Judith McNaught (11 page)

was perfect.

Standing beside the camera, his arms crossed against his chest, Zack watched it all through narrowed, impersonal eyes, but when Austin started to kiss and fondle Rachel and drag her down onto the hay bales, everything went wrong. Austin was awkward and clearly embarrassed. "CUT!" Zack shouted, infuriated by the realization that he was probably going to have to watch Austin fondle and kiss his wife

repeatedly at this rate. Stalking forward into the pool of light, he raked the actor with a look of glacial scorn. "You weren't kissing her like an inept choirboy in my hotel room, Austin. Let's see a little reenactment of that scene instead of this amateur performance you're giving us now."

Austin's face, which had been likened to Robert Redford's for its boyish charisma, turned a bright red.

"Jesus, Zack, why can't you be adult about all this

—"

Ignoring him, Zack rounded on Rachel, who was glaring at him, and with unprecedented crudity, he said,

"And you—you're supposed to be in heat, not dreaming of giving yourself a manicure while he mauls

you!"

The next two takes were very good, and the entire crew knew it, but both times, Zack stopped them before Rachel could even reach for the gun, and he made them do it over. He did it partly because he'd suddenly developed a perverse satisfaction in forcing them to publicly perform the same adulterous groping and fondling that had made a public fool out of him but mostly because he felt something was still

wrong with the scene. "CUT!" he called, interrupting the fourth take and walking forward.

Austin came up from the hay bale furious and spoiling for a fight, his arm around Rachel, who'd finally

developed enough sensitivity to be embarrassed and equally furious. "Now look, you sadistic son of a bitch, there was nothing wrong with the last two takes! They were perfect," Austin ranted, but Zack ignored him and decided to try the scene the way he'd considered doing it yesterday.

"Shut up and listen," he snapped, "we're going to try this a different way. Despite what the author thought when he wrote this scene, the fact is that when Johanna shoots her lover, even accidentally, she loses all

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our empathy. The man's been obsessed with her, sexually and emotionally, and she's been using him to fill

her own needs, but she never had
any
intention of leaving her husband for him. She has to be wounded with that gun before he is, or he becomes the only victim in this film, and the entire point of this picture is

that they were
all
victims."

Zack heard a murmur of surprise and approval from people behind the camera, near the doorway of the stable, but he didn't need it to reinforce his judgment. He knew now he was right. He knew it with the

same gut instincts that had enabled him to win an Academy Award nomination for a film that had seemed

routine and ordinary until he directed it. Turning to Rachel and Tony, who looked reluctantly impressed with the change, he said curtly. "One last time, and I think we'll have it. All you have to do is reverse the outcome of the original struggle over the gun so that Johanna is wounded first."

"Then what?" Tony demanded. "What do I do after I realize I've shot her?"

Zack paused, thinking, then he said decisively, "Let her get control of the gun. You didn't mean to hurt her, but she doesn't realize it. You step back, but she's got the gun and she's pointing it at you now, crying—for herself and for you. You start backing away. Rachel," he said turning to her, completely absorbed, "I want to see sobs from you, then you close your eyes and pull the trigger."

Zack moved back into position. "Mark it—"

The camera assistant stepped in front of the camera with the clappers. "Scene 126, take 5!"

"Action!"

This was going to be the last take, a perfect take—

Zack sensed it as he watched Austin grab Rachel and force her down onto the hay bales, his hands and mouth devouring her. There was no dialogue now, but a background score would be dubbed in later, so when Rachel groped for the gun and got it between the two of them, Zack urged her on, goading her to fight harder. "Struggle!" he barked, and on a stroke of irony, he snapped, "Pretend he's me!" The ploy worked, she squirmed and hammered at Tony's shoulders in furious earnest, she got her hand on the gun.

