Night Mask (9 page)

She did not know where she was. The darkness of the night and the drugs in her system were confusing her. She did not know how long she ran. Minutes, hours, days, years. She could not remember her name. Floating faces appeared before her. They came alive, taunting her. She saw lights ahead of her, but did not know if they were real or imagined.

She staggered and stumbled along, until she came to a small bluff. She did not see the earth end, and stepped out into nothing. She rolled down the embankment and hit the gravel road, oblivious to the pain in her body. She saw twin lights coming straight at her, but could not move. She heard the sliding of tires on dirt and gravel, and tried to cry out. Animal sounds came from her throat.

“Jesus Christ!” the voice reached her ears.

“What the hell is it?” another voice asked. “A deer?”

“Oh, dear God!” another voice added. “It's a woman. Somebody call the police.”

Tina passed out.

“Sexually assaulted in just about any way you would care to name,” the doctor said to Lani, Leo, and Sheriff Brownwood. Half a dozen CHP officers were standing in the hospital corridor, along with half a dozen more La Barca city police officers. “And tortured very skillfully. I think they planned to keep her alive for as long as possible, in order for the torture to last longer.”

“And give them more pleasure,” Lani ventured a guess with a sour look on her face.

“Yes. That would be my guess,” the doctor agreed.

“Is she conscious?” Brownie asked.

“She's drifting in and out. She keeps muttering something about drugs and faces.”

Lani and Leo exchanged glances.

“I'd think morning before she's coherent.”

“I'm going home,” Brownie said. “Why don't you two do the same?”

“We'll stick around for a while,” Leo said.

They took chairs in the hall, after finding a coffee machine that dispensed coffee whose flavor was remarkably like what camel spit must taste like. Both the cops took one sip and sat the cups down on the floor and tried to forget them.

“You remember those musical notes on the wall of the boy's room back in New York?” Lani said.

“Yeah. I'd forgotten all about that. You figure it out?”

“No. But a friend of mine did. It's ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb.' ”

“Say what? ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb'?”

“Weird, huh?”

“What else would it be in dealing with the Ripper?”

Tina's doctor passed by the cops. He slowed down and said, “Now she's muttering about mirrors and lights.” He walked on, then stopped and turned around. “You mentioned something about having dogs out backtracking Miss Gamble's scent.”

“That's right,” Leo said. “Did you hear something?”

“No. But I think you can forget about that.” He pointed toward the door, which looked like it was about a half a mile away down the polished hallway. “It's pouring rain and expected to last for a couple of days.”

Leo and Lani looked at one another. “Shit!” they said together.

* * *

They were at the hospital at seven the next morning. A nurse built much like a Mack truck blocked the door to Tina's room. “You can't go in there. She's being bathed, and then she'll be examined by Dr. Kander, and then she'll have breakfast. Come back in an hour.”

“Is the hospital cafeteria open?” Lani asked.

“Only if you have a death wish,” the nurse said without cracking a smile.

“It couldn't possibly be any worse than the coffee we got out of the machine last night.” Leo said.

“You wanna bet? Try the cafe down on the corner.”

The county deputies, rather than brave the downpour again, elected to have coffee, juice, and toast in the hospital cafeteria. “It's kinda hard to screw up toast,” Leo said.

“What was that you said about not screwing up toast?” Lani said, scraping the burn off the toast.

“I'm wrong occasionally.”

Back upstairs, the same nurse looked at them and said, “You ate in the cafeteria, didn't you?”

“Only toast,” Lani told her.

“Was it burned?”

“Yeah,” Leo said, a disgusted look on his face.

The stocky nurse suddenly laughed and held out a small paper sack. “I swiped a couple of sweet rolls from the nurses's lounge. Enjoy.”

They got in to see Tina a few minutes later. She was in some pain, but willing to talk. Her feet were heavily bandaged, and thorns and branches had torn her legs from ankles to upper thigh. Her hands were bandaged, a result of many falls.

“Before you say it,” Tina managed a small smile. “I know I'm lucky to be alive.”

