Night Mask

by William W. Johnstone

  “I don’t care. I just want it over.”

  “Wind’s picking up. It’s going to rain.”

  “Wonderful.”

  They responded to a call from an hysterical woman who claimed she was under attack. It was a tree limb banging against the rear of her house.

  Dark clouds whipped in and further blackened the night; sudden rain squalls slicked the roads and obscured vision. Cops all over the city felt their guts tighten. It was just too damn quiet. Leo pulled into a parking lot of a supermarket and parked close to the building, cutting the lights.

  “It’s gonna blow, Leo,” Lani said.

  “Yeah. Any second now.”

  Then the radio went wild, as dispatchers attempted to answer dozens of calls that flooded communications of both the city and county.

  “Betcha a hundred bucks it’s a ruse,” Leo said, still parked by the side of the building.

  “No bet.”

  Cops began calling in that the emergency signals were false. The problem was, so many of them were out in the county. But every call had to be responded to. If only one was real, lives might be in danger.

  “I hate those goddamn Longwood boys,” Leo said, considerable heat behind his words. “I’ve never worked a case that I took so personal.”

  “Are we going to respond to any of those calls?”

  “No. We’re going to sit right here. I got a hunch.”

  “You want to share?”

  “There is nothing to share. I just feel that we’ll do more good by waiting, than by driving all over the county.” He glanced at the rearview mirror. “Car coming up behind us. No lights.”

  Both cops pulled pistols from leather, then breathed a bit easier when they saw it was Ted and Brenda. Brenda lowered her window, and Leo cranked down his. Both cars were dark and blended in with the night. The rain had slowed to a drizzle.

  “You think it’s going to pop downtown, too, hey?” she asked.

  “I do. But don’t ask me why I feel that. I just do. You two got your AR’s out of the trunk?”

  “They’re on the backseat. And my thumb is sore from filling up spare magazines.”

  The sounds of racing engines and loud mufflers reached them. Then gunshots blasted the night.

  “Here we go,” Leo said. The four of them left their cars and grabbed up AR-15’s. They waited in the darkness, crouched beside their vehicles.

  None of them saw the shapes moving silently up behind them.

  Chapter 30

  The racing, roaring cars drew nearer, and the shots louder. It was drive-bys, and the shooters were having fun, blowing out streetlights, shattering windows, and shooting stray dogs and cats and any person they might see. The wild sounds of heavy metal music could be heard over it all.

  “Goddamn punk assholes!” Leo said, and lifted his AR-15 as the lead car came into view. He blew the windshield out and put two .223 rounds into the driver’s head. The car began spinning around and around in the wet street. The drivers of the cars behind the out-of-control vehicle slammed on their brakes and immediately began fishtailing all over the place. The lead car jumped the curb and crashed into a building. The music stopped.

  “That’s something to be thankful for,” Lani muttered. She turned around just in time to see a half-dozen young men and women slipping up behind them, all of them carrying rifles. “Behind us!” she shouted, and started letting the lead fly from her AR-15.

  Once the drivers of the spinning cars got them under control, instead of driving off, seeking safety, young men and women jumped out, wild-eyed and screaming and shooting.

  Lani and Brenda concentrated on those still standing behind them, while Leo and Ted directed their fire at those in the street. It was a bizarre scene in the night. None of the attackers, front or back, seemed to care that they were being chopped down by the police fire, and Leo was going to find out why. He took careful aim and put a .223 round into the knee of a young man. The young man screamed in pain and dropped his rifle. When he tried to crawl to it, Leo put a round into his outstretched arm. The young man passed out from the searing pain.

  Lani had cut her eyes, saw what her partner had done, and did the same to a young woman not fifteen yards from her. Lani had to shoot her three times, once in each leg and then in the arm, before she stopped trying to reach her weapon and lay on the wet parking, moaning and screaming out words that made no sense to any of the cops. By now the wet night was filled with flashing red and blue lights, as other cops sealed off the bloody block and quickly brought the shoot-out to a conclusion. Actually, the cops had little to do with the ending of the brief firefight: those wounded took their own lives. All except for the two that Leo and Lani had wounded.

