Watch Them Die

by Kevin O'Brien

  Hannah stared at him. She had no way of knowing that it was the last time Kenneth would ever apologize for hurting her.

  Like their son, Mr. and Mrs. Woodley did a total about-face once they realized that Hannah intended to keep the baby. As long as she was providing them with a grandson, Hannah was welcomed into the family. In fact, the Woodleys didn’t let her out of their sight. They bought her and Ken a beautiful, three-bedroom ranch house, then furnished it. Mrs. Woodley introduced Hannah to the country-club set. Ken went to work for his father.

  She and Ken were miserable. One evening, she pointed out to him that it had been nearly three months since they’d made love. His response was, “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, don’t you think it might make things better between us if we at least tried?”

  Frowning, he gazed at her swollen belly. “If I wanted to fuck a cow, I’d go over to Nellinger’s Dairy and hump one of their heifers.”

  Hannah probably should have run away then. But she didn’t want to have her baby at a free clinic. She moved into the guest room. Ken found himself some diversions. He had his yacht moved up to Green Bay. He’d go sailing off without her for entire weekends. She welcomed his absence. When he was home, he sometimes took his frustrations out on her. At first, the abuse was verbal: she couldn’t cook; he’d married way beneath him; she was a pig. When she became numb to his occasional tirades, he started throwing things: a plate of pasta that ended up on the dining-room wall; a clock radio, which just missed her head. Once, he hurled a cup of hot coffee at her. Hannah managed to avoid direct contact with the mug, but it smashed on the floor at her feet and scalded her legs. She had to drive herself to the hospital, where they treated the burns.

  She was back there two weeks later to give birth to their son. The Woodleys were unbearably meddlesome over the baby, even picking out his name: Kenneth Muir Woodley III. Hannah called him Guy-Guy, or just Guy. She used to like the name Ken, but didn’t anymore.

  She discovered that Ken had actually been exercising some restraint during those tirades before Guy was born. Now that she was no longer pregnant, Ken didn’t have to be so careful with her. He didn’t have to hold back. His outbursts were just infrequent enough that she couldn’t predict them. Kenneth took it out on her if the baby was crying too much, or if the house was messy or smelled of baby poop. Such offenses were grounds for a black eye or a swollen lip. Want another? he’d ask, after the first blow. That question always seemed to precede a beating. Hannah only made things worse for herself by fighting back, but she fought back anyway.

  She begged him: “For God’s sake, Ken, don’t you think this Ike and Tina routine has run its course? We’re both miserable. You were a pretty nice guy back in Chicago. You were no prince, but at least you weren’t mean. I know you feel trapped here. So do I. If we broke up, things would be easier for you. I’ll give you the best visitation rights in the world if you let Guy and me go.”

  She was trying to reason with a total cokehead. Apparently he got the stuff from someone at work. Ken must have been hooked on it back in Chicago, too. Maybe that was why he’d gone through her money so quickly.

  One of the most stupid moves of her life—right up there with first going on a date with the son of a bitch—was confiding in his mother that they should consider intervention. Of course, Mrs. Woodley fell into denial about her son’s drug problem—the same way she’d failed to notice all the bruises on her daughter-in-law. Just to make sure her boy was on the straight and narrow, Mrs. Woodley asked Ken if there was any truth to what Hannah had told her.

  Hannah ended up in the hospital that night. He’d blackened both her eyes and fractured her jaw. She took seven stitches in her chin where she’d hit the edge of a glass-top coffee table during the scuffle. She also had a broken arm. Ken told everyone that Hannah had been in a car accident. He even went so far as to total her car, so he could back up his story. Ken visited her at the hospital, pampering her with flowers, an expensive nightgown, all the comforts. A nanny was hired to look after Guy.

  During her stay in the hospital, Hannah decided that she had to leave him. She told her doctor that the car accident story was a cover-up. “Ken did this to me,” she whispered to him, her mouth nearly immobile due to the wire around her jaw. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Her doctor didn’t look surprised; merely annoyed. “I didn’t hear that,” he replied, shaking his head. “I can’t do anything about it.”

