Beyond the Mask Read online

  “Door’s open,” Bentley said. “I guess that’s probable cause.”

  Frank drew his weapon and stepped in. The air had a heavy quality to it. It was rich with a smell that Frank was all too familiar with. Not decay, but the coppery smell of spilled blood.

  Sunlight slanted in through the open doorway and illuminated the flying dust that was floating in the air.

  There was a table across from the door. It was littered with index cards. Sitting at one of the seats, face down on the table, was a body. Frank recognized the shape of the head, the hairline.

  “No,” Frank said. He paused just inside the doorway with his gun drawn, but he couldn’t move any farther.

  Bentley continued to walk. He approached the table and leaned down, blocking Frank’s view of the corpse. After a second, Bentley turned to Frank.

  “I know you’ve got to call your people and I know you don’t want to see this, but I think you’d better look anyway. There’s a lot to see here.”

  Frank forced his legs to move again. He felt numb, not just physically but emotionally as well, and his vision seemed to bob for no desirable reason. He was barely able to register the fact that he was walking. Instead he felt almost like he was gliding along. Kind of like the view that you would get from an unstable steady-cam shot in a movie.

  The table continued to grow in his vision as he got closer, but it was the body that he was completely focused on.

  Frank thought about the conversation he’d had with Gloria in the morning. She had said that Rick had some things to look into outside of the office. He hadn’t even bothered to wonder what things that might be, but now Frank understood. He had come to talk to their witness.

  “Damn it, Rick,” Frank said.

  He was standing next to Bentley now. His knees felt weak, and he focused all his will to keep from falling over.

  “I’m sorry,” Bentley said. He reached out and put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. Frank’s head moved slowly, but he pulled his gaze away from Rick and looked at Bentley.

  “Thank you,” Frank managed. His throat was dry and irritated and his voice came out as more husk than anything else.

  “Take your time, I don’t want to push you, but you need to look at the stuff on this table.”

  Frank spared one more glance at the body of his friend and then looked past the pool of blood under his head to the rest of the table.

  There was another index card. Another crystal on it. They had found the number four.

  “He killed Rick early this morning, before he killed the family,” Bentley said. “That’s proof of that.” He indicated the card.

  “These must have come from Collins’s apartment. But why kill a guy for a bunch of index cards you could pick up at a store?”

  “He must have had something to do with it,” Bentley said. “It’s really the only thing that makes sense. Have you checked up on any friends or family?”

  “We’re doing that,” Frank said. But were they? He wasn’t sure. He was positive that someone must have thought of it and started to do the leg work. He tried to remember if he had put anyone on it and he couldn’t. The problem was that he wasn’t acting like a Sheriff; he wasn’t acting like a boss. Ever since they’d found Sheila’s body, he had been acting like a detective. Running his own investigation almost parallel to his station’s. That was why Rick had come here today, wasn’t it? Because he knew that Frank might forget, not get around to checking up on Ellison.

  “This is my fault,” Frank said.

  “No, it’s the killer’s fault. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and check out that map.”

  Bentley had moved to the other side of the table and leaned over the map, careful not to touch anything.

  Frank looked around the rest of the house. “He might be here, we should look for him.”

  “We know he’s not here,” Bentley said. “There’s no car in the driveway and Rick was killed this morning. This Ellison has gone out and killed again since then. He knows we’re on to him and he won’t be coming back here.”

  Bentley was right. Frank knew it, but it still seemed dangerous. That alarm bell was going off again. It had been getting louder and it was harder to ignore than it had been.

  “What day was that first family killed on? That was a Tuesday, right?”

  Frank had been looking at Rick’s prone body again. He felt a tingle all over his face, as if something were trying to burst out of there.

  “Um…yes. Tuesday.”

  “Uh huh,” Bentley said. “The couple was killed today. It matches.”

  “What does?” Frank asked. He looked over at the map. It was a local map, showing the criss-crossing grid of streets that made up Yucca County.

  Some of the areas were marked with colored marker: Blue, green, yellow, black and red.

  “They’re Ellison’s routes,” Bentley said. “Each day of the week a different area of the county and a different route. It matches up with the areas the families were found.”

  “What about Collins and Sheila?”

  Frank moved away from the body and studied the map.

  “Sheila, no. She’s on his route, but not on the day we found her. Collins was…” Bentley traced his finger above the map, careful not to touch it. “Yep, he was on Ellison’s route too. Only not on the day we found him.”

  “He could have been killed earlier,” Frank said. “I don’t think we have a stable time of death on him.”

  Bentley nodded. “Sheila was an anomaly. On the night that I was released, so that’s curious.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Frank said. “I need to call it in.” He glanced at the body again. “And we don’t need to be here anymore.”

  They walked out into the sunlight and Frank began to feel a little more like himself again. He pulled out his phone and called the station. Bentley stood by while Frank explained the situation and ordered the units.

  “His route for tomorrow is the southern end of Yucca,” Bentley said. “But that’s not where he’ll go.”

