Universal Harvester(9)

No. This is Sarah Jane Shepherd at Video Hut in Nevada. Something’s wrong with …

No. Hi, I got a tape from you that’s had something else taped onto it and I think you should know about it. Maybe. Transfer the responsibility. But they, in turn, bought their tapes from somebody else, and that’s what they’d probably say: Everything arrives at the Northern Video warehouse sealed. All we do is pick and pack. This is probably one of your customers.

This is probably one of your customers. Video Hut did decent business, but was small. People who worked in Ames rented from Hollywood Video now. The customer base was shrinking. Stores like Sarah Jane’s were on their way out: they’d served small towns since the dawn of the VCR boom, but they couldn’t compete with volume. Count up the membership cards in the box on the counter by the computer terminal, throw out the ones that belonged to people who hadn’t rented in over a year, and you’d know exactly how big the pool of possible suspects was.

So she took She’s All That home with her that night, along with Targets—Jeremy’d called it “the other one, the old one”—and, from the comfort and safety of her recliner, fast-forwarded to the hard parts. Just like Stephanie Parsons, she took notes; but her own notes were very direct, item-by-item accounts of anything visible in the frame during the scenes in question, with no guesses or question marks. After running the She’s All That scene twice, she reviewed her work while the movie played on. Working efficiently while a movie played was second nature to her by now, more comfortable than silence.

She was making a check mark by a line that said “cheap card-table chair, something from a garage sale” when the end credits started. “Kiss Me” jangled along underneath while they rolled, warm and sentimental. Then, about halfway through, the song stopped, and the credits cut out, and the living room filled with light.

*

She left for Collins early the next morning, meaning to verify her suspicions and be back in time to open the store. She’d taken several Polaroids of the image on the screen during the end credits’ most harrowing moment; a snapshot of a paused screen wasn’t much, but you could still see the face clearly enough, the spatter drooling down its chin onto the dirt of the driveway. You could see the field off to the right. And you could see, finally, in the background, behind the woman apparently crawling away from it and toward the road, the unmistakable outline of a farmhouse; and you’d know, if you’d grown up anywhere nearby, exactly which house it was.

A woman in a faded floral-print dress, yellow daisies and blue cornflowers, answered the door. “Good morning,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

Sarah Jane looked at her, trying not to stare too hard. “Sarah Jane Shepherd,” she said; manners still came first. “My folks owned a farmhouse a little closer to town when I was a kid. I grew up over there.”

“Well, good to meet you, Sarah Jane Shepherd,” said the woman in the floral-print dress. “I’m Lisa. I came here about five years ago, I guess. I was up in Charles City before.”

“Lisa—”

“Sample.” She regarded Sarah Jane and extended her hand. “My folks were from Pottawattamie County.”

“Near Grinnell?”

“No, that’s Poweshiek.” Sarah Jane nodded. “Pottawattamie’s way over western Iowa. Almost Nebraska.”

“Right, sure. Well—I was wondering if I could have a look at your outbuilding,” said Sarah Jane, releasing Lisa’s hand and gesturing across the driveway; she didn’t see any point in putting it off. On the drive over she’d practiced a few reasons, and now she made her choice. “My dad wants to build himself a toolshed before summer.” Her father had been dead for several years. It was a gamble.

Lisa came out through the screen door. Her feet were bare; there was some dirt underneath her toenails, enough to see it without needing a closer look. She looked to be in her early thirties, but her manner seemed older: she walked languidly, and spoke slowly, her voice deeper than the one Sarah Jane might have imagined coming from that young face.

“Sure—it’s not much,” she said, starting down the porch toward the building in question and beckoning Sarah Jane to follow her. “It was already on the property when I got here. I think it might be original with the house.”

Inside the shed, its single overhead lightbulb too bright for the small space, Sarah Jane focused hard on her breathing, pretending to look into the corners she hadn’t already seen on the tape. She paced the perimeter slowly, looking up to the ceiling and trying to think of questions. She hadn’t thought far enough ahead.

“They don’t make ’em like this anymore,” she said after a while, pleased with herself.

“I guess not,” said Lisa Sample. “Mainly people buy them premade now. No real reason to build one, I guess.”

Sarah Jane thought very briefly about her life, about how little ever happened, and then she retrieved the printout of the paused frame from her purse. She didn’t really believe she was about to show it to a total stranger, but she didn’t see any other way to go about it.

“Listen,” she said. “I saw a strange movie and I recognized the places in it from having grown up out this way. Look over here”—she jabbed at the right side of the page—“that’s your house, right?”