Beyond the Mask Read online

  Thirty-One

  The next morning, he kissed Katie goodbye to her protests that he should just stay home.

  He explained that there was still work to do in order to close the Ellison case and she finally assented.

  When he entered the station, Gloria gave him a smile, but it wasn’t the same. There was less flirtatiousness to it. Apparently she had heard about his new living situation.

  “Hello, Sheriff,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to be in today.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Frank asked. “Did we put an end to crime everywhere?”

  “An attitude like that isn’t going to keep your young philly happy.”

  “The rumors around this place,” Frank muttered as he opened the door to the bullpen area.

  He stopped just inside the door. All the deputies were lined up in front of him. Michaels was standing near the center. When they saw Frank they erupted in thunderous applause.

  Frank smiled and waved his hand at them. “Thank you, thank you all. But this wasn’t a victory for me; this was the combined work of everyone here.”

  The applause continued.

  “Now get back to work and let’s get some more of ‘em.”

  Michaels broke from the pack as the rest of the deputies dispersed.

  “They wanted to do something for you,” Michaels said.

  “I appreciate it,” Frank said. “But there are still reports that need to be filed on this thing before we can close it all up.”

  “You’re on office duty,” Michaels said. His smiled broadened. “I suppose you can take care of that.”

  “Well then let me get to my office and do my job.”

  Thirty-Two

  Frank had been sitting in his office, going over papers for nearly three hours when there was a knock at the door.

  He thought it would be Michaels, coming over to rub his restricted assignment in a little more. Frank would take it all in with good cheer, because that’s what you did when guys ribbed you, and then ask Michaels if we wanted to get some lunch.

  Frank’s belly was rumbling.

  “Come on in,” Frank said.

  He was surprised at the face that greeted him when the door opened. It wasn’t Michaels, it was Jenkins.

  “Doctor,” Frank said. He stood up and extended his hand. “You know I’ve been meaning to come and talk to you. I wanted to apologize for the way that I acted the last time we saw each other.”

  Frank thought about that meeting. Thought about how he had railed against them. How he had threatened the doctors. The thought embarrassed him and it must have showed on his face because Jenkins offered him a thin smile.

  “You wanted to come and apologize to me,” Jenkins said. He took a seat in front of the desk and Frank sat down in his own chair.

  “Well, I had other reasons to come and talk to you, but those don’t matter anymore.”

  Didn’t they? If that were the case then why was Frank’s alarm sounding louder than ever. Jenkins was here in his office now. Why?

  “No,” Jenkins said. “What I found amusing is that I am here to apologize to you. I am not as smart as I sometimes think.”

  A wire tightened in Frank’s gut. Where was Bentley now? He had no idea. Jenkins was here to apologize? Did something happen. His thoughts turned to Katie almost instantly.

  “I decided that I would save you the trip and come down here myself. After I saw the news, I had expected that you would call this morning, but I’m glad that I got a chance to come here.”

  “What’s he done?” Frank asked.

  Jenkins peered at him with muddled eyes. His head cocked to the side, making him almost look like a puppy.

  “You should know. You’re the one who killed him.”

  “Bentley’s still alive,” Frank said. Now it was his turn to be confused.

  Jenkins laughed. “Perhaps you are, as yet, unaware of what I’m referring to. Though I have no doubt that a police officer of your skill and intelligence would discover it in due time. I am not speaking of Bentley.”

  “Ellison? But you didn’t treat him. Did you?”

  Jenkins body language shifted. He looked like he knew he had the upper hand now and he some of his nerves had melted away.

  “No, I never treated him, and that’s precisely the point. He volunteered for us. He and his associate would come on Thursdays to help with arts and crafts.”

  “Ellison was at your hospital every week?”

  Frank didn’t hear the entire answer, but he didn’t need to. The alarm bell had final stopped, because Frank’s brain had revealed the question to his conscious mind. The question that had caused the bell to sound in the first place.

  He remembered a snatch of conversation that he and Bentley had shared. It had been about their meeting in the bar. How fortunate it was that he met Frank at the bar, so that Frank could be sure he had nothing to do with Sheila’s death.

  How had Bentley known Frank was going to be at the bar?

  Frank didn’t even know he was going to be there. Hadn’t told anyone he was going to stop there. After his heated meeting at the hospital, he had needed a drink and he had seen the bar. Then Bentley showed up.

  With this first question asked more of them started to pop up. They were like dandelions which threaten to destroy a well manicured lawn.

  Bentley knew the landlady was a woman. He had said something about her being a bitch.

  How exactly did Bentley get his cell phone? Collins owned the cell phone store.

  Dread rose in Frank’s mind as more things came to him and still Jenkins was prattling on.

  He had known about the butterflies in Collins’s apartment, but he had been in the car when they found him. He mentioned the butterflies to the landlady.

  How did he know I was going to that bar?

  Frank thought about the equipment in the cell phone store. Bentley had said there was tracing equipment there. Had Ellison helped him track Frank down? Or had it been Collins? One last act before they murdered him.

