Don't Read After Dark: Keep the lights on while reading these! (A McCray Horror Collection)

by McCray, Carolyn

  And where was she, anyway? He’d used his one call for her, and she was out getting her hair done. And his dad, well, who knew if Dad even took down the message? No matter how hard Mitchell tried to explain that he was at the police station, accused of murder, his dad just kept saying, “Momma-bear will be home soon enough.”

  Um, clearly not.

  The one time he wanted his mom hovering over him, she was at the beauty parlor. He might have relished the irony if, you know, he didn’t have to pee like a racehorse. Mitchell considered invoking his rights and asking for an attorney, but he knew how that looked. If they didn’t already suspect you, asking for a lawyer sealed your guilt. Besides, his parents had taken out a second mortgage just to afford his doctoral studies. They couldn’t afford the five-hundred-dollars-an-hour fee, plus the retainer. And a public defender? Yeah, Mitchell had watched enough Law & Order to know that he was probably doing a better job then that.

  Just as Mitchell was about to ask to go to the bathroom again, the door jerked open. A man in a suit followed the police lieutenant into the room. The new guy was definitely a Fed. Sure, he had on the same cheap suit and close-cut hair as the lieutenant, but his attitude? Oh, he owned the room. This guy was used to going anywhere he wanted and getting his way.

  “This is Special Agent Derek Boulder,” the lieutenant explained.

  Bingo. Mitchell was good. Well, and he’d seen Silence of the Lambs enough times to understand protocol.

  “Great ... Just great ...” mumbled the detective.

  Ha. The locals never liked it when the FBI interfered. This would have been thrilling, if, you know, he wasn’t the suspect in custody.

  “Johnson, give them a few minutes,” said the lieutenant.

  The detective scowled at Special Agent Boulder before he exited the room. The lieutenant closed the door and propped a shoulder against the wall. Guess he couldn’t count on his detective to stay out.

  “And you are here because. . .?” Mitchell asked the agent.

  “I'm investigating the deaths surrounding Terror in the Trees.”

  “Finally!” Mitchell threw his head back and raised his hands to the ceiling. “Have you figured out what happened to Elmore?”

  The agent studied Mitchell up and down, like some kind of Terminator body scan. “We were hoping you could clear that up for us.”

  Mitchell rolled his eyes and tossed his hands up in the air. Here we go again.

  “I didn’t kill Elmore!” Mitchell exclaimed. He choked back a sob. “He was my friend. Whoever killed Elmore is still out there. You’ve got to believe me.”

  An image flashed of blood, so much blood. What if the killer came back because he thought Mitchell saw something? They always go after the witness. To tie up loose ends and stuff. Was he going to be another of Terror in the Trees’ victims?

  “I'd love to.” Agent Boulder braced his hands on the table, leaning his body toward Mitchell. “Why don’t you start with why you were at the studio so early?”

  “I ...” Mitchell swiped at his eyes. “I was working on my doctoral thesis.”

  The agent raised an eyebrow. “That early?”

  “Elmore had to rush-edit the film for the premiere tonight.”

  Mitchell could remember how excited he had been. Back when he wasn’t in an orange jumpsuit being grilled by an FBI agent. He shifted in his seat, trying to find a position that didn’t stress his bladder.

  “When you got there, did you see anyone else around?” Boulder asked.

  “No. But the security cameras in the halls should show everyone who was down there.”

  “What did they show?” the agent asked the lieutenant.

  The officer shifted, scratching his head nervously. “Um ... I’m not sure if we have reviewed them completely yet.”

  “What?” Boulder’s eyes narrowed on the lieutenant. Mitchell squirmed even though the lieutenant was the one getting the Darth Vader stare.

  “We didn’t think ... since he was covered in blood ... it seemed an open-and-shut case.” The lieutenant tried to justify the department’s actions. “All we needed was a confession.”

  “Oh, great!” Mitchell cried. “I’m a little preoccupied being a murder suspect, and I have to do your job, too!” How was it that the cops didn’t even look at the tapes? What exactly had they been doing for the last two hours? Plus, Mitchell felt about a hundred times braver with the special agent glaring at the lieutenant.

