“Engineer out at KSIN got the back of his head bashed in,” she was told. “It’s a strange one, too. Nothing was taken from his wallet or home.”
“Ripper-related?”
“We’re not treating it as such. We think something scared the burglar away.”
“Is Cal dead?”
“No. But he’s still in a coma. The doctors think he’s going to make it.”
“No more Ripper attacks?”
“Not that we know of.”
Lani lay on the bed for a time, then dressed and walked down to Leo’s room. He was relaxing on the bed and pointed to a bottle of Crown Royal on the dresser. She fixed a drink and sat down, telling him about Cal.
“I know Cal Denning,” Leo said. “He’s worked on our equipment for free. I’d be very much surprised to learn that he has an enemy in the world. He’s a very laid-back guy. And a nice guy.”
“Well, he was almost a dead guy.” She looked down at her drink then lifted her eyes. “It’s related, Leo.”
He stared at her for a moment. “You’re reaching, Lani.”
“I can’t help it. It’s related. I know it is. I feel it.”
Leo sighed and slowly nodded his head. “I think the half brother and sister are in California, Lani. In the La Barca area. Did we get anything back on our request to force the opening of the Longwood trust?”
“Denied. No reason to believe the boys have anything to do with the Ripper case.”
“Shit!” Leo cussed, which was something he did not do very often. But this case was causing him to swear more than Lani had ever heard him do.
“The judge said it isn’t against the law to change one’s name. And after reviewing the files, he further stated that since the boys had committed no crimes prior to the name change, they have every right to expect privacy. Our people are appealing.”
“That’ll take two or three years!”
Lani shrugged her shoulders. “You know how it goes, Leo.”
“Let’s get out of here, Lani. Catch a plane to Rochester first thing in the morning.”
She reached for the phone. “I’ll make the reservations.”
* * *
Damn cat! the Ripper thought, inspecting the face in the mirror. It would be days before the deep claw marks would finally fade. And Denning was still alive. Damn the man! And the Ripper had learned that two county pigs, Leo Franks and Lani Prejean, were now traveling all over the country, backtracking the movements of the Longwood boys. But that little matter was going to be taken care of, very soon. Permanently. No more oinkies.
The face in the mirror sighed in frustration. The urge to strike was building within. Strong now. Almost overpowering. It would have to be soon. If not, the Other would take control, and the Other was not nearly as cautious as conditions warranted.
The face in the mirror smiled. Pretty Tammy would soon be added to the collection of faces, and if everything went as planned, Dick Hale would find his butt in jail, and those bad boys in lockup knew what to do with a cherry-butt like Dick.
The face in the mirror laughed and laughed and laughed. This was such fun.
* * *
The Rochester detective dropped a thin file on the desk. “That’s it,” he said. “But since that happened, the remains of seven more have been found, and we think they’re all connected.”
“And there might be seven more undiscovered around here,” Leo said.
“Or seventy,” the detective said. “How’s it going with you guys?”
“Slow and frustrating,” Lani said, opening the file.
“Ain’t it always? Take your time. Use my desk. I’ve punched up on computer what we know about the other nine. Coffee is over there.” He pointed. “The one who drains the pot makes fresh. Have fun. I got to go work a rape that will probably turn out to be an unsatisfying scrape, and now she’s got a grudge against his ass. No offense, Lani.”
“None taken. I know what you mean.” The detective walked away, and Lani and Leo looked down at the photos of the dead girl, before and after. Before was pretty and vibrant, after was awful.
“Leo,” Lani said. “What does this guy do with the faces?”
Leo looked at his doughnut. “I don’t know. You have a guess?”
“He saves some of them.”
“Good God, Lani!” He laid the doughnut aside.
“He preserves them to take out and look at from time to time.”
“I worry about you, Lani. I really do. You have a weird mind.”
“It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.” She closed the file. “The cops would know the person is missing. There would be a full description: age, height, weight, hair coloring, scars, and marks. He’s not trying to disguise the victim to prevent ID. He loves these faces, Leo.”
Leo grimaced, burped, and put a paper napkin over the doughnut.
“Remember what Zanetis said? Since ’72, they have discovered five more bodies in the Albany area. That’s seven over there. Eight here. I’ll bet you when we’re through, we’ll have a total of three or four hundred bodies over a twenty-year period.”
Leo sighed and settled back in his chair. “He’s been a busy boy.”
“Let’s go talk to the medical examiner.”
“Yes,” the man said the word slowly. “I remember the cases very well. Of the seven additional bodies found in this area, I can verify that four of them had their faces cut away.”
“You have spare photos we could borrow?” Leo asked.
“Oh, yes. You can have them. Where do you go from here?”
“Buffalo.”
* * *
“Yeah, we hated to let this one go,” the Buffalo detective said. “She was the daughter of a cop.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But after nineteen years ... ?”
“And how many more bodies have been found since the first one?” Lani asked.
“Nine. Five of them with their faces cut away. That we can prove, that is.”
“Do us a big favor?” Leo asked.
“Anything. Name it.”
