Faces of Fear (31 page)

"Cindy…"

But Cindy had already started back toward the French doors. "Stay if you want, Lisa, but I'm going." She signaled to Tommy and glanced once more at Alison. "Excuse me while I get your
valet
to bring up Tommy's Honda before it brings down property values around here." She turned on her heel and continued walking.

"I guess I better go." Lisa looked apologetically at Alison. "They're my ride."

Feeling tears in her own eyes, Alison nodded and hugged Lisa, but most of the happiness she'd felt only a few minutes ago drained out of her as she watched her oldest friend walking out of her party.

A soft hand touched her arm. "Let them go," Tasha said.

"She's right," Dawn added. "Forget them—you aren't like them anymore." She opened her purse and showed Alison a pint of tequila. "C'mon, birthday girl. Let's have some
fun!
"

Alison wanted to ignore Tasha and Dawn and go after Cindy and Lisa, but as another group of Wilson kids arrived, she knew she couldn't.

This was her party, and she was the hostess, and no matter how much she'd rather be with Cindy and Lisa right now—or even upstairs in her room, calling Cindy and trying to put their friendship back together—she knew she couldn't give in to her impulses.

Instead, she had to put on a happy face and be a good hostess, no matter how she felt. As she turned back to the garden, the band picked up the tempo and Trip came up the steps to the terrace.

"Dance with me?" Giving her no chance to refuse, he took her hand, and seconds later she was on the dance floor. As the music swelled, Cindy's words began to fade, though she could still feel the pain in her heart. Tomorrow, maybe, she would call and try to fix things. But for now she smiled as brightly as if she were still at the peak of the day's happiness, and danced amid her new friends.

TINA WONG SIPPED AT THE PAPER CUP OF COLD COFFEE, EVEN THOUGH caffeine had been eating a hole in her stomach for hours. Ben Kardashian, the video tech who'd been cooped up with her in the editing bay all night, looked even worse than she felt, his unshaven face dark with stubble, and eyes so bloodshot it looked as though he'd been out drinking all that time.

But even after working all night, the hour's worth of tape they'd come up with still wasn't quite right. But what was missing? Tina had finished all her camera work, completed all the voice-overs.

The interviews melded well, each one flowing smoothly into the next, building the story. Yet she didn't have the climax. Somehow, despite the grisly horror of everything the hour depicted, it still lacked that final dramatic moment that would tie the whole story together and give it a sense of overwhelming urgency.

Ben leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms and shoulders, rubbed his neck for a moment, then dropped his hands into his lap. "I gotta eat."

Tina nodded, though she'd barely heard the words. "Why don't you—" she began, her mind still searching for the missing moment.

Ben cut her off. "No. I need to get out of this room and go somewhere to eat something."

"Okay," Tina sighed, leaning back in her own chair. Though she knew food would only distract her from the job at hand, she also knew that Ben was about to get cranky, and she still needed his touch with all the high-tech equipment in the bay in order to finish the final edit of the special. She glanced at her watch: 6:28 A.M. "Why don't you take half an hour?"

Ben nodded, opened the door to the bay, and left. Outside, Tina could hear the station beginning to come alive with the weekend staff; the soundproof door swing shut, the quiet of the bay closing around her, and she went back to work. Her deadline was ten o'clock; before the special could air, Michael would have to watch it, and he'd undoubtedly want to run it by the legal team. That meant hunting down a couple of lawyers on a Sunday and getting them to come in so they could see what she'd put together in time to make any last-minute changes.

All of which meant she not only had to find her ending, but have it completed by ten.

She was just about to start running the tape for what seemed the millionth time when her cell phone buzzed, vibrating loudly on the metal desk. She found it under a mound of wadded-up sheets of notes and coffee-stained napkins, then swept the trash into a wastebasket with one hand while picking up the phone with the other and looking at the caller ID.

Michael Shaw. Swell—not even seven on Sunday morning yet, and her boss was already on her.

She flipped the phone open and tried not to let her sleepless night show in her voice. "Hello?"