  “Perhaps you should think about bringing those tapes in here,” Derek said. When the lieutenant shuffled his feet, the special agent barked, “Pronto!”

  If Mitchell were gay he would have fallen in love with Boulder right then and there. If Kyle MacLachlan from Twin Peaks and Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive ever had a love child, it would be Special Agent Boulder.

  Maybe now Mitchell could go to the bathroom.

  * * *

  Amanda paced back and forth in the conference room, chewing the edges of her expensive, manicured nails. Damn it, she’d chipped the forty-five-dollars-a-bottle nail polish. She thought that she had broken the habit. Fifteen thousand dollars in hypnotist bills said she had, but here she was gnawing away like a seven-year-old.

  But who could blame her? How could it be her fault that the arrogant FBI agent had decided to impound her film? No matter how she tried to justify it, she still felt as though her father’s ghost gazed down upon her, demanding that she “fix it.” That had always been his mantra. If she had been bullied at school or had lost her lunch money, his only response had been, “fix it.”

  But how could she fix this? If she lost the studio to creditors … Her entire legacy, her entire family’s legacy, would be lost.

  Her vice president rushed into her office. “Look, I haven’t even sealed the Truth or Scare deal. I just need a few more—”

  “They want to impound the film!” Amanda replied as she resumed biting her nails. “Terror in the Trees. The FBI wants to confiscate it.”

  “What?” Howie stammered. “Why?”

  “It’s that damn Mulder-wannabe.”

  This was all Jill’s fault. Like Amanda didn’t know that the FBI agent knocking on the studio’s door was the same exact agent whom Jill had left at the altar. Was he doing this to punish his ex-fiancée? Did his reason really matter? Right now, she needed to figure out a way to salvage her opening.

  “What about Ms. Connor? The premiere? The president?” Howie fidgeted with the cuffs on his shirt. Probably worried about his own bonus.

  “Jill’s out of the loop.”

  “But ...”

  “Her entire studio doesn’t ride on this film,” Amanda snapped, wanting so badly to put that fingernail back between her teeth.

  “There’s still that Charlie Sheen project coming up for auction ...” Howie suggested.

  “Charlie? In a romantic comedy about mimes?”

  Howie might get an A for ass-kissing. However, he got an F for not using his brains at all.

  “So, what are we going to do?” he asked.

  “The premiere will go on,” Amanda announced. Her will was resolved. She would do her bootlegging ancestors proud. “We can’t miss this chance. Not with POTUS making an appearance.”

  “How are you going to go around the FBI?”

  “Who said I was going around them?” If only Amanda could see the look on that agent’s face when she was done. “I’m going through them.”

  “But the film?” Howie asked, his eyes darting, trying to catch up.

  “They can’t impound what can’t be found.”

  “Huh?”

  “A copy of the film was stolen once,” Amanda explained, relishing the plan. “What’s to stop someone from stealing the original?”

  She really should credit Jill for the idea. The whole stolen film on the day of the premiere would generate some great publicity. Too bad that Jill wouldn’t be around to bask in the glory.

  “You mean ...?”

  Amanda sat down at her desk, t
he impulse to chew at her nails long forgotten. Folding her hands, she placed her index fingers at her lips.

  “We’re gonna steal our own film.”

  “Who could you hire to do that?

  Poor Howie. Always so slow on the uptake. Amanda steadied her gaze on her vice president as a slow, satisfied smile crept across her face.

  “Oh, shit ...” he replied.

  CHAPTER 8

  Hold it together, Jill thought. Hold it together.

  Jill stared down at the text sent from Amanda’s assistant.

  You. Are. Fired. So sad. Too bad.

  She doubted that Amanda had instructed that last part, or maybe she did. To say that their last conversation had gone well was to say that Kate Gosselin’s career was on the rise.

  Nausea rolled over Jill as her head throbbed.

  Fired.

  Don’t cry. Don’t puke. Don’t swoon.

  Breathe. This will work itself out.

  Yeah, right.

