Frank frowned into the mirror. Then he touched his forehead and prodded his cheeks. “I don’t look old, do I?” he said. “I mean, I don’t look as old as you do. How come?”
“The last twenty-four years, Frank—well, let’s put it this way, they just passed you by.”
“They passed me by? How in God’s name did that happen?”
“Do you remember a kid named Laurence Stepney?”
“Sure I do. A real tearaway, that boy, but if I can straighten him out, I reckon that he could go far. Heck—listen to me. If twenty-four years have gone by, then Laurence Stepney must be nearly forty by now.”
“Do you remember him trying to steal a car from the Big Bear Supermarket?”
Frank thought for a while. Then he slowly nodded. “Kind of … Him and some other kid named Thomas Cusack.”
“You tried to stop him, Frank. Can you remember that?”
Frank’s eyes, which always looked as if he were long-sighted, seemed to focus even further away, into the past. He reached out his hand as if he were trying to take hold of somebody’s shoulder.
“Yes—yes, I do remember. I said, ‘You’re not letting me down, Laurence. Only yourself, and your parents.’ ”
“Then what happened?”
Frank lowered his hand and looked up at Sissy in bewilderment. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. What did happen?”
“Laurence Stepney shot you, Frank. He shot you without any warning at point-blank range.”
Frank looked down at his chest, almost as if he expected to see his shirt soaked in blood. “Is that what put me into a coma?”
“No, Frank.” Sissy had to stop for a moment, because she was so choked up. “That’s what killed you.”
Frank sat in complete silence while Sissy explained about the roses, and the ring, and Red Mask, and what the DeVane cards had predicted.
“That’s why we called you back, Frank. It’s the only way I could think of to save scores more people from being murdered. But Trevor and I agreed that if you didn’t want to help us, if you wanted to rest in peace, then we’d honor your wishes and let you go back to sleep.”
Frank lifted his left hand and stared at it. “So what you’re telling me is that I’m dead, and this is a dead man’s hand?”
“The Frank Sawyer I was married to, the actual Frank Sawyer, he’s dead, yes, and his remains are lying in the Morningside Cemetery in New Milford. But you are Frank Sawyer’s likeness. You have Frank Sawyer’s memories, and Frank Sawyer’s character, and hopefully you have Frank Sawyer’s talent for hunting down criminals.”
“I’m a painting?”
“You were recreated as a painting, yes. We don’t know for sure how it happens, but we think that the ring on Molly’s necklace has the power to bring her paintings to life.”
Frank stood up. He touched Sissy’s hair and wound one of her silver curls around his finger. “Wild as ever,” he told her. “Never known a woman whose hair was always so flyaway.”
“I loved you, Frank. I loved you so much. When you were killed, it was like I was killed, too.”
“How can I be a painting?” Frank asked her. He traced her eyebrow with his fingertip, and touched her cheek, and then her lips. “How can a painting walk, and talk, and wind your hair around his finger?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. But there are so many stories about paintings and drawings that come to life.”
“Crazy,” said Frank, and shook his head. “I always said you were crazy, didn’t I? That’s why I love you so much.”
Sissy said, “Do you think you want to stay and help us, my darling? Or do you want to go back?”
“I was dead. Now I’m alive again. Maybe I’m only a painting, but I still feel like me. So what do you think?”
“Let me wake up Trevor and Molly.”
She turned toward the corridor that led to their bedroom, but she didn’t have to go to rouse them. Trevor and Molly were standing in the doorway, staring at Frank as if they were two children who had surprised Santa putting out their presents.
“Dad,” said Trevor, with a catch in his throat. “Dad, I don’t believe it!”
He came forward. The two of them looked at each other for a moment, long-lost father and grown-up son. Then they embraced each other tightly, as if they never wanted to let go, ever again.
“It is a miracle,” said Trevor. “It really works. It is a miracle.”
Sissy turned to Molly and smiled. Molly was wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her stripy nightshirt. “You did wonderful work tonight, Molly. He’s just like the Frank that I remember.”
Molly was holding her necklace in her hand, and she held it up. “Look,” she said. “I could see it glowing on my dressing table, and I knew that something must be happening.”
The stone in Van Gogh’s ring was shining so brightly that it looked as if it had a red light in it.
Molly said, “It must be like your ring, Sissy—except that your ring goes dark to show that people are telling lies.”
“Yes,” said Sissy. She took the necklace and held it up in front of Frank’s face, so that the ring was reflected in his eyes, like twin red sparks. “It can sense that you’re alive,” she told him. “And—look—the closer it gets to you, the brighter it shines.”
“How about a drink to celebrate?” Trevor suggested.
“Trevor, it’s three o’clock in the morning.”
“So what? I have a bottle of Cuvée Napa in the fridge if anybody fancies some. This is something that’s really worth celebrating, don’t you think?” He hesitated, and then he said, “Dad? You do drink, don’t you? What I mean is, you can drink?”
Frank shrugged. “So far as I know. I feel real enough, don’t I? I expect I can eat, too. You still make that corned-beef hash, Sissy?”