Later, an actual gunshot would be dubbed in, in place of the soft
pop
of the blank shell in Rachel's gun,

and Zack watched Tony wrest the gun from her, waiting for the perfect moment in their struggles before

he called, "Gunshot!" so that Tony would pull the trigger, fire the blank, and Rachel would fall back and

grab the packet of fake blood concealed near her shoulder. It was now!
"Gunshot!"
he shouted and Rachel's whole body gave a violent jerk as a gunshot exploded like a firecracker in the cavernous barn, echoing off the metal roof.

Everyone froze, momentarily immobilized by the unexpectedly loud sound where there should only have

been the
pop
of a blank shell with a light load in it.

Rachel slowly slid out of Tony's arms and onto the floor, but there was no fake blood spreading across her arm from a fake shoulder wound.

"What the—" Zack began, already dashing forward.

Tony was bending over her, but Zack shoved him away. "Rachel?" he said, rolling her over. There was a small hole in her chest, but only a trace of blood was seeping from it. Zack's first coherent thought, as he shouted for someone to go get the ambulance and the medics while he felt frantically for her nonexistent pulse, was that this wound couldn't be fatal:

Rachel was scarcely bleeding, the wound was nearer her collarbone than her heart, and besides, professional medical help was only a few yards away, on hand on the set, as required under law.

Pandemonium was erupting everywhere; women were screaming, men were shouting, and the crew was

rushing forward in a suffocating crowd. "Stay the hell back!" he yelled, and because he couldn't find a
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pulse, he started giving her CPR.

* * *

An hour passed while Zack stood just outside the stable doors, a few yards away from everyone else, waiting for some word from the hoard of medics and cops inside with Rachel. Squad cars and

ambulances were parked all over the lawn and driveway, their eerie red and blue emergency lights whirling frantically in the still, humid night.

Rachel was dead. He sensed it, knew it. He'd seen death once before; he remembered how it looked.

Despite that, he could not believe it. The cops had already questioned Tony and the cameramen. Now they were starting to question everybody who'd been in there when it happened. But they weren't asking Zack what he'd seen. He thought, as much as he was capable of rational thought, that it was very odd of them not to want to talk to him.

Above him a brilliant light began to sweep the area and he heard the loud whine of helicopter blades. He saw the bright red cross on the side of the chopper and relief poured through him; apparently they were going to airlift Rachel to the nearest hospital, which surely must mean the medics had gotten her vital signs

stabilized. Just as the comforting thought took hold, he saw something else that made his blood freeze: The cops who'd cordoned off the entire area when they arrived were letting a dark sedan through. In the light from the descending helicopter, he could read the emblem on the side of the driver's door. It said County Coroner.

Everyone else saw it too. Emily began to sob in her father's arms, and Zack heard Austin's savage curse followed by a comforting murmur of words from Tommy. Diana was staring at the coroner's car with a pale, set face, and everyone else was just … staring at each other.

But no one was looking at him or attempting to approach him. In his dazed state, that seemed a little strange to Zack even though he preferred it that way.

The entire cast and crew were quarantined at their hotel the next day for questioning by the police.

Zack

spent the time in a restless stupor, while the police refused to give him any information and the news media spewed out a steady stream of it for the entire country. According to the NBC program he

watched at noon, the gun that killed Rachel had been loaded with a hollow point shell, which was designed to break up and spread out on impact, inflicting total destruction in a wide area of the body rather than merely passing through it, which was why her death had been instantaneous. "CBS

Evening

News" provided a ballistics expert on their program who stood in front of an easel with a pointer and a diagram of Rachel's body and explained to America exactly what damage the shell had done and precisely where it was located. Zack slammed the off button on the television's remote controller, then he

went into the bathroom and threw up. Rachel was dead, but despite the fact that there'd been no real warmth in their marriage, despite the fact that she'd intended to divorce him for Tony, he could not come to grips with her death or the gruesome, evil way it had occurred. The ABC 10 o'clock network news dropped a verbal bomb on him when it was

announced that according to the autopsy report, which had

just been released, Rachel Evans Benedict had been six weeks pregnant.