He spoke with no preamble at all. "They found another body, Tina."

Even as he spoke, the answer to her problem began to form. "What did he take?" she demanded.

"The usual stuff," Michael said. "And the nose."

With that final word, the end to her special flashed through her mind as vividly as if it were already on tape. The ending would be perfect now—more than she could ever have hoped for—and Ben Kardashian would know exactly how to do what she needed. "Can I get a photo of the woman before she was mutilated?"

"I don't know," Michael replied. "I don't have much information yet—I called you as soon as I heard. I can give you the woman's name and address, but for now that's about it."

Tina scribbled the information on a napkin, promised Michael the finished special no later than ten, hit one of the speed-dial keys, and waited impatiently for her assistant to pick up her phone. When a sleepy voice finally answered, she didn't bother with pleasantries any more than Michael Shaw had a minute earlier. "I need a picture, Cheryl. The woman's name is Molly Roberts, and she lived in Alhambra. Get on the Web and find her—she'll be on MySpace or Facebook, or one of the dating services. Ben's out grabbing breakfast, and I need it by the time he gets back." There wasn't even a hint of grumbling from Cheryl, though Tina suspected she was silently cursing the day she'd taken her job. She simply took down the information and hung up.

Tina made a mental note to ask Michael to give Cheryl a raise, then dimmed the overhead lights in the editing bay, leaned back in the squeaky chair, and closed her eyes, visualizing how she wanted the handiwork of the Frankenstein Killer to look.

The face she'd constructed with Photoshop, roughly combining the facial features of the murdered women into a composite of whatever the killer was looking for, hadn't worked nearly as well in reality as in her own visualization. It looked piecemeal—fragmented—and though certainly horrific, hadn't made a good, cohesive face.

Even worse, it had a hole in its center where a nose should have been, and though she'd experimented with adding various noses, including her own, it hadn't worked. Partly, of course, it was because the final image was still far too rough; but even more important, as far as Tina was concerned, was the fact that the final image she'd built was incomplete.

With the death of Molly Roberts, though, she could finally complete the picture.

At the end of the hour, she could present to the world the exact face the killer himself was constructing.

And as soon as Ben Kardashian got back, they would go to work.

Tina opened her eyes and smiled.

When she got a photo of Molly Roberts, she'd have the last piece of the puzzle she'd been putting together with Photoshop. She'd finally have a full face, and Ben Kardashian would know exactly how to bring it to life.

And tomorrow morning, they might still not know the name of the Frankenstein Killer, but the entire broadcast world would know the name Tina Wong.

CONRAD DUNN OPENED THE DOOR TO THE LABORATORY THAT WAS HIS most private domain and waited a moment before turning on the overhead fluorescent lights. There was something about the laboratory when it was illuminated only by the soft green glow of the sustenance tanks, and the only sound was the equally soft throbbing of the pumps that provided those tanks with the exact level of oxygen they needed to keep their contents as fresh as the day they'd been harvested, that instilled a sense of peace in him that had been rare since the accident that ruined Margot's beauty.

And nearly nonexistent since the day she died.

Perhaps it was the gentle throbbing of the pumps, which reminded him of Margot's heartbeat when he used to press his face against her perfect breast. Or the green glow that reminded him of the glint in her eyes when she smiled at him. Or the fact that it was here that he had originally created her. So now he stood quietly inside the door for a moment, just breathing in the calm of this rarely used room.

But a moment was all he could devote to his reverie.

There was work to be done.

He snapped on the overhead lights and shifted his attention to the latest acquisition in the tank.

Opening the lid, with a pair of tongs he lifted out the newest fragment of tissue that had been added to the collection in the tank, then examined it from every angle with a practiced, critical eye.

