Death Mask

CHAPTER TWENTY Red Mask Panic

On their way back home they stopped off at the Rook-wood Pavilion in Norwood so that Molly could buy some more crayons and paints from an artist’s supply store called Arts Of Gold and some purple beaded cushion covers from Stein Mart. Then they bought themselves strawberry ice-cream cones and walked through the mall, window-shopping.

“So where do you think we go from here?” said Molly.

“I’m not sure yet,” Sissy admitted. “But I do think that George told us something important. Or rather, he lied about something important.”

“But he’s dead. Why should he lie about anything? What would be the point?”

“People usually lie because they’ve done something that they’re ashamed of.”

“Being murdered is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yes, but why was he murdered?”

They were looking at summer dresses in T.J. Maxx when Molly’s cell phone warbled. She answered it and said, “Yes,” and then, “Yes,” and then, “Oh God, not again.”

“What’s happened?” Sissy asked her.

“Red Mask,” said Molly. “He’s killed seven more people in an elevator at the Giley Building. But it looks like there’s a copycat killer, too. Eleven people were stabbed in an elevator at the Four Days Mall, but at almost the same time.”

“There are two Red Masks?” said Sissy. “That’s just terrible. How can there be two of them?”

“Mike Kunzel says he has witnesses. Three people survived — one at the Giley Building and two at the Four Days Mall. He wants me to go to the hospital and talk to them. He says they all described a red-faced man with two knives.”

“This is just awful. No wonder the cards predicted so much blood.”

“Do you want to come with me?” asked Molly. “Maybe if you sit in while I’m drawing my composites, you might get some kind of insight.” “Sure, yes, I’ll come along.”

They walked back to Molly’s car. The skies had cleared now, and a gilded sun was shining, but the morning was still steamy, and thousands of cicadas were chirruping in the trees that surrounded the parking lot. They drove out of the gates, splashing through the puddles, and headed toward Allison Street.

Molly turned on the radio. On 700 AM, a reporter was talking to Lieutenant Colonel Whalen, the commander of the investigations bureau.

Lieutenant Colonel Whalen sounded shaken. “It’s far too early for us to say exactly who we’re looking for. It could be a copycat killer, yes. But then again, it could be an organization of two or more terrorists. Whoever it is — and whatever perverted purpose they have in mind — they are obviously determined to cause as much panic and disruption as they can.”

“But what would you say to the general public in Cincinnati?” asked the reporter. “What special precautions would you advise them to take?”

“We all need to keep our eyes open. We all need to be aware of what these men look like, and to check out our fellow passengers whenever we step onto an elevator.”

“But if we can’t be sure of our safety in a glass-paneled elevator that’s in full view of two crowded streets and a crowded shopping mall. where can we?”

“Right now, I’d advise Cincinnatians to stay on a high level of personal alert no matter where they’re going or what they’re doing. Riding in elevators, walking in the park, going out shopping — even at home. So far, yes, these men have attacked people only on elevators. But we have no guarantee that they won’t diversify their assaults, and we have no idea when, or where, or even if they are planning to strike again.”

“So you couldn’t even guess at a motive?”

“Not yet. It’s perfectly possible that the perpetrators have an agenda that makes some kind of twisted sense to them. Last year, if you remember, James Kellman shot two innocent children on a bus because he thought they were laughing at his private thoughts. But — no — we have no idea at this time why any of these people were attacked.

“All I can say on behalf of the CPD is that their loved ones have our deepest sympathy.”

Chrissie had survived. Elaine had been stabbed in the face with both knives at once and had fallen backward, with Chrissie underneath her. Chrissie had been stabbed three times in the left arm, and once in the left leg, above the knee — but even though the knife blade had penetrated so deeply that the point had momentarily stuck in her thighbone, it had missed her femoral artery by a quarter of an inch.

She was sedated and confused, and her eyes kept roaming around the room as if she was fearful that her attacker was suddenly going to reappear.

But Molly kept on saying, “You’re safe now, Chrissie. He’s gone, and he won’t be coming back. I promise you.”

