Page 26 of In the Dead of Night

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rain tapped like impatient fingers on the roof as Sara pulled out the old silent movie projector. She wanted to think they would run the reel of film to see her and her sister frolicking on the beach or riding ponies at a nearby stable. She knew it was crazy, but she had a bad feeling about what they would find instead. She couldn’t ignore the trepidation twisting her gut into knots.

“Gotta be thirty years old.” Taking the projector from her hands, Nick looked around for a relatively clear wall on which to project the reel and proceeded to set it up on an old wooden crate full of 33 rpm albums.

“Any idea what’s on the tape?” he asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

He must have seen the tension on her face because he paused and gave her his full attention. “What?”

“I know this is going to sound silly, but I have a bad feeling about that tape.”

“How so?” His eyes lingered on hers a moment too long before he returned his attention to the reel-to-reel. “You think maybe you’ve seen it before?”

“I’m not sure.” Realizing her hands were knotted in front of her, she concentrated on relaxing them, failed.

“Only one way to find out.” Flipping the switch, he stepped back.

A square of light appeared on the wall. Minute scratches and flecks of dust flashed black within the square. Numbers flicked by, seconds counting down from ten to one. An instant later, the image of a young woman lying on what appeared to be a box-spring mattress came into view. Sara squinted at the blurred image, realizing with a terrible sense of foreboding that the woman’s hands and feet were lashed to the bed.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “My God.”

When Nick didn’t respond, she risked a look at him. His eyes were riveted to the scene unfolding before them. The muscles in his jaws were tight. His features were filled with some dreadful anticipation Sara didn’t understand.

Terrible realization assailed her. A gasp escaped her when the masked figure of a man entered the room. Sara caught a glimpse of the ivory-handled revolver in his hand. The deadly beauty of it. But her focus was on the young woman. Please don’t let him hurt her, she thought. But she knew the wish was in vain.

There was no audio, but Sara saw the woman’s mouth open in a scream. The gunman aimed the weapon at her, and the woman’s eyes went wild with terror. Her body bucked and twisted atop the narrow bed. Sara watched, paralyzed by a fear that ran so deep her bones felt as if they had been filled with mercury. She wanted to run from the room, but wasn’t sure her legs could do the job.

The pistol jerked in the man’s hand. A white puff of smoke rose from the blue steel of its muzzle. Blood trickled stark and black onto the floor. All Sara could think was that this was not happening. It was all some kind of horrific joke.

A sound that was part sob, part curse, choked from her throat. Her mind reeled with the images her eyes took in. Horror. Blood. Death. The utter darkness of pure evil. What in the name of God had they stumbled upon?

Before she could move or speak, Nick’s curse cut through the air. Lunging forward, he slammed his fingers down on the power switch. The projector rattled to a stop.

Sara sat down hard on a nearby storage trunk and put her face in her hands. Her mind whirled to process what she and Nick just witnessed. Disbelief mingled with the remnants of horror and spilled over into a mass of emotions she couldn’t begin to sort through.

When she found her voice, she raised her gaze to Nick. “That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”

He shook his head, his features a mask of revulsion. “Unbelievable.”

“What in the name of God was that?”

“They call it snuff. Urban legend mostly. The FBI has never found one to be authentic.” Nick shook his head. “It could be fake. Some amateur photographer or techno geek doing some creative editing.”

“It looked real.”

Scrubbing his hand over his jaw, he nodded. “Yeah, it did.”

For the span of several heartbeats the only sound came from the steady pound of rain against the roof. “These types of films may exist in other countries. But here…”

“Smuggled in?”

“I don’t know.” His gaze met hers. Within its dark depths, Sara saw the extent of his concern and an even darker worry, and she knew after this, nothing was going to be the same.

Crossing to the reel-to-reel, he switched off the projector light. “I’ll seal everything and courier it to the Bureau of Forensic Services Lab in Sacramento first thing in the morning, see if the geeks there can authenticate it. The lab will dust for prints. If they find any, they’ll run them through the database. If that son of a bitch is in the system, we’ll get him.”

“What about the woman?”