Bone Music

by Rice, Christopher

  Luke hasn’t moved, but his heaving chest makes it clear he’s still breathing. She’s about to wrap one arm around his waist before she realizes it’s the bruised and bleeding one, the one that should be broken, if not torn from her body entirely, and isn’t. She goes to wrap her good arm around his waist and remembers that if she pulls too hard she might detach his torso from his hips.

  “Thank you, sir,” she tells the driver.

  The driver just stares after her. Still bent over in a crouch. “Thank you,” she says. “I owe you my life. Honey, we should go. We’ll be late to get the baby.”

  “What fucking baby?” Luke whispers.

  “Now, sweetheart,” she hisses.

  He takes a step, then another and another. He lags behind, his expression making him look like he’s the one who just stopped a speeding truck with one arm. He’s swallowing over and over again, sucking in half breaths through his nostrils, staring dead ahead as if he’s being marched toward the gallows. But they’re making decent enough time. Within a minute or two, they round the corner, putting the still stunned driver out of sight.

  “You OK?” she asks.

  “I’m fine,” he croaks; then he stumbles a few steps to his right, grabs a public trash can by the rim, and empties the contents of his stomach into it.

  III

  26

  The woman he might kill next is doing a lousy job of stretching her quads. She’s bracing herself against the cargo door of her RAV4 with one hand, but her form’s still off. And when she pulls back on the ankle of her bent left leg with her other hand, her hips wobble and she bites her lower lip.

  So she’s an inexperienced jogger. That’s good. She’s also doing her stretches out here in the parking lot on Portola Parkway and not closer to the trailhead, where there’s more space, which says she doesn’t have much experience with Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, either. Another very good sign. When she does take to the trail, she’ll be self-conscious and insecure, preoccupied with how she looks to the other hikers and bicyclists and, more important, not very aware of her woodsy surroundings.

  He’s made it a point to get to the park an hour before dusk. If everything goes well, he’ll need the cover of night to work under. But he figured the late hour would also introduce him to a woman so eager to get a run in before the park closes she’ll be too distracted to notice she’s being stalked. Self-conscious and insecure are even better than rushed, however, and it’s a great sign, he thinks, that he’s stumbled across such a promising target within minutes of his arrival.

  Changing his method of abduction with each new patient hasn’t been easy, but it’s been an essential component of his success so far. Otherwise, the cops might have linked the first and second disappearances before he managed to complete his work. Before the masks were placed. And the masks are key. They’re the only reason he does this. No matter what becomes of him, no matter who eventually steps up and tries to tell his story, it’s all about the masks. If they get that part wrong, then it means even his biographers haven’t taken the time to get to know him, and that means no one ever will.

  This is the first time he’s tried to claim a patient out in the wild—or a contained and lightly trafficked version of the wild. If tonight goes well, it will be as a result of all the extra steps he added to his process: an interim hiding space for the patient, a judicious use of the thick brush that lines the lower section of the Borrego Canyon Trail, a ball gag to quiet her in those brief moments before the sedatives take effect, or in the event that they somehow manage to wear off before he gets her in his trunk. So, yes, insecure and nervous are great signs in a potential new patient, but with this particular patient, the key factor is really weight. A few extra pounds means no core strength to fight him off. Too many and he won’t be able to drag her off the trail undetected in whatever time fate gives him to do the job.

  He studies the woman’s meaty thighs, notes the slight roll poking over the waistband of her bike shorts. Soft and thick. Not bulky and bottom heavy. Perfect.

  He imagines her enjoying fruity tropical drinks with a group of her girlfriends at some noxious chain restaurant, the kind that serves desserts the size of babies.

  He imagines her swirling her straw as she listens to one of her prettier, slimmer friends go on and on about the trendy new fitness class she’s taking and how it’s supposedly changing her life.

  Imagines her pacing her apartment later that night, listening to Taylor Swift but hearing only her pretty friend’s boasts, knowing she’ll never have the confidence to walk into a gym or some new class full of glistening little Southern California fitness nuts, but realizing that she has to do something, has to make some attempt to lose the weight that’s probably dogged her since her teens, even if it’s the last-minute, hastily planned run she’s preparing for now, in a pair of New Balance shoes that aren’t right for this or any trail.

  In about ten years, if somehow she’d managed to marry well, she could become the type of woman who ends up in his office, expecting his scalpel to add ten more honeymoons to her failing marriage. There’s no ring on her finger now, and come sunset, if he does his job right, she’ll never marry. But when he’s finally done with her, her life will have meant something. Or her face will have meant something, at least, once he’s separated it from her pettiness, from her weakness.

  First she has to fail his test.

  Slowly, he starts to approach her, forcing himself to take short steps, which isn’t easy given he’s six foot three. But the short steps make his running pants whisk together, a repetitive sound that alerts her to his approach at just the right moment.

