Watch Them Die

by Kevin O'Brien

  As he crept toward the bathroom, Richard could hear the shower water churning. He glanced back toward the beds. The kid hadn’t moved at all, just a lump under the covers.

  Clutching the knife handle, Richard shook off the small towel, and tucked the blade back under his arm. He switched on the video camera and put it up to his face. He reached for the bathroom door with his free hand.

  For a fleeting moment, he missed his friend. How much easier it might have been with one man filming, and another stabbing. But he only needed one hand to work the knife. And he’d become accustomed to operating a camera while running, driving, and conducting all sorts of activities. He was up for the challenge.

  Richard filmed the door opening. A bright light swept across the dim bedroom, and steam fogged up the lens for a moment.

  The bathroom came into focus: white tiles, beige wallpaper. The shower curtain was white plastic, not the semi-transparent kind. He couldn’t see her on the other side. But he could imagine.

  She was naked, of course. She probably had her eyes closed. She couldn’t hear him. And she certainly couldn’t hear the quiet, mechanical humming noise from his video camera.

  Gazing at that closed shower curtain, he felt a little giddy and nervous. It wasn’t just the steam that was making him sweat. Richard filmed his hand slowly reaching for the curtain.

  Suddenly, his movements became accelerated. His adrenaline was pumping. He yanked the curtain open, then quickly pulled the knife from under his other arm. Richard was looking through his camera as he raised the butcher’s knife. He wanted to capture her screams on videotape.

  But the shower was empty.

  Another heavy wave of vapor clouded his camera lens.

  “What the hell?” Richard Kidd muttered angrily. He lowered the camera and the knife, then turned toward the open door.

  He didn’t expect to see Hannah. He barely had time to realize she was there. All at once, she slammed the aluminum bar over his head.

  Richard Kidd howled in pain. The video camera fell out of his hands and broke on the tiled floor. The butcher’s knife flew into the tub. Though stunned, Richard remained on his feet. Blood oozed from the gash on his forehead.

  Hannah hit him again, knocking his glasses off. He stumbled back, almost falling into the tub. He accidentally knocked the shower head askew. The hot water doused both of them.

  “Fucking bitch!” Richard growled, enraged. He managed to regain his footing.

  The steam from the shower set off the smoke detector in the next room. The beeping noise echoed in the brightly lit white bathroom.

  Hannah tried to strike him again with the aluminum rod. But Richard Kidd reeled back and hit her across the face.

  Hannah’s feet slipped from under her. She fell back on the slick, tiled floor, bumping her head on the side of the tub.

  Catching his breath, Richard Kidd stared at her. Without his glasses, it took a moment for him to focus. She’d been knocked unconscious. The shower spray was pelting her. Hannah’s blond hair was matted down. The blood coming from her mouth looked like pink drool that the pulsating water waved away. It stained the front of her blouse.

  The knife was still in the tub.

  Richard glanced at the mirror above the sink, then wiped the fogged glass. He had two gashes on his forehead, seeping blood.

  “Goddamn you,” he muttered. He gave Hannah’s leg a fierce kick. Then he kicked his broken video camera. It slid across the wet floor. He picked up his designer glasses. Both lenses were cracked.

  The smoke alarm continued to beep at an obnoxious, high pitch.

  Grabbing a washcloth from the sink, Richard held it to his bleeding forehead. Again, he stared at the butcher’s knife in the tub.

  She’d ruined his death scene. All those weeks of planning and preparing, and she’d fucked it all up. Killing her now was too easy. She was semiconscious at best. She’d barely even feel it. That wouldn’t do. He wanted her to suffer.

  He wanted Hannah to regain consciousness. And then she would wake up to a nightmare.

  Hannah tasted blood in her mouth. Soaked and shivering, she lay in a puddle of cold water on the bathroom floor. When she sat up, her head started to throb.

  She’d lost some time. But she didn’t know how much. A few moments? An hour? The shower wasn’t running anymore. The smoke detector was no longer beeping. Hannah squinted up at the ceiling in the next room. The alarm device had been smashed. She noticed blood smears on the bathroom door, and a bloodstained washcloth on the floor just beyond the bathroom threshold. She glanced around for the butcher’s knife, but didn’t see it.

