Death Mask

CHAPTER ELEVEN Signs and Wonders

They heard about it on the TV news as Sissy was making lunch: a Swiss cheese and ciabatta sandwich with plum tomatoes.

“This just in,” announced Marcia LaBelle on WLWT. “A twenty-eight-year-old man has been found stabbed to death in an elevator car in the Giley Building in downtown Cincinnati — less than twenty-four hours after the knife attack in the same building that left one man dead and a young woman seriously injured.”

“Molly! Did you hear that?” Sissy called out. She picked up the remote and turned up the volume.

“A police spokesperson said that it is still too early for investigators to determine if the murder was committed by the same assailant. However she admitted that the attacks bore ‘several distinct similarities.’

“The victim will not be named until next of kin have been informed, but Channel Five news has learned that he was an animator who worked for the computer-graphics company Anteater Animations on the twenty-third floor of the Giley Building.”

Molly was standing in the kitchen door now, still holding her paintbrush. “Oh God. I know a couple of artists who work for Anteater. Klaus and Sheila. I hope it wasn’t Klaus. I’d better call.”

Marcia LaBelle said, “Still wanted by police in connection with yesterday’s stabbings is this man,” and Molly’s composite picture of Red Mask suddenly filled the TV screen. “Detectives have dubbed him Red Mask, because of his florid or sunburned or possibly grease-painted face. They warn anybody who sees him not to approach him, but to call nine-one-one immediately. He is almost certainly armed, and extremely dangerous.”

Sissy sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, feeling hot and dithery and distressed. “An animator, that’s what she said.”

“That’s right,” said Molly. She lifted the phone off the wall and punched out the number of Anteater Animations.

“But an animator. And what did the cards show us? A puppeteer. Somebody who brings little figures to life.”

Molly said, “Busy,” and punched redial. “Still busy.”

“Why didn’t I make sure that the cards gave me more information?” said Sissy. “You don’t know how guilty I feel.”

“Sissy — there was no way you could have predicted exactly who was going to be killed, was there? Or exactly where? Or exactly when?”

“But there was! If I had only persisted, I probably could have found out that the attack was going to happen in the same place as yesterday’s murder, and what time of day it was going to happen. I turned up the blood card, didn’t I? So I knew that there was going to be more killing, and I knew that it was going to happen very soon. I could have warned the police, couldn’t I? I might have been able to save that young man’s life!”

“Sissy, for God’s sake, you can’t blame yourself.”

“But I can, Molly, and I do! I was blessed with the gift of foresight, and that makes me responsible for using it, and using it wisely, and to protect innocent people from evil, if I see evil coming their way.”

“All right. So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to read the cards again, and if they warn me that there’s going to be even more killing, I’m going to call that detective friend of yours.”

“Mike Kunzel? To be fair, Sissy, I very much doubt if Mike will believe you. You know how skeptical he is.”

“I don’t care if he believes me or not, so long as there’s a chance that I can prevent any more innocent people from being murdered.”

“Well, you do what you feel you have to do. Damn it, still busy. I wonder if I still have his home number.”

While Molly tried to get through to Klaus, Sissy went to her bedroom and came back with her cards. She cleared the table and wrapped their sandwiches in foil. Neither of them had any appetite now.

At last, Molly got through to Klaus’s girlfriend, Anita. She came off the phone looking relieved.

“It wasn’t Klaus. It was a young guy called Jimmy Moulton. That’s all she knows. Apparently this Jimmy was the first person to arrive this morning, so whoever killed him must have been hiding in the building all night, waiting for him.”

Sissy was laying out the cross of Lorraine. She turned over la Blanchisseuse, the Laundress, with her washing tub brimming with blood. Then she turned over l’Avertissement, the Warning. This card showed a party of finely dressed people approaching a wooden bridge — men, women, and children. A man with wild hair and tattered clothes was standing in front of the bridge with his hand raised, as if he were warning the party not to cross. The bridge’s handrails were entwined with what appeared to be red climbing roses, but when Sissy took off her eyeglasses and examined them more closely, she realized that they were severed human hands of varying sizes — some large, some very small — smothered in blood.