“I was so scared. He kept shouting, ‘Wicked! Wicked!’ He was trying to kill all of us.”

“I know. That’s why I need you to tell me what he looked like.”

“His face. His face was so red. It was like he was burned.”

Molly held up one of her Caran d’Ache crayons. “Was it red like this?”

“No. It was redder than that.”

Molly held up another crayon, torch red. “How about this?”

Chrissie nodded. “That’s how red he was. And his eyes. It was like he had no eyes at all.”

Sissy sat on the opposite side of the hospital bed, a little way back. She could feel Chrissie’s fear, as tight as an overwound clock. But, oddly, she had no sense of Red Mask himself, only emptiness. It was just as if Chrissie were describing a figure that she had seen in a nightmare, rather than a real person.

Usually, when she talked to women who were being intimidated or beaten, she could pick up a distinct sense of the people who were frightening them so much. Bullies and abusing husbands lived inside their victims’ consciousness, possessing them like malevolent spirits. But Chrissie’s description of Red Mask evoked nothing at all. Blackness. Coldness. No more soul than a cicada.

She moved her chair closer to the bed and reached out for Chrissie’s hand.

“Do you mind?” she asked her.

“Of course not,” said Chrissie.

Sissy turned Chrissie’s hand over and examined her palm. She had a long, double life line, which meant that she had an outstanding resistance to negative events in her life and would live to a very old age — even though there were two significant breaks in it. The first of those breaks was probably an indication of the knife attack that she had just suffered. The other showed that she had another life-threatening incident in store for her when she was very much older, but she would survive that, too. Maybe an accident, maybe an illness.

Her line of Venus was perforated, which revealed sensitivity and a willingness to listen to other people’s problems. But her line of Apollo was short and broken, meaning that she was a dreamer and a procrastinator, who lacked concentration.

Her fate line, though, was highly unusual. It had a complicated whorl in it that Sissy had only seen once before, on a woman who had claimed that a statue in the ornamental gardens in Darien, Connecticut, had spoken to her and given her a warning that her daughter was about to die.

The whorl meant that Chrissie had witnessed a highly potent psychic phenomenon — something that most people would never witness even if they lived a hundred lifetimes. A miracle.

Molly was quickly sketching the face of Chrissie’s assailant. His head looked slightly narrower than her previous two drawings of Red Mask, and his cheeks were more chiseled, but there was no question that it was the same man.

When she had finished, she lifted up her sketch pad and turned it around so that Chrissie could tell her how accurate it was. Chrissie immediately turned her head away. “That’s him. Please, I don’t want to look at it. That’s exactly him.”

Sissy held Chrissie’s hand between hers, and said, “Don’t worry. You’re never going to see him again. Your palm tells me that you’re going to be happy and healthy and live for a very long time. Oh — and apart from that — you’re going to have at least five children.”

Chrissie opened her mouth in disbelief. “Five children! But I’m not married yet! I don’t even have a boyfriend.”

“You will. You see your mount of Venus here, just below your thumb? It’s very high and rounded, which means that you’re going to have a passionate love life and a very satisfying marriage. And five children, one for each finger.”

Molly stood up. “My motherin-law is never wrong, believe me. Madame Blavatsky had nothing on her.”

Chrissie said, “Thank you. And I really hope you catch this psycho.”

Sissy and Molly glanced at each other. Chrissie hadn’t yet been told that there had been two almost simultaneous attacks in the city center that morning, and that both of them had been carried out by a red-faced man.

“We’ll catch him,” Molly reassured her. “You just worry about getting yourself better.”

They were about to leave the room when Chrissie said, “Oh! There’s one more thing that I remember. The man — he had a piece missing from his ear.”

Molly stopped. “A piece missing from his ear? What do you mean?”

“It was his right ear, like a triangular piece missing from his earlobe.”

“You want to show me on this drawing?”

“Okay.”

Molly kept most of the man’s face covered while Chrissie penciled in a V-shaped nick.

“That’s good,” Molly told her. “That’s very distinctive. That should help the police a lot.”

