Watch Them Die

by Kevin O'Brien

  He was prepared for the possibility of never returning to Seattle. He had also prepared for the possibility of the police invading his home. They would find a lot of evidence there, certainly enough to put him away for life.

  He’d fixed it so none of that evidence would ever leave his house. It wouldn’t happen right away. He had a timer set for twenty-eight minutes after motion detectors picked up activity. By that time, his house would be full of cops.

  Dead men and women, all of them.

  Too bad he wouldn’t be there to film it.

  But he had a far more important scene to realize today, here at this crummy hotel. He’d been preparing for this for some time now. The wait would soon be over.

  Richard Kidd gazed at Hannah in the window, and he smiled.

  The timer on the VCR in Richard Kidd’s living room was counting down from nine minutes.

  Upstairs, Ben discovered Richard’s large walk-in closet, which had been converted into an office with a built-in desk, state-of-the-art video equipment, a TV-VCR, and a library of homemade tapes. There must have been a hundred of them, all labeled. Ben noticed about a dozen tagged Video Store, with various dates. He also saw one called On the Yacht, from earlier in the week. He wondered if it showed Richard and Seth planting the bomb on Kenneth Woodley’s boat. Which one of them was the explosives expert?

  Ben popped the tape into the VCR and switched on the TV. He recognized Kenneth Woodley. He was with a cheap-looking blonde below the deck of that doomed yacht. They were doing lines of cocaine together. He started undressing her. Then, suddenly, he hit her—again and again. Her screams came over the soundtrack. Ben winced at each brutal blow. He saw what Hannah had endured while married to the son of a bitch.

  He couldn’t fathom how Richard Kidd just sat back and videotaped Kenneth beating the hell out of that poor woman. Then again, this was a killer, a voyeur who had kept the cameras rolling while his star strangled to death in Sue Aside.

  What was going on in the galley of that yacht bordered on rape. Ben couldn’t watch anymore. He stopped the VCR and ejected the video.

  Among the cassette boxes on the shelf, one labeled Goodbar, Raw Footage caught his eye. Ben glanced at his watch. Almost ten to twelve. He didn’t want to linger there much longer. But he needed to make certain he had enough evidence for the police. Then they could come in and turn the place upside down.

  Ben inserted the Goodbar, Raw Footage tape into the VCR. He found himself staring at a shot of the bed in the very next room. But the Peeping Tom poster was gone. His old girlfriend, Rae, and Richard Kidd wandered into the picture, then sat down on the bed. It broke Ben’s heart to see her again, looking so pretty and vulnerable.

  What she and Richard Kidd were saying to one another was garbled. Ben experimented with the volume, but with no luck. Apparently, the mike wasn’t within range. Another thing was apparent: Rae didn’t know she was being videotaped. She laughed at a joke Richard made, then kissed him.

  They fell back on the bed, and their faces were no longer in the picture. The two entwined bodies could have belonged to any horny couple. Ben impatiently hit the fast-forward button. After a moment, Richard shifted her around in the bed. He obviously knew where the camera was, and wanted Rae’s face in the frame. He climbed on top of her and started to unbutton her blouse. Then he reached for something beside the bed.

  Ben slowed the tape to normal speed, and watched as Richard recreated the Goodbar scene with a strobe light. Rae looked uncomfortable. She was saying something, but the words were indecipherable. Amid the staccato, flickering image of those two people on that bed in the next room, Ben noticed Richard pull a knife from under the mattress.

  All at once, he started stabbing Rae in the chest.

  Ben felt sick as he watched his old girlfriend struggle with this maniac. Then she stopped struggling.

  Richard climbed off the bed, leaving her to lie there, lifeless. Her dead eyes gazed at the ceiling. Bloodstains bloomed on the white bedsheets tangled around her.

  Ben could see some of the blood splattered on the headboard and wall. He realized those weren’t wine stains he’d noticed earlier. He’d been looking at Rae’s blood.

  Ben swallowed hard, then wiped the tears from his eyes. He was about to eject the tape, but accidentally hit the fast-forward button again.

