AROUND THE SAME time that June Rapaport is squeezing Mel O’Connell’s windpipe shut with her bare hands, Rebecca Conner is pulling her patrol car into a spot directly in front of Ricky’s Video Rentals on Baker Street. She comes out here practically every weekend to get a movie. She usually wants to pick something romantic, but Mel, who stays behind at the house because their relationship is still only for those on a need-to-know basis and nobody else needs to know, asks her to pick up some gory horror flick. Truth be told, she secretly enjoys those kinds of movies better than the romance ones, anyway.
Today, though, she’s here on official police business—somebody called the station and asked if they could send an officer out to check on the owner of the video store, Ricky Montoya. Not only is Ricky the only name in home video rentals in Windale, PA, but he’s also the only name in electronics. And he’s handy with them, too. The display he put together for all those fancy TV sets he’s selling is nothing short of magical to look at. But the caller said they’d spotted Ricky on the roof of the strip mall, assembling … well, they couldn’t say exactly what it was he was building, just that something didn’t feel right.
Rebecca gets out of the car and immediately notices something tall and metallic protruding from the roof of Ricky’s shop. It looks like a cross between a radio antenna and a metal sculpture. She has no idea what to make of it other than maybe Montoya is trying his hand at ham radio. Though, Rebecca is pretty sure, you don’t need an antenna that big.
Maybe—and this is far more unlikely—Ricky’s figured out how to intercept the army’s radio communications here in Windale. Maybe he knows exactly what’s going on behind the curtain that Colonel Higgins has drawn over the entire disaster and can give Rebecca an insider tip. Maybe this mess will be over before it gets worse.
Don’t hope too hard, Becky, her mother would have said at a time like this. Or you’ll scare the miracle away.
She goes to the glass door at the front of Ricky’s Video Rentals and stops when she sees that the neon OPEN light in the window is dark and that there’s a paper sign taped inside the door. CLOSED FOR GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER, the sign reads in black marker.
“Well, that’s just not funny at all,” Rebecca mumbles to herself.
She tries the door. Locked. She raps her knuckles against the glass a few times. “Mr. Montoya, it’s Deputy Conner! We received a call from someone concerned about your well-being. Can you open up please?”
There’s nobody else around. The Wag’s and the Pizza Hut are both open for business, but the parking spots in front of them are all empty. The arcade won’t open again until Thursday night. And no one is ever really sure whether the adult bookstore is open. The midday sun is pressing down against the windows and doors of the entire strip mall, and it’s like standing near an open oven. Rebecca is already sweating, wishing for the AC that’s still running in her cruiser.
“Mr. Montoya!” she yells again, louder this time. She knocks on the glass as hard as she can without breaking it. “Mr. Montoya, I need you to open the door and let me in! This is the police!”
A minute passes, then another. Finally, someone pushes open the door to the Pizza Hut and sticks her head out. Rebecca recognizes her as one of the high school students—Hannah something. She’s got a face spattered with dark freckles and a silly-looking visor on her head emblazoned with the Pizza Hut logo.
“Deputy Conner?” Hannah says.
“Hi, hon,” Rebecca replies, moving down the sidewalk a few steps to where Hannah is standing. The door is propped open behind her, and a divinely cool breeze wafts out from inside. “I’m looking for the gentleman who owns the video store. You know him?”
“Ricky?” Hannah says. “Sure, I know him. But I don’t think he’s in there. We haven’t seen him in a couple of days. Not since…” She nods toward Dagger Hill, where from here, Rebecca can just make out the nasty new beauty mark the plane gouged into its face.
“Really?” Rebecca replies. “No offense, but Ricky seems like the kind of guy who’d be more inclined to hike up his prices right about now. I guess the technical term for someone like him is shrewd, but where I come from, we prefer the word weasel.”
Hannah laughs. “You’re not wrong. But he’s also the kind of guy who might skip town before things get really sketchy. We call that a ‘poser.’”
