The Video Store

by S J Sargent

  It was one of her coworkers.

  Amy’s killer, and Christine’s killer, and Sofia’s killer was not Jonathan. It was one of the guys sitting in the room right next to her. And she was trapped with him in a secluded house in the middle of nowhere.

  43

  Amy’s Final Email

  Wednesday, December 17 – 2:51 P.M.

  Amy rested both of her hands on her stomach and said a short prayer. Though she wasn’t religious, the burden of this new pregnancy was causing her to feel a deep responsibility. Responsibility that extended beyond her own life. A drive to survive for the sake of her baby.

  Did her abductor even know that they’d actually taken two people and not just one? Did they even know that they were threatening the life of a teenager and of a life that might not ever see light? These were the thoughts that haunted her mind as she sat in solitude over the past five days.

  Amy had no way of knowing what time it was, or even the day. All she knew was the four walls in this little basement room. Well, she assumed it was a basement. All she really knew is that it had no windows or outside noise.

  The room had clearly been treated and prepared for this. It made no sense and served no logical function outside of housing a victim. Metal enforced walls with a weak layer of carpet on top for sound proofing. The door had no knob. Just the outline of where one used to be.

  Amy had tampered with everything. She’d peeled back layers of carpet on the wall, only to find a thick layer of steel. She’d checked for weak points on the door. Tried the roof. No progress. She stayed in one corner the whole time, mainly to distance herself from the opposite corner that she had been forced to use as her restroom. The pregnancy didn’t make any of it easier.

  Amy’s only form of interaction was for a few minutes a day. Usually in the morning, the door would open long enough for a tray to be slid inside. Then at night, usually when she was sleeping, it came again with a bottled water. That was it.

  The first time the door opened, she recognized him. He didn’t bother wearing a mask, which frightened her even more. Amy wasn’t sure where she’d seen him before, but she recognized his face. He didn’t say a word. He never did. Just let his gun do the talking, always aimed right at her womb, which made her wonder if he knew about the baby.

  He didn’t.

  To make the time pass, Amy talked to herself so that her thoughts wouldn’t drive her crazy. She recited lines from movies she knew, trying to reenact as much of them as she could. Anything to pass the time. The Matrix was fresh on her mind, having seen it just hours before she was taken from her car. One of the lines kept playing over in her head.

  “You ever have that feeling where you’re not sure if you’re awake or still dreaming?”

  She didn’t even like the movie, but the line created a mental escape that she kept going back to. Maybe this was a dream. Maybe it was a nightmare that she would eventually wake up from. With no differential between night and day, between Saturday and Wednesday, she couldn’t tell anymore.

  She had been snatched out of her car in the middle of the day. Right in the middle of Pecos. It was so quick and unassuming, that no one around would have even noticed. It was just another Saturday and just another parking lot. With the heavy snow, most people were looking down to guard their face from the heavy winds. That’s how he had been able to pull it off so easily. Kidnappings were the last thing a person expected to see in Pecos.

  So performing one in plain sight was the perfect ploy. It was much easier than he had even planned. In fact, that had been the easiest part of the whole operation.

  It wasn’t until Monday that Amy realized who he was. She didn’t know his name, but she’d seen him stand right next to Molly while she was renting a movie. Working right next to her, smiling and checking out customers. All the while, hiding a secret life and a twisted mind.

  Molly didn’t appear close friends with him or anything, but she would definitely have recognized him.

  Did she get the email?

  Amy asked herself that every single hour. It was all she could hold on to for hope. Before she’d been taken into that room, she had been kept in what looked like an old cellar. It was chilly and damp. There was dripping coming from somewhere on the other side of the walls. In that house she could hear more than in this room. Footsteps approaching the door. The TV on upstairs. The front door opening and closing.

  At some point, though, she was moved to another room. There was no dialogue. Just the awkward sounds of grunting as her arms were profusely duct taped to her sides and she was pushed forward. She tried clawing and biting, but with no sense of direction it was meaningless. Eventually, there was a hard thud as she was thrown inside a car trunk. The door closed and the car started moving moments later.

  Amy knew that as long as the car was moving, she had time to escape. Frantically flexing and gasping for bursts of strength, one of her arms came free. It shot around the trunk like a snake, feeling for anything sharp to cut her loose. Instead, her hand hit a gym bag full of supplies. Her hand made its way through the bag in search of any tool to get her free. And that’s when she felt it.

  A flip phone. Buried at the bottom of the bag under some clothes. Or at least, it felt like clothes. She didn’t even bother to ask why there was an old phone in the trunk with her. Maybe it was so they wouldn’t be tracked as they drove away from town? She didn’t take time to question or consider the possibilities, or even why it was sitting at the bottom of the bag next to her.

  She just flipped it open and pressed some buttons until it turned on. The phone’s jingle played and Amy cried to herself.

  “Thank you, Lord.”

  Amy couldn’t see it, but it was old enough to still have actual keys for numbers. Just like the one she had in middle school. She tried 9-1-1. No signal. She tried calling her parents. Nothing. As she pressed numbers hoping for some freak combination to make a call, the phone just shouted back random digital sounds to her.

