The Face of Fear

by Dean Koontz

  “Not much. The bullet probably cauterized the wound; that’s how shallow it is.” He held out his left hand, opened and closed it to show her that he wasn’t seriously affected. “I can climb.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “I’ll be fine. Besides, I don’t have a choice.”

  “We could go inside, use the stairs again.”

  “As soon as Bollinger checks the Lexington side and doesn’t find me, he’ll come back. If I’m not here, he’ll look on the stairs. He’d nail us if we tried to go that way.”

  “Now what?”

  “Same as before. We’ll walk this ledge to the corner. By the time we get to Lexington, he’ll have looked over that face of the building and be gone. Then we’ll rappel. ”

  “With your arm like this?”

  “With my arm like this.”

  “The vision you had about being shot in the back—”

  “What about it?”

  She touched his left arm. “Was this it?”

  “No.”

  “Chaos, Dwight. ”

  “Chaos?”

  “There are too damned many of these subhumans for the supermen to take control of things in ordinary times. Only in the midst of Armageddon will men like us ascend. ”

  “You mean... after a nuclear war?”

  “That’s one way it could happen. Only men like us would have the courage and imagination to lead civilization out of the ruins. But wouldn’t it be ridiculous to wait until they’ve destroyed everything we should inherit?”

  “Ridiculous. ”

  “So it’s occurred to me that we could generate the chaos we need, bring about Armageddon in a less destructive form. ”

  “How?”

  “Well... does the name Albert DeSalvo mean anything to you?”

  “No. ”

  “He was the Boston Strangler. ”

  “Oh, yeah. He murdered a lot of women. ”

  “We should study DeSalvo’s case. He wasn’t one of us, of course. He was an inferior and a psychotic to boot. But I think we should use him as a model. Single-handedly, he created so much fear that he almost threw the city of Boston into a state of panic. Fear would be our basic tool. Fear can be stoked into panic. A handful of panic-stricken people can transmit their hysteria to the entire population of a city or country. ”

  “But DeSalvo didn’t come close to creating the kind of—or the degree of—chaos that would lead to the collapse of society. ”

  “Because that wasn’t his goal. ”

  “Even if it had been—”

  “Dwight, suppose an Albert DeSalvo... better yet, suppose a Jack the Ripper were loose in Manhattan. Suppose he murdered not just ten women, not twenty, but a hundred. Two hundred. In a particularly brutal fashion. With clear evidence of aberrant sex in every case. So there was no doubt that they all died by the same hand. And what if he did all of this in a few months?”

  “There would be fear. But—”

  “It would be the biggest news story in the city, in the state, and probably in the country. Then suppose that after we murdered the first hundred women, we began to spend half of our time killing men. Each time, we’d cut off the man’s sex organ and leave behind a message attributing the murder to a fictitious militant feminist group. ”

  “What?”

  “We’d make the public think the men were being murdered in retaliation for the murders of the hundred women. ”

  “Except women don’t typically commit crimes like that. ”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re not trying to create a typical situation. ”

  “I’m not sure 1 understand what sort of situation we are trying to create. ”

  “Don’t you see? There are damned ugly tensions between men and women in this country. Hideous tensions. Year by year, as the women’s liberation movement has grown, those tensions have become almost unbearable, because they’re repressed, hidden. We’ll make them boil to the surface.”

  “It’s not bad. You’re exaggerating.”

  “I’m not. Believe me. I know. And don’t you see what else? There are hundreds of potential psychotic killers out there. All they need is to be given some direction, a little push. They’ll hear about and read about the killings so much that they’ll get ideas of their own. Once we’ve cut up a hundred women and twenty or so men, pretending to be psychotic ourselves, we’ll have a dozen imitators doing our work for us. ”

  “Maybe.”

  “Definitely. All mass murderers have had their imitators. But none of them has ever committed crimes grand enough to inspire legions of mimics. We will. And then when we’ve turned out a squad of sex killers, we’ll shift the direction of our own activities. ”

  “Shift to what?”

  “We’ll murder white people at random and use a fictitious black revolutionary group to claim credit. After a dozen killings of that sort—”

  “We could knock off some blacks and leave everyone under the impression they were killed in retaliation. ”

  “You’ve got it. Fan the flames.”

  “I’m beginning to see your point. In a city this size, there are countless factions. Blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, Orientals, men, women, liberals, conservatives, radicals and reactionaries, Catholics and Jews, rich and poor, young and old... We could try to turn each against its opposite and all of them against one another. Once factional violence begins, whether it’s religious or political or economic, it usually escalates endlessly. ”

  “Exactly. If we planned carefully enough, we could do it. In six months, you’d have at least two thousand dead. Maybe five times that number. ”

  “And you’d have martial law. That would put an end to it before there was chaos on the scale you’ve talked about. ”

  “We might have martial law. But we’d still have chaos. In Northern Ireland they’ve had soldiers on street corners for years, but the killing goes on. Oh, there’d be chaos, Dwight. And it would spread to other cities as—”

  “No. I can’t swallow that.”

