“It’s in my purse.”
Josh began digging through her bag. He removed Sarah’s cell phone and the detective’s card.
“I’m going to program it into your phone. She’s number eleven on your speed dial. If anything happens just hit eleven. What about your gun?”
Sarah reached beneath her pillow and felt for the pistol.
“Got it right here.”
“Okay. Just stay awake with that gun where you can get to it and I’ll be home soon.”
“I can’t believe I slept that long. I didn’t even get to go for a run. Do you think we should check the camera?”
“We weren’t asleep very long. I seriously doubt anyone broke in here in broad daylight. The sun had just set when I woke up an hour ago.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll check it in the morning when we both wake up.”
Josh kissed her on the cheek and walked out the door.
“Josh, wait!”
Josh walked back into the bedroom.
“Do you think you can install that security bar before you leave?”
Josh took a quick peek at his watch and Sarah knew that he was calculating how long it would take him to drill the four holes it would take to install the bar and screw it into the metal door frame versus the time it would take him to get to work.
“Sure. I’ll take care of it.”
Sarah rose up on her tiptoes and kissed Josh on the cheek. She followed him as he walked into the garage to get the screw gun, a level, and a hacksaw, and then back to the rear slider door. It didn’t take Josh long to get the bar cut down to the right size and installed. Sarah felt a pang of guilt as she watched him work. They hadn’t had sex in days. He hadn’t mentioned it but she knew it must have been bothering him. Just a week ago she would have been begging him for a quickie before work rather than pestering him to install a lock on their door so no one could break in and rape and murder her. She couldn’t wait until they finally caught that fucker. Sarah couldn’t wait to get her life back.
She walked over to the cupboard and took down a tin of Colombian coffee. She pulled down the coffee filters and prepared a fresh pot. It was going to be a long night with Josh gone. There was no way she was going to allow herself to fall asleep without him.
“Okay, it’s all done. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Josh kissed her and headed swiftly for the door. Sarah knew that he was trying to leave before she asked him to do anything else or tried to get him to stay. As badly as she wanted to yell for him not to leave, she remained silent as he walked out the door. She peeked through the blinds and watched as Josh pulled the Saturn out of the garage. As he drove off down the block, Sarah turned her gaze toward the neighbor’s house. The blinds in the front room facing the street were swaying again. Someone had been there just moments ago, watching her, watching Josh leave, she was sure of it.
“That son of a bitch!”
Sarah ran upstairs and retrieved her gun from beneath the pillow. She checked the chamber and the clip as she ran back down the stairs. She ejected the clip into the palm of her hand and froze. It was empty. Sarah was positive that she had loaded it.
“Oh shit.”
She looked back down the stairs and then turned and looked back up the stairs at her open bedroom door. Sarah walked upstairs and back into the bedroom. She looked over at the VCR, then up at the smoke-alarm camera. Before she checked the tape she went into the closet and found the box of .40-caliber bullets and reloaded the clip. As she slid bullets into the gun, she checked the room for bullet holes. There were no holes except for the one in the door and the drywall from the week before.
Sarah’s hand trembled as she reached for the universal remote and turned on the TV. She pressed PLAY and then REWIND and watched in horror as Dale cleaned her bedroom in reverse. Sarah rewound the tape past the murder and then paused it at a scene that made her stomach lurch and heave: Dale raping Josh. She fastforwarded and rewound it several times to be sure what she was seeing.
“Oh God. Oh God.”
She rewound the tape all the way to the end and then watched the entire thing at regular speed. She saw Dale ambush them both and club her and then Josh with the hammer. She watched him pull out a roll of duct tape and bind Josh’s wrists and arms before he regained consciousness and then do the same to Sarah. Then she saw him rape her and then Josh. The next part turned her blood to ice water. She watched Dale murder them, both of them; then she watched him wrap them both loosely in plastic that he had brought with him as he went about tidying up, scrubbing the floor and the wall behind the bed, wiping blood spatter from the nightstand, and then changing the sheets and the pillowcases. Sarah hadn’t even noticed that earlier when she had reached under the pillow for the gun. He had changed the pillowcases. The Kevlar pillowcase was gone. She watched him empty all the bullets from the gun and place it under the pillow and then he arranged Sarah and Josh next to each other in bed.
Seeing her own lifeless body bleeding out onto the plastic was surreal. How was this possible? How could she possibly be watching her own murder on video? It didn’t make sense. She looked down at her chest and there was no evidence of a wound. Just one small freckle she’d had for as long as she could remember. Other than that, her skin was smooth and unblemished. She continued watching the rest of the video.
She watched him struggle to lift Josh back onto the bed without the plastic slipping and spilling more blood onto the freshly cleaned bed and floor. Then she saw him kneel over her. With the camera’s overhead angle she couldn’t see exactly what he was doing. It looked like he was kissing her. Then she saw him begin removing the plastic from around her, once again being careful not to get any blood on the new sheets. That’s when she noticed that the wound in her chest was gone and she was breathing.
“What the fuck?”
Sarah rewound the tape. Sure enough there it was. One minute she’s dead and bleeding and the next she’s breathing. She let the tape play and watched as he did the same thing to Josh before gathering up the plastic and the duct tape and his knife and the hammer and slipping out the door. A few more minutes passed and she watched as Josh got up and began getting ready for work.
“This is impossible. This is fucking impossible!”
She had her evidence, the evidence she’d been waiting for, but evidence of what? Even looking at it on tape she couldn’t believe it.
“Because it’s not fucking possible!”
Sarah rewound the tape and watched it again, once again feeling nauseated and having to fast-forward past the video of Josh’s rape.
“My poor husband.” She wondered how she could ever let him see this. It would scar him for life. Then she watched the murders again, the cleanup, and then the resurrection. Dale had somehow brought them both back to life.
Sarah collapsed onto the floor and just sat there staring at the TV, not knowing what to do or whom to call. She knew she had to call Josh but she didn’t want him to see what she had seen. She knew that it would have destroyed him. She had to call the cops. But what would they do with this? This didn’t make sense. Sarah picked up her cell phone and dialed eleven. Detective Lassiter picked up on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Detective Lassiter?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“This is Sarah Lincoln.”
“Mrs. Lincoln?”
“Yeah.”
Sarah paused not knowing what to say.
“Is everything okay?”
“No. I mean…I don’t know. I’ve got something you need to see. I got it on tape…on video.”
