Watch Them Die

by Kevin O'Brien

  Hannah sat back and gazed out the window. It was strange. Guy had just heard his father’s name on the radio, but he didn’t know it. If this morning’s visit from the police had left any room for doubt, now it was official. They were looking for her. They were announcing it on the radio, for God’s sake.

  She saw a roadside sign for Amtrak at an upcoming exit. There were also signs for restaurants and motels: a Best Western, a Travelodge, and two more places.

  Hannah leaned forward again. “Could you get off at the next exit, please?” she asked.

  She decided that the Sleepy Bear Motel looked clean—and cheap enough. The sign out front showed a yawning bear wearing a nightcap and sitting in bed. “It Feels ‘Just Right!’” was the slogan above the blinking Vacancy sign. The motel was a sprawling two-story stucco with outside access to each room. Hannah noticed several fast-food places within walking distance.

  There was also a train yard nearby. She could see the tracks on the other side of the parking lot’s chain-link fence. One advantage; they could probably walk to the Amtrak station.

  The taxi driver unloaded their bags from the trunk. He even helped Hannah carry them into the lobby. The place smelled of coffee and had floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. There were also a lot of teddy bears. There was teddy bear-patterned wallpaper, a teddy bear calendar, a bookcase full of teddy bears behind the registration desk, teddy bear crochet pillows on the sofa and easy chairs, and porcelain teddy bear lamps.

  Guy was fascinated with the place. Hannah paid the driver. She noticed the same easy-listening type of music playing on a radio behind the registration desk. She wondered if the motel clerk had just heard the same news report.

  A middle-aged woman emerged from a back room on the other side of the counter. She had short brown frizzy hair and a kelly-green polyester skirt with a polka-dot blouse. She had a slightly desperate smile on her face. “Hi, there!” she chirped. “Do you need a room?”

  Hannah stepped up to the desk. “Yes, please.”

  “If you could fill out our little form, it would be wonderful.” The woman handed Hannah a pen, and put a card in front of her.

  She borrowed Ben’s alias for the registration form: Ann Sturges & son, 129 Joyce Avenue, Yakima, WA 98409. She’d improvised the address, and purposely made the phone number undecipherable.

  “I’m a little concerned about the noise from the railroad yard,” Hannah said, while filling out the form. “If you can give us a room that’s kind of quiet, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Two beds?” she asked, typing on her computer keyboard. “One for Mamma Bear and one for Baby Bear?”

  Hannah glanced up at her, a smile frozen on her face. “Um, yes. I—I’ll be paying in cash, and we’re staying two nights—maybe three.”

  “Well, it’s lovely to have you,” the woman replied.

  “Thank you,” Hannah said, handing her back the pen. She glanced out past the rain-beaded window at the parking area. She noticed an old burgundy-colored Volvo in the lot. Had it been there before? Was it the same car Ben had warned her about?

  She couldn’t tell if anyone was in the front seat. The windshield was too dark. Hannah kept staring at the car. Then she saw the wipers sweep across the windshield for a beat.

  A chill rushed through her. She grabbed Guy’s hand and pulled him closer. She turned her back on the car. The desk clerk was saying something, but Hannah didn’t really hear her. She remembered one of Rae’s e-mails. In it, she’d said her stalker drove a “wine-colored” Volvo.

  Hannah didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t grab a taxi and go to some other motel. He’d simply follow her. She couldn’t call the police, either. She thought of Ben. But he probably hadn’t even checked into his hotel yet.

  She stole a glance over her shoulder at the old Volvo again. He wouldn’t be just watching her tonight. His Psycho scenario was all set: the roadside motel, the rain, a woman fugitive, a cleansing shower. He’d have to use force to get her in the shower. Hannah imagined being stripped and dragged into a tub. What would he do to Guy?

  “Ma’am?” the desk clerk said. She was holding out a room key. “I have you and the little one in Room 220. It’s very quiet.”

  “Do you have two rooms that are adjoining?” Hannah asked.

