Beyond the Mask Read online

  “Dead,” Frank said. “You knew he wasn’t the killer?”

  “When I saw the building I did.”

  Frank straightened up and turned in Rick’s direction. His back was to him and he was still on the phone. Frank bent down again.

  “There’s no way you can be an official part of this investigation.”

  “I know,” Bentley said. A smile was playing on the edge of his lips.

  “But maybe we could have a few conversations about things at my house. You could tell me what you think.”

  “I could do that,” Bentley said. “Maybe I’ll even be good at it. Maybe it’s what I’m supposed to do.”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “All I know is that I’m out of ideas.”

  Nine

  HE never thought of it as hunting. Not really and truly. It was more like picking berries. Because they were everywhere, you didn’t have to hunt them. They were on the streets; they were at the shops they were in their houses. Houses were the easiest, of course, they thought their little shelters protected them, but they left themselves open all the time.

  Fear was a powerful thing, but it was in short supply when they were in their own homes. There was no fear, no readiness, no preparation.

  In the end they were just sitting there waiting to be killed. Just like a berry was sitting on the bush waiting to be picked. It really was that easy.

  HE walked down the street looking for the right house. HE didn’t need anyone to tell him what the right one would be; he could spot that just as easily as a Boy Scout could tell you what berries to eat and which ones would be poison.

  Most of the houses were empty in the morning. People were at school, they were at work, they were out and about. Night would have been an easier time to work, like he had with Sheila, but night wasn’t going to work anymore. HE no longer had the time to sit and wait. No longer had the time to mark a place and then return to it later.

  That was how he had imagined it would work when the killing started, but time…time…time, it marched on and he was running out. The death clock had been wound and there was no stopping it now.

  About halfway down the street there was a house with a white mini-van parked in the driveway. On the back window of the mini-van was a decal depicting a mom and dad with two children. They were just stick figures outlined in white, but it was all he needed to see.

  He walked up to the front door, glancing at the Dodgers flag which flew above the mailbox, and turned the handle. It was unlocked.

  “Make sure Charlie’s got his glove,” a male voice said.

  It was coming from his left where the front hallway turned. There were a set of stairs in front of him.

  The owner of the voice, a short, fat man wearing a blue Dodgers jersey, walked into view from around the corner.

  HE didn’t hesitate. HE stepped forward, the knife already in his hand, and slashed across the man’s throat. Blood spurted in a fine mist and hit the walls. HE dropped the body to the floor.

  The man had been looking at the stairs when he came around the corner so he climbed them.

  “Bill, I can’t find Charlie’s glove.” Female voice.

  The woman was also short, also fat, but she had a pretty face. He could imagine that she would have been really beautiful if she hadn’t been so fat. She saw him and then saw her husband dead on the landing.

  The scream didn’t last long. HE ended it with his knife. HE lowered the fat woman to the floor, hushing her as he did. Eyes were watching him, he knew it. He looked up and saw two children, one boy and one girl. They looked like they were around 11 and 7 respectively. They were staring at him.

  The boy was wearing a Dodgers cap and had a plain, blue shirt on. His glove was already on his hand. The girl had fine blonde hair that was braided down the back. Here eyes were ringed with tears.

  “I hate this part,” he said.

  It didn’t stop him from standing up and moving towards the children.

  When it was over, he walked to the bathroom and stripped off his dirty clothes. HE set down his duffel bag and opened it. The clean clothes were neatly folded inside. HE took them out dressed. Then he placed the gloves and the dirty clothes back into the bag and walked to the front door.

  HE paused just long enough to place an index card on a table by the door. Then he was out and gone. Like he’d never been there.

  Ten

  I.

  The call came in a little after noon. Frank had dropped Bentley off at his house and Rick had stayed at the Collins’s scene to help run the investigation. Frank was sitting in his office when his phone buzzed.

  “Yes?”

  “Someone on the tip line,” Gloria said.

  The tip line. That was a joke. They got more headaches than they did tips from that phone number. It was supposed to be a number that ordinary citizens could call when they’d spotted suspicious activity. Another wonderful innovation from the new age of terrorism fueled paranoia, but like most things, it didn’t work the way it was supposed to.

  “So send it to Adams or Rivers. You know how this works, Gloria.”

  “The guy says that he only wants to talk to you. He says it's about Sheila Braddock.”

  Frank sighed. “Put him through.

  “Sheriff Miles,” Frank said when he heard the click of the line.

  “2214 N. Willow Bough Ave,” a husky voice said. Then the line clicked and it was dead.

  Frank held the phone in his hand for a second, unsure what to do. He pushed the button to connect him back to Gloria again.

  “That was fast,” Gloria said.

  “Where’s Willow Bough Ave? That’s over in San Samson right? South end of the county.”

  “Yeah,” Gloria said. “My aunt lives about three blocks from there.”

  “I’m heading over there. I’ll be available on the phone if you need me.”

  “Okay,” Gloria said. “Something wrong?”

  “Probably,” Frank said and hung the phone up.

  II.

