Monster

Folded into an empty box were two sheets of paper.

Title page: The Monster's Chosen. He Canot Be Stopped.

Second page: Cast

We worked on that for a long time.

The "fag actor" was most likely Dada, the "old-maid pro-fesor," Claire. Other designations included "the wino twins (Monster finds a perfect match)" and three headings- "pompos businessman," "coke whore," and "girl shopping"- for which no conforming tape could be found. "Greaser farm-chick" matched Suzy Galvez, "the sheriff's hotblooded wife" Marvelle Haas. The "teenage pimp" could've been the goateed boy stabbed in the chest, then dismembered. But he fit "street punk," so my guess was Christopher Soames. Never had his audition, lucky lad.

At the bottom of the page: "more?????? definitly. how many????????????"

The job of identifying the u

A Korean-American salesman named Everett Kim, bludgeoned with a baseball bat-the "chink"-was traced to the Glendale-based skydiving club where Derrick Crimmins and Hedy had first met. The ex-wife of another member, a dental hygienist from Burbank, turned out to be Allison Wisnowski. "The nurse."

Four months later, no new I.D.'s and only one of the bodies had been found: one of the runaway girls, a sixteen-year-old named Karen DeSantis, discovered by hikers in Bouquet Canyon.

One additional tape was found in the Explorer, the scene barely discernible because of poor light: Hedy Haupt aka Heidi Ott, getting out of the four-wheeler, smiling uneasily. Handing the camera to someone off screen, then turning her back and cocking her hip. Moving slowly, seductively. Vamping. Smiling as she turned to look back.

Saying, "How'm I doing-sexy enough?" just before her head disappeared in a flash. No designation on the list. Perhaps Derrick Crimmins had conceived her as "coke whore," or maybe he had yet to dream up a designation.

Creating characters, killing them off.

Folded in a pocket of Crimmins's black silk shirt was a copy of the Blood Walk title page we'd found in his night-stand. On the reverse were several handwritten paragraphs in the same sharp-edged hieroglyphics used for the production notes:

The Monster: combenation of extreme evil-madness and supernatural psychic ability s to tell the future and to get into peoples heads. Locked up in the high security asylem just like Haniball Leckter he also cant be stopped like Leckter, can go through walls, beam himself around change his moleculs like a StarTrek alien. Exits at will, goes around killing at will. Various people, all types just cause he likes it, gets off on it, not crazy all the time this is just what he does, his job, his callin in life, no one will ever understand it because theyre not in the same dimension. And he canot be stopped anymore than Jason or Freddie Kruger or Michael Meyers.

Except by The Daredeveil Avenger. Who understands him cause He grew up with him and Hes also got the psychic powers but for good not evil. Once Hhe was a kid now He's a man, tall and muscular and silent, a real John Wayne Dirty Harry type but with a sense of humor. True Lies meets James Bond. Doesn 't waste action except whem it counts. Women love him the same as James Bond but He has no time for them because only He knows what The Monsters really capible of, so only he can stop The Blood Walk which otherwise would be inevatable.

He wears Black but He's the Good Guy. Keep it different, creative. The actions in the end always between him and the Monster. Prime-evil battle. Only at the end can we know how it turns out. In the last scene the Monster dies the worse death of all. Maybe burning, maybe grinded up in some kind of hamburger machine. Or acid. Either way, he's dead.

Or maybe not.

If it works there's always a sequel.

Chapter 42

"What the hell was he pla

He stuffed pretzels into his mouth. No answer expected.

We were sitting in a bar on Pacific Avenue on the south end of Venice, not far from the Marina. Jimmy Buffett on tape, sun-roughened faces and zinc noses, sports talk, the pretzels. Mostly calls for beer on tap.

It was Thursday. I'd spent the afternoon just as I had every day this week. Out in Bellflower with Suzy Galvez, trying to break through. Milo had offered my services right after the rescue. Mr. Galvez, a landscaper with a vicious scar ru

Three weeks later, I got the call from Mrs. Galvez. Meek, halting, slightly accented voice. Apologetic when she didn't need to be. Suzy was still waking up with screaming nightmares. Two days ago, she'd started wetting her bed and sucking her thumb; she hadn't done any of that since the age of six.

I drove out the next day. The house was a brown box behind freshly painted white pickets, too many flowers for the space. Mr. Galvez greeted me at the door, a scar-faced, muscled keg of steam. Shaking my hand too hard. Telling me he'd heard I knew what I was doing. Handing me a mixed bouquet, cut fresh from the garden, when I left.

Marvelle Haas was rumored to be seeing a therapist in Bakersfield. Neither she nor her husband had returned anyone's calls. The task force was still looking for bodies, contacting departments in other cities, other states, trying to figure out how many people Derrick Crimmins had murdered. Cases in Arizona, Oklahoma, and Nevada seemed promising. Evidence on Derrick's brother's motorcycle accident was sketchy, but Cliff Crimmins's name had been added to the victim list.

Milo snarfed more pretzels. Someone shouted for a Bud. The bartender, a black-haired Croatian with four rings in his left ear, palmed the tap. We were drinking single-malt scotch. Eighteen-year-old Macallan. When Milo asked for the bottle, the Croatian's eyebrows lifted. He smiled as he poured.

"What the hell was it all for?" said Milo.

"That's a real question?"

"Yeah, I've used up my ration of rhetorical."

I was sorry he asked. I'd thought about little else, had answers good enough for talk shows but nothing real.

Milo put his glass down, stared at me.

"Maybe it was all for fun," I said. "Or preparation for the movie Crimmins convinced himself he'd write one day. Or he was actually going to sell the tapes."

"We still haven't found any underground market for that kind of crap."

"Okay." I sipped. "So eliminate that."

"I know," he said. "There's an appetite for every damn bit of garbage out there. I'm just saying nothing's turned up linking Crimmins to any snuff-film business deals, and we've looked big-time. No cash hoard, not a single bank account, no meetings with any shifty types in long coats, no ads in weirdo magazines. And the computer Crimmins had in the house wasn't hooked up to the Internet. Nothing but basic software, no files. Our guy says he probably never used it."