Night Mask (13 page)

Ted Murray had heard the call and was the first officer to respond. He rushed inside, staying low. Dick spotted him and cut loose, the buckshot just missing Ted.

“Don't jump in the cloakroom!” Leo yelled.

Too late.

“Great god!” Ted hollered as Dick resumed his shooting out of the lights. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for Ted, he couldn't shoot out the light in the cloakroom.

Ted left the small room a hell of a lot faster than he had entered, and that was pretty swift. He scooted across the floor, over to Leo.

“I tried to warn you,” Leo said.

Ted was too shocked to reply.

“Brenda's down, Ted. I don't know how bad.”

Dick shot out the last light in the normally poorly lit club, and the huge room was plunged into darkness.

“Brenda's all right!” Lani called. “Just a small cut on her forehead. The bullet must have fragmented when it hit something, and she caught just a small piece of it.”

The sounds of screaming sirens touched those inside the private club. The smell of smoke reached them at just about the same time.

“Get out, Lani, Brenda!” Leo called. “The fool has started a fire.”

The man in the dress in the cloakroom let out a squawk, jumped up, and ran out the front door, the front of his dress all poked out.

“Go!” Leo said to Ted. “Move! I'm right behind you.” Outside, Leo yelled to several uniforms, “Cover the back and both sides. Radio in for fire trucks.”

Within seconds, the old building was a wall of flames. The smell of human flesh bubbling and sizzling was sickening. The heat was so intense, the police and fire fighters were forced to back up.

“No one will get out of that,” the fire captain said, raising his voice over the roar of the flames and the crackling and collapsing of walls. “But this rain will keep it from spreading.”

The press showed up and captured it all on film. But nearly all of the patrons of the Cock ‘n' Balls had left the scene immediately upon fleeing the building. Only the hard core remained, and they were vocal. Very vocal.

Leo had said nothing about running into Ms. Banana, otherwise known as Sergeant Dixson. He would share that information with Lani, later on. But he probably would not tell Ted.

Over Brenda's very loud protests, she had been loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. The attending EMT had said her wound looked very slight, but she would probably be kept for twenty-four hours under observation. Just to be on the safe side.

The rain had stopped, the storm sweeping eastward very fast, and the night had turned clear and starry.

Ted had gone back to his motel room. Said he wanted to take a very long, very hot shower. His minute and a half in the cloakroom had unnerved him.

“You think Dick Hale was the Ripper?” a reporter asked Leo.

“No.”

“Do you feel at all responsible for this terrible tragedy?” another asked.

Leo looked at the crap-for-brains reporter for a few seconds, and then walked off without dignifying the question with any sort of reply. “Idiot,” he muttered to Lani.

Out of earshot of the press, Lani said, “I heard a window breaking just after we smelled the smoke. I think Dick got out. Or at least somebody did.”

“Another nut on the loose,” Leo replied. “Hell with this. Let's go make our reports and go home.”

* * *

The pair known as the Ripper sat in their den and laughed at the news reports of the many deaths at the local nightclub. It was wonderful news. They had felt sure that Dick Hale would do something, but they had not dreamed it would be this delightful.

“I'm so excited,” one said, taking the other's hand.

“Me, too,” the other said, gently squeezing the hand.

“Shall we?”

“Let's.”

They wandered off to the bedroom.

* * *

The official death count at the Cock ‘n' Balls was twenty-two dead and thirty-five wounded. Some of the wounded were not expected to live. And some very prominent people from various communities all up and down the coast had been in attendance.

“Who all did you see in that loony bin?” Sheriff Brownwood asked Leo the next day. He closed the door and sat down, speaking to Ted and Brenda and Lani. Brenda had a small bandage over her right eye.

Leo looked at Ted, and said to hell with his original decision. “Sergeant Dixson for one.”

“Al Dixson? The Bull?”

