by John Saul
And she looked good. In fact, she looked fantastic.
She looked like Teresa at Conrad’s office, with breasts that were neither too large nor too small, and looked perfect on her lean frame.
But maybe it was only the sweater.
She took off the sweater and her jeans and went into the closet. Very carefully she took the party dress off its hanger and slipped it on.
And once again the fake breasts filled the bodice perfectly.
So Cindy was wrong.
The perfectly formed breasts made her look better—a lot better—and when the implants were in, it would all look even more natural than it did now.
Suddenly, she wanted to tell Conrad to schedule the procedure as soon as he could.
But first she’d call Cindy again and tell her that her attitude was all wrong. But what good would that do? She wasn’t going to change Cindy’s mind—when Cindy decided something, that was that. So this would just have to be one of those things that friends accepted in each other.
But as she turned in front of the mirror, she knew she had to tell someone what she was going to do. And it had to be someone who would be as excited as she suddenly was.
Tasha!
Of course! Alison took off the dress and put it back in her closet, then put on her bathrobe. Even it looked better with her new shape.
She flopped back onto the bed, picked up her phone, and speed-dialed Tasha, who would not only understand and share her excitement, but also be able to tell her exactly what to expect in the surgery. In it, and after it.
And maybe—just maybe—Conrad would have time to do it next weekend.
Suddenly, life was fabulous.
NATALIE OWEN FISHED a Diet Pepsi out of the nurses’ station refrigerator and dropped into the chair behind the big reception desk in the lobby, her eyes automatically going to the computer monitor. Everything was quiet tonight. Most of the nursing home’s residents were sleeping, and all but one showed no signs of not making it through the night. The single exception was Manny Smithers, whose family was sitting vigil at his bedside so he wouldn’t die alone, even though he’d shown no signs of recognizing anyone for the past two years.
In fifteen minutes Steve Williams would arrive to relieve her, and since she’d finished all her paperwork half an hour ago, she decided she might as well log on to eHarmony and see if the man of her dreams had noticed her yet.
With a few strokes on the keyboard, she logged into her account and found that almost a dozen people had looked at her profile since the last time she’d checked.
But nobody had responded.
And she was pretty sure she knew why: it had to be the photograph.
Double-clicking on the image to enlarge it, she gazed dolefully at the offending picture. It had been taken by her mother after her solo performance with the church choir last Easter, when she’d sung the Lord’s Prayer. In the picture, she was wearing the blue choir robe with the gold V-neck stole that made her eyes look bluer and her hair even blonder than it was, and she knew it was one of the best photographs ever taken of her.
Her entire face was blooming with the spirit of Christ. Her hair was perfect, her smile attractive and welcoming.
But even her mother—who had taken the picture, for heaven’s sake!—had said that if she was going to attract a man, she shouldn’t post a picture of herself in a choir robe. Men wanted to see what she had to offer, and would be afraid she was hiding something beneath the flowing gown. But Natalie still thought it was the right picture; after all, she didn’t want to attract just any man. She wanted God to send her a good Christian who would appreciate both her and her faith.
She clicked twice more on the photo to enlarge it further.
The hint of lipstick that the choir director put on her lips just before the service actually looked good—not slutty at all. Her mother always said her lips were her best feature, even insisting that they looked just like those of some famous supermodel whose name Natalie couldn’t remember.
Margot something-or-other.
She had never actually bothered to find out if her mother was right, but even if she was, it hadn’t seemed to matter. It was starting to look like no matter what photo she put up on any matchmaking site, no man was ever going to want her.
She was almost thirty.
It was about time she stopped all the wishful thinking and accepted that spinsterhood was going to be her lot in life.
Steve rang the bell at the front door, waving to her as she buzzed him through, and Natalie barely managed to close the Web browser before he could see what she was doing. She briefed him on what little activity had taken place over the last eight hours, then finished her Diet Pepsi, swapped her stethoscope for her purse in her locker, and walked out into the mild Los Angeles night.
Ten minutes later she pulled her secondhand Toyota into the dark carport behind her apartment building, reminding herself for what had to be the fifth time to tell the manager about the burned-out bulb tomorrow morning, and knowing even as she reminded herself that by then she would have forgotten all about it.
Not that it mattered, really, since she’d chosen the apartment three years ago because it was in the middle of the safest neighborhood in Studio City, and still was.
She got out of the car, grabbed the tote bag full of clothing that she was gathering from deceased residents to donate to the poor, and locked the car behind her.
But as she took a step toward the doorway leading to the stairwell up to her second-story apartment, icy tendrils of fear crawled up the back of her neck.
Something was wrong.
She was not alone.
“Hello?” she called out, her voice sounding oddly hollow as it echoed off the concrete walls of the carport.
There was no answer, and she told herself to stop being an idiot by letting her imagination run away with her.
Still, the carport didn’t feel right, and the goose bumps on her skin weren’t going away.
Refusing to give in to her fear and glance over her shoulder, she made herself walk toward the stairwell and the safety of her little studio apartment, where tonight’s scripture lesson on tape was waiting for her.
