Page 24 of Script Swap
The door hit something and wobbled.
In the opening, a hand was visible.
I suddenly had an idea of what had stopped the door.And where Kyson had gone.
Jonni started to scream.
Chapter 5
It was Kyson.And he was dead, of course.The back of his head had been smashed in.
The deputies came—Bobby and Dahlberg—and then the sheriff.They corralled everyone in the theater on the stage.Bobby stayed to make sure nobody (i.e., me) got into trouble while Sheriff Acosta and Dahlberg locked down the crime scene, and then there was nothing to do but wait.
And think.
And watch.
Terrence paced back and forth, gesticulating wildly, occasionally turning his face up to the heavens to moan things like “Why me?”and “I’m ruined.”But it was hard to forget the look on his face from the night before, the shock giving way to rage when Kyson had delivered that final line.
Nora sat on a wooden box that had been painted black, some sort of set piece.She didn’t weep or wail, but she did look suitably grave.
Betty and Milton were staring daggers at each other from across the theater.I got the feeling that if Bobby hadn’t been there, they’d have been at each other’s throats.Possibly literally.
Tinny stood near the red curtain, a strange smile on her face.
No Pippi.
And Jonni was having the time of her life.Wrapped in one of those foil emergency blankets, she was shivering and shaking and weeping uncontrollably while a paramedic checked her out.I hadn’t seen this guy before—White, twentysomething, hair in a tight fade with a lock of bright blue at the front.He also looked like he’d been painted into his uniform, and let me tell you, this gentleman had never skipped leg days.Jonni kept grabbing his hand whenever he moved, clasping it in her own and slowly trying to bring it toward her, uh, bosom, like some kind of horrible tractor beam.The paramedic, to his credit, kept getting his hand free, but he couldn’t quite seem to reach escape velocity.
“Something is seriously wrong here,” I said.
“I’ll say,” Bobby said.“She’s a fingertip away from sexual assault.”
“No, I mean—well, yeah, but I was talking about here in the theater more generally.Kyson.”
Bobby made a sound that could have meant anything.
“This has got to be about the script, right?Because otherwise, why kill Kyson?”
“We don’t know why someone killed Kyson,” Bobby said.“That’s the whole point of an investigation.”
“I know, but I’m saying, it must be connected to the script, right?”
“Not necessarily.It could have been a coincidence.”
“Bobby, people were freaked out.That line Kyson said, it meant something to somebody.Maybe to more than one somebody.And now Kyson is dead.That can’t be a coincidence.”
He made that noise again, the one that wasn’t quite disagreement.
“The real question,” I said, “is if the theft of the box office money is connected.”
“That seems likely.”
“But how?Is it a red herring?”
“Like what?Someone stole the money to try to draw attention away from the script?”
“Maybe.Or what if it’s not a red herring?What if that’s the crime Kyson was talking about when he said, ‘I know what you did’?”
