The Video Killer

ONE

SAUCY ITALIAN blood flooded his veins, sweat stung his olive eyes, a police siren deafened his pepperoni-pink ears. He smashed a trash can, forcing a running-back spin against a garage wall just before the fire-white cop beacon lit up the whole filthy alley. The 27-inch Magnavox in his arms jabbed his chin and knocked his knees. Johnny Tone loved TV—not his own TV—but somebody else’s.

A SIREN obliterated The Late Show’s first punch line. Lottie Krantz howled. 10:35—time for folks to be in bed. Her swollen feet shuffled onto the front screen porch. Even at night and at ninety-three—Hilltown’s oldest living resident—and even with her TV glasses on, she clearly saw the man’s short, powerful body scamper across the street. Going too fast, up to no good, too hot for running.

Johnny burst through a fence gate, raced across the Reverend Thompson’s backyard and reached the next alley.

THE POLICE car screeched to a stop. Patrolman Roy Hampton’s blood boiled, excitement flamed behind his eyes, his right leg twitched, demanding he crash the fence, through the house if necessary.

Michelle Maynard grabbed Roy’s hand on the steering wheel. She was forty, Roy was twenty-five—he never listens.

Don’t, Roy, please, Michelle begged her partner.

The adrenaline wouldn’t stop, the leg wouldn’t quiet. This was why Roy had joined the police in the first place: the thrill of the chase, the mind clicking at lightning speed, fiery nerves perched right smack on the edge of mayhem.

Damn! Roy cursed. That’s the fifth TV this month.

Let’s try on the other side, Michelle suggested.

Right.

Roy slammed the car in reverse, scorching the tires.

JOHNNY HURDLED a low fence into a maze of alleys. He turned when he heard the car hit gravel. A green pickup loomed in the drive. A red brick wall closed one side and a wood-slat fence faced the other. Not enough room, not with the TV. Johnny whirled. The police beacon raced down the alley.

Trapped.

LOTTIE KRANTZ dragged herself through her living room. Balance and order—the secret of her longevity—were threatened once again.

ROY PUSHED the patrol car into a slide.

Darn it, Roy, Michelle shouted. You’re gonna get us killed!

But Roy knew just what the vehicle could take, and as soon as it rested comfortably in the Harrison’s new chain-link fence, he jumped out, service revolver in the air.

JOHNNY CROUCHED behind a garbage can. The sound of two pairs of boots on gravel excited him to the bone.

Put the gun away, Roy, please, Johnny heard.

Shh! Roy commanded, and Johnny could tell the cops were coming his way.

Johnny searched the darkness. The thought of leaving the Magnavox and crawling under the truck never occurred to him. The gun worried him even as the thrill of it bolted up his spine like a good episode of Hawaii Five-O. Something else…a sound, what? From the next house over.

Lottie hobbled onto her back porch. A pinpoint of moonlight caressed deep wrinkles in the woman’s forehead.

Lottie Krantz, Hilltown’s oldest living resident.

Police officers! Come out with your hands up! Roy ordered.

Lottie squinted into the darkness.

Roy crept around the corner of her house.

Michelle’s flashlight struck chrome and glanced off the Magnavox screen.

Lottie spotted Johnny behind the trashcan. She gasped, grabbed the string overhead and pulled. The porch light flared above, searing a yellow image of Lottie’s shaking, pointing finger into the cones at the back of Johnny’s eyes.

There he is! Get him! Lottie screamed.

Roy whirled and fired, blasting the bulb, raining glass and tungsten on Lottie’s gray hair. She dropped to the porch floor.

No! Don’t shoot! Michelle yelled, wrestling her partner to the ground, grasping desperately for the gun.

Johnny wondered: what the hell are they doing?

Release me! Roy croaked, face burning anger, brain on fire. She’s surprisingly strong—

Please drop the gun, Michelle begged.

Johnny peeked at the two cops struggling on the drive.

One crazy chance you gotta take.

Johnny shot out from behind the truck. His left foot crushed Michelle’s hand, his right stomped Roy’s ankle. Shouts of pain pierced the night as Johnny made good his escape down the alley past the parked patrol car, Magnavox firmly in hand.

