Kiss Of Evil

67

At first, to the 617 people tuned to Cable99 on New Year’s Eve, it looks to be a scaled-down version of Hollywood Squares. Or The Brady Bunch. Four windows dividing the TV screen into four equal sections.

Closer examination, to those in the know, would yield the understanding that these are four separate webcam feeds, the sort of cybercast videos that jump and lurch and produce, overall, a rather vertiginous effect in the viewer.

Still, anything can happen on Cable99, and often did.

In the upper-left-hand frame is a disheveled man, early forties, maybe. He is sitting in a chair, staring blankly at the camera. But not moving. The room he is in looks to have very dark walls, and the bright lights cast harsh shadows across his face.

In the upper-right-hand corner is a still photo of a very exotic-looking young woman, a fashion model head shot, a real dark-eyed beauty. The lower two squares are blank.

In the control booth at Cable99, Furnell Braxton, the unlucky low man on the totem pole who drew New Year’s Eve tech duty, casts a disinterested eye toward the monitor as he eats his Tony Roma’s.

At eleven-thirty-one, a DVD begins to play in the lower-right-hand frame. It looks like a video of a man standing in front of the Justice Center, a place Furnell Braxton tries to avoid at all costs. The video is pretty jerky, as always, but Furnell is not a big believer in streaming video anyway — half the time it lagged way behind the audio — and truly hopes all concerned here understand.

Still, the audio seems to be running smoothly.

“This was a cold-blooded killing of a police officer in the line of duty,” the smeary video image of the guy in front of the Justice Center says. “I think the evidence will show that the defendant, Sarah Weiss, pulled the trigger.”

Performance artists, Furnell thinks. What a bunch. Still, anything’s better than the woman who dresses her dogs up for tea once a month, then tapes the whole damn thing.

The tape continues: “Mike Ryan was a good cop… Mike Ryan was a family man… a man who woke up every day and chose-chose-to strap on a gun and jump into the fray… Mike Ryan died in the line of duty protecting the people of this city.”

Furnell pops open his diet Dr Pepper.

“So the next time you find yourself picking through a pile of garbage, or hiding in the bushes like some pervert, or running down the street with a forty-pound video camera just so you can invade the privacy of a heartbroken ten-year-old girl in a wheelchair, I want you to stop, take a deep breath, and ask yourself what the hell it is you do for a living…”

“Damn straight,” Furnell says as he unwraps his dessert.

“Sometimes, the monster is real, people,” the man says. “Sometimes, the monster has a pretty face and a perfectly ordinary name. This time, the monster is called Sarah Weiss.”

There is a break in the video, then, a new video image.

A young man, wearing Ray-Bans, sitting in a wing chair, in a brightly lit room.

Furnell nearly chokes on his soft drink when the man in the sunglasses says the words.

Within sixty seconds he is talking to his cousin Wallace. Wallace Braxton works the night shift at WKYC, the Cleveland affiliate station of NBC.

“Are you sure?” Wallace asks for the second time, already punching in his boss’s speed-dial number.

“Absolutely,” Furnell says. “Absolutely sure. He said, ‘Here, tonight, live, a police officer is going to commit suicide.’”