Watch Them Die

she thought about going to Joe’s apartment building and asking if anyone had spotted a maroon Volvo parked nearby on the night Joe fell from the roof? Maybe they could recall part of a license-plate number.

He said he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. No one would harass or threaten her as long as he was around.

This was Rae’s third night in a row at his place. She wasn’t in love with him; she even told him so. Still, he made her feel safe, and that was good enough right now.

He opened her blouse, then kissed her breasts. Smiling, Rae ran her fingers through his hair. With his tongue, he drew a warm wet line up to the base of her neck. Rae shuddered gratefully. Maybe he wasn’t so clumsy after all.

Still, he was squashing her.

“Babe, could you move for just a sec?” she finally piped up. “Honey?”

With a grunt, he shifted to one side, but he just felt heavier. Pinned beneath him, Rae was sinking into the mattress. “Sweetie?” she said, hardly able to talk. He was crushing the breath out of her.

He reached toward the nightstand and flicked a switch on a cord. A strobe light sputtered on, like a series of camera flashes. It was too bright, almost blinding.

He reached for something else, something hidden between the mattress and box spring, but Rae couldn’t see it. His every movement seemed fractured by the strobe light. Rae thought he might have grabbed a condom. Whatever it was, he quickly slipped it into his back pocket.

He still had on his jeans. As he ground his pelvis against hers, she felt his erection through the layers of clothes.

Rae squirmed beneath him. “Wait,” she protested. “I’m not comfortable—”

“It’s okay to scream if you want,” he whispered. “That’s why I closed the windows.”

“I don’t want to scream,” she said, with a weak laugh. “Why would you say that? What are you talking about?”

In the staccato light, she saw his face contorted in a grimace as he writhed on top of her, A vein bulged in his neck.

Something’s wrong here, she thought. A panic swept through her. Rae began to shake uncontrollably. She felt trapped beneath his weight.

“Please,” she said, trying to push him away. “I just need you to climb off me for a second. Really…”

He kissed the side of her neck. He didn’t seem to be listening. He kept slamming his pelvis against hers. It hurt.

“Please, stop,” she cried, struggling now. “I—I just need to…to change positions. You’re crushing me….”

“Can’t move,” he muttered, his breath swirling in her ear. “You’ll ruin it.”

“Ruin it? What do you mean?”

He reached into his back pocket. His movements seemed jerky in the flickering light. Rae saw something shiny in his hand.

It looked like a knife.

Oh, dear God, no, this isn’t happening. Desperately, Rae fought to get out from under him. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t even breathe. Hard as she tried, Rae couldn’t budge an inch.

But then he shifted around, and all at once, his knees were pinning down her arms.

In the fractured light, she saw him drawing back the knife. Sweat glistened on his face. His eyes looked so cold.

Suddenly Rae realized those cold eyes had been studying her for the last few months.

And she realized she was going to die.

Terrified, she struggled beneath him, but it was useless.

“Don’t move. Don’t ruin it, baby,” he whispered, raising the knife over his head. He smiled a little. “I need you in camera range.”

The death of Rae Palmer was documented by two concealed video cameras that night.

Rae’s self-appointed director and leading man had over two hours of footage shot in the bedroom that night. Only thirty-five seconds of videotape showed the actual stabbing.

The strobe light made for a murky image at times, and the abundance of blood wasn’t quite as evident on tape. He also had to tinker with the sound to raise the volume of her screams. But all in all, he was happy with the results.

He edited the raw footage down to eleven exciting, harrowing minutes. Careful not to take anything away from Rae’s final performance, he left his likeness on the cutting-room floor. He became a mere shadowy figure in the foreground, wielding the knife. Watching the final product, he didn’t recognize himself at all.

Seeing the video was exhilarating. But he should have remembered. It had happened before. Once he’d done all the work and admired the fruits of his labor, he became overwhelmed with an emptiness, a sort of postpartem depression. There was only one way to remedy that. He knew what he had to do.

He had to find a new leading lady.

One

Hannah glanced at the videocassette in the plain plastic box. There wasn’t much tape on the spools, certainly no more than a half hour’s worth of viewing. The mystery video had been sitting in the “Return Tape Limbo” drawer behind the counter at Emerald City Video for over two weeks now. In that bottom drawer they stashed defective tapes and DVDs, lost-and-found items, and cassettes dropped off at the store by mistake.

Hannah Doyle had been working at Emerald City Video for eighteen months. In her opinion, every hour at the place had taken its toll on her appearance. Hannah thought she looked pale and tired most of the time. But the customers who saw the pretty, blond clerk with the trim figure wouldn’t have agreed with her. Though she was thirty-two years old with a toddler son at home, Hannah’s youthful looks had many people assuming she was fresh out of college. A prominent scar on her chin lent some character to her lovely face. People in the store had asked, but Hannah didn’t talk about how she got the scar.

Crouched behind the counter, she stared at the mystery cassette. She was always curious about these “wrong return” videos. Customers often asked if she’d ever found any homemade sex tapes among those mistaken returns. Hannah hadn’t. After a couple of weeks, she’d always take them home and review the tapes before throwing them out or recycling them.

If the store employees wanted to see sex tapes, they had over two thousand adult titles to choose from.

Emerald City Video was a neighborhood video store, and the neighborhood was one of Seattle’s most eclectic. Street urchins who looked as if they’d wandered in to shoplift might be renting an Audrey Hepburn movie on their parents’ account. An old lady might be patiently standing in line with Upstairs, Downstairs clutched in her liver-spotted hands, while the man in front of her checked out four adult videos.

The shop was ideally located across the street from a mini-mall that housed an Old Navy, Starbucks, and a dozen smaller stores. Emerald City Video’s storefront was all windows, allowing Hannah and her coworkers a good look at the bustling street scene. People-watching helped pass the time when business was slow. The employees didn’t have to wear uniforms either, and for that, Hannah was grateful.