Night Mask

by William W. Johnstone

  Dick gave her the finger and vanished, his cape flowing behind him.

  The first officer on the scene arrived about thirty seconds after the echoes of the shooting had died away. Sgt. Gene Clark.

  “You!” Agnes hollered.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Gene muttered. “Not again! Lady, you are a goddamn menace with that hogleg, you know that?”

  “He went that way, you big ape!” Agnes squalled, pointing. “Go catch him!”

  “Look at my house!” the homeowner yelled, stumbling out of the rubble.

  “What about my car?” the irate motorist screamed from up the block.

  “To hell with your house and your car!” Agnes bellowed, reloading and snapping the cylinder closed with a menacing click. Gene ducked behind his unit, knowing full well that if Agnes had the right kind of ammo, that slug could punch right through his car.

  Gene grabbed his mike and called in, radioing a Code 108, which means officer needs assistance—LIFE IN DANGER!

  Several of the cops guarding the punks heard the call and responded, figuring (rightly) that the life of one of their own was worth a hell of a lot more than all the punks combined.

  Dick was close to Billy Fetterson’s house when the unit out front suddenly roared away. Smiling and slobbering and grunting like the madman he was, he ran across the street and jumped up onto the porch just as Billy’s mother was walking out. Becky Fetterson took one look at Dick and passed out. Billy Fetterson also caught a glimpse of the Caped Avenger and ran hollering out the back door. Dick figured his luck was about shot for that night, and disappeared into the darkness.

  Meanwhile, the Ripper had chosen another victim.

  * * *

  Lani picked up the in-office line. “Stacy Ryan just called,” Brownie said. “Jennifer Lomax was supposed to be in this morning to cut some commercials. She didn’t show, and there is no answer at her home. You people check it out. I got a cop’s bad feeling about this.”

  Jennifer Lomax, known as Jenny Caesar (just like the salad, good to eat), had signed off the air at 2:00 a.m., as usual, and had not been seen since. Leo jimmied the lock on her door and found that her bed had not been slept in. She was not at home. There were no signs of a struggle. Lani was putting out an APB on her vehicle. Anna had said that when the vehicle was found, don’t touch it until she did. Anna picked up a scarf of Jenny’s and put it in her pocket. The scarf was very lightly scented with Jenny’s favorite cologne.

  “Pick up something for the dogs, too,” Ted said.

  Everybody thought the worst. But the Ripper’s luck was slipping by like grains of sand in an hourglass. The Ripper had had a long run; had left a trail of bodies from one coast to the other. It was nearing the end.

  * * *

  “Goddamn you!” Jim Longwood said. “You stupid oaf! How could you let her escape?”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” the simpering voice replied. “You’re just as much to blame as I am. Besides, there is nothing to worry your pretty head about. She’s probably dead by now.”

  “Yes. Hopefully. Well, we’re in the clear, and the house is rigged. The young people should be on the move in a few hours. Look, I’ve got to go to work.”

  “I’ll be listening, sweets.”

  * * *

  Jennifer Lomax had pulled herself along the last few yards by sheer willpower. Her strength was almost gone. She knew she was badly hurt, probably dying, but was determined not to slip into that long sleep until she told somebody, anybody, what she had learned during the long, hideously perverted and painful hours of her captivity. But she didn’t know how much longer she could hold out. Then she saw the lights of the lonely mom-and-pop store by the side of the road. She almost made it. She came to within a few hundred yards of the store, before the blackness took her. Jenny cried out once, then slipped into unconsciousness.

  An All Points Bulletin had been issued for Jenny, and the cops were mounting a massive hunt for her, aided by dozens of civilians who had come forward. But it was a dog that some uncaring and worthless turd had abandoned who found Jennifer Lomax.

  The dog’s incessant barking finally drew the attention of the elderly couple who owned and operated the small convenience store. At his wife’s urging, the man walked over to see why the dog was making such a fuss.