They sat in the living room talking until it began to grow light outside. Even though Sissy knew that “Frank” wasn’t the real Frank whom she had buried, the experience of seeing him again and sitting next to him again made her feel so young and happy that she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.
It was only when she caught sight of the two of them in the mirror that she grew quieter, because he was so much younger than her. Twenty-four years had etched their marks around her eyes and around her mouth, and these days she usually wore a silk scarf or a large enameled necklace to hide her neck.
“So what happens next?” asked Frank. “How do I locate these two Red Mask characters?”
“I think the best place to start is the Giley Building,” said Sissy. “That was where Red Mask first attacked George Woods and Jane Becker. Like I told you, I couldn’t sense him at all, and the police tracker dogs couldn’t pick up any kind of scent. But that was where Molly first drew him, and I think there’s a very strong possibility that he’s hiding out there.”
“And if we find them? What do we do then?”
“Summary justice,” said Sissy. “There’s no point in trying to arrest them and put them in jail. They would simply disappear. When we find them, we have to destroy them. It’s as simple as that.”
Frank finished his glass of sparkling wine. “That was good,” he said. “Never tasted nothing like that before. Who would have thought twenty-four years ago that young Trevor would be educating his own daddy in sophisticated tastes?”
Sissy said, “I’m going to start by seeing if you can sense where the Red Masks are hiding. After all, you’re the same as they are, a painting, and you can follow them into places that nobody else can.”
“I’m not psychic like you, Sissy. I never could understand how you knew there was somebody coming to pay us a visit about an hour before they showed up, or how you could tell when something bad was going to happen.”
“I know, darling. But you always had an intuition for hunting down the bad guys, didn’t you? And I think you’ll find that you have new abilities now.”
Frank turned his head around. “I can hear something,” he said. “I’ve been hea
ring it ever since I got here.”
He stood up and approached Molly’s painting of New Milford Green, with its Colonial houses and its band-stand and its scattering of leaves on the grass. He lifted his hand toward it, and said, “I can feel the wind, Sissy. I can hear the cars going by, and the people talking.”
He turned back toward her, but as he did so he staggered, and his knees gave way. He seized the back of one of the kitchen chairs, but he collapsed onto the floor, with the chair on top of him.
“Frank!” said Sissy, kneeling down beside him. “Frank, are you okay?”
Frank looked up at her. The pupils of his eyes were very small, as if he had been staring into an intensely bright light.
“I’m okay, I think. Funny turn, that’s all. For one second … I didn’t know where I was.”
Sissy took hold of his hand, lifted it toward her lips, and kissed his wedding band. “Wherever you are, Frank, you’ll always be with me. Always.”
She helped Frank into bed and went into the kitchen for two glasses of water. As she passed Molly’s study, however, she paused, and then she went in, setting the glasses of water down on the table.
There lay the sketchbook in which Molly had painted Frank. The page was blank. She touched it with her fingertips, almost regretfully. It had been such a vivid portrait. But of course she had the “real” Frank now—a Frank she could talk to, and kiss, and share so many memories with.
As she was about to leave, however, she noticed the sheet of paper with the painting of the roses on it. She picked it up and examined it, frowning. The rose petals were tinged with brown, and the leaves had turned dry and curly. Not only that, the painting was very much fainter. Now that Molly had cut them, they were dying, and because they were dying, their image was fading. Molly’s paintings took on a life of their own, but it seemed to Sissy that even on paper they could wither and die, and disappear.
She went back to her bedroom. Frank was asleep, and steadily breathing.
She leaned over and kissed his hair. “Please don’t disappear,” she whispered. “I don’t think I could bear it, not a second time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Hide-and-Go-Seek
Detective Kunzel was sitting at the counter in Hathaway’s, the 1950s-style diner with the pink Formica tabletops, forking up a breakfast of scrapple and fried eggs. The waitress had just come up to ask him if he wanted more apple butter when his cell phone played “Hang On Sloopy.”
“Kunzel,” he answered.
“Enjoying your breakfast, Detective?” whispered the harsh voice of Red Mask. “Could be your last, if you’re not careful. The condemned detective’s last meal.”
“What do you want, you murdering piece of shit?” Detective Kunzel demanded, and the elderly man sitting next to him turned and stared at him in alarm.
“It’s not what I want, is it? I’m getting what I want. I’m getting my revenge, in spades. No, Detective, I’m talking about what you want.”
“Go on,” said Detective Kunzel, putting down his fork. Suddenly he didn’t have an appetite anymore.
“You want me, don’t you? You want to see me handcuffed and locked up in a cell, and then hauled up in front of a court and sentenced to death. You want to see me in Mansfield, don’t you, with a needle in my arm?”
“Well, you got that right. But I’m not going to assume that you’re going to give yourself up.”
“I’m not. You think I’m a fool? But justice is justice, Detective. Justice should be fair, and I’m giving you the chance to come after me.”
“Why would you do that?” he asked Red Mask. He waved the waitress away and said, “No, thanks.”
“Maybe I’m bored. Maybe I feel like some sport, along with my revenge. Maybe killing all of these poor innocent folks is getting to be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.”
“So this is about what you want?”
