Chapter 14

I patted Grant’s arm. “I’m going up to the door for a better view.” Grant nodded, his hand poised over the camera controls.

I slipped through the curtain and sat on the floor in front of the door. Despite the textured surface of the glass, the view through it was relatively clear—a little like viewing an underwater scene, but I could still see well enough to make out Larry’s infuriated expression. The sounds from the dungeon came clearly through the speakers on the console.

Larry gasped and stared when the door to the dungeon opened. I realized Larry wouldn’t have been able to hear the bell that signaled Steffi’s approach, and his startlement was no doubt genuine. Larry brought his thighs together with a slap. With his legs apart, you could see his silk briefs up the legs of his shorts. He watched cautiously as the figure entered, his jaw thrust out belligerently.

Steffi was dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled up. In the dimness of that end of the room, her face was lost in the shadow of the hood. She stopped just inside the entrance, watching Larry.

His teeth gritted, Larry rasped out, “You better let me out of here, now! You have no idea how much shit I can bring down on your head.”

I could just make out that Steffi’s mouth was slightly open. The lower half of her face radiated complete astonishment. Like everyone else who had known in advance that Larry would look and sound like Zeke Hillcrest, she had still not been prepared for such a perfect impersonation. Slowly, the corners of her open mouth curled upward into a smile. “I don’t think you have access to your shit right now, Zeke.”

Larry’s lips were pressed together, his shoulders straining as he tried harder than ever to pull his wrists free of the cuffs. He gave up finally, breathing hard, and glared again at the intruder. “Who the hell are you? What do you want?”

The woman reached up and pushed the hood back. Her hair was brushed back and held in a pony tail, and I was sure she had worn it this way in high school. “I’m somebody who wanted to be your friend once, Zeke.”

Larry started angrily, “Am I supposed to know...” He stopped, and leaned forward as much as the chains would allow. His eyes went wide. He finally said in a whispery voice, “S-Stephanie?”

Steffi laughed delightedly. “It’s so sweet of you to remember! Do you remember all the little people you stepped on along the way, or should I consider myself special?”

For the first time, a look of fear crossed Larry’s face. “L-look, Stephanie, I never meant ... I mean, it was all kind of ... for fun, you know?”

The good humor disappeared instantly from Steffi’s face. “Fun! Oh, yeah, I’m sure it was. Think of all the fun I had sitting in jail. Wondering what they were going to do to me. Wondering if they were going to execute me. They would have if I’d been eighteen, you know. I wasn’t sure how that worked. Were you sure, Zeke? Did you check into the laws? Did you think they might hang me?” She took a step closer, her fists clenched, glaring, spitting out the words, “Did that thought ever come into your head while you were having fun?”

Larry pressed himself back against the wall. His voice quavered as he spoke. I had a feeling that Larry was as deep into the fantasy as Steffi was. Larry was not the professional actor he was impersonating, but I believed Larry was not having to pretend to be afraid of Steffi—at least, not consciously. He had spent two months immersing himself in Zeke, acting like him, trying to think like him. Today, now, he was Zeke. In his conscious mind, he believed he was the person who had tormented Steffi all those years ago. “S-Stephanie ... You know they’re looking for me. And I mean, this isn’t just your average missing persons case. This is going to be big news everywhere!” Some self-confidence and defiance was coming back into his voice. “How long do you think you can hide me?”

That was one of the “conversation points” Steffi had wanted Larry to bring up. I knew what Steffi had planned as a response. Steffi gave Larry a grim smile. “Do you remember how you got here, Zeke?”

Larry bit his lip and shook his head.

Steffi giggled. “That’s one nice thing about that drug. Short term memory loss. You do remember going out for a drive this morning, right? Just you and your hot little convertible? Top down. Beautiful day today.” Zeke was known to do that, during his down time between movies. Larry nodded, and Steffi went on. “My associates rear-ended you at an isolated intersection out in the boondocks. Do you remember that much?”

Suddenly infuriated, Larry snarled, “You better not have messed up my car...”

Steffi laughed again. “Have some perspective, Zeke. You’re in a lot more trouble than your car is. Anyway, when you and my associates got out of your cars to look over the damage, they gave you a little injection. And here you are!” Steffi gestured grandly at the surroundings.

