The Last Thing I Saw (21 page)

Davis said, “That’s pretty convoluted, but I guess plausible.”

“So Kim was killed for the same reason Wenske had to be silenced—to protect the drug operation that was basically keeping the ineptly run Hey Look Media empire afloat. And Boo Miller was both the mechanism by which HLM found out that Wenske was onto them, and then he was in the wrong place at the wrong time—the right place for HLM—when he showed up at Kim’s Boston apartment to pool their information and then to brief me that night at dinner.”

“What about this Delaney, the source of the information on Wenske’s investigation? Why wasn’t he killed?”

My phone went shaky in my hand. “Good question, Lieutenant.” I wondered if by now he had been.

After a moment, Davis said, “I think I should put you in touch with some reliable law enforcement out there, Strachey. I’ll get a name, and let me get back to you.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Give me an hour or two.”

“There’s one other thing I should tell you. I’m all but certain Eddie Wenske is alive.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“With luck, I’ll know soon.”

“If these bad actors killed Kim and Miller and maybe Delaney to keep Wenske from exposing all this criminal behavior, why wouldn’t Wenske have been their first and foremost victim?”

“I think they had planned on making him just that,” I said. “But then they had what they thought was a better idea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I guessed the knock at my door just after eight was going to be Ort or, even better, Paul Delaney. But instead it was three Hispanic men instructing me to step through the back doorway of their black van. One of the three men had a Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic drawn, another waved what looked like a jagged-edged hunting knife at my jugular, and the third man gestured impatiently for me to get in. I said I’d like to bring my phone, which was next to my bed, but the meanest-looking of the three, the one with the knife, snapped, “Fuck that. Get your ass in the vehicle
now
.”

My impulse was to run, but I thought I knew enough about these three—were they the Hispanics with a van who probably killed Bryan Kim and Boo Miller?—that the chances were good that the one with the Glock would shoot me down in the motel parking lot and then the one with the dagger would plunge it into my heart. So I climbed into the van.

I was shoved onto the floor while the others sat on the metal benches that ran along either side of the van’s interior. The back door was slammed shut and we quickly took off, the van driven by a fourth man I didn’t get a look at.

There was some dirty carpeting under me, and I wondered if its putrid stench was from Boo Miller’s blood.

“Where are we headed?” I said.

“Shut your mouth.”

The Glock was still aimed at my midsection, and I said, “Is the safety on on that thing? Glocks are known for discharging in a light breeze.”

He just grunted, holding no interest in anything I had to say on gun safety.

None of these three was Pablo or Blanco, so were we headed for the Skutnik lodge or elsewhere? And when we arrived, wherever it was, would I find Paul Delaney? If I did find him and he was alive, that offered hope for me. If I found him and he was not alive, that was bad all the way around.

I assumed the van I was in was the one I had seen earlier in the day as Ort and I were driving away from the Skutnik lodge, but I wasn’t sure.

I hadn’t had any dinner, so the queasiness I felt had to have been from the stinking carpet and from fear.

“Mind if I sit up on the bench?” I said. “You can still blow my guts out if you think you need to.”

“Stay down! Stay down!”

I imagined the Glock going off and the bullet passing through my viscera and on down through the floor to the van’s gas tank where it would set off an explosion that would blow us all to bits. That would represent a crude form of justice, but I wouldn’t get a lot of satisfaction from it. Nor would it punish or restrain whoever was behind all this bloody mayhem.

We sped along a straight smooth highway—Interstate 5?—and then veered onto a road with twists and turns and a lower speed limit. Highway 89, I was thinking.

The three men had not bound me—not necessary with their arsenal aimed at me—and they had not blind-folded me either. I wished they had. That would have been an indication that I would be unable to tell the authorities where I had been held captive after I had gotten out of this alive.

After ten minutes or so—I was able to glance at my watch from time to time—the van turned left onto a secondary road, and I thought:
This is it. I’m getting my wish. I’m going to see Mason Hively’s dungeon.

We made another turn onto a bumpier road—the Skutnik driveway—and soon the van slowed and came to a halt.