  The woman frowned at her. “Well, yes, on the first floor,” she said. “I can’t promise they’re as quiet as—”

  “That’s fine, thank you,” Hannah said, stealing another look over her shoulder. “I—I want two rooms, with the inside door between.”

  “Alrighty,” the woman murmured. She started typing on her computer keyboard again.

  When the desk clerk gave her the keys to Rooms 111 and 112, Hannah quickly stashed one in her purse. She slung the tote strap over her shoulder and pulled the other two suitcases on their wheels. Guy insisted on helping. With one hand beside hers on the strap, he grunted and huffed and puffed.

  As they moved across the shiny wet parking lot, Hannah spied the burgundy Volvo out of the corner of her eye. She could see someone in the front seat now. He sat behind the steering wheel. But his face was in the shadows.

  They reached Room 112, and stepped inside. Hannah switched on the lights, then closed the door behind them. Guy caught his breath, then fell down on the brown shag-carpeted floor as if passing out.

  “Honey, that floor’s probably filthy,” Hannah said, gazing at the room. There was a TV, and two full-size beds with comforters of a brown, gold, and beige paisley design. They matched the drapes. The headboards and other furnishings were of dark-stained wood in a Mediterranean design. Sixties chic. Framed pictures of pussy willows and birds were screwed to the wall above the beds.

  Hannah unlocked the door between the rooms, then opened it. There was a second door, which could only be opened from the other side. Neither of the doors had knobs on the inside.

  “Guy, please, get off the floor,” Hannah said. “C’mon. We have to take another trip back to the lobby.”

  Hannah and Guy reemerged from the hotel room. She switched off the lights and shut the door. They started back to the lobby, lugging the suitcases again.

  “Why couldn’t we stay?” Guy asked.

  “That room isn’t very clean,” Hannah announced loudly. She was shaking her head. “We need to switch to another room.”

  When they returned to the lobby with all their luggage, the desk clerk gazed at Hannah with concern. “Is there something wrong, ma’am?”

  Hannah shook her head again, and set her room key on the counter. “No, not at all,” she said. “I just wanted to know if you can recommend a nearby restaurant.”

  “Oh,” the woman smiled. “Well, from the way you came in here, I got the impression there might be something wrong with the room.”

  That was the exact impression Hannah wanted to create—for Richard Kidd.

  “No, the room’s fine,” Hannah said. “It’s terrific.”

  “But Mom, you said—”

  Hannah shot Guy a look that shut him up.

  The desk clerk praised the fare at the Yankee Diner down the block. Hannah thanked her, and made a show of taking the room key from the countertop. Then she grabbed her bags again.

  “Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking,” the woman said. “Why did you—um, bring your luggage back here with you?”

  Hannah waved the room key at her. “Oh, no reason. Thanks again.”

  She ignored the woman’s baffled look, then stashed the key in her purse. She eyed the man in the burgundy car again. He seemed to be watching her every move.

  With a semblance of help from Guy, Hannah hauled the suitcases to Room 111, right beside the room she’d just “rejected.” She pulled the key out of her purse, and unlocked the door.

  Once inside, she switched on the lights, then closed the door behind her. Guy ran to the bed and began bouncing on it. The room was identical to 112—right down to the paisley brown bedspread and curtains.

  Hannah hoisted one of the suitc
ases up on the bed and opened it. She found the first-aid kit she’d packed. She pulled out a roll of white adhesive tape.

  She went to the door to the neighboring unit, unlocked and opened it. The room next door was dark, just as she’d left it.

  “Cool!” Guy said. “A secret passage!” He started to run into the other room, but Hannah stopped him.

  “Guy, honey, you can’t go in there,” she said. “Not until I say so, okay? I’m playing a game with someone, and I don’t want him to know we have a connecting room. We may have to hide in here—but not until I say so. All right? Do you understand?”

  With a sigh of resignation, he nodded.

  Hannah taped up the lock catch to the door.

  “What game are we playing?” Guy asked. “Hide-and-seek?”

