A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

The Perfect Script

The entire cast and crew were quarantined at their hotel the next day for questioning by the police. Zayn 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. Zayn 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 Malik had been six weeks pregnant.

Zayn sank back on the sofa and closed his eyes, swallowing bitter bile, feeling as if he was in the middle 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, Zayn answered a knock on the door to his suite and glared at the two tall, grim-faced detectives who'd questioned him yesterday. "Mr. Malik," one of them began, but Zayn'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 Zayn's back, suddenly shoved him into the wall, grabbed his wrists, and jerked his hands up behind his back. Zayn felt the cold bite of the handcuffs at the same time the other one said, "Zayn Malik, 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—"

********************************************

"Ladies 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 Zayn Malik. Once, the media had fawned over him, now they reported every detail of Zayn Malik'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 Zayn Malik's friends. You know that the night before Rachel Evans was murdered, Zayn Malik discovered her naked in Anthony Austin's arms. You know that Malik was enraged, that he attacked Austin and had to be dragged off the man. You've heard testimony from guests in the hotel who were in the hall outside Malik's suite and who heard the loud argument that ensued. From these witnesses you know that Rachel Evans told Malik that she was planning to divorce him and marry Anthony Austin and that she intended to gain half of everything Zayn Malik possessed in that divorce. These same witnesses testified that Malik 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 Zayn Malik is." Turning, he began to pace, recapping the way the crime had taken place, working up to his conclusion: "Zayn Malik didn't murder in an unpremeditated rage of passion like your ordinary killer. No indeed, not him. He waited twenty-four hours so that his precious movie could be finished first, and then he chose a method of revenge that is so bizarre, so cold-blooded it makes me gag! He put hollow point shells in a gun, and then at the last minute while they were filming the end of that movie, he changed the way the script had been written, so that his wife, not Anthony Austin, would be shot during their fake struggle!"

Alton paused and gripped the railing again. "None of this is conjecture on my part. You've heard the testimony that proves every word: On the afternoon of the murder, while the rest of the film crew was on a break, Zayn went into that stable alone, ostensibly to rearrange some things on the set. Several people saw him go in there—he admitted it himself—yet no one on the film crew could think of a single thing that looked different when they returned to the set. What was he doing in there? You know what he was doing! He was switching the harmless blank shells, which a production assistant testified he had put in the gun himself, for deadly hollow points. I remind you once again that Malik's fingerprints were on that gun. His and his alone, left there no doubt by mistake, after he'd wiped the gun clean. And once all his preparations were made, did he finish the gruesome deed and get it over with like an ordinary murderer? No, not him. Instead of that," Alton turned to face the defendant, and he did not have to feign his loathing and revulsion as he said, "Zayn Malik stood beside a cameraman in that stable, watching his wife and her lover embrace and kiss and fondle each other, and he made them do it over and over again! He stopped them each time his wife was ready to reach for the gun. And then, when he'd had enough 'fun,' enough sick vengeance, when he could no longer prolong the moment that the script called for—the moment when his wife was supposed to reach for the gun and shoot Tony Austin—Zayn Malik changed the script!"

Twisting around, Peterson pointed a finger at Zayn Malik, his voice ringing with loathing. "Zayn Malik is a man who is so corrupted by wealth and fame that he actually believed himself above and beyond all the laws that apply to you and to me. He believed you'd let him get away with it! Look at him, ladies and gentlemen of the jury—"

Compelled by Peterson's booming baritone, every single face in the crowded courtroom turned in unison toward Zayn Malik, who was seated at the defendant's table. Beside him, Zayn Malik's chief defense attorney hissed without actually moving his lips, "Damn it, Zayn, look up at the jury!"

Zayn raised his head and complied automatically, but he doubted that anything he did was going to make a difference in the jury's collective minds. If Rachel had set out to frame him for her murder, she could never have done a better job at making the "evidence" point to him than he had done on his own.

"Look at him," Alton Peterson commanded with renewed fervor and fury, "and you'll see what he is—a man who is guilty of murder in the first degree! That is the verdict, the only verdict, you can return in this case if justice is to be done!"