In the background, on a hill, stood two crosses in the shape of Xs, with two men nailed to them.

The last card was le Cache-cache, the Game of Hide-and-Go-Seek. A group of hunters were making their way through an oak forest, holding up lanterns. They had dogs, too. But the oaks in the forest all had distorted human faces, and their branches were upraised arms with spidery fingers. One of the oaks looked as if it were about to seize one of the unsuspecting hunters from behind, and many of the trees had human legs dangling from them, as if dozens of previous hunters had been hoisted upward and lynched.

Molly leaned over Sissy’s shoulder. “So you’re going to show these to Mike Kunzel, are you? And what are you going to tell him?”

“I’m going to tell him that the killer hasn’t stopped killing yet, not by a long way, according to these cards. In fact he’s going to kill more and more people every time. I’m also going to tell him that he and his men need to be very careful when they go looking for him. You see this Cache-cache card? This means that the hunters are going to become the hunted. They’re going to suffer a whole lot of casualties before they find Red Mask. That’s if they find him at all.”

“Well, you can try,” said Molly. “But like I say, Mike Kunzel is one of these people who won’t believe that a stove is red-hot until he’s sat on it to make sure.”

Sissy said, “There’s so much detail in these cards. times, dates. There’s a sundial in this picture pointing to quarter after ten o’clock. And there are five magpies sitting on that signpost. That means the fifth month, May.”

“Sissy — I believe that you can predict what’s going to happen. But what I’m trying to tell you is, it’s going to take so much more to convince Mike.”

“I’ll write down everything that I can, and then maybe you could take me to police headquarters.”

“Sissy — ”

“People are going to be killed, Molly! People are going to die! And I’m the only person who can stop it from happening! I have to try, goddammit!”

“Okay,” Molly agreed. “But take my advice, and try to make your predictions sound very straightforward. Don’t tell Mike that five magpies means May. And don’t mention any kind of magic.”

It took Sissy over an hour to study the cards in detail, noting every single nuance, such as distant castles with flocks of rooks around them, and two-headed cats, and peasants sleeping under hayricks. She couldn’t interpret all of them, though, and she began to feel that the cards were deliberately trying to frustrate her.

She sat on the tapestry window seat overlooking the yard. The cicada nymphs were beginning to molt, breaking out of their skins and stickily emerging with red eyes and black bodies and wings. Their discarded remains floated to the ground, so that the soil around the maple tree was littered with hundreds of papery shells.

Molly brought her a glass of wine. “How’s it going?”

Sissy held up her legal pad. On it, she had written, “Red Mask: Predicted Behavior Patterns,” and underlined it seven times.

“Is that all?”

“I can’t do it, Molly. Not logically. I know what the cards are telling me because I know what they’re telling me. But I can’t explain it to anybody else. Why do five magpies mean May? Because they do, that’s all. I can’t tell you why.”

Molly sat down beside her. “All right. But even if you can’t explain how you know what Red Mask is going to do next — what do you think he’s going to do?”

“He wants to kill dozens more people, I’m sure of it. He has the taste for it now. You see this card? You see this man in the background, stuffing himself with tripes? From what the cards are telling me, I’m kind of surprised that Red Mask only killed one person today. He enjoys stabbing people. He relishes the blood and the close physical contact and the power that it gives him over his victims. And for some reason he’s very vengeful, very self-righteous. He believes that he’s totally justified in committing all of these murders.

“The cards are telling me something else, too. Red Mask wants to be recognized. He wants to be notorious. He wants everybody in the city to be frightened of him. I think he’s going to contact the police or the media before too long and start making threats. Look here — this man shouting from the top of a tower.”

“And the roses? These roses are really gruesome, aren’t they? — these ones like bloodstained hands.”