  In rapid, sputtering motion, Richard switched off his strobe light. Then his friend Seth Stroud wandered into the bedroom. The two of them started to strip the bed, leaving Rae’s semi-nude corpse in the middle.

  Ben slowed the tape to normal speed again. He could see a shiny plastic lining beneath those bloody bedsheets. Seth said something that he alone thought was funny. He was laughing as they peeled the plastic sheet off the mattress. They bundled Rae and the blood-soaked linens inside the tarp-like sheet.

  Seth started moving toward the camera. “Lighten up,” he muttered as he came into range of the microphone. “I’m the one who should be in a shitty mood. I spent the better part of my night digging a fucking hole for her in that ravine near the cemetery. You owe me big-time. I’m gonna—”

  Seth switched off the camera. Ben stared at the snowy static for a moment.

  He remembered a ravine near the cemetery where Bruce and Brandon Lee were buried. Hannah had pointed it out.

  He quickly ejected the video.

  He wouldn’t let this particular cassette out of his sight until he handed it over to the police. It answered all questions as to what had happened to his friend, Rae Palmer. The content of the tape sickened him. But it ended a month-long search.

  Ben could hear the clock ticking in Richard’s bedroom. He glanced at a wastebasket near the desk, and spotted a plastic bag. He loaded the video inside. He figured he should go. He now had what he’d come a long way to find. Getting to his feet, he took one last look at the video library. He wondered about a video labeled Hannah and another, Vertigo Revisited.

  He inserted Vertigo Revisited into the VCR.

  “COULD YOU PUT DOWN THE FUCKING CAMERA FOR A MINUTE, MAN?” Seth said.

  It was startlingly loud. Ben had forgotten he’d tinkered with the sound in the Goodbar video. He grabbed the remote and lowered the volume.

  On the screen, the picture was so dark and murky, Seth could barely be seen walking up a continual flight of stairs. He seemed to be inside a tower. He was addressing the camera, apparently held by Richard Kidd.

  “You’re getting on my nerves with that thing,” Seth went on, sneering at the camera. “I mean it. Why are you taping now anyway?”

  “It’s a test shoot, dum-dum,” Richard responded, a disembodied voice behind the camera. “We have to get it right for tomorrow night when we take Hannah up here. We’ll need a higher-exposure film, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah, the lighting here sucks.” Seth sighed, forging up the staircase. “Plus we’ll have to drag her ass up here. This is gonna take a helluva lot of work tomorrow.”

  The handheld camera was a little unsteady keeping up with him. “You know the one we should have filmed dying?” Seth continued, a bit out of breath. “That bitch we threw out of the apartment-building window. Perfect light, and lots of room to move around.”

  “I told you already,” Richard replied. “I only videotaped her for surveillance. The death scenes are exclusively for my leading ladies. The others don’t matter.”

  “You and your goddamn leading ladies,” Seth groaned, shaking his head at the camera. “You hold onto those tapes of them like an old miser. I helped make them too, you know. Hell, who’s the one who went in that video store time after time wearing a wire so you could hear what was going on with your precious Hannah? If it weren’t for me and that wire, you never would’ve heard those two customers bitching at her. And those were two of our best kills. I put a lot of hours on each one of your mini-masterpieces. Least you could do is loan them out to me once in a while. I’m sentimental too, you know.”

  “I’d will them to you, Seth,” Richard said. “On
ly, we both know you’ll die first.”

  “Always cheers me up whenever you say that,” Seth muttered.

  “Anyway, the tapes will probably go up in smoke. No one else is getting them. In fact, I’ve had the place rigged in case the cops ever start gathering evidence.”

  Seth laughed. “Shit, no. You mean like in the boat? With a timer and a delay?”

  Ben wasn’t sure he’d heard him right. He stopped the tape, then backed it up again. For a moment, while the tape rewound, he could hear the clock ticking in the bedroom.

  He was about to stop the tape again. But all of a sudden, he heard someone downstairs. “She had me show her how to rig it to a door—with a little delay….”

  Ben froze for a moment. He realized the voice downstairs was someone on TV.

