Night Mask

by William W. Johnstone

  The trio of cops were silent for a moment. “I didn’t know you smoked, Dick,” Brownie said.

  “I hadn’t in twenty years. I started up again in jail.”

  “You were going to be a surgeon, weren’t you, Mr. Hale?” Lani asked, surprisingly gentle.

  “Yeah. But I suddenly developed an aversion to blood.” He laughed sourly. “Isn’t that something? I was twenty-two years old, making top grades in medical school, and suddenly the sight of blood caused me to get light-headed, nauseous, and sometimes pass out on the floor. Still does. The doctors say it happens. Sure happened to me. When my wife has her period, I can’t even sleep in the same bed with her.” He laughed again. “Of course, we haven’t slept together in ten years anyway.”

  “What is your personal physician’s name, Dick?” Brownie asked.

  “Henson. Over at the center. But he’s on vacation in Hawaii. Be back next week. He can verify what the sight of blood does to me. And so can a dozen other people who’ve seen me hit the floor and barf and anything else you can imagine. No way I could have killed and done those things to those women. I’d have been passed out right beside the body.”

  Brownie stood up. “Dick, I know you’re a reasonably wealthy man. My suggestion is that you hire off-duty deputies to stay with you twenty-four hours a day. Don’t move without them. That way you can have a credible witness as to your every movement. I’ll set it up, if you like.”

  “Do that, Brownie. I’d appreciate it. I’ll pay them well.” He looked at Leo and Lani. “Please find out who is killing these women. Get me off the hook.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Lani said. “But you never finished what you were saying about why broadcasters won’t take a hard-line stance against crime and criminals.”

  “Oh, boycotts, for one thing. They’re a very effective tool in shutting people up. And you’re powerless to prevent them. There is no law against a boycott... not that I know of. And you can set off minority groups without ever knowing—until it’s too late—how you did it.” He sighed, then smiled sadly. “The age of political correctness. What do you call a fat person now? This is no joke. A calorically adventurous person. You think I’m kidding? I guarantee you that my stations are going to be boycotted because I let slip the word ‘nigger.’ Bet on it. And you know what else? I don’t care. I’m coming out from under this cloud of suspicion fighting. For as long as the government lets me, that is. Which won’t be very long. For if they don’t stop me, some goddamn minority group will. Bet on that, too.”

  * * *

  “This is going to get interesting,” Brownie said, standing by the road, leaning against his car.

  “How much of what Dick said in there do you buy?” Lani asked the sheriff.

  “Oh ... fifty/sixty percent of it. Dick was a horse’s butt as a kid, a young man, and a grown man. He just blames his family for all of it. But he came by it naturally. His father was a horse’s butt, too.”

  “So if Dick Hale didn’t kill those women—and I don’t believe he did—then who did?” Leo asked.

  Brownie smiled. “That’s what the county is paying you two to find out.”

  * * *

  Dr. Henson had a good laugh when he found out that Dick was under suspicion for killing and mutilating two women. “No way!” he said firmly. “Dick faints at the sight of blood. A classic and quite severe case of hemophobia.”

  That and all the other evidence that pointed away from Dick, caused the DA to quietly drop the charges.

  But Dick was anything but quiet about his lockup and his experiences while in jail. He moved Stacy back to program director, moved Cathy Young back to part-time, and over loud objections from Carla and Stacy, he began editorializing. He warned Carla that if she tried to interfere, he would fight her and use every dirty trick he could dredge up. “And,” he added, grim-faced. “I can get plenty damn dirty if I have to, Carla.”

  Carla backed down. She knew exactly what he meant, and did not want any personal dirty linen flapping out in public.

  To his credit, Dick openly and on-air admitted to being gang-raped while in jail, and urged others to come forward with their jail or prison experiences. He ended his first editorial thusly: “The good, decent members of the Black community will support me in calling for jail and prison reform. The niggers will boycott the station.”

  “Oh, shit!” Lani said.

  Carla Upton and Stacy “Tally-Ho” Ryan almost had simultaneous heart attacks; while the Ripper was highly amused at the content of the editorial.

  This was even better than Dick in jail, the Ripper thought. Let him destroy himself financially.

  The Federal Communications Commission, whose members (many people think), are no more than notoriously self-righteous “Morality Police” of broadcasters, threatened to pull the license of KSIN. Dick Hale told the FCC to go to hell. All he was doing was exercising his right of free speech.

  “You can’t offend others and call it free speech,” Dick was told.

  That gave Dick what he thought was a fine idea, and he retired to write another editorial. Since all charges against him had been dropped by the DA, Dick no longer employed off-duty deputies and city police officers. Bad mistake on his part.

  Certain minority groups gathered and voted to boycott the KSIN complex. The leader of the boycott was a very pretty young Black woman who really did have the best interests of the Black community at heart. But like so many other groups who wave placards and march around demanding this and that, Tina Gamble had never learned that there are a great many people who don’t like to be forced into doing something... whether they support that particular cause or not. Freedom of choice must be a door that swings both ways.

  The Ripper watched Tina Gamble on TV and smiled.

