Another figure, full head mask over its face and hair, stepped onto the camera’s stage.
Frankenstein, a baseball bat gripped firmly in his hand.
Tiffany cowered.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Witt hissed. “It’s a goddamn snuff film.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Witt grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned off the DVD.
“No, let it play.” Max’s voice was out too loud, too sharp. Too emotional.
“You don’t need to watch any more of it. You know how it ends.”
“I’ve already seen it in my dreams. Once more won’t hurt me.” Maybe, maybe not. As awful as she knew it would be, she had to see it through to the end.
Witt looked at her for a moment, then said, “You told me you didn’t remember the whole vision.”
“I do now.”
“Then you don’t need to see it again.”
She looked at him. “It’s her swan song. I owe it to her.”
His eyes were puppy-dog eyes, all sad, protective, and loving. “I’ll watch it for you. You don’t have to see it.”
She took the remote gently from his fingers. “I watched Cameron die from a bullet in the middle of his forehead, Witt. Nothing could be worse than that.” She felt her husband’s tears flutter against her eyelashes.
Witt laced his fingers with those of her unoccupied hand. She held onto him as she pointed and pushed the button.
Max steeled herself against the empathic sensations, gathering strength from Witt’s grip. She would watch the whole thing, but she would not live it, would not accept the feelings into her own body.
The video flicked on. Tiffany couldn’t scream. With the first blow to her chest, she fell sideways, taking the chair with her. She landed hard on an arm, her hands still cuffed behind her.
Max couldn’t catch a breath for seconds. The digitized sounds were indistinguishable now. Grunting, groaning, a muffled screech of rage, from whom, Max couldn’t be sure.
Together, Frankenstein and Dracula pulled Tiffany upright on the wooden chair.
“Do it again.”
“Again?” Frankenstein murmured, the bat held at its side. The masked eyes shifted from Dracula to Tiffany’s bloodied cheek where she’d whacked the floor, and back once more.
“Again.”
“But ...”
A moment of silence. A look passed between the two creatures. Tiffany’s gaze went wild, flashing from one to the other. She shook her head, first slowly, then violently as the bat rose in the air.
She shut her eyes as it connected with her belly and knocked the chair backwards, but not hard enough to tip it.
“More,” Dracula ordered.
At the prompting, the beating started in earnest. Savage. Frenzied. Frankenstein screamed with each strike against Tiffany’s body. The rag in her mouth dislodged with the impact, and Tiffany gave voice to her agony.
Blows rained down on her. Faster. Harder.
Max closed her eyes, but the sound went on and on. She’d hear it for the rest of her life—the whack of the wooden bat, the crack of bones breaking, flesh tearing, all of it underlain with utter terror, grief, and rage.
The sounds of a dying animal.
In the end, Witt took the remote from her limp fingers and turned off the machine.
They sat in silence. Tiffany’s screams reverberated in the quiet room. The tick of the clock on the wall, the slow in and out of Witt’s breath, the distant bark of a dog; these were the only things that grounded Max in reality.
“Do you see stuff like that in your job every day?” she whispered.
A long silence, then his quiet voice, “I see the aftermath.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“I close my front door.”
She thought she understood. She’d sold her furniture, her condo, and given away her cat to keep her aftermath at bay. Sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes it was only a quick fix.
Sometimes it lead to obsession.
“He did it.” He. Traynor. God. That’s how the bastard saw himself. A power and a sanctioner of death. Invincible.
Witt stared at the TV screen, blue now that the video had ended. She did not have to explain the he to him. “Did you wonder why it was so easy to get into his house?”
“I was careful. I broke the window, then I waited outside just in case he had an alarm.”
Witt closed his eyes, let his head fall back on the sofa, and sighed. “He has an alarm.”
She sucked in a breath. “How do you know?”
“I interviewed him after his daughter died. He kept me standing in the hallway. The alarm pad was on the inside wall next to the door.”
She hadn’t seen it. “All right.” She bit her lip, then let it slide from between her teeth. “So he has an alarm. He forgot to set it before he went out tonight.”
“Does he seem like the kind of man that would simply forget?”
She sat. Numbness worked its way slowly up her arms.
“Maybe he was waiting for you to do exactly what you did,” Witt suggested. “To take that DVD.”