Page 54 of The Vegas Rerun
I see Molly leave her desk, presumably to have her lunch. I skip forward, waiting for her to return, but instead, Sarah appears and goes to Molly’s desk where she stands and waits until Molly comes back into the shot again.
There. The two women have spoken briefly, and Molly is now following Sarah towards the east stairwell. I track them to the door, and then I switch views to the east stairwell camera. The time stamp on the main hallway footage showed it was one forty-two pm when the women entered the stairwell.
I skip ahead on the stairwell footage until I find the same time stamp. Sarah and Molly come through the door, and I slow the footage down to real time, just letting it play normally.
My heart is slamming in my chest as I ready myself for what I’m about to watch. I feel like it beats louder than the low hum of the equipment.
On the screen, Molly walks into frame. She’s tense, kind of pissed off looking. Her shoulders are tight, and her lips are pressed into a line. A few seconds later, Sarah enters behind her, her steps quicker, more aggressive., although she too looks pissed off. The women start talking to each other. There’s no audio, but from their expression and their body language, it is clear that they are arguing about something.
Then it happens. Sarah hits herself square in the nose. Bang. Blood pours out of it.
The punch she gives herself is so fast, so deliberate, that I almost miss it. She raises her hand, clenches it, and punches herself in the face a second time, causing a thin mist of blood droplets to spray through the air. She is freely bleeding, the blood cascading down her chin and onto her blouse.
I blink.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
The two women are arguing again and after a few minutes, it looks like Molly tries to get back out of the stairwell, but Sarah stands in front of the door, blocking Molly’s path. The argument continues for a bit longer, and then Sarah shoves her, hard.
There is no hesitation, no pause, and it certainly wasn’t self-defense. Even if Molly said something threatening, she wasn’t physically attacking Sarah like Sarah had claimed.
I rewind a little bit of the footage and watch it again as Sarah pushes Molly square in the chest with both hands. It’s not a slip. It’s not an accident. It’s controlled, intentional. I feel sick watching it, but I can’t stop now. I have to see what happens to poor Molly.
Molly stumbles and it looks like she’s going to fall, but then she grabs the railing and stops herself from falling. Only shemust have landed funny on one of her feet, because her ankle rolls and then she’s falling for real this time.
The sickening grace of her falling hits me like a punch to the gut. Her arms flail as she twists in midair, trying to catch herself, but there’s nothing to grab. She disappears from the frame, and I’m glad I don’t have to watch her bouncing down every stair. Even without watching the footage, I can imagine the sound of her body hitting the stairs, over and over again, and then the awful silence that would follow as she landed at the bottom of the stairs, broken and bruised.
I reach out to stop the play back of the footage, but I notice Sarah standing at the top of the flight of stairs and I find myself watching her for a moment as she stares down the stairwell for a beat. If there was any doubt in my mind that she had meant for Molly to fall, the expression on her face would have scrubbed it clean away. She’s smiling – a wide, nasty looking smile that kind of reminds me of the Grinch’s smile. Then she looks around, composes herself, and rushes back into the hallway, out of frame.
Sarah admitted she had pushed Molly, but she claimed it was in self-defense. The only person swinging hands was herself. I can’t believe she likely broke her own nose just to make Molly look bad.
I shoot to my feet, the chair rolling back and slamming into the wall. My breath catches. My stomach twists so hard that I nearly gag.
Everything in me wants to go straight to the police, or to confront Sarah, and to scream at her, to ask her what exactly the fuck she was thinking. But the weight of it all - of knowing the truth and needing to act, but not sure yet which action is the correct one - nearly knocks me flat. This is new to me. I’m usually decisive and can make quick decisions, but this is different. Personal. The woman I love – and yes, I do love Molly,there’s no getting around that – has been hurt when under my supervision and in my care, I suppose you could say.
I sit back down and run my hands over my face.
I replay the footage. Once. Twice. A third time, slower, just to be sure. I tell myself it’s because I can’t afford to leave any room for doubt. I need to know this isn’t some trick of the camera, some optical illusion. But the truth is, it’s not that. I’m just torturing myself, watching Molly get hurt, feeling sicker with each viewing until I tell myself that’s enough.
It’s real. I can see it’s real from Sarah’s posture, and the force behind the shove. Molly didn’t even move towards her, let alone run at her like she was attacking her. And then the bit that really turns my blood cold, the way Sarah smiles after Molly hits the ground, like she’s proud of herself.
I stop the footage from replaying over again and I exhale hard, scrubbing a hand down my face. I feel dirty just watching this, like I’m complicit in it somehow, even though I had nothing to do with it. I tell myself not to be silly, but the niggling feeling doesn’t quite go away. I know what Sarah is like and I knew how much she wanted the job Molly got. I should have watched her more closely, made sure she wasn’t planning to do anything rash. But truthfully, even if I had kept an eye on her, I wouldn’t have been watching for this. I would have expected an argument, some bitchy comments maybe. But this? God no.
I wonder if that’s even what the fight was about. It’s been a fair amount of time since Molly was promoted. Why would Sarah wait until now to act? But if it’s not about the job, why would Sarah do this? Molly wouldn’t hurt a fly. She avoids confrontation like it’s contagious so I don’t think she’s been antagonising Sarah, and I don’t believe for a second that Molly was bragging about having me under her thumb – I didn’t believe it before but now, after seeing what I have just seen, Iwill never believe another word that comes out of Sarah’s mouth again.
I glance at the timestamp on the footage again. One forty-two and seventeen seconds. I grab a notebook and pen from the desk drawer and jot it down. I’ll need to make copies, secure the footage, maybe send a copy to the police and definitely one to HR.
And most importantly, I need to talk to Molly. Not later. Not after the meetings and following the protocol and cutting through all the red tape. Fuck that shit. I need to see that she’s ok with my own eyes and I need to hear her voice, hear her say she doesn’t blame me for this, I guess. But mostly, I just want her to be ok.
CHAPTER 38
JOSHUA
The sick,acidic rage that I can feel deep down in my stomach won’t leave me. It feels like it’s eating me from the inside out. I have to do something to get it out, but I don’t know what that something is.
The rage churns low in my gut, coiling tighter with every breath I take. I think getting out of the tiny security office might help and so I close down the CCTV laptop and lock it in the cabinet behind me, the click of the key echoing far louder than it should. My hands tremble as I lock the office door behind me, not with fear, but with fury. It is a dangerous sort of fury. The sort that is controlled, tempered, and in the right circumstances, lethal. I’ve seen a lot in my time here, but this – fuck - this is something else.
Sarah pushed Molly down the stairs. There was no fucking self-defense and no excuse for what she did. She did it deliberately. Methodically. Like she’d planned it. Like she was eliminating a problem. And afterwards, she smiled like she was pleased with herself.