“Run the name Longwood. See if you have anything.”
“It’ll take some time. But I’ll be glad to get it done. Come back in the morning?”
“We’ll be here.”
* * *
The detective was nervous. He motioned the California cops to follow him. They got in his car and drove away from the central station. “This is juvenile stuff,” he said. “You didn’t get it from me, and you can’t use it in a court of law.”
“We understand,” Lani said. “We don’t have to like it, but we understand. You ought to work in California.”
“No, thanks. New York State is bad enough. It’s absolutely unfair to the law-abiding public not to release the names of perverted little creeps.” He pulled over to the curb. “Jack and Jim Longwood, twin brothers, attended a private school just outside of town. It’s closed down now. Has been for years. They were both brought in for questioning after the disappearance of a boy from the school. The boy’s body has never been found. The school is—was—located on the Tonawanda River. The body was probably dumped in the river and ended up as fish bait in Erie. We had pictures of the little twin bastards, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, the pictures are gone from the file. You know their father was enormously wealthy?”
The California cop nodded their heads.
“Well, money can buy a lot of things. Including cops, I’m sorry to say.” He handed them the file on Jack and Jim Longwood. “Read it in my presence and give it back.”
It did not take Leo and Lani long to memorize the pertinent facts and return the file to the Buffalo cop. “Thanks,” Lani said.
“I hope you catch them. Where do you go from here?”
“Akron.”
“Busy little bastards, aren’t they?” the Buffalo cop said. “I just wonder how many they’ve killed over the years.”
“You sound convinced it’s them,” Leo said.
He smiled. “I was uni
form then. Yesterday when we spoke, it all came rushing back. I was the first to interview the twins. Arrogant, profane, snooty, little crapheads. Smug. Ten, eleven years old, and they knew all the dirty words in the book. And called me everyone of them.”
“Are the school buildings still standing?” Leo asked.
“Oh, yeah. The complex has been tied up in the courts for years. If you’re thinking about going out there, I don’t want to know about it.” He smiled. “But there is a stand of thick timber behind the school. Be a dandy place to hide a car.”
* * *
There was no security at the old private school, and getting in was a piece of cake. There were boxes and crates stacked all over the halls, and someone had been kind enough to mark the contents on the outside of every box and crate.
Luck was with them, and they found a crate marked: YEARBOOKS 1975. But in the space for Jim and Jack Longwood was printed: Photo Not Available.
“Shit!” Lani said.
“Now we start looking for records.”
It took them more than two hours, and when they finally found the records section, they were covered with dust and grime and cobwebs. It took them another hour to find the files on Jim and Jack Longwood.
Neither of them realized it, but they were both holding their breath as Leo opened first one file, then the other. They exhaled as the pictures of the twins looked back at them.
“Gotcha, you little jerks!” Leo said.
“We can do a computer enhancement and pretty well know what they’ll look like at age thirty,” Lani said.
“We finally got a break.”
They put fresh batteries in their flashlights and repacked as best they could. On the way out, Lani literally tripped over a small box and hit the floor. On the floor, her beam of light caught the printing on the side of the box. DISCIPLINARY RECORDS.
“Well, now,” she said, standing up and brushing some of the dust off of herself. “This just might prove interesting reading.” She opened the box and found the files on Jim and Jack Longwood, and shoved them into her large purse.
“You taking those?”
“You better believe I am. We can always say someone mailed them to us.”
Leo suddenly clicked off his light and shushed her. “Listen!” he whispered, as Lani instinctively cut the beam of her light.
They could clearly hear the sounds of footsteps on the concrete walk outside.
“More than one person,” Lani whispered.
“I make it two people. And we’re trapped.”
“Jimmy the goddamn thing,” a woman’s voice reached them in the dark and dusty corridor. Let’s get in here and get this over with.”
“I got news, Sis. It’s already been jimmied.”
“The half brother and sister,” Lani whispered.
“Yeah.”
The California cops heard the jimmied door open and close.
“And here they come,” Leo whispered.
Chapter 7
The man and woman stood still and used flashlights to search the long corridor. Lani and Leo were well aware that the beams of light were picking up their footprints in the decade’s-old dust on the floor. There was nothing they could do about that. There was nothing they could do, period. The newly arrived man and woman were blocking the way out.
The flashlights were abruptly switched off, plunging the hall into darkness. Then the sounds of running feet reached the California cops. The man and woman were leaving ... in one hell of a hurry.
“No way!” Lani muttered, throwing caution to the wind. She jumped to her feet and ran after the pair.
“No!” Leo yelled. When his warning had no effect, he leaped to his feet and took off after his partner.
The unknown man was fumbling with a stubborn door when Lani slammed into him. The old door shattered, and both Lani and the man went tumbling outside, landing on the concrete. The woman turned and faced Leo, stopping the cop for a few seconds.
Leo had never before in his life seen such hate and evil on a human face. But he was quite familiar with the gun in her hand.