  “Sort of,” Hannah replied, flattening out the tape.

  “Who are we playing with?”

  “You don’t know him, honey,” she said nervously. “I hope you never do. Listen, I want you to lie down for a while. You need to take it easy. I’ll get you a glass of water in a minute.”

  She ducked into the dark room next door. Through a crack in the closed curtains, she saw the figure alone in the car, still parked in the lot. The rain had started up again.

  Without moving the curtain, she made sure the window was locked. There was an aluminum bar that kept the window from sliding open. It reminded her of the broom handle she’d sawed down for the front window in their Seattle apartment.

  “Mom?” Guy cried from the next room.

  “I’ll be right there, honey,” Hannah called softly to him.

  “When do we start playing the game?” she heard him ask.

  “Very soon,” Hannah replied.

  She dead-bolted the outside door, then started back to her son in the connecting room.

  Richard Kidd must have been in a sentimental mood last night—or early this morning. On the floor near his unmade bed was a scrapbook with a sleek steel cover. Some drug paraphernalia and a glass that smelled of scotch were on the nightstand. The room had all black-lacquer furniture, with a silver-gray bedspread. Above the headboard was a huge, framed poster from the movie Peeping Tom.

  Sitting on the bed, Ben opened the album. He glanced at photos of Richard Kidd as a little boy, with bangs and Coke-bottle glasses. In one snapshot, he posed with his Polaroid camera. A laser-printed caption beneath the photo read: “The beginning of a great career.”

  There were several Polaroids of a German shepherd, captioned: “Misty—1988.” Ben turned the page, and cringed at three photos of the same dog, lying on the ground with its head chopped off.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  Ben forced himself to go on. He grimaced at a series of grisly photos showing the bloody, butchered corpses of teenage boys. It took Ben a moment to realize that many of the victims were the same boy. He looked like Seth Stroud, and he was smiling in a couple of shots. They were faked death scenes. Some of the corpses were even played by the young Richard Kidd.

  Richard’s habit of stalking women must have developed in high school. He’d taken several shots of a pretty young blonde apparently unaware of someone photographing her. The style of these candids was consistent with his later photos of Angela Bramford, Rae, and Hannah.

  Richard had saved the same Missoula newspaper article about his short film premiering as an added feature at a chain of local theaters. There were snapshots of him at the opening, along with an old ticket stub.

  Ben paged through pictures of Richard at Berkeley. He’d collected letters from movie companies and amateur film contests, all rejections. Seth got in the last word with his captions beside these letters, everything from “They Can’t See Genius” to “I Will Persevere.”

  While Ben browsed through the album, he listened to make sure no one was outside. The clock ticking on Richard Kidd’s nightstand seemed especially loud, like a metronome.

  He noticed—for the first time—above the bed’s headboard and below the Peeping Tom poster, there were a few speckles. At first, Ben thought they were shadows of raindrops on the big picture window across the room. But Ben leaned closer. It looked like traces of red wine had splashed on the white wall. Someone must have tried to wipe off the stains, but the little dark red spots had sunk in; a permanent remembrance of some wild night.

  Wild indeed. On the dresser across from the bed, Ben noticed several cameras. He wondered if Richard Kidd had taken pictures in here for another kind of scrapbook.

  Ben went back to the album on his lap. He glanced at a letter from the West Coast Film Institute, informing Richard Kidd that his thirty-minute short, Sue Aside, had won first prize in their student film contest. Richard’s caption read: “A Genius Is Discovered.”

  “You don’t mind yourself at all, do you, Dickie,” Ben muttered.

  There were articles about Sue Aside, scheduled to show at a number of film festivals. Richard had saved preliminary reviews, praising the short movie as kinky, disturbing, and a masterpiece in black comedy.

  From what Ben read, the movie was about a young woman who, after several comic, failed attempts at suicide, finally gets it right by hanging herself from a cord of blinking Christmas lights. Some stills from the movie had made their way into the scrapbook. The film’s star was an attractive, edgy-looking, dark-eyed brunette.