  Amanda would make sure that never happened. If the premiere got canceled and Terror in the Trees took a nosedive, taking an entire studio down with it, that would be Jill’s fault. If somehow the film ended up doing well, Amanda would assert that it only did so by being rid of Jill’s “bad vibe.”

  For as intellectual a town as Hollywood tried to appear, it was also as superstitious as a prosecutor at a Salem witch trial. Everyone was already on edge, waiting to see if Terror in the Trees tipped the balance of power. Would this be another Blair Witch or Jaws 3-D?

  If Amanda could convince the other studios that the poor opening was because Jill had “jinxed” the project … well …

  And it seemed that she was already jinxed. Jill had put in a call to every major studio head and hadn’t received so much as an auto-respond email back. News spread like wildfire in the Hollywood Hills. If something didn’t change, and change quickly, she could forget ever working in Tinseltown again. Even Vancouver would be out of her reach. As a matter of fact, she doubted if even her old ska bands would take her calls.

  Every muscle in her body wanted to carry her home for a hot bath and a good cry. Carry her far from Terror in the Trees and Derek. Not necessarily in that order. But what would that accomplish? That she tucked her tail between her legs and went back to promoting pizza joints?

  Nausea lurked at the back of her throat again. Just thinking of Derek and the way he strode back into her life, creating havoc and undermining her career as if it were three years ago.

  Breathe, she reminded herself.

  Besides, if she were being honest, the entire Terror in the Trees campaign had gone off the tracks as soon as they launched it. If anything, having Derek here, with his pit bull tendencies, could work in her favor.

  If anyone could figure out what was really happening, Derek could.

  And if that exonerated her in the process, so be it.

  That is, if she could convince her stomach to stay in one place.

  * * *

  Derek studied Mitchell, trying to get a read on him. The kid was definitely terrified. His face was as pale as the concrete wall behind him. The pulse in his neck pounded with each heartbeat.

  He also knew that the kid was lying, though. Not about the murder. Not the way Mitchell’s face lit up when Derek mentioned the surveillance tape. Guilty people seldom liked video proof of their guilt.

  But if Mitchell wasn’t lying about the murder, then what was he hiding?

  Sure, the kid ate up all that fake blood and gore from horror movies. But once it became real life, the kid looked like, well, like they were lucky he hadn’t wet himself already.

  The door opened as the lieutenant wheeled in a cart with a small TV and DVR machine. The squeaky wheels only added to the tension in the room. Jill followed him. Her eyes red rimmed. Her bottom lip tugged between her teeth. Derek knew that look. He had caused it too many times to count. But he couldn’t worry about her right now. Not with the president attending the premiere tonight. Derek was on the clock.

  As the lieutenant popped the DVD into the machine, Derek pulled up a chair and sat down next to Mitchell.

  “This is your last chance to tell us what happened before we see for ourselves,” Derek explained.

  But the kid shook his head. “The tape is going to show everything exactly like I said.”

  “Are there any others involved?” Derek asked, but he feared that Mitchell was right. There was no way this scrawny kid cut off anybody’s head. Maybe he had been used as a decoy. Someone needed his credentials to get into the building and the editing suite.

  “Is anyone paying attention?” Mitchell demanded, as his eyes darted around the room. “I don’t know what’s going on. But it has something to do with that film.” Mitchell closed his eyes, inhaling a shaky breath. “The way it lashed out at Elmore ... almost like it was attacking him.”

  Great, Derek thought. Now he had to factor mental illness into Mitchell’s equation. Today was one of those days that you couldn’t cross off the calendar fast enough.

  “I’ll bite,” Derek said. “Exactly what did this ‘film’ do?”

  “I know what that sounds like,” Mitchell sniffed, swiping his hand under his nose. “Another escapee from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  “Was he like this before?” Derek asked Jill, but she didn’t answer. Her attention was focused on her phone. He touched her arm. Startled, she turned to him, her eyes settled on his hand, as if she couldn’t believe that he dared to place it there. He snatched it away, cursing himself for being too casual.

  Focus, Derek, focus.

