Death Mask

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Summoning

Molly gave Victoria half a Versed tablet to calm her down, and put her to bed. Trevor chose a double Jack Daniel’s instead of a sedative, and Sissy joined him.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said, as he hunched in his armchair in the living room. “It was like a horror movie. There was so much — blood.”

They had already seen on the news that seventeen men, women, and children had been fatally injured on the Race Street skywalk. The attack had lasted a little less than three and a half minutes, but between them, the victims had been stabbed three hundred and twenty-four times.

The two men who had perpetrated the attacks fitted the descriptions of Red Mask — or at least two out of the three Red Masks. Witnesses at both ends of the bridge had seen them rushing toward the skywalk before the attack took place, but nobody had seen how or where they had gone afterward.

“We are urgently appealing to anybody who might have seen these men leaving the scene of the stabbings,” said Lieutenant Kenneth Moynihan of the homicide unit on the news. “So far, we have no idea how they managed to make their escape without a single person noticing them. We don’t know if they went through the mall or out through one of the department stores, or made their way along the skywalk. They could have had a getaway vehicle parked in the Fountain Square Garage, but none of the attendants there saw anybody who matches their description.”

Trevor switched the sound off. “Do you have any idea?” he asked Sissy.

“I do. But do you really want me to tell you?”

“Momma, for better or for worse, I saw those two Red Masks today. I saw them with my own eyes, and I saw what they can do. My God, if I hadn’t had a run-in with the girl in the denim department, Victoria and I could easily have been on that skywalk, too.”

“Well, I thank whatever fates there are for that.”

“So? How do you think they got away?”

Sissy sipped her whiskey. “You saw those roses yesterday evening. One minute they were three-dimensional, and real. The next, they were only two-dimensional — nothing but drawings.”

“And what does that tell me?”

“Roses are roses. Roses don’t have intelligence, or choice. Roses can’t make decisions. But men can. I’m beginning to think that those two Red Masks have the ability to choose when they want to be real and when they want to be drawings. A man can be traced, but a drawing can hide anywhere — on a wall, on a sheet of paper — just waiting for the time when he wants to turn himself back into a man again.”

Trevor said, “I find it so goddamned hard to get my head around all of this. Surely there must be some other explanation.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Maybe it’s some kind of a conjuring trick. You know, like Harry Houdini. He could make himself disappear, couldn’t he? And he wasn’t a drawing.”

Sissy laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all in the cards, Trevor. The cards show an image that comes to life. It’s just like those killings that happened this morning. The cards predicted them, but I didn’t understand what they were trying to say to me.”

She took out l’Avertissement and handed it to him. “Look here. A bridge, with a man warning people not to walk across it. Red roses, entwined on the railings. but they’re not red roses at all, they’re hands, covered in blood. Seventeen of them, if you count. Adult hands, children’s hands. One for every person who was killed today.”

Trevor said, “That could be a coincidence.”

“It could be, yes. Except for the five magpies, which stand for the month of May, and for the two crosses on the hill. Diagonal crosses, two Xs. And what’s the date today? May twentieth. Roman numerals, XX for twenty. Not only that. look at the two men nailed to the crosses. They both have red hair and red faces.”

Trevor finished his whiskey and put down his glass.

“Do you want another?” Molly asked him.

“I’d like to, but I need a clear head for this.”

Molly said, “Whatever decision you make, honey, you know that I’ll respect it.”

“I know. But I don’t have a choice, do I? Not after seeing all those people butchered.”

“So you agree we should do it?” Sissy asked him.

“On one condition. That Dad really wants to help us. If it distresses him too much — or if anything else goes wrong — then we send him back to wherever he came from, and that’s an end to it. We leave him in peace.”

“Of course,” said Sissy.

Now that Trevor had actually agreed to them resurrecting Frank, she herself was less than sure that she wanted to go through with it. It had been one thing to fantasize about it, but to do it for real.

“I think I need a cigarette,” she said.

“Dad’s not going to like it when he finds out that you’re still smoking.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t need a cigarette.” She hesitated, and then she said, “Goddamn it. Yes, I do.”

She went out into the yard, where the cicadas were chirping more raucously than ever. She lit a cigarette and deeply inhaled.

It had been nearly twenty-five years since two young troopers had come to her door with their hats in their hands, telling her that Frank had been killed. She had said, softly, “Oh, dear God,” but she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t even cried at his funeral.

