Watch Them Die

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 suitcases 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.