  Cal Denning was getting quick mental flashes of his lost memory. Flashes that were returning so fast he could not pin any of them down.

  Dick Hale drove down to Los Angeles to meet with his attorney. But his attorney had been called to New York City, and Dick decided to make a day of it in the city ... alone.

  Gil Brown, the Windjammer, called in sick and a part-timer, George “Gunda” Dan, was pulled in to work the Windjammer’s shift.

  Lani Prejean and Leo Franks sat at a desk in the station, surrounded by mounds of material they had gathered on the Ripper, and looked at each other. They were stumped.

  At four o’clock that afternoon, Tina Gamble vanished.

  * * *

  Lani listened to the ringing of the telephone and sighed. It was seven o’clock. She had been looking forward to a quiet evening at home, an early dinner, and bed by ten o’clock. She jerked up the receiver.

  “Yeah?”

  “Lani? Brownie here. I’ve got people crawling all over me down at the office. Get cracking. Tina Gamble’s disappeared, and Dick Hale is nowhere to be found.”

  “Where is his escort?”

  “He stopped using them. I warned him, but he just wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “On my way.”

  * * *

  Tina Gamble was surrounded by faces. There appeared to be hundreds of them, but that was an illusion created by the careful placement of many mirrors of various sizes and extremely bright lights. Tina had been raped repeatedly, and beaten in between the sexual assaults. But she was alive, and determined to get away from this awful place. She forced herself to ignore the faces floating in clear liquid in what appeared to be gallon jars.

  She knew she didn’t have much time, for she had felt the sting of a needle in her arm and already was becoming very light-headed. But she had been left alone for a few minutes, strapped naked to the floor. For her small size, Tina was an incredibly strong woman, physically and mentally. Mentally, she fought the drugs in her system, and physically, she strained against the leather straps that were fastened around her wrists and ankles. She was beginning to hallucinate mildly, wild colors exploding in her brain. She wondered what kind of a drug had been injected into her system?

>   The leather straps around her wrists became slick with her blood, as the straps lacerated her flesh. She slipped one small hand through the strap and quickly unbuckled the other strap. Both hands freed, she worked frantically freeing her ankles. Then she was on her feet, looking wildly around her for a way out. She carefully picked her way through the lights and mirrors and floating faces, until she stood in darkness.

  She was beginning to hallucinate badly now, and realized she had perhaps only minutes before she lost all control of her mind. She could hear footsteps above her. Tina found a small window, covered with the dust and grime of years, and pushed it open, crawling out into the coolness of night. She pushed the window closed just as the drugs began to take effect, colors and wild shapes mingling and bursting in her brain. She began to run. Rocks cut her bare feet, and brush tore at the flesh of her legs. She fell down a dozen times, bruising and cutting her knees. She ignored the pain and ran.

  She did not know where she was. The darkness of the night and the drugs in her system were confusing her. She did not know how long she ran. Minutes, hours, days, years. She could not remember her name. Floating faces appeared before her. They came alive, taunting her. She saw lights ahead of her, but did not know if they were real or imagined.

  She staggered and stumbled along, until she came to a small bluff. She did not see the earth end, and stepped out into nothing. She rolled down the embankment and hit the gravel road, oblivious to the pain in her body. She saw twin lights coming straight at her, but could not move. She heard the sliding of tires on dirt and gravel, and tried to cry out. Animal sounds came from her throat.

  “Jesus Christ!” the voice reached her ears.

  “What the hell is it?” another voice asked. “A deer?”

  “Oh, dear God!” another voice added. “It’s a woman. Somebody call the police.”

  Tina passed out.

  Chapter 11

  “Sexually assaulted in just about any way you would care to name,” the doctor said to Lani, Leo, and Sheriff Brownwood. Half a dozen CHP officers were standing in the hospital corridor, along with half a dozen more La Barca city police officers. “And tortured very skillfully. I think they planned to keep her alive for as long as possible, in order for the torture to last longer.”

  “And give them more pleasure,” Lani ventured a guess with a sour look on her face.

  “Yes. That would be my guess,” the doctor agreed.

  “Is she conscious?” Brownie asked.

  “She’s drifting in and out. She keeps muttering something about drugs and faces.”

  Lani and Leo exchanged glances.

  “I’d think morning before she’s coherent.”

  “I’m going home,” Brownie said. “Why don’t you two do the same?”

  “We’ll stick around for a while,” Leo said.

  They took chairs in the hall, after finding a coffee machine that dispensed coffee whose flavor was remarkably like what camel spit must taste like. Both the cops took one sip and sat the cups down on the floor and tried to forget them.

  “You remember those musical notes on the wall of the boy’s room back in New York?” Lani said.

  “Yeah. I’d forgotten all about that. You figure it out?”

  “No. But a friend of mine did. It’s ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb.’ ”

  “Say what? ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’?”

  “Weird, huh?”

  “What else would it be in dealing with the Ripper?”

  Tina’s doctor passed by the cops. He slowed down and said, “Now she’s muttering about mirrors and lights.” He walked on, then stopped and turned around. “You mentioned something about having dogs out backtracking Miss Gamble’s scent.”

