Death Mask

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Magic Garden

Sissy and Molly kissed on the steps of the Giley Building. The street outside was crowded with squad cars and ambulances and television vans, as well as scores of rubberneckers. From the hubbub of excitement going through the crowd, anybody would have thought that they were expecting the imminent arrival of a famous movie star.

“Cincinnati sightseers,” said Molly, in disgust. “Look, I’ll see you later, Sissy. Take care of Victoria for me. And Trevor. Well, I know you’ve been taking care of Trevor all of your life.”

Molly climbed into one of the squad cars to be taken over to Cincinnati police headquarters on Ezzard Charles Drive. A big, heavily built officer with curly white hair was waiting to escort Sissy down the steps to another squad car, to drive her back to Blue Ash.

She settled into the backseat. The interior of the squad car smelled strongly of cheeseburger.

“Excuse the fragrance, lady,” the officer apologized. “I haven’t eaten in six hours straight. Not even a candy bar.”

As he pulled away from the curb, he opened up a yellow polystyrene box and lifted out a twelve-ounce cheeseburger and took an enormous bite.

“I’m sorry, you know, but my captain thinks I’m what? The starving millions in Africa? I always say you gotta eat to function. Nobody can function on an empty stomach.”

“Well, you’re right,” said Sissy. She was looking out of the window, but she couldn’t help sensing the officer’s heartbeat.

Bom-pause-badom-pause. Clogged arteries. She could feel them. She could feel a pain clutching at her left arm, too, as if she were just about to have a heart attack.

“Got this at Zip’s,” he said, holding it up. “Best damned burgers in Cincinnati.”

“All the same,” Sissy told him. “You should watch what you eat, and how you eat it.”

“Lady, I wish I had the luxury. If I had the luxury, I wouldn’t be eating no cheeseburger in no squad car. I’d be sitting down proper with my napkin tucked in my collar and I’d be eating T-bone steak and mashed potatoes and plenty of gravy, with a plate of hot corn-bread on the side, and blueberry pie and ice cream for dessert.”

“What’s your name?” Sissy asked him.

“You want to know my name? It’s Gerald. Gerald Clyde. Forty-one years old, proud father of three little girls.”

“You want to see your little girls grow up, Gerald?”

“Excuse me?”

“You have a health crisis coming,” Sissy warned him. “You really need to ease up and visit your doctor for a physical.”

The officer stared at her in his rearview mirror. “Lady, I’m a little stressed is all. Maybe a touch overweight. Otherwise, I’m two hundred percent fit. I could stop this car right now and do ten one-arm push-ups on the sidewalk.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sissy. “It really is none of my business, is it? It’s just that I get these very strong feelings about people.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Really — don’t take any notice. I’m only a silly old woman, that’s all.”

The officer chewed his cheeseburger slower and slower. “You got a feeling about me?” he asked her. “Like what?”

“Please, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m upset, that’s all. Seeing those people murdered — ”

“I know. It’s tough.”

The officer drove for three or four minutes in silence. Then he said, “You feel there’s something wrong with me? Like I’m sick or something?”

“No. Really. Forget it, please.”

They stopped at the intersection of Madison Road and Dana Avenue. The officer turned around in his seat and for a split second, his face was transformed. His eyes were rolled up into his head, showing nothing but white, like cue balls, and his lips were white, too, as if he had been drinking bleach.

Then he said, “Believe me, lady, I take care of myself. So don’t you worry. I eat plenty of fruit. And yogurt, too. And I spend fifteen minutes every day on the treadmill.” And his face returned to normal — red cheeked, blue eyed, and grinning. Before the signals changed, he took another large bite of cheeseburger.

When Sissy arrived back at Blue Ash, Trevor and Victoria were already home. Victoria was watching School of Rock in the living room, while Trevor was out in the backyard, sweeping up dried cicada skins. The trees and the bushes were still clustered with hundreds of glistening cicadas, gradually drying out in the afternoon sun. Mr. Boots came wuffling up to greet her, licking her hand.

“How was it?” asked Trevor.

