Death Mask

CHAPTER TWELVE The Red Secret

A uniformed policeman took them through to the lobby, where Detective Kunzel and Detective Bellman were talking to two crime-scene investigators, one of them black and gray haired, like Morgan Freeman’s overweight cousin, the other blond and bespectacled and thin as a stick insect.

“Molly, thanks for coming down,” Detective Kunzel greeted her. “And — ah — thanks for bringing your motherin-law.”

“You’re more than welcome,” Sissy told him. “Anything I can do to help.”

Detective Kunzel led Molly to the super’s office. It was built into the right-hand side of the lobby, in a curve, with windows that looked right across to the elevator bank. Inside, Mr. Kraussman was sitting at his desk, which was heaped with invoices and newspapers and his half-eaten goetta sandwich in a crumpled foil wrapper. On the wall in front of him he had pinned up photographs of his wife and his children and his family schnauzer, and a photograph of himself standing next to a giant statue of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe, somewhere in rural Wisconsin.

“Molly, this is Mr. Herbert Kraussman. He’s the super here at the Giley Building. Mr. Kraussman, this is Molly Sawyer, our forensic sketch artist.”

Mr. Kraussman stood up, wiped his hand on the front of his shirt, and held it out. “Like on TV, right? I tell you what the guy looked like, you make a drawing.”

“That’s right, Mr. Kraussman. That’s exactly what I do.”

“I don’t know what I can tell you, ma’am. Like I said to this detective here, I only saw him for just one blink. Blink! And then he wasn’t there no more.”

“Well, you might surprise yourself,” said Molly. “Your brain, it’s like a camera. You may not think you saw very much, but in fact you saw everything. It’s a question of getting you to picture it in your mind’s eye and describe it to me. Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Oh — forgive,” said Mr. Kraussman, and lifted a blue plastic box of dusters and cleaning sprays from a wooden armchair on the opposite side of his desk. Molly sat down and propped her sketch pad on her knee.

“We’ll leave you to it, then,” said Detective Kunzel. He turned uncomfortably to Sissy. “Maybe you and I can discuss the future.”

They walked out into the lobby. The doors to the third elevator had been wedged open, and Sissy could see that the interior was spattered all the way up to the ceiling with blood. Morgan Freeman’s cousin was kneeling on the floor of the elevator car, taking photographs, and with every flash the elevator car appeared to jump. His skinny blond partner was dusting the mirrors for fingerprints, and another young CSI with a Zapata mustache was measuring the lobby with a laser. Detective Bellman and a half dozen other police officers were gathered around a makeshift table, studying the architect’s plans for the Giley Building.

“You think the killer is still here?” asked Sissy.

“Almost sure of it. The elevator doors opened, and Mr. Kraussman saw the suspect look out. Like he says, though, it was only for a split second. Then the doors closed again, and the elevator went back up and stopped at the seventeenth floor, which is where we found it with the victim’s body inside. No sign of the suspect, of course.

“No other exits were open at the time. There’s an emergency fire door in back and a service door for laundry and deliveries and such, but at that time of the morning the service door was locked and chained, and the emergency fire door has a seal on it, which you need to break to open it.

“So the logical conclusion is that the suspect is still hiding on the premises someplace, which is why we’re carrying out a floor-by-floor search. It’s a complicated old building with all kinds of attics and storage spaces and closets and cubbyholes, but we have seventy-seven officers deployed, and two dog handlers, so if he’s here, then we’ll find him.”

Sissy lifted her head. The lobby was echoing with conversation and footsteps and camera shutters clicking and somebody hammering. Detective Bellman called out, “Mike! Mike, c’mere, would ya?” and another officer said, “You’re breaking up, Stan, I can’t hear you,” as he talked to one of the dog handlers on his radio.

But Sissy closed her eyes and allowed her sensitivity to rise upward, as if she were asleep and her spirit was rising from her body on a fine golden chain. It rose past the art-deco chandelier with its amber glass diamonds, and up through the combed-plaster ceiling, ascending through the building floor by floor.

She felt the police officers who were searching the offices, and even saw the flicker of their flashlights. She felt the dogs panting, and the dogs, who were much more sensitive than their handlers, stopped and turned in bewilderment as her presence passed them by.

She went all the way up to the twenty-fifth floor, and into the roof-space, where the water tanks and the elevator winding gear were housed. She could have risen further, through the coronet-shaped roof, and seen the whole of Cincinnati spread around her, with its water-front office buildings and its giant ballpark, and the wide hazy curve of the Ohio River with all of its bridges. But she allowed herself to sink down again, all the way back to the lobby, and opened her eyes.

Detective Kunzel had been talking to Detective Bellman. “Are you okay there, Mrs. Sawyer?” he asked her. “Thought you were kind of meditating there, for a moment.”

“He’s not here,” said Sissy, emphatically.

“Please?”

“Red Mask. He’s not here. I would have sensed him, if he was.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Detective Bellman put in. “There’s no way he could have gotten out. He has to be here.”

“I don’t care what you say. He’s not.”

“So what makes you so sure about that?” asked Detective Kunzel.

“Detective Kunzel, I was born with certain sensitivities and certain abilities, and while they’re very difficult to explain to other people, they’re as natural to me as seeing and hearing and smelling. He’s not here anymore. He’s gone. I don’t sense him in the building anywhere.”

