Watch Them Die

great.”

She poured each of them a glass of wine. “After all the phoning and e-mailing back and forth, now there’s this boat explosion. They’re going to think I arranged it.” Hannah sighed. “How much time do you think we have before the police are banging on that door?”

“There wasn’t much left of the boat,” Ben said, frowning. “It might take a few hours to connect the yacht to Kenneth—and then to Kirkabee. Chances are pretty good Kirkabee already gave his agency your name and address, Hannah.” He took a sip of wine. “My guess is we might be okay here tonight. But you’d be pushing your luck to stay on any longer than noon tomorrow.”

“God,” she murmured. “Everything’s closing in at the same time.” Hannah reached on top of the refrigerator, where she’d stashed the photos Paul Gulletti had given her. She set them near Ben’s plate. “I think these pictures mean he’s very close to killing me.”

Ben studied the pictures.

“Paul came by tonight and delivered those,” Hannah said. “He found them on his desk this morning—”

“You let him in while you were alone here with Guy?” Ben asked. “Hannah, you shouldn’t have taken a chance like that—”

“I don’t think it’s Paul,” she cut in. “He told me about the photos we found in his desk. Someone has been leaving those pictures for him in weird places—under his office door, in his coat pocket. It’s a pattern. First come the candid shots of the girl; then, a day or two later, the pictures from a movie murder. And after that, it happens for real—to the girl in the candids.”

“So why didn’t he call the police?” Ben asked.

“He’s married, Ben. He’s afraid. He was involved with the first two victims.”

“So you think it’s Seth?”

She frowned. “I want to read this essay he wrote for Paul. Maybe I can figure out his way of thinking. I have a hunch the other murders—those two rude customers, Ronald Craig and Britt, Kenneth and the other private detective, even the attempt on your life—I have a feeling those people were killed as part of some weird manipulative game he was playing with me.”

“I don’t understand,” Ben said, putting the ice pack on his cheek again.

“I think the explanation might be in this essay Seth wrote and Paul ripped off. It’s in a book called Darkness, Light, and Shadow. Paul said he’d try to get me a copy.”

“I don’t think you’ll have time for that, Hannah. You need to leave here tomorrow.”

Hannah started to refill his wineglass.

Ben shook his head. “No more for me, thanks,” he said. “In fact, I could use some coffee—if you don’t mind making it. I need to step out again.”

“Where are you going?”

He glanced at his wristwatch. “There’s still another hour of class. Seth won’t be home for a while. His roommate could be out, too. This might be a good time to take a look at that garage apartment of his. Maybe Seth has a copy of the book you’re talking about.”

Ben lowered the ice bag from his face. “And I’d also like to check out his collection of home videos.”

He stopped to catch his breath as he stood in front of the Tudor estate on Aloha Street. Ben started down the long driveway toward the garage. He could see his breath in the cold night air. Most of the trees surrounding the estate had lost their leaves already, and the old mansion seemed rather sinister against the indigo sky. There was a light in one of the upstairs windows, but it didn’t look like anybody was home. It was so deathly quiet, he could hear the wind whistling through those naked trees.

All at once, a dog started barking. Ben froze for a moment. He glanced over at the main house. A light went on over the front door, and Ben quickly ducked into some bushes at the side of the driveway. The dog’s incessant yelping continued.

Ben waited, and watched the front of the house. After a couple of minutes, the dog finally shut up. Ben crept out of the bushes, but then two cars—one after another—sped down Aloha Street. He almost jumped back into the shrubbery, yet his feet stayed rooted on the pavement.

Ben made his way down the driveway, hovering close to the bushes. He studied the darkened windows on the side of the house. He kept expecting to see a figure standing in one of them—or perhaps a curtain moving. But he didn’t notice anything.

In the mansion’s shadow, the garage area was dark. Ben glanced over his shoulder at the back of the house. He saw lights in three of the upstairs windows, but no sign of life.

He grabbed hold of the stairway bannister on the side of the garage. “Shit,” he muttered. Small wonder Seth didn’t break his neck going up and down the rickety stairs in the dark.

Each step squeaked as Ben made his way toward the landing at the apartment’s entry. It was too much to hope for an unlocked door, but he tried it anyway. No luck. Pulling his credit card from his wallet, he worked it around the lock area. He thought a burglar alarm might go off at any moment, but apparently Seth and his roommate felt they had nothing worth stealing.

Ben gave up and put his Visa back in his wallet. He stopped to stare at a window about three feet from the other side of the landing’s bannister. It had been left open a crack.

He moved over to the edge of the landing, then threw one leg over the railing. The bannister let out a loud creak. As Ben tried to grab at the windowsill, he felt the railing give way beneath him. He quickly pulled back and braced against the door.

Another car sped by on Aloha Street, and for a moment its headlights swept across the driveway, down toward the garage.

Shaken, Ben didn’t move. He peered back at the house again. It occurred to him that they were probably used to a certain amount of noise back here. Two single men in their twenties lived in this garage apartment. The two roommates probably came and went at all hours. How many times had they locked themselves out? Or did they have an extra key someplace?

Ben reached up for the ledge above the doorway, patting the length of it. Nothing. And there wasn’t a key under the doormat. Frowning, Ben glanced down the stairs. By the bottom step was a flowerpot with a dead plant in it.

He crept down the creaky stairs. Each squeak underfoot seemed amplified in the still night. He finally reached the bottom of the stairs. He moved aside the heavy flowerpot, and found a key.

Skulking back up the steps, Ben prayed the key would open Seth’s door.

It worked.

The apartment was warm, and a bit smelly—like a poorly vented locker room: sweat, testosterone, and dirty clothes. Closing the door behind him, Ben waited for a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

He stood in the living room. A newspaper was strewn on one end of the Salvation Army sofa, and a couple of beer cans littered the coffee table, along with copies of Premiere magazine and Entertainment Weekly.

Ben saw a stack of videos by the TV. He checked the boxes. Six videos had Emerald City Video labels on them, and two of these were porn movies. There were store-bought, slightly beat-up copies of Goodfellas and Apocalypse Now. Three unlabeled videos rounded out his collection.

Peering out the window, Ben checked the house and the driveway. He decided to take a chance, and switched on one of the living-room lamps. He had stay low now; he couldn’t afford to be seen in the window. He switched on the TV and turned the volume to mute.

Popping the first unlabeled video into the VCR, Ben wasn’t sure what he’d see; perhaps some surveillance of Hannah, or maybe Rae’s death, or even someone else’s murder.

What Ben saw was an old Seinfeld rerun. He pressed fast-forward, then stopped in several places on the tape. All he came up with were a couple of other old sitcoms and part of a Saturday Night Live.

Ben found more of the same with the other two unlabeled tapes. He spent over a half hour reviewing them. But he didn’t just watch the TV. He also checked the brick-and-board bookshelf for more videos and the book