Crashed

28

“Tell me,” I said.

“Well, she got through with her makeup and then put on the costume for the scene, just a kind of nothing dress, a little evening dress, black with-”

“I don’t need to know about the dress. And?”

“And she hadn’t said anything for five or ten minutes. It was like she was miles away, or memorizing something. You know what I mean? Just not there. Anyway, she asked for a few minutes alone. So I told everyone to leave the room, and then we, I mean Ellie and I, we went to the cafeteria and got a couple cups of coffee. Just, you know, giving Thistle some time to pull herself together. Then we went back and knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer, and when we opened it, she was gone.”

Ellie came up from behind me, putting the phone away. “Not on the sound stage,” she said to Tatiana.

“How long was she alone?” I asked.

“Fifteen minutes?” Ellie said, aiming the question at Tatiana.

“Maybe twenty,” Tatiana said.

“Say twenty,” I said. “Enough time for anything.”

“Anything?” Tatiana said. Her fingers flew to her mouth. “Oh. Oh, my God. You said it, if they’re really serious about shutting this thing down, it’s Thistle they’ll target.”

“Let’s not go there yet. Did you both go into the room?”

“Yes,” Ellie said hesitantly. “I went first.”

‘How long ago?”

“Oh, gosh, hard to-I’ve been so upset.”

“Eight, ten minutes,” Tatiana said. “And I didn’t actually go into the room.”

“Okay, when you went into the room,” I said to Ellie, “was the dress in there?”

“The dress-”

“The costume dress. The one she had on. Did you see it in the room Thistle had been in?”

The two women looked at each other, and Ellie said, “No.”

“The clothes she arrived in. Were they in there?”

“Yes,” Ellie said.

“Okay,” I said to Tatiana. “Now you can tell me about the dress.”

“Little basic black number, sort of tarty,” Tatiana said. “Cut to bare one shoulder-”

“The left,” Ellie said.

Tatiana frowned. “Are you sure?”

I said, “It doesn’t matter. There’s no way Thistle would leave the lot wearing a dress like that. If she’s got that on, she’s here somewhere. Tatiana, get six or eight good people and divide up the lot. I want everyplace searched by at least two people. Clear?”

“Sure. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to see whether I’m wrong.”

There were three ways in and out of the studio. The gate we’d come in through was used mainly by vehicles, and it consisted of an eight-foot section of chain link that had to be opened and closed by the guy in the guard shack. He hadn’t opened it for anyone on foot in hours, although he’d let a few cars out in the past fifteen minutes. The only car he recognized was Trey’s chauffeured, bulletproof limo, which had pulled out five or ten minutes earlier.

It was also possible to walk out through the gatehouse, but it was only about four feet square, and anyone who left that way would practically have to bump into the guard. He said no one had come through on foot.

“Do you check the cars that leave?”

His brow furrowed beneath his imitation cop’s hat. “Check them?”

“You know, look inside, open the trunk, anything like that.”

“Geez,” he said, “this ain’t Checkpoint Charlie.”

It wasn’t Checkpoint Charlie in the Palomar Studios lobby, either. Two weight lifters in rental uniforms sat behind the desk, one of them wearing mirrored sunglasses that made me dislike him instantly.

“Has a young woman in a black dress gone past you guys in the past ten, fifteen minutes?”

“Who’s asking?” said Sunglasses.

“Good to know you’re awake,” I said. “Hard to tell with those Top Gun way-cools sitting on your big fat nose.”

“Hey,” he said, getting up.

“Think about it,” I said. “Somebody as rude as I am is probably eager to kill you. Can you think of another reason?”

“Um,” he said, but the other guy said, “No, nobody like that. I mean, one woman, but she works here. We see her every day.”

“Thanks,” I said. To the other guy, I said, “Any time. Just take a swing at me any time. It’ll be a pleasure.”

The third gate was at the back of the lot, and it opened onto a narrow, eucalyptus-lined street that bordered the wide, white concrete trench of the Los Angeles River. There was no guard, just a metal gate with a handle that anyone could open from the inside. To re-enter from the outside, you needed to punch a numeric code into a keypad. It was the logical place for Thistle to have chosen if she’d known about it, but I doubted she did. As far as I knew, she hadn’t worked at Palomar before.

I stood there, looking at the gate, at the tall rows of eucalyptus bending slightly in a breeze I couldn’t feel, and kicked myself. Despite the little black dress, despite the fact that no one had seen her leave, I didn’t think Thistle was still on the lot. She’d either gotten out on her own somehow, or someone had spirited her away. And there were a lot of potential someones. I remembered my question about all the things that had gone wrong before I got involved. I had said, Who has access like that?

And Craig-Robert had answered: Sweetie. All of us.

I jogged back toward the main building.

“Somebody saw her,” Tatiana said the moment she spotted me. “Just about five minutes ago.”

“Who? Where?”

“Eddie and Lorraine. They’re grips. They went into Studio A, the one we’re not using, to get some lighting clamps, and she ran out of the studio and into the administration building.”

“They’re sure it was her?”

“Right dress, right hair, right size. You know, she was running, and she didn’t look back and wave at them or anything, but it was Thistle.”

“Get everybody. I want all the doors to the administration building watched by at least two people while we search every foot of the place. Have somebody tell the rent-a-cops to keep their eyes open. Nobody who could conceivably be Thistle goes out of the building until we’ve been through it. And I mean conceivably-if somebody sees a short guy with a beard, I want to know that the beard is real. She could make herself look like anything with the stuff that’s available here.”

“We’re on it.” Tatiana ran toward the stage Thistle had been going to shoot on to round up the crew. I kept my eyes on the back door to the administration building, fighting a feeling that this was going to be a waste of time.

And it was. Two hours later, the building had been turned inside out. All the exits had been monitored. The basement and a small crawlspace attic had both been checked. The people who’d been searching were tired, frustrated, and cranky. The people whose offices we’d ransacked were irritated, self-righteous, and cranky.

“Go back,” I said to Tatiana. “Go through every wastebasket. Every trash receptacle in every rest room. Empty them completely. Turn the fuckers upside down.”

“What are we looking for?” Tatiana asked.

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Thirty minutes later, she came out with the black dress in her hands.