  He ran through the bedroom and stopped at the top of the stairs. He could see the living-room television. It had come on by itself. Mickey Rourke was talking to William Hurt.

  “Does any of this mean anything to you?” Rourke was asking.

  Ben knew the movie: Body Heat. They were talking about Kathleen Turner’s character, plotting to kill Hurt in a boathouse with a delayed explosive device.

  For a second, Ben couldn’t move.

  …the tapes will go up in smoke…

  …I already have the place rigged…

  Does any of this mean anything to you?

  Suddenly, Ben bolted back toward the bedroom closet. The video was still rewinding in the VCR. On the television screen, Richard was moving backward down the church-tower steps at an impossibly rapid pace.

  Ben ejected the tape, then swiped up a couple of the videos on the desk and stashed them in the plastic bag. He raced past the bed where Rae had been slain, grabbed one of the small cameras from the dresser top, and headed for the large picture window.

  There was no time to think about what he was doing. Ben had to get out of the house. He hurled the camera at the window, punching a hole through the center and splintering the glass. Ben covered his face and neck the best he could, then dove through the opening.

  For a second, he didn’t feel anything. He was aware of falling, and he heard the window breaking and popping. Everything else was a blur. He was working on pure adrenaline. Survival instincts.

  At that same moment, an explosion tore through the tiny house.

  The force of it shattered windows in a couple of neighboring homes. The people who saw the blast would describe the flames, and the black, billowing smoke. They said the ground shook. Sparks and debris shot hundreds of feet through the air.

  They said no one could have survived it.

  Twenty-four

  “Has Ben Podowski checked in yet?” she asked, glancing at her wristwatch. It was five-twenty.

  “No, ma’am, not yet,” the Best Western operator told her on the other end of the line. “But we’re expecting him.”

  “Do you know if he called in for his messages? He said he might.”

  “Is this Ann Sturges?” the operator asked.

  “Um, yes,” Hannah said. She looked over at Guy under the covers. He stirred a little in his sleep. He’d been napping since four-fifteen.

  “We still have you on the message board, Ms. Sturges. So he hasn’t called in yet, no. Can he still reach you at the Sleepy Bear Motel in Tacoma at 360-555-0916?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “We’ll make sure he gets the message when he checks in or calls.”

  “Thank you. Good-bye.” Hannah hung up the phone. Something had happened to Ben; otherwise he would have called her. She prayed he was all right, but Hannah had a horrible feeling her prayers were too late. She’d left the first message for him over four hours ago.

  In that time, she and Guy had had Chinese food delivered for lunch; they’d watched cartoons on the TV; Hannah had called Ben’s hotel two more times; the rain had let up; and that lone, shadowy figure hadn’t moved from the front seat of the burgundy Volvo.

  Hannah wandered to the window. She could see her reflection in the darkened glass. She knew he could see her, too. He was still out there in the parking lot. He was probably waiting for her to take a shower.

  Hannah wanted him to know she was settling in for the night, so she’d kept the curtains open. What he didn’t know was that they had a connecting room, an escape route, their own panic room—with a phone.

  She glanced down at the aluminum bar in the window groove, a security device meant to keep the window from sliding open too far. She furtively lifted the bar from between the grooves along the windowsill. Then she let it drop on the floor, near her feet.

  Hannah walked away from the window and sat down on the bed across from Guy. Peeking up at her from his pillow, he rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Hi, Mom,” he muttered.

  She felt his forehead. He didn’t seem to be running a fever at all. “Honey, remember how I said earlier that we were going to play a game?”

  He nodded. “We were gonna play after lunch, but you said no.”

  Hannah stroked his hair. “That’s right. But we’re starting the game now. It’s a very serious game, Guy. I need you to do exactly what I tell you. Do you understand?”

  The brat climbed out of bed. He was in his T-shirt and underpants. He said something to his mother, then retreated into the bathroom.

  With his camera, Richard Kidd zoomed in on Hannah Doyle as she unbuttoned her blouse. The light was better now, no reflection on the window. She was in focus. She had her shirt open, with a bra underneath. She pulled a robe out of the closet.