  Then Frank thought about how Ellison had screamed at Bentley. How he had raced to him to attack him. Was this reaction to a final double-cross?

  “Background checks are pretty standard for our volunteers,” Jenkins said. “And I knew he was in a mental institution before, but he seemed like he had been successfully treated. I thought that if the others saw a former patient that had been released it would spur them to work hard to get better.”

  Jenkins sighed and spread his hands.

  “I see now that I was wrong.”

  Frank barely heard him. He was thinking about Sheila. Thinking about why she had been first. These thoughts led back to Katie.

  “I have to go doctor,” Frank said. “You can show yourself out.”

  There was only one thought in his brain as he raced from the station. Katie. Katie. Katie. Katie.

  Thirty-Three

  He was in the car with his cell phone in his hand with no real memory of getting there. It was like when you were driving and thinking about something else and your brain just autopilots you home.

  Katie’s phone rang six times before her voice mail finally picked up.

  Probably just in the shower, Frank thought. He didn’t believe it and neither did his heart which beat a staccato rhythm in his chest.

  Any chance for self-delusion ended when the voicemail picked up. Instead of Katie’s cheery voice, another one spoke in his ear.

  “Oh, Frank. I wish you hadn’t grown so attached to her.”

  It was Bentley, and not the almost normal speech pattern of the kid that he had shared his home with. His fucking home. No, this was the smooth, almost reptilian, delivery of a killer that he first met in a hobo’s shack.

  “Part of me wishes that you’d figured it out sooner. Okay, that’s a lie, because I don’t like being ensnared. I need her, you know that don’t you Frank. I know this will ruin whatever friendship we’ve build up and that does dishearten me slightly, but I have
to finish it.”

  Frank pressed the phone so hard against his ear that he could feel heat radiating off of the side of his face.

  “Don’t come, Frank. It will be better if you don’t. But if you do, I will be forced to kill both of you. Goodbye Frank. I hope I don’t see you again.”

  The message cut out and Frank threw the phone at the passenger door. It rebounded and the back cover came flying off as it hit the floorboard.

  He had never made better time to his house, but knew what he would find there. The message told him that.

  Still, he jumped from the car almost before he had it shifted into park and drew his gun. The front door was closed, but unlocked.

  The living room was a mess. The cushions from the couch lay on the floor in a jumble.

  The table lamp had been knocked over and next to it was Katie’s cell phone. The blue button on top of it blinked, indicating that she had a missed call.

  “Katie!” Frank called.

  No answer. Of course no answer. She was with him now.

  “I let him live here!” Frank screamed. “I didn’t listen to you, Katie! Why the fuck didn’t I listen to you!”

  He had begun to cry, but he barely noticed it. He ran out the front door and back out to the car.

  No sooner had he put the car into gear then he realized that he had no idea where he was going.

  Frank shifted the car back to park. It wouldn’t do any good to go off blindly running.

  Collins’s store?

  No, it was a crime scene and didn’t feel right. It wasn’t personal to Bentley.

  Then it came to him. All at once. He knew where he needed to go.

  Thirty-Four

  The old house had been bought. Frank had been there to help Sheila move. It looked the same though. The new owners hadn’t made any special modifications that Frank could see.

  There were three cars in the driveway. A blue SUV was parked near the fence to the backyard. Behind that a green coupe and behind that, a car that Frank recognized, a white sedan.

  He had seen it just two days ago, on the night the couple with the baby had been killed.

  Frank remembered trying to see inside the car and not quite being able to. He also remembered how Bentley had distracted him from it by asking him about Julie.

  The white sedan didn’t belong. It was nosed up to the coupe, but still the ass end of it stuck out to the sidewalk.

  Frank approached the front door in a crouch. His gun was out and the safety was off. He tried the knob, it was unlocked.

  The living room was empty. Some part of his mind registered the fact that it looked different than the last time he saw it. The furniture had changed, of course, and the picture of the little boy tying his shoes was gone. It had been replaced by a print which showed tall ships on a placid lake at sunset.

  The top of his mind was focusing on movement and sound. There was none.

  He moved to the kitchen.

  Two bodies lay on the floor near the sink. One man and one woman. The woman’s head had an odd dented look to it.

  The man’s throat had been slashed.

  The new owners.

  Frank caught movement from the tiny house in the backyard.

  The little toy house that had once belonged to a little girl who would never see a birthday past her sixth.

  Frank eased the back door opened and stepped out on the lawn.

  “Probably should stop there,” a voice called.

  Frank stopped and looked into the window of the toy house. He could see Bentley looking at him.

  Katie was in front of him. There was a white cloth around her mouth and she tried to scream at him through it.

  All that came out was, “Raaank. Raaaank alp eee. Alp eeeeeee.”

  “Shut up,” Bentley said. He was once again speaking as himself. Speaking as what he truly was, a monster. Frank wondered how he could have missed the restraint that Bentley had been speaking with. A restraint that had now been stripped away.