“What can you tell us about the Ripper?” Tina asked. “The place where you were held, and how the man snatched you?”

“I have no idea how I came to be ... wherever it was they had me.”

“They?” Leo asked. “More than one person?”

“A man and a woman.”

There goes Jack and Jim right out the window, both cops thought.

“What do you mean, you have no idea how you got there?”

“Just that,” Tina said. “I remember being outside the KSIN buildings. I remember telling Marge— Marge Stillman—I was going to get us some coffee. I went to my car, got in, started the engine, and turned on the radio. I remember driving away. I remember pulling onto the parking lot of the Quick-Pack store. The next thing I remember was being raped and beaten. I know it sounds crazy. It is crazy! But it's the truth.”

“We believe you,” Lani said. “And we're having a guard posted outside your door, twenty-four hours a day. What can you tell us about the man and woman.”

“Both of them slender, average height. The man was quite strong, and the woman was very shapely. I never got a look at their faces because they, they ... ” She shuddered and swallowed hard. “They were wearing faces.”

“Faces?” Leo asked, his stomach doing a slow rollover. He looked at the stocky nurse, standing by the bed. Her face was impassive.

“Human faces,” Tina said. “Real human faces. Like the ones they had floating in those glass containers.” She turned her head to one side and vomited.

“That's it!” the nurse said, shooing the cops outside. “Come back in a few hours. Move.”

The cops knew better than to argue. They left the room and took seats in the corridor.

“A man and a woman,” Leo said softly. “Who would have figured that?”

Lani shook her head. “Certainly not me. One of the trackers said he feels Tina probably ran for miles. And in her confused state, some of the time probably in circles. But this rain stopped them cold.”

“It sure wasn't Dick Hale. Dick's built like a bear. So where does this leave us?”

“With Tina Gamble. She'll start remembering things. They always do.”

“ ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb'?” Leo asked.

“I think we may as well forget Jim and Jack Longwood for the time being. They're running their horror show somewhere else. We've got our own feature attraction. Homegrown. Presented in living color.”

“It's been a long movie.”

“Yeah. But I don't think we've even reached the intermission yet.”

* * *

Dick apologized for using a racial slur on the air, toned down his editorials, and the boycott of KSIN was called off. For two weeks the Ripper did not strike. Tina was released from the hospital and went back to work. She could remember nothing more about her ordeal. Cal Denning returned to his duties as chief engineer of KSIN. His office/workroom had been cleaned, and everything put away. The tapes where he had slowed down the commercial had been erased. The weather turned hot and dry.

Lani and Leo found themselves with a long weekend, and Leo had a suggestion.

“You want to go hiking?”

Lani looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Leo, you know I am not the outdoors type. My idea of roughing it is the Sheraton with clean, crisp sheets, room service, and a good piano bar.”

“We start where Tina was found on the highway and work in a circle.”

“It's already been done.”

“Not by us.”

Lani thought about that for a moment. “When do we leave?”

“Right now.”

* * *

Leo had a Ford four-wheel drive pickup, and it was packed with camping gear and food. Sheriff Brownwood had told them, “I don't care how long you two stay out there in the boondocks. Just find something. Anything.”

Tina had been found on a county road in some pretty rough country. The road was not often used, and the only reason for the traffic that night was because a group of fishermen had been returning from a weekend of fishing at a lake on the west side of the Los Padres National Forest.

“She tumbled down the embankment here,” Leo said, pointing. “The dogs backtracked her for two miles. In that direction.” Again, he pointed. “Then the rain stopped them. The spot where they lost her scent is marked. Come on. Let's go.”

The cops both wore comfortable but tough clothing and good hiking boots. They each carried two canteens of water.

They walked for about twenty minutes, and Lani said, “I'm lost, Leo.”

He chuckled. “I showed you how to use a compass and how I shot our azimuth. We are not lost.”

“Leo, I wouldn't know an azimuth if it hit me in the mouth. I'm a city girl. I
hate
the great outdoors. There are bugs and crawly things out here. Snakes. And bears.”

“Mountain lions, too.”

She moved closer to him.