  “All over the country, people would be reading and hearing about New York. They’d—”

  “It wouldn’t spread that easily, Billy. ”

  “All right. All right. But there would be chaos here, at least. The voters would be ready to elect a tough-talking mayor with new ideas. ”

  “Certainly.”

  “We could elect one of us, one of the new race. The mayoralty of New York is a good political base for a smart man who wants the presidency. ”

  “The voters might elect a political strongman. But not every political strongman is going to be one of our people. ”

  “If we planned the chaos, we could also plan to run one of our men in the wake of it. He would know what was coming; he’d have an inside track. ”

  “One of our men? Hell, we don’t know any but you and me. ”

  “I’d make an excellent mayor. ”

  “You?”

  “I have a good base for a campaign. ”

  “Christ, come to think of it, you do. ”

  “I could win. ”

  “You’d have a fair chance, anyway.”

  “It would be a step up the ladder of power for our kind, our race. ”

  “Jesus, the killing we’d have to do!”

  “Haven’t you ever killed?”

  “A pimp. Two drug pushers who pulled guns on me. A whore that nobody knows about. ”

  “Did killing disturb you?”

  “No. They were scum. ”

  “We’d be killing scum. Our inferiors. Animals. ”

  “Could we get away with it?”

  “We both know cops. What would cops look for? Known mental patients. Known criminals. Known radicals. People with some sort of motive. We have a motive, but they’d never figure it in a million years. ”

  “If we worked out every detail, planned carefully—hell, we might do it. ”

  “Do you know what Leopold wrote to Loeb before they murdered Bobby Franks? ‘The superman is no
t liable for anything he may do, except for the one crime that it is possible for him to commit—to make a mistake. ’”

  “If we did something like this—”

  “If?”

  “You’re committed to it?”

  “Aren’t-you, Dwight?”

  “We’d start with women?”

  “Yes. ”

  “Kill them. ”

  “Yes. ”

  “Billy... ?”

  “Yes?”

  “Rape them first?”

  “Oh, yes. ”

  “It could even be fun. ”

  Bollinger leaned out of the window, looked both ways along the ledge. Harris was not on the face of the building that overlooked the side street.

  Although the pitons were wedged in the stone beside the window, as they had been when he’d fired at Harris, the rope that had been attached to one of them was gone.

  Bollinger crawled onto the windowsill, leaned out much too far, peered over the ledge. The woman’s body should have been on the street below. But there was no corpse. Nothing but the smooth sheen of fresh snow.

  Dammit, she hadn’t fallen! He hadn’t shot the bitch after all!

  Why wouldn’t these people die?

  Furious, he stumbled back into the room, out of the wind-whipped snow. He left the office and followed the corridor to the nearest stairwell.

  Connie wished that she could rappel with her eyes closed. Balanced on the side of the highrise, twenty-three stories above Lexington Avenue, without a safety tether, she was unnerved by the scene.

  Right hand behind.

  Left hand in front.

  Right hand to brake.

  Left hand to guide.

  Feet spread and planted firmly on the wall.

  Repeating to herself all that Graham had taught her, she pushed away from the building. And gasped. She felt as if she had taken a suicidal leap.

  As she swung out, she realized that she was clenching the rope too tightly with her left hand. Left to guide. Right to brake. She relaxed her grip on the rope in front of her and slid down a few feet before braking.

  She approached the building improperly. Her legs were not straight out in front of her, and they weren’t rigid enough. They buckled. She twisted to the right, out of control, and struck the granite with her shoulder. The impact was not great enough to break a bone, but it was much too hard.

  It dazed her, but she didn’t let go of the rope. Got her feet against the stone once more. Got into position. Shook her head to clear it. Glanced to her left. Saw Graham three yards away on that side. Nodded so he would know that she was all right. Then pushed outward. Pushed hard. Slid down. Swung back. She didn’t make any mistakes this time.

  Grinning, Graham watched as Connie took a few more steps down the stone. Her endurance and determination delighted him. There really was some Nora Charles in her. And a hell of a lot of Nick too.

  When he saw that she had pretty much gotten the knack of rappelling—her style was crude but adequate—he kicked away from the wall. He descended farther than she did on each arc and reached the eighteenth floor ahead of her.

  He braced himself on the almost nonexistent window ledge. He smashed in the two tall panes of glass and fixed a snap link to the metal center post. When he had attached his safety tether to that carabiner, he released the main line, pulled it free of the overhead anchor. He caught the rope, tied it to the carabiner in front of him, and took up a rappelling position.

  Beside him, nine feet away, Connie was also ready to rappel.

  He flung himself into space.

  He was amazed not only at how well he remembered the skills and techniques of a climber, but at how quickly the worst of his fear had vanished. He was still afraid, but not unnaturally so. Necessity and Connie’s love had produced a miracle that no psychiatrist could have matched.

  He was beginning to think they might escape. His left arm ached where the bullet had grazed it, and the fingers of that hand were stiff. The pain in his bad leg had subsided to a continuous dull throb that made him grit his teeth occasionally but which didn’t interfere too much with his rappelling.

  In a couple of steps he reached the seventeenth floor. In two more jumps he came to rest against the sixteenth-story window ledge—where Frank Bollinger had decided to set up an ambush.

