Night Mask

by William W. Johnstone

  “Come on,” the neighbor said.

  “How dare you say that to me!” Agnes hollered.

  “How’s your ass, Agnes?” Lani asked.

  “You can’t say those things about my boy, Beeson!” Mr. Williams screamed.

  “I just did, Williams,” the neighbor said quietly. “And I don’t apologize for it.”

  “Shut up,” Leo warned, pointing at the man. “No matter what you thought of the kid, can the nasty remarks for now.”

  “Your ass is mine, Beeson!” Mr. Williams shouted.

  “I doubt it,” Beeson said, and stepped back into his own house.

  “I’ll kill that no-good rotten son of a bitch!” Mr. Williams said.

  “Just remember that a half-dozen cops heard you say that,” Lani reminded him.

  Someone else heard him say it, too.

  * * *

  Every cop working the case felt that Stacy Ryan was guilty as hell. But no one could prove it, and Stacy Ryan was staying squeaky clean. No one challenged Carla Upton’s will, and Stacy was now legally a rich, young woman.

  Sensing that public opinion was running high against the young people involved in the hideous torture /murders, and the majority of the public would not tolerate them making a martyr of the dickhead, the press played down the killing of Tommy Williams... instead of their usual weeping and sobbing and hanky-stomping. Even Agnes Peters decided not to write about the killing.

  But all that was about to change.

  The teenagers (all minors) who had been freed from jail, met secretly the morning after Tommy Williams was killed and came to the conclusion that someone was stalking them and that their lives were in danger. They called their attorneys, and the lawyers asked for a meeting with the chief of police of La Barca and with Sheriff Brownwood.

  Brownie was the first to speak after hearing the astonishing request. “Get out of my goddamn office!” he angrily told the group of attorneys.

  The chief of police grabbed a fistful of one attorney’s shirt and tie and drew back his right fist, about two seconds away from popping him, when a deputy wisely grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

  “It’s a legitimate request, Sheriff,” a lawyer, said. “The young people are in danger. They’re being stalked.”

  Brownie almost said that he hoped the stalker got every one of them, but he bit that off short of speech. “There is no goddamn way this office is going to provide security for that pack of savages!”

  “Ditto for my office!” the chief of police said.

  “Then you leave us no alternative, but to seek a court order forcing you to do so,” another attorney told the top lawmen of city and county.

  That did it for the chief. He lost his cool and wrapped both big hands around the neck of the attorney and starting choking him and shaking him like a doll. Brownie, the deputy, and the assistant chief of police finally separated the two men, and when the lawyer caught his breath, he predictably yelled, “I’ll sue you!”

  The chief of police balled one hand into a huge fist and knocked the attorney right through Brownie’s office door.

  While that was going on, Williams’s neighbor, Mr. Beeson, an insurance agent, was driving out into the country to see a prospective new client. He was found around four o’clock that afternoon, shot four times in the back of the head with a .357 mag.

  Mr. Williams was immediately picked up for questioning.

  “I was alone, driving around, trying to clear my head,” Williams said. “My son was killed last night, you bastards! This is a very trying time for me and my wife.”

  La Barca homicide detectives tossed the Williams home and found a stainless steel .357 mag.

  “That isn’t mine!” Williams said. “I don’t own a gun.”

  “Test his hands,” the chief said, after meeting with Leo and Lani. “This thing stinks like a setup.”

  Tests proved that Mr. Williams had not fired any type of gun that day.

  “Try to recall who was in the crowd last night,” Lani asked all the cops who had been present at the Williams home. “Somebody heard Williams threaten Beeson.”

  “There must have been several hundred people who eventually gathered around there,” Ted said. “We had to block off the street to traffic, remember? And Williams was shouting when he threatened Beeson.”

  “Okay,” Leo said wearily. “We reconstruct the scene. Try to remember everybody you saw at the Williams home. Don’t leave out anyone just because they’re a cop, an EMT, a doctor, a minister, a respected member of the community, or a friend. Let’s meet back here in the morning.”

