The Soul Stealer: The master of horror and million copy seller with his new must-read Halloween thriller

1

‘Trinity? It’s Margo. I have to see you. I’m so scared. I’ve never been so scared in my life.’

‘Margo? What’s wrong? Where are you?’

‘You remember Peyton’s Place, on Reseda? That bar where we all got together for Trudy’s birthday? Do you think you can meet me there?’

‘I have to pick up Rosie from school right now, but sure, after that. Say four o’clock?’

‘Okay, then. Four. I’ll see you there at four. But you will be there, won’t you? Please promise you’ll be there.’

‘Yes, I promise.’

Margo hung up without saying anything else and Trinity was left staring at the blank screen of her phone. She hadn’t heard from Margo Shapiro in over a year, when she had last attended a reunion party at John R. Wooden High School. Margo had been sparkling then: red-headed and eye-catchingly attractive, and bursting with excitement about her walk-on part in Howard Bright’s latest comedy, Hilarity Jones.

What could have happened to frighten her so much? Trinity had never heard anyone sound so panic-stricken.

She went through to the narrow hallway, stepping over the boxes that were ready to be returned to Amazon. She took down her denim jacket from the peg by the front door and called out to her father, ‘Dad!’

There was no answer. She could hear Steve Wilkos on the TV, with the volume turned low, so she called out again. ‘Dad! I’m just going to pick up Rosie from school!’

There was still no response, so she went into the living room. Her father was slumped sideways on the worn-out red couch, with an open can of Rolling Rock wedged between his hairy thighs, and softly snoring. She went up to him and shook his shoulder.

‘Dad – I’m just going to pick up Rosie!’

He opened his eyes and stared up at her for a moment as if he couldn’t think where he was, or who she was, or even who he was, himself. His wiry grey hair was sticking up as if he had been electrocuted, his eyes were puffy and his chin was prickly with silver stubble. The front of his blue Chargers T-shirt was ribbed with diagonal brown lines. His breakfast had been last night’s leftover burger and he had used his T-shirt to wipe the barbecue sauce off his fingers.

‘Trinity—’ he said, trying to sit up straight without tipping his can of beer into his lap. ‘You’re an angel, Trin, I swear to God. I shoulda – I shoulda picked her up myself – but after yesterday – you know what day it was yesterday. Honestly, I swear to God, I’ll pick her up tomorrow. I’ll even get up early and fetch her to school. How about that?’

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday, Dad.’

‘Well, there you are. The Lord’s looking after me. But I’ll fetch her Monday. I swear.’

Trinity nodded and said, ‘Okay, Dad, whatever.’ She didn’t remind him that he had taken Rosie to school only once in the past three and a half years, and on that occasion he had been stopped for backing his car up into the Arby’s Roast Beef Sandwich sign on Reseda Boulevard and causing over $400 worth of damage.

But she was forgiving. Yesterday would have been her mother’s birthday if her mother hadn’t been taken by ovarian cancer three years ago, at the age of forty-seven.

Her mother was looking at her even now, from the oval picture frame on top of the air conditioner, with her cropped brown hair, her high Slavic cheekbones and her turned-up nose, which her father had always called her ‘ski-jump’ nose. Her mother was smiling but her smile was somehow apprehensive, as if she had secretly suspected that her happiness couldn’t last for long.

In looks, they could have been sisters, Trinity and her mother, although Trinity’s hair was shoulder-length and sweeping, and she was much skinnier than her mother had been. But they shared those Slavic cheekbones and some of that constant caution in their eyes, like a deer stepping through a forest.

‘You’ll be passing the market on Vanowen, won’t you?’ her father called out, as she opened the front door.

‘Dad, I just paid the rent. I got dust.’

‘Jim’ll let you have a six-pack. Tell him I’ll pony up next Friday.’

‘Well, I’ll ask him. But I’m in a hurry. I promised to meet my friend Margo at four.’

‘Margo? Who’s Margo?’

Trinity didn’t answer but closed the door and crossed over the driveway to her father’s Mercury Monarch with its faded silver paintwork and its one green passenger door. As she was climbing into the driver’s seat, Kenno came strutting over from next door, where he had been washing his orange Challenger.

‘Trinity! How’s it hanging, doll?’

