Wanting Sheila Dead(14)

“It’s one of the perks of the job,” Sheila said. “I don’t think I ever realized, before I started doing this, just how much I wanted to say that I wasn’t saying. I mean it. You worry about your career and whatever and you keep it all bottled up inside. I don’t keep it bottled up inside anymore. I let it all right out there. And it’s wonderful. Besides, half these people deserve what they get. Can you really believe there are hicks this stupid in this day and age?”

Olivia wanted to say that Sheila had always let it all right out there, if she’d had enough to drink. That was how she’d ended up on a reality show to begin with. Olivia, however, never let anything out, and wouldn’t, even if they were paying her. She checked her clipboard again, pawed through a few pages, found the one she wanted and said:

“All right. You go in through that door over there. You’ll find yourself behind a curtain. Wait for the music to cue up and then come through. We’ve got it set up so that there’s a little platform there. After that, it’s up to you to remember what you’re supposed to say.”

“I remember what I’m supposed to say,” Sheila said.

Olivia watched her go through the other door. Then she herself went through the one she’d sent Janice Ledbedder through. She looked around at the girls. She nodded to one of the men behind her and the spotlight went on to the place where the curtains would part. Olivia looked at the crowd one more time and then—

“Thirty-one,” she said.

“Quiet,” the man closest to her said. “We’re rolling.”

Olivia was still staring at the crowd. She counted. She counted again. There were thirty-one. She thought of Janice Ledbedder out in the hall. She looked across the heads of the girls and at as many faces as she could catch, but she couldn’t find what was wrong. She went to the front and stood just behind Sheila at the podium.

Then the music started, and the curtains parted just slightly, and Sheila was out there in front of everybody. Her long red dress glittered in the light. Her long black hair looked as fake as it always did. Olivia told herself that it wouldn’t matter. There were thirty Gucci bags on tables in the next room, twenty with a picture of a girl in them. If one of the losers had snuck into this room she’d be weeded out before any more filming got done before that, because she wouldn’t have her picture in any of the bags. This was not a crisis. There was no need to turn it into a crisis.

“The thirty of you standing before me today,” Sheila Dunham said, “represent the end of one very long process, and the beginning of another. Whether you realized it or not, we have been watching you in this room for the last hour. We’ve been watching what you say and what you do, and we’ve come to the second decision of the three decisions we’ll have to make today. There can be only one America’s Next Superstar. There can be only fourteen girls in the house in Bryn Mawr. That means that sixteen of you will have to leave before this day is over. This time, we will eliminate only ten of you, and then there will be another test. In the next room—”

Olivia saw the girl move forward, a little blond girl, pretty enough, but mousy and small.

“—there are tables, and on those tables are Gucci bags, one for each of you. In twenty of those bags, there are pictures. If there’s a bag with your picture in it, you will go on to the next test. If there is not, then you will have to go home, immediately. When I step back—”

The blond girl had gotten closer. Nobody was paying attention to her. Some of the girls were straining toward the faint line that told them how far back they had to stay. The girl was not moving past that line. Olivia moved forward herself. She had to stay outside the range of the cameras.

“—you will be allowed to go through these curtains, through the door behind them, and search for your picture. On the count of three. One—”

This time, the little blond girl did move forward over the mark.

Then she raised her arm, pointed it directly at Sheila Dunham, and it was only when the shot was fired that Olivia realized she had a gun.





PART I




Everyone is interested in murder, in theory if not in practice . . .

—Theodore Dalrymple





ONE



1


For most of his life, Gregor Demarkian had cared very little for, or about, murder mysteries. He had tried a few, over the years. In the army, he’d read the books he’d found in the base libraries close at hand. Those had been mostly “hard-boiled,” and he’d found them completely ridiculous. It was odd, these days, to think that he’d ever been as young as that, but he hadn’t been so young that he hadn’t been able to figure out that real private detectives did not go chasing around the landscape solving murders that police forces couldn’t, or wouldn’t, solve themselves. Besides, he never much liked the way the police were portrayed in the works of people like Raymond Chandler. He did not think the police were habitually corrupt. He did not think the local business community was habitually corrupt, either. He did not think America could be explained by some grand collusion of the police and the capitalists, for the sole purpose of . . . well, he had never been able to figure out what the villains in hard-boiled novels really wanted. There was money, but it had never seemed to him to be a big enough reason for all the nonsense that was going on, nonstop, in an apparent attempt to destroy the soul of the country.