  “Oh,” Jill said, as she seemed to reorient herself to the room. “Um ... Whenever I talked to him, which wasn’t often, he seemed normal ... that is, if you consider a kid who quotes movies every other sentence normal.”

  Mitchell rocked back and forth in his chair as the lieutenant cued up the surveillance tape to the correct time. Derek worried that maybe Mitchell had watched one too many horror films, you know? Maybe fiction and reality had blurred. Hopefully, the tapes would clarify more than a few things.

  “We’ve only got footage from the hallway,” the lieutenant said as he fast-forwarded. “They didn’t have cameras in the editing room.”

  Derek pulled his chair closer to the screen. “We’ll take what we can get. Play it.”

  He felt Jill’s breath on his neck as she leaned over his shoulder. In crisp, stark black and white, the footage must be in HD, for the hallway bloomed on the screen. Quickly, the lieutenant scrolled to the time code just after Mitchell’s key card had been swiped at the security desk.

  After a few seconds, Mitchell appeared on-screen, inching toward the editing bay frame by frame. The kid looked like any teenager about to view his favorite film in a private screening. Kind of like Sylvester the Cat, who had just eaten Tweety Bird. Derek had seen footage of many a murderer about to enter the scene of the crime. Seldom did they appear to be humming. There was a spring to the kid’s step that Derek couldn’t imagine he would have—if he were even an accessory to the murder.

  Mitchell entered the editing suite, so the lieutenant fast-forwarded the image until the door burst open, as the kid skidded out of the room.

  “That’s when Elmore told me to get towels!” Mitchell twisted his hands, his face ashen. The kid’s legs bounced under the table.

  Damn. The suite’s door opened toward the camera, so there was no way to see inside the room to verify or discredit Mitchell’s account of events. So much for Hollywood knowing their angles.

  “Where were you going so fast?” the lieutenant asked the kid.

  “The bathroom. Like I said!” Agitated, Mitchell dug his fingers into his scalp, clutching his hair.

  The lieutenant went to fast-forward again, but Jill stopped him. “Wait. Go back a few seconds.”

  Derek glanced from the screen to Jill. “Why?”

  “I thought I saw something,” Jill explained. “On his right hand.”

  Mitchell’s figu
re appeared on the screen, walking backward.

  “Stop. Right there,” Jill instructed.

  Mitchell froze on the screen.

  Derek studied the image. The only things he saw were Mitchell and an empty hallway. “I don’t see ...”

  Jill pointed at the screen. “Look at Mitchell’s hand.”

  Derek squinted. Clearly, Jill had way better eyesight than he.

  What the ...? Sure enough, the tips of Mitchell’s fingers were stained red. But how? The footage was clearly shot in black and white.

  “Is that blood?” The lieutenant asked the question on everyone’s mind.

  Mitchell pleaded, “No. That’s the oil I told you about!”

  “But it’s red,” the lieutenant stated.

  “How is this possible?” Derek gestured toward the monitor. “Could someone have doctored the tape?”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “We confiscated the footage within minutes of the collar.” He flipped open the file. “The editor was reported dead to the security staff at 7:38 a.m., and an officer secured the site by 7:45 a.m. I don’t even think that Industrial Light & Magic could have laid in special effects in under seven minutes.”

  Oil or blood, what was the answer? Derek wondered. Did the camera suddenly become capable of picking up color? Actually, not just any color, but the color red. This was one of those questions that the squints back at the lab were going to have to answer.

  “All right. Fast-forward,” Derek said, watching Mitchell out of the corner of his eye. How was the kid going to handle the main event?

  On-screen, Mitchell entered the bathroom, and then disappeared—out of sight. Seconds later, he reappeared with a handful of paper towels as he raced to the editing bay. The time stamp counted down ten seconds, and then the suite door burst open again as Mitchell backpedaled out the door. Black handprints streaked the floor.

  Mitchell’s mouth was open wide, screaming and screaming.

  The lieutenant stepped away from the monitor. “Looks pretty black and white to me. Excuse the pun ...”

  The only problem was that there was absolutely nothing black and white about this case. Derek watched Mitchell now. The kid’s gaze was transfixed on the screen. A tear slid down the kid’s cheek.