Kenno was a keen bodybuilder and his sleeveless maroon T-shirt showed off his balloon-like biceps, densely decorated with tattoos of skulls and gorillas and bosomy women. He was handsome in a Josh Hutcherson way but he looked younger than his twenty-seven years because of his acned cheeks and his tawny man-bun, and his legs in his ripped denim shorts were disproportionately spindly for his pumped-up torso.

‘I can’t stop, Kenno. I have to pick up Rosie from school.’

‘You’ve lost weight, baby, do you know that?’

‘It’s these skinny jeans, that’s all,’ said Trinity. She slammed the door shut and started the engine but she wound down the window.

Kenno leaned on the roof of her car, squeezing out his sponge. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take you up to the Tamales House and treat you to all the wet chicken burritos you can eat. That’ll give you some oomph.’ He held his hands out in front of his chest to show her what he meant, his sponge still dripping.

‘Kenno, I’m a vegetarian. And I have to go, or else I’ll be late.’

Kenno grinned at her, showing her his missing front tooth. ‘Okay, okay, forget the chicken burritos. Rajas con queso.’

‘Chillies give me heartburn. Goodbye.’

She backed out of the driveway with a squeal of worn-out tyres and drove to Kittridge Street to Reseda Charter High School. It was a hot, brass-bright afternoon and she had forgotten her sunglasses so she had to drive with her eyes narrowed because of the reflection from the hood. She also had to drive carefully because the Monarch’s transmission fluid was leaking and the gearbox kept unexpectedly downshifting, jolting her forward behind the wheel.

Rosie was waiting for her under the trees on the corner of Etiwanda Avenue, talking to two of her girlfriends. Trinity blew her horn, turned around and drew up beside her. Rosie opened the back door and tossed her school bag onto the seat, and then she climbed in next to Trinity. The first thing she said was, ‘What’s for dinner?’

Rosie could not have been more different from Trinity. She was fourteen years old, short and plump, and bore a strong resemblance to their paternal grandmother, Lily, with curly blonde hair and windflower-blue eyes. She had been an exceptionally pretty baby, and Trinity guessed that when she lost the weight she had put on at puberty, she would be turning all the boys’ heads. In the meantime, she compensated for her lack of looks by being snippy and opinionated and endlessly demanding.

Trinity didn’t tell her that with thighs like hers, Rosie’s navy-blue skirt was hitched up far too short. That would have started a tirade that might still have been carrying on at bedtime. ‘Why? Why do you say it’s too short? Are you saying my legs are too fat or something? Is that what you’re saying? Be honest!’

‘For dinner? I don’t know,’ said Trinity, as she pulled into the kerb beside the market on Vanowen Street. ‘I was thinking spaghetti.’

‘Again? We had spaghetti Monday.’

‘Rosie, until Dad’s unemployment comes in, spaghetti’s about all we have.’

‘So why have you stopped at the store?’

‘Why do you think? Dad wants to borrow some beer.’

Trinity climbed out of the car and went into the market. It was frigid in there and smelled of cheese and she gave an involuntary shiver. She was hoping that genial Jim would be there behind the counter, but instead it was his young assistant Jesús, with his shiny black pompadour and his shirt open over his medallions, sticking price labels on salamis with all the flourish of a gunslinger.

‘Hey, don’t even ask,’ he said, as Trinity approached the counter.

‘A six-pack, that’s all. He’ll pay you Thursday when he gets his check.’

‘That’s what he said last week, and he still doesn’t pay.’

‘He’s gasping for it, Jesús. Please.’

Jesús put down his price gun and stared at Trinity with those black-lashed eyes that put her in mind of Prince.

‘I tell you what. You let me feel your pussy, I give you the six-pack.’

‘Jesús!’

He came around the counter and walked up to her with a confident, undulating swagger, snapping his fingers. ‘I’m serious, zorra. You let me give you the finger, I give you the six-pack, and I don’t even charge you for it. Come on. If President Trump could do it, why not me?’

The fact that Jesús had called her ‘zorra’ wasn’t lost on her. He knew that her surname was Fox, and ‘zorra’ meant ‘fox’. But it could also mean a girl who partied with a lot of guys.

Trinity took a step back and looked around, towards the door. She could see Rosie sitting in the car outside, prodding at her phone. It was too dark in the store for Rosie to be able to see inside, and anyway the sunlight would be casting a reflection on the window.