  Richard had kept solicitous letters from film companies, agents, and independent producers. Apparently, he was very hot stuff.

  Ben wondered why Richard wasn’t now a famous film director. What had happened to the young movie maverick? The answer came a few pages later, in a Los Angeles Times news clipping with the headline:

  FILM SHORT, SUE ASIDE, PULLED FROM RELEASE

  Amateur Director Filmed Actress’s Death on Movie Set

  Heather Stuart, the twenty-two-year-old star of Richard Kidd’s breakthrough masterpiece, had, in fact, slowly strangled to death on those cords of blinking Christmas lights. Her panic and struggle, recorded on film, were real. Her strange facial contortions, which brought titters from some viewers, weren’t an act.

  Richard Kidd gave conflicting accounts of the incident. In one article, he said Heather must have hung herself for real after they’d finished the film that night. In another version, he claimed Heather had wanted to commit suicide, and asked him to film it.

  The West Coast Film Institute denounced Sue Aside, and revoked Richard Kidd’s award. And in a printed response to one editorial suggesting he be charged with manslaughter, Richard Kidd said he should be entitled to artistic immunity.

  Another editorial predicted Hollywood agents and production companies would be falling all over themselves to snare the notorious Richard Kidd for their projects. But still another editorial maintained that selling popcorn in a movie theater would be the closest Richard Kidd would ever come to working again in the film industry.

  Ben couldn’t find any evidence in the scrapbook indicating an investigation or trial. But the next few pages held letters of rejection from agents, film companies, and studios. Richard Kidd captioned these with phrases like “Believe in yourself” and “You Have a Vision; They are Blind.”

  Richard’s address on the letters changed from San Francisco to Seattle. But his luck remained the same. Numerous rejections to applications for film contests, grants, and college teaching-assistant programs seemed to attest to Richard Kidd’s undesirability.

  But there was a letter to a Seth Stroud on Aloha Street, dated January 27, 2001, complimenting him on the experimental videos he’d sent, Sticks and Bones and Dead Center. The gentleman writing back to Seth Stroud was interested in meeting him. He planned on making his own independent film, and wanted Seth’s participation. The note was signed by Paul Gulletti.

  Under the letter, Richard had the caption “A New Beginning.”

  Ben sighed. Ironically, that was the last page of Richard Kidd’s scrapbook. It was also the last of Richard Kidd, film-maker. He’d borrowed his friend’s name in order to work in the movie
s. Too bad he’d hung his hopes on Paul Gulletti, whose big talk about making an independent film would probably never amount to anything.

  But Richard certainly got his revenge on Paul; torturing his mentor by stealing his women, then letting him know when and how he was going to kill them.

  Ben figured there had to be another scrapbook somewhere, one with Angela Bramford, Rae, and all the others. Hannah too, of course. Perhaps the second volume was in Seth Stroud’s garage apartment, now tagged as police evidence against suicide victim Seth Stroud.

  Ben glanced at the ticking clock on the nightstand: almost a quarter to twelve. He wondered where Hannah and Guy were right now.

  Downstairs, on the VCR in Seth’s living room, the digital counter switched from eleven to ten minutes.

  Through the rain-beaded windshield and across the parking lot, Richard Kidd watched her open the curtains. He reached for his video camera.

  But Hannah wouldn’t quite come into focus. The light wasn’t strong enough in the hotel room, and he kept getting a reflection of the parking lot in her window. There wasn’t much to photograph anyway. She was unpacking a few things while the kid sat up in bed, watching TV.

  He wasn’t sure how far Hannah intended to run. But this hotel was as far as she would ever get.

  Like his prey, Richard had also packed this morning. In addition to clothes, he’d brought along some essentials: spare cameras and film, skeleton keys from Seth’s job, and a gun, among other things.

  He knew the police might be looking for him soon. His friend, Seth, was a loose end with dozens of loose ends connected to him. He’d had to go. But even after planting all that evidence in Seth’s apartment and removing everything of his own, Richard figured in his haste something might have gotten past him.