It was her first big break. Sure, she’d scored some small roles, mainly because she was so striking, but nothing that put her in the lights. She got a waitressing job at Burgundy’s, the current “in” café in Beverly Hills, fully aware that every important producer dropped in for lunch at one time or another. She was careful about who she went out with, who she slept with. She was sure the men realized she was using them as much as they were using her. It didn’t matter, everyone was happy, especially Gloria, especially now. She was about to be Detective Belle DeWitt, a badass cop in Baltimore. Was Belle short for something else? She’d have to ask.

Would Detective Belle DeWitt be her breakout role? They’d even asked her if she liked her character’s name when she’d done her second audition, and that had made her glow.

An old geezer on the showrunner’s team, a genius with a camera, she’d been told, claimed he’d filmed the original Gloria Swanson when she’d roared through Hollywood back in the day. He asked if she was related, since she looked so much like her, and he’d laughed and laughed at his own joke.

She drank more champagne from the bottle, rubbed her mouth. She wasn’t hungry, her stomach was too jumpy.

She thought again of Deborah and wondered if she should make an appearance at her funeral. It meant she’d have to be nice to Doc, that boring stick-in-the-mud doctor Deborah had been practically engaged to, who’d hated that Deborah was an actress. If he had such a burr up his butt about it, why had he wanted to marry her? Yes, she’d go. She owed Deborah that.

She was pretty buzzed when she started her nightly ritual. She closed all the draperies, checked every window, dead-bolted the door, and set the burglar alarm, installed thanks to her parents.

When she was finally in bed, the AC set on high and her new .22 beside her on the bedside table, she settled in and picked up the latest copy of Vanity Fair and tried to concentrate, but all she could see was a future photo of herself, proudly holding up her Baltimore PD badge. Looking hot, of course.

It was a quarter to one in the morning when she finally closed her eyes.

WAKE UP, GLORIA.

Her eyes flew open and she was fully alert. Her heart was pounding, the covers tangled around her legs. That voice, it was loud and clear. It was Deborah’s voice shouting at her to wake up, but Gloria knew that wasn’t possible. She shook her head. A dream? Sure, she’d been thinking about Deborah and she’d dreamed about her, that made sense, but she was wide-awake now, her champagne buzz gone, and she was scared. She looked at her bedside clock. 1:59.

She grabbed her .22 off the bedside table, felt the cold steel against her fingers, her palm. And waited, listening for all she was worth. She heard something. No, her brain was playing tricks on her because she was scared. She hadn’t heard anything, it wasn’t possible. But she clutched the gun to her chest, not moving. You have a gun; he can’t kill you. Don’t make a sound, just breathe, listen, focus.

And then she heard it, the sound of the window slowly sliding up in her second bedroom, nearly noiseless, but she knew the sound. Why hadn’t her state-of-the-art alarm gone off?

She hadn’t actually believed the serial killer would come, even after Detective Loomis’s call. How many hundreds of wannabe young actresses were there in L.A.? And how could she have gotten on that madman’s hit parade? At least she wasn’t asleep, and she had a gun. No way was he going to slash her throat, no way was she going to be his seventh victim.

Gloria slipped out of bed, molded her pillows into her shape and covered them with lots of blankets, and that made sense since the room was cold from the full blast of the air-conditioning. She backed away and slipped down to her knees behind her ancient red velvet chair, a present her grandmother had given her for luck in LaLa Land. She concentrated on stilling her breathing, slowing the wild pounding of her heart. She was used to doing that each time she performed, but this was real and it wasn’t the same. She realized she’d forgotten her cell and ran on bare feet to the bedside table, pulled her cell out of its charger, fell to her knees and crawled back behind the big chair. She fumbled, finally managed to press 911. She heard the operator’s calm voice asking what was her emergency and she whispered, “The Starlet Slasher is in my house. Hurry, please hurry.” She punched off, not wanting him to hear her, knowing her address would show up on the operator’s screen.

Would the cops get there before he walked into her bedroom? Her heart was still beating so loud she wondered if he’d hear it as he came closer. She heard a board creak. He was in the hallway, outside the bathroom. Would he hear her breathing? Would he smell her fear and know she was awake? He could have a gun as well as a knife. Would the lump in her bed fool him at all or would he start shooting?

He was outside her bedroom door. She heard his breathing, slow and easy, as he pushed on the partly opened door. She felt the air change as the door swung inward, though she hardly saw it because it was very dark. She knew he was looking into her bedroom, toward her bed. He stepped into the room. She saw the brief flicker of a small flashlight, aimed directly at her bed, at the lump beneath the covers, then it was dark again. He didn’t want to take the chance of waking her up.

Gloria kept swallowing bile she was so scared. She could barely see him in the narrow shaft of moonlight coming in through the small opening in the drapes. He was tall and thin, but that was all she could see. He was wearing a cap pulled down low and something covered his face. Goggles? To hide his face? That wasn’t in any of the news reports. And then she realized it was to keep from being blinded by blood. Her blood.

He walked very quietly toward the bed. If she’d been asleep, she’d never have heard him. When he stood beside the bed, he bent forward, reached out his left hand toward the pillow where her head would be, and he raised his knife, ready to slice it across her throat.

Sirens shrieked in the distance. Her breath whooshed out. She jumped to her feet and fired, and she kept firing, staring right at him, focused, as she’d been taught, pulling the trigger slowly, steadily, though she was nearly blind now with fear and shaking form the adrenaline pumping through her. She fired until the revolver was empty, and she kept firing, and the small .22 clicked and clicked.

50

* * *

“I’m Detective Arturo Loomis, Santa Monica Police Department. I called you today to warn you about the killer and to suggest you might want to leave town for a while.” He showed her his badge.