She thought of her father, lying sideways on the couch, drunk and dribbling, a man worn out with grief and failure and endless disappointments. Then she turned back to Jesús. He was grinning and waggling his eyebrows up and down, as if to say, how about it then?

At that moment the doorbell jangled and a large woman in a flowery dress the size of a small sideshow tent came gasping into the store, impatiently yanking her shopping trolley in behind her as if it were a disobedient dog.

Trinity said, ‘Forget the beer.’ She headed for the door but Jesús followed her.

‘It’s okay, you can have the beer. We save the payment for next time, hunh?’

‘I said forget it.’

Trinity wrenched the door open. She didn’t know if she were more angry at Jesús for what he had suggested or herself for even considering it, even for a split second. Jesús shrugged and lifted both hands and said, ‘Your loss, calaca! Fuck you!’

That was another word Trinity knew, calaca, because she had been called it when she was at school. It meant ‘skeleton’.

She climbed back into the driving seat and slammed the door. Rosie was still prodding at her phone with her chipped orange fingernails and didn’t even look up.

‘I have to meet a friend,’ said Trinity, trying to breathe normally so Rosie wouldn’t realise that she was upset. ‘I’ll take you home first and when I come back I’ll try and think of something different for dinner.’

‘Can’t I come with you? I hate being on my own with Dad these days.’

‘My friend’s really upset about something. I don’t know what it is but she sounded like she’s in bits.’

‘I’ll stay in the car.’

Trinity looked at the clock. It was nearly five to four in any case, so she would have been late for Margo if she had taken Rosie home first. And she knew that her father would either be asleep and snoring or else he would keep nagging Rosie to give him ‘cuddles’. He never interfered with her sexually, but she was revolted by his clumsy hugging and his prickly beer-wet kisses. He missed their mother.

‘Okay,’ said Trinity, and she started up the engine and turned south to Peyton’s Place, only five blocks south on Reseda Boulevard. She turned into the parking lot in front of the line of single-storey restaurants and bars and dry cleaners and tugged up the handbrake.

‘You’re sure you’re going to be okay? I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’

Rosie still didn’t look up from her phone. ‘I’ll be fine, Trin. If I get bored I’ll walk home.’

Trinity got out of the car and crossed the sidewalk to Peyton’s Place. She was about to push open the heavy glass door when it was wrenched open from inside and a bulky man in a black bomber jacket and a black beanie came bursting out, swinging a large brown hessian bag. He almost knocked her over.

‘Hey!’ she said, but he ignored her, shamble-jogging down Reseda Boulevard and disappearing around the corner.

She went into the bar. It was dark in there, illuminated only by small, shaded lamps on the tables and the dim orange strip lights behind the bar. All around the walls were black-and-white photographs of Reseda in the 1920s, when it was producing more lettuce than anywhere else in the country, and Southern Pacific Railroad trains came up Sherman Way to be loaded with it.

There were only three customers in the bar, sitting in the far corner, and they were all middle-aged men who looked like Proud Boys. The bald barman was dipping into a large bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and staring up at a replay of a Rams game on the television. Trinity walked up to the bar and said, ‘Hi. I’m supposed to be meeting my friend here?’

The barman wiped Cheeto spice from his drooping moustache with the back of his hand. He looked Trinity up and down in her faded denim jacket and her tight white three-quarter length jeans as if he were trying to decide if she was old enough to be in a bar. ‘Red-headed girl? Green dress?’

‘I don’t know what colour dress she was wearing, but yes, she’s a redhead. She hasn’t come and gone, has she?’

The barman jerked his thumb towards the back of the bar. ‘No. She come. But she gone to the bathroom.’

‘Okay,’ said Trinity. ‘I’ll just shout out and tell her I’m here.’

The barman shrugged and went back to cramming Cheetos into his mouth.

Trinity went to the door marked Restrooms. As soon as she opened it, she smelled acrid smoke, like varnish burning, and she could hear a sharp crackling sound. She stepped into the short corridor that separated the two toilets and opened up the door to the Women’s. The whole room was swirling with smoke and transparent blue flames were leaping up over the top of the centre stall.

‘Margo!’ screamed Trinity.

