Death Mask (3 page)

Below her, half submerged in the darkest depths of the well, a black creature was looking up at her expectantly, its teeth bared and its claws ready to snatch at her dress.

Sissy frowned at the card for a while, and then she tucked it firmly back into the middle of the deck. You're just a card. Don't try to get smart with me.

"Grandma?" asked Victoria.

"What is it, sweetheart?"

"What's the matter, Grandma? That wasn't a horrible card, was it?"

"No, of course not. It was a very nice card, as a matter of fact. It was a little girl, jumping into some water. Hey-maybe it means that Mommy and Daddy will take you on vacation."

But Sissy suspected that the card was yet another warning, especially since it had been brought to her attention in such an extraordinary way. How could a card fall edgewise like that and stick in the table? It was a warning that something bloody and violent was very close at hand, and that it was going to arrive amongst them sooner rather than later. The girl, falling down the well. The black creature, waiting to tear her to pieces.

"Daddy promised he would to take us to Disney World," said Victoria, with a mouthful of Toll House cookie.

"That would be wonderful, wouldn't it?" smiled Sissy. She rested her hand on top of Victoria's head. Une Jeune fille tombante.

The world at the bottom of the well was another world altogether, in which creatures could breathe, but humans would drown. The cards were telling her that whatever was coming, it was coming from someplace different and strange-a place of reflections, and shadows, where everything was back to front, and voices argued very late at night, in empty rooms.

Molly came in from the yard, followed by Trevor and Detectives Kunzel and Bellman.

"I'll see you later, Sissy," she said. She picked up a green crochet shrug from the back of one of the kitchen chairs and pulled it on. "I don't know how long I'm going to be-maybe two to three hours, depending. You'll take care of these two for me, won't you?"

"Oh, yes," Sissy assured her. "I'll take care of them good. I'll feed them and I'll read them a story and I'll make sure that they wash their teeth before I tuck them into bed."

"Ha!" laughed Detective Kunzel.

"Momma," Trevor protested. "For Christ's sake, already."

CHAPTER 5 - Red Mask

They had moved Jane Becker into a private room next to the trauma-surgery unit. As Molly made her way along the corridor, one of the fluorescent lights was flickering, which made her feel as if she were walking through one of those Japanese horror movies, like Ring.

A uniformed cop was sitting on a chair outside her door, reading Cosmopolitan.

"All they had," he explained, as Molly gave him a smile.

"I'll bring you a Penthouse, next time I come," she told him.

The room was painted a neutral magnolia, with a large framed poster of "Blue Grass Country" hanging on the wall. The venetian blinds had been closed, but Molly could see the glittering lights of Bethesda Avenue through the slats.

A young woman with curly chestnut hair was propped up in bed. Although she was very pale, she had one of those faces that Molly called "sweetly pretty." Her pert little nose had a sprinkling of freckles across it, like cinnamon. Her eyes were mint green and her lips were bow shaped and very pink. But her left cheek was swollen with an angry red bruise, and she had butterfly stitches on her left eyebrow. Both of her hands were swathed in white muslin bandages, and Molly could see that underneath her pink flowery hospital gown, thick padded dressings had been applied to her shoulder blades.

As Molly came in, a large black nurse was checking her saline drip.

"You the artist lady?" asked the nurse.

"That's me."

"Here," said the nurse, and maneuvered an armchair to the side of the young woman's bed. "But make sure you don't go tiring her out none. Her blood pressure's way too low, which means she's still in shock."

"I'll be fine, honest," the young woman assured her in a high, off-key whisper.

"Oh, yeah? In my experience it's the ones who insist they're going to be fine is the ones who keel over the quickest."

Molly propped her leather-bound sketchbook against the side of her chair and hung her satchel of pencils and pastels over the back of it.

"Molly-Molly Sawyer," she smiled. "I can't shake your hand, but hi."

"Hi," said the young woman. "Jane Becker. Very nearly the late Jane Becker."

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Molly asked her. "The police want a likeness as soon as possible, but I can always come back tomorrow morning."

Jane Becker emphatically shook her curls. "He killed that poor man, right in front of me, for no reason at all. Stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him, and then he started to stab me. I mean-why? I didn't even know him, and I don't think that man knew him either."

"Well, the police can't think of any reason why he should have attacked either of you," said Molly. "The man who got killed was a Realtor. George Woods, that was his name. He worked for Ohio Relocations on the nineteenth floor. Forty-one years old, with a wife and two little girls aged seven and five."

