The Perfect Witness: Screenplay

By Logan Snare

In 1989, a missing woman is found dead. Investigators go to her apartment and find nothing. They are left without a clue. Twenty years later, children discover the body of a murder victim. Somehow, these deaths are related, and detectives soon get a break with the help of an old cold case.

In the midst of all this horror, a wandering husband is brought back to his wife. A traffic accident brings unexpected love to a man in need of a change. However, the killer is still out there and soon has an encounter with the happy new couple.

A major historic event is on the way, and a killer needs to be caught. Will the victims ever be laid to rest, or will a murderer continue to walk free?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663210708

Logan Snare

Logan Snare is a brand label, which is a business title for production. My name is Abigail L. Stanwood. I am a documentary photographer. My most recent show was the first ever full exhibition theft in the history of the Downtown Honolulu Arts District. I was voted among the top celebrated one hundred artists of the past 100 years in Boston, MA. My interest in IT Security + developed amid the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. “Her writing [in the depiction of the villain] is delusional.” – Community Health Centers of America “She [her approach] is judged to be of above average intelligence.” – APA of America

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 LOGAN SNARE.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may

be used or reproduced by any means, graphic,

electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage

retrieval system without the written permission of

the author except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters,

names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue

in this novel are either the products of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any

web addresses or links contained in this book may

have changed since publication and may no longer

be valid. The views expressed in this work are

solely those of the author and do not necessarily

reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher

hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided

by Getty Images are models, and such images are

being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1069-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1070-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021919159

iUniverse rev. date:  03/25/2022

FADE IN:

GRAPHIC

1994

Rural County, New York State

In 1989, a missing woman is found dead. Investigators go to her apartment and find nothing. They are left without a clue. Twenty years later, the father of two children discovers the body of a murder victim. Somehow, these deaths are related, and detectives soon get a break with the help of an old cold case. In the midst of all this horror, a wandering husband is brought back to his wife. A traffic accident brings unexpected love to a man in need of a change. However, the killer is still out there and soon has an encounter with the happy new couple. A major historic event is on the way, and a killer needs to be caught. Will the victims ever be laid to rest, or will a murderer continue to walk free?

EXT. PRECINCT BUILDING: INTERROGATION ROOM – DAY [WHITE HERRING]

GARY

My hands are clean.

ANDREW

Your hands are tied.

[END WHITE HERRING]

EXT. AMERICAN LANDSCAPE – DAY

Mountains surrounded by lush green hills. The morning light breaks through the window. A man rows his boat gliding across the top of water. Joggers and people riding bikes move along pavement. A sparrow passes in front of the frame. Birds fly overhead in rapid succession one by one. The river passes through a city nearby spreads out in a mass expanse and draws into other industrial and more suburban regions in the rural countryside of the state. The sun shines brightly against the green forest as clouds begin to draw inward, darkening the air, against the sprawling landscape.

Carla (40s, White). Her family photo sits on her desktop and computer. A colorful page extends from her newspaper as she sits alone and quietly reads the E4-8 section of the newspaper.

MAN [V.O.]

Missing persons. Wake up

GRAPHIC

20 years later

GRAPHIC

Present Day Manhattan, New

York City

INT./EXT. TELEVISION STATIC – DAY [SFX]

MAN [V.O.]

Wake up. They’re trying to

Kill you.

[END SFX]

EXT. BUILDING: ABOVE GROUND FLOOR – DAY

Potato sack races, follow the leader, telephone. The games children play. There’s nothing worse than having the wrong information. That way you might be wrong and not know it and then you’d be making decisions based of false information. The game of telephone is a game in which one person whispers one thing into someone’s ear and that thing then gets passed on to another person and then another and another and so on and so forth. By the end of the game the thing that was told is usually completely different at the end in contrast to the beginning.

Rain falls hard and droplets trickle over window ledge outside.

Carla stands and looks out from the interior window of a building and reads a newspaper.

EXT. AMERICAN LANDSCAPE – DAY

[CUT AWAY]

Andrew walks over a grassy embankment towards the river’s edge seen against the horizon. Elizabeth, the Medical Examiner needs to make sure that decisions are not being made on false information. A small K-9 puppy begins to dig in the ground. Three dogs recover a red thread fiber, and it is placed in the evidence bag.