She went up to the stall door and tried to push it open, but it was too hot to touch, so she kicked it. Inside, Margo was sitting on the toilet in a mass of flames. Her red hair was ablaze and her green dress was curling into blackened shreds. Her face had already shrivelled into a grimacing mask – her eyes opaque and her lips stretched back over her teeth. Both arms were held up in that monkey-like pose that was adopted by almost everybody who was burned to death – firefighters, Vietnamese villagers, saints or witches.

2

When Nemo came up to her, Trinity was still sitting behind the wheel of the Monarch with the door wide open, holding a glass of water that the barman had brought out.

The parking lot outside Peyton’s Place was chaotic. A fire truck was only ten feet away from her with its lights flashing and its engine running, so that Trinity could hardly hear what anybody was saying to her, apart from feeling so numb with shock that she couldn’t believe she was actually here, with all these people shouting and running around her. There were three patrol cars parked at different angles, as well as a white coroner’s van and a TV truck from ABC7.

When Trinity had told her what had happened, Rosie had been excited rather than shocked. She hadn’t known Margo and this was by far the most dramatic event since last November, when her classmate Mike Wollenski had been killed while racing his Dodge Caliber along Saticoy Street at over seventy-five miles an hour. Now Rosie was busy contacting all of her friends and telling them to watch the local TV news, because they would see her in the background.

Nemo had been talking to Johnny Cascarelli, the owner of Peyton’s Place, a short man in a pale-blue double-breasted suit with a high black pompadour. Now and again Johnny Cascarelli had nodded his head in Trinity’s direction, and Nemo had taken off his mirror sunglasses and frowned at Trinity in the way that a father looks at his daughter when something in her life has gone badly wrong. After a while he had slapped Johnny Cascarelli on the shoulder and come across to talk to her.

‘Johnny tells me that it was you who found her,’ he said, in a hoarse, gravelly voice.

Trinity raised her eyes. She saw a solidly built man of about forty-five years old, with buzz-cut black hair that was beginning to show traces of grey, and a broad, squarish face with a deeply cleft chin, like a retired boxer. He was wearing a grey leather jacket with a satin emblem of some kind of black bird stitched onto the left-hand pocket, and baggy jeans.

‘She was a friend of yours, right?’ he asked her.

Trinity nodded. She thought she ought to be crying but she felt as if her tear ducts had dried up.

The man came a little closer. ‘Johnny called me. He and me, we’ve been amigos for years. I’m an ex-cop, but these days I do freelance private detective work – well, among other things. Johnny’s worried this is going to badly affect his business. He doesn’t trust the cops any more than I do, and he wants me to double-check what really happened to your friend here. You know, in case the cops overlook something important, like they have a habit of doing.’

Trinity took a sip of her water. ‘I see,’ she said, although she didn’t really understand what he was talking about.

‘Nemo’s the name,’ the man told her. ‘Nemo Frisby. Sergeant Weller told me that they’ve asked you all the questions that he needs to for now, so you can go home. I was wondering if you were okay to drive.’

At that moment, the door of Peyton’s Place opened up and two investigators from the coroner’s office wheeled out a gurney covered with green plastic sheeting. Trinity turned her head away and now, without warning, the tears began to run down her cheeks.

Nemo came up and took the glass of water out of her hand.

‘Here,’ he said gently. ‘Let me drive you home. Is this a friend of yours? Does she want a ride home too?’

‘I’m her sister,’ Rosie told him. ‘It’s okay. I’ll sit in back.’

Trinity stood up numbly and Nemo led her round to the passenger seat.

‘It’s 6844 Zelzah,’ said Rosie.

Nemo climbed behind the wheel, started the engine and backed out of the parking lot. A uniformed officer gave him a familiar salute as he turned into the street, and Nemo saluted him back.

‘What you witnessed there, young lady, nobody should never have to witness,’ he said, as he drove. ‘It’s going to take you a while to get over it, believe me, so go easy on yourself. On the other hand, don’t try to put a lid on your feelings, that never helps at all. I’ve known witnesses who’ve tried to pretend that they never saw nothing. You know, blank it all out. I guarantee, though, it always come back to them, mostly when they’re least expecting it, sometimes months or even years later, and bam, just like that, they fall to pieces. And I mean they literally fall to pieces. Mentally, emotionally.’

He turned off Lindley Avenue on to Vanowen. ‘You’ll need to talk about it, Tina. So I’ll give you my number and you can call me any time you like.’