  * * *

  “Ten possibilities,” Brenda said. “Two of the kids there used to buddy with some of those kids we arrested. Seven people who have kids arrested were present, and one Patricia Sessions.”

  “That name is familiar,” Ted said.

  “She’s a salesperson out at KSIN TV.”

  “She live close by?”

  “She lives clear across town.”

  Det. Bill Bourne, who had left the La Barca PD to work for the sheriffs department, slowly raised his head. “Wait a minute. Hold it. Why does that name ring a bell with me? Give me a second, folks.” He got up and walked around the room for several minutes. Then he snapped his fingers. “Got it! My wife saw them at the airport in L.A. Last year. Alice had taken a commuter flight down to visit her sister. They were boarding a plane to Mexico. All three of them, together.”

  “All three?” Brenda said. “Who?”

  “Carla Upton, Patricia Sessions, and Stacy Ryan.”

  Chapter 25

  Before they could react, the phone rang. The psychic, Anna Kokalis, had arrived.

  “Show her in,” Lani said.

  Brenda had deliberately not told Ted much about Anna, and she was amused at the expression on his face when the woman walked in. Anna was in her early thirties, very petite, very shapely, and very pretty. Her hair was as black as a raven’s wing, and her skin was smooth and flawless. Her eyes were gray, and slightly Slavic-appearing. She was introduced all around.

  “Nice to see you again, Lani,” Anna said. She had a very soft voice.

  Leo took one look at the expression on Ted’s face and winked at Lani. Ted was smitten—hard.

  “We’ve got a bit of a problem here, Anna,” Brenda said.

  Anna’s smile was sad. “You have more than that, and you know it. You would not have contacted me, if you felt any other way.”

  “I’m the one who convinced the others to bring you in,” Lani said.

  “I know,” the woman replied.

  Lani wisely decided not to pursue that. She really wasn’t sure she wanted to know how Anna knew. “I alone am firmly convinced that something . . . well, beyond the normal is at work here.”

  “The supernatural?” Anna asked.

  “That or something very close to it. Let us walk you through this thing, starting with what Leo and I found out in New York State.”

  Anna sat for twenty minutes, listening to the detectives retrace their steps. She asked no questions until the four cops had finished.

  “You’re convinced the Longwood mansion is evil?”

  “I am,” Lani said. “I can’t speak for Leo.”

  Anna looked at Leo. His only reply was a shrug of his shoulders. She looked first at Brenda, then at Ted.

  “We haven’t been to the mansion,” Brenda said.

  Anna stood up. “I need to visit the ruins of the country home that blew up.”

  “There’s nothing there except rubble,” Brenda told her.

  “Oh, yes, there is,” Anna said mysteriously. “It isn’t visible. But it’s there.”

  * * *

  Sitting inside the rusting hulk of an ancient vehicle he was now calling home, Dick Hale cleaned his shotgun and then carefully brushed his cape. He had chosen the next person to bring to justice.

  The story of the subliminal messages had leaked out, and the DJs at KSIN were understandably edgy, knowing they were
all under suspicion. To a person, they maintained a high visibility when not on the air. It was an unnecessary move on their part, for the police had taken them off the suspect list—all but one of them. And Stacy Ryan was being very careful in everything she did. However, she did smile a lot. Cathy Young had taken over Stacy’s slot on the air and was doing a good job.

  A judge had taken under advisement a motion for the cops to provide around-the-clock protection for those young people arrested in connection with the killing-club murders and released to the custody of their parents. The whole idea was very repugnant to the judge.

  Citizens of La Barca and Hancock County had extra locks put on their doors, many had armed themselves, and nearly everybody had become very cautious when outside their homes. Armed citizens stood guard around the city’s parks and playgrounds, and the police were under orders not to attempt to seize privately owned weapons. That, of course, did not set too well with those who belonged to groups whose main focus in life was to disarm American citizens. But after the second person got his jaw broken by the butt of a rifle (it’s called being butt-stroked), those types wisely decided to keep their mouths shut and stay faraway from those men and women who had armed themselves solely to protect their kids.