  Frank pulled up to the house and saw the mini-van in the driveway. He parked in front of the house and walked up, pausing a second to glance at the van. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could see. The only thing he didn’t approve of was the Dodgers flag flapping in the breeze. He was a Giants man.

  Frank knocked on the door, but it wasn’t closed all the way and with his first rap it swung a little. It was enough to afford him a view of a body on the ground. He raked his gun out of the holster and entered the house in a crouch.

  The man was laying face-down in front of the staircase. Frank looked up and saw a lump on the top of the landing.

  What the fuck? Was this guy the Flash? How the hell did he get the husband on the bottom and the wife on the top with no one hearing anything?

  Thoughts circled his brain. The first was of the phone call. Someone wanted him here. That could easily mean it was a trap. He had been foolish to come alone-it was a mistake that he’d made before-but he hadn’t been thinking he’d find a murder scene.

  Then he thought about the mini-van outside. Mini-vans meant kids didn’t they?

  That thought blocked out all the others and Frank took the stairs two at a time.

  When he reached the top, he was careful to step around the body. He didn’t have to think about that (in his panic he wasn’t thinking about much of anything) it was just instinct.

  There were no other bodies in the hallway, but there were red streaks that had soaked into the carpet and made a thick line towards the doorway at the end of the hall. It was unmistakable, but Frank still didn’t want to believe it. One of the good things about being the boss was that you didn’t have to see so many dead kids. He thought of Karen. He had been spared that scene, the last memory that he had of Karen had been when she opened the door for him the day that he’d come to tell Sheila that her husband had been murdered, but now it seemed that fate had brought him back to a similar scene.

  Doubled over if that thick
line is actually two lines, Frank thought.

  It certainly looked like it, but he couldn’t think about it now. Thinking would stop him from doing what he intended to do.

  He walked to the end of the hallway; keeping his back pressed up against the wall to avoid the blood, and pushed the door open.

  They were on the bed. Lying there together. Their fingers had been intertwined so it looked as if they were holding hands. The boy was on the near side and the girl on the far side. They had been propped on their sides so it looked as if they had fallen asleep looking at each other. Almost like a married couple instead of the brother and sister they obviously were.

  The skin around the boy’s neck was jagged, but Frank couldn’t see the full slash from his position at the door. The girl’s was easier to see. One thick line from ear to ear. The girl’s eyes were open, like Sheila’s had been, and the light had been extinguished from them in the same way it had been from Sheila’s. Whatever she had been was now gone. To where, Frank didn’t know. He wanted to believe that she was in Heaven, but he wondered how an all-loving God could allow something like this to happen.

  Frank looked at them for several minutes before going downstairs. It caught his eye when he was almost to the door, intending to get out of the house for some fresh air. Another index card, another piece of crystal and another red number. This one a three, of course it was.

  “How long until I find a four?” Frank asked out loud. That was a question he didn’t want an answer to.

  III.

  Rick would still be busy with the Collins scene, so Frank dialed Michaels’s number. He wasn’t the next in command (that would be Lieutenant Adams, a hold-over from the previous administration and a four star idiot) but he was the man that Frank wanted.

  “You went there alone?” Michaels asked when Frank had gotten him on the line.

  “We got a tip from the line,” Frank said. “Just an address. I didn’t expect to find a crime scene. I thought if it was going to be anything it was going to be where the guy lived.”

  “Well that’s your privilege. You’re the boss after all.”

  “You know who I want, don’t you?”

  “I’m guessing Brackstone, Renault and Fischer.”

  “You guess right.”

  “Okay, but Fischer is over at the other scene. Busy day. Should I pull him off?”

  “No, just come with the other two. Is Roman still over with Collins?”

  “Just got back with his little pile of evidence and went back down to his hole.”

  “Bring him.”

  “Already walking down there,” Michaels said.

  “Lieutenant is getting closer and closer,” Frank said and hung up.

  It took them twenty minutes to get there. Three police cruisers and Roman’s van.

  Michaels got out of his car and started barking orders at the deputies to secure the scene. Then he walked over to where Frank stood in front of the house.

  “Is it the same guy? I guess it has to be doesn’t it?”

  Frank nodded.

  Roman trotted up to the house with an improbable smile on his face. Frank wondered about the guy’s marbles and not for the first time.

  “You’ve got another card for me, da?”

  “It’s on a table by the door,” Frank said.

  Roman walked into the house and Michaels started to follow. He stopped and looked at Frank. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “I’ve seen all I need to,” Frank said. “I’m going to get back to the station.”

  Eleven

  All calls to the tip line were recorded. It was a standard procedure and the tapes were generally wiped the next day, unless it was something of importance. Frank thought that the latest call would qualify.

  “I sent it down to the lab,” Gloria said when Frank had arrived back at the station. “Just like you asked me to.”

  “Rick back yet?”

  “Just,” Gloria said. “He’s down there with them.”

  Frank made the walk to the lab. Now there were five other white coats down here. Roman was still at the latest crime scene, but had had called in the reinforcements. Frank was sure he was going to have to approve some overtime for the added personnel, but that didn’t matter to him.