“Bad. Horrible. He didn’t only kill that poor young man. He killed three office cleaners, too.”

“Molly told me, on the phone. She said you heard his voice, too.”

Sissy nodded. “It’s so terrible. He seems to want revenge on anybody and everybody, and I still can’t understand why.”

“Come on, Momma. You shouldn’t let it worry you so much. It’s not your responsibility to catch him.”

“But if I can help, Trevor — ”

“Momma. the cops know what they’re doing. They’ll track him down him sooner or later, and they won’t need fortune-telling cards or séances.”

“Oh, I see. Molly told you about the séance?”

“Of course she told me about it. But, you’re a seventy-one-year-old woman. I can’t stop you, can I? No matter what I think about this talking-to-the-dead stuff.”

Sissy laid her hand on his arm very gently. “Just like your father. He refused to believe in spirits even when I got through to his sister Joan and she told him where her diary was hidden.”

Trevor scooped up the last of the cicada skins and dead leaves onto a piece of cardboard and tipped them into the trash can. “Hey — have you seen these?” he asked Sissy, and pointed to the roses and the hollyhock and the Shasta daisy. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they? I don’t know how, but I never even saw them grow.”

“They’re miraculous,” said Sissy.

“I was thinking of cutting the roses before the cicadas suck the life out of them.”

“Why not? I’ll put them in a vase for you.”

Trevor took out his pocketknife and cut each of the roses at the bottom of the stem. “Just beautiful,” he said. “They remind me of New Milford. You remember, the roses that Dad used to grow around the porch.”

“Yes,” said Sissy. “I remember.” And for a moment, she thought she could see Frank standing under the vine trellis, but it was only a trick of the sunlight and shadow.

They went back inside, into the kitchen. Sissy looked in the cupboard next to the sink and found a narrow glass vase. Victoria came in and watched her as she arranged the roses with a few ferns around them.

“How was school today?” Sissy asked her.

“Okay.”

“Just okay?”

“I was tired. I nearly fell asleep in geography, and Mr. Pulaski came right up behind me and clapped his hands together to wake me up.”

“Why were you so tired? Didn’t you sleep well last night? After all that spaghetti you ate, I thought you would have slept like a pig in clover.”

“I slept okay, but I had too many bad dreams.”

“Bad dreams? What about?”

“I dreamed that a giant was chasing me.”

Sissy placed the vase of roses on the hutch. “A giant? What did he look like?”

Uncle Henry, I’m frightened of giants. Uncle Henry, can’t we go back?

“I didn’t see. It was much too dark, and I was running away as fast as I could run.”

“The giant didn’t catch you, did he?”

“No. I made myself wake up. I said, ‘There’s no such thing as giants,’ and I felt better after that. But then I fell asleep again and I dreamed that I was falling down this dark hole, like Alice in Wonderland.”

“What horrible dreams! I’m not surprised you were tired.”

“Maybe I should pop a couple of Valium before I go to bed tonight.”

“Pop a couple of Valium? — I don’t think so. But I could make you a nice warm mug of malted milk.”

The phone rang. Trevor came back into the kitchen and answered it, but then he handed it to Sissy. “It’s Mike Kunzel, for you.”

Sissy said, “Mike?”

“Hi there, Mrs. Sawyer. Just thought you’d like to know that you were right. We searched the Giley Building from the roof to the basement. Every office, every closet. We even checked the garbage chutes. No sign of Red Mask anywhere. No fingerprints, either, and the footprints were a bust.”

“Did you manage to work out how he could have gotten away?”

“My guess is he walked straight out the front door while the super was dialing nine-one-one. It’s amazing what people don’t notice when they’re panicking.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“There’s nothing much we can do, except to keep on looking for him and appeal to the public to keep their eyes open, too. By the way, Molly left about fifteen minutes ago. She’s a really great artist, that girl.”

“Yes, she is,” said Sissy, looking at the roses on the hutch. “Even better than you know.”

Trevor said, “What’s happening? Any news?”

