“What is your deal?” he asked, as he slowly zoomed in on the image.
But of course, Tabitha Henry’s pixelated face couldn’t answer any questions about her deal, or anything else.
* * *
—
Baron went home to do some work, and Chloe and I spent the next several hours making calls. Somehow Chloe managed to convince a representative from the movie studio that we hadn’t made up this insane story just to mess with her. The studio rep assured us that nobody who worked for their publicity department had ever been harmed in a manner consistent with what we’d described. When we asked her if she was sure, she told us that she was one hundred percent positive.
That attack never happened.
* * *
—
According to the information Baron’s finance guys sent over, Tabitha Henry was born in Queens, New York, graduated from UCLA with a degree in communications, then moved back to New York to work in digital advertising for a while before eventually returning to Los Angeles to start an immersive interactive theater company.
Tabitha’s company was called Rowing All the Boats. They ran a few popular escape rooms in Los Angeles. Their events always received rave reviews, and by the end of their first month of operation, they had a two-month-long waiting list. A few months after that, they were purchased by a company specializing in cutting-edge online-gaming technology called Chronicler Enterprises.
I called the number listed on the Rowing All the Boats website and left a message asking Tabitha Henry to return my call.
She called back a few hours later.
After some awkward small talk, I finally explained why I’d gotten in touch with her, how some friends and I had discovered a really weird movie clip, and that Tabitha herself was the star.
She gave me her email address and I sent her the file. A few minutes later she called us back, this time on video.
Tabitha’s hair was a bit shorter, her face a little bit fuller, but otherwise, she looked pretty much the same as she had in that clip with Jeff Goldblum.
“How the fuck did you do that? How did you copy my face and body?”
“We didn’t. We found it on somebody’s phone,” Chloe said.
“Whose phone?”
Chloe and I looked at each other.
“Well?” Tabitha was losing patience.
“A man named Alan Scarpio.”
“The billionaire?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you know him?”
“No. He’s gone missing, right?”
“That’s right,” Chloe said.
“What’s a missing billionaire doing with a fake video of me on his phone?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “That’s why we’re calling.”
It looked like Tabitha wasn’t sure who she should be mad at, or how mad she should be.
“What in the actual fuck?” she said. We could hear her playing the video clip again while she was speaking with us. “It’s so realistic. It’s creeping me out.”
“You’re sure you don’t remember anything like this happening?” I asked.
“Are you serious?” Tabitha’s eyes were huge. “You think I could forget something like this?”
She held her phone up to a desktop computer and showed us the section of the video where the publicity assistant’s arm was slashed. “Look at all of that blood. Would there really be that much blood?”
“I understand this must be…strange for you,” I said.
“Ya think?”
“I can send you all the information we have, if you like.”
“Yeah. I’ll need all your information.”
“If you have any questions, please get in touch.”
“Thanks. I’m sure I’ll have questions. I mean, you do know this isn’t me in this video, right?” She stared at the two of us. “Right?”
“Right,” I said. “Of course.”
“This is so weird.” Tabitha started watching the video again. “Wait, did Devon put you up to this?”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t know any Devon.”
“Right—except that’s exactly what somebody who knows Devon would say.”
I looked at Chloe. She shrugged.
Tabitha Henry, for the moment at least, appeared to be a dead end.
9
EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T RABBITS
“This is fascinating.” The Magician pressed the space bar on his laptop and the video stopped playing.
We’d rushed over to the arcade shortly after we’d spoken with Tabitha. The Magician had watched the video three times in a row.