Lorraine Tisdale

Lorraine Tisdale is 29 and has spent half her life in a city and the other half on a stage. Born in the Midwest, the daughter of a dentist and a dance teacher, she came to California at twenty with a theater degree and a suitcase full of clipped ads. She does television work, local commercials and regional theater seasons, and this time she plays the ingenue of the show.

She lives in 14C, wall to wall with the lead actor, in a two-room apartment rented by the production, with an orange sofa, a noisy fan and a fridge holding only yogurt. She wakes late, rehearses aloud in the bathroom and eats lunch standing, watching the clock. At night, after the show, she removes her makeup with cold cream and counts in the dark how many times she flubbed her lines.

She is thin, with a stage actress's posture, attentive green eyes, freckles and voluminous red hair with layered bangs. She wears a cream silk blouse with a tie collar, brown bell-bottoms, platform sandals and gold hoops. She speaks fast, is theatrical even in her tone of voice, and when nervous answers with irony, which usually makes things worse.

She was the one who found her colleague's body: they had a rehearsal at 11, just the two of them, for the new scene in the second act, and he is never late. She knocked, the door was only pulled to, she went in. She remembers the aluminum tripod of the big camera, which always stood in the corner of the room and had vanished, leaving only three footprints in the carpet, and the videocassette recorder's cord yanked from the outlet. Of her colleague she says he looked tired, with dark circles, that he was going to stop his late nights and try again with his ex-wife and son, like a man tidying drawers. As for her age, she hides it, like any actress.

Lorraine knows whoever lives wall to wall is usually the first witness and the first suspect. It could be the observation of an actress accustomed to watching what others do. It could be someone who notices too much for what would be convenient. The detective will have to decide which.