Intensity

convenience stores would be smart enough to climb on a stool and eject the cassette to take it with them or otherwise destroy the evidence. The camera is sending the image to a video recorder elsewhere in the building.
        The system is an add-on, so the transmission cable isn't buried in the wall. This is fortunate for Vess, because if the cable were hidden, the search would be more time-consuming. The line isn't even tucked up above the suspended acoustic-tile ceiling. Bracketed to the Sheetrock, it leads openly to the back partition behind the cashiers' counter and through a half-inch-diameter hole in that wall to another room.
        There's a door to that room as well. He finds an office with one desk, gray metal filing cabinets, a small safe with a combination lock, and wood-pattern Formica storage cabinets.
        Fortunately, the recorder isn't in the safe. The transmission cable comes through the wall from the store, continues through two more brackets for a distance of about seven feet, then drops down through the top of one of the storage cabinets. No attempt at concealment whatsoever.
        He opens the upper doors to the cabinet, doesn't find what he seeks, and checks below. Three machines are stacked atop one another.
        Tape whispers through the bottom machine, and the indicator light shines above the word RECORD. He presses the STOP button, then EJECT, and he drops the cassette into his raincoat pocket.
        He might play it for Ariel. The quality will not be first-rate, because this is an old system, outdated technology. But the precious girl will be impressed by his bold performance even in too brightly lit scenes on black-and-white tape that has been re-recorded too often.
        A telephone stands on the desk. He uncouples it from the cord that leads to the wall jack and uses the butt of the shotgun to smash the keypad.
        A new shift of clerks will come on duty, probably at eight or nine o'clock, in four or five hours. By then Vess will be long gone. But there's no point in making it easy for them to call the police. Something might go wrong with his plans, delaying him here or on the highway, and then he will be glad that he bought himself an extra half hour by destroying the telephones.
        Beside the door is a pegboard on which hang eight keys, each with its own tag. With the exception of the current regrettable interruption in service, this establishment is open twenty-four hours a day-yet there's a key to lock the front door. He slips it off its peg.
        In the work area behind the cashiers' counter once more, after closing the office door behind him, Vess snaps down a switch, and the overhead fluorescents wink out.
        He stands in the dim light that remains, breathing through his mouth, licking his lips, rolling his tongue over his gums, tasting the lingering acrid scent of gunfire. The gloom feels good against his face and the backs of his hands; the shadows are as erotic as slender, trembling hands.
        Stepping around the bodies, he goes to the counter and takes only his forty dollars from the cash register drawer.
        The young Asian's Smith & Wesson.38 Chief's Special lies on the counter, in the cone of light from the gooseneck lamp, where Vess carefully placed it minutes ago. He is no more capable of stealing the gun than he is of taking money that doesn't belong to him.
        The Slim Jim, from which the Asian took a large bite, is also on the counter. Unfortunately, the wrapper was peeled off; therefore, it is useless.
        Vess plucks another sausage from the display rack, neatly chews off the end of the plastic wrapper, and slides the tube of meat out of the package. He inserts the shorter sausage (missing the Asian's bite) into the wrapper and twists the end shut. He puts this in his pocket with the videotape-for Ariel.
        He pays for the sausage that he threw away, making change from the open register drawer.
        On the counter is a telephone. He unplugs it from the jack and smashes the keypad with the butt of the shotgun.
        Now he goes shopping.

    
        Chyna was relieved when the lights went off, frightened by the hammering, and then alert in the subsequent silence.
        She had crept out of the cooler-lighted aisle and returned to her shelter at the end of the shelf row, where she had quietly peeled open the cardboard-and-plastic package that contained the disposable cigarette