“Whatever — we still have to complete our search. At worst, we can find out how he managed to get out of the building without anybody seeing him.”

“He’s going to kill again,” Sissy told him. “He has the appetite for it now. And next time, he’s going to kill three or four people, or even more.”

Detective Kunzel and Detective Bellman exchanged meaningful glances.

“And, what, your cards told you this?” asked Detective Kunzel. “Or did you use your crystal ball instead?”

“You can mock me all you like,” said Sissy. “Crystal balls are wonderful for telling the future. They’re very farseeing, much more farseeing than cards or tea leaves.”

“So what’s his motive?” Detective Bellman put in.

Detective Kunzel shook his head in exasperation, so that his jowls wobbled, but Detective Bellman said, “No, come on, Mike. Mrs. Sawyer has taken the trouble to come down here and tell us what she sees. I’d like to hear it. Hey, my grandmother used to read my palm.”

“Who needs fingerprints and DNA and witness evidence?” asked Detective Kunzel. “Let’s just issue the whole department with Ouija boards.”

Sissy was unfazed. Frank had been equally skeptical about her psychic sensitivity, even when she had guided him to a hit-and-run suspect who was hiding in a disused laundry in Canaan, and when she had warned him about a fatal shooting at a local store even before it had happened. So if Detective Kunzel didn’t want to believe her, that was his privilege. But she was sure that Red Mask wasn’t here in the Giley Building — just as she was equally sure that he was going to commit more murders.

“I told Molly, I was very surprised that he killed only one person today. The cards say that he’s going to escalate his attacks very quickly. As for his motive, he’s taking his revenge for something that he perceives to be a serious injustice. He believes that he was taken advantage of and badly wronged. He believes that the fear and suffering that he had to endure entitles him to punish anybody and everybody, even if they weren’t personally involved in this injustice.”

“Do you have any idea where he’s gone?” asked Detective Bellman. “Like, I know some psychics can see through a suspect’s own eyes and identify the place where they’re hiding out. There was this one movie I saw, the psychic heard bells, and they found the suspect hiding in this church.”

“That was a movie, Freddie,” said Detective Kunzel, with exaggerated patience. “And it wasn’t bells, it was train whistles, and he was hiding in a barn.”

“It was bells.”

“Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass if it was the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It was fiction and this is r-e-a-l. Mrs. Sawyer here cannot possibly have any idea where Red Mask has gone to.”

“Well, you’re right,” said Sissy. “I don’t. You know — I’ve never known a subject like him. I can feel his anger. I can feel his need for revenge. But I can’t feel him, not at all. I don’t have any sense of his personality whatsoever.”

Detective Kunzel laid his hand on Sissy’s shoulder. “Thanks for trying to help, anyhow. I just wish that more of the good people of Cincinnati were as concerned about helping us to catch criminals as you are.”

“There’s one more thing, Detective,” said Sissy.

“Hey, call me Mike, please.”

“Red Mask wants notoriety. He’s probably seen himself on the TV news already, and in the papers. He’s going to be in touch with you, personally. He’s going to start giving you advance notice of what he’s going to do next. He wants to start his own personal reign of terror.”

“All I can say is, he knows my number.”

At that moment, Molly came out of Mr. Kraussman’s office with her sketch pad. Without saying a word, she folded it back and showed them her drawing.

Detective Bellman whistled. “Same guy. Never saw two composites look so much alike.”

The sketch depicted a red-faced man with bristling hair and a sloping forehead, glaring out of the narrow space between two elevator doors. He had sharp, angular cheekbones and a prominent chin with a sharp cleft in it. The only difference between this sketch and the sketch that Molly had drawn from Jane Becker’s description was that his eyes appeared to glitter, as if he were feeling triumphant.

“Right,” said Detective Kunzel. “Good job, Molly. Why don’t you take that over to headquarters and have them send it out to the media?”

Morgan Freeman’s cousin came rustling up to them in his blue Tyvek suit. “Got you some footprints this time, Detective.”

“Any idea what size?”

“Ten, I’d say. Very broad foot. But the soles didn’t have no pattern on them, nothing at all. Not even stitching.”

Detective Bellman said, “Any footprint is better than no footprint. That first stabbing, there was all this blood on the floor, and the perpetrator didn’t leave a single footprint, nowhere.”

“Correction,” said Morgan Freeman’s cousin. “He may have left a footprint, but we were unable to tell if he did or not. Half of the office staff trampled in and out of that elevator, followed by half of the homicide unit. By the time they were through, the whole place looked like one of those Arthur Murray dance lessons.”

“Bernard here is very hot on crime-scene integrity,” said Detective Bellman.

Molly said to Sissy, “Are you coming to police headquarters with me, or would you rather go back home? I shouldn’t be longer than an hour.”

“I’ll go home,” said Sissy. “Victoria will be back at three thirty, won’t she? I can give her some milk and cookies.”

“Trevor can do that. He can’t cook, but he can pour milk and take cookies out of the cookie jar.”

“I’d still like to be there,” Sissy told her. Just to make sure that she’s safe. She still didn’t understand the significance of the girl in the white nightgown, floating on the ocean, and the headless fish bleeding in the water, and they worried her.

“I’ll have an officer take you home,” said Detective Kunzel, and beckoned to one of the uniforms standing by the main doors.

We’re here, somebody whispered, very close to Sissy’s right ear.