The Devils Punchbowl

“It’s coming up now,” Caitlin says, pointing at a small, spinning beach ball on the blue screen. Then the screen goes black. “Do you think there’s any risk of destroying the data by playing it on the wrong machine or anything?”

“I doubt it,” says Kelly. “The disc may not boot without a code, though. Let’s see. Look—”

From out of the blackness comes an image of weathered, old Corinthian columns against a summer sky. The camera pans along the leaves of the capitals, then pulls back to reveal a square of great columns with no building between them, fronted by a set of broad steps that lead into thin air.

“What the hell?” asks Kelly.

“I know that place,” says Caitlin. “That'’s the Windsor Ruins, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say, a chill of foreboding in my chest.

“What’s the Windsor Ruins?” Kelly asks.

Caitlin’s shaking her head in confusion. “It’s where Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift filmed

Raintree County.

” She turns and looks at me with disbelieving eyes. “Penn, is this…?”

“Maybe.”

A couple of years after Caitlin moved to Natchez, she watched

Raintree County

with me on cable one night. When I told her that part of the movie had been filmed close to Natchez, she’d insisted on visiting the burned-out mansion. We took a video camera with us, and as we toured the columns, which stand like silent sentinels in the deep woods north of town, we thought it would be fun to film a romantic kiss on the steps where Taylor and Clift had shot their scene. As was common during that phase of our relationship, things quickly got heated, and we retired behind the huge base of one column to finish what we’d begun on the steps. We’d had some wine, and since we were alone at the site, Caitlin suggested we leave the camera running. I have a feeling that the results of that suggestion are about to flash up on the screen before us.

“Oh, God,” Caitlin cries, as a shot of her moving ardently beneath me fills the screen. Feminine moans come from the computer’s speakers.

“I'’ll close my eyes,” Kelly offers, “but will somebody tell me what the hell is going on? Did you put in the wrong disc?”

They both turn to me as though I'm playing some childish joke on them.

“That'’s the DVD that was in the book,” I say softly. “What the hell?”

There’s a jerky cut, then Caitlin is sitting astride me, her bare breasts flushed, her neck mottled pink.

“You want me to leave?” asks Kelly, staring in confusion at the screen.

“I don'’t care if you see my tits,” Caitlin snaps, “I want to know what’s going on!”

I'm about to stop the player when the scene changes. This image is lower resolution than the first, because it was shot on an early eight-millimeter video camera, one my father bought around 1993. In this video, Annie is three years old, and she’s pretending to make her way hand-over-hand across a horizontal ladder. Beneath her, trying to stay out of the frame, are her mother and me. Annie giggles with the unalloyed joy that no parent can hear without a tug at the heart, and Sarah laughs every time Annie giggles.

“You’re almost there!” Sarah yells encouragingly. “You’ve almost done it!”

Explosive giggles fill the soundtrack as Annie reaches out and

grips the last crossbar with her plump little hand. When I pull her free and set her on my shoulders, Sarah hugs us both, then raises her hand in triumph. Too upset to speak, I reach out, turn the red trackball on the desk, and pause the video.

“Penn?” Caitlin says worriedly. “What is this? Are you okay?”

“It’s not the videos that bother me,” I say, lying just a little. “That first one? The one of us doing it?”

“Yes?”

“I didn't want Annie to see this tape by accident, so I put it in my safety-deposit box at the bank.”

Caitlin blinks rapidly, trying to work out what’s going on.

Kelly gets there first. “Sands made this disc. Or Quinn. Sometime before this afternoon, they found the real disc, then made this one and replaced the original with it. That'’s what you’re saying, right?”

“It’s the only explanation.”

“And the tape of you and Caitlin—the one in your safe-deposit box was the only copy?”

“Absolutely. Does that mean someone at the bank helped them?”

“Not necessarily. Sands may have a box at the same bank. Depending on bank procedures, he or Quinn could have gone in to see their box, then broken into yours. They probably did it as soon as Sands perceived you as a threat. Same with your house. That'’s probably where he got the old home movies, right?”

“No. Those were in my dad’s house.”

“The fact that he got to this stuff is the message. Even though he got his stolen disc back, he’s saying he can get to you anyplace, anytime.”

“We’d better watch the rest of the tape, just to be sure.”

Caitlin looks at me. “Are you sure you want to see it?”

“Me? What about you?”

“Kelly already saw me naked. Big whoop. It’s you I'm worried about.” Her voice goes quiet. “Stuff with Sarah? Things you might not want to see with me? Or me to see at all?”

I take her hand, and Kelly looks away. “It’s okay. Whatever there is, you can watch.”

Caitlin swallows hard, and her eyes soften. Then she sighs, composes herself, and clicks the button on the trackball.

On the screen, Sarah and Annie and I fade to black. Then Annie

appears again, alone this time. She can’t be more than ten months old, and she’s sitting on the steps of our house in Houston. She looks into the lens, then reaches for someone outside the frame. When no one takes her, her eyes fill with confusion and she begins to cry. Just as Sarah’s hands enter the frame to take her, the sound of maddened dogs bursts from the speakers. The savage cacophony hurls me thirty years back in time, to the night Tim and I pedaled for our lives in the cemetery. From the sound, five or six dogs are fighting over something, but then the snarls and snapping teeth are punctuated by a sound that freezes my blood. It’s a man screaming—first like a man, then like a little boy being torn apart by wolves. Male voices shout in the background, but I can’t make out distinct words. The screams become shrieks, rising in pitch and volume until they'’re suddenly cut off. What follows can only be the sound of animals fighting over meat. As we stare in stunned horror, the screen goes blue.

“That'’s the worst thing I’'ve ever heard,” Caitlin says. “Do you think the disc has fingerprints on it?”

“Yours,” I say. “These guys don'’t make that kind of mistake.”

“Who

are

these people? That wasn'’t dogfighting.”

“That was a snuff tape,” Kelly says, a strange awe in his voice. “I'’ll bet they have video too. They just couldn'’t risk showing it to us.”

“You think it shows them?” I ask.

“Maybe. I'’ll bet we could ID the victim from it.”

“Ben Li?” I suggest.

Kelly shrugs. He’s already read Linda’s note and listened to the tape of Tim’s car chase. “Could have been. This guy sounded older to me when he first screamed, though. Late thirties, forties maybe.”

“Jesus,”

says Caitlin. “You can guess people’s ages by their screaming?”

The Delta veteran shrugs again. “Occupational hazard.”

She turns to me and starts to speak, then steps close. “Penn? I’'ve never seen you look like that. Except maybe…after Ruby was in the fire.”

“Sands got what he wanted, right?” I say too loudly. “He found his missing disc. So why go to all this trouble? Why keep

fucking