“And coyotes and wolves.”

“Awright already, Leo. Enough.”

“And it's in this area where that madman with the axe used to chop up kids who came out to park and smooch.”

She sighed. “That tale is told in every state in the Union. Smooch, Leo? Smooch? God, you're old, Leo. Old. What the hell are we looking for, anyway? She was naked, for Christ's sake. Any bloodstains have been long washed away.”

“I'm like that Supreme Court Justice when asked about pornography. He said, ‘I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.' I don't know what we're looking for, Lani. But I'll know it when I see it. Keep walking.”

“Yes, bwana. Right, sahib. Whatever you say.” She pointed. “Is that stake where the trail was lost?”

“That's it. Let's take a breather.”

“Thank you.” Lani sat down and drank about half a canteen of water.

Leo pulled the canteen away from her mouth. “Go easy on that stuff, Lani. You'll make yourself sick.”

“I'm thirsty!”

“Lani, make the water last. Put a pebble in your mouth and suck on it. It'll create saliva and make you feel better.”

“A pebble? Wonderful. Eat a rock and feel better. Where'd you learn all this survival crap, Leo?”

“Vietnam, Lani.”

“What were you, a Green Beret?”

“A green beret is a hat, Lani. No. I was a LRRP. That rhymes with burp. Stands for Long Range Recon Patrol. I was a Ranger.”

“No kidding? I never knew that about you, Leo. You jump out of airplanes?”

“Yes. And climbed mountains and skied and learned to scuba, and all sorts of other neat stuff that I've been trying for twenty years to forget.”

“You must have been young.”

“Seventeen when I went in, and eighteen when I became a Ranger. Two months later I was in Vietnam.”

“In country?”

Leo smiled. “Some people call it that.”

“But you don't?”

Leo smiled and shook his head. “No. Lani, we're going to work in a big circle. We're going to stay within sight of each other and circle, an ever-widening circle.”

“I saw John Wayne do this in a cowboys and Indians movie one time.”

“Hush up. Are you rested?”

Leo wasn't going to talk about Vietnam. Now or ever, Lani realized. She nodded her head. “I'm rested.”

“Let's go.”

They rested several times and finally broke for lunch, which consisted of smushed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tepid water from their canteens. They had discovered nothing. At three o'clock, they still had found nothing, and Leo was just about ready to call it a day and trudge on back to where they'd left the pickup.

“Leo!” Lani called. “I found something. But I don't know what it might mean.”

The handprint had been spared from the elements by a small overhang, and by some type of small animal that had taken shelter under the overhang. Probably a rabbit judging by the color and texture of the fur Leo fingered. He looked around carefully and saw a small broken branch from some scrub brush.

“She came from that direction and stumbled and fell here,” he said, opening his compass and taking a heading. He took out a map and marked their location. He stood for a moment, filled with indecision. He couldn't send Lani back for the truck. She'd be lost as a goose in fifteen minutes. Taking a small camera from his pack, Leo took pictures of the scene and turned to his partner.

She had somehow picked up on his vibes. She sat down. “I'll wait right here, Leo. I saw the dust kicked up by a vehicle on that gravel road over there. I can find that. You go back and get the truck, and when you get over there, honk the horn or fire off a round. I can make it.”

“You're sure?”

She smiled. “Move, boy!”

Leo walked as swiftly as he dared. But he knew not to push himself in this intense heat. He wasn't all that worried about Lani. She could be tough as nails when she had to be, but she was out of her element. She was as good a street cop as anyone Leo had ever known. But this wasn't the street. This was rattlesnake country.

When Leo reached the truck, to save time he cut across country. While they had walked, Leo had mentally noted a way for the four-wheel-drive vehicle to make it back to where he had left Lani. The Ford pickup was high off the ground, and he'd taken it over much rougher terrain. When he was about halfway to where Lani waited, he blew a tire.

He knew cussing would be a waste of breath, so he just sighed and got out and changed the tire.

But when he reached the spot where he'd told Lani to wait, she was gone, and from all the churned-up earth, it looked like there had been one hell of a struggle.