  The window was closed. However, the drapes had been drawn back. One desk lamp glowed dimly in the office.

  Bollinger was on the other side of the glass, a huge silhouette. He was just lifting the latch.

  No! Graham thought.

  In the same instant that his boots touched the window ledge, he kicked away from it.

  Bollinger saw him and pulled off a shot without bothering to open the rectangular panes. Glass sliced into the night.

  Although Bollinger reacted fast, Graham was already out of his line of fire. He swung back to the wall seven or eight feet below Bollinger, rappelled again, stopped at the fifteenth-story window.

  He looked up and saw flame flicker briefly from the muzzle of the pistol as Bollinger shot at Connie.

  The gunfire threw her off her pace. She hit the wall with her shoulder again. Frantic, she got her feet under her and rappelled.

  Bollinger fired again.

  41

  Bollinger knew that he hadn’t scored a hit on either of them.

  He left the office, ran to the elevator. He switched on the control panel and pushed the button for the tenth floor.

  As the lift descended, he thought about the plan that he and Billy had formulated yesterday.

  “You’ll kill Harris first. Do what you want with the woman, but be sure to cut her up. ”

  “I always cut them up. That was my idea in the first place. ”

  “You should kill Harris where it’ll cause the least mess, where you can clean up after. ”

  “Clean up?”

  “When you’re done with the woman, you’ll go back to Harris, wipe up every speck of blood around him, and wrap his body in a plastic tarp. So don’t kill him on a carpet where he’ll leave stains. Take him into a room with a tile floor. Maybe a bathroom. ”

  “Wrap him in a tarp?”

  ’7’11 be waiting behind the Bowerton Building at ten o’clock. You’ll bring the body to me. We’ll put it in the car. Later, we can take it out of the city, bury it upstate someplace. ”

  “Bury it? Why?”

  “We’re going to try to make the police think that Harris has killed his own fiancée, that he’s the Butcher. I’ll disguise my voice and call Homicide. I’ll claim to be Harris, and I’ll tell them I’m the Butcher. ”

  “To mislead them?”

  “You’ve got it. ”

  “Sooner or later they’ll smell a trick. ”

  ’Yes, they will. Eventually. But for a few weeks, maybe even for a few months, they’ll.be after Harris. There wouldn’t be any chance whatsoever that they’d follow a good lead, one that might bring them to us. ”

  “A classic red herring.”

  “Precisely. ”

  “It’ll give us time. ”

  “Yes. ”

  “To do everything we want. ”

  “Nearly everything. ”

  The clairvoyant was too damned hard to kill.

  The doors of the lift slid apart.

  Bollinger tripped coming out of the elevator. He fell.

  The pistol flew out of his hand, clattered against the wall.

  He got to his knees and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.

  He said, “Billy?”

  But he was alone.

  Coughing, sniffling, he crawled to the pistol, clutched it in his right hand and stood up.

  He went into the dark hall, to the door of an office that would have a view of Lexington.

  Because he was worried about running out of ammunition, he used only one shot on the door. He aimed carefully. The boom! echoed and reechoed in the corridor. The lock was damaged, but it wouldn’t release altogether. The door rattled in its frame.
Rather than use another bullet, he put his shoulder to the panel, pressed until it gave inward.

  By the time he reached the Lexington Avenue windows, Harris and the woman had passed him. They were two floors below.

  He returned to the elevator. He was going to have to go outside and confront them when they reached the street. He pushed the button for the ground floor.

  42

  Braced against the eighth-floor windows, they agreed to cover the final hundred and twenty feet in two equal rappels, using the fourth-floor window posts as their last anchor points.

  At the fourth level, Graham smashed in both rectangular panes. He snapped a carabiner to the post, hooked his safety tether to the carabiner, and jerked involuntarily as a bullet slapped the stone a foot to the right of his head.

  He knew at once what had happened. He turned slightly and looked down.

  Bollinger, in shirt sleeves and looking harried, stood on the snow-shrouded sidewalk, sixty feet below.

  Motioning to Connie, Graham shouted, “Go in! Get inside! Through the window!”

  Bollinger fired again.

  A burst of light, pain, blood: a bullet in the back....

  Is this where it happens? he wondered.

  Desperately, Graham used his gloved fist to punch out the shards of glass that remained in the window frame. He grabbed the center post and was about to drag himself inside when the street behind him was suddenly filled with a curious rumbling.

  A big yellow road grader turned the corner into Lexington Avenue. Its large black tires churned through the slush and spewed out an icy liquid behind. The plow on the front of the machine was six feet high and ten feet across. Emergency beacons flashed on the roof of the operator’s cab. Two headlights the size of dinner plates popped up like the eyes of a frog, glared through the falling snow.

  It was the only vehicle in sight on the storm-clogged street.

  Graham glanced at Connie. She seemed to be having trouble disentangling herself from the lines and getting through the window. He turned away from her, waved urgently at the driver of the grader. The man could barely be seen behind the dirty windshield. “Help!” Graham shouted. He didn’t think the man could hear him over the roar of the engine. Nevertheless, he kept shouting. “Help! Up here! Help us!”

  Connie began to shout too.