Chapter 1 #3
“Mm-hmm.” She eyed the teetering files in his in-tray.
Evidence. He wanted evidence. “How about this?” She drew out her phone and brought up Vivien’s last social media post—a selfie at a local bar with a man too good-looking to be good news.
Vivien was beaming; he looked pissed. “She’s written in the caption, ‘Expecting a proposal any day.’ People have replied with things like, ‘Omigod, so jealous,’ and, ‘When do I get to meet him?’ That’s the last confirmed sighting I have.
If you can find that guy, maybe he knows something. ”
She thrust the phone in Officer Sheng’s face. He took it, holding it at arm’s length. She could almost see the recalibration in his pupils as he focused. He … laughed.
“What… what is it? You know him?”
“Are you pranking me?” His focus darted around the room. “Is this a prank?”
“Absolutely not! Don’t you think he looks dangerous, the way he’s glaring at the camera like he wants to pick a fight with it?”
The cop leaned forward. “So, you want me to, what, arrest him?”
“I don’t know about that, but he may be a person of interest.”
“Oh, he’s definitely a person of interest.”
“Wait, he is? I thought you said—”
“A person of interest to pretty much everyone in America.” He assessed her for a long moment. “You … really don’t know who he is?”
She shook her head.
He tapped something into his computer and swung the monitor around.
The screen filled with images of the most handsome man Lana had ever seen—portraits, full-length shots in tuxedos with stunning women in gowns, candid snaps in a supermarket and jogging on a street…
Short brown hair, a California tan, bright green eyes.
“Who is that?” Lana leaned forward, her butt rising from the chair.
“Uh, Griffin Hart?”
She shook her head.
“Are you messing with me? Child star? Action hero? Son of Peter Hart and Evangeline Zavala? Grandson of Lloyd Zavala? Born famous and just gets more famous?” He waved a hand in front of her face. “Nothing? Really?”
Lana forced her eyes from the screen and sat. “And you think this Griffin Hart might be involved in Vivien’s disappearance?”
The cop exhaled heavily, spinning the monitor back. “No, I do not think he was involved. I think your sister asked him for a selfie, like thousands of others.”
“Then why does he look so pissed?”
“He’s not known as a Mr. Nice Guy. And he gets a lot of stalkers—we were put on alert when they started filming Gods and Mortals here.
” He gestured to a lineup of mugshots stuck to a whiteboard.
“The casting assistants sometimes recruit extras in town, if they’re short, but a couple of times they signed up these nutters. ”
“Oh, yes, there was a man down the street just now, recruiting.” He’d told Lana she had a “great look” for background acting. As she went to thank him for the compliment, he added: “You’re so very average. We need people who won’t stand out.”
The cop pointed at the mugshot of a forty-something redhead.
“This one thinks she was married to Griffin Hart in a previous life. That one over there? She’s convinced he’s being hypnotized and is actually her kid.
This guy believes he and Griffin Hart are predestined by cosmic design to be besties.
We’re constantly playing whack-a-mole with these freaks.
We don’t literally whack them,” he added quickly.
“I can’t believe you don’t know who he is. You live in L.A.?”
“I had a … sheltered upbringing.”
“Ohhh, yes.” He tapped the screen. “The cult. Washington State, was it?”
“Not a cult—an off-grid unplugged community. My parents still live there.”
“You’ve called them, I take it? Or sent a Pony Express?” He flashed a self-congratulatory smile at the joke. “If it’s off-grid, how do you know your sister hasn’t gone back there?”
“I’ve written to them, sure. Kept them updated. They haven’t heard from her.”
“You’ve written to them? By what, letter?”
“Yes,” Lana said impatiently. “Letter. On paper. In envelope. In the mail. They don’t have phones or internet.
They even came to L.A. for a week, to help me search.
That’s when we filed the missing person report.
” It was a big deal for her parents to get on a plane and come all that way.
They hadn’t proved all that useful, but she understood the urge to feel like you were doing something that wasn’t just sitting around waiting.
And it had made her feel less alone—until they left and she felt more alone than ever.
“If Vivien had turned up, they would have contacted me right away. They are capable of borrowing a phone, in extreme circumstances.”
“No need for sarcasm.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just…” Her voice cracked.
“I know something’s wrong. What about her phone?
We’ve had location sharing since she…” Lana trailed off.
No need to mention it was a condition Lana had imposed on Vivien after picking her up from a bender that had ended in Palm Springs.
“It last pinged in the hills behind the set, and nothing since. And it was there for a couple of days before the signal was lost, so she wasn’t just passing through.
That trail is closed to the public because of the filming, so I can’t get up there to check. ”
“Those location-sharing things aren’t always accurate.”
“With GPS, they can be accurate to sixteen feet, under open sky.” (623.893: Navigation technology.) “Can you find out her movements up until that time? The location tracking doesn’t give me the history.” If only Lana had been watching the map, like when Vivien hitchhiked to Coachella.
“Again, that’s quite a process.”
“If you could at least have a look—”
“Honestly, if someone’s buried a body up there—and I’m not saying that’s happened—that’s gonna take some finding.
We don’t have the resources to commit to a wild goose chase without a more solid indication.
” He mashed his lips together and worked them around thoughtfully, before turning back to the screen.
“Let me screenshot that photo with Griffin Hart. I’ll crop him out.
The ones in our files don’t have her smiling. ”
“She is one of those people who looks totally different when she smiles.”
His gaze flicked to Lana’s, warily. The phone skipped a beat, then started again.
“Oh,” Lana said, comprehending. (363.256: Forensic science.) “You want to be able to identify her by her teeth if she’s…” Sometimes Lana wished she hadn’t read so many books.
“Look, I’ll ask around town, okay? And I can kick up the classification from ‘unknown circumstances’ to ‘suspicious circumstances’ if we add a suggestion that she’s a danger to herself because of her emotional state.”
“Will that mean someone will be out looking for her?”
“No, but it can’t hurt.” He decisively tapped some keys and pushed up from his chair. “How’s that? Feel free to call if you think of anything else,” he added as the phone continued to ring.
Lana had walked out knowing she couldn’t leave it there.
She was on unpaid leave, which she couldn’t afford to take, with the rent due on her Mid-City studio, and still she had no answers.
And unlike with most questions in life, she wouldn’t find them on the shelves of a library.
As she left the station, pulling out her car key, she heard a voice behind her.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a great look for background acting?”
She turned. It was the casting assistant who’d approached her earlier. “In fact, I have heard that before.”
“You’re so very—”
“Average, I know. Forgettable, even. You’ve convinced me. Where do I sign?”
So here she was, a week later, on the set of the hottest TV show in America, dying for the nineteenth time since eight a.m.
To Officer Sheng’s credit, he had visited the set on Tuesday, Lana’s second day as a professional nobody.
She’d watched from a distance as he inspected the set and…
No. Inspected was too strong a word. He’d toured the citadel, the tunnels, the props and wardrobe trailers.
He’d blushed when introduced to Estelle Duman, who feigned interest and even accepted a business card.
He did flash around Vivien’s photo, but no one offered anything beyond a shrug.
So, with Lana’s extra work coming to a gruesome end, she had devised a more audacious plan. Which she would launch once they were done killing her.