“Babe, could you move for just a sec?” she finally piped up. “Honey?”
With a grunt, he shifted to one side, but he just felt heavier. Pinned beneath him, Rae was sinking into the mattress. “Sweetie?” she said, hardly able to talk. He was crushing the breath out of her.
He reached toward the nightstand and flicked a switch on a cord. A strobe light sputtered on, like a series of camera flashes. It was too bright, almost blinding.
He reached for something else, something hidden between the mattress and box spring, but Rae couldn’t see it. His every movement seemed fractured by the strobe light. Rae thought he might have grabbed a condom. Whatever it was, he quickly slipped it into his back pocket.
He still had on his jeans. As he ground his pelvis against hers, she felt his erection through the layers of clothes.
Rae squirmed beneath him. “Wait,” she protested. “I’m not comfortable—”
“It’s okay to scream if you want,” he whispered. “That’s why I closed the windows.”
“I don’t want to scream,” she said, with a weak laugh. “Why would you say that? What are you talking about?”
In the staccato light, she saw his face contorted in a grimace as he writhed on top of her, A vein bulged in his neck.
Something’s wrong here, she thought. A panic swept through her. Rae began to shake uncontrollably. She felt trapped beneath his weight.
“Please,” she said, trying to push him away. “I just need you to climb off me for a second. Really…”
He kissed the side of her neck. He didn’t seem to be listening. He kept slamming his pelvis against hers. It hurt.
“Please, stop,” she cried, struggling now. “I—I just need to…to change positions. You’re crushing me….”
“Can’t move,” he muttered, his breath swirling in her ear. “You’ll ruin it.”
“Ruin it? What do you mean?”
He reached into his back pocket. His movements seemed jerky in the flickering light. Rae saw something shiny in his hand.
It looked like a knife.
Oh, dear God, no, this isn’t happening. Desperately, Rae fought to get out from under him. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t even breathe. Hard as she tried, Rae couldn’t budge an inch.
But then he shifted around, and all at once, his knees were pinning down her arms.
In the fractured light, she saw him drawing back the knife. Sweat glistened on his face. His eyes looked so cold.
Suddenly Rae realized those cold eyes had been studying her for the last few months.
And she realized she was going to die.
Terrified, she struggled beneath him, but it was useless.
“Don’t move. Don’t ruin it, baby,” he whispered, raising the knife over his head. He smiled a little. “I need you in camera range.”
The death of Rae Palmer was documented by two concealed video cameras that night.
Rae’s self-appointed director and leading man had over two hours of footage shot in the bedroom that night. Only thirty-five seconds of videotape showed the actual stabbing.
The strobe light made for a murky image at times, and the abundance of blood wasn’t quite as evident on tape. He also had to tinker with the sound to raise the volume of her screams. But all in all, he was happy with the results.
He edited the raw footage down to eleven exciting, harrowing minutes. Careful not to take anything away from Rae’s final performance, he left his likeness on the cutting-room floor. He became a mere shadowy figure in the foreground, wielding the knife. Watching the final product, he didn’t recognize himself at all.
Seeing the video was exhilarating. But he should have remembered. It had happened before. Once he’d done all the work and admired the fruits of his labor, he became overwhelmed with an emptiness, a sort of postpartem depression. There was only one way to remedy that. He knew what he had to do.
He had to find a new leading lady.
One
Hannah glanced at the videocassette in the plain plastic box. There wasn’t much tape on the spools, certainly no more than a half hour’s worth of viewing. The mystery video had been sitting in the “Return Tape Limbo” drawer behind the counter at Emerald City Video for over two weeks now. In that bottom drawer they stashed defective tapes and DVDs, lost-and-found items, and cassettes dropped off at the store by mistake.
Hannah Doyle had been working at Emerald City Video for eighteen months. In her opinion, every hour at the place had taken its toll on her appearance. Hannah thought she looked pale and tired most of the time. But