  Richard didn’t expect it, but he felt himself getting hard.

  He watched Hannah tie back her blond hair in a ponytail.

  The brat emerged from the bathroom and scurried back into the bed.

  Hannah said something to him; then she stepped into the bathroom. Richard put down the camera for a moment. He reached into the bag on the floor of the passenger side.

  He found the butcher’s knife he’d brought along specifically for tonight. He’d wrapped it up in a towel. The blade was eight inches long. He kept the knife hidden in the towel as he stepped out of his car. He glanced again at the window to Room 111.

  Hannah came out of the bathroom, still wearing her robe. She had a shampoo bottle in her hand.

  Richard stood by the car with the door open. He watched her say something to the brat. The kid yanked up the comforter, covering his face. She pulled it down to speak to him, but he only tugged the comforter back up again, huddling beneath it.

  Hannah turned down the lights. It was so dim in there, Richard didn’t think the place would photograph well. But he’d have good, strong light in the bathroom, and that was where it really mattered.

  He’d have to cheat a little, of course. Holding a camera and wielding the knife would be difficult. Later, he’d videotape a few shadowy shots of himself raising the knife and plunging it downward. Then he’d splice those shots into footage of the actual murder.

  He watched his leading lady saunter over to the window and close the curtains.

  He tucked the swaddled knife under his arm. After retrieving his video camera from the front seat, he shut the car door.

  He headed for Room 111, where Hannah Doyle would give her final performance.

  “Oh, Guy, you’re being so good,” Hannah whispered, quickly leading him into the connecting room. She was carrying his clothes, shoes, and jacket. She sat him on the floor, between the two beds. “Now, I want you to get dressed. Then stay down here, and be very quiet. Stay there until I say it’s okay. Understand, sweetheart?”

  Wide-eyed, he nodded.

  Hannah kissed the top of his head. She threw off her robe. She was still dressed underneath it. Buttoning up her blouse, she went to the window and peeked through the slit between the curtains. She could see Richard Kidd skulking toward Room 111. She’d been right about him and the Vertigo murder. The teacher’s assistant she’d known as Seth Stroud was indeed someone else, and he wasn’t really dead.

  Richa
rd Kidd neared the row of rooms. Hannah could see he had a video camera in his hand and a towel tucked under one arm.

  Grabbing a pillow from the bed, Hannah hurried back to the other room. She shoved the pillow under the sheets of the bed Guy had just vacated, then pulled the comforter back up. It looked like there was a small body in the bed. Hannah rolled her eyes and hoped he’d fall for it.

  She swiped the aluminum bar off the floor by the window. Breathlessly, she ran into the bathroom and turned on the shower, full blast. She closed the curtain, then darted out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

  On her way to the connecting room, Hannah paused. She noticed a shadow on the window curtains, the silhouette of someone creeping up to the door. Past the muffled roar of the shower, she could hear him rattling the doorknob and fiddling with the lock.

  Hannah ducked into the connecting room. She checked the adhesive tape over the lock. Still secure. There was no knob on the inside, so she gave the door a quick tug. It shut, but not quite all the way.

  “All right now, honey,” she whispered. “Be very quiet.”

  “’Kay, Mom,” Guy answered in a loud whisper.

  Clutching the aluminum bar in her hand, Hannah leaned close to the door. She heard some clicking. He was still working on the lock next door.

  Richard Kidd managed to unlock the motel room door with his dead friend’s skeleton key. Seth had always been the expert at breaking and entering. But Richard had picked up a few of his tricks.

  Quietly, he opened the door. He didn’t want her brat interfering. He’d planned on slitting the kid’s throat very quickly, then moving on to Mommy in the shower.

  But the kid appeared to be asleep again already. The covers were still pulled over his head from their game of peekaboo earlier. He didn’t stir.

  Richard closed the door behind him. He decided to leave the little shit alone until afterward. He liked the idea of killing Hannah with a clean knife. And he needed to catch her while she was still in the shower. Stopping to do away with the son might screw that up.