  Suddenly, she heard a door slam in the next unit.

  “Guy,” she whispered, panic-stricken. She got to her feet, and nearly collapsed again. The floor was so slippery. Her leg ached something awful. Had he kicked her?

  Hannah hobbled out of the bathroom. Tracking water on the brown shag carpet, she hurried to the door connecting to Room 112. It was locked.

  “Guy?” she called, pounding on the door. Tears stung her eyes. “Guy, are you in there?”

  No response.

  Hannah ran out the other door. It was cold outside, and she was soaked to the bone. But she hardly noticed.

  She banged on Room 112. The door creaked open. “Guy, are you in here?” she cried, stepping inside the dark room. She checked between the beds, then under them.

  The lamp on the nightstand table had been knocked over. There was blood on the white shade.

  Hannah bolted back outside. She spotted the old burgundy Volvo in the lot. Richard hadn’t driven away with him.

  She had hoped to use that car to get away. After knocking Richard Kidd unconscious, she would have phoned the police and reported a man attacking a woman in Room 111 of the Sleepy Bear Motel. Then she would have taken his car and driven off with her son.

  But now Richard Kidd had her little boy.

  Hannah gazed around the parking lot. She was shaking. Tears streamed down her face. She had to remind herself to breathe.

  She heard Guy scream, but for only a couple of seconds. He was drowned out by the sound of a train whistle. Still, she knew it was Guy. She knew his voice.

  Hannah ran to the side of the motel. Beyond some shrubbery and a barbed-wire fence was the railroad switching yard. She stared at the rows of freight cars lined up on the tracks. The yard was well lit. Rain puddles had formed in the shallow, rocky gullies between the tracks. The place smelled of oil and freshly cut wood. A couple of the trains were moving.

  Hannah saw an opening in the fence, then wove through the bushes. She passed a couple of old empty boxcars on the first track line. Her leg began to hurt more as she forged over the coarse rocks and gravel around the tracks. A cold wind cut through her, and she shuddered.

  She heard another scream, much closer this time. Hannah found an opening between a tanker and a flatcar stacked with lumber. Down the next line of tracks, she saw them.

  Richard was hauling Guy toward a moving train on the next track. He paused for a moment, then glanced back at Hannah and smiled. Blood from the cuts on his forehead streaked down his face.

  Guy was shrieking and struggling in his arms.

  “Let him go!” Hannah screamed. She hurried toward them. Up ahead, a train rounded a curve in the tracks. For a moment, the locomotive’s front light blinded her. The loud horn muted the sound of Guy’s screams.

  Past the glaring light, Hannah caught sight of them again. Richard was loading Guy into an empty boxcar of an idle train. He climbed aboard after Guy.

  Hannah started running after them, sidestepping around wooden ties and rails. She tripped on a lockbox, and toppled forward onto the rocky gravel. It hurt like hell. She knew she’d scraped her hands and knees. She knew she was bleeding. But there was no time to stop and look.

  Pulling herself up, Hannah felt a loose spike on the ground. She hid it in the waistband along the back of her jeans. Once again, she staggered toward the train. She heard its air brak
es hissing, and the engine starting up.

  Out of breath, Hannah hobbled toward the open boxcar.

  Then she stopped dead.

  Richard Kidd was standing inside the freight car, holding a butcher’s knife to Guy’s throat. Silent, with tears running down his cheeks, Guy looked utterly terrified. His little body was shaking. The front of his jacket had been smeared with blood. It took Hannah a moment to realize that the blood was Richard Kidd’s.

  He was grinning at her. She’d never seen him without his trademark glasses. She didn’t realize how cold his eyes could be. With his face covered in blood, he appeared almost demonic.

  “Let him go,” Hannah gasped. “I’ll do anything you say.”

  Richard Kidd merely snickered. “Come and get him.”