Roy disentangled himself and jumped upright. He tested his ankle and surveyed the area.

Saddle up! he shouted to Michelle.

Shaken, her knees aching, Ms. Krantz crawled back inside her house.

Johnny fought the burn in his thighs and bounded up his back steps. The door was unlocked—except for Johnny, Hilltown was virtually free from crime. The door slammed shut, the siren complained again and the great, white search-beam on the patrol car knifed the wall over Johnny’s head.

Oughtta buy curtains for that door.

He was short, thank God, five-four, his salvation once again. He stood granite-still, not daring a single muscle twitch despite the ache. Focus on the future. This is just a prelude, a stepping stone to greatness. No pain, no gain. Think of the fame that’ll blanket you like the early morning fog wherever you go. Worth it, Johnny decided, even as the light-shaft refused to move and the low voices of the police came to him, unintelligible and frightening.

You could have killed her, Michelle said.

I had to neutralize the light, Roy explained.

Like a supernova moving through the galaxy, the circle of light crawled off the wall over Johnny’s head. He heard the patrol car creep down the alley and the siren fade. A cruel grin slipped into Johnny’s mouth. He stood that way for a few minutes, a cool-down after exercise. He checked his watch. Six-minute mile with a forty-pound handicap. He counted the pulse pumping through his neck, calculating the aerobic benefit.

You’re gonna bust a vein, Michelle warned as they resumed patrol.

Negative! Roy shouted, his face turning even brighter red.

Are too, Michelle muttered to herself.

Keep a lookout! Roy ordered.

Michelle knew what they looked like: Frick and Flack, Laurel and Hardy, Andy and Barney, Keystone Cops in an Interpol world. All because Roy insisted on making Apocalypse out of every little encounter with crime.

JOHNNY SWUNG the TV by his side and hefted it into the sitting room. It was an ordinary place extraordinarily furnished, filled with desks and end tables, each holding a TV, sixteen with the Magnavox. There were Zeniths, RCAS, GEs, Hitachis and one gorgeous, near-new Sony Bravia which filled Johnny with pride.

IT HAD started by accident a month earlier. Johnny had been jogging up one of the steep inclines that gave Hilltown its name. A young couple, graduates of the local teachers’ college, moving to a bigger city, smaller apartment and larger aspirations, had left their Quasar unattended at the back of a yellow rental van. Johnny had picked it up in stride. The weight was nothing; he exercised daily when he wasn’t working and he hadn’t held a job in two years. He approached thirty years of age, but that was his secret. Except for the scars on his face, he still had his boyish good looks, most of his black, curly hair and a magnificent body. He had developed his own revolutionary new exercise program, stealing a couple of TVs a week, starting close, now picking targets a mile from home. An easy warm-up jog, a short wait by the window until a commercial signaled the victim’s trip to the refrigerator, then Johnny slipped in the unlocked front door—no break-ins, he insisted—before the sprint back to his house.

There’d been problems. DVRs were a constant hazard and the new cable hookups could be treacherous. Johnny’s first one was screwed right into the set and even his massive biceps couldn’t wrench it free. The victim, forty-year-old car mechanic Sam Teller, had tried to make it to both the refrigerator and the bathroom during one commercial break—not even station identification—and had wandered back mid-theft, adjusting his fly with one hand, grasping a cold hot dog with the other, which Johnny was sure the poor sucker waved at him as Johnny absconded with his Panasonic. Since then Johnny carried a pair of wire-clippers. That’s what he liked: a new challenge every night. Tonight, for instance, Johnny had encountered the police for the first time. A worthy opponent, he felt, physically fit in an old-fashioned, calisthenics kind of way, but burdened by legal restraints, moral scruples and narrowness of vision.

It wasn’t a job really; Johnny despised the idea. He hadn’t made a dime stealing TVs and didn’t plan to. He’d had his fill of jobs from the time he was sixteen: loading, hauling, counting, hammering, putting things together and taking them apart. By living simply he was rid of money cares and planned to stay that way. Stealing TVs wasn’t sport, either—not organized anyway; Johnny hated that too. Rules, equipment and uniforms—he was done with that. Stealing TVs was a habit like brushing your teeth, taking your vitamins or watching reruns of Maverick.