“An astute observation, my dear,” Rebecca says, grinning. “Thanks for your help. If you happen to see him, do you mind giving the police station a call?”
“Not at all.” Hannah smiles and ducks back into the chilly paradise of the Pizza Hut.
Rebecca almost gets into her car and leaves, but she decides a look around back, just to make sure, would be proper protocol. With only a tiny groan, she gives her belt a hearty tug and trudges around to the back of the strip mall.
There’s a line of green dumpsters, all overflowing with heaps of trash and surrounded by huge, buzzing flies. More searing blacktop with chemical shimmers radiating off it. There’s also a ladder, propped up against the back of the building, right where Ricky’s place is. That’s presumably how Ricky got his contraption onto the roof, but there’s not a chance in hell Rebecca’s climbing that thing. If the Montoya kid passed out on the roof and is baking in the sun, then he’s just going to be a cooked chicken—Rebecca’s terrified of heights.
But she notices a sliver of darkness beneath the ladder that gives her hope. The back door to Ricky’s Video Rentals is ajar, which hopefully means that even though Ricky’s business is closed, Ricky is still working.
Rebecca walks past the dumpsters and their vile stench, goes around the shaky-looking ladder, and presses her ear to the open door. She hears nothing. Not a good sign. She knocks, knuckles banging against metal. “Mr. Montoya! This is Deputy Conner! I’m here on official police business! The door is open, and I’m coming in!”
With that, she pulls open the hefty door. It groans loudly, echoing through the silent back lot. Rebecca steps inside with her hand instinctively resting on the butt of her sidearm.
The back office is completely dark except for the too-bright sunlight reflecting in from outside. The AC’s been off for a couple of days, it feels like, and the air inside is stuffy and still, making it hard to breathe. From the front of the store, Rebecca can hear something clicking, over and over, a rapid tickticktickticktickticktick. On the swatch of the bizarrely patterned carpet that she can see from back here, she can see lights flickering.
“Ricky?”
Rebecca doesn’t want to go up to the front, not after the weekend she’s already had. Between Clark Webber’s cows and the plane crash and the chief going toe to toe with that vile colonel—
But she goes, because she’s a good cop and, more important, a good person who cares about the people who live in this town with her, even the weasels and the posers. She moves through the inky dark of the back office to the door with a sign on it that says SALES FLOOR and nudges it open.
The “sales floor” is partially lit by sunlight filtering in through the tinted front windows. But the flickering light is coming from the collection of TV sets that used to be neatly arranged on one wall. Now, they’re scattered across the store. Thrown there, it seems, by somebody. A few of the screens are broken, shattered inward to reveal the wires and circuits inside. The others are powered on, with their screens like frenzied snow globes, sputtering static and noise. One of them is making that god-awful ticking sound. There are huge craters in the walls, and most of the particleboard shelves have been knocked over, tipped into one another like dominoes. The cardboard sleeves that belong to the VHS tapes are torn and strewn about—Rebecca can see the grinning faces of famous actors watching her from every corner of the store.
And there, with his head stuffed inside the broken shell of a thirty-two-inch Sony TV, is Ricky. Jagged teeth of glass stab into his chest and neck. Rebecca can’t even see his face—it’s lost in the maw of the gray creature that ate it. There’s a puddle of blood under Ricky’s body, soaked into the psychedelic carpet. It looks like dark, toxic ooze in the cold blue light of the other televisions.
Rebecca swallows something that might have been a sob or a scream, and she takes a step toward Ricky. She has to check his pulse, but something about this place, about the way he’s lying face-first in the shattered remains of a television, sends a shiver up her spine. She doesn’t think she’s seen so much carnage in just two days as she has this weekend.
As she gets closer, she notices something in Ricky’s hand, pale and limp as it is, but still holding on. It’s a black plastic rectangle, the very thing that Ricky Montoya lived and, apparently, died for: a VHS tape.
Rebecca reaches behind her and yanks the radio out of her belt to call the chief.