  Hannah hesitated, then boosted herself up into the car. Putting weight on her bad leg, she nearly fell backward onto the rock piling and the next set of rails. She grabbed hold of the boxcar’s sliding door. “Please,” she said, catching her breath. “Please, it’s me you want—”

  Another blast from a locomotive drowned her out. As much as Hannah pleaded, she knew he couldn’t hear her. And she knew it didn’t matter what she said. He was still going to kill her little boy.

  With the knife tip, Richard Kidd traced a thin line of blood along Guy’s neck. Guy didn’t register any sign of pain. But he was still trembling.

  “What do you want from me?” Hannah screamed.

  “I wanted you to be my leading lady, Hannah,” he yelled over the churning, noisy din of the train yard. He took the knife away from Guy’s throat for a moment, only to wipe the blood out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “I was pulling all the strings for you,” he went on, the blade against Guy’s neck once again. “I was watching over you, Hannah, protecting you. I have hours and hours of screen-test footage I shot of you. What a fucking waste. You could have been my leading lady. But you’re just as bad as those other bitches who came before you.” He shook his head at her. “At least when it didn’t work out with them, I got to film their death scenes. They were sacrificed for my art. At least I had something to show for my efforts with them. But you, Hannah, you’ve left me with nothing.”

  “I’ll make it up to you, Seth,” she said. “I mean Richard. I’ll do whatever you want. I’m sorry.”

  He glared at her. “You think you’re very clever,” he retorted. “You don’t know what sorry is yet.”

  He dragged Guy over to the other side of the huge, open door. He glanced back at a train approaching in the distance. Holding Guy under the chin, Richard pushed him toward the opening. “Ever see anyone thrown in front of a moving train before?” he asked.

  Guy shrieked.

  “Please, no…” Hannah begged. Poised on the other side of the door, she reached back for the railroad spike tucked in the waistband of her jeans. The train was coming closer, picking up speed. The sound of its grinding engine grew louder.

  Richard laughed. Again, he took the knife away from Guy’s throat so he could wipe the blood out of his eyes.

  Just then, the car gave a jolt that shook all three of them. Suddenly, they were moving.

  Guy broke away from him. At the same moment, Hannah lunged at Richard, stabbing him in the shoulder with the rail spike. He dropped his knife and howled in pain.

  The deafening noise from the train wheels and engines drowned out his cries. The boxcar rocked and quaked as it picked up speed.

  Grabbed hold of the sliding door, Richard managed to stay on his feet. He pulled the spike from his shoulder. Blood leaked down his jacket.

  Crouched near the floor on the other side of the opening, Hannah pulled Guy behind her. Richard was breathing hard as he came at them. He shook his head and said something. But she couldn’t hear what it was.

  The car took another jolt. Richard lost his balance. Reeling toward the edge of the open door, he clawed at Hannah and managed to grab hold of her sleeve.

  But she clung to a latch on the door.

  His arms flailing, Richard fell out of the boxcar—into the path of the oncoming train.

  There was a loud blast from the engine. The brakes screeched. Hannah pulled Guy toward her, shielding his face. She turned away as well. She didn’t want to see Richard Kidd mangled and crushed under the locomotive.

  Watching people die had been something he liked. But not her, and not her little boy.

  Curling up against the wall of the boxcar, Hannah held onto Guy. Wind swept through the open door. They were both shivering. “It’s okay, honey,” she assured him. “We’re both all right.”

  “’Kay,” he said in a small voice.

  She felt him nodding against her shoulder.

  Hannah patted him on the back. “It was just like a nightmare, sweetie,” she said, over the churning locomotive. “But we’re safe now. Everything’s all right.”

  He stopped crying. Hannah rocked him in her arms. “Listen to the choo-choo train, Guy,” she whispered. “Listen to the train….”

  Epilogue

  The nightmare wasn’t over for Hannah.

  Guy was taken from her. She spent the night at a women’s holding center at the King County jail. At least they gave her a private cell.

  Another small solace, Guy got to stay with Joyce—and not in some children’s shelter.

  Hannah had called her from the emergency room of Tacoma General, near the rail yard. Joyce had made it to the hospital by cab five minutes before the Seattle detectives showed up. Guy had been released into her care.

