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Eight P.M. Full dark beyond the reach of the lights. Temperature already at forty and still plunging with mid-November glee. On set with a very nervous producer and a cast of one hundred and four possible murder suspects.

This is where Samuel Chaibongsai had sat, day after day, scene after scene. Looking for blatant procedural inconsistencies. A former cop turned entertainment consultant. The job he used to do, the job he was now paid to do. One man, two occupational views.

Then, she was struck by another thought. If scene one was about the murderer’s first attack, and scene thirty-two was about baiting the same murderer, then where was the actor, or even the stand-in, for the Gravestone Killer?

Because suddenly, D.D. was staring at the whitewashed face of a demented man, looming out from behind the fake tombstone and raising an ax over Natalie’s bowed head.

Murder is a full-body experience. Your pulse rate will spike, your skin flushes with heat, your palms dampen with sweat. Beforehand, it is not uncommon to have second thoughts, pre-party jitters so to speak. Once the process has started, however, crossing the street, sneaking into the backyard, prying open that never completely secured window . . .

A calm will descend. A predatory Zen state, where the air tastes crisper, the smell of her shampoo registers sharper, while the sound of her first muffled scream, caught in the latex-covered palm of your hand . . .

Sound and scent will become snapshots, frozen forever in your mind. A slide show of sensory indulgence, her panting breath, matching the equal racing of your heart, her kicking struggles, the corresponding flex of muscle and power in your own limbs. Her sheer, desperate need to escape. Your own equally compulsive, biological imperative to kill.

You will feel stronger, hear better, smell sharper, taste finer, and see crisper than ever before. As long as you stay in control. No panic, no frenzy, no mistakes. Ride the ride to her last, gasping, gurgling breath. Killing is about power, but it is also about self-control.

Mentally prepare for the physiological overload. This is step four.

Chapter 4

D.D. was out of the director’s chair before she could stop herself. She wasn’t thinking about the fact that she was a very pregnant woman who should probably sit on the sidelines, hands folded primly over rounded middle. Instead, she saw danger and she responded as a cop. Out of her chair, moving across the hard-packed ground, registering the tang of chemical fog upon her tongue, the sound of a genuinely panicked scream in her ears.

Gun out, hustling her awkward bulk around video village, beyond the glow of the klieg lights and into the dim shadows of the vast cemetery, where she would be out of the killer’s sight, while he would be fully illuminated in hers.

Perhaps one second had passed, with the blond actress screaming, and camera crew still filming, while others around the set straightened up from texting, talking, loitering, and started to eye the scene uneasily.

“No, no, no,” the stand-in wailed, hands up, defensively, twisting away from the looming figure.

“Cut,” the director yelled. “I need to see her face. Again, but this time, turn toward the camera!”

Except Natalie was now garbling hysterically in some foreign language, while the white-faced man brought the ax down hard, just missing the blonde’s head as he sliced off a chunk of foam tombstone.

D.D. looped out far right, trying to line up a shot. But a hundred and four crewmen seemed to translate to a hundred and four obstacles. Cameras, lights, dollies, equipment, tombstones . . . Couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot.

“Cut, cut, cut!” the director yelled. “Hey, why’s he attacking my tombstone?”

Natalie was staggering to her feet, hands still over her head as she screamed more words D.D. didn’t understand. The blonde seemed to have recovered slightly. Less hysteria, more rage as she faced off against