Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

Unless he still intended to use it.

He swung around and stalked over to the desk, staring down at the desktop CPU. On the screen, nasty little people chattered and talked in excited gibberish. He clicked the mouse, running over the site, not wanting to go down the wrong vile rabbit hole, until he reached the drive-in movie theater he’d heard Lily and Brandon talking about.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered when his instincts proved right.

“What?” Stacey asked, stepping behind him.

He pointed to the sign, the marquee outside the theater. One word appeared on it, bold and large, demanding attention.

Hanging .

She gasped. “The camera.”

He’d taken it, and probably a laptop, for a reason.

“Where would he go?”

Dean had no idea. But it had to be somewhere close, in town, maybe. Someplace where Seth could quickly set up and hop online for his final performance.

The only question was, whom did he intend to hang? God, did he hope Stacey’s fears about her father didn’t bear fruit.

Desperate for more information, he clicked on the entrance to the drive-in. When asked to pay credits, he cursed the techno-psychos, then figured out how to spend some of the Reaper’s own currency.

As soon as he’d done so, the screen faded to black. Then, very slowly, a picture began to emerge. Not a cartoon, not a phantasmic world of garish light and exaggerated color. This was the real world. And a real person.

“Seth,” Stacey whispered, bending low to watch as the picture grew clearer.

When it did, he immediately realized it was already happening. All the excited people in the Playground were shelling out their gold.

The intended victim was the Reaper himself. He was going to commit suicide. Now. Right now, live on the Internet.

Utterly helpless, they watched as Seth Covey, dressed all in black, pulled a noose down from above, sliding it over his head. He stood on an old-fashioned wooden box; the walls surrounding him were rough-hewn and faded, the floor bare dirt.

Seth smiled at the camera. And, without hesitation, kicked the box.

Stacey flinched as the body dropped and began to writhe on the end of the rope. But rather than covering her eyes in horror at seeing her friend’s son end his life, she smacked her hand flat on the desk.

“He’s in Dad’s old barn! It’s within reach of the wireless.”

They stared at each other for a split second, then rose and ran like hell up the stairs. He could see the barn in the distance. The EMTs were getting ready to bring the boy out and needed the ambulance. A siren was coming up the road, drawing closer, but still at least a minute or two away. More precious seconds would be lost to a trip up the driveway, back down, then two miles up the road.

Straight across the fields was shorter. A mile at most.

Neither of them hesitated. They both ran, flying across the ground, oblivious to the weeds and rocks covering the rough countryside. They reached the bottom of the hill, pounded through a small stream, up the other side.

How long? He didn’t want to think about how many minutes it had been, whether Seth’s body still twitched and spun. And how many sick fucks around the world were tuning in to watch.

God knew, if there was anybody who deserved the death penalty, it was probably the Reaper. But Dean wanted him to face justice. Not to escape by his own hand, his own way, on his own terms.

He found a reserve of speed and picked it up, covering the final quarter mile a few seconds ahead of Stacey. The barn door was closed, but he burst against it, shattering the old wood, splintering the planks into pieces as he stumbled inside.

He spied the killer immediately. The man hung still. Completely still. But still Dean charged forward, tripping over something-the infernal camera. He kicked it away, dove for Seth’s dangling feet, lifting and trying to remove the pressure. Stacey was right behind him, shoving the wooden box back in place, and they both heaved up.

But even before they’d moved to cut him down, Dean knew they were too late. The body was deadweight. Covey’s face was purple, his neck bent at an odd angle. It had broken in the fall. And then he’d suffocated.

It was over.

The Reaper was dead.

Hope Valley had boasted a famous citizen or two in its day. Some World War II hero had hailed from the town, as had a semisuccessful country singer. Even a former Virginia congressman.

The Reaper, however, topped them all.

As soon as word about the case got out, the media descended upon Stacey’s small hometown, covering every inch of it like fire ants on an anthill. She couldn’t get away from them. She held formal press conferences right away, with Dean and his boss by her side, but the vultures still parked outside her house at night. She felt like a bug under a microscope as they all watched, hoping something new would happen to serve as the teaser for the next broadcast.

There was nothing new left to happen. Covey was dead. His last victim, little Nicholas Logan, would survive physically unscathed, though probably mentally scarred.

They’d even found the final piece of the puzzle they’d been looking for all along. While processing the scene at the barn, Dean had noticed a slightly sunken area in the ground in the back of one of the old stalls.

Lisa.

And that was the end of that.

Still, the reporters pried into all the angles, titillated beyond belief by word that the first victim’s mother had killed her husband. And that the Reaper’s father was hospitalized but facing charges for theft when he was released. Somehow Rob-the-Perv Monroe had even gotten tangled in there- Sheriff Who Catches Killer Stalked in Her Own Home . The mayor had quietly resigned, not stepping forward even once to take advantage of the spotlight. And his sick, miserable excuse for a son was sitting in a mental ward, hopefully being tormented with the memories of what he’d done to poor Lady.

The FBI tried to keep Satan’s Playground out of it, but the media had wanted the full details of the Internet connection, and they’d found them. The site had gone black, for good this time, within twenty-four hours of Seth’s suicide.

Sick bastards. She could only hope that the FBI would catch them when they inevitably resurfaced.

“Finally got a minute alone, huh?” a voice asked from the open doorway of her office late one weekday afternoon.

Spying Mitch there, she forced a weary smile. “I think it’s my first in a week.”

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay.”

It was true. Not great, but she was holding up. She’d just be better if she didn’t have to hold up alone. Oh, she was surrounded by friends, supported by her father and her brother, who’d finally gotten past his own situation to help his sister, his town, and his best friend through the ordeal. Her deputies had been rock-solid, the town residents sincerely grateful for a job well-done.

Even Warren Lee had done his civic duty, turning up at the station with some surveillance images from the night Lisa had been killed. He said he’d just discovered them, having gone looking after the case was blown open. She didn’t know that she believed him. Still, all was good.

But she went to bed alone every night. She had for several nights, ever since Dean and the rest of the Black CATs, as even the media was now calling them, headed back to D.C.

He’d called. She’d called. But somehow, something had changed. He hadn’t had to say it; she’d figured it out.

The case was over. He had no reason to be here. She’d been the one who had demanded a “meaningless,” emotionless fling for as long as he was around. Now, the only reason he would have to be around was if she wanted him to be, if this thing they had became personal. Emotional. Real.