The first time she had sobbed, it had come upon her quite unexpectedly, when she was sitting with her friend in Aurora’s Café drinking coffee and they had played “Pretty Woman” on the jukebox. Frank had always sung it to her — not that Frank could sing in key. He had always found it difficult to pay her compliments, and so he let Roy Orbison do it for him.

She sang it now, under her breath. “Pretty woman. walking down the street. ”

Molly came out, carrying a leather-bound photo album. “I found plenty of reference,” she said. “That’s if you still want to go ahead with it.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t see the warning in the cards,” said Sissy. “The twentieth of May, at a quarter after ten, on a bridge. It was all there, if only I could have read it. I could have saved all of those people’s lives.”

“Sissy, you tell fortunes. You talk to dead people in mirrors. You’re the most amazing sensitive I’ve ever known. But you’re not infallible. Nobody is.”

Sissy turned around to face her. “I used to be. I used to be infallible. But — well — maybe Trevor’s right. Maybe I am losing it. Maybe I am going bananas.”

Molly had bookmarked the album and now she opened it. Inside was a large color photograph of Frank standing on the shore at Hyannis. Sissy had taken it herself, only about two weeks before he was killed. His hair was ruffled by the ocean breeze, and he was grinning at her. She had forgotten how blue his eyes were.

“That’s good, that’s a good one. I like that.”

“I won’t draw him at the beach, though. I’ll draw him here.”

“Okay. Under the vine trellis, how about that?”

“I could draw him anyplace. In the living room, if you like.”

“I know. But when he materializes — if he does — it seems like something he should do without us all staring at him. Something private.”

Molly nodded. She understood what Sissy meant. She couldn’t guess what it would feel like for Frank, being resurrected through a drawing of himself, but she imagined that it would be momentous, both physically and emotionally.

“What are you going to say to Victoria?” asked Sissy, as they went back inside.

“I don’t know. We haven’t done it yet, have we? But if we do — I guess I’ll simply tell her the truth.”

“ ‘Victoria, this is your grandpa, who died long before you were born? Come and say hi!’ ”

“Sissy, you’re such a cynic.”

“No, I’m not. I’m a jelly, if you must know. I’m just trying to protect my feelings.”

Molly sat at her desk, and Sissy sat close beside her. Trevor stayed on the opposite side of the study, pacing up and down. Every now and then, he nervously cleared his throat, as if he were waiting for a job interview.

With the photograph of Frank at Hyannis propped up in front of her, and three smaller photographs showing his right and left profiles and a three-quarters view, Molly began to sketch. She had never met Frank, of course, but Trevor had told her so much about him that she felt she knew him well. His matter-of-fact attitude to life, his dry sense of humor. But she also knew that he had been dedicated to helping other people, particularly those who were helpless and down on their luck — and that didn’t only mean those who were victims of crime, but also the criminals themselves.

Frank Sawyer had done everything he could to help a nineteen-year-old drug addict named Laurence Stepney to turn his life around. One morning he had seen Stepney and another youth trying to break into a car in the parking lot of the Big Bear Supermarket near Nor-folk. He had walked up to Stepney and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. Without hesitation Stepney had pulled out a.38 revolver and shot him in the face.

“That’s it,” said Sissy, as Molly started to shade in Frank’s cheekbones. “You’ve really got him, you know? When you come to the eyes, though. I always thought that Frank looked a little long-sighted. like he was focused on something way behind you. My friend said that he always made her feel transparent, as if he could see right through her.”

Trevor came halfway across the room, leaned over to peer at Molly’s sketch pad, and then went back to his pacing. “This is not going to work, is it? I can’t see how this is possibly going to work.”

Sissy said, “Trevor. even if it doesn’t work, we’ll still end up with a very fine portrait of your father, and I can’t complain about that.”

“The whole thing’s nuts. I’m nuts for going along with it.”

“Trevor, I like you when you’re acting nuts. You’ve been so serious all your life. You were even serious when you were potty training.”

“For Christ’s sake, Momma.”

“Do you know why your father married me? He told me once. He said, ‘Sissy — you are the most irrational person I ever met. You’re completely crazy, and that’s just what I need in my life. A little bit of crazy.’ ”

“I’m sorry if I didn’t inherit any of that.”

“You don’t think so? I think you did. I think you’re more like me than you care to admit.”