"I'm so sorry." Jane Becker's eyes were crowded with tears. "Somehow it makes so much worse, doesn't it, knowing what his name was? He wasn't just a dead man, he was George Woods."

"Yes," said Molly. She tugged a Kleenex out of the box on the nightstand and handed it to her. "But doesn't that give us all the more incentive to find the guy who murdered him? Think of George Woods's family. Think of his girls. He's never going to see them grow up, and they won't even remember him. Let's try to give them some justice, shall we?"

Jane Becker nodded. "I'll help you. I promise. I can picture that man so clearly. Like he's there." She reached out with one of her bandaged hands as if he were standing right beside Molly and she could actually touch him.

Molly sat down, with her sketchbook on her knees.

"Before you start trying to describe the man who attacked you, Jane, I'd really like to know a little about you."

Jane Becker blinked at her. "Me? I'm just a legal secretary who got into an elevator and got stabbed by some psycho."

"I know. But I want to see that man through your eyes. Different people see things in completely different ways, especially when they're highly stressed. If you go to court, for instance, and you listen to five eyewitnesses, you wouldn't believe that they were all describing the same crime. The perpetrators were Hispanic. The perpetrators were black. The perpetrators were white guys wearing black hoodies. They drove a blue Buick or a gray Oldsmobile or a silver Accord. They had guns, they had knives, they had baseball bats. They ran off east, they drove off west."

"Okay. I understand. But I don't know what I can tell you."

"You can start with how old you are."

"Twenty-five last April. Aries, although I never behave like an Aries. Like, I'm not exactly the assertive type."

"You're single?"

A second's pause. "Yes, I'm single."

"Do you live by yourself?"

"For a while I did-almost eighteen months. But last October I moved back home with my mom and my dad. Oh, and my annoying younger brother Kevin."

"And home is where?"

"Lakeside Park. I've lived there all my life. I went to Villa Madonna Academy and then to Thomas More."

Molly thought: quiet, conservative neighborhood, not too expensive, with mostly traditional homes. "What made you move back?" she asked.

"I had an apartment on Elm Street, in the city. I loved it, but it was way too expensive."

"Okay…You like music?"

"Oh, sure. Imogen Heap, she's my favorite. 'Have You Got It In You?' And Tori Amos."

"And reading?"

"Danielle Steel. I love Danielle Steel. And The Lovely Bones. That was the last book I read."

"How's your social life? Are you dating at all?"

"I go out with guys sometimes. But mostly in a gang from the office, you know? There's nobody special, not at the moment."

"Did you ever have anybody special?"

Jane Becker suddenly coughed, and coughed again, and reached over for a glass of water. When she had recovered, she said, "I don't understand the question. I mean, what does that have to do with my being attacked?"

"Jane-it's only background. It helps me to visualize the man who stabbed you in the same way that you do. You perceived him with your emotions, with who you are, as well as your eyes."

"Can't I just describe him to you?"

"I'm sorry," said Molly. "I didn't mean to upset you. Sure-let's get down to business and see if we can't bring this guy to life."

She folded back the first page of her sketchbook and picked out a soft sepia crayon. "What struck you about him the most? I mean-if you had to describe him to me in three words, what would you say?"

"His face. He had such a bright-red face. It was so red, it was practically scarlet. It was like he was badly sunburned, or maybe he'd been drinking. And he had eyes like slits, and a mouth like a slit, too. It was almost like he was wearing a red mask."

"Do you think he could have been wearing a mask?"

"Oh, no. That was his real face. But it was just so red."

"Did you smell alcohol on his breath?"

"No. But he did have a smell… It was kind of sour, and burned. Like burned hair."

"Okay…he had a red face and eyes like slits. Could you take a guess at his ethnic origin? Did he look Oriental, maybe? Or Native American?" Molly's pencil was already at work, and the man's disembodied eyes were peering up at her from the page, as if they were emerging from another dimension.

"I don't know what he was. He looked dangerous, that's all. You ever see men like that? They're all full of tension, like those pit bull terriers, you know?"

"Okay…how tall would you say he was?"

"At least six feet. Six feet two. Maybe a little over."

"And how was he built?"

"Heavy, with very broad shoulders. And a thick neck. And the way he stood. Even that was threatening. Kind of leaning toward me, as if he was itching to be let off the leash."