  And Agnes Peters’s ass was healing nicely.

  * * *

  “Monumental evil,” Anna Kokalis finally spoke, standing amid the rubble of the blown-apart country home. She turned and walked quickly back to the road, the investigators right behind her.

  “Well?” Lani asked.

  “I ... don’t know,” the psychic admitted. “I’ve never experienced a feeling quite like it. All murderers and rapists and kidnappers and others of that ilk are evil to some degree. But the evil I experienced here is... different. It’s . . . indescribable. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Pure?” Lani prompted.

  Anna looked at her. “Yes,” she said slowly. “That would describe it. Pure evil. But supernatural?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I have tried all my life to not venture into that area. People like myself . . . we have to be careful. So many times we stand so close to the edge. I don’t know how to put it any other way.”

  “Anna,” Brenda said. “You don’t have to do this. You can turn right around and go back home.”

  The woman shook her head. “No. I’ll help. But I want to speak with a priest this evening. I must. It’s important that I do.”

  “I’ll be happy to escort you,” Ted said quickly.

  She smiled at him. “Thank you. I accept your offer.”

  As they walked to the cars, Ted gave Brenda a very dirty look. She was whistling, off-key, music from South Pacific: “Some Enchanting Evening.”

  * * *

  Cecil Harrison sat in the backyard of his parents’ home and stared out at the gathering darkness. His thoughts were darker than the growing night. He missed the weekly meetings of the killing club. He missed the screaming of the tortured. He missed the heady feeling of power, when he raped and sodomized the screaming unwilling victim of perversion . . . male or female; it hadn’t made a bit of difference to Cecil. He missed the smell of blood. The sixteen-year-old grew conscious of someone staring at him from over a security fence. Pat Judson, the turdy next-door neighbor who had started a petition to get Cecil placed in a mental institution, a boys’ home, back in jail, somewhere, anywhere other than this neighborhood.

  “What are you starin’ at, you puke-faced son of a bitch?” Cecil snarled at the man.

  “A rotten, evil punk,” Pat bluntly told the young man.

  Cecil’s father rushed out of the house. “Hey, Judson!” he shouted. “You don’t talk to my boy that way.”

  “I’ll talk to that piece of shit anyway I like, Harrison,” the neighbor stood his ground. “And I’ve got a right to do just that.”

  “Goddamnit, Judson, the boy apologized for killing your stupid dog! Goddamn mutt barked too much anyway.”

  “It’s what he did to my son that gives me the right, Harrison.”

  The father had no comeback for that. Although it had never been conclusively proven that his son forced the little boy next door to have oral sex with him—it was one kid’s word against the other—the father knew in his heart it was true. But how do you not stand up for your kid? “The courts will sort all this out, Judson.”

  “How does that repair the mental scars that my boy will carry for the rest of his life, Harrison?”

  “Give it a rest, Judson,” the father said wearily. “Just get off my boy’s back.”

  “I want that worthless piece of garbage in prison, and I’ll not rest until I see him there,” Judson vowed.

  “Come on in the house, boy,” the father urged.

  “I like it here,” the punk said. “Fuck-face over there don’t bother me none.”

  “Dinner’s ready, honey,” Judson’s wife called from the back door.

  Cecil Harrison’s father looked at his son, shook his head, and walked back into his own house, his back stiff with anger. He stopped for a moment, staring at the Judson home. It had been a very nice dog; didn’t bark any more than other dogs. He sighed. Hell, Pat was a nice guy. He closed the sliding-glass door and shut the world out.

  “And pull the drapes!” Cecil told his father. “I like the night.”

  “Right,” the father said, holding back his own anger. He fought away the urge to pick up a poker from the fireplace and beat his son’s head in with it. He pulled the drapes closed, thinking: where did the wife and I go wrong? Cecil’s older brother and sister turned out great. The last chick in the nest turned out . . . shit sorry, the father concluded. Boy, the grief that you have brought your mother and me. But you don’t care about that, you miserable, selfish, evil, little bastard. He locked the sliding-glass doors. “Get your coat, Helen,” he called to his wife. “Let’s go see a movie.”