  He stood for a moment, gazing in horror at the sight. Then he turned and shuffled back to the store as fast as his old legs would permit, and called the police. His wife gathered up water and clean cloths and went to see what aid she could give to the tortured woman. The dog, a mixed breed, refused to leave Jenny’s side.

  * * *

  “I don’t see how she’s lived this long,” the EMT said. “She’s lost so much blood.”

  The four investigators and the psychic, Anna Kokalis, looked at the tortured body with the strange markings cut deep into the flesh.

  “Satanic markings?” Lani asked.

  “Probably,” Anna replied. “But they are nothing like anything I’m familiar with.”

  “Brown!” Jenny suddenly gasped. She opened pain-filled eyes. “Brown!”

  Lani knelt down beside her. “Brown what, Jenny? Talk to me, Jenny.”

  “Brown and woman,” Jenny pushed out the words. “Evil. The devil.”

  “A brown woman?” Ted mused aloud.

  “Gil Brown,” Leo said. “The Windjammer.”

  “Yes!” Jenny said, then closed her eyes and allowed death to relieve her of the pain.

  “Son of a bitch!” Brenda said. “He was right under our noses all the time.”

  * * *

  “My god!” the Windjammer said, when the cops showed up at the station and confronted Gil Brown with a warrant for his arrest. “I’m not the Ripper. My sister and I had friends over last evening. Frenchy and Cal Denning were there.”

  “That’s right, Leo,” the engineer said. “The party started at seven and broke up around midnight. Jenny was probably just calling out for Gil. They used to have quite a thing going.”

  Lani stared at the Windjammer. The man was the right age, the right size, somewhat effeminate in his manner. But after talking with a dozen people, Gil Brown had an unshakable alibi. Gil and his sister, who worked at home as a computer programmer, lived in a small but very comfortable and secluded home. A judge signed the search warrant allowing the cops to enter and search the apartment. They found nothing that would implicate Gil or his sister, who was confined to a wheelchair.

  Leo and team were back to square one.

  “It’s them,” Anna insisted hotly. “That home was filled with evil. Malevolence oozed out of every pore of that woman.”

  “We can’t take that to court, Anna,” Brenda said.

  “Dogs are backtracking her movements,” Leo said. He had taken the abandoned dog to a vet to have him checked out and brought up to date on shots. Leo was going to take the dog home for his kids. He looked at the team. They had all changed into jeans and hiking boots. “Let’s go.”

  About an hour of daylight remained when the dogs stopped at a country home.

  “Find out who owns this property,” Leo said. “And get the explosives team out here to check it. Remember what happened last time.”

  It was dark when the explosives experts finished. “It’s wired to blow, Leo. It’s been booby-trapped all over the place. By someone who knows what they’re doing. Front and back doors. Windows. The outbuildings. Everything is wired to blow. I—”

  “Get out here!” one of the explosives team shouted from the rear of the home. “Back up. Get out of here. Move, goddamnit, move!” He was running as he shouted.

  The cops just had time to hit the ground when the house exploded. Just like the other country home, massive amounts of explosives went up, hurling lethal chunks of brick and timber all over the place. The concussion picked up the man who had shouted the warning and tossed him about ten feet. He landed heavily, but unhurt except for having the wind knocked out of him.

  Leo picked himself up and brushed off
his clothing. “Seal the place off and post guards here,” he said wearily. “We’ll start picking through the rubble at first light. No sense in trying to do anything tonight. There might be more unpleasant surprises waiting for us.” He looked at Lani. “You got a blanket around Gil and his sister?”

  “Zipped up tight,” she said.

  “Let’s go home and get some rest.”

  Chapter 28

  Brenda had been staying with Lani, and she shook the county detective out of a very deep sleep just before dawn. “Get up, Lani. Leo just called. A half a dozen of those punk kids have hit the road.”

  As the women dressed and took a couple of brush swipes at their hair, Brenda shared what she knew from Leo’s call. “The kids stole some guns from their parents and took off.”

  “Damnit, there weren’t supposed to be any guns in those homes! That was the judge’s orders.”