  “Why?” Frank asked. He barely registered asking the question.

  “Because he knows we’re onto him now. He left the map there. He’s smart enough to realize that we’ll know his normal route.”

  “Do you think he’s going to be out tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank shook his head. “He’ll lay low now. Stay out of sight. If he cares about staying clear of jail he will.”

  “No,” Bentley said.

  Frank turned to the kid and saw the seriousness in his face. The hard set jaw, the steel eyes. There was no joy in that expression.

  “Why?”

  “Because he can’t,” Bentley said. “He can’t stop the hunt. He will keep coming and coming until we stop him.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Have I been wrong yet?”

  “No,” Frank said.

  “He probably won’t follow his normal route, but he’ll stick to his normal routine and he will stick to areas that were in his route.”

  “We need a full route map,” Frank said.

  “We need to move quickly.”

  Frank looked back at the house. “I should wait for the deputies to get here.”

  “Rick’s not going anywhere,” Bentley said.

  “You fucking asshole.” Frank advanced on the kid. Bentley did not give an inch.

  “I don’t mean it in a cruel way. Just a fact. And no on is going in there. The scene will be fine for the five minutes that no one is here.”

  Frank sighed. “Fine. Let’s go talk to Chambers again.”

  III.

  Chambers looked as happy to see Frank and Bentley again as Frank was to be back. Once again they went to his office only this time Chambers didn’t sit at all. He just stood by the door. It was almost as if he were blocking the exit.

  Paranoid, Frank thought. You’re being paranoid again.

  “What can I do for you now?” Chambers asked.

  “We need the rou
te map for Harvey Ellison,” Frank said.

  “I thought I explained that Mr. Ellison doesn’t work here anymore?”

  Mr. Ellison. So he had left the first name basis behind. Chambers was a smart one. He must realize that their coming back meant that there was a good deal more going on than just a witness statement.

  “But he did have a route,” Bentley said. “One that I’m sure you’ve since reassigned to someone else.”

  “Yes,” Chambers said.

  “We need a copy of that map,” Frank said. “And we need it now.”

  “Wait here,” Chambers said.

  Frank looked around the room, after he had left.

  “What do you think of him?”

  “He’s nervous,” Bentley said. “But for normal reasons. I don’t think he had anything to do with this. He thinks that he’s going to be in some kind of trouble if Ellison did something bad while he was working for-”

  Frank, who had been looking at a picture of Chambers with the Governor of California that hung on the wall, snapped his gaze back to Bentley.

  “What is it?”

  “His uniform,” Bentley said. “Chambers let him keep his uniform. How else could he walk around like a meter reader? Maybe even that hand held computer that they all use.”

  “Fucker.”

  “I still don’t think he had anything to do with it. Remember, Ellison is dying. Maybe Chambers thought it would just be a nice keepsake for him to have or something. Maybe Ellison begged to keep them and Chambers couldn’t say no. In any case he thinks he’s going to get in trouble for it.”

  “He is,” Frank said.

  The door opened and Chambers walked in with a stack of papers in his hands. He handed them over to Frank with a smile. “These are the routes that Ellison had. They’re divided by days.”

  “Do you think he’s still doing his routes?” Frank asked.

  Chambers flinched. “Why would he do that?”

  “He still could, couldn’t he?” Frank asked. “He’s still got his uniform and computer.”

  “He does not have a computer,” Chambers shot. “I told him that something like that would be noticed if it was gone.”

  “But he does still have his uniform?”

  Chambers sighed and walked to his chair. He didn’t so much sit as he just let his knees unhinge and allow himself to fall into the chair.

  “He wanted them.”

  “Them?”

  “Two uniforms,” Chambers said. He looked up, his eyes were muddled and there was a thin film of sweat on his forehead. “The man had cancer, what was I supposed to do?”

  “You know that he’s killing people?”

  Chambers started to shake his head and then stopped. “When I saw the third murder on the news, I had my suspicions.”

  “And you said nothing,” Bentley said.

  “What was I supposed to say? I think that it might be possible that an ex-employee of mine might be the killer because the locations of the murders matched his routes on the days he used to do them? Would you have believed that?”

  “Why did you suspect him?” Frank asked. “What was it about Ellison that told you he might be capable of something like that?”

  “The mental institution,” Chambers said. He looked at Frank like this should be obvious. “You don’t know about that? Why do you think he did it?”

  Frank ignored the question. His heart had started to thrum in his chest. “What mental institution?” He asked. His voice came out louder than he had intended it to and he saw Chambers flinch.

  “Frank,” Bentley said.

  “What institution? Tell me now.”

  “I don’t know,” Chambers said.

  “Frank,” Bentley said again.

  He sounded like a child that was trying to get his mother’s attention when she was on the phone. Frank ignored him. “Where was it?”

  “Someplace in Texas,” Chambers said. He had shrunk back against his chair, seeming to try and push through it. “It’s where he was from. I don’t remember the name of it, I swear. All I know is that he was in there when he was like sixteen.”