  The Woodleys were major contributors to the hospital, and Ken’s mother was chairwoman of the Cantor Ball, an annual fundraiser for the Children’s Ward. Hannah couldn’t expect anyone in that hospital to help her. All legal avenues were blocked by the family as well. No local lawyer would represent her in a divorce. And no way was the family going to let her walk away with their grandson.

  She began to hatch her escape plan while in the hospital, looking out the window of her private room. She would gaze down at the water, the bayside park with all the trees, and the happy families walking along those winding paths.

  The doctor had her on soft foods because she couldn’t chew well. She remembered eating a lot of yogurt—too much. At the time, Hannah thought she’d never want to see another container of Yoplait. She could only imagine eating solid foods—and being free of Kenneth Muir Woodley, Junior.

  Sitting on the bleachers, Hannah watched Guy play on the jungle gym. She set aside the peach yogurt and glanced at her wristwatch; only about ten minutes more before she had to hurry back to work.

  In many ways, she still wasn’t free of Ken. He still haunted her. It wasn’t intentional, but she hadn’t been with another man since him. She was afraid of getting too close to anyone, afraid of getting hurt again.

  Pam, the head of the day care center, blew a whistle. All the children started to gather together to file back into the building. Hannah smiled and waved at Guy, who jumped up and down excitedly and waved back. She watched him walk away with the other children. He was the only man in her life right now.

  Hannah suddenly shuddered. She realized Guy wasn’t the only man in her life at the moment. There was another man, imposing on her, playing some sort of strange, deadly game. And Hannah had a feeling that he was just getting started.

  Five

  He stared at the piece of wood that she’d lodged in the groove of the sliding window. It looked like the sawed-off handle to a broom or a rake. He smiled. His leading lady was very clever. She’d caught on to how he’d been breaking into her place. She’d changed the locks on him, too.

  It was kind of sweet, really—her thinking she could keep him out with that puny piece of wood and a new dead bolt.

  He stood on the walkway at her front door. He had a good view of the Space Needle from here, but the Needle’s lights were off right now. It was five-fifteen in the morning.

  He’d last been inside her apartment five nights ago. There was something very romantic about that walk in the rain when he’d dropped off the tape of Rosemary’s Baby. He’d missed her these last few days.

  He’d spent far more time than he’d intended figuring out how to break into the Broadmoore Apartments and planning his date with Cindy Finkelston. Of course, she hadn’t known about it.

  She hadn’t been expecting him at all.

  She hadn’t expected to die Sunday morning.

  Smiling again, he touched Hannah’s front door and brushed his fingertips against the doorknob. The newspaper carrier would be around soon. And in about ninety minutes, Hannah Doyle would be waking up. She would drop off her kid at the day care place, then go to the video store. On Tuesdays, she worked nine to five.

  He liked watching her at work. He had hours and hours of videotape footage of Hannah at the video store.

  She might not notice him today. She wouldn’t be expecting him. But he would be watching her every move.

  Guy’s class was taking a field trip to the Woodland Park Zoo. When Hannah dropped him off at Alphabet Soup Day Care that Tuesday morning, she pulled
the teacher aside and asked her to be extra-vigilant with Guy. “I’ve got this—stalker situation,” Hannah explained. “I don’t think he’d go after Guy, but—well, I’ll feel better knowing you’ve got your guard up, Pam.”

  Pam was a tall, athletic woman in her mid-twenties with short-trimmed blond hair. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out, Hannah,” she assured her. “Do you know what this creep-o looks like?”

  “Um, no. It’s, um, a telephone talker thing.”

  “Have you contacted the police about it yet? Maybe they can put a trace on your line.”

  Hannah nodded. “Yes, they’re doing that,” she lied.

  “Good. Can’t be too careful,” Pam said. “We have extra people for this trip. And I’ll keep close tabs on Guy. Don’t you worry about him.”

  “Thanks, Pam.”

  Hannah spent her break time that afternoon at the Broadmoore Apartments, six blocks from the store.

  She gazed up at the row of windows along the top floor of the five-story slate-colored structure. She wondered which window Cindy Finkelston had fallen from. Did her body land in the shrubs on the east side of the building, or in the parking area along the front and west sides?