‘It’s not Tina, it’s Trinity,’ Rosie put in, without looking up from her phone.

‘Oh, sorry. I thought that’s what Sergeant Weller told me. But really, Trinity, I mean it. Don’t bottle it up. I had twenty-two years in the LAPD and I know how important it is to share your feelings with people who will listen to you and understand how traumatised you feel. It doesn’t have to be me. But don’t keep it bottled up, okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Trinity, staring out of the window. She was sure she could still smell Margo’s burning hair in her nostrils.

When they arrived home, Nemo opened the car door for her and Rosie helped Trinity into the house. Kenno was waxing his Challenger now and he eyed Nemo suspiciously, although he didn’t come over and ask what was going on. Nemo took out his phone and called his wife.

‘Sherri? Yeah, it’s me. I need a ride. I know. Yes, I know, but I left it at the crime scene and took this young woman home. No. Of course not. I would have done the same if she’d been a guy. She’s traumatised. Fine. Fine. 6844 Zelzah. Just past Hartland.’

He was starting to send a text when Trinity’s father appeared at the front door, blinking in the sunlight. He was still holding a can of Rolling Rock in one hand.

‘Rosie just told me what happened,’ he said. ‘Like, Jesus Christ.’

Nemo went up to him. Trinity’s father wiped his free hand on the back of his shorts and held it out, but Nemo didn’t shake it.

‘Nemo Frisby,’ he said. ‘Formerly Detective Nemo Frisby, West Valley Area. Your daughter’s badly traumatised, sir. She’s going to need considerable care and understanding for the next few days. If not weeks.’

‘Okay,’ said Trinity’s father. ‘I got you.’

He paused for a moment, licking his lips, and then he nodded towards the Monarch. ‘You didn’t happen to notice… she didn’t manage to pick up a six-pack before she got trau – before she got trautamised – by any chance?’

Nemo stared at him as if he had spoken in a foreign language. Then, without saying a word, he turned around, walked back to the kerb and continued his texting. Trinity’s father stayed in the open doorway for a while, holding on to the jamb for support. When he realised that Nemo wasn’t going to answer him, he staggered back into the living room and Nemo heard him stumble over the rug and shout out, ‘Fuck!’

*

Trinity was lying on her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling, when Rosie tapped softly at the door.

‘Trin? Sabina’s here. She wants a word.’

Trinity sat up. On the opposite wall, over her desk, a poster of Tom Cruise playing a young lawyer in The Firm frowned at her seriously.

‘Tell her I’m not feeling too good.’

Rosie fidgeted with the door handle. ‘She said it’s quite important. It’s about Buddy’s therapy.’

‘Okay,’ said Trinity, and she swung her legs off the bed.

‘Have you thought what’s for dinner yet?’ asked Rosie, as Trinity followed her out to the hallway.

Trinity closed her eyes for a moment and stopped where she was. She didn’t know if she was going to scream with frustration or collapse onto the floor and pretend to have fainted. But then she opened her eyes again and saw Buddy in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, and he gave her a gappy-toothed grin and waved.

She took a deep breath to calm herself and waved back, although her face felt numb and she couldn’t manage to smile. She could see her father’s white hairy leg behind Buddy and he had obviously fallen asleep again.

‘Dinner – no, not yet,’ she told Rosie, who had already returned to prodding at her phone. ‘If you don’t want spaghetti, I’ll try to think of something.’

Sabina was standing outside on the driveway. She looked like a nurse, because she was still wearing the pale-blue button-through dress that she wore when she was giving therapy to the children at the Small Talk speech-training centre. Her cornrow hair was styled into a halo braid and her lips were scarlet and glossy. Rosie had once said that she looked like Rihanna’s less successful twin sister.

‘Hi, Trinity! How’s the world with you?’

‘Well, no, not too good right now.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. What’s wrong, girl?’

‘It’s okay. I’ve had a kind of a shock, that’s all. I don’t really want to talk about it.’

Sabina cocked her head on one side sympathetically. ‘You’re sure? You do look a little pale, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘You wanted to have a word about Buddy. How’s he coming on? Is there a problem?’

‘He’s coming on fine, therapy-wise. I’m sure you’ve noticed yourself how much clearer he’s talking. His resonance and his phonation have improved so much in the past three months. No – it’s a behavioural thing.’

