“The rape?”
“Yes.” Sarah paused again. “And more.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Sarah hung up the phone and took a deep breath; then she dialed Josh’s number. He didn’t answer. After five rings his voice mail picked up. He must have already been on the casino floor.
“Uh…Josh. You need to call me back. It happened again. And…and I got in on video, all of it. It’s terrible. That sick bastard. It’s so terrible. And there’s more. I know why we can’t remember anything. I know why I thought he murdered me. He did. He murdered both of us. This is so crazy. Call me back. No. Just come home. Come home. I can’t explain this over the phone. You have to see it. I have to show you.”
Sarah hung up and sat down with the gun in her lap. She stared out the window at the house across the street trying hard to suppress the urge to walk over there and knock on Dale’s door and blow his fucking head off. It was harder than she ever could have imagined.
When the black Crown Victoria pulled up outside, Sarah was still holding the gun. At some point she had cocked it. She was aiming it at the neighbor’s door when the insistent ringing of the doorbell finally registered through her fugue. As she uncocked the pistol, Sarah had a moment to wonder what she would have done had Dale opened his front door and stepped outside. She imagined herself pulling the trigger again and again and watching tiny explosions of red blossom in his chest, abdomen, neck, and forehead as the tiny full-metal jackets tore holes in his flesh. The doorbell rang twice more accompanied by a fist pounding on the door before Sarah ran downstairs to let the detectives in.
“You okay? I was just about to kick the door down!” Detective Lassiter said as she stepped into the house and reholstered her weapon. Detective Torres still had his own Glock nine-millimeter clutched in his hands, eyeing her suspiciously before finally opening his sports jacket and slipping the gun back into its holster.
“I’m sorry. I was…distracted.”
“So, you said you had some new evidence? A video?”
“Yes. It-it’s upstairs. Maybe you can make some sense of it. Because I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”
The two detectives followed her upstairs and into her bedroom.
“Sit down.”
Detective Lassiter took a seat on the bed across from the TV while Torres remained standing. Sarah turned on the television and then started the VCR.
“We installed a security camera this afternoon when we got home. It’s in the smoke detector.”
Sarah watched the detectives’ expressions as the tape played. She watched them wince and scowl and frown in discomfort as the rape and murder played out on-screen. Their jaws dropped and Detective Lassiter turned to look at her with a dozen questions on her face as, on the TV screen, Sarah’s and Josh’s corpses began to reanimate.
“What the hell?”
“What the fuck is this?” Detective Torres asked. “Is this some kind of CGI shit? This was all bullshit?”
“No! It’s real. I don’t understand it either.”
“Mrs. Lincoln, this isn’t going to work. If you faked some kind of murder scene to set up the neighbor we can’t go along with it,” Detective Torres said.
“I didn’t fake anything!” Sarah shouted.
“I just saw your husband get up and go to work after having his throat slit! And here
Sarah shook her head.
“How the fuck should I know? You’re the cops. I have this piece of shit on tape raping and killing me and my husband and I expect you to do something about it!”
“But you’re not dead!” Detective Torres shouted.
“But I was raped! Here’s the fucking evidence. Now do your damn job!”
“Mrs. Lincoln—”
“Sarah. I told you, call me Sarah.”
“Okay, Sarah. We can’t do anything with this tape. A defense attorney would tear us apart. And what do you think would happen if a jury saw you pop up out of the bed after being stabbed in the chest? They’d think it was all special effects or CGI.”
“Then don’t show them the whole film. Just show them the rape and the murder until we figure out how he did whatever the hell he did to us.”
Detective Torres shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Detective Lassiter began to speak and then paused. She looked up at the ceiling and then around the room, then back at Sarah.
“We could. We could try to use it to get a confession. We could use it to get a warrant for his arrest and a search warrant for his home.”
“Trina, we would be willfully tampering with evidence,” Torres said.
“Not really. I’m not saying we erase the rest. We just don’t show them the rest. We stop the tape right after the murders.”
There was a long silence while everyone in the room considered the possibilities. Detective Lassiter spoke up first.
“You swear that this tape isn’t a forgery? You didn’t fabricate this or alter it in any way? You swear this is real?”
“I wouldn’t even know how to fake something like this. I don’t know who would outside of Hollywood.”
Detective Lassiter held up her hand to silence her and Sarah stopped talking and tapped her foot impatiently. She felt like she were back in grade school being chastised by one of the Catholic school nuns.
“Fuck all of that. That’s not what I asked you. I want to hear you swear it to me. Swear that the whole thing went down just like you said it did.”
“I swear.”
Detective Lassiter took a deep breath and then ran her hand over her forehead. She looked at the floor and then up at the ceiling and then let out all the air in her lungs in one long, exhausted exhalation. Sarah was afraid the woman was going to call bullshit on the whole thing and just walk right out the door. Sarah had gotten visual proof of what she had been saying the whole time and still the story was no more believable. It still made no sense at all.
“Okay. Then we do it. I’ll go talk to the judge. Torres, you get some black-and-whites across the street and arrest that piece of shit.”
Detective Lassiter stood up from the bed and both Sarah and Torres gasped. Where the detective had been sitting, blood had soaked through the sheets leaving a perfect impression of both butt cheeks. The detective’s entire backside was wet with blood.
“What the fuck?”
“I guess we have what we need to get the CSU over here now.”
“Shit. These are my favorite pants.”
Detective Torres smiled. “And now they’re evidence.”
“Shit,” Detective Lassiter repeated.
Sarah was still staring at the bloodstain. Somehow, it was more real and terrifying than the video. Because that puddle of red made the images on the tape undeniable.
“Why don’t you try calling your husband again. Have him meet us down at the station. We’re going to need statements from both of you. I would suggest that you both try to remember as much as you can.”
Sarah’s hands trembled as she picked up the cell phone. She was still staring at that big red ass-print in the sheets. Her fingers were just about to punch in Josh’s number when the phone began to vibrate, startling her and causing her to drop the phone. It continued to vibrate as Sarah stood above it just staring at it. Finally, she reached down and picked it up on its final ring.
“Josh?”