  “That’s right,” Leo said. “Did you hear something?”

  “No. But I think you can forget about that.” He pointed toward the door, which looked like it was about a half a mile away down the polished hallway. “It’s pouring rain and expected to last for a couple of days.”

  Leo and Lani looked at one another. “Shit!” they said together.

  * * *

  They were at the hospital at seven the next morning. A nurse built much like a Mack truck blocked the door to Tina’s room. “You can’t go in there. She’s being bathed, and then she’ll be examined by Dr. Kander, and then she’ll have breakfast. Come back in an hour.”

  “Is the hospital cafeteria open?” Lani asked.

  “Only if you have a death wish,” the nurse said without cracking a smile.

  “It couldn’t possibly be any worse than the coffee we got out of the machine last night.” Leo said.

  “You wanna bet? Try the cafe down on the corner.”

  The county deputies, rather than brave the downpour again, elected to have coffee, juice, and toast in the hospital cafeteria. “It’s kinda hard to screw up toast,” Leo said.

  “What was that you said about not screwing up toast?” Lani said, scraping the burn off the toast.

  “I’m wrong occasionally.”

  Back upstairs, the same nurse looked at them and said, “You ate in the cafeteria, didn’t you?”

  “Only toast,” Lani told her.

  “Was it burned?”

  “Yeah,” Leo said, a disgusted look on his face.

  The stocky nurse suddenly laughed and held out a small paper sack. “I swiped a couple of sweet rolls from the nurses’s lounge. Enjoy.”

  They got in to see Tina a few minutes later. She was in some pain, but willing to talk. Her feet were heavily bandaged, and thorns and branches had torn her legs from ankles to upper thigh. Her hands were bandaged, a result of many falls.

  “Before you say it,” Tina managed a small smile. “I know I’m lucky to be alive.”

  “What can you tell us about the Ripper?” Tina asked. “The place where you were held, and how the man snatched you?”

  “I have no idea how I came to be ... wherever it was they had me.”

  “They?” Leo asked. “More than one person?”

  “A man and a woman.”

  There goes Jack and Jim right out the window, both cops thought.

  “What do you mean, you have no idea how you got there?”

  “Just that,” Tina said. “I remember being outside the KSIN buildings. I remember telling Marge— Marge Stillman—I was going to get us some coffee. I went to my car, got in, started the engine, and turned on the radio. I remember driving away. I remember pulling onto the parking lot of the Quick-Pack store. The next thing I remember was being raped and beaten. I know it sounds crazy. It is crazy! But it’s the truth.”

  “We believe you,” Lani said. “And we’re having a guard posted outside your door, twenty-four hours a day. What can you tell us about the man and woman.”

  “Both of them slender, average height. The man was quite strong, and the woman was very shapely. I never got a look at their faces because they, they ... ” She shuddered and swallowed hard. “They were wearing faces.”

  “Faces?” Leo asked, his stomach doing a slow rollover. He looked at the stocky nurse, standing by the bed. Her face was impassive.

  “Human faces,” Tina said. “Real human faces. Like the ones they had floating in those glass containers.” She turned her head to one side and vomited.

  “That’s it!” the nurse said, shooing the cops outside. “Come back in a few hours. Move.”

  The cops knew better than to argue. They left the room and took seats in the corridor.

  “A man and a woman,” Leo said softly. “Who would have figured that?”

  Lani shook her head. “Certainly not me. One of the trackers said he feels Tina probably ran for miles. And in her confused state, some of the time probably in circles. But this rain stopped them cold.”

  “It sure wasn’t Dick Hale. Dick’s built like a bear. So where does this leave us?”

  “With Tina Gamble. She’ll start remembering things. They always do.”

  “ ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’?” Leo asked.
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br />   “I think we may as well forget Jim and Jack Longwood for the time being. They’re running their horror show somewhere else. We’ve got our own feature attraction. Homegrown. Presented in living color.”

  “It’s been a long movie.”

  “Yeah. But I don’t think we’ve even reached the intermission yet.”

  * * *

  Dick apologized for using a racial slur on the air, toned down his editorials, and the boycott of KSIN was called off. For two weeks the Ripper did not strike. Tina was released from the hospital and went back to work. She could remember nothing more about her ordeal. Cal Denning returned to his duties as chief engineer of KSIN. His office/workroom had been cleaned, and everything put away. The tapes where he had slowed down the commercial had been erased. The weather turned hot and dry.

  Lani and Leo found themselves with a long weekend, and Leo had a suggestion.

  “You want to go hiking?”

  Lani looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Leo, you know I am not the outdoors type. My idea of roughing it is the Sheraton with clean, crisp sheets, room service, and a good piano bar.”

  “We start where Tina was found on the highway and work in a circle.”

  “It’s already been done.”

  “Not by us.”

  Lani thought about that for a moment. “When do we leave?”

  “Right now.”

  * * *

  Leo had a Ford four-wheel drive pickup, and it was packed with camping gear and food. Sheriff Brownwood had told them, “I don’t care how long you two stay out there in the boondocks. Just find something. Anything.”