  She’s down on one knee, double-knotting her right shoe, when she notices him. At first she seems stricken by the sight of his legs. They’re muscled tree trunks that make formidable impressions even inside his baggy pants, and they encourage her to glance up at his torso. Later he’ll don his black windbreaker, but for now it’s tied around his waist, so his tank top can offer her an expansive view of his bulging shoulders, his biceps like goose eggs, the Michelangelo-carved veins along his powerful forearms. Something like desire and hope lights up her expression, as if, for an instant, she thinks he might be the one. And then she gets a good look at his face. The light goes out of her eyes almost instantly.

  There’s no telling which feature of his she focuses on first, but whichever one it is, it repels her. Maybe it’s his offensively long mouth, which despite its size still doesn’t manage to close entirely over his fat tongue. Together these attributes conspire to make him always look slightly winded, a cruel injustice given that he’s spent his entire adult life in peak physical condition. Maybe it’s his forehead, which rises like a wall toward the sudden flat top of his skull, too flat for his latest hair implants to distract from its startling angularity. And then there are his eyes. They crowd the bridge of his nose so closely, there’s no making them look evenly spaced, no matter how much he has his nose sanded down. And it’s been sanded down plenty, to the point that it now looks both perfect and perfectly out of place, like a piece of statue designed to plug a congenital hole in the center of his face. Maybe she sees only one or two of these things. Maybe she notices all of them at once. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she gives him the brusque, dismissive smile he’s come to expect from women all his life, then returns her attention to her shoe.

  She’s failed the test.

  She’s his now.

  They used to fill him with paralytic rage, these moments, these split-second exchanges in which a lifetime’s worth of accomplishments, from his medical degree to the hours he spends in the gym to the millions he’s amassed in savings, are rendered worthless by a series of genetic attributes. Of course, if he put some effort into it, he could big-talk her past her initial reaction. Make it clear how rich and successful he is until she was leaning on his every word. Because once she knew enough details about his life, a chunky, entitled little bitch like her would realize she should be grateful for
any attention from a man like him. But none of that would erase the wretchedness of that first moment, of that flash of truth in her eyes when she saw for the first time the face he’s never been able to escape.

  During medical school, he watched students with half his skill earn twice the respect of their professors because their big, perfectly balanced eyes and tiny, sculpted chins invoked a parental tenderness in just about everyone they met. Since then, he’s watched rival doctors bring in twice the number of patients solely because the strong jawlines and proud Roman noses they exhibit in their professional headshots suggest a confidence and skill they do not truly possess. You had to be the relentless victim of these constant injustices to see how prevalent they were. He calls it the tyranny of faces, a tyranny so pervasive, so woven through the fabric of society, that it goes well beyond the deferential treatment granted the exceedingly beautiful. This injustice is made up of the millions of unearned gifts bestowed on those whose faces are merely balanced or proportional, who possess random, genetically determined arrangements of features that just happen to trigger primal, but positive, emotional cues in those around them, cues that bear no real connection to who they are as people. To what they actually say. To what they actually do.

  Why is he the only one who can see this—that our faces are masks, rendering our personalities, our behaviors, our true accomplishments, utterly irrelevant, and yet we seem to have utter, idiotic faith in them as indicators of what’s in the soul?

  With each face he removes and places on public display, he comes another step closer to revealing this injustice to the world.

  It took only a few seconds for this woman, this total stranger, to dismiss him, as so many have done before. But the rage has left him entirely in the short time it takes him to reach the circle of benches and concrete next to the trail’s entrance. Now it’s been replaced by a giddy sense of anticipation that sends a pulse of heat to his balls. The base of his cock thickens.

  He turns his back to the woman, dons his windbreaker, and props one leg against the bench in front of him; then he bends forward slowly to stretch out his hamstring.

  A group of mountain bikers flies out of the tunnel of branches that mark the trailhead, slowing as they near their parked cars.

  There are other parks he could have picked. Bigger parks with more room to hide. Smaller parks he could slip in and out of more quickly after nightfall. But many of them were scorched by recent wildfires that devoured their mature trees. What’s brought him to Whiting Ranch is the densely wooded first stretch of the Borrego Canyon Trail, a little finger of wilderness passing through typical Orange County subdivisions, the kind where the red-tile-roof houses all look the same and the streets are gently curved to distract from the fact that the entire neighborhood was laid out on a single sheet of drafting paper. Beyond the first stretch, the houses fall away and the trail rises into the drier hills beyond. If all goes well, his new patient will never get that far.

  He hears her footfalls behind him, sluggish slaps against the concrete, turning crunchy when they hit the dirt.

  He keeps his back to her as she passes, makes sure his baseball cap is secure. He’s taken care to pull most of the threads from the logo on the cap’s brim—a logo for some medical supply company whose name he can’t even remember, a giveaway he got at some conference years before. Now the brim bears a few loose loops of blue thread, confusing enough to throw off a potential witness should they try to describe it later. Every minute said witness spends wondering what sports team the hat promoted is another minute he gets to work in peace, without distractions.

  As tempting as it is to check the contents of his fanny pack, he can’t do that now, not out in the open like this. Instead he grips the outside and gives it a little shake, as if he’s just making sure the thing’s secured to his hip. It allows him to feel the lumps made by the ball gag and the ten-milliliter syringe containing his special blend of ketamine, Versed, and propofol.