Chrissie looked across at Sissy. “You’re sure I’m never going to see him again?”

“Never,” said Sissy. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

They managed to talk to one of the teenage boys who had been stabbed in the glass elevator at the Four Days Mall. His name was Ben, and he was seventeen years old and very spotty and skinny, with a mass of black curly hair.

When the red-faced man had started stabbing, Ben had crouched down in one corner of the elevator with his hands covering his face. He had been stabbed through his hands seven times, and his left cheek had been sliced open right to the bone, but he had been lucky that the knives hadn’t penetrated his eyes.

“It was like his face was painted red, you know? He scared the crap out of me, if you must know. This one dude was telling him back off and everything, but he pulled out these knives and nobody stood a chance.”

“Was he tall, medium, or short?”

“He was like humungous.”

“How about his face? Was it squarish, or long, or oval?”

“He looked like the Hulk. Like, if the Hulk was red instead of green, that’s exactly what this dude looked like.”

“Did you notice anything about his ears?”

“His ears? I wasn’t looking at his frickin’ ears, ma’am, excuse my French.”

Sissy said, “Would you do something for me, Ben?”

“Sure, whatever.”

She opened her purse and took out the deck of DeVane cards. Ben watched her, baffled, as she sorted through them. She found l’Apprenti, the Apprentice, which she picked as Ben’s Predictor card. It showed a young man in a long leather apron sawing wood in a carpenter’s workshop. At the far end of the workshop three latticed windows gave out onto a garden. In each window stood a naked girl with braided hair — a brunette covering her eyes, a blonde covering her ears, and a red-head covering her mouth, like the three wise monkeys. They represented the young man’s inexperience.

She laid the card on the bed, and then offered the rest of the pack to Ben. “Choose four cards. Any cards, it doesn’t matter.”

Ben looked up at the Chinese-American nurse who was filling in his notes. She shrugged as if to say, Go ahead. it’s fine by me. A little fortune-telling never hurt anybody.

He picked four cards, which Sissy set around the Predictor card at all four points of the compass.

“This is behind you,” said Sissy, pointing to the card below the Apprentice. “You had a spat with a girl you really care about.”

Ben stared at her. “How do you know that? Have you been talking to my folks?”

Sissy smiled and shook her head. “It’s true, then?”

“I broke up with my girlfriend over the weekend. We kept fighting all the time.”

“All right,” said Sissy, and pointed to the card on the left. “This is your ambition.”

The card was le Violoniste, and showed a young man in a green velvet suit playing the violin in front of an audience of various animals — dogs, goats, llamas, and leopards — all of which were also dressed in human finery.

“You want to be a musician,” Sissy told him. “A rock guitarist, if I’m guessing correctly. And you and your girlfriend used to fight because she was jealous of all the girls who hung around whenever you played.”

“This is incredible,” said Ben.

Sissy pointed to the right-hand card, le Marcheur. A thin man in a triangular hat was walking down a muddy country road. It was teeming with rain, and the man’s only companion was a bedraggled black dog.

“This is what lies ahead of you, Ben. Success won’t come to you easy. You’ll have to travel a long, long way to achieve your ambition, and you’ll get very depressed and frustrated. But you should make it in the end. See this break in the clouds? You’ll get a break one day, when you least expect it.”

Ben said nothing to that but pointed to the last card, at the top. “What does this one mean?”

“Le Témoin, the Witness. That’s you, and what happened to you today.”

“I don’t get it.”

The card showed a man in a pigtailed wig and a frock coat stepping back from a picture frame with one hand raised as if he were trying to shield his eyes. But the picture frame, although it was elaborate, with curlicues and bunches of grapes carved around it, was empty.

Sissy picked it up and scrutinized it carefully. “I’m not so sure that I get it, either.”

Molly said, “Let me see,” and Sissy handed it to her.

“It’s a man looking at nothing,” she said, and handed it back.

“Exactly,” Sissy agreed. “But he’s obviously frightened of it, isn’t he — even if it is nothing.”