  That’s when it triggered Amy’s memory. This was the exact same phone she used to have. The shape of it. The sounds. The buttons. It was verbatim the same model she had been given by her parents as her first cell phone in eighth grade. Though it had been years since using it, her muscle memory kicked back in.

  The phone had no service. The rejection noises made that obvious to her. So she hit the side button, which opened the email app – a cutting edge feature for this phone when it was released. She typed in the only friend’s email she could think of.

  Molly.

  And she started typing away a message, praying it would send and that Molly would be able to discern the T9 messaging format. They had made jokes in the past about the old long-form texts they had to send to friends when they were younger. Just one of the many inside jokes that’d had together in their chats over coffee.

  But this one wasn’t a joke. This was a plea. A cry for help. A clue to help Molly know what was happening to her.

  Amy cried as she pressed ‘SEND’ over and over and over, only to be met with the rejection noise. She grunted. Out of breath. Beads of sweat coming off her brow. Defeated. She could hear the car starting to slow down as gravel was crushed under the tires beneath her. The car rocked forward as it came to a complete stop.

  Then she heard it.

  It was the same sound that every 8th grader longed to hear from their limited-data flip phone.

  ‘Wifi signal detected’

  Wherever she had just been taken had internet and it reached to her trunk. She pressed ‘SEND’ again just once more. But this time, it gave the ‘whoosh’ sound. She held her breath. Did it go through?

  Moments later, the trunk opened and she was met with a slap. A needle entered her arm and she passed out immediately. When she woke up, she was in the new room.

  Staring up at the ceiling, Amy sat there and wondered if the email had gone through. Or if it even made a difference. She screamed as she speculated why someone would do this to her, and why they would
keep her alive.

  Who would do something like this to an innocent, teenage girl just months away from graduating and starting a new life?

  The most tragic part was the accidental death that no one would ever know about. The death that didn’t make the news because it died before it could get to the second trimester. The death of Amy’s child, whose life was only known by its parents and Molly.

  44

  In The Woods

  Tuesday, December 21 – 6:15 P.M.

  “Detective Bolin. I need to talk to you,” Molly whispered over the phone, even though she was crouched down in the woods and fifty feet from the house. The only thing that could hear her was the piercing wind.

  “Molly, you are not safe,” he said. No question in his voice. He’d given up on bedside manner days ago. Now he was just trying to do everything he could to get her back to Pecos as soon as possible. He knew what was happening, but he didn’t understand why Molly didn’t. “Where are you right now?”

  “I’m not sure.” Molly looked back at the house. The three guys were preoccupied watching TV and wrapping up their dinner. “I think I’m with…him.”

  “With who?”

  “…your killer.”

  Molly went deeper into the woods, out of eyesight. She was bothered by the fact that he didn’t refute her concern. She was throwing out her claims in hopes that Bolin would assure her that she was safe.

  She was still cautious to talk to him. Molly could feel him fishing for evidence over the call.

  “Alex took us to a hideaway out of town. He was just trying to keep us safe from everything.” Bolin stayed silent. “You have to understand. We needed to get out of town.”

  “Who is us? Who else is there?”

  “Me, Peter, Alex, Ken.” Molly let out a deep breath, slipping into confession mode. “Detective Bolin, the anonymous email sent to you about Amy’s final words. I sent that.” She paused so he could reply. When he didn’t, she kept talking. “I was wrong. Amy wasn’t saying that the killer was a girl. I thought that’s what she was saying, but I’m wrong. She was trying to tell me that the killer-”

  “-worked with you.” Bolin asked.

  “Yes. Wait. How did you know that?”

  “Christine. She told me right before she…before she died.” Bolin let out a sigh. “She didn’t know who it was. She couldn’t see his face, but she saw his uniform. That’s why I was trying to call you. The surveillance footage. Her account. Sofia’s death. All the evidence is lining up onto one subject…”

  Molly was afraid to ask who he was referring to here. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. “Am I safe right now?”

  There was a long period of silence. Molly peeked back up at the house to see Alex peeking out the back window. Any moment he was going to start venturing into the woods and looking for Molly. She didn’t have a good alibi for running off without talking to him. It was the first time she had.

  “No. You are not safe.” Bolin said softly. Firmly, but softly. “Now I don’t want you to panic, but are you able to leave there without making much of a commotion?”

  Molly glanced over at the two cars parked in front of the house, then back over at Alex who was now standing on the back porch. He called for her. “Molly!”

  She ducked down lower, though she wasn’t sure why. Bolin’s skepticism of Alex was rubbing off on her. And vice versa. She wasn’t sure who she could trust. “I think I can get out of here,” she whispered back at him. Molly’s eyes glanced over at Ken and Pete’s cars parked in the front.

  “You need to get to the Pecos police station as soon as possible. This is the safest place you can be right now. Again, I don’t want to cause a panic. But I need you to do two things. First off, share your phone location with me. That way, I know where you are.”

  Molly started to shake as she looked at her phone screen and sent her information to him. “Done. What else?”