Johnny added the new set to his collection, plugged it in and screwed a cable to the back. He sank into the tattered green couch and clicked through the channels: The Office, Tonight Show, Taxi, Into the Night, Nightline, Hart to Hart, TMZ, Video Log, Mad Men, Evening at the Improv—a cornucopia of entertainment offerings and most nights any of the shows would have served, but tonight, in his excitement, Johnny wanted more. He switched to the DVD. Rock ‘n’ roll throbbed—The Scuds, Blast Me.

It’s not what you are, it’s how you’re lookin’,

Give me a song and I’m cooking.

I’m your man and you ain’t nothin’,

Shake your butt, quit your cussin’.

An’ BLAST ME! I said BLAST ME!

She was stunning, young and spectacular, over six feet tall, even higher in spiked heels. She danced in sixteen different-sized TV images, strutting like a wild ostrich across Johnny’s eyes.

Fry your brain like an egg on a pan,

You ain’t heard rhymin’ like your man can.

It makes you hot fit to boil,

Set to explode, like a snake in a coil.

So BLAST ME! I told you—BLAST ME!

Her name was Terri Beales. She flashed a sultry look into the camera, a fan blew her thick brown hair over one auburn eye. She smiled and winked and her wide mouth moved upward on one side. Thick red lips pursed together into a lemon-nasty kiss, an aqua g-string outlined wide hips and giant, jutting buttocks. Long leg-muscles fought a pink corset, white garters and black-lace stockings. Her legs were ravishing, yet Johnny loved her breasts most. Wrapped in a ruffled, electric-blue bra three sizes too small, nipples pressing fabric, the zeppelin-shaped protrusions flew to the beat, down and up, side to side and once—Johnny switching to slow-motion—flying apart like great globes repelled by electrostatic force, arcing out and away, nearly knocking Terri off her feet, a pair of planets bursting free at the first big bang. There was something fundamental about her breasts, Johnny believed, like the shape of Mother Earth, or the original apple plucked from the first tree.

I snatched you like all the rest.

When you do me, you do the best.

When you’re with me, there ain’t no others,

’Cept slimeball geeks and dipshit mothers.

So BLAST ME! (Didn’t you hear me, woman?)

BLAST ME!

It looked like a rock ‘n’ roll video all right—backlit smoke poured in from the side and colored lights flashed blue and orange. But the image stayed frozen and Terri occasionally drifted off-screen. Then the camera panned awkwardly, revealing the edges of the cheaply painted, city-street backdrop, cutting Terri off at the knees, then the neck, threatening to lose her altogether.

Johnny thought: beautiful. Classic. A statement—like a good beer commercial.

The dry-ice vapor curled up Terri’s nostrils until she choked and coughed. The camera followed as she bent double in convulsions. She waved the mist away and stumbled off the set. The unrelenting camera stuck to her like wet tar as she clamored up the basement stairs seeking oxygen to fill her starving lungs.

Johnny clicked off the DVD. He was beginning to tire of her. Too loose, too uncontrolled, too big. She possessed none of the dancer’s discipline and never would. Still, her body was devastating and for the time being, in Johnny’s mind…she’ll have to do. If she just had an ounce of talent. Suck it up; it’s your responsibility to inspire her, to bring the best out of her, to find the magic.

You’re the director! Johnny boomed out loud. He jumped off the couch, pumped his arms and worked himself into a pep-rally fervor. Johnny checked his watch. 11:00 p.m. Nightline going off, Rockford coming on. "It’s time, damnit!"

Johnny descended the creaky stairs to the hot, dank basement. He stepped into the one large room, pulled the string on the overhead light and illuminated the city street backdrop propped against a rusty central pole. Stage lights covered with colored gels pointed at the scene, a video camera stood ready to shoot.

And Terri Beales slumped in front of it all.

Johnny crossed to the three horizontal freezers in the corner. He opened the Amana. Cold, frosty air spit up at him. He reached to a hook on the wall, jerked down his leather gloves, pulled them on like a surgeon and seized a huge hunk of dry ice. His muscles tightened, his face turned red. With a groan, like timber straining in a great gale, the ice broke free. Johnny threw the ice in a bucket of water. The vapor rose. He switched on a fan and blew the mist onto the set.