  Katie thrashed and bucked, but it was all lower body movement. The knife Bentley held to her throat prevented her from moving too much.

  “I told you not to come,” Bentley said. “I’m impressed that you figured out where I would be, but I did want you to stay away.”

  “Bentley. Don’t do this.”

  “You were an idiot when it came to the investigation of that sniveling moron, Ellison, and you’re being an idiot now if you even think I can stop.”

  “Why? Why do you have to do this?”

  “You were an idiot. You admit that, don’t you? I handed Ellison to you and then you watched me murder him.” Bentley laughed. “You even helped me cover up my crime.”

  “Please.”

  “Think about the investigation, Frank. Every major break you made in that case was my idea. If it had been up to you, Ellison would have succeeded in his stupid plan to kill twelve times before he shot himself.”

  “He was planning suicide?”

  “Yes. He told me that he couldn’t bear to have his cancer eat away at him. The Doctors gave him twelve months. One for each number on his grandfather’s watch.”

  “Bentley.”

  “Please drop your weapon, Frank. Or is that too much déjà vu for you?”

  Frank bent at the knees and placed his gun on the grass.

  “Now I want you to step forward. Get a little closer to the house. I hate yelling and I have a hard time seeing you.”

  Frank approached the house, bent over to keep his sightline on Bentley and Katie.

  “That’s good,” Bentley said when Frank was about three feet from the window.

  “How well did you know Ellison?” Frank asked. His eyes flicked over the roof of the tiny house and then back down to Bentley.

  “He was a fan, that was all,” Bentley said. “He came up to the hospital and we started to talk.”

  Bentley smiled.

  “Of course we couldn’t talk about the things we wanted to. So we would pass notes.”

  “Arts and crafts,” Frank said. “You’d pass notes through the origami.”

  “Sometimes even more out in the open than that. Do you know those markers with the invisible ink? One person writes the note and it’s invisible and then you use another pen to uncover the message.”

  “Sure.”

  Katie’s eyes were fixed on Frank. He tried to comfort her with his own eyes.

  “He brought some of those in. We passed notes for years. He tried some early kills. Found he liked it. I told him that we could do it better if we were together.”

  “So you convinced Jenkins you were cured?”

  “That began from the very beginning, Frank. It was always the plan if I were caught and stuck into a hospital. Remember when you told me that you were disappointed that it took me ten years to convince him?”

  Frank nodded.

  “Well I am good, but Jenkins was a hard man to convince. Even with all my skill and charm it did take a full ten years. There were some case studies about sociopaths in early adolescence that had developed into you sheep, but there were none on someone like me. No studies on people as violent as I was. That proved a big hurdle.”

  “But you did convince him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you convinced Ellison to kill Sheila?”

  Katie thrashed some more.

  “Let the men talk,” Bentley said. “Or I’ll kill Frank first. That way you can watch him bleed all over Karen’s little house. It can be the last thing you see.”

  Katie stopped.

  “He was more than happy to. I told him that he could help me complete my goals. I told him that Katie could be number twelve.”

  “But you didn’t have any intention of letting him help you?”

  “Of course not. Katie is all mine.”

  He hugged her tighter to his body and the knife drew a drop of blood. Katie let out a little shriek.

  “What I don’t understand is where Collins came in?”

&n
bsp; Bentley eased up on the knife. “Another fan boy. Of course, I think he had a crush on Harvey. Harvey’s gate didn’t swing that way, but he led the poor boy on.”

  “Did he kill his parents in a fire?”

  “Of course he did. I wasn’t lying to you when I told you that people like Ellison don’t make friends unless they are friends of the same species.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “Ellison’s idea, actually. He said that we didn’t need him anymore. Monsters can be so cruel can’t they?”

  Bentley laughed.

  “The best part about the whole thing is that Harvey was the only person I’ve killed since I’ve been released. He killed all the rest. Chose them all on his own, except for Sheila. And he considered her an honor.”

  Bentley fixed Frank with a cold stare. “Of course, that changed when Katie and I broke into the house and it’s going to change again right now. I’m going to need you to come in the door, Frank.”

  Frank took a step away from the house and nodded. “Sure. I’ll do it now.”

  “Be sure to bend down, wouldn’t want you hitting your-”

  That was as far as Bentley got, because that’s when thunder erupted from behind him.

  The bullet struck him in the back of the head. The right side blew out in a shower of skull and blood and brains. The knife dropped from his hand and he slumped into the open window. Half of his body slid down the front of the house, the bottom half stayed inside.

  Katie screamed, the side of her face was covered in gore and her hands ripped at the gag and pulled it off.

  Frank was at the door, holding it open. Katie raced out, banging her head on the top of the frame as she did.

  “I’m so sorry,” Frank said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

  Katie wrapped her arms around him and wept on his shoulder. He hugged her close.

  Michaels walked over from the tree line. He carried the rifle slung over his shoulder and smiled.

  “How about that,” Michaels said. “Now we’re both going to be on restricted duty for a few days.”

  “Thank you,” Frank said.