Sissy thanked Detective Kunzel for calling and then hung up. “Not yet,” she told Trevor. “But Molly should be home soon. Do you want me to make you some supper? How about some fried chicken, with salad and French fries?”

“No, no. I’m good. I had lunch at Nick & Tony’s with a guy from Brussels. Euro Investments. They’re looking for a foothold here in the States.”

“Trevor — ”

“Yes?”

She wanted to tell him how special he was, and how special Molly was, and Victoria, too, but for some reason she couldn’t find the words. She was feeling protective, but she didn’t think that Trevor would appreciate her mothering him, not right now. He was a man, after all. Whatever happened to him or his family, he had to take care of them the way he thought best.

“Don’t say I’m just like Dad,” said Trevor. “You always say that, but Dad was Dad, and I’m me. Dad took risks. I only calculate them.”

“I was only going to tell you that I’m proud of you. Is that such a crime?”

He held her close. It made him aware of how frail and ribby she was. “No, that’s not a crime.”

Victoria said, “Giants must be real, don’t you think? If they’re not real, who made them up, and why did everybody believe them?”

“If I knew the answer to that, honey,” said Trevor, “I’d be a very wealthy man.”

About ten minutes later, Molly arrived home looking pale and distracted. She lifted her fringed satchel over her head and hung it over the back of the kitchen chair.

“Boy, I am totally pooped. Drawing that Red Mask. For some reason it took so much out of me.”

“Well, he’s not a very pleasant character to think about, is he?” said Sissy. “Let alone draw.”

“I don’t know. It was more than that. It was like he was staring at me out of my sketch pad and saying Go on, then, let’s see how much life you can breathe into me.”

“How about a glass of wine?” asked Sissy.

“No, I think I’ll take a shower first. I feel kind of tainted, you know, like he’s been pawing me.”

“He’s only a drawing, hon,” said Trevor. “You shouldn’t let yourself get so upset.”

“I know. But while I was drawing him, I kept thinking, ‘Okay, that’s it, I’ve finished.’ But then I felt like I had to shade his eyebrows some more, and thicken his hair, and change the expression in his eyes. By the time I was finished, he looked so much younger — and, like, pleased with himself. And pleased with me, too.”

Sissy took hold of her hand. “Come on, sweetheart. It was really traumatic, what we saw today, all of those people dead. And in a way, when you were drawing him, it was like you were face-to-face with the man who murdered them, wasn’t it?”

“I guess so. Yes, it felt like that.”

Trevor put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “From now on, you stick to drawing fairies, okay?”

“Okay,” Molly smiled. Then she said, “Victoria — did you finish your homework?”

“Yes! It was cool. It was all about cicadas. I love cicadas.”

“I’m glad somebody does. They’re starting to fly already, and when the police officer was driving me home, they kept going splatter-splatter-splatter all over the windshield.”

Without taking a breath, Victoria said, “Cicadas live underground for seventeen years, feeding on the sap from tree roots. Then they tunnel their way out so that they can reproduce. They have yellow skins, which are very tough. The men cicadas make their mating calls by flexing their stomachs, and some of them are as loud as a hundred decibels.”

“What about the women cicadas?” asked Sissy.

“They never make any noise at all.”

“See?” said Trevor. “The perfect species.”

“After they mate, the men cicadas drop down dead.”

“I agree with you,” said Molly. “The perfect species.”

She turned to leave the kitchen, and it was then that she noticed the vase of roses on the hutch. She gave Sissy a quick, quizzical look and said, “Did you cut these roses?”

“Trevor did,” said Sissy, as calmly as she could. “Pretty, aren’t they?”

“Strange thing was,” said Trevor, “I never even noticed them growing.”

“Really?” asked Molly. “I don’t know how you could have missed them.”

“Well, I never noticed them, either,” said Victoria.

Molly lifted up the vase and gently touched the roses’ petals. Sissy could tell that she was upset. These were a miracle, created out of pencil and ink, not just a table decoration.

Sissy looked at her wryly. Miracles are miracles, Molly. If we knew how they happened, they wouldn’t be miracles. They would only be tricks.