We all stayed put until the driver came around and opened the back door. I looked out and was interested to see that it was Rover Fye. The other three exited the van first. Then I climbed out.

I said, “Am I in a Hey Look TV reality show? You’re Hal Skutnik’s boyfriend, I think I recall. Am I on gay TV?”

“Yeah, you’re in a reality show, you stupid asswipe. You and your friend Delaney. But the reviews aren’t going to be all that good.”

“Par for the course at Hey Look TV,” I said.

Fye didn’t fly into a rage. He said coolly, “You’re going to get a dose of reality you won’t soon forget, Strachey. And the reviews are going to be great. Because I’m the reviewer, and I know you’re going to receive raves.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“Don’t bother.”

Fye directed the three goons to take me into what he called
the studio
.

I said, “I’m not ready for my close-up.”

“Yeah, you
think
you aren’t.”

It was after nine at night and Pablo and Blanco were still lounging on their bench, floodlit now, outside the big metal building. They exhaled cigarette smoke and nodded as we approached, and Fye manipulated a big sliding bolt and then opened a walk-through door next to the high garage doors, which remained shut.

I followed Fye, the muzzle of the Glock close to my back and the hunting knife raised and glistening off to my side.

The building was in fact a film studio, with cameras and dollies and lighting overhead and on racks and poles. Taking up half the space in the back part of the structure was a film set, the much-talked about dungeon built for the unproduced
The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo.
There were torture devices—a medieval-style rack, some kind of hang-from-the-rafters mechanism, and a large leather-covered platform with whips and paddles next to it. And chained by the feet to a supporting I-beam were two men.

One of them was Paul Delaney, who nodded a kind of resigned greeting as I approached him. I think he mouthed the words, “Sorry, sorry.”

I also recognized the other man who was chained to a pole. I walked up to him and said, “Dr. Wenske, I presume.”

He laughed lightly and said, “You’re Don Strachey, I take it.”

“I sure am.”

“You didn’t happen to bring along a cake with a file in it, did you?”

“I meant to, but nope.”

Fye said, “I’m going to go up to the lodge and relax. I’ll see you all in the morning. Mason might drop by later to say nighty-night to y’all and get spanked. But I want to leave you alone so that Edward will explain what your role is going to be in HLM’s next production. I want you to understand how important that role is. I think it’ll be perfectly clear and you’ll know just what to do. And so will Mr. Wenske. Right, Eddie?”

Wenske looked pale and exhausted but otherwise unhurt. He was a slightly worn version of his
Weed Wars
jacket photo, with the hazel eyes, the shock of hair and the bent grin that was part of his natural physiognomy. He wore old jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, and he was borderline aromatic.

Wenske said, “Rover, you are nuts. I told you. This is
not
going to work.”

“Oh, sure it is,” Fye said, and directed his three goons to chain me up too.

Which they did. They attached a manacle to my ankle and locked it with a key one of the Mexicans kept on a ring on his belt. Welded to the manacle was a chain that was wrapped around the same upright I-beam that kept Wenske and Delaney from moving more than about twelve or fourteen feet in any direction. Off to the side about ten feet away was a porta-potty that I didn’t like the looks of.

I said, “Rover, are Paul and I going to be performers in a Hey Look TV production?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I’m not in the actors’ union. Neither is Paul, I’ll bet.”

“Don’t worry. We don’t get involved with that guild shit. Anyway, there’s no union for the type of performing you’re gonna be doing.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Toodle-ee-oo, boys.”

Fye went out followed by the Mexicans, and then I could hear the bolt slide shut.

Delaney said, “I should have known. I’m so sorry I got you mixed up in this, Strachey.”

“Paul, you didn’t know,” Wenske said. “It was my mom who hired Don, and she couldn’t have known either. Don, care for a drink?”

“Sure.”

We all seated ourselves around an old formica-topped kitchen table, and Wenske opened a fresh bottle of water and passed it around.

“I had figured out,” Wenske said, “that the HLM people were crooked and obnoxious. What I didn’t know until it was too late is that they are criminally insane.”

“Meth freaks, apparently,” I said.