  “Sixteen,” Frank said. “In Texas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Forty-eight. I went to his birthday party. It was just a few months before he got his diagnosis.”

  “He wasn’t there, Frank,” Bentley said.

  Frank finally turned from Chambers and looked at the kid. He looked scared. Frank had never seen it on him before. Maybe it was progress.

  “I guess not,” Frank said. “Not that many years ago.”

  “It raised some eyebrows at corporate,” Chambers said. He sat straighter in the chair. “There were people who didn’t want me to hire him because of it, but I thought he looked fine to me. I mean the kid was only sixteen at the time.”

  Frank was starting to get a sense of the picture. Chambers had hired the guy, even though he had a history of mental illness. He had sent him on his way with a couple of uniforms and a get-well card and that was it. He had given him almost all the tools he had needed to start this killing spree.

  “I suppose I should tell you that Ellison is a suspect in the killings.” Frank leaned against the desk so that his face was mere inches from Chambers’. “So if there’s anything else you know that could be helpful, you’d better tell me about it now.”

  “No,” Chambers said. He had once again begun to press against the back of his chair, trying to get away from Frank. “I’ve told you everything I can think of about him. I cooperated.”

  “I hope we don’t have to come back,” Frank said. He walked out the door and Bentley followed him.

  IV.

  “So it won’t be the southern end of the county, that’s all we know for sure,” Frank said when they were back in the car.

  “We don’t even know that for sure,” Bentley replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He might think that we’ll assume he won’t go south and hit there anyway.”

  “How likely do you think that is?”

  “Not likely,” Bentley said.

  Frank nodded his head. Police work was, by and large, straightforward. Things were done according to procedure. They had reliable evidence that the south would have been his next target and so they would naturally follow up on it. Ellison would know that and he would avoid the south.

  “The answer is in here,” Bentley said. He was holding up the route maps. “He’s going to strike somewhere along these routes tomorrow.”

  “Then the best thing that we can do is set up patrols in the area tomorrow. We’ll have to get his picture to the media so that citizens can be on the lookout for him.”

  “That seems like the best idea,” Bentley said.

  Frank turned right at Vernor.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “I thought I would go to the station with you.”

  Frank heard the disappointment in the kid’s voice but it couldn’t be helped.

  “Not yet. I want to do a little work on this case first before-”

  “Before you introduce me to your friends? I’m kind of like that girl you date that you don’t want anyone to know about.”

  “It’s not like that,” Frank said.

  “Fine.”

  They continued on in silence and Bentley didn’t look back when Frank pulled up to the house and he got out of the car.

  Frank watched him walk into the house and then drove to the station.

  Seventeen

  I.

  Someone was sitting on the bench waiting for him when he got back. He hadn’t seen her in almost eight years, but he recognized the curve of her cheek and the sweep of her hair. It was a little longer, but remained that same shade of red. She reminded Frank, achingly, of Sheila.

  “Katie!”

  She stood up, not smiling, and walked over to him. Her face was set and her eyes were cloudy. “I came
here to tell you that Mom’s funeral is going to be tomorrow at ten o’clock. I thought you’d want to come.”

  She started to walk passed him, but Frank grabbed a hold of her just above her elbow. She jerked away from his grasp.

  “Katie, what’s wrong?”

  “Do you think I want to be here? I almost didn’t come, but you did so much for us when...when things were bad that I knew I had to.”

  “Let me take you out to dinner tonight.”

  “Is your new friend going to be there?”

  Someone had told her. Frank looked up and saw Gloria looking down at her computer, but there was scarlet running up the sides of her face.

  “He’s not my friend and he’s not going to be there.” That was true, Frank was sure of it. Bentley hadn’t become his friend. He might have spent some time with him, to keep an eye on him, but they hadn’t developed anything more than that.

  “He’s living with you, isn’t he?” Katie asked.

  Frank stared at her and didn’t answer. She brushed past him and out the door. Frank debated for a second before following her.

  “Katie! Please wait.”

  Her high heels had been clicking on the concrete, their percussion stopped and she turned around.

  She had become a beautiful woman. More than beautiful really, she had a mix of world-weariness and innocence in her eyes that was almost impossible to find. Her skin was creamy and smooth. Her body, which had already begun to develop when Bentley had started his terror, had filled out. Her waist was slim and it gave her the perfect hour-glass shape.

  She wore a red summer dress that framed her body nicely. The wind blew the bottom of the dress against her legs and she raised a hand to brush her red hair out of her face.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Frank said. “Maybe I’ve made some mistakes, but Bentley didn’t kill your Mother.”

  “Maybe not,” Katie said. “But he killed my Dad. He killed Karen and he killed Brenda and God knows who else.”

  “I know what he is,” Frank said. “I remember it every time I look into the mirror and see this stump where my tongue used to be.” He didn’t open his mouth to show her; that would have been a step too far. “I remember it every time I try and say a damn G sound and fail.”