Chapter 113
CYNTHIA MAINES WAS waiting in a golf cart at the main gate of the Warner lot in the last light of Halloween. Justine hadn’t remembered the date until she’d seen the kids dressed in costumes running from house to house.
The Harlows’ personal assistant looked shell-shocked. She’d obviously been crying.
“What’s happened?” Justine asked, climbing into the passenger seat.
Maines drove on, her shoulders hunched forward as she said, “I’ve learned that my life is not what I thought it was. I’ve learned that my beliefs are suspect. And that my instincts are worthless.” She glanced over at Justine, looking lost. “How is that possible? How is it possible to spend years of your life with people and not see them?”
“Tell me,” Justine said.
Maines shook her head in disgust. “It’s something that has to be seen.”
They drove past the turn to the Harlow-Quinn bungalow, past the soundstages, and parked not far from the cafeteria. They walked into a nondescript building with a central hallway.
“I got a friend of mine to let me use the screening room,” Maines said, putting a key into a lock and opening a door for Justine.
There were six theater seats inside and a good-sized screen. Justine had no idea what was going on when Maines scooped up an iPad and gave it orders.
Maines’s hands were shaking. She seemed to be having trouble picking out the commands.
“I got worried after you left the other day,” Maines said hoarsely. “About the computers missing at the ranch, and whether the files for Saigon Falls had actually been backed up.”
“Okay?” Justine said.
“I couldn’t get into Harlow-Quinn to take a look,” Maines said. “So I contacted the repository in Minneapolis where all the digital files were supposed to be sent. I had to talk to them a couple of times when we were setting this all up before the move to Vietnam, so they knew me. They had no idea I’d been fired and gave me a temporary password that allowed me to review the logs.”
“Was Saigon Falls backed up?”
Maines’s eyes were glistening with tears. “That’s what makes this all so awful. It was there, backed up around six the day Thom and Jen disappeared. It was a rough edit, but you can already see the genius of it. The story line. The acting. The cinematography. I’d love to show it to you, but it seems so …”
“Seems so what?” Justine said, wondering where this was going.
Maines looked lost again before saying, “There was another backup made from the ranch the night they disappeared, some sort of emergency thing. Maybe triggered by the power going off and the generator taking over? I don’t know. But about a hundred files were sent to the data bank that had never been there before.”
“What were they?”
Maines replied, “How is it possible that the artists who created Saigon Falls also created this?”
She hit RETURN on the smart tablet. The huge LED screen lit, showing the Harlows’ master bedroom at the ranch in Ojai.