Alter Ego

44

When Stride finally got home, the man he was looking for was already there. Chris Leipold was huddled in one of the Adirondack chairs on his porch. The writer was as white as the snow, and he’d obviously been drinking. A half-empty bottle of brandy was still in his hand. He stared at Stride through bloodshot eyes. His speech was slurred by the numbing cold, the lingering effects of his virus, and the dulling effects of the alcohol.

“It’s over,” Chris said. “It’s done.”

Stride sat down in a chair next to him. He glanced over his shoulder through the cottage windows. Inside, the lights were on. Serena was already home.

“What are you doing here, Chris?” Stride asked.

“It’s over,” Chris said again.

“What is?”

“The studio’s pulling out of The Caged Girl. The movie’s dead.”

“Ah. I’m sorry.”

“Five years of work up in smoke in five hours. Now I’m the guy who wasted tens of millions of dollars and got nothing to show for it.”

“It’s not your fault that Dean Casperson is a sexual predator.”

Chris shook his head. “You don’t know Hollywood.”

Stride tried to feel bad, but he’d hated the idea of this movie from the beginning. There was no value in celebrating evil. “Be honest with me, Chris. Did you know what was going on?”

The writer turned his head slowly. “About Dean?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. Everyone knew. Do you think it’s only him? Every actress has a story about someone in this business. They swallow it down and smile and pretend it never happened. It’s what women everywhere do with powerful men.”

Stride wished that Chris was wrong. But he wasn’t.

“I’ve asked you this question a hundred times,” Stride said, “but I’ve never really gotten an answer. Why did you want to do this movie, anyway? Why did you write a script about what Art did?”

“I already told you; the movie was never about Art.”

“Except it is,” Stride said. “We both know that.”

“I cast a nobody to play Art. I cast Dean Casperson to play you.”

“Yes, thanks for that,” Stride replied drily. “Tell me the truth. How did you really feel about your father?”

Chris took a long time to reply. Then he said, “I loathed him.”

“Even before the murders?”

“Yes. He was a son of a bitch. All my life, he made sure I knew that he was Art Leipold and I was just a mediocre reproduction. A genetic copy made on bad carbon paper. I was never going to accomplish a fraction of what he did. He was a news anchor. I was a nobody.”

“That must have hurt,” Stride said.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve paid a lot of shrinks a lot of money over the years to deal with that. And yes, you’re right, that’s why I did the movie. Sure it is. I wanted to show him up once and for all. I wanted the world to see who he was. A nobody. A cruel, sadistic nobody. Now look what’s happened. Art gets the last laugh. I tried to destroy him, and he destroys me instead.”

Stride stood up and extended a hand. “Come on, Chris, let’s go inside.”

“I should go.”

“You’re in no condition to drive. You can sleep it off on our sofa.”

He helped Chris out of the chair and opened the cottage door. The house was drafty, the way it always was. The lights in the living room were low, and he could hear Serena working in the dining room beyond the great space. He guided Chris to the red leather sofa and draped him across it. He covered him with an afghan. Chris was asleep almost immediately.

Stride joined Serena in the dining room, where the lights were brighter. He kissed her, then went to the kitchen to get another Coke, but the caffeine was losing its punch. He was tired. He took a seat next to Serena and scanned the research she’d been doing. The dining room table was covered with his files and notes from the Art Leipold murders. She’d pulled their television into the room, too, and set it up near the windows. Frozen on the screen was a still of Aimee Bowe from one of her scenes in the movie.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“No.”

“This is months of work. You’ve only been at it a couple hours.”

“I don’t know how much time Aimee has,” Serena said.

Stride jerked his thumb at the living room. “Chris is drunk. I put him on the sofa.”

“He was waiting for me when I got here,” Serena said. “I asked him to pull Aimee’s takes in the movie and put them on a disk for me. I thought he went back to his hotel.”

“Did he tell you? The movie is dead. They’re shutting it down.”