  At the hospital, Leo and several doctors got into a shouting match in the hall.

  “I don’t give a goddamn for their rights!” Leo yelled, nose to nose with a doctor. “I don’t care if they die tomorrow. Tonight, goddamnit, I’m going to talk to them.”

  “Over my dead body!” the doctor yelled.

  “That can be arranged!” Leo shouted.

  “Are you threatening me, you—you—flatfoot?”

  “Yeah, you quack!”

  “Those young people are seriously wounded,” another doctor stepped in.

  “Yeah, I know!” Leo yelled. “Me and my partner seriously wounded them.”

  “Well, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” another doctor said.

  “Who the hell asked for your opinion?” Leo shouted. “Goddamn liberal son of a bitch!”

  “I’ve got a right to my opinion, you trigger-happy gun freak!” the doctor responded.

  Lani got between Leo and the doctors, just as Leo was balling his fists, and managed, with much pushing and shoving, to back Leo up a few yards and get him calmed down. “It’s all moot now, Leo,” she said. “The punks have been taken into surgery. They’re going to be out for hours.”

  The doctor with a bias against guns gave Leo the bird, and Leo gave him two in return.

  “Go pay your dues to the NRA, Wyatt,” the doctor said.

  It took Lani, Ted, and Brenda to keep Leo from jacking the doctor’s jaw. Big Gene Clark showed up, and between the four of them they managed to push and pull Leo down the corridor and outside the lobby of the hospital. For a man his size, Leo was as strong as a young bull.

  Sheriff Brownwood pulled up in a unit and stared in disbelief as Big Gene Clark stood with his massive arms wrapped around Leo’s chest. Leo’s feet were completely off the sidewalk. A young doctor was standing just inside the glass doors to the lobby, shooting Leo the bird, and Leo was returning the gesture twofold. Brownie wanted very badly to ask what in the hell was going on. Then he thought better of it and drove off, knowing that cops sometimes got rid of stress in very peculiar ways.

  * * *

  Agnes Peters sat in her den, ready for the return of Dick Hale. She was wearing a flak jacket she’d bought at an Army/Navy surplus store and a football helmet. She was dressed in camouflage BDUs and combat boots. To hell with the newspaper, her column, and the book she was working on. This was personal now. And somehow she knew that Dick felt the same way. Agnes had bought a twelve-gauge shotgun and several boxes of double-ought buckshot. Her neighbors, upon seeing her tote the gun in, had immediately bought all the three-quarter-inch plywood they could and boarded up windows. All of the neighbors felt that Agnes had gone completely around the bend.

  Agnes sat in the darkened den, the shotgun across her knees, and muttered, “Come on, you nutty bastard. I’m ready this time.”

  * * *

  Jack and Jim Longwood sat mesmerized by the footage of the riots shown on TV. They loved every second of it. Everything was working out exactly as they had planned.

  * * *

  KSIN radio was off the air. Someone had tossed a bomb into the studios and another bomb into the transmitter building. Blew everything all to hell. The plan was working out beautifully. It was just delightful.

  * * *

>   Frank Miller and Connie Lange had gotten tickled at Lani’s recounting of the events that had taken place in the lobby of the hospital, and were cracking up with laughter. Leo had calmed down and was taking the good-natured ribbing well. The riot, for the most part, was over. Cops and national guardsmen were now mopping up. The hospitals and the jails were equally full. All the escaped young members of the killing club had been accounted for. All but two were dead, and those two were under heavy police guard.

  Across town, Dick Hale slipped up to the rear of Agnes’s house. Dick was retreating further and further into total madness with each day. He no longer even thought of the members of the killing club. His sole purpose in life was to rid the world of Agnes Peters. And it would have come as a great surprise to Agnes to learn that a great many people hoped Dick would succeed.

  Dick no longer wore his Caped Avenger costume. He couldn’t remember what he had done with it. No matter. He still had his shotgun and plenty of shells for it. Dick’s mind was more animal than human now, and those new senses were warning him that this could be a trap. Something was wrong with the scene that lay before his eyes. It was just . . . too neat. Too easy.