Larry glared at him. “They will find me. I couldn’t be that far away. A drug wouldn’t put me under that long.”

“Well, distance is the least of your problems. You see ... oh, wait.” Steffi looked at her watch. “The news should be coming up. That should clear things up for you.”

Steffi picked up a remote on the table nearby and thumbed a button. The ending of the popular song “Consume My Heart” filled the room from unseen speakers, followed by a female voice saying, “Stay tuned for the news on the hour, including the latest on the Zeke Hillcrest mystery.” After a commercial, another voice started speaking. The first voice had been Garrett, playing a DJ. The second was Safford, a Second Year student, who had been judged to have the sort of calm, authoritative voice favored in radio newsreaders.

Safford’s pre-recorded voice began, “The car belonging to missing actor Zeke Hillcrest has been found. An alert passerby spotted the car partially submerged in the Planque River, not far from Hillcrest’s Forest View home. Police spokesmen say Hillcrest was not in the car. Tire tracks indicate the car was driven into the river, and police speculate Hillcrest may have lost control of the vehicle. The seat belt was unused, and it is possible Hillcrest may have been swept out of the car by the current. There is no information as to whether Zeke Hillcrest may have found his way to shore following the accident, but the police are cautiously hopeful. They are now awaiting the arrival of divers, who will begin searching the river shortly. Stay tuned to this station for the latest bulletins.” Safford paused. “In other news...”

Steffi switched the “radio” off. She smiled at Larry. “I’m sure you see the problem, Zeke. Everybody’s going to be looking in the wrong place! They think they know where you are, and that’s where they’ll stay, combing the bottom of that river, probably for days! It won’t occur to them to look anywhere else, certainly not in an underground bunker on the estate of a person nobody will think to associate with you! Not in the amount of time you have left.”

Larry gawked at her. “W-what do you mean? About ‘time I have left’?”

Steffi reached toward the wall and pushed a button. A panel in the ceiling, invisible until it moved, opened above the center of the room. A length of rope with a hangman’s knot in its end dropped through the panel. The noose bobbed and swung at the end of the rope, gradually becoming still.

Larry shrank back against the wall, his shoulders hunched. “No! You can’t do that to me!”

Steffi looked at him curiously. “Why not? You didn’t care if I was hanged.”

Larry shook his head violently. “You can’t, you can’t! I’ve got so much longer to live! I just...” His eyes widened, and he spoke rapidly, hopeful. “I just signed a contract with City Lights Studios. They’re going to pay me one million dollars a year, over the next fifteen years, and at the end of that, I’ve agreed to do a snuff film for them. You can have that money! I don’t need it! Think about it, Stephanie! A million dollars every year, for fifteen years! And when I do the movie, you can come on the set and watch me be snuffed! And get some of my thanerone after! I’ll tell them you have to be there!” I was proud of that story. I’d come up with it myself.

Steffi laughed more heartily this time. “Money! You think that will fix it. Tell me, Zeke, have you kept track of me at all? Do you know what I’ve been doing lately?”

Larry shook his head blankly.

Steffi gave him a nasty grin. “Well, offers of money don’t mean a lot to me. I’d barely notice a few more millions. But being able to hang you myself...” She looked at Larry intently and spoke slowly. “ ... that means everything to me.”

Larry stammered quickly, “Th-there must be something I can do! Stephanie, you could hang anybody! I’m not just anybody, I’m Zeke Hillcrest! I can get things done for you. I’m not just talking about money. Tell me what you want. Anything!” Steffi had suggested that “Zeke” remind Steffi that he was an actor. Larry decided that Zeke wouldn’t do so directly, and had settled on this oblique reference to his exalted place in the scheme of things.

Steffi’s eyes lit up. I thought Steffi’s smile, in some way, seemed genuine. Obviously things were going as she had intended, and she seemed both relaxed and very excited—she must have been worried that the acting out of her fantasy would fall short of her imaginings, but Larry’s appearance, his vocal impression, and above all his realistic Zeke-reaction to the situation was making it easy for Steffi to slide into the fantasy wholeheartedly.