She screamed at him, the fury in the shrieking echoing throughout the empty building. Leo threw himself to one side, just as she pulled the trigger. The booming of the pistol was enormous in the emptiness. The slug slammed into the glass of the trophy case and breaking glass tinkled to the tile.
The man Lani had hurled against was addled, having bumped his head on the concrete. She jumped up and threw herself at the woman’s legs, knocking the woman down. The pistol slid away into the darkness. Lani got a second’s glimpse at the woman’s face, and nearly recoiled at the hate and evil so vividly expressed there. Then the woman was up and delivering a vicious kick to Lani’s belly, driving the wind from her. She grabbed her pistol and ran out the door.
Leo fired, the slug from his 9mm missing the woman and grooving a hot line in the half-open wooden door. Then the woman was gone, her male companion staggering along with her. Lani lay gasping on the dirty floor, both hands clutching her stomach.
“You all right, kid?” Leo panted, kneeling down beside her.
“Yeah,” Lani gasped. “That bitch can kick like a mule.”
Both of them heard a car crank up and drive off, back tires spinning in the pea-gravel parking lot.
Lani sat up, her back to the wall. “Did you see the face on that woman?”
“I sure did. Scared the crap out of me. No artist could ever paint that much evil.”
“I agree.”
Leo spotted something lying just outside the shattered front doors. He left Lani and picked it up.
“So much for the half brother and sister being in California,” Lani said, getting to her feet. Her stomach hurt like hell.
“We’ll soon know,” Leo replied. “The man lost his wallet.”
* * *
“George Prott?” Leo said aloud, looking at the driver’s license. “Prott?”
They had returned to the motel, making certain they were not followed.
“The prott thickens,” Lani said with a smile.
“Oh, Lani,” Leo groaned, shaking his head. “That’s bad, kid. Pull up your shirt. Let me look at your belly.”
She was going to have one whale of a bruise, but there was no swelling to indicate anything ruptured.
“What’s the address on the license?”
“P.O. Box in Binghamton. A hundred dollars. No credit cards, no business cards, nothing.” He looked carefully at the license. Fingered it. “It’s a phony.” He handed it to her.
Whoever had done it, had done a good job. But the license was still a phony. She tossed it on the bed. “The boys know we’re after them, Leo. They’re cleaning up any paper trail that might be behind them.”
“Yeah. But who’s helping them do it? The half brother and sister?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. The man and woman we tangled with tonight were older. I’d guess in their mid to late forties.”
“But we heard the man call the woman sis.”
“Oh, I think it’s still all in the family. I think this family is all nuts. Cousins, maybe. Hell, Leo. I don’t know. Can we call the Bureau in on this?”
“If we could prove it was the boys, yeah. Crossing state lines would do it. Let’s see them in the morning.”
* * *
The agent in charge listened to the California cops. When they finished, he said, “You have no concrete proof linking the twins to the murders?”
“No,” Lani said. “But isn’t the cutting off of the faces enough to prove the killer, or killers, is crossing state lines?”
“It is in my opinion. I don’t have the last word, though. I’ll kick it upstairs and see what happens.”
They did not, of course, tell the FBI man of their breaking into the school, or of being attacked by the man and woman.
* * *
Lani and Leo moved on to Akron. In addition to the original woman who had been killed and mutilated back in ’77, authorities
in and around the city had since discovered eight more bodies, most of them without faces. On a hunch, the California cops went to Columbus. There, in addition to the man who had been killed in ’78, the police had since uncovered twelve more bodies, all of them, they believed, linked to the first murder.
It was in Akron that Leo suggested they rent a car and just drive the route the Ripper had—according to their theory—taken on his cross-country murdering spree. They would stop at each county seat along the way, and talk to the sheriff and chief of police, for both Leo and Lani had a hunch that the Ripper had not confined his murders to cities. They okayed their plan with Sheriff Brownwood and with Dennis Potter, and rented a car.
They cut down to Springfield and had a chat with a local detective. One more faceless body to add to the list. Two in Columbus, one outside of Lima. They stopped in Fort Wayne, Logansport, Lafayette. More bodies over the years.
“It can’t be the twins doing it all,” Leo said, as they rolled along through Indiana, nearing the Illinois border. “They’re not old enough, and couldn’t have covered this much ground.”
“I agree. The older half brother and sister must be in on it.”
“Or more.”
“Elucidate, please.”
“Elucidate? Don’t go fancy on me, kid.”
“You want to explain?”
“It’s a club.”
“A club?”
“A killing club.”
She arched one eyebrow and waited. According to a road sign, Danville, Illinois was only a few miles away.
“I don’t believe any of that crap Karl Muller told us about the house and the torture chambers and all that. I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Longwood were killers or kinky or anything like that. Just rich and arrogant and contemptuous of other people and overly protective of their twins. I think we’re going to find that the older half brother and sister started the killings, and then saw the twisted minds of Jim and Jack and introduced them to the ... well, call it a game for want of a better word. I also think that the twins were—contrary to what we’ve been told—confined at one time or the other, to mental institutions. And there, they recruited other people who were and are twisted in the same way.”
Night Mask Page 5