She reached out to pull open the door between her and the bright light of the stairwell, but just before her fingers closed on the doorknob, an arm snaked out of the darkness, slid around her throat, and jerked her backward.
The bag of clothing flew from her hand, and she watched it arc across the carport as if in slow motion. And then she was flailing against her assailant, but before she could escape the imprisoning arm, she lost her balance and sank to the floor.
A knee pressed down on her right arm.
“Please,” Natalie gasped, her voice barely even a whisper. “Take whatever you want. Just please don’t hurt me.”
Then she felt the point of a knife at her throat, and knew she was about to die.
Die right here in her own carport, only a few feet from the safety of the building.
She tried to think of the peace of death and the wonder of meeting Jesus, but somehow no prayers came to her mind.
All she could do was listen to her own heart hammering inside her chest.
Then, out of the darkness and through her terror, she heard a voice.
“All I want,” it said, “are your lips.”
My lips, she thought. Why would someone want my—
Before she could finish the thought, the knife sliced across her throat, and as blood spurted from her aorta and she felt her life draining away, rough fingers grabbed her lips and she felt the knife sink into her flesh once more.
Finally the prayers she wanted to utter came back to her, and she tried to move her lips to form the words.
But her lips were gone, and the words were lost in the blood gushing from her neck and then—
—and then it didn’t matter, for Natalie Owen could pray no more.
18
TINA WONG FINISHED CLIPPING THE LAVALIERE MICROPHONE TO THE
collar of Jillian Oglesby’s blouse and asked her to say a few words so Pete Biner could get a volume level, then picked up the glass of water that Jillian’s mother had provided—complete with an obviously hand-crocheted doily to protect the bird’s-eye maple coffee table from being stained—and went over her notes for the interview.
“I can’t really tell you anything,” Jillian said in a soft, apologetic voice that Tina knew would tug at the heartstrings of everyone who heard it, let alone saw the pictures of Jillian’s ruined face. “I didn’t see anybody. He hit me from behind, and when I woke up, I was already in the hospital.”
“That’s okay,” Tina said, searching for a way to turn this into something more than just video footage of a girl with scars where her eyebrows had once been, and a mother who was doing little more than weeping and wringing her hands. She had already had to talk the girl into washing off the makeup she’d used in a monumentally unsuccessful attempt to hide the skin graft scars, penciling in a pair of eyebrows that were neither even nor symmetrical. Now Jillian at least looked as pathetic as she sounded, but Tina knew that the big trick was to find a way to stretch the interview out long enough for the audience to truly appreciate the carnage she was displaying for them.
“We’re good, Tina,” Pete said.
“Okay! Showtime!” Tina smiled brightly at Jillian. “Deep breath.”
As Jillian self-consciously filled her lungs with a big breath—and her mother wiped perspiration from her own upper lip, ignoring the beads of sweat covering Jillian’s face—Tina’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
Michael Shaw. She flipped the phone open. “Yes?”
“There’s been another murder,” Michael said, wasting no words at all. “This time he took the girl’s lips.”
The inventory clicked through Tina’s mind like cards on a Rolodex: lips, ears, eyebrows, breasts. “What about the glands?” she asked, forcing herself not to look at either Jillian Oglesby or her mother.
“Given the carnage, it looks like he took all the usual stuff.”
Tina glanced inquiringly at Pete, and when she spoke, her question was as much for the cameraman as her boss. “Can we go live right now?”
Pete nodded, having already set up a satellite link to connect the truck parked in the Oglesby driveway to the studio in Los Angeles.
“At the top of the hour,” Michael agreed.
Tina checked her watch. She had seven minutes to prepare. Unclipping her own mike, she went out to the tiny front porch, where the midday sun was peeling the last of the paint from the railings, the steps, and the clapboard siding of the house itself. “This guy’s some sicko,” she said softly to Michael, hoping she was casting her voice low enough so the two women in the house wouldn’t hear her. If she was going to get the best reaction from Jillian, she didn’t want the girl to have even a minute to think about what was going on. “What’s the name of the new victim, the one with the lips? And give me the details. Fast.”
“Natalie Owen,” Michael replied, then filled Tina in on what had happened the night before. “You’re not going to have a lot of time—I’m giving you forty seconds at the top of the hour, but that’s it.”
“It’ll be enough,” Tina said. “Thanks.” She folded her phone, slipped it into her pocket, then went back into the house, where she gave Jillian a reassuring smile as she clipped the mike back onto her blouse.
“A slight change in plans,” she said. “We’re going to do some of the interview live, and broadcast the rest on Sunday.” She drank the rest of the water, checked her makeup, then patted the sweat off Jillian Oglesby’s lips. She was just finishing up getting the girl posed next to her by the fireplace when Pete Biner held up five fingers, then started dropping them down, one every second.
“This is Tina Wong, reporting live from Bakersfield, where I’m interviewing Jillian Oglesby, who I believe was attacked last year by the same man who has now killed at least five women in California, the latest being Natalie Owen, a nurse murdered in the carport of her Studio City apartment last night.” She turned to Jillian just as the reality of her words sank into the girl, whose face had become a mask of horror. “He took the girl’s lips this time, Jillian. What do you think is going on in this man’s mind?”
