After She's Gone (West Coast #3)

Oh joy.

Stone had worked her way up as a freelance reporter and now produced and starred in her own reality-type mystery show. Nash had watched a couple of episodes and thought Stone was long on innuendos and short on facts. Worse yet, Stone, originally a native of the Southwest, maybe Arizona or New Mexico, Nash thought, had lived in Portland for a while, and since Portland had achieved a newfound “cool” status, Stone had adopted the city as her own. Now she was always nosing around, looking for a juicy story she could sink her teeth into and, sometimes, at least in Nash’s opinion, exploit.

The woman was photogenic enough to be a model, so she made crime reporting look good.

Now, she was sinking her investigative teeth into the Allie Kramer case, asking for an interview with Nash.

“Forget it,” Nash said under her breath, but noted that Stone had mentioned in her e-mail that Cassie Kramer had left Mercy Hospital.

This was news to Nash and it shouldn’t have been, since Cassie Kramer was very much a person of interest in her sister’s disappearance. The day was starting out just great, she thought grimly. It wasn’t yet eight and already Nash was irritated enough to reach for a bottle of Tums to calm her nervous stomach. After popping three chalky tablets, Nash dialed the hospital and met roadblock after roadblock in the form of a taciturn receptionist who could quote HIPAA compliancy rules and hospital regulations without the least inflection in her voice. Biting back her frustration, Nash persevered and after cutting through what seemed to be reams of red tape concerning privacy, was told, “Miss Kramer is no longer a patient at Mercy Hospital.” A few more inquiries to a local cab company and she learned that Allie Kramer’s sister had been driven to a car rental agency. More telephone calls ended up revealing that Cassie Kramer had, indeed, left the gloom of Portland for the sunnier climate of Los Angeles.

Nash made a call to the LAPD and a note to herself.

Then she searched through the rest of her never-ending in-box of e-mails. Once she’d dispensed with the ones she could, she picked up her phone and checked her voice mail. Fortunately it consisted of only a few calls. Again, Whitney Stone had recorded a similar message to her e-mail. She wasn’t alone. Two other reporters had left their name and number. Nash didn’t bother to call them back. If they were professional, then they knew the protocol, which was to go through the Public Information Officer.

Besides, she didn’t have any answers. The Kramer case was a puzzler, the primary reason Nash was losing sleep, even though there wasn’t a homicide, at least not a proven one yet. A famous person was missing under suspicious circumstances, but her stunt double had been shot on the last day of filming, when the cast and crew had been called back to Portland to reshoot a scene. Had those shots been accidental? Or had Lucinda Rinaldi been the intended victim? Maybe Allie Kramer, who hadn’t shown up that day, had been the ultimate target? Had she known she was in danger, been tipped off somehow and made herself disappear, putting another woman in danger? That was hard to believe. Why stay away so long? Why not reach out to family, friends, or the police if she’d felt so threatened?

Nash thought hard, swallowing coffee by rote. She wondered if it were possible that the killer had found Allie Kramer and kidnapped and/or killed her when he realized his mistake at targeting the wrong woman. That was a possibility. A long shot, but a working theory because Nash was certain that Sig Masters, the actor who’d actually pulled the trigger, hadn’t intended to shoot Lucinda Rinaldi or anyone else. Nash remembered questioning him and the man had broken down and cried, shaking his head, swearing he’d gotten the prop gun from the locker; and the woman who had the key, Ineesha Sallinger, the prop manager, corroborated Masters’s story and swore her key to the prop locker had been with her for the entire time it took to film the scene. Though the room where the locker was located had been left open during the shoot, the locker itself had been secure. Sallinger had sworn that no one could have exchanged the guns.

But someone had.

The pistol used in the shooting looked identical to the prop, but it had been armed with real bullets. The only fingerprints upon it were Masters’s. Not even Sallinger’s had been found anywhere on the barrel, trigger, or grip. That in and of itself was odd. A prop gun should have several sets of prints on it. The prop manager, maybe someone who had loaded it with blanks, and the shooter, to start with. The gun seemed to have been wiped clean until Sig had received it. Sallinger explained that question away by saying that she’d been wearing gloves that day. The Portland wintry weather had been cold and wet.