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
He inserted
“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
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. “Only, 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.
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.
Ben knew the movie:
For a second, Ben couldn’t move.
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
