Watch Them Die

Tish had left the sign on Emerald City Video’s door. The lights were switched off inside, and the door was locked.

Hannah had brought her key. She paid the cab driver and asked him to wait. Guy jumped out of the taxi and ran to hug Ben.

Hannah pulled out her key and unlocked the door. “C’mon, hurry up, guys,” she urged, stepping inside. “I need to turn off the alarm.”

She locked the door behind them, then made a beeline for the break room, and punched in the alarm deactivating code.

With the cold, gloomy, overcast morning, not much light came through the store window. Hannah switched on one set of lights in the store—over the children’s section. She planted Guy in front of the shelf of kids’ videos. “Okay, you know the drill, honey,” she told him. “Look all you want, but don’t make a mess.” She pointed to the break room. “Ben and I will be right over there. Okay?”

“Can we watch Monsters, Inc., Mom?” he asked.

“Only for the fifteenth time? I don’t think so, Guy. Not tonight.” She felt his forehead, then mussed his hair and hurried to the break room.

Tish had left the computer on. Sitting at the desk, Hannah began to type. She pulled up the customer file. Ben looked over her shoulder.

She typed in Kidd, Richard. What came up was the closest name to it: Kidman, Andrew.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered. “He’s not in here.”

“Back it up,” Ben suggested. “See if there’s another person with the last name Kidd.”

Hannah scrolled back to the previous customer: Kidd, Matthew…Kidd, Lawrence…Kidd, Laura… Kidd, Eustace (Richard).

“That’s him,” Hannah said. The birth date listed made Eustace Richard Kidd twenty-five. Hannah clicked on the Related Customer icon to see if he had anyone else on his account: Stroud, Seth.

“Bingo,” Ben muttered, grabbing a piece of paper and pen from the desktop. “What’s the address listed?”

“1313 East Republican Street,” Hannah read from the screen. “It’s not far from Seth’s place.”

Hannah clicked into his rental history file. “It’s all here,” she said. “Angela’s the first victim we know of, right? Seth said she was Paul’s summer fling last year. She was killed in late August; strangled under the bells at the Convention Center, like Marilyn Monroe in Niagara. Look at the rental dates. He checked it out twice.”

Hannah pointed to the listing:

NIAGARA-V0901-Rented: 8/8/01 Rtrn: 8/11/01NIAGARA-V0901-Rented: 8/20/01 Rtrn: 8/22/01

“Guy, are you okay out there?” Hannah called, while scrolling down the alphabet.

“Can we watch Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin?” he yelled back.

“It’s It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” Hannah corrected him. “Not tonight, honey.” On the screen, she pointed to another rental listing:

ON THE WATERFRONT-V1122-Rented: 7/14/02Rtrn: 7/16/02

“That’s a week or two before Rae’s boyfriend fell off the roof,” Ben said. “Like Eva Marie Saint’s brother in On the Waterfront.”

“They were boning up on how to do it like the movie,” Hannah remarked. She scrolled to the S’s:

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN-V0205-Rented: 6/7/02Rtrn: 6/9/02STRANGERS ON A TRAIN-V0205- Rented: 6/11/02Rtrn: 6/13/02

“That’s before they killed the woman in Rae’s office. Lily, the one who was strangled on that island near the Arboretum.”

“The Floating Flower,” Ben murmured. “What about Looking for Mr. Goodbar?”

Shaking her head, Hannah scrolled back to the L’s. “I don’t think so, no. It’s not here. I must have already been targeted as Rae’s successor by then. They probably didn’t want to take any chances renting it here.”

“You keep saying they. You mean Richard and Seth?”

She nodded. “Didn’t we pretty much establish that two people have been behind all these killings? You said one was driving and another was shooting at you the other evening. Right?”

Ben scratched his head. “So—the theory is, for one reason or another, Richard turned on Seth and killed him last night. Or are you saying maybe Seth really isn’t dead?”

Hannah cleared the computer screen. “No, I think Seth is dead, all right. The real Seth Stroud. We only met him once.”

Hannah turned around in the chair to face him. “It’s why Seth’s fall from the bell tower copied Vertigo. I started to tell you on the phone. Kim Novak’s character was pretending to be Madeleine during the first half of the movie. Jimmy Stewart was led to believe she’d killed herself by jumping from the church tower. But it wasn’t a suicide. It was the real Madeleine’s murder.”

He nodded. “I remember. But what does it have to do with—”

“The Vertigo clip we saw was a fake suicide,” Hannah interrupted. “The woman Kim Novak pretended to be was murdered. Last night, the real Seth Stroud was murdered. The person we’ve known as Seth was just pretending to be him.”

“What makes you so sure?” Ben asked.

“The film clip. He’s never misled me before.”

“So—you’re saying the person who has been calling himself Seth Stroud is really—”

“Richard Kidd,” she said, handing him the scrap of paper with Richard Kidd’s address written on it. “He was friends with Seth Stroud. We know that. Remember when you and I went to the garage apartment, looking for Seth?”

“Sure, yeah. Of course,”

“When that young man answered the door, at first glance, I thought he was Seth, because they looked so much alike. Remember before he said anything, we asked if Seth Stroud lived there?”

Ben nodded.

“His response was something like ‘What do you want to see him about?’”

“And we told him we were in Seth’s film class,” Ben finished for her. “Then he said he was Seth’s roommate, Richard Kidd.” Ben gave her a wary, sidelong glance. “You think he was lying?”

“Yeah.” Hannah got to her feet. “I think he was Seth Stroud. He was the one killed