Now Molly was filling in the shadows under Frank’s cheekbones and the lines around his mouth. She really was a remarkable artist, thought Sissy. Her portraits weren’t at all like photographs. In a way, they were much more real than photographs. They breathed life, and character. As she highlighted his lips, Sissy almost expected Frank to start talking to her. And as the drawing came nearer and nearer to completion, Trevor came back across the room and stood right behind her, staring at his dead father in fascination, but also in deeply suppressed pain.

“Okay,” said Molly, at last. She held the portrait up so that they could see it better. “All we can do now is wait and see if anything happens.”

“Well, I suggest we leave it for a while,” said Sissy. “Let’s sit down and have a drink, and say a prayer to whatever gods we happen to believe in.”

Molly washed her paintbrush and put it back into its jelly jar. Before she stood up, she sorted through her necklace until she found the brass and garnet ring, and squeezed it tight between finger and thumb.

“Saying a prayer to Vincent van Gogh?” Sissy asked her.

“Asking for his blessing,” said Molly. “If anybody knew what madness and fear and disappointment were all about, he did.”

They left the study and went back into the living room. Trevor filled up their glasses and they sat down and looked at each other, almost as if they had done something for which they should all feel guilty.

“Do you want to smoke, Momma?” Trevor asked her.

Sissy blinked at him in surprise. “You don’t mean that, do you?”

“What the hell. What difference is it going to make?”

“Well, thank you for your consideration,” said Sissy. “But your father’s coming back, and you know what he felt about my smoking.”

They sat in silence for five minutes longer. Then the phone warbled, making Sissy jump.

Molly picked it up and said, “Sawyer residence. Oh, Mike. How are you? I know, terrible. Victoria’s really upset. Well, and Trevor is, too. I know.”

She covered the receiver with her hand and said, “Mike Kunzel. He wants to know if I can draw him another composite.”

“Not if you’re wearing that necklace, you can’t.”

“Of course I won’t. And I don’t have to go downtown. Trevor saw the perpetrators as clear as anybody. I can do it here.”

She took her hand away from the receiver. “For sure, Mike. I can do that. Give me an hour, and I’ll e-mail it to you.”

She said, “Yes,” and then, “yes,” and then she held out the receiver for Sissy. “He’d like a word with you, too.”

“Me?”

Detective Kunzel said, “Hi, Mrs. Sawyer. How’s it going?”

“Well, we’re all very upset, naturally.”

“Last time that Red Mask called me on my cell phone, you said that he had given us a clue. But I never had the chance to ask you what it was.”

“No, you didn’t, and I have to say that I was kind of relieved. I didn’t think that you’d believe me, even if I told you.”

“Try me, Mrs. Sawyer. You never know. I’m supposed to be the most skeptical guy in the unit, but there are times when even us skeptical guys find ourselves clutching at straws. We’ve raided three addresses this afternoon, looking for red-faced men — one in Betts-Longworth and two in Over-the-Rhine. But the only red faces were ours.”

Sissy tried to choose her words with care. “Let me put it this way, Detective. You’ve heard about people having doppelgängers, exact doubles of themselves?”

“Go on.”

“I think that the two Red Masks who killed those people at the Giley Building and the Four Days Mall, and the two Red Masks who killed those people on the skywalk this morning — I think they could be doppelgängers, of a kind.”

“I don’t get it. You mean, like identical twins?”

“In a way. But identical twins are two separate people. These are the same person, twice. Like two copies of the same picture.”

There was a very long pause. Then Detective Kunzel said, “I’m sorry, Mrs Sawyer. You got me there. I don’t really understand what you’re saying.”

“It doesn’t really matter if you understand it or not, Detective. The most important thing is to be aware of it. When you send your men out looking for these Red Masks, tell them to watch their backs. My cards have given me a very strong warning: the hunters could end up becoming the hunted.”

“Well. I’m a whole lot more confused than I was a minute ago,” said Detective Kunzel. “But I’ll take your word for it. I’ll tell my men to look out for one guy who could be two guys.”

“He may be no guys at all,” Sissy told him.

Another pause. “Let’s just stick to your doppelgängers for now,” said Detective Kunzel. “But if you do have any more theories — ”

Sissy hung up and handed the phone back to Molly. “I have a very bad feeling about this,” she said.

Mr. Boots, who had been sleeping on the carpet next to the couch, suddenly lifted his head and let out a whuff.

“See? Mr. Boots can feel it, too.”