  He’s locked and loaded and ready to go.

  After a few minutes on the trail, he spots her.

  She’s already losing steam, probably because she took off too fast. Her chocolate-brown ponytail is swaying when it should be bouncing, and she’s glistening with sweat. He’s never run up behind a patient in this way, and he’s pleasantly surprised by the delicious tensions inherent in the act. By the multiple contrasts. Waiting and the exertion, simultaneous assessments of the trail ahead and behind, of the thickness of the brush on either side, of his speed, which must stay steady without giving away that he’s slowly gaining on her. He feels like a wolf and a snake in one. Or a snake riding on the back of a wolf, waiting for the right moment to strike. A ridiculous image, even if it is a fitting metaphor. He has to hold back laughter.

  When you become this good at something, he thinks, that’s a sign it’s exactly what you should be doing.

  It’s time. He can feel it. His cock can feel it. He’s desperately hard.

  The light is fading, lacing the shade from the branches overhead with threads of true darkness. The brush on either side of the trail is as thick as he needs it to be. And it’s quiet, save for their twin, interposed footfalls. Another minute or two and she’ll notice him.

  Another few minutes after that and the trail will rise, and the brush will thin out.

  It’s now or never. Or more accurately, it’s now or start over. And he doesn’t want to start over. He can’t start over.

  She failed the test. It’s decided.

  After a deep, steadying breath, the man they call the Mask Maker accelerates.

  He pulls the Talon air-weight baton from the thigh holster hidden underneath his running pants.

  With the press of a button, he extends the baton to its full length.

  Before she notices him inches behind her, he brings it down across the woman’s upper back with enough force to send her face-first into the dirt, her breath coming out of her in a desperate, ineffectual wheeze that sounds nothing like a scream.

  27

  When Julia Crispin was nineteen years old, she was raped at knifepoint inside her parked car after leaving a bonfire party on Mission Bay. It was the summer before her sophomore year at Yale, and when she returned to school a few months later, she brought with her a long, slender scar that snakes along her jugular vein to a spot an inch or two beneath her collarbone on her left side.

  Julia is fifty-seven now and the CEO of Crispin Corp, one of the most successful surveillance technology companies in the world. Like Cole, she inherited her business from her father. Unlike Cole, she has considerably more experience in the CEO position, a fact of which she never fails to remind him. She’s a handsome woman with a long, fine-boned face, pale, freckled skin, deep-set blue eyes, and dark eyebrows that always make her appear as if she’s finishing up a frown. For as long as Cole’s known her, she’s worn her hair in a platinum Jackie-O bob. The scar’s still with her, and it has a tendency to peek above the collars of the lustrous silk blouses she favors. She’s never made an effort to conceal it with makeup. It’s like she’s daring people to ask her about it. Or better yet, reminding them of what she’s survived.

  Cole can see the top half of it now, and he’d rather focus on it than the stoic expression on her face as she watches the microdrone surveillance footage of Charlotte Rowe and Luke Prescott taken that afternoon.

  She’s watching the footage on a tablet he brought her, which his tech team assured him was air gapped, meaning never connected to the Internet. It’s also been stripped of any drive or device that could support a cellular or Wi-Fi connection. They transferred the footage onto it the old-fashioned way, with a portable hard drive.

  Julia’s office is carved out of the earth underneath her sprawling glass-and-steel mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, which means it offers no view of the horses she keeps in the stable or the snaking front drive lined with willows and precisely placed beds of wildflowers. Down here, an ignorant visitor might assume the glass walls are designed simply to
make the banks of television screens behind them disappear once they’re turned off. But the glass hides more than the televisions; behind them is another set of walls, steel encased, with enough electromagnetic shielding to deflect the surveillance efforts of the NSA.

  It saddens him a bit that Julia’s office bears no photographic evidence of her accomplishments. No framed photos of her shaking hands with presidents or other CEOs. Just dark-glass walls; recessed, pinpoint track lights that can be made bright enough to simulate sunlight; spindly steel-and-glass furniture like the uncomfortable chair he’s sitting in now; and the persistent flicker of CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and Bloomberg News. But when your life’s work is developing cameras and recording devices that are all but invisible, maybe it’s bad form to broadcast your accomplishments.

  “Is that a tree?” Julia asks without looking up from the tablet.

  “Yes,” Cole answers.

  “She’s kicking over a tree. With one foot.”

  “It’s not a very big tree.”

  “I can see how big it is. And the man watching her?”

  “A police officer with the Altamira Sheriff’s Department. His name’s Luke Prescott. They were high school classmates.”

  “And she’s showing him what she can do,” Julia says. “Lovely.”

  When she reaches the end of the video, she sets the tablet down faceup. A tiny gesture, but one that seems to challenge the veracity, or at least the importance, of what she’s just seen.

  “Microdrones took these?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Not ours, I presume.”

  “If they were yours, I wouldn’t have lost four of them when the wind picked up, and I’d still be able to see her after dark.”

  “I’m flattered. It is hard to find good help these days, isn’t it?”

  “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “Better microdrones?”