Excerpt of A More Perfect Union by J.A. Jance

Chapter One

"CASSIE, for God's sake! What the hell's the body doing
out there already? I didn't call for the body. We're not
set up yet."

Speaking through a megaphone from his perch on a raised
boom, movie director Sam "The Movie Man" Goldfarb's voice
echoed through the wooden maze of Lake Union Drydock like
God himself speaking from the mount.

Cassie was Cassie Young, a punk-looking young woman who
served as Goldfarb's right and left hands. She scurried
toward the base of the director's boom as she raised a
hand-held radio to her lips.

Because I'm a homicide cop, my ears pricked up when I
heard the word "body." For the past two weeks I'd been
trailing around Seattle, dutifully mother-henning a
Hollywood film crew. Officially, I was on special
assignment for Mayor Dawson's office, acting as technical
advisor to His Honor's old Stanford roommate and buddy,
Samuel Goldfarb. Unofficially, I was doing less than
nothing and felt as useless as tits on a-boar.

My short venture into the moviemaking business had
certainly stripped away the glamour. As far as I can tell,
movies are made by crowds of people who mill around
endlessly without actually doing anything. I mean nothing
happens. They take hours to set up for a scene that takes
less than a minute to shoot, or else spend hours shooting
a scene that amounts to two seconds of film footage. The
whole process was absolutely stultifying. I hated it.

My initial spurt of "body"-fueled adrenaline disappeared
quickly. After all, movies are totally make-believe. On a
film set, nothing is really what it seems. I naturally
assumed that this was more of the same. Leaning back
against a workbench in the pipe shop, I shifted my weight
to one foot as I attempted to ease the throbbing
complaints of the recently reactivated bone spur on my
other heel.

I had been whiling away the time by chatting with a
garrulous old duffer named Woody Carroll. Woody was a
retired Lake Union Drydock employee on tap that day to
keep a watchful eye on the cast and crew of Death in
Drydock. His job was to make sure we didn't do any damage
to company property in the course of our Saturday shoot.

Woody told me that he had worked as a carpenter for Lake
Union Drydock both before and after World War II. He had
been there steadily from the time he got home from a
Japanese POW camp in the Philippines until he retired in
1980. He was full of countless stories, and his tales had
kept my mind off the bone spur for most of the day. Hiding
out from a blazing sun, we had retreated into the gloomy
shade of the pipe shop. Seattle was sweltering through an
unusually hot, dry August. People who live in the
Northwest aren't accustomed to heat.

"I don't know what to think of these young 'uns today,"
Woody Carroll drawled, picking up his train of thought and
resuming our conversation as though nothing had happened.
He had been complaining bitterly about the quality of some
of the younger employees around the drydock. "They'd
rather buy and sell stuff to put up their noses than do an
honest day's work. It just beats all."

Outside I could see Cassie Young returning her radio to
her pocket. Now, shading her eyes with one hand, she
called up to Goldfarb where he remained enthroned on the
boom.

"The shop says they're still working on the body. It isn't
ready yet."

"Well, what the hell do you call that? It's right in the
way of the next shot. Get it out of there, for God's sake!
What do you think I pay you for? And where's Derrick's
stuntman? I need him. Now!"

Goldfarb had pointed toward a spot in the water near where
steep wooden steps led up the wingwall of the drydock.
They had been using the boom to shoot a fight scene on the
narrow steps with the navy minesweeper Pledge looming in
the background. Two of the movie's name-brand stars,
Derrick Parker and Hannah Boyer, still clung to two-by-
four handrails some twenty feet above the solid planking
of the pier.

As the entire crew jumped in response to Goldfarb's barked
commands, Cassie Young carefully picked her way across a
snarled tangle of electrical cords toward the place
Goldfarb had indicated.

I didn't much like Cassie. She was a scrawny, red haired,
postadolescent who went in big for the spiked, new-wave
look. She wore a thick layer of white pancake makeup. Her
eyelashes dripped with heavy, black mascara. She could
easily have been mistaken for a refugee from a school for
mimes. Looking at her made me grateful she wasn't my
daughter, although she and Kelly were probably much the
same age.

Cassie and I had crossed swords on numerous occasions
during the course of my two-week stint of involuntary
servitude on the set of Death in Drydock. I had a tough
time taking her seriously. The feeling was mutual.

According to Captain Powell, my main assignment as
technical advisor was to make sure Goldfarb didn't portray
the Seattle Police Department as "a bunch of stupid
jerks." I had quickly learned, however, that trying to
tell Sam Goldfarb anything he didn't want to hear was like
talking to a brick wall. Every time he had his pretend
cops doing something unbelievably stupid, I squawked
bloody murder. For all the good it did me. Cassie Young
didn't mince any words in letting me know that I was to
keep those opinions to myself. I was a technical advisor
all right. In name only.

For the past week, I had called Captain Powell every
morning at eight o'clock, begging him to let me off the
hook and pull me from the assignment. No such luck. He
kept telling me that the mayor wanted me on the set, and
on the set I'd stay.

Still mildly interested in whatever had plucked Goldfarb's
nerves, I watched as Cassie reached the edge of the dock
and knelt down to peer over the side. Her knees had barely
touched the wood when she sprang back as though she'd been
burned. She covered her mouth with one hand, but still the
muffled sound that escaped her lips was as blood curdling
a scream as I'd heard in years. The wrenching sound echoed
back and forth through the otherwise eerily silent wooden
buildings.

For days I had lurked in the background of the process,
staying out of the way of cameras and equipment. Now, the
sound of Cassie's scream galvanized me to action. No
matter what, I'm first and foremost a cop. In emergencies,
we're trained to react. It's a conditioned response as
natural as breathing. Without giving it a second thought,
I started toward Cassie on a dead run, ignoring the quick
stab of pain in my injured heel.

"Quiet on the set," someone boomed through a mega phone,
but Cassie kept on screaming, pointing hysterically toward
the water. I reached her and grabbed her by the shoulders
just as the megaphone boomed again. "For God's sake,
somebody catch Hannah! She's going to fall."

Cassie barfed then. I managed to swing her away from me
just in time, then I held her by the waist while she
heaved her guts out on the dock.

Between barfing and screaming, I prefer the latter.

At last Cassie straightened up and leaned heavily against
me while her whole body quivered with terrible shudders. I
held her, patting her gently on the back, soothing her as
best I could, while I attempted to peer over her shoulder
and see into the water, but we were too far from the edge
of the dock. The angle was wrong.

"What is it?" I demanded finally, holding her at arm's
length. "What's down there?" Shaking her head from side to
side, she seemed totally incapable of speech, but as soon
as I took a step toward the edge of the dock, she came to
life and fought me tooth and nail. Her ability to speak
returned as well.

"No, no!" she protested, twisting her wrists to escape my
grip. "I can't look again. Please don't make me look
again, please."

By then, one of the electricians was standing beside us. I
handed Cassie off to him, then went to the edge of the
pier to see for myself.

As soon as I did, I understood why Cassie Young had fought
my attempt to drag her back.