"How would you describe the shape of his face? Oval, round, or squarish?"

"Squarish. Definitely squarish. And his forehead was kind of slabby."

"How about his nose?"

Jane Becker closed her eyes. Molly waited for her with her crayon poised over her sketchbook, saying nothing. She knew that Jane Becker could see her attacker's face as clearly as if he were standing right in front of her, and she didn't want to interrupt that moment of intense visualization. She wished only that she could share it.

"Jane?" she coaxed her. "His nose? Was it a long nose or a snubby nose? Getting the nose right-that's real important. If you think of the way that cartoonists draw people-they always exaggerate their noses."

Jane Becker opened her eyes again. "I don't want to make a mistake, that's all. I was so freaked out when he was stabbing that poor man. But what if they arrest somebody and it wasn't him?"

"Jane, seriously, that's down to me. I'm the forensic artist, it's my responsibility to get it right."

Jane Becker hesitated for a moment longer, and then she said, "Okay, then, his nose was pointed, with kind of a bump in it. And he had very high cheekbones. And a big chin, with a cleft in it. I remember that. A really deep cleft."

Molly's pencil made the softest of chuffing noises as she shaded and filled and structured, and the perpetrator gradually began to materialize in front of her, as if he were coming toward her through a hazy white fog.

"What was his hair like?" she asked.

"Reddish…reddish, but turning gray. And cut very short. Bristly."

Molly took out her box of pastel colors and went on sketching and shading for a few moments more. A red face, with touches of green and blue to give it depth and emphasis.

"You didn't see what color his eyes were?"

"Like I say, they were slits. All I can think of is black."

Molly lifted up her sketchbook up and turned it around so that Jane Becker could see what she had drawn.

Jane Becker covered her mouth with one bandaged hand. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Oh my God, that's so much like him."

"You're sure?"

Jane Becker peered at the sketch more intently. "Maybe the cheekbones not so sharp. His cheeks were kind of fuller, not so hollow. And his eyebrows were thicker. I remember his eyebrows, because they were bristly and red like his hair."

Molly lightened the shadows under the cheekbones and made the face smoother and rounder. She quickly scribbled in some denser eyebrows, too.

"That's it," said Jane Becker. "That's the man who stabbed me. I can't believe how you did that."

"I listened to you, that's all," Molly told her. "You told me what he looked like, and here he is. But you told me-Jane Becker, legal secretary who lives with her parents in Lakeside Park, and that was very important."

She didn't say that she had made the suspect much less aggressive in his appearance than Jane Becker had described him. In spite of her prettiness, she suspected that Jane Becker had some problems relating to men. Probably not serious problems-no more than a lack of confidence, or a recent relationship that had suddenly turned sour. But witnesses' personal prejudices could dramatically distort their description of a perpetrator's appearance. Black suspects were frequently described by white witnesses as being much more dark skinned and much more physically intimidating than they actually proved to be when they were arrested. Looking "dangerous" didn't affect the length of a suspect's nose, or the positioning of his ears, or the color of his hair.

Molly had also made the suspect look flushed, rather than scarlet. A witness's perception of color was always intensified by fear, because it widened the pupils.

She closed her sketchbook and packed away her pencils and her crayons. "Thanks, Jane. You've been very brave and very helpful."

"What happens now?" Jane Becker asked her.

"Right now I'm going over to police headquarters to put some finishing touches to this composite, ready for the media. It should be on the TV news later tonight, and in the papers by tomorrow morning."

"Do you think you'll catch him? I couldn't bear to think this could happen to anybody else."

Molly opened her sketchbook again and looked at the face of Jane Becker's attacker. "If this sketch is as accurate as you say it is-then yes, I'm pretty sure we'll catch him."

"Can I ask you one more thing?"

"Sure, of course you can."

"Where did you find that fantastic necklace? I haven't been able to take my eyes off it."

Molly lifted it up. "It's amazing, isn't it? I got it at the Peddlers Flea Market on Kellogg. I don't suppose it's worth anything much, but I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. It has everything, doesn't it? Suns, moons, even little animals."

On the way out of Jane Becker's room, she showed the sketch to the policeman sitting outside. "This is the guy…just in case he tries to get in here and finish the job."

"Dead ringer for my Uncle Herman," said the cop. "Be glad to pull him in for you, on suspicion."