  “You need to try to get out of there without causing a scene,” Bolin explained calmly. “The last thing you want is to create any suspicion.”

  “Suspicion from who?” she asked.

  “Molly.”

  She jumped up as she felt Alex’s hand on her shoulder. Spinning around, she glared at him with fierce eyes. He stepped back. Molly quickly hung up and buried her phone in her pocket. Trying to hide the tears in her eyes, she forced a smile.

  “Molly, what are you doing? Are you okay?” Alex tried to help her up, but she retracted. She shook her head.

  “I just…need some space.”

  “What is…who were you talking to just now?”

  She looked down, hoping he wouldn’t ask again. Molly scooped herself up and started walking back to the house. Alex tried to hold her hand again, but she again turned it down.

  “Molly. What’s going on? Talk to me.”

  “I was talking to Detective Bolin.”

  Alex stopped. “What? Are you crazy?”

  “No!” she yelled at him. “I’m the only one that’s not! You’re the one that dragged me up to this death trap! And then invited Ken like he’s on vacation. What did you expect me to do? We can’t just run from the cops forever. I don’t even know where we are right now.”

  “Bolin. What did you say to him?” Alex asked.

  “I told him what I found!” She held up the piece of paper with Amy’s message on it. Alex looked at it closely. Confused. “We had it wrong, Alex. You had it wrong. It doesn’t say ‘no guy’. That doesn’t even make sense. It says ‘guy from MM’.” She shoved the paper into his chest. “Movie Madness. MM. We had the clue wrong.”

  Alex took the note and started to look at it closely. “MM?” Molly nodded. “That’s the two extra sixes. How did we miss this?” Molly shrugged. Alex tried not to smile, though there was satisfaction in finding another clue. “Guy from Movie Madness. Of course. That’s why she sent you the email. Because she recognized him and knew you would know him. That means…” Alex looked over at the house and the two guys sitting in there.

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “We need to go,” he said.

  Molly added one more thing. “I shared my location with Bolin, too. So he’s on his way.” Alex stopped so abruptly, it caused a fender bender between him and Molly’s body.

  “What?” Alex raised his voice. Why did you do that?”

  “Alex, he’s trying to keep us safe. We drop my phone with him, sneak out, and they track it here. Then this thing is over.”

  “Except for one problem.” Alex took a deep breath. “That clue? Guy from Movie Madness. That makes me a prime suspect in his eyes, too. And considering I fled with you and brought you up here, he’s going to think I’m trying to run from him. So all you did was call the wolves out this way toward me. He’s coming for me too.”

  Molly, now at an utter loss, buried herself in Alex’s chest. She shook her head violently. “I’m sorry.”

  Alex put his arm around her. “We need to leave.” Molly nodded. “I’m going to sneak in and get the keys. Meet me at the car. Sneak around the side of the house.”

  “Wait. What about Peter? We can’t just leave him here with Ken. That’s a death wish.”

  Alex paused for a moment, looking at the car and the house. Then back at Molly. “At this point, Peter’s on his own.”

  45

  Last Thursday Night

  Thursday, December 16 – 6:55 P.M.

  Amy was just glad to breathe fresh air again, even if it was through a hood. It had been several days since she had been outside of that little room. Maybe more. She really had no idea. Amy wanted to scream, but the gun stayed against her head.

  “Paralyzed for life if you say a word.”

  That’s the only words she heard while he guided her on a long hike through tall, wet grass. She was too tired and weak to even think of running. Having had no more than a few hundred calories the past forty-eight hours, Amy barely had enough energy to walk. With each step, she felt like her legs were about to collapse.

&n
bsp; And finally, they did.

  She started to weep as she laid on the ground. Completely defeated. Ready for it all to be over, even if her only exit was death. That sounded better than the endless torture. Through her lament, she pleaded with her abductor to stop.

  “Please.” She had to pause to take another breath. “Let me live or let me die.” Another breath. “Either is better than this.”

  “What’s the adventure in that?”

  The first thing she’d heard him say in days. He’d mostly been quiet and shadowy, just as he’d been in the rest of his life while she sat in her prison cell and waited for her death. It made Amy cringe to think that this monster was just another unsuspecting citizen of Pecos that walked around and grocery shopped like everyone else. Every moment, people walked right by him and smiled. Having no idea what he was hiding.

  He picked her up off the ground and pushed her onward. Amy could now hear the birds chirping around her. It reminded her of those innocent weeknights in the backyard, before she needed a math tutor. Before she had the stress and anxiety of college admissions letters and future decisions. Before she was old enough to even imagine anything like this happening to her.

  The scars all over her body became more painful with each step. Her sweat soaked through her clothes and mixed in with the five-day-old mildew that was now deep in the fibers of her shirt. Ready for it all to be over, Amy decided to start pushing him to a breaking point. Anything to end this excruciating hike.

  “How long have you been at Movie Madness?”

  No response.

  “Was it a good job?”

  Nothing.

  “One of my best friends, Molly, worked there. Did you ever meet her? She’s a cute girl. My age. Red hair. Basically a genius. According to Pecos standards, at least.”