Free Diagnosis Murder 3 - The Shooting Script by Lee Goldberg Page A

cooler shut. "It's from a glacier in Antarctica and is shipped directly to her. She demands that it be kept at exactly 68 degrees. She's the same way about carpet. It must be extra heavy, tufted British wool, primarily from Scottish Blackface, Herdwick, and Cheviot sheep."
    "She sounds awfully picky," Mark said.
    "You mean she's a pain in the ass," Steve said, ducking under the crystal chandelier in the living room to admire her entertainment center.
    "She's nothing compared to some actors I've worked with," Morgan said. "A certain Oscar nominee has to have his feet massaged with egg yolks from free-range chickens before he performs a scene."
    Morgan's radio crackled and an insistent male voice asked: "What's the ETA on the H2O?"
    The beleaguered young man yanked his walkie-talkie from its holster as if he'd been zapped with a cattle prod and quickly responded: "Sixty seconds."
    Morgan motioned to Mark and Steve. "Follow me, and I'll take you to her," he said, practically leaping out the door of the mobile home.
    Mark and Steve almost had to run to keep up with him, as the APA raced between trucks, over electric cables, and around the enormous lights that illuminated the alley where the night's scenes were being shot.
    Morgan edged his way through the intense group of baseball-capped professionals huddled around the cameras and playback monitors and rushed out to Lacey McClure, who stood in the center of the alley in a black leather jumpsuit.
    The APA unzipped the little cooler and offered Lacey a bottle. She took a quick drink, put the bottle back in the cooler, and flashed Morgan a superficial smile of thanks. That's when she saw Mark and Steve behind the camera, watching her. Her smile remained, in all its blazing insincerity.
    "Is everyone hydrated?" the director asked, his impatience evident in every word.
    Lacey glared at him, but it didn't seem to bother the director.
    "I'll take that as a yes," the director said, turning to his director of photography, who sat in the canvas chair beside him. "How about you; are we ready?"
    "We're set," the director of photography said.
    "Great, let's do it," the director said, nodding to his assistant director, who stood in the alley, just outside camera's field of view.
    The assistant director took out his walkie-talkie and spoke into it, his voice emanating like a crackling echo from walkie-talkies all over the set. "This will be picture. Every body settle. Quiet please."
    "Action!" The director snapped, then hunched over the monitors to watch the scene unfold.
    Delia Storm walked down the dark alley. Three figures peeled out of the darkness around her like shadows coming to life. There were three men, dressed in black, and they carried baseball bats.
    One of the men smiled. His yellow teeth looked like they'd been knocked out, mixed together, then shoved back into his mouth in the wrong places. "Didn't anybody tell you it's not safe for a lady to walk alone here at night?"
    "I'm not a lady," she said with a thin smile.
    "Then what the hell are you?"
    "Justice," she hissed, then whirled around and—
    "Hold your positions," the director yelled. "Lacey out, Moira in."
    The cameraman didn't move and neither did the three men. Lacey hurried behind the camera and another woman, dressed exactly like her, took her place in the alley, assuming the same position Lacey had been in.
    "Who is that?" whispered Mark to the APA.
    "Moira Cole," Morgan said. "Lacey's stunt double."
    At that instant, the director yelled "Action!"
    Moira whirled into a spinning kick, hitting the nearest man in the face with her foot and sending his bat flying from his hands. She caught the bat, twirled it in her hands like a baton, and used it to take out the guy next to her, then froze in a martial-arts stance to confront her lone remaining adversary, her head at an angle that obscured her face from the camera's view.
    "Hold your positions," the director yelled again, and Moira rushed out and Lacey assumed her final