Serena didn’t look surprised. “So you’re not going to be a star after all?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, you’re a star to me,” she told him, leaning over to kiss him again. “And to Cat. I was worried about you tonight, Jonny. I really thought you were going to shoot Casperson.”

“I thought so, too. Did you make it to the hospital? How is she?”

“Sleeping.”

“You should probably get a couple hours of sleep yourself.”

“I can’t,” Serena said. “I have to keep at this. I have to find Aimee.”

“Okay, we’ll do it together.” Stride stretched his arms over his head and leaned back in the chair far enough that he could see Chris Leipold in the living room. He made sure Chris was out cold before he spoke. “To be honest, I was starting to wonder if Chris was the one who took Aimee. I was beginning to think he might have framed Art for the murders back then.”

“Why would he do that?” Serena asked.

“To get revenge against Art for making him feel worthless for most of his life. Except now I can see that the movie was really his revenge. He didn’t commit murder over it.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Nowhere,” Stride said. He gestured at the television. “Why did you want the videos from the movie?”

“I’ve been going over every take Aimee did to see if there was anything that would give us a clue.”

“And?”

“There’s nothing that I can see,” Serena said.

Stride took the remote control and started the video again. The scene looked familiar to him, and he realized that he’d been on the set while it was being filmed. Dean Casperson was rescuing Aimee Bowe from the cage where she’d been held. It was unsettling to him seeing Casperson in the movie when he’d pointed a gun at the man’s head only a few hours earlier in real life. On the screen, they’d traded places. Dean Casperson was him. Casperson was the one with the gun.

He watched the dialogue between the two actors:

“Who did this—”

“It doesn’t matter now. We have him. He’s not going to hurt anyone else.”

“I can’t move. What’s wrong with me?”

“Give it time.”

“I’m so cold.”

“You’ll be out of here soon.”

“I killed it. I killed it. I killed the little girl.”

Stride stopped the playback. “I know Aimee improvises, but I still don’t understand that line. ‘I killed the little girl.’ What does that mean? Did she say anything to you about where it came from?”

Serena smiled. “You’re as bad at movie lines as you are with song lyrics.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s not ‘little girl,’ Jonny. It’s ‘little bird.’ She’s saying she killed the little bird. She’s talking about the chickadee that was inside the cage with each victim. That was an awful thing. I can’t believe you never told me about it.”

Stride rewound the video and played it again. He listened carefully and realized that Serena was right.

I killed the little bird.

And again and again and again.

I killed the little bird. I killed the little bird. I killed the little bird.

Serena stared at him as he kept replaying the scene. “Jonny, what’s wrong?”

He thought about all the possibilities, but none of them led him where he needed to go. None of them had an innocent explanation. Something wasn’t right.

“How did Aimee know about that?” Stride asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How did she know about the chickadees? We never released that information publicly. We didn’t want any of the families to know about it. It was too disturbing.”

Serena shrugged. “Lori Fulkerson told her about it.”

“No, that’s impossible.”

“Jonny, I was there when Lori said it,” Serena insisted.

“Lori didn’t know,” Stride replied. “There was no chickadee in the cage with her. The others, yes, but not her. We assumed Art wasn’t able to trap one during the winter.”

“How can you be sure about that?”

“Feathers. There were no feathers in the box with her. When we dug up the bodies of the other women buried behind the cabin, we found feathers trapped in their clothes. And then when we did the autopsies and got the analysis of their stomach contents, we figured out what had happened. It was grotesque. No one needed to know about that. We made a conscious decision to keep it private out of respect for the victims. The county attorney didn’t use that information at the trial.”

“Well, Lori found out somehow,” Serena said. “Somebody must have told her.”

“No. Nobody told her. There are no more than ten people in Duluth who know about the chickadees. They’re cops and attorneys, and that’s all. I can give you their names. There is no way Lori Fulkerson could have known about it.”

Serena thought about it. Then she shook her head.

“There is one way, Jonny. What if Lori put those women in the box herself?”