  Hannah, who had severe bruises on her leg and face, had been taken back to Seattle—in handcuffs.

  On Saturday afternoon, Jennifer Dorn Podowski was making arrangements for her husband. She handled everything on-line and on the phone. She’d instructed the Seattle Medical Examiner’s office to have the remains flown to New York after the autopsy. The body would be buried in a cemetery not far from their home in Croton-on-Hudson.

  Ben said it was the least they could do for Rae. She had no family.

  That Saturday morning, police had searched a ravine in north Capital Hill, and they’d found her remains, wrapped in a plastic sheet buried in a shallow grave. They knew where to look, thanks to Ben.

  He’d spent Friday night in Harbor View Hospital, where doctors reset his broken left arm, then put it in a cast. They also sewed seventeen stitches in that same shoulder. There were dozens of other cuts and abrasions from the broken glass, and some second-degree burns from the explosion.

  The police detectives who questioned Ben in his hospital bed said he was lucky to be alive.

  Another bit of luck; they’d found two videotapes in a plastic bag hidden under his torn, seared shirt. He’d given the tapes to the cop who had discovered him. Bloody, charred, covered with dirt and debris, he’d been wandering near the recycling bins of the apartment building across the street from Richard Kidd’s residence—or what was left of it. The cop had written on his report that Ben Podowski had appeared dazed and incoherent.

  But Ben had known exactly what he was doing at the time.

  The first tape had Seth Stroud ascending the church tower, talking to his friend with the camera. Between the two of them, they made references to the boat explosion, a plot to kill Hannah Doyle, and Richard Kidd’s booby-trapped house.

  If that wasn’t enough to shed light on their culpability in this killing spree, the second video showed Richard stabbing Rae Palmer, and Seth Stroud helping dispose of the body.

  While detectives in the East Precinct were viewing the tapes and becoming more interested in the whereabouts of Hannah Doyle, their colleagues were interviewing Ben Podowski in Harbor View Hospital’s emergency ward. The doctor on duty didn’t appreciate the constant police presence while sewing up his patient.

  Ben kept asking to use the phone. He wanted to call the Best Western Executive Inn. He had to find out if Hannah had left a message, and make sure she was all right. But the police kept telling him that if he needed to phone anyone, th
ey’d make the call for him. The doctor finally had to knock Ben out with a sedative, because he wouldn’t sit still.

  He woke up at seven o’clock that night, in a hospital bed. He was covered with bandages and salve for his burns. A nurse was there. And a couple of detectives were waiting to talk with him. Ben’s first words were: “Is Hannah okay? Hannah Doyle?”

  “Yes, we have her in custody,” one of the detectives answered.

  They questioned him for the next two and a half hours. At Ben’s suggestion, the police interviewed Paul Gulletti about the man calling himself Seth Stroud, and about Paul’s relationships with a couple of the murder victims.

  Detectives also spoke with several students in Paul’s class. Most of them misidentified photos of the real Seth Stroud, claiming he was the teacher’s assistant. Tish at the video store also had trouble differentiating photos of the two men.

  The pair of killers had indeed looked very much alike. If not for Ben and Hannah, perhaps Richard Kidd might have gotten away with murdering his friend—as well as so many others.

  On Saturday morning, Ben’s wife faxed the police hard copies of Rae Palmer’s e-mails. The documents linked the rooftop “suicide” of Joe Blankenship and Lily Abrams’s death with the others. They would finally put the Floating Flower case to rest.

  Richard Kidd had been living quite well off a monthly allowance from his late father’s trust fund. His mother in Missoula, Montana, refused to believe the awful stories the police were telling about her son.

  The murders made national news by Saturday morning. The media couldn’t help comparing Richard Kidd and Seth Stroud to their kill-for-kicks predecessors, Leopold and Loeb.

  By Saturday afternoon, CNN was showing a clip from Richard Kidd’s film short Sue Aside. A video and DVD company was already trying to acquire distribution rights to Sue Aside as well as Richard’s other student films, Dead Center and Sticks and Bones.