Danielle had done a superb job, as usual. The choice of Molly Roberts as the donor was perfect: the curve of the nostrils, the straightness of the bridge, were exactly like Margot's; their perfection was utterly wasted on the bland travesty that had been the rest of the woman's face. And Danielle had done her work well: the incision was clean, with plenty of surrounding tissue, which would allow him to attach it with ease. Satisfied, he carefully lowered the small mass of skin and cartilage back into the green liquid. Next, he retrieved each of the other fragments in turn, examining them carefully for any signs of deterioration.

They were as perfect as the day Danielle DeLorian had harvested them.

As perfect individually as would be the face they would soon be collectively melded into.

He replaced the cover on the tank, and shifted his attention to the small operating room that was separated from the lab by an airlock that guaranteed nothing could compromise its sterility. Thus, though it had not been used in a very long time, it was in perfect condition for what was about to take place within its walls.

Conrad took two sterile packs of instruments from one of the cabinets and opened them, laying each gleaming metal piece on the instrument tray in the order in which they would be needed. Next he arranged a series of suture packs in the same order, until the precision of the series of scalpels, hemostats, retractors, sponges, gauzes, and sutures lined up on the tray mirrored the precision with which he would carry out the surgery to come. Only when he had made certain that each instrument was perfectly aligned did he finally adjust the tray into position so he could reach whatever he needed from the head of the table.

Closing his eyes, he turned around three times. Then, his eyes still closed, he reached out and closed his fingers around the first object he touched.

It was, of course, the first scalpel he would use to execute the first cut he would make.

Satisfied, he sterilized the scalpel with alcohol and returned it to its place.

He hung the bottle of dextrose with sodium chloride, and readied the IV tube and needle he would attach to it when the time came.

He set three vials of fentanyl on the instrument tray, which would keep his patient peacefully asleep for as long as necessary. The lack of an anesthesiologist would be a handicap, but only a minor one—when he operated, every one of his senses was heightened, and he'd be able to gauge the depth of the patient's unconsciousness merely by the sound of her breath, and adjust the drugs accordingly.

From another cabinet, he took fresh sterile sheets and draped the table. He hadn't readied an operating room like this since he was an intern; the nursing staff had done this for so many years now that he'd forgotten how relaxing the ritual could be.

Relaxing and enervating at the same time.

Or perhaps he was enervated by the extraordinary procedures he was about to perform. Not that it would be the first time he'd performed it; indeed, he'd performed it twice before, each time with results that were nothing short of perfect. There was, therefore, nothing to be worried about.

And yet the fluttering in his belly was more than the surge of anticipatory energy he felt before every surgical procedure.

Something still wasn't quite right.

He moved to the other side of the table and double-checked the dressing materials he would need.

He added a second vial to the tray; it contained the special compound Danielle DeLorian made only for him.

The operating theater was ready.

When the patient was sedated on the table, he would turn on the overhead light, adjust the volume of the strains of Stravinsky, or perhaps Vivaldi, that would flow from the speakers hidden in the walls, and begin.

For now, though, everything was fresh and ready.

Waiting.

And yet that sense of something not quite right—something left undone—some tiny imperfection—still pervaded his spirit.

Then his eyes were caught by the lavender Healing Health Laboratories label on the vial he'd just added to the tray and he knew.

It was that small scratch on Danielle's neck that he'd seen the day after she harvested Molly Roberts's single perfect feature.

Conrad felt his blood pressure begin to build as he realized what that scratch must have meant.

Danielle had made a mistake.

Another
mistake.

And she'd failed to tell him about it.

She had put herself, and him, and
everything,
in jeopardy.

Almost as bad, his own subconscious had known about her mistake for days now but failed to warn him. Still, in all fairness, he'd realized what had happened in time to deal with the error.

Again he regarded the lavender label, and the answer to the problem came to him.

Returning to the laboratory, he went to the drug cabinet and quickly found what he was looking for. Filling a syringe from the vial, he carefully replaced the plastic cap on the needle and put the vial back in the cabinet.

From another cabinet, he took the small leather valise he had used in medical school, opened it, and set it on the countertop. Taking a cold pack from the freezer, he put it into the valise, then added a plastic emesis basin and a fresh scalpel.