  “The parents lied. What else is new?”

  Leo took one look at Lani’s hair and said, “You girls forget your brooms?”

  Lani told him what he could do with that comment and how to insert it.

  Ted wisely and tactfully said nothing about Brenda’s hair or lack of makeup.

  The radio squawked and the cops froze as they listened. The half-dozen hard-core members of the killing club had gone on a rampage. They hadn’t just run off from home. They had killed their parents first, bludgeoning them to death before taking off. The homes looked like slaughterhouses at closing time.

  Gene Clark and two other city patrolmen had one other kid in custody at the hospital. “You have to see this to believe it,” Gene told Leo at the hospital. This kid’s a real basket case. It took all three of us to subdue him.”

  The young man, age fifteen, was in a straitjacket, screaming and bouncing off the walls. “I must obey!” he screamed. “I have to obey. They’re calling me!”

  “Posthypnotic suggestions?” Lani asked a doctor.

  “That’s what the head of our psychiatric department thinks.”

  “He is possessed,” Anna Kokalis said.

  “That’s what a priest said,” the doctor acknowledged.

  “Can’t you shoot him with something and calm him down?” Leo asked.

  “He’s got enough tranquilizer in him now to fell a horse,” the doctor said. “It doesn’t seem to have any effect.”

  “You can’t tranquilize the devil,” Anna said. “He’s under the spell of demonic possession.”

  The doctor sighed.

  “Let’s check out the homes,” Leo suggested.

  Carnage. At the Fetterson home, Billy Fetterson had used an axe on his parents, chopping them to death while they slept. Even the ceiling was blood-splattered.

  “Does this remind you of something?” Lani asked her partner.

  “Yeah. The Longwood mansion.”

  “Do you think the boys planned this?”

  Leo shrugged. “I’ve given up trying to predict what those loonies are up to, or what they’ll do next. Let Homicide handle this. Let’s get out to the house and start digging through the rubble.”

  A man and woman were waiting for them at their cars. Both young. Both very earnest-looking. The man wore a conservative suit, the woman wore a conservative pants-suit.

  “You want to guess who they are?” Brenda whispered to Lani, then giggled.

  “FBI. Right out of the academy. Sent in to assist us poor ol’ ignorant country cops.”

  “Bingo!”

  Both the man and woman held up their IDs. “Agents Miller and Lange,” the man said. “We’ve been sent in here to assist you.”

  “You have first names?” Leo asked.

  “I’m Connie and he’s Frank,” Agent Lange said, without cracking a smile.

  “I would certainly hope so,” Brenda said.

  “That reminds me of a joke about two old maids,” Lani said. “They were going to be frank with each other. One said, ‘Oh, good. You be Frank tonight and I’ll be Frank tomorrow night.’ ”

  The two Bureau people exchanged disapproving looks. Agent Lange said, “How you can joke at a time like this?”

  “Oh, you’ll get the knack of it,” Leo assured her. “Or you’ll come unglued. How long have you two been out of the academy?”

  Frank cleared his throat. “Not long.”

  “First assignment out on your own, hey?”

  “Ah . . . yes. The first one of any great importance.”

  “Wonderful. Come on. I want you both to see something, and then we’ll drive out to the house.”

  Leo walked them through the Fetterson house and watched as the two young agents fought to maintain their stoic Bureau composure. At the morgue, Leo flipped back the sheet covering Jenny Lomax. The young agents didn’t lose their breakfasts, because neither of them had as yet eaten. But they did turn a tad pale.

  “Now let’s go visit the arches and get some food to go,” Brenda suggested, a wicked look in her eyes. “We can eat on the way out to the house.”

  Outside the morgue, Frank and Connie paused and held up their hands. “Okay,” Frank said. “You’ve made your point. You’re the seasoned cops, we’re the new kids on the block. Is this the last object lesson for the day?”

  “Yep,” Leo said. “Now let’s go get something to eat. I’m hungry.”