  “You should know better than to go out on your own,” Rick said. Reproach dripped in his voice, but he kept his tones pitched low.

  “I didn’t think it would be anything,” Frank said. He looked at the lab geeks. They were all looking at pieces of physical evidence, using their microscopes and luminal. “Where’s the tape.”

  “Weird Mike has it in the back.”

  “What have I told you about calling him that?”

  “I’m not doing it to his face,” Rick said, but he was smiling.

  The back rooms of the lab were located behind a set of double doors at the back of the basement. There were three of them. One was Roman’s office and only contained his computer and a few nick knacks that he’d picked up over the years. Another was the ballistics testing facility. There was a bullet proof glass tube with a hole at one end that was used to fire guns in order to match bullets and impact patterns.

  The final room was the one they were looking for. It was a mass of computers and electronic equipment. Video, audio, it had everything. Including the surveillance camera feed of the station. In that way it could act as a kind of a safe room in case of some sort of emergency.

  Weird Mike was sitting in front of one of the computers. Instead of a white coat he wore a plain black shirt and a pair of jeans. When the door opened, Mike swiveled in his chair to face his guests. There was a doughnut perched on his round stomach.

  Part of what made him weird was his body. He had skinny legs, skinny arms, a skinny face, a flat butt, but a huge belly that made him look like he’d swallowed a beach ball.

  Frank would have thought that Mike had gotten that belly from too many bottles of Coors light, but Mike was an abstainer. No one had ever seen him drink anything stronger than Coca-Cola.

  Mike picked up the doughnut and took a bite of it; powdered sugar dripped from his chin and dotted his black shirt, like snowflakes. He set the doughnut back down on his stomach.

  “Fi, I had nary an expectation of two gentlemen of your station here today.”

  Mike was the only member of the forensics team who was not a member of the sheriff’s department. He was a freelancer, but an electronic genius according to Roman. He hadn’t been needed often enough to put him permanently on the pay roll. But, in the few times they had called on him, Frank had been more than satisfied with the results.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Rick asked.

  “Oh, I’m reading medieval literature now.”

  “Last time you were here you were talking like a robot,” Frank said.

  Mike looked offended. “Not a robot, an android. Data from Star Trek to be exact.” Mike shook his head as if Frank’s lack of knowledge made him profoundly sad. “This week it’s medieval literature, but I can go back to the Data talk if you want.”

  “Just tell us what you’ve found,” Frank asked.

  “Not a whit thusly. You’ve besought my counsel too hastily. I have yet to transgress the conundrum.”

  “Does all that mean that you haven’t had time yet?”

  “Precisely,” Mike said.

  “Well then you won’t mind if we just sit here and watch you work.”

  Rick and Frank pulled up chairs while Mike turned back towards his computer. He hit a button and Frank heard the voice again.

  “2214 North Willow Bough Avenue.”

  The voice sent a chill up Frank’s back this time. It was the voice of the killer, he was sure of it now. This wasn’t some concerned citizen that had seen something out of the ordinary. It was a killer that wanted Frank to find what he’d left for him.

  Mike hit buttons and the tape slowed down. Now the voice wasn’t only husky but deeper, sounding like the voice of a demon.

 
“Can you trace the call?” Rick asked.

  “No,” Mike said. His voice had taken on a monotone lack of emotion. It seemed as if he was opting to move back to the Data voice after all.

  “The duration of the call was far too short for a specific trace. It is my hypothesis that even if the call had been longer we would not be able to get a positive trace at any rate.”

  “Why?” Frank asked.

  “Because I believe the call was placed from a cellular telephone. If that is a correct assumption then I would speculate that the telephone in question was of the previous pay variety.”

  “A burner,” Frank said.

  “That is correct,” Mike replied.

  “Drug dealers use those,” Rick said.

  “This isn’t a drug dealer,” Frank said. “He’s a serial killer.”

  Mike wound the tape back and played it again. This time the voice was completely absent and what they were left with was the hiss of background sound. It was just the silence of the connection until the very end. A voice spoke one word: “please.”

  “What was that?” Rick asked.

  “One of the kids,” Frank said.

  Mike rewound it and played it again.

  It was the girl; the voice was too high for even a prepubescent boy. The girl had been alive when the killer made the call.

  “Call Michaels,” Frank said to Rick. “Tell him the guy might still be in the area.”

  Rick got up and trotted to the door. “And ask him if anyone saw anything,” he called after him.

  Twelve

  I.

  Frank entered his house and was surprised for a second at the sound of the television. Then he remembered Bentley and he relaxed.

  It wasn’t until he had stripped his jacket off and was about to take his holster off that he remembered who Bentley was. He kept it on.

  “How was work?” Bentley asked from the couch. He didn’t turn around.

  “Busy,” Frank said.

  “He’s killed again, hasn’t he?” Bentley asked.

  “Yes,” Frank said. He took a seat on one of the recliners and let out a heavy sigh. “He’s done it again and we have nothing so far.”