He does not know that he’s being watched from afar.

[END CUT AWAY]

EXT. APARTMENT ROOM - DAY

Indistinct TV plays in background.

WOMAN, CARLA

Hello.

OPERATOR

Hold please. I’ll be with

you in a moment.

She reads through the first section of the newspaper with a demeanor of fatigue and turns one of the sections facedown. In the entertainment section of the paper, there is an article about a musician who was going to be performing in concert at a venue that is a few hours away from where she lives. She reads the article and finds information to order concert tickets. At the bottom of the article, she reads a correction.

HEADLINE

2 million Dollar Contract.

In the entertainment section of the paper, there are multiple articles.

HEADLINE

Designer to accept fashion

icon of the year award.

SUBLINE

She [the designer] makes

women feel powerful.

HEADLINE

Screenwriter releases new

limited series to network.

HEADLINE

Director earns award by

Academy.

A review of the designer’s work listed in the commentary of the previous article.

HEADLINE

The Supreme Logo

significantly increases the

price of a product.

The musician who was going to be performing in concert at a venue that was a few hours away from where she lived. The article about a musician performing at the concert is based on your choice of actor to be portrayed in this next scene. Please choose at your own discretion. She reads the article and finds the information to order the tickets. At the bottom of the article, she reads the correction that reads: [Illegible] followed by "he is worth 2 [illegible]. The newspaper is torn at the bottom of the page. Woman looks through the hole in the paper. A dog, golden retriever comes into focus in the background. She holds her credit card for purchase in one hand when a cell phone notification sounds, and she is placed on hold while music plays.

PRODUCER

It takes about 100,000

dollars to create 1 episode.

CARLA

I would never want to be

responsible for that much

money.

The contract is for Entertainment industry related production that the performer would have a responsibility to create multiple series of many different shows. She closes the newspaper. At that point, 2 million didn’t quite seem like enough. The article is a review and historiological profile of the performer whose event she is required to attend and evaluate the performance thereof by her new employer. She purchases one ticket. Despite reservations, this woman attends the event. The storm system moves through the area. And there is a significant amount of traffic leading into town on the day of the concert. It is warmer in that area as opposed to where she and her family lives, which is in the more rural region of the state. In the summertime, the farther inland one travels in these parts, because of the trees, the heat, and the weather, the hotter and more humid the air becomes. The trees are lush and green. The river that runs directly through the middle of the state intersects at one point below where the concert is to be held, in a plein open-air style amphitheater. Insert your own favorite concert here. The concert is perhaps one of the most well- attended events in the area. The technicians are running a sound check early that day. The sun is bright. The audience arrives, and everyone takes their seats in the partially enclosed theater. Inside the amphitheater, the air is unmoving. The concert begins with a musical overture. The heat rises up to circulate within the contained area of the amphitheater and built upon itself to create wind and heat combined.

After the concert she drives away and passes through the area where an open investigation had been taking place. She turns on the radio console.

RADIO MAN 3

There is no perfect witness.

Announcing Breaking News Broadcast.

RADIO MAN 4

New information released in

the investigation of. . .

Carla changes the channel and turns down the volume.

RADIO MAN 1

Yeah, I see him everywhere,

and It’s like, ‘Gosh, I

wonder who does his

publicity?’ You know?

RADIO MAN 2

No, it’s not.

Carla attends the event as a reviewer. She had just started a new job.

MAN 1 voice fades and radio turned off.

The sound of rain hitting the windshield in small drops.

In a building right around the corner, five blocks away from the area of the city where a new building was being erected, a man was in a meeting. Carla’s husband, Hank (40s, White) is halfway across the state. He is going to lose his job. The loss of his job would be an event marked by such incongruity that by the end, the actual result would no longer be good enough for those who had begun it. Hank had a pretense of incapacity and of compliance. This helped him to learn from others. It was a script that he thought one must assume in order to make the company’s standard protocol for hiring easily seen in its implementation. Hank Clark had been called the most profitable salesman in his department during the first year of his employment. He worked in mergers and acquisitions for a nonprofit agency. He looked good with his short dark red, blond hair and blue green eyes. He was only thirty-six years of age and weighed nearly one hundred fifty pounds. He sat among a group of people. They were discussing new employment options because of an issue related to their department’s having almost hired a person who did not meet their employment standards. Hank was in charge of hiring, and he managed the department.