  Lani rode with the Bureau people and wolfed down two Egg McMuffins and two cartons of milk before opening her cup of coffee. Frank and Connie declined breakfast. Lani lit up a Parliament.

  “We don’t smoke,” Connie said quickly.

  “I do,” Lani said, puffing away. “Have you two been briefed on this case?”

  “Very perfunctorily,” Frank said.

  “Good word,” Lani muttered. “I’ll have to spring that on Leo.”

  It took the rest of the trip for Lani to bring the two young agents up-to-date. They both were sober, quiet, and reflective as they pulled into the drive of the rubbled house. They got even more sober and reflective at Leo’s words.

  “Forensic just found some faces in what used to be the basement.”

  “Faces?” Connie asked. She was looking at the half-eaten sweet roll in Leo’s hand.

  “Yeah,” Leo said, taking a big bite of the jelly roll. Part of it oozed out onto his fingers. He licked it off while offering the rest of the roll to Lani. She ate it. “More over there in the sack on the fender. Better get one while they last. Faces. Yeah. But we can’t identify this one. They probably brought this one with them when they came West. They save faces. Put them in some sort of clear preservative in a big jar. They like faces.”

  “They were briefed only perfunctorily,” Lani said, walking up eating a jelly roll. “I unperfunctorized them on the way out.”

  Frank’s expression turned very grave at that, while Connie had to duck her head to hide a quick grin. She had picked up immediately that these highly experienced, seasoned, and very capable cops were going to rib them for a time; she was ready for it. Frank, on the other hand, did not take kidding well. They had gone through the academy together and while she liked the serious young man, he didn’t have much of a sense of humor.

  Leo stuffed another jelly roll into his mouth and spoke around it. “This is it,” he said, holding up a clear evidence bag which contained what appeared to be a female human face, complete with long blond hair, darkened now by the exposure to air.

  That did it. Frank trotted off to the bushes.

  Brenda took the bag. “I’ll get this back to the lab and have a description drawn up and sent out.”

  “No, you stay with us,” Leo said. “Give it to a uniform. Jimmy over there looks like he could use a break. He’s been down in that basement for over two hours, stepping over and on rotting arms and legs and faceless heads.”

  Connie headed for the bushes at that.

  “Did I say something to offend her?” Leo questioned.

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for the two young agents to get their sea legs, so to speak, and soon they were
both changed into jeans and work shirts from out of their luggage, and right in the middle of the basement of horrors. When Leo called a halt for lunch—sand—wiches and soft drinks sent out from town—they both had a healthy appetite and Frank was loosening up.

  “I needed you guys,” he admitted, after wiping a bit of mustard from his chin. “I’ve been strutting around like a peacock ever since I graduated.”

  “And so have I,” Connie admitted. “To a lesser degree.” She smiled at Frank and they both laughed.

  “So how much do you guys have that you don’t want to tell us about, because it was obtained illegally?” Frank asked.

  Leo chuckled. Frank was stiff as a board, but sharp as a tack. “Quite a bit of the earlier stuff.” He told the agents about the illegally obtained material.

  Surprisingly, Frank just shrugged. “Sometimes I guess you have to do that. I wouldn’t be adverse to doing it in a case like this.”

  “Frank!” Connie said, feigning great shock at such a revelation. “You?”

  Frank took a swig of Coke. “This nation is in deep, deep trouble. So many of the people seem to have no morals, no honor, no values. We’re awash in drugs and sexual perversion. I would have never dared breathed this aloud back at the Academy, but it’s my belief that if we’re ever to win the war against crime, we’ve got to get down to the level of behavior of the criminals.”

  “Then we’d be no better than those we’re fighting,” Ted said.

  That conversation got nipped as the investigators watched Bill Bourne drive up and get out.

  “He’s got something for us,” Lani said. “And he’s not happy about it.”

  “You look like a thundercloud, Bill,” Leo said. “What’s the matter?”

  “All the test results finally came back about an hour ago. Fingerprints, blood samples, hair samples, DNA. Stacy Ryan had absolutely nothing to do with any of the killings we’ve investigated.”