as they approached.
Riley pulled up behind a crime scene van, taking in the organized chaos before them.
Uniformed officers maintained a perimeter with yellow tape, keeping at bay the small cluster of early-rising journalists who had somehow already caught wind of the story.
Crime scene technicians in white coveralls moved between vehicles and the theater entrance, carrying equipment and evidence bags.
As promised, Detective Hayes stood waiting at the entrance, his posture tense, shoulders hunched against the morning chill—or perhaps against the weight of his professional miscalculation. He straightened when he spotted them, raising a hand in acknowledgment.
“Agents,” he greeted as they approached, his face haggard under the harsh lights. The confidence he’d projected yesterday had evaporated, replaced by the grim determination of a man forced to recalibrate his entire understanding of a case. “Appreciate you coming so quickly.”
Riley nodded. “What do we know so far?”
Hayes gestured for them to follow him inside, ducking under the crime scene tape. “Victim is Crystal Keene, 65, film critic for Metropolitan Monthly. She was here for the Roberta Rimes festival that got postponed after Veronica Slate’s murder.”
The old lobby of The Velvet Screen was transformed into an active crime scene. Harsh portable lights illuminated every corner, technicians dusted surfaces for prints, and a police photographer methodically documented the space.
“A projectionist named Ted Coonfield called 911 to report the murder,” Hayes continued, leading them deeper into the lobby. “Like I told you, he claims he was attacked. Woke up bound and gagged in a supply closet.”
“And he’s the one who found her?” Ann Marie asked.
Hayes nodded. “Says it took him hours to get free. When he did, he went to the projection booth and found Crystal Keene there.” He paused, his expression darkening. “Coonfield’s pretty shaken up, but he’s coherent. He’s over there.”
He indicated a man sitting on a bench along the wall, a paper cup of coffee clutched in trembling hands.
Ted Coonfield looked to be in his sixties, with thinning gray hair and the stooped posture of someone who had spent decades hunched over equipment.
A paramedic hovered nearby, periodically checking the swollen bruise on Coonfield’s temple.
As they approached, Coonfield looked up, his bloodshot eyes haunted. “You’re the FBI people?”
“I’m Special Agent Riley Paige,” Riley confirmed, keeping her voice gentle. “This is Special Agent Ann Marie Esmer. We’d like to hear what happened.”
Coonfield nodded, setting his coffee aside.
“Ms. Keene called yesterday. She wanted to see Dandelion Days—Roberta Rimes’ final film.
Said she was disappointed the festival had been postponed after what happened to Veronica Slate.
And of course, she wanted to see it on film.
Not a digital copy. I came in early last evening to test the equipment and load the film.
The theater’s been closed, so I wanted to make sure everything was working properly. ”
“What time was this?” Riley asked.
“Around seven. The screening was set for eleven.” Coonfield’s hand drifted unconsciously to the bruise on his temple.
“I was in the projection booth, testing the equipment, when someone knocked on the door. I opened it, and somebody hit me here.” He touched the swollen area gingerly.
“Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the janitor’s closet downstairs, tied up and gagged. ”
“Did you see who attacked you?” Ann Marie inquired.
Coonfield shook his head, wincing at the movement. “Never got a look. Could have been anyone—man, woman, I don’t know.”
“And when you regained consciousness?” Riley prompted.
“It was dark. My watch was gone, so I don’t know exactly what time it was.
” Frustration flashed across his features.
“I spent God knows how long working the ropes loose. My wrists are all torn up.” He displayed his bandaged wrists as evidence.
“By the time I got free, I figured Ms. Keene must have come and gone, maybe thought I’d stood her up. ”
His voice caught slightly. “I went up to the projection booth to check the equipment, see if anything had been taken or damaged. That’s when I found her.”
“Tell us exactly what you saw,” Riley said, maintaining eye contact.
Coonfield swallowed hard. “She was... chained to the number one projector. The lamp was still on, projecting white light onto the screen. When I looked at the film, I saw that it had been deliberately sliced to make it jam in the gate and burn through.”
His professional indignation briefly overtook his horror. “Whoever did this knew projectors. They knew exactly how to make the film catch and burn—created a slice that would snag in the gate.”
“You mentioned recognizing the scene,” Hayes interjected. “From a movie?”
Coonfield nodded gravely. “The Broken Window. 1957. There’s a scene where a film critic is murdered in a projection booth, strangled, and then chained to the projector as a statement. It’s... infamous among projectionists. A kind of urban legend in our profession.”
“I’d like to see the crime scene now,” Riley said, turning to Hayes.
The Detective nodded grimly. “This way. Techs have documented everything, but we left the body in place for you to see.”
He led them through the theater’s main auditorium, where the screen still glowed with the harsh light from the projector above.
The beam cut through the darkness, illuminating dust particles dancing in its path.
At the back of the theater, they climbed the narrow service stairs that Crystal Keene had ascended the night before, heading toward her death.
The projection booth was crowded with crime scene technicians, the small space barely accommodating the additional bodies. They stepped aside respectfully as Hayes ushered Riley and Ann Marie in.
The smell hit Riley first—the acrid scent of burned film and the distinctive odor of death in its early hours.
Crystal Keene’s body was secured to one of the massive projectors with heavy chains, her head lolled forward, a bleeding wound around her neck where a garrote wire had cut through her flesh.
Her elegant clothing—a silk blouse and tailored pants—contrasted sharply with the indignity of her death.
Nearby, a loop of melted film hung from the projector like a grotesque decoration.
Riley stepped closer, carefully avoiding the markers placed by the crime scene unit. She studied the positioning of the body, the chains, the meticulous attention to detail evident in the staging. This was not a crime of opportunity or passion. This was methodical, planned to the minutest detail.
But she needed to know more than that if they were going to prevent another death. Riley closed her eyes, allowing her mind to shift, reaching for a sense of the killer’s thoughts at the moment of murder.