“Yeah. In a yellow evening gown with a big, floppy, flowery hat. Looked like Chiquita Banana. With a five o'clock shadow.”

“Could he have been working undercover?” the sheriff asked.

Brenda giggled.

Leo looked over at Ted. “I don't know who that was in the cloakroom.”

“What's this about a cloakroom?” Brenda asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Yeah,” the sheriff said. “What about a cloakroom?”

Ted folded his arms across his chest and looked like a thundercloud.

“Ted had an encounter with a person in the cloakroom, while Dick was shooting at us,” Leo said. “Did he show you his erection, Ted?”

“I'm leaving,” Brownie said, standing up. He looked at Leo. “Question is: did he show
you
his erection?”

“Yeah,” Leo said straight-faced.

Brownie shook his head. “I worry about you, Leo. Maybe you should call your wife and tell her to cut short her visit with her sister and come on back home.” He walked out of the office.

Brenda was just about to bust wide open with laughter.

“I'm warning you, Brenda,” Ted said, cutting his eyes at her. “You're pushing your luck.”

“What'd I say?” she asked innocently. “What'd I say?”

* * *

The Ripper didn't let a little minor fire and twenty-two deaths put a damper on fun. Leo received a package at the office promptly at eight o'clock, and very nearly lost his breakfast when he opened it. Inside was the severed right arm of what appeared to be a white female, probably in her late teens, with no identifying marks or scars. About an hour later, a local delivery service brought another package to the sheriff's office, addressed to Lani. Inside was the left arm. Just before noon, two packages were placed at the rear door of the building and discovered by a motorcycle cop who'd come in the back way. They were addressed to Ted Murray and Brenda Yee. The boxes contained the left and right legs.

“I don't even want to think about where the torso and head will show up,” Brownie said, to the team at lunch. They were all brown-bagging it and sitting in the break room.

“Sheriff?” a deputy stuck his head into the room. “There's a big box sitting out in the parking lot. It's got your name on it.”

Brownie looked at his half-eaten ham and cheese. “Shit!” he said.

The box contained the torso of the girl. But no head.

The torso was turned over to the lab people, and they quickly concluded that the girl had been sexually assaulted and savagely beaten.

The press played it up big, insinuating—not too subtly—that the police were so inept that they couldn't catch a cold. One newspaper reporter, Agnes Peters—who was so left-leaning many wondered how she managed to stand up straight—was particularly harsh with the city and county police. She had learned, somehow, about Dennis Potter's financing of Leo and Lani's trip East, and insinuated that the entire sheriffs department was in the pocket of the richest man in the county, there only to do his bidding. Agnes, it seemed, hated all rich people. She was a long and strong advocate of wealth redistribution (that's spelled S-O-C-IA-L-I-S-T and occasionally D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T). Agnes concluded her venomous tirade by stating: Perhaps the police and sheriffs department doesn't really want to catch the Ripper, since his prey have been overwhelmingly the poor, the minorities, and those who practice an alternate lifestyle.

“I wasn't aware that Ruthie Potter was poor, a member of any minority group, or practiced an alternate lifestyle,” Brownie said, after reading the column.

“I'll give Ms. Agnes Peters about seventy-two hours before she learns it's not nice to fool with one of the richest people in the state, and probably one of the richest persons in America,” Lani remarked.

Brownie shook his head. “I doubt that Dennis will do anything. If she had defamed Ruthie, he would buy the paper and fire her.”

“He bought LGH Industries two years ago, and fired the plant manager after the man made repeated slurs about Ruthie's character,” Brenda said softly. “I know. We investigated that buy-out for possible violations of several laws.”

“The outcome?” Lani asked.

“The case was suddenly ordered closed,” Ted said. “Dennis Potter's power reaches very high.”