‘Behavioural?’ Trinity could see that Kenno had stopped waxing the hood of his Challenger in mid-circle and was grinning at her.

‘He’s been having fights with two of the other boys in the group. And not just an occasional scrap, you know, like all boys do. It’s been ongoing for at least a week or two now. I’ve asked him what it’s all about but he says it’s nothing. I was wondering if you could get it out of him.’

‘I’ll try. He always has his happy face on, but he does keep his secrets.’

‘Thanks. The way they’ve been going at each other, I’m worried that one of them’s going to get seriously hurt.’

Trinity glanced behind her to make sure that her father hadn’t woken up and come shuffling to the front door to see who she was talking to.

‘Sabina – do you think you could do me a huge favour?’ she asked. ‘We’re flat broke and my dad’s unemployment doesn’t come in till next Thursday. I have to give Rosie and Buddy something for their dinner.’

‘Sure,’ said Sabina. ‘How much do you need?’

‘Well, twenty if I get the Pizza Hut five-dollar deal.’

Sabina walked over to her red Sonic, opened the passenger door and took out her purse. She came back and gave Trinity a fifty-dollar bill.

‘There. Why don’t you order some chicken wings and shakes to go with them.’

‘I can pay you back on Thursday, I promise.’

‘There’s no panic, girl. Honestly. You have enough on your plate. And that shock you had, whatever that was… well, I hope it doesn’t take you too long to get over it.’

Trinity’s lips were pressed tightly together and she had to blink away some tears. She wanted to say thank you but she knew that if she opened her mouth she would start to sob.

Sabina went back to her car. Before she climbed in, she gave Trinity a little wave and called out, ‘Let me know how things go with Buddy, okay?’

Trinity nodded. After the death of her mother, she had always believed she could deal with any of the tragic surprises that fate had a habit of dealing out. But now she felt weak and drained of colour, almost ghost-like, and when Kenno called out to her she found it hard to believe that he could even see her.

‘Hey, Trinity! You still up for tamales?’

She ignored him and went back into the house. He stood staring at her front door for a few moments as if he half expected her to come out again, but then he shrugged and said ‘whatever’ and went back to his waxing.

*

They were all sitting in the living room with their pizza boxes open on their laps when the six o’clock Eyewitness News came on. Trinity hadn’t felt at all hungry, but she had ordered herself a Garden Party pizza with spinach and tomatoes and peppers because she knew that if she went to bed on an empty stomach, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She desperately wanted to be able to sleep deeply tonight, without dreams.

Trinity’s father was sitting hunched over his pizza box with a slice in each hand, wolfing them down alternately. Whenever he ran out of alcohol he would develop a ravenous appetite, and he had started eating as soon as Trinity had shaken him awake and set the pizza box down on his lap. He hadn’t said a word, not even to ask how she could have afforded it.

Buddy was still sitting on the floor in front of the TV. He was eleven, only a month off twelve, but all the same he was big for his age, and overweight. Apart from his snub nose and his dark brown crew cut, he looked just like their father. He was even wearing a Chargers T-shirt, although it was a size too small for him now, and his belly bulged over the waistband of his shorts.

Rosie had perched herself on the arm of the couch, as far away from her father as possible, while Trinity was sitting as usual in the sagging basketwork chair where their mother always used to sit, doing her embroidery. It was the family’s only outright acknowledgement that she had taken her mother’s place in charge of the household.

The cuckoo clock in the hallway whirred and clanked and chimed six times, interspersed with thin peeping noises because one of its bellows was punctured.

Rosie said, ‘Switch over to the news! Buddy, switch over to the news! You’ll be able to see me on TV!’

Buddy picked up the remote and changed the channel to the local news. The lead story was about a gas explosion in Van Nuys, but the second item was about Margo being burned alive in the restroom at Peyton’s Place.

News anchor Rachel Brown said, ‘The young woman’s body was so badly burned that it was only because a friend had agreed to meet her at Peyton’s Place that the police were able to make an immediate identification. She was Margo Shapiro, a twenty-three-year-old actress who had appeared in the movie Hilarity Jones and also in the TV series Class of Angels.

‘Sergeant Weller, the lead officer of West Valley police, said it appeared that Ms Shapiro had been deliberately set alight, although who had assaulted her and why were