Free Finding June by Shannen Crane Camp Page B

course,
telling off Rich and John for the cavalier way in which they
discussed the crime scene, as per usual. While the captain was
scolding the boys, Charles Bagely and Cutter came into the scene,
ready to be assigned to the case. That's when the real action of
the script began.
    Lukas and Will read their parts, which seemed
to make up a good chunk of the script. At one point their
characters visited Jackie, the medical examiner, and it was the
first time I’d really heard Joann speak since she’d come into the
room. Her voice was deep and smooth, instantly making me think of a
smoky-voiced lounge singer. She twirled her blonde hair as she
read, and I couldn’t help but stare at how elegant she was. There
was something about her that just made me feel like I was a little
girl in a room full of grown-ups: tolerated, but not really
expected to participate.
    After Charles and Cutter talked to Jackie to
discover the means of the murder (arsenic), they decided to head
over to the theatre, where they’d meet me. Up until this point I’d
been relatively relaxed about the read through. Honestly, it just
felt like I was watching another episode of Forensic
Faculty . But now I was actually going to have to participate. I
cleared my throat nervously and scanned my lines to make sure I
wasn’t about to sound like a five-year-old trying to read
Shakespeare.
    “Interior. Day. Charles and Cutter walk into
an empty dimly-lit theatre,” the mousey man next to Mr. Hill
read.
    “This place is a dump,” Will Trofeos read,
pulling a face as if he were actually looking at a dingy theatre. I
tried to pay close attention to exactly what Will was doing. I
wanted to make sure I didn’t sound like I was reading the script
and have the whole cast think I couldn’t act, but at the same time,
I wanted to make sure I didn’t over-act and seem like I didn’t know
what to do at a table read.
    “Yeah, and they hire killers,” Lukas said
with a smirk at Will. I couldn’t tell if Lukas was smirking at him
because that’s what Cutter would do, or if he just thought the line
was funny. Was I supposed to be making my character’s facial
expressions? Should I gesture too, if the script called for it, or
should I hold the script and not move my hands at all? I was
definitely over-thinking this whole thing. I really needed to take
a step back and relax. It wasn’t that big of a deal—I just had to
do what I’ve been doing my whole life.
    “We don’t know that, Cutter,” Will said, his
tone suddenly serious. “Remember what I told you about coming onto
a crime scene? You have to go in with a blank slate or you let your
judgment get clouded by preconceived notions,” he chided in his
thick Spanish accent.
    “Got it,” Lukas mumbled moodily.
    “All right, so the body was found in that box
over there,” Will said, pointing across the room at me and making
my heart skip a beat.
    “Who found him?” Lukas asked, glancing at his
phone under the table. I peeked around the room to see if anyone
else had noticed, but they all had their eyes trained on the
script, so I quickly dropped my eyes back to the page.
    “His assistant found him during the
performance. Sent him into the box to disappear—guy comes out
thirty seconds later ready for the freezer.”
    “It was her,” Lukas said
matter-of-factly.
    “Cutter,” Will answered in an exasperated
tone, like a father rebuking his son.
    “What? Who else would know exactly when he’d
go into that box?”
    “I don’t know,” Will answered with strained
patience. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
    “Fine, but I say we talk to her first,”
Cutter stated in the cocky tone I’d heard so many times on the show
before. That was usually the first giveaway that he was wrong.
    No matter how innovative a crime show tried
to be, there always seemed to be a pattern. On Forensic
Faculty , for example, the detectives would question a series of
suspects in the first fifteen minutes. They