  “What about Cecil?” she asked.

  “Fuck Cecil!” the disgusted father said.

  Cecil heard his parents leave the house and drive off. Just as the sound of the car faded, his eyes caught the movement of a dark shape, slipping silently outside the fence. A strange-looking figure, almost comical, the cape billowing out behind him. But the shotgun made the scene very real and menacing. Cecil stared at the funny-looking shape and knew instantly what it represented. Cecil felt fear clutch at him. This time Cecil didn’t have the upper hand. He jumped for the sliding-glass doors. Locked.

  “Shit!” the punk whispered.

  “Justice,” the dark figure behind the fence called.

  “Hey, man!” Cecil called, panic in his voice. “I got rights.”

  Pat Judson heard the commotion and stepped out onto his patio. He saw the man in the cape and mask outside the Harrisons’ fence. He smiled. He could practically feel the panic welling up in Cecil.

  “Hey, man!” Cecil called to his neighbor, standing in the light from his den. “Call the cops, man! That nut’s here with a gun!”

  “There is justice in this world after all,” Pat Judson said, then turned and walked back into his house, closing the doors and pulling the drapes.

  Cecil ran to the edge of the house and tried the gate. Locked. “Goddamnit!” he shouted. He looked up, the man and wife living in the house on the other side were staring out of the kitchen window at him. They were smiling. Cecil had poisoned their cats and dogs, too. “Call the cops, damn you!” he screamed. The man reached up and lowered the kitchen blind.

  Cecil turned and had just a few seconds in which to ask the Lord’s forgiveness for all the hurt and degradation he had caused in his years. He chose not to do that. “Fuck you!” he screamed at the masked and caped man.

  Dick leveled the twelve-gauge shotgun, loaded with three-inch double-ought buckshot, and pulled the trigger. Cecil’s head exploded in a gush of blood and brains and bits of bone.

  “What was that?” Pat Judson’s wife asked.

  “Justice,” her husband replied. “Pass the mashed potatoes, please.�
�

  * * *

  CAPED AVENGER STRIKES AGAIN, the morning headlines silently screamed.

  “Caped avenger,” Leo said. “Good god.”

  “If none of the neighbors saw anything,” Ted said, “how does this reporter know it’s the same person?”

  “They don’t,” Lani said. “But it sells newspapers.”

  “You can bet several of the neighbors saw something,” Brenda said. “I pulled Cecil’s file. He’s poisoned dogs and cats all up and down that block; and that’s just for starters.”

  “We know all about Cecil Harrison,” Leo said. “Just like that punk Tommy Williams, Cecil Harrison was well known to every cop in the city and county.”

  Sheriff Brownwood stuck his head into the room. “The judge just ruled, boys and girls. We have to provide around-the-clock protection for the remainder of those out on bail and/or in the custody of their parents.”

  Lani hurled her coffee cup against the wall. “Goddamnit!” she yelled, summing up the feelings of every cop in the county and every cop in the country who had been following the case.

  * * *

  Leo asked Ted to work with Anna Kokalis and naturally Ted accepted. Since Leo still wasn’t sure exactly what Anna was going to do, if anything, that left him and Lani and Brenda to do some more old-fashioned police work. Like wearing out shoe leather.

  Of the fifty-odd teenagers arrested at the warehouses, about half of them had been released to their parents. Guarding twenty or so people, around-the-clock, was going to put a terrible strain on the manpower of the PD and the sheriff’s department. Brownie laid it on the line to the judge.

  “We just don’t have the people to do it. It’s going to take over sixty officers to do it. We can’t do it and still give law-abiding citizens the protection they’re paying for.”

  “You’ll find a way.”

  Brownie smiled, sort of, at the judge. It was very similar to the smile a mongoose gives a cobra. “Now, Brownie,” the judge said.

  “The public is not going to like this decision of yours, Homer. And if you think I’m going to take the heat for pulling all those officers off the street to guard a bunch of goddamn, sorry-assed, worthless punks, you’d better think again.”