“I—I—what—” Jillian floundered, which was exactly what Tina had been hoping for.
She turned back to the camera. “This man, whoever he is, seems to be roaming around our state, taking parts from girls as if he’s trying to build himself whatever his idea of the perfect woman is. It’s as if Dr. Frankenstein has risen from his grave and is back in his laboratory. But my question is this: why have the police been unable to stop this…” Tina paused as if searching for the words she had in fact already planned to say, then went on. “…monster,” she finished. “How many women must be robbed not only of their lives, but of their very features before this killer—this Frankenstein Killer—is stopped? For the latest on all these killings, tune to Channel 3 at eight P.M. on Sunday, when I’ll bring you a full report on what has been going on that the police haven’t been telling us about. Now, back to the studio for a traffic update. This is Tina Wong, live from Bakersfield.”
As the live feed ended, Tina signaled Pete to keep taping and eased Jillian Oglseby back to the sofa. Seating herself beside Jillian, Tina took her hand. “What can you tell me, Jillian? Do you remember any of it?”
The girl nodded, her eyes glazed. “I—I was out jogging, just like I always do. And he hit me on the head from behind, and—and—” Her voice broke, then: “He slit my throat.” Jillian pulled aside the collar of her blouse to show a wide scar that extended all the way around the front of her throat. “And then he cut off my eyebrows. It happened so fast I couldn’t even scream, but then another jogger came by and he ran away.” Her voice dropped to a faint whisper. “I almost bled to death.”
“Brave girl,” Tina said as Pete narrowed the camera’s focus to fill the frame with Jillian’s face. As Pete held the shot, Tina went on. “What are the police doing to capture this murderer and stop his rampage of terror? Not enough. Not nearly enough. This is Tina Wong, keeping you up to the minute on the Frankenstein Killer, who is still at large.”
The red light went out.
“Good piece,” Pete said.
Tina’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Michael again. She flipped it open.
“The Frankenstein Killer?” her boss grated.
“It works,” Tina responded, waving to Jillian to stay where she was so Pete could film her from other angles.
“So now you’re going to need all new graphics.”
“That’s true,” Tina said. “Would you mind getting that ball rolling? We should start running promos tonight. I’m going to be here another hour finishing this interview, so I’ll see you late this afternoon.”
Michael sighed.
And Tina smiled.
The Frankenstein Killer.
It had been a stroke of genius, and it would stick. And from now on Michael Shaw would have to give her anything she wanted. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if the networks started calling even before the special aired.
“Okay, Pete,” she said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
MICHAEL SHAW NEEDED at least two more hands to handle everything on his desk, and four would have been even better. And almost all of it had to do with Tina Wong.
Since she was still on her way back from Bakersfield—and caught in traffic, which she’d called three times to report so far, never failing to mention that she was going to talk to “the network” about his refusal to provide her with a helicopter—he had to approve the promos for her special even before she saw them. Knowing Tina Wong, that meant she would do whatever she wanted in the way of reediting, using his preapproval as her license. But after her live remote broadcast this morning, the switchboard had been flooded with calls from people who were certain they knew who the Frankenstein Killer was and who wanted to be interviewed on air by Ti
na. And every other station in the area was picking up the story, though Tina possessed far more information than anyone else.
Which meant Tina had the whip hand, at least for now.
Michael buzzed his intern and asked him to bring another double latte from the coffee kiosk down the block, knowing he would be surviving on them at least until Tina’s special aired, and probably for a week afterward.
He leaned back in his chair and gazed morosely at the stack of other work that was overflowing his in-box and at the pile of unanswered phone messages that was growing by the minute. He rotated his aching neck in a futile attempt to get a couple of the kinks out, stretched his back, then reached for the stack of messages and began sorting through them, discarding at least half of them as nothing more than annoyances.
When two brisk raps on his door interrupted his concentration, he looked up, to remind his secretary that he’d ordered no interruptions for the next fifteen minutes—none!—but when he saw two men in business suits, his annoyance turned to anger. If Tina Wong had already called “the network” to complain about him—
“Michael Shaw?” one of them asked, cutting into his thoughts before he’d begun to envision upbraiding her.
“Isn’t that what it says on the door?” he snapped.
“We won’t take much of your time,” the second man responded. “I’m Evan Sands and this is Rick McCoy.” Both men reached into the inside pockets of their suit jackets and flipped open glittering LAPD badges for his inspection. “We need to talk to you about the allegations your reporter is making on the air.”
“My reporter?” Michael said, deciding to play dumb even though he of course knew who they were talking about—the very thorn that had been irritating his side for the last several months.
“Tina Wong,” McCoy chimed in, in case he hadn’t figured out who they were here about. “She seems to have taken it upon herself to fabricate connections between murder cases that may not be connected at all.”
“Which is a huge problem for us,” Sands picked up, going on with a routine Michael was sure they’d used before. “First off, every loony in town is confessing to these crimes. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that your Miss Wong is creating panic in the streets. Our job is hard enough without a newscaster acting like no woman is safe anywhere in the entire area.”