“Just Rover and Mason. That’s where Rover is headed now, I’m sure. They sit around the lodge and do meth. Skutnik doesn’t do drugs at all, as far as I can tell. But in a way he’s the worst of them all because he is delusional.”

“What are his delusions? Other than of grandeur?”

“It is his belief that Hey Look TV will win an Emmy next year. He needs this to happen to make his mother proud. Mason told me she’s in an assisted living place in Beverly Hills, and she calls Hal once a week and says all the other old ladies there have sons and daughters who have won Emmys, and when is Hal going to win one and make her proud, too? Except, have you ever seen Hey Look TV programming?”

“One time I saw part of an episode of
Dark Smooches
.”

“So you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Mason and Rover are addicts and sadists—well, masochist in Mason’s case—and probably clinically insane.”

“And homicidal,” Delaney said. “I told Eddie about Bryan Kim and Boo Miller.”

Wenske shook his head. “I was so naïve. I just thought they were cynical jerks. Guys who held other gay people in contempt and then exploited them. But they’re actually far worse. Poor Bryan. God. If I had any idea he’d be hurt by this…”

“They are preposterous people,” Delaney said. “Lots of people are involved with shady business practices, but how could you have known they were killers?”

I said, “They killed Bryan and Boo Miller to warn off anybody like yourself, Eddie, who might expose how HLM is being propped up by screwing writers and filmmakers, Ponzi financing, and marijuana growing and wholesaling. But they didn’t kill you. And I think I know why.”

“Of course they didn’t kill me,” Wenske said. “They can’t do without me. I’m writing Hal’s Emmy-winning script for
Notes from the Bush
.”

“How’s it going?”

“Terrible. I don’t know how to write for film. It requires a totally different craft from what you use for prose. It’s about compression, and as a writer I’m about as compressed as
Moby Dick
. I’ve got these books, and they don’t help at all.” Wenske picked up a battered paperback copy of
Making a Good Script Great—A Guide for Writing and Rewriting
, by Hollywood script consultant Linda Seger. “I’ve read eight books on screenwriting, and I figure if I keep at this for another twenty years I might be able to learn the basics of the craft. Unfortunately, Hal’s mother isn’t going to live that long.”

“Anyway,” I said, “I take it your life will be worth less after you produce a usable script. I don’t like to bring that up, but I guess you’ve thought of that.”

“Yes, I have. What Hal tells me—he comes up here once a week to check on my progress—what he tells me is, he wants me there at the Emmys to collect my award and thank him profusely for giving me the opportunity to bring my book to the screen. Hal is crazy, and he may actually believe that once I’m out of here I won’t run screaming to the nearest police station. The guy is demented. Rover and Mason, on the other hand, are more connected to reality, meth freaks though they are. So once I finish the script…well, I am very afraid to think about that.”

“So,” Delaney said, “Eddie has two reasons for not finishing the script.”

“One is,” Wenske said, “I’m incompetent at screenwriting.”

“And number two is,” I said, “Rover and Mason might kill you soon after you’re done.”

Delaney said, “So what we have here is a variation on
Scheherazade
. Eddie has to keep turning in drafts that are bad. Because as soon as he finishes a good one, he’s done for.”

One part of the present equation was missing, however. I said, “But what about Paul and me? We’re onto all this crap. Why are we here in the dungeon? Why didn’t they just kill us and dump our bodies in the Siskiyou County woods?”

Wenske tensed up. “Because,” he said, “they don’t trust me. They think I’m malingering.”

“And how will our presence change that?”

“They plan on torturing you in my presence unless I hurry up and present them with a usable script.”

I looked around at the devices resting back in the shadows of Mason’s dungeon.

I said, “Then I guess we all have to get out of here somehow. Any ideas on how we can do it?”

Wenske said, “No. And believe me, I’ve thought of little else.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Wenske had some energy bars he’d been given by his captors, and I ate a couple of those for dinner. He showed Delaney and me the script he’d been working on on the laptop Hively had provided, but I didn’t know what to make of it. I tried to see the story and characters in my head as I read along, but it was all terribly sketchy. I admired anybody who could tell a story using this spare vocabulary, and I admired anybody who could make it all come to life with actors, lighting, a setting, and film or video cameras.