Her mouth gagged, her hands tied behind her back, her breasts wrapped in shiny-aqua acetate, Terri Beales slowly opened her pale, brown eyes—just barely.

Johnny grinned.

A tiny, pitiful moan escaped Terri’s blue, bloodless lips.

Wake up, Terri! Johnny exclaimed. It’s showtime!

TWO

LAURA CASUELY was only vaguely aware of the drop of perspiration creeping down between her shoulder blades as she peeked at the man next door from the spare bedroom upstairs. Straight, mowed rows of backyard grass filled her gaze while the morning sun sparkled off her pretty, blue eyes. Twenty years old, Laura retained the fragile, adolescent, blonde features that had embarrassed her all her life. She ducked behind the window, blood pulsed her veins. Her breath caught in her throat and her knees turned to silly-putty.

No power on Earth could quell Laura’s secret love for the man next door. She rose from the floor, retaking command of her long, slender legs. She felt his firm hands on the mower handles as he pushed the machine skillfully around another corner, along another row of green. She tasted the sweat glistening off his muscled arms. And when he stopped and pulled off his T-shirt to wipe his massive chest and weather-hardened faced, Laura thought she smelled it, even from the distance—a sweet, manly blend of wood-smoke and iced tea.

Laura thought: a caring person. The little things tell—the way he tosses his shirt aside, the way he bends over and picks up a stray stick and throws that away too.

She’d memorized him from a distance, every inch of his compact body, every telltale scar on his face, remnants of some selfless act of heroism, Laura believed. She wanted him, all of him, completely—nothing short would do—and she vowed to do whatever it took. He was Love—the kind she’d missed all her life, that made the Earth turn and the stars twinkle.

The house shook and buzzed. Big guns boomed target practice from Fort Riley, fifty miles away. The First Infantry Division, The Big Red One—young, cursing, cynical, put-upon men in scratchy green uniforms beginning their daily bombardment of innocent hillsides.

You’ll get used to it, they told Laura when she first arrived in Hilltown. But Laura never minded. Strong men making big noises—she loved them all.

Laura’s hand slipped under her nightgown, turning her pink nipple hard, then descending to where, down there, she was already shamefully damp with lust. The smell of putrefied tuna fish and Swiss cheese struck her nostrils in a wave of insurmountable guilt and disgust. She rushed to the door, to find the bathroom, scrub her filthy digits clean, maybe shower.

But Ralph Farley’s voice stopped her.

She can pay her own way, that’s what she can do! Ralph shouted from the other side of the door. He was thirty-five, slightly balding, owner of the house, rushing up the stairs, pursued by Arlene Farley, Laura’s older sister.

Shhh! Arlene admonished.

Don’t shhh me! Ralph blasted back.

Laura heard them veer into the bathroom. She understood their concern, she knew there would be tension when she came to live with them. They watched her, waiting for her to crack up, explode and disintegrate. Laura forgave them. It was only natural, she supposed, that they would gape and gauge, not wanting to miss a single second of tense, nail-biting suspense.

They’re only human, after all. Arlene is your sister and Ralph is your brother-in-law and they care for you. They are concerned, that’s all.

RALPH TRIED unsuccessfully to tie his tie in the bathroom mirror.

Here, let me help you, Arlene offered, reaching in to her husband’s throat, impatient with his clumsiness. Ralph shoved her hands away.

Cut it out! he shouted, a bit of spittle hitting her in the eye. I’m not your damn sister! I can tie my own damn tie!

You’re going to be late, Arlene scolded.

Who cares?

LAURA MOVED from the door. Eavesdropping is eavesdropping. Respect their privacy. They are relatives and you love them both.

She sat at the dressing table and surveyed the doll world in front of her. Knowledge long forgotten, ancient and sacred, spoke to her in voices only she could hear, but in a language Laura didn’t understand. Crudely sculpted, twenty in all, most of the dolls were just lumps of hardened clay, others more clearly human. They moved in Laura’s mind, with lives of their own—cleaning ladies and farmers, peasants and princes, around a golden, glazed, ceramic castle.