  Hannah took a pad and pen from her bag as she approached the lobby doors. She studied the list of residents’ names on the keypad of buzzer codes. There were close to fifty names. Hannah recognized some of them as customers at Emerald City Video. She started scribbling down the names of Cindy Finkelston’s neighbors.

  She was down to the last few when someone snuck up behind her and cleared his throat. Hannah swiveled around. Staring back at her was a tall, gaunt man in his fifties. He had a dirty-gray mustache and very thin, long hair that he’d pulled back in a ponytail. He was nearly bald on top. He wore a denim shirt and jeans, and leaned on his broom. “Can I help you with something?” he asked.

  “Oh, hi,” Hannah replied, caught off guard.

  “Are you one of those insurance people again?”

  She nodded. “Yes, um, I’m—Rosemary Farrow with Northwest Fidelity Life. The—ah, late Cindy Finkelston had an account with us. I’m a claims adjuster, here doing a little preliminary poking around. It’s very sad what happened. Are you the building manager?”

  For a moment, he gave her a cool, sidelong stare. Hannah had to wonder if he’d bought any of it. Finally, the tall man puffed out his skinny chest a bit and nodded. “I’m Glenn, the caretaker here,” he said. “You’ll probably want to talk to me.”

  “Oh, yes. I imagine not much gets past you, huh?” Hannah said.

  “Not much at all. I knew the deceased as well as anyone else around here, which isn’t much. I don’t think too many people liked her. But I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead, so that’s all I’m saying about that.”

  “Do you know how it happened?” Hannah asked.

  He glanced up at the west corner of the building’s roof. “You know, I’m the one who heard her scream. I was working around back. I heard this shriek, and then something went thump. That was her body hitting the car. There’s a gate back there, so I had to go all the way around the other side of the building. Otherwise, I would have been the first one to get to her. But a couple of neighbors beat me to it.”

  Hannah gazed over at the parking area on the west side of the building. “She landed on a car?” Hannah asked; then she remembered her cover story. “Um, they didn’t mention that in the report,” she added.

  Glenn nodded and reached back to scratch under his gray ponytail. “A brand-new silver Mazda. She hit the edge, then rolled off. Smashed the roof and windshield. You should have seen all the blood and glass.” He shook his head. “A goddamn mess. They finally took down the police tape and towed away the car yesterday morning.”

  “What about the people next door to her?” Hannah asked. “Did they hear anything? Maybe someone was in the apartment with her.”

  Glenn shook his head again. “Neighbors didn’t hear diddly. And from what I caught the police saying, it looked like she was alone in the apartment when she went out the window.”

  “So they don’t think she was pushed out?” Hannah asked.

  He let out a little chuckle, then pointed to the roof. “Take a look up there,” he said. “Top floor, second window from the end. See it?”

  Hannah squinted up at the long, narrow window along the fifth floor. “Yes, I see it.”

  “That’s where she fell from. Now, go over one window, and you see her balcony. Check out the sliding glass door, the low railing. If I was gonna give somebody the heave-ho from up there, that balcony would have been a much better place. Why go to all the trouble of opening up that window and tossing her out when you got a whole balcony to work with? You wouldn’t even have to leave the living room. It’s a short balcony. One good shove and she’s gone.”

  “You should be a detective,” Hannah said, buttering him up. “Listen, I’m not supposed to ask this, but what do you think happened? Do you think it was an accident?”

  Scratching his chin, he gazed up toward the building’s top floor. “Like I say, if it was anything intentional—suicide or homicide—why not use the balcony and make it easier? Why the window?”

  Hannah thanked Glenn, saying that she and Northwest Fidelity Life were both grateful to him for providing his expertise. As she walked back to work, the caretaker’s remark haunted her. Why not use the balcony and make it easier? Why the window?

  Hannah suddenly knew the answer, and with that realization, a shudder passed through her. Cindy Finkelston’s death sentence had been carried out to the letter.

  The girl who died in Rosemary’s Baby didn’t plunge from any balcony. She fell from a window.