Zack sank back on the sofa and closed his eyes, swallowing bitter bile, feeling as if he was in the middle

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of a hurricane that was spinning him around. Rachel had been pregnant. But not by him. He hadn't slept with her in months.

Unshaven and unable to eat, he prowled around his hotel suite, occasionally wondering if everyone else was being detained and if so, why none of them had come to his room to talk or commiserate or pass the time. The hotel switchboard was under siege from people in Hollywood trying to reach him, most of them, he knew, more interested in getting the dirt than expressing any real regret at her death. And so he

refused to answer phone calls from everyone except Matt Farrell and spent his time wondering who in God's name had hated Rachel enough to want her dead. As the hours passed, he suspected every single person on the set for one absurd reason or another, then he discarded that suspect and groped for another because his reasons for suspecting them were so impossibly flimsy.

In the back of his mind he was aware that the police might believe he had some very strong motives for murdering her, and yet the thought was so ludicrous that he remained steadfastly convinced that the police would realize that.

Two days after her death, Zack answered a knock on the door to his suite and glared at the two tall, grim-faced detectives who'd questioned him yesterday. "Mr. Benedict," one of them began, but Zack's

patience and temper had been strained past the breaking point.

"Why in the living hell are you bastards wasting your time with me!" he exploded. "I demand to know

what progress you're making finding my wife's killer

—"

He was so enraged that he was caught off guard when one of them, who'd walked into the suite and positioned himself at Zack's back, suddenly shoved him into the wall, grabbed his wrists, and jerked his hands up behind his back. Zack felt the cold bite of the handcuffs at the same time the other one said,

"Zachary Benedict, you are under arrest for the murder of Rachel Evans. You have the right to remain

silent, you have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney—"

"
L
adies and gentlemen of the jury, you've heard the shocking testimony and seen the incontrovertible proof…" Alton Peterson, the prosecuting attorney, stood perfectly still, his piercing gaze moving slowly over the faces of the twelve Dallas County jurors who were about to decide the outcome of a trial that had generated a holocaust of public attention with its scandalous revelations of adultery and murder among Hollywood's superstars.

Outside the courtroom, the halls were packed with reporters from all over the world who were waiting to discover the latest titillating developments in the trial of Zachary Benedict. Once, the media had fawned over him, now they reported every detail of Zack's fall from prestige with even greater relish, serving up each juicy morsel of conjecture and allegation to fascinated Americans, who digested each

tidbit along with their dinners and the evening news.

"You've heard the
proof,"
Peterson reminded the jury more emphatically as he continued his final summation, "the unimpeachable testimony from dozens of witnesses, some of whom were actually Zachary Benedict's friends. You know that the night before Rachel Evans was murdered, Zachary Benedict discovered her naked in Anthony Austin's arms. You know that Benedict was enraged, that he attacked Austin and had to be dragged off the man.

You've heard testimony from guests in the hotel who
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were in the hall outside Benedict's suite and who heard the loud argument that ensued. From these witnesses you know that Rachel Evans told Benedict that she was planning to divorce him and marry Anthony Austin and that she intended to gain half of everything Zachary Benedict possessed in that divorce. These same witnesses testified that Benedict warned his wife, and I quote
…
" Peterson paused to glance at his notes, but it was all for effect, because no one in the courtroom could forget that threat.

Raising his voice for emphasis, he repeated,
"I'll kill
you before I let you and Austin get half of
anything!"

Gripping the railing around the juror's box, he searched each rapt face. "And he
did
kill her, ladies and

gentlemen. He killed her in cold blood, along with the innocent, unborn baby she carried! You know he did it and I know he did it. But the
way
he did it makes this crime even more revolting, more heinous, because it shows the kind of cold-blooded monster Zachary Benedict is." Turning, he began to pace, recapping the way the crime had taken place, working up to his conclusion: "Zachary Benedict didn't