  Dick paused, enjoying the feel of the light drizzle on his flesh. Dick Hale was stark naked except for the bandolier of shotgun shells across his chest. A naturally dark-complexioned man, Dick tanned easily and blended in rather well with the night.

  Then Dick realized that he had an erection. He’d been thinking about Agnes and had gotten hard. The more he thought about making it with Agnes—and then shooting her—the better he liked it. She really wasn’t a bad-looking woman. He could put a bag over her head, he supposed. Or a flag, and fuck her for Old Glory. It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.

  Then Dick realized he was chuckling. Standing there in the rain, a shotgun in one hand and his cock in the other. Thinking about pronging Agnes Peters.

  Dick slipped up to the house and chanced a peek into the kitchen. Nobody there. He padded silently over the brick patio and peeped into the den through a crack in the drapes. There she was! What was that getup she had on? Looked stupid. But that shotgun was real enough. No matter. Once Agnes got a look at his boner, she’d fall over on her back and spread her legs. Dick had always fancied himself as a great lover.

  He couldn’t believe his luck when he tried the back door and it opened. Careless of her. What Dick didn’t know was that the door had been left unlocked deliberately. But what Agnes didn’t know was that Dick could move so silently. Their confrontation was to be a great shock to both of them.

  Dick leaned his shotgun against a wall and took a one-handed grip on his erect pecker. Two hands would have hidden it with four fingers to spare. And part of a thumb. Dick took a deep breath and leaped under the archway to the den.

  “Yahoo!” he hollered. He waved his pecker at Agnes. The head of it.

  “Great god!” Agnes screamed. Scared her so bad she pulled the trigger of the shotgun and blew a hole in the sliding-glass door. The heavy recoil turned her chair over. Dick lost his erection and ran to his own shotgun. Agnes was crawling to her knees and grabbed up the twelve gauge. Guessing where Dick might be in her house, she leveled the muzzle and boomed off a round. The buckshot tore through the paneling and punched out the other side, narrowly missing Dick’s head.

  “You bitch!” he yelled, and stuck his shotgun around the corner, without exposing himself, so to speak, and pulled the trigger. Killed the TV.

  Agnes fired off another round, and this time she scored. Part of the paneling blew into Dick’s right buttocks. He bellowed like a bull and jumped right into the fray, firing the shotgun as fast as he could pump and pull.

  Agnes wisely took cover, flattening out on the carpet behind a sofa. When she heard the firing pin strike nothing, she jumped up just in time to see Dick’s big ass. She fired. Dick screamed like a panther and went out the back door as fast as he could, which was a pretty respectable rate of speed for a man his age. With some buckshot in his ass.

  Agnes jumped up and ran to the back door just in time to see Dick jump over the fence. She fired again and again Dick squalled. All the neighbors had taken cover at the sound of the first shot.

  “You bitch!” Dick shouted.

  “Come back and fight like a man, you perverted son of a bitch!” Agnes shrieked. “You goddamn coward!”

  That stopped Dick cold. His ass felt like it was on fire, but no one called him a coward. He turned around and started running toward the fence. He cleared it and was snorting and grunting like a cape buffalo, running directly at Agnes.

  She jerked the shotgun to her shoulder and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She was out of shells. Dick impacted with Agnes at a dead run, and both of them were knocked through the stationary side of the sliding-glass door. A heavy brass drape rod came down and conked Dick on the head, knocking him out cold. Agnes’s head had impacted against the heavy glass of the door, and she was unconscious before she hit the floor, also on her head.

  And that was the way the cops found them.

  * * *

  “You gotta see this, Leo” he was informed by radio. “I mean, you gotta see this!”

  They were only a few blocks away and rolled up to Agnes’s home within a minute, Brenda and Ted right behind them. Sheriff Brownwood came behind the CBI team.

  Brownie stood over the unconscious pair and shook his head. “I have seen some sights over the years, but this takes the prize.” He smiled. “Of course, we have to have pictures.”

  Six cameras were whipped out, and the flashes captured the bizarre scene for all time. Agnes had landed on her back, her arms around Dick’s bare back. Agnes’s legs were spread, Dick’s lower torso perfectly placed.