  Sixteen residents from the Broadmoore Apartments were customers at Emerald City Video. Hannah looked up the histories on all of their accounts. Two of them had rented Rosemary’s Baby: Smith, Collyer & Jeanne had checked out the movie eighteen months ago; and Webber, Rosanne had watched it back in February. Looking for Mr. Goodbar had never been rented on either account.

  It wasn’t much to go on. Hannah wondered if cross-referencing all these names was just a waste of time.

  She’d been at her register, tapping into the files for the last half hour. She’d gracefully weathered interruptions from customers. But Hannah didn’t see this one coming.

  “I have a DVD on hold,” the middle-aged man announced—without so much as an “Excuse me.”

  Hannah glanced up at him. With his silver hair and tan, he had a certain kind of cold handsomeness. A Ralph Lauren logo was embossed on his lightweight, navy blue jacket. He must have been drinking, because he smelled like a distillery. “The name’s Hall, Lester. The movie is Sorority Sluts II: Anal Adventures.”

  Nodding, Hannah kept a straight face. “All right, let me see if we have it back here for you.”

  “Well, you should,” he replied, his tone a bit ominous. He drummed his fingers on the countertop. “I called earlier, and they told me it was in.”

  Hannah turned to the back counter.

  “Hate that guy,” her coworker, Britt, murmured as she passed Hannah with a stack of videos. “He’s such an asshole.”

  All Hannah could do was nod her head, and think to herself Well, you’d know. You’re living with the poster boy of assholes. Britt’s boyfriend, Webb, was scum, a drug dealer who often beat her. Hannah liked Britt a lot, but knew she was kind of a screwup. As their coworker, Scott, once said about Britt, One minute, you want to hug her and protect her from the world, and the next you want to slap some common sense into the poor, sorry bitch.

  Twenty-nine and pencil-thin, Britt had short, maroon-dyed hair, a pale complexion, and—at last count—thirteen piercings. She also had a certain gentle, vulnerable quality that was endearing. Nearly every week, she gave Hannah some little gizmo for Guy that she’d saved from a cereal box.

  “Last week, he called me an idiot, right to my face,” Britt whispered. She snuck a wary glance over her shoulder at Lester Hall. “He phoned
earlier about a DVD porno. It’s right there.”

  It wasn’t there. Hannah checked the reservation pile. Britt must have transposed a couple of digits on the DVD’s code. An adult DVD was there for him, but it was the wrong one. Hannah looked in the drawer, and the DVD that Lester Hall wanted was checked out. “Oh, shit,” Hannah muttered.

  She put on her best contrite look and turned to him. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Hall,” she said. “They put the wrong movie back here for you. The DVD you wanted is checked out.” Hannah looked it up in her computer. “We have Sorority Sluts II in VHS format, and I can—”

  “I don’t want it on VHS,” he said firmly. “They told me the DVD was here. Why would they tell me it’s here when it isn’t?”

  Beside her, Scott looked up from his register.

  “They goofed,” Hannah explained. “The DVD back here is two numbers off. I’m sorry. If you’d like another DVD, we’ll rent it to you for free.”

  “I don’t want another DVD! I wanted Sorority Sluts II. It’s not there?”

  Hannah shook her head. “No, the movie back here is something called Debutante Whores.”

  Scott piped up. “You know, those Debutante Whores are just like Sorority Sluts, only classier.” He paused. “Because—they’re debutantes.”

  Hannah shot him a You’re-Not-Helping look.

  Lester Hall glared at Scott, then at Hannah. “I don’t understand how this happened. You said my DVD was here, and it isn’t. This is fucked. How stupid are you people?”

  “It was just human error,” Hannah said patiently. “I’m very sorry. We’ll credit your account—”

  “I don’t want a credit. I want my movie, you stupid bitch. And I’m sick of you saying you’re sorry—”

  “Hey, you know,” Scott interrupted. “Take it easy—”

  “I’m not talking to you, faggot,” Lester Hall retorted.

  People in the store were stopping to stare. Britt came up to the register. “I think I’m the one who screwed up your reservation,” she said meekly. “I’m really sorry—”