Hank (40s, White). He wears a suit and tie. And he is seated inside an office, staring at construction workers outside through the window. He was surrounded by two other people. Everyone was seated at a large table, and everyone was looking at Hank. The irony of this man’s story is that the very thing he’d done to others would ultimately be done to him. Although he would survive because of what others had done to Hank, he would not do the same to them without intention. He boldly takes a deep breath.

HANK

I am here. That new hire

keeps calling.

EMPLOYEE 1

This person called the front

desk and left a message.

EMPLOYEE 2

She even called your office

earlier this week.

EMPLOYEE 1

Hank.

A message alert sounds off on the phone.

SMS

Hello.

EMPLOYEE 1

Did you get the message?

HANK

Uh, I did not receive any

messages.

SMS autocorrect box is displayed on cell phone.

EMPLOYEE 3

She tried calling the front

desk and your office.

EMPLOYEE 1

Yeah.

EMPLOYEE 2

Just tell her that we can’t

hire her.

Hank stands up. . .

EMPLOYEE 1

You can’t do it, Hank?

HANK

No, I can do it. Did you

take down all the messages

when she called?

The other workers stare at him with puzzled looks on their faces before intentionally turning and confidently shuffling back in the direction of the office coffee vending machine. Hank exits the room and then returns to his office. In his hand he holds the papers for automatic employment screening. The phone rings. An icon appears at the bottom of the screen with a little blue dot next to the caller ID.

Hank picks up the phone. . .

HANK

Hello.

Hank closes the door to his office. On the phone it i1s the person his department had almost hired. He is dodging her calls because he did something wrong and didn’t want to be the one to have to take responsibility for it. Every time her number calls his office, he manages to cover it up.

POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE

When do I start work?

Friday?

HANK

Oh. No. You won’t be

starting work this Friday.

Hank sits down in a chair facing the wall.

POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE

What?

Inaudible.

HANK

Okay, yeah. Do you remember

those questions? The

approximately four hundred

sixty sliding-scale

questions you had to answer

along with your application,

yes?

POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE

Um, yeah. Okay.

He turns to the window and sees a small cluster of birds perching off to the side of one of the buildings. None of the birds move except for the occasional fluttering of wings and feathers as they resettle themselves in calm anticipation. He implements the required standard for his field.

HANK

Look, there is one out of

three scores you can get,

red, yellow, or green. You

scored yellow. I’m sorry,

but we don’t hire yellow

people here.

Surely now he gets recognition. The company feels it’s important that their employees stick to the script. The woman on the phone gives him a piece of her mind.

POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE

What? You can’t do that.

What?

HANK

Yes, I can. It’s okay. You

scored yellow. That means

that you can try again in

six months.

He marks up a note on the page without expression.

HANK

It’s a good thing. If you

had scored red, we wouldn’t

ever be able to hire you.

Of course, if you score

green, we hire you right

away.

POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE

You can’t do that.

HANK

Yes, I can.

POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE

You’re making a huge

mistake.

HANK

This test is backed by a

team of board-certified

professionals.

Hank stares for a moment. She hangs up the phone. He hangs up the phone. The irony of this would be that Hank would soon be on the receiving end of this sort of behavior in the future, a result marked by such incongruity that the situation yet to develop would only be understood by those who observed it in hindsight. He holds the papers for work restriction in his hand. He puts them away in the file. He looks outside the window at the construction workers several buildings away.

It feels to him like something is missing. Hank is uncertain. Days later, in a different region near one of the rural areas of his state would affect the direction of his career and his whole life.

EXT. RURAL NY AREA - DAY

The rain comes and then subsides that day. Heavy traffic develops through the rural area that would be the site of what had become the blocked-off area of an open investigation. People drive past the blockade and continue traveling toward the rural area of the county. A local cable station’s news network van is on a part of the road that was blocked off, where a man stands with one hand across his abdomen and the