“YOU KNOW WHAT the problem with zombies is?” Catherine asked. “They don’t stay buried.”
She flung the rubber mask onto the table in front of Roger Park and his lawyer. The producer flinched at the sight of it. The stark decor of the interrogation suite was a far cry from his luxurious trailer, and Park appeared much less at ease in this inhospitable setting. He swallowed hard. “Where did you get that?”
“Debra Lusky’s personal storage unit,” Brass stated. “Carefully wrapped in tissue paper and tucked away in a box of personal memorabilia.” He cracked a wry smile. “Who knew zombies could be so sentimental?”
“Not to mention murderers.” Catherine held the mask up so that Park could get a better look at its worm-eaten features, previously seen in close-up on the infamous zombie sex tape. Park had been confronted with the video footage only moments earlier. “Look familiar?”
The attorney, a silver-haired smoothie named Arthur Chou, placed a restraining hand on his client’s arm. Chou had a reputation for getting Hollywood celebrities out of trouble; he had once managed to get an A-list date rapist acquitted despite a surfeit of DNA evidence. “Don’t answer that.”
Brass ignored the lawyer, keeping Park in his sights. “Maybe we should ask your wife if she recognizes the mask . . . or the woman in the video.”
“No!” Park blurted. “You can’t! She’d ruin me!”
“Quiet,” Chou counseled Park again. He dismissed Brass’s threat with a wave of a well-manicured hand. “I fail to see the relevance of my client’s personal life. I was under the impression this was a murder investigation, not divorce proceedings.”
Catherine was unimpressed by the lawyer’s haughty attitude. “I think your client just did a pretty good job of demonstrating its relevance. Mr. Park’s career would suffer if his wife found out he was cheating on her. That gave him a motive to dispose of Matt Novak—and Debra Lusky.”
“We did our homework,” Brass elaborated. “Seems Tricia Grantley has a controlling interest in the whole Zombie Heat franchise.” He gazed knowingly at Park. “She could kill all your big TV plans if she felt like it.”
Park blanched at the prospect. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. “Look,” he began, over Chou’s protests, “I admit I had a thing with Debra. We met at the Zombie Heat premiere and, what can I say, we just clicked. There was this amazing chemistry between us. . . .”
“You mean you both liked your sex good and creepy,” Catherine translated.
Park glared at her. “That’s not a crime.”
“So why didn’t you mention this to us before?” Brass asked.
“It’s just like you said,” he answered. “We were trying to keep my wife from finding out, for all sorts of personal and professional reasons.” He wiped his sweaty brow with a silk handkerchief. “I had enough catastrophes to deal with after the shooting, and telling you about my affair with Debra was not going to bring Matt back. After all, it didn’t have anything to do with Matt’s death.”
“Even though Novak died with a copy of the video on his person?” Brass was openly skeptical. “Here’s what I think happened. Your old drinking buddy somehow got hold of one of your kinky home movies. Maybe he lifted it off your computer. Or maybe you even showed it to him in a careless moment.”
Stranger things had happened, Catherine mused, especially where Hollywood types were concerned. According to this movie she’d seen on cable once, Bob Crane, the one-time star of Hogan’s Heroes, had frequently taped himself having one night stands with groupies, then shared the videos with a long-time crony of his. Come to think of it, that had ended in murder too. . . .
“But then,” Brass continued, “Novak decides to blackmail you into making him a star. So you decide to get rid of him in a convenient ‘accident.’ And, lucky for you, Debra knows just the right person to squeeze the trigger for you. Her old frenemy, Jill Wooten.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Park protested. “If I was in cahoots with Debra, why would I kill her, too?” He placed a hand over his heart, feigning grief. “Believe me, what we had was very special.”
“Not special enough,” Catherine accused him. “Not once she started cracking under the pressure. We interrogated her roughly nine hours before she was murdered, and she was pretty stressed out by the end of the questioning, almost like she was on the verge of coming clean.” Catherine could see how it all played out. “I’m thinking she called you in a panic, probably on one of those disposable cell phones you harassed Jill with, and you realized you couldn’t depend on her silence anymore.”
Brass picked up the narrative. “Of course, there was no time for anything tricky or elaborate this time. So you just arranged to meet her in the park . . . and shot her in the head when her back was turned.”
Park started to object, but Chou cut him off. “You two missed your callings, you know that? You should have been screenwriters.” He scoffed at their theory. “It’s a colorful story, but it’s all just supposition. Prove it.”
Catherine met his cocky smirk with one of her own. “We’re working on it.”
“Is that all?” the lawyer demanded. “Are we done here?”
“Just one more thing,” she said.
“What’s that?”
Catherine took out her cell phone. “I’d like to hear your client say ‘nuclear.’”