Chapter 48

“You send me to Toledo and what do I do?”

Morris was distracted from his phone conversation with Polk by the cameraman signaling that they would be live in three minutes. Margot Denoir had swapped out the easy chair on the set for a loveseat so that he and Parker could sit on it together instead of Parker lying on the floor like last time. The bull terrier was blissfully gnawing on a rawhide bone while Morris listened to Polk and Margot looked on with heightened expectation. Nobody was better at smelling sensational ratings than Margot.

“I’ve got less than three minutes,” Morris told Polk. “Whatever you got, tell me it quickly.”

“I delivered, that’s what I did,” Polk said, sounding disappointed that he couldn’t play out his news more dramatically. “If Jack Blount was once a hell-raiser, he isn’t anymore. Now he’s an accountant. Kind of a milquetoast at present if you ask me.”

“Speed it up,” Morris said. “I’m going live with Margot Denoir in two and a half minutes.”

“Okay, okay. Take all the fun out of it for me, why don’t you? A long story short, he never broke into his old man’s workshop like his brothers thought. What he did was hide in the bushes when his old man cleaned out the workshop, and after his old man left some boxes in the car and headed back for more, the younger Blount rummaged through them, saw what he thought were metal cage traps for catching rats, and also found a certain mask that he salvaged and kept all these years. And I got it now.”

“The mask looks like the ’84 police sketch?”

“Exactly like it.”

“Jesus,” Morris said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Text me a photo.”

“You got it, boss.”

“Sounds like something big,” Margot said after Morris got off the phone.

Morris told her that was an understatement. When the text came in, he saw Polk had been right. It had to be the mask Ed Blount wore when a witness saw him leaving Denise Lowenstein’s apartment building.

“I’m forwarding you a photo,” Morris said. “We’ll need to get this on the air.”

The cameraman was counting down from ten. Margot must’ve arranged with her assistant to wait until the count reached three before rushing onto the set, distracting Parker with a treat, and grabbing the rawhide bone. God only knew why. Maybe Margot thought Parker would look more photogenic lying on the loveseat without the bone, but if Morris knew she’d been planning that, he would’ve explained why it was a bad idea. Since he didn’t, it surprised him as much as it did Parker, and he didn’t have a chance to grab his dog in time.

A split second later the cameraman signaled they were live, Margot went into her wide-eyed breathless act, and Parker bounded off the loveseat and landed in Margot’s lap. The bull terrier proceeded to lick her mouth and cheeks, streaking her expertly applied makeup. The look of stunned amazement on Margot’s face as she was left sputtering in midsentence was priceless. No one was better on the local TV scene at faking shock and outrage on the air than Margot, but right then her audience was seeing the real thing. Morris took his time grabbing Parker and carrying him back to the loveseat. He wasn’t happy with the dumb stunt Margot had pulled.

“Parker’s clearly a big fan of yours,” he said, tongue in cheek.

Margot was too flustered to speak, which might’ve been a first for her. The moment passed.

“He must be,” she said with an exaggerated sense of mortification. “I guess I should be thankful I’m still wearing my bra.”

While her makeup was ruined, Margot’s poofy blond hair remained undisturbed. Given all the styling mousse she used, it was doubtful a hurricane could have budged it. She wagged a finger at Parker. “Now you behave yourself! It usually takes at least three dates to get as far with me as you just did, buster!”

Parker thought she was playing a game with him, and he let out a couple of pig grunts as he tried to squirm free from Morris’s grasp, but Morris held tight. He mouthed to Margot to bring Parker back his bone. The director must’ve picked up on it because seconds later the assistant was hurrying over with the partially chewed rawhide bone. Soon after that the bull terrier was gnawing on it and once again ignoring all the activity around him.

“Well, that was exciting,” Margot declared. As fast as someone could snap their fingers, her expression became deathly somber. “We all need moments of levity during such difficult times. When we come back from commercial break, famed serial killer hunter Morris Brick will be revealing to us shocking new developments in the Nightmare Man case.”

There wasn’t supposed to be a commercial break at that time, but there also wasn’t a TV director alive who would’ve risked Margot’s ire right then. The cameraman signaled they were off the air, and Margot bellowed for her makeup artist. A skinny woman in her sixties rushed onto the set and began feverishly fixing the damage Parker had done.

“I should have your dog stuffed and mounted for what he did,” Margot said.

“When we go live again, I should put you on my knee and spank you for what you did,” Morris growled back at her. “With all the stimuli on the set and his toy being grabbed from him, he got overly excited and thought you were playing with him. He reacted exactly the way you should’ve expected.”

Margot sat sullenly after that. As her makeup artist was finishing up, she complained, “I must’ve looked absolutely hideous.”

“The most stunningly gorgeous woman on morning TV?” Morris said. “Not possible.”

“Your flattery won’t change the fact that I’ll be a laughingstock!”

“If that’s so, you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Your ratings will be off the charts with the news I’ll be breaking.”

Talk of high ratings appeased her. The cameraman began to count down from five, and when he reached one, Margot’s expression instantly transformed into one reflecting the utmost urgency.

“Exclusive to The Hollywood Peeper, we will be revealing the identity of the first Nightmare Man. I say first, because there have actually been two of these demented killers.”

“That’s right,” Morris said. He gave the director a prearranged nod, and Ed Blount’s mugshot, the 1984 police sketch, and the photo of the mask Polk had sent were shown on a split screen, and Morris told the whole sordid story of why he believed Ed Blount created the Nightmare Man.

“That’s simply incredible,” Margot said in her patented breathless voice as she raised a hand to her throat so that her fingers grazed the base of it.

Saying it aloud, it sounded impossible, but Morris knew it was true.

“This hired killer, Ed Blount—he died in prison in 1992?”

“That’s right.”

“So who is the second Nightmare Man?”

“We don’t know yet, but we believe it’s someone he met while in Ashfield State Prison. We’re now looking at the inmates he had contact with, and we can use any help the public can provide.”

Morris then made an appeal to viewers asking them to call the hotline number if they saw anything unusual near Lori Fletcher’s apartment building during the weeks leading up to the murder. He also asked the same of anyone who might know someone catching and keeping live rats. This of course got Margot’s curiosity, and she tried her damnedest to pry out of him whatever salacious details she could about what the Nightmare Man did with rats. She didn’t get anywhere, and she must’ve known she wouldn’t, but that didn’t stop her from giving it her all. If nothing else, it made for riveting television and would send her audience’s imaginations into overdrive, although nothing they came up with would match the sickening truth of what was done with them.

Revealing crucial information was always a dilemma for a number of reasons: First and most obvious in this case was the potential of being overwhelmed with false leads involving rats. Another factor that weighed heavily on Morris was that he might inspire copycat killers to come up with their own creative ways to use rats in a murder. But when he discussed this with Gloria Finston, she suggested he mention the rats. Even if nobody saw the killer collecting them, the killer could be worried that someone did, and the added stress could lead to him slipping up. She was convinced they had more to gain than to lose, and he agreed with her.

Margot finally gave up on pressing him about the rats, and he caught a glimmer in her eyes and a flash of a cunning smile. She didn’t quite wink at him, but she just as well could’ve.

She said, “It seems that Police Commissioner Martin Hadley made the right call in bringing you and your firm, MBI, into this investigation.”

He always suspected Hadley and Margot traded favors—that he slipped her confidential information in exchange for favorable treatment on her show, at least more favorable than he deserved. This proved it beyond any doubt.

Morris said with a straight face, “The man’s a visionary.”