  “One thing puzzles me about this,” Brownie said.

  “Just one thing?” Lani questioned.

  Brownie looked at her. “Why was Agnes wearing a football helmet?”

  “Where are Dick’s clothes?” Bill Bourne questioned.

  “I like those combat boots she’s wearing,” Brenda said.

  “I haven’t seen a flak jacket like that one since Nam,” Leo said.

  The EMTs arrived and rolled Dick off of Agnes and checked them both. “Dick’s got a concussion, and he’s shot in the ass. But other than that, their signs are good. This helmet probably prevented Agnes from sustaining a fractured skull. But the impact was enough to knock her out. She’s going to be badly bruised, but she’ll be all right.”

  “Get Dick in restraints before he wakes up,” Brownie said. “I strongly advise you do that.”

  Agnes opened her eyes and groaned. She blinked a couple of times and focused on the group standing around her. “It figures,” she said, predictably Agnes. “There never is a goddamn cop around when you really need one.”

  Chapter 31

  The doctors removed the bits of paneling and the buckshot from Dick’s ass, and then placed him in the nut ward of the hospital. Dick would never stand trial for anything. He was hopelessly lost forever in the dark, twisted world of madness. Agnes was kept in the hospital for twenty-four hours, for observation. Leo and Lani could get nothing out of the wounded young man and young woman. They hissed and spat at the cops until the doctors ordered the cops out. This time Leo did not argue. He was too pissed-off for that. Wisely, the young doctor stayed out of Leo’s way.

  KSIN radio was going to be off the air for several more days, maybe longer than that. But the city had calmed down, and the streets were more or less safe for law-abiding citizens. But people were being advised to conduct their business during daylight hours.

  Anna got permission to visit the young man and young woman in the hospital, and emerged from their rooms badly shaken. “They are possessed,” she said to Leo and Lani.

  “Nonsense!” said the young doctor who had exchanged birds with Leo. “Only a fool believes in that rubbish.”

  “You, sir,” Anna replied, “are the fool!”

  Leo certainly agreed with that ass
essment. He nodded his head, but kept his mouth shut. The doctor glared at him, but kept any comments to himself. Lani was tensed, ready to jump between the streetwise cop and the young doctor. But Leo just turned his back to the man and walked out of the building. He had more to worry about than one out-of-touch-with-reality, smart-assed doctor.

  Outside, in the parking lot, Lani asked, “Now what?”

  “We put an end to the Longwood boys,” Leo said.

  “Just like that, hey?” Brenda said with a smile.

  “I got an idea.”

  “You want to share with us?” Connie asked.

  “Sure. Maybe we can make them come to us.”

  “Oh?” Lani said. “Pray tell us your plan.”

  “Well . . . I haven’t got that worked out yet.”

  “Does it have to be legal?” Brenda asked.

  “Hell, no,” Leo told her.

  “Well,” she smiled the words. “In that case, let’s kick it around.”

  “Please excuse us,” Connie said quickly, and Frank nodded his head in agreement. Connie added, “We’ve got an awful lot of paperwork to do.”

  “Right,” Frank said. “We’re literally overwhelmed with paperwork. So, we’ll see you guys later.”

  With the Bureau momentarily out of it, Lani faced the woman from the CBI. “Do you have a plan?”

  Brenda shook her head. “I don’t even have a clue. But what I do have is a gut feeling that when we end this thing, it’s not going to be done legally.”

  Slowly, almost reluctantly, Ted nodded his head. “I concur. Whatever it takes to bring this horrible chain of events to a close, let’s do it.”

  “Where do we start?” Lani asked, looking at her partner.

  Leo arched one eyebrow, and that gesture always irritated Lani. She’d been trying for years to copy it, and hadn’t been able to master it yet. “I’m not going to sit around and wait for the Ripper to strike again. I want those young people out of the hospital, and shot up with pentothal or whatever kind of drug the experts use to deepen hypnosis.”

  Ted whistled softly. “Man, those doctors won’t allow that. Not as long as those punks are under their care.”