“You don’t have to take me up on this, Detective. But it’s a onetime offer. After this, it’s back to the massacres. No rest for the wicked, remember. No mercy for the innocent, neither.”
“All right, then, Mr. Mask,” said Detective Kunzel. “What exactly do you propose?”
“You can find me at noon exactly, in the parking structure next to the Giley Building. Bring plenty of backup. You’re going to need it.”
With that, Red Mask cut off the connection. Detective Kunzel immediately punched out Lieutenant Booker’s number at headquarters.
They parked across the street from the Giley Building and climbed out of their car. Although it was nearly noon, the street was in shadow and unnaturally chilly.
“He couldn’t have picked anyplace grimmer, could he?” said Detective Bellman, looking up at the eight-story parking structure. It had been built in the late 1950s, and it was due for demolition as soon as the Giley Building itself was vacated. It was made of grimy concrete, with black streaks down the walls. The sides of each floor were open, but they were all covered with rusty steel mesh.
Three squad cars had already parked on Race Street, and twelve more would arrive in the next few minutes without sirens or lights. The CPD had cordoned off a six-block area between Elm and Vine Streets, from Seventh Street as far south as Third Street.
“Here comes the cavalry,” said Detective Kunzel, as two black SWAT vans appeared around the corner, followed closely by three metallic silver cars carrying FBI agents. Off to the northeast, they could hear the flackerflacker-flacker of a police helicopter. There were two police sharpshooters on board, but the helicopter crew had been instructed to stay well away unless Red Mask ventured out onto the parking structure’s flat roof.
Two FBI agents came over. One of them was tall and wide shouldered, with a jutting chin and black slicked-back hair like a young Jack Lord from the early seasons of Hawaii Five-O. The other was black, with a shaved head, and he had the steel-sprung walk of a man who gets up at 5:00 A.M. every day for a punishing workout.
“Agent Morrison, Agent Greene,” Detective Kunzel acknowledged them.
Special Agent Morrison looked up at the parking structure. “So what’s going down, Detective? Lieutenant Booker said that the unsub challenged you to meet him here.”
“That’s right. He pretty much told me that he was bored with killing defenseless people and wanted a little sport.”
“You say ‘he’ like he’s only one person.”
“I know. But I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy who calls me up every time. And he’s adamant that he has no accomplice.”
Special Agent Morrison turned to Special Agent Greene. “Can you believe this? I’ve had to deal with so many schizos over the years who seriously believe that they’re two different people. But this is the first time I have ever come across two different people making out like there’s only one of them.”
“Could be twins,” Special Agent Greene suggested. “Sometimes they have this really highly developed synchronicity. You know—one of them bangs his thumb with a hammer and the other one says ‘Shit!’ ”
Detective Kunzel blew his nose. “Whatever the truth of it is, these guys are illogical, apparently motiveless, and it seems like they’re killing people just for the kicks. But remember what I told you when I first briefed you: however many Red Masks there are, they seem to be able to come and go without being seen, and they have no moral compunction about who they attack.”
“Okay, Detective. Thanks for that. Let’s hope we can wrap this one up for you.”
Two SWAT teams of ten officers each had climbed out of their vans and were gathering around the front of the parking structure. The entrance was low, with a huge concrete beam over it, bearing the letters G LEY BUI D G PAR ING. Immediately inside stood a red and white sentry box in which an attendant usually sat to collect parking fees. Then a concrete ramp curved up to the left, its surface shiny from years of use.
“Why do I have such a bad feeling about this?” asked Detective Bellman, as one of the SWAT teams started to jog up the ramp, their
rubber-soled boots squeaking on the concrete. The other team split up and headed to the right—four toward the elevator and six toward the stairs.
“You’re beginning to sound like Mrs. Sawyer,” said Detective Kunzel. “ ‘Double, double, toil and trouble.’ There’s a logical explanation for this Red Mask character, believe me, whether he’s one perpetrator or two.” All the same, he couldn’t help thinking of Sissy’s last words to him, warning him to be careful: “the hunters could end up becoming the hunted.”
The SWAT team had reached the first parking level. One of them appeared behind the rusty mesh and shouted out, “First level clear!” Immediately, the two FBI agents took out their guns and followed them into the building and up the ramp.
“Are we going in?” asked Detective Bellman.
“No need. Not yet, anyhow. These guys know what they’re doing.”
“Level two clear!” they heard over Detective Bellman’s radio.
They waited two or three minutes. Then they heard, “Level three clear!”
“I don’t think Red Mask is even here,” said Detective Bellman. “He’s probably watching us from some office building across the street, laughing his goddamned nuts off.”
“Elevator—elevator has malfunctioned,” said a different voice over the radio. Then, “We’re immobilized halfway between the sixth and seventh floors.”
Detective Kunzel said, “Shit.”
A minute-long pause, then, “We need a technician to get us out of here. We’ve tried everything, but the emergency switch has been disconnected. All the goddamned wires have been cut.”
Another pause, and then, “The hatch is jammed. We can’t open it. We’re pretty much trapped.”
Detective Kunzel snapped, “He’s in there, Freddie! Red Mask is in there! Come on!”
Death Mask Page 19