“You don't know the whole story,” Brownie said, glancing up. “The plant manager's son was trying to get Ruthie to go out with him. He became very persistent, and Dennis warned the man to put the brakes on his son's mouth and his stalking of Ruthie. The man cussed Dennis and said his son could do any damn thing he liked. The plant manager then started spreading rumors about Ruthie being a slut and a whore... and those were the nicest things he had to say. Dennis got tired of it. The only person to lose their job was the plant manager. Since Dennis's buy-out, the employees have all been given raises, and the company is doing better than it ever did before. Dennis is Hancock County. He's built parks and playgrounds for kids, given millions of dollars to local charities and schools. When the local police and this very sheriff's department got in a money crunch last year, it was Dennis who bailed us all out. All his plants have free day-care for the kids of working mothers. Dennis's good far outweighs whatever bad he might have. No, he'll let this foolish reporter slide ... this time. But if she's got any sense at all, she'll never mention his name again. Dennis and I grew up together, in the migrant workers' camps. I know him better than anyone. And he can be ruthless.”

“What's he really worth, Brownie?” Leo asked. “Do you know?”

The sheriff smiled. “About five billion dollars. Dennis was one of the pioneers in the computer business. He invented about a half a dozen of some sort of gadgets. Then he started buying factories and land. You know the rest.” Brownie left the room just as a uniform walked in.

“Five billion dollars,” Lani spoke the words softly. “I can't even visualize that much money.”

“Well, visualize this, Lani,” the uniform said. “They found the girl's head. Over at St. Anthony's on Elm Street. Just about freaked out the priest.”

The four stood up and walked out silently.

* * *

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” Leo muttered, staring up at the crucifixion on the wall behind the pulpit.

The Ripper had tied the head of the girl over the face of Jesus. The face of the girl was contorted by the last, hot moment of agony before death. Her tongue was blue/black, protruding out of swollen lips. Her eyes were bulging and horror-filled. She had been completely scalped, the whiteness of skull bone glistening in the dim light of the church.

Several priests and nuns were murmuring low prayers in the shadows next to a wall.

“Get pictures of it,” Leo said to a uniform. “Did you call the lab people?”

“Right, and yes.”

“We'll assemble the body parts in the lab and try to ID the kid.”

“What kind of person would do something like this, detective?” the older of the priests asked.

Leo remembered the words of the ex-priest back in New York State. “A very evil person, Father. Evil through and through.”

“There is good in everybody, my son,” the priest replied.

Leo shook his head. “Not in the people who did this, Father. Not one shred of good in them.”

“I pray you're wrong.”

“No, Father.” Leo pointed to the head of the girl. “Pray for her.”

* * *

“She was a runaway from a little town in Alabama,” Lani said, walking in and laying a teletype on Leo's desk. “Seventeen years old. She must have come from a real loving home. Her parents said to bury her out here ... providing the state will pay for it. They don't plan on coming out for the service.”

Leo sighed, Ted looked very pained, Brenda shook her head at the callousness.

“I put out some jars around the office to try to collect enough for a small headstone.”

“I have a better idea,” Leo said. “I'll see to it that Dennis Potter hears of this. Any word on Dick Hale?”

“No. He's dropped out of sight.”

“He'll surface,” Brenda said. “And he'll start killing more homosexuals when he does. Our office did a psychological profile on him. Our in-house shrink says he blames gays for the death of his son. He said get ready for wholesale slaughter, if Dick stays on the loose.”

“I'm afraid you're right and he's right.” Leo picked up a sheet of paper and held it so all could see. “Small sporting goods store out on the edge of town was broken into last night. Several cases of canned food and bottled water were taken. Along with about two hundred 12-gauge shotgun shells, a .38 pistol, and several boxes of ammo for that. Also missing was a tent, sleeping bag, camp axe, knife, and other survival gear. If it was Dick—and I'll bet it was—looks like he's going to head for the timber and work at night.”

“One thing's for certain, after all that shooting at the club the other night,” Brenda said.

“What's that?” Leo asked.

“Dick seems to have overcome his aversion to blood.”