Sissy took out a cigarette and lit it. “I’m not sure about the roses yet. But they show up in practically every card, don’t they? So they must be significant. I get the feeling that the cards are trying to tell me that I’m missing something really obvious, but I can’t for the life of me work out what it is.”

The phone warbled. Molly picked it up and said, “Sawyer residence.”

“Molly? It’s Mike Kunzel.”

“Mike? You must be psychic. I was just about to call you.”

“Really? I guess you’ve heard there’s been another homicide at the Giley Building.”

“Yes — yes, I did. It’s so horrible. The young guy who got stabbed, Jimmy Moulton? He worked with some friends of mine in the same animation studio.”

“Well, it was pretty damned brutal, I can tell you. Worst stabbing I’ve ever seen, bar none.”

“Do you think you’re looking for the same perpetrator?”

“We haven’t finished the forensics yet, but personally I’m ninety-nine percent sure of it.”

“My motherin-law thinks it is.”

“Your motherin-law?” Pause. “You mean your motherin-law who tells fortunes?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, it’s reassuring to know that we’re on the right track.”

“Mike — she’s read the cards, and she believes she knows what Red Mask is going to do next. She might even be able to help you to find him.”

“Molly, with respect, I’m looking for evidence here, not conjecture.”

“I’m not talking about conjecture. Sissy doesn’t do conjecture. Sissy reads the cards and interprets what they tell her about the future. And what they’ve been telling her about Red Mask, and his whole state of mind — well, I’ve told her that you probably won’t believe any of it. But don’t you think it’s worth your listening to what she has to say? Remember that her late husband was a police detective. She won’t deliberately waste your time, I promise.”

“You realize what will happen if the media find out that I’ve been talking to a fortune-teller? I’ll be back on traffic duty before you can say Crossing Over with John Edward.”

“The media won’t find out. And what do you have to lose?”

Detective Kunzel was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Okay, Molly. I need you down here anyhow, so you might as well bring her with. We have a witness here who says he caught a glimpse of the perpetrator, and I’d like you to see if you can rustle up another composite.”

“You’re still at the Giley Building?”

“That’s right. There’s a unit on its way right now to pick you up.”

Molly hung up the phone.

Sissy said, “Thank you for standing up for me. You were great.”

“I’ve told you. I believe in you. I always have. But I can’t guarantee that Mike Kunzel is going to be impressed.”

Sissy said, “Give me a minute. My hair’s such a mess.”

“Your hair is fine.”

“How can you say that? My hair’s always a mess. My hair is the Battle of the Wilderness, reenacted in hair.”

She stood in front of the mirror next to the door, trying to rearrange the pins and the combs that kept her hair up in a wild, lopsided bun.

“I’m really concerned about this Red Mask character,” she told her reflection.

“What’s to be concerned about?” said Molly. “All you have to do is tell Mike Kunzel what you saw in the cards. It’s up to him if he believes you or not, which he probably won’t.”

“But supposing Red Mask finds out what I’ve done? You can see how vengeful he is.”

“How can he possibly find out? Mike Kunzel’s not going to tell anybody that you talked to him, that’s for sure, and nobody else will, either.”

“I don’t know. But there’s something about Red Mask that’s really beginning to disturb me. It’s not like my usual readings. Usually, I pick up some sense of who people are. I can sense if they’re artistic or if they’re more practical. I can sense if they’re confident or shy. Sometimes I can even tell what kind of family they came from, and if they had any brothers or sisters. But Red Mask. he doesn’t give me anything. Blankness. Black. Nothing at all, except anger and revenge, and this terrible thirst for blood.”

“Sissy, they’ll catch the guy. They’re bound to. They’ll catch him and they’ll lock him up and they’ll probably give him a lethal injection.”

Sissy took hold of her hands and squeezed them. “I’m sorry. I see these signs and these warnings, and I usually read too much into them. You’re absolutely right.”

The doorbell sounded. “That must be our ride,” said Molly. “And remember — no magpies.”