You must make more children, Laura suggested to her disciples in a commanding, wordless, telepathic language.

Maybe tomorrow, she softened. But whose? The priest and the washerwoman, Laura giggled, then threw her hand over her mouth at the scandal. She hoped they didn’t hear.

What about you there, mowing the lawn? You so short and strong, potential father, loving husband, my salvation. God is a man, after all, a privileged race, urgently in need of woman.

Laura’s delicate fingers surrounded the potential mother. Even at two inches and roughly fashioned, she was unmistakably Laura. It was a long way down from parapet to moat and the gardener looked tiny in the distance, pushing his mower down straight rows of verdant, pillow-down grass.

Magnifying glass—that’s what you need. No, a telescope.

It was impossible, devices or not; the gardener and the girl’s separation was complete and permanent. The space between them was irreversibly stretched by class distinction, protective moat and thick, stone walls.

Disguise—that’s it! The gardener isn’t a gardener at all! He’s a prince, heir to the throne, hiding from rivals to the kingdom.

Uncomfortable with the plagiarism, Laura nevertheless pushed the figure up the castle wall, mowing the tower’s bricks to the top, where the man embraced the woman. Overcome with passion, Laura ran the male replica over her face. Her eyes filled with tears of ecstasy as the mower moved down her neck.

"I want her to hear me!" Ralph’s voice echoed against the bathroom tiles.

She just got out of a— Arlene started to say.

Booby hatch, Ralph finished.

An institution!

And why does she have the damn door shut? Ralph asked, his voice calmer. She could be croakin’ herself right now, for all we know. If she gets blood on the new shag—

She just needs to meet some people and find some friends. Get back on her feet, Arlene argued.

Laura heard it clearly: Ralph losing his footing on the stairs and falling groaning to the bottom.

Oh, how I wish I could help them.

She imagined them at the breakfast table, Ralph with his newspaper between face and plate, Arlene crunching cereal full of oat bran, a bouquet of daisies and a cup of decaf set before them. Ralph putting down the paper, reaching for a coffee cup and splashing the table lightly, glancing up at Arlene, a sweet smile curling at the corner of his mouth, rising, stumbling to Arlene and kissing her sloppily on the cheek, having aimed for lips.

Laura smiled.

They can be such a cute couple sometimes. Unlike you, unlike…

Laura felt her dark tormentor and personal savior reach up to her, inserting his bloody hooked hoof, tugging at her intestines, ripping flesh.

Get to the bathroom, wash your hands, shower, find the pills!

But the clutch of retribution held fast with unbearable pain, dragging her deep into the insatiable jaws of degradation. She was trapped in a dark, hot, mud-wet place, her nostrils assaulted by the stench of burning flesh, her sins paraded gleefully in front of her with the certain punishment they demanded. The screams of the damned attacked her ears, the taste of liver and Brussels sprouts choked her. Grisly, green demons lounged around a glass coffee table sipping cold beers, mocking the notion of a forgiving God, chuckling cynically at the concept of reincarnation.

Laura glared right back, staring into the monsters’ bloodshot eyes, fighting fear.

Is it too much to ask, one man, one love, to cherish and hold, to forgive and obey, forsaking all others, all the days of your life?

The world is my ashtray; I shall not want, Laura chanted. The world is my ashtray; I shall not want.

Silence.

She’d broken the spell once again—for the time being at least—and the roar of quiet filled her ears. Ralph was gone too—his voice no longer consumed the house. Even the artillery from the fort stood silent.

No lawnmower either!

Laura rushed to the window.

The backyard was a small, empty, green square of new-cut grass next a gravel driveway. An unattended lawnmower sat precisely in the center.

Johnny…oh, Johnny! Laura wailed, her short, sharp fingernails scratching at the window, the sleeves of her robe falling to her elbows past a series of ragged scars—six of them—across each wrist.

THREE

PATROLMAN ROY Hampton fought the sleepless burn in his temples as he limped down Main. The sun had been up an hour, traffic on its way to work ridiculed him. Stores began