Stealing Faces

by Michael Prescott

  Her gaze followed his pointing finger to a rectangular aperture in the ceiling.

  “But that option’s foreclosed in this instance,” Cray added sadly. “I’ve told the staff to check the vent cover daily for any sign of tampering. Last time, as you recall, you spent many nights loosening the screws by hand. Such a slow, tedious undertaking. What patience and determination you showed. Admirable, really. But not to be repeated, Kaylie. We’re more vigilant now. At the first indication that you’ve been at work on the vent, you’ll be in a straitjacket—or strapped to the bed. Do you understand me?”

  Kaylie nodded. She knew it was true. She’d seen the orderlies check the vent cover with a flashlight every morning since she’d been unstrapped from the bed.

  “So you can’t get out that way. As for the door, it’s always locked, of course. And there’s no window. No exit, then. Or so it appears. Still, there is one thing a clever girl could do to free herself from this predicament. Surely I don’t need to spell it out for you.”

  Did he expect her to solve this riddle unaided? She tried to reason her way to an answer, if there was one. Vent, door, window ... another way ...

  “Oh, but I forgot.” Cray grinned at her with cruel solicitude. “Your brain’s sick, isn’t it? Then I guess I’ll have to do your thinking for you. Well, consider.”

  He leaned forward, propping himself on the bed with an outstretched arm.

  “We’ve had no escapes from the institute since you were our guest. But we have had one almost equally unfortunate incident.”

  Kaylie waited.

  “The patient in question was a young man who found a most creative way to release himself from his torment. It involved a bedsheet, like this one here.” Cray snagged a fold of the rubber sheet between two fingers. “And that vent I mentioned. The vent cover, with its metal grillwork, is quite securely fastened to the ceiling, and just high enough above the floor that if a person were to stand on the commode and loop one end of the sheet through the grille bars, then take the other end, take it and tie it in a slipknot around her neck ... her slender, fragile neck ...”

  Kaylie understood.

  This was the gift Cray offered her. It wasn’t enough that he had put her in this room, ravaged her life, made her a pariah and a fugitive. No, he wanted to finish the task of demolition he had begun—to finish it not by his own hand, but by hers.

  Anger cleared her mind for the moment, and she saw why Cray had allowed the nurses to unstrap her from the bed, the wheelchair. He needed her ambulatory, at liberty within the cell, so that no artificial restraint would prevent her from taking her own life.

  “You fucker,” Kaylie snarled, fury cresting in her like a hot, boiling wave.

  “No need for indelicacy.” Cray smiled. “I’m merely passing along a harmless anecdote—”

  With a rush of hatred she sprang at him.

  Her hands came up fast, fingers hooking into claws, taking him by surprise, and she caught him in the cheek and raked four deep grooves in his skin.

  Cray shouted, a hoarse, inarticulate sound.

  He had shouted in the desert when she sprayed him with ice to save her life. She’d hurt him then, wanted to inflict a new and worse hurt now.

  She swiped at him again, but missed, and then he swung her around, pitching her sideways off the bed onto the hard shock of the floor.

  She struggled to rise, couldn’t, because already he was on top of her, straddling her hips as she lay prostrate.

  Over her groan of panic she heard commotion in the hall, the nurse shouting, “Dr. Cray, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine!” Cray snapped. “No problem, Dana.” He struggled to catch his breath, then added in a softer voice, “No problem at all.”

  He released Kaylie and stood. She rolled onto her side, staring up at him. He was huge. He was everything evil in the world.

  “Very well then, Kaylie.” He had recovered his composure. She saw him grope in his pocket for a handkerchief, then wipe the threads of blood from his cheek. “You haven’t lost the will to fight, I see. Or the will to live. You’re strong. Stronger than I’d expected. But your strength won’t help you. You’ll die tonight.”

  “I won’t,” she whispered. “I’m not going to do it.”

  “Oh, I believe you, Kaylie. But that merely means I’ll have to do it for you.”

  She pushed herself half-upright and studied him, taking his measure.

  “You can’t,” she said finally, working hard to string words together, enough words to make her point. “There are ... people around. They’ll see.”

  “They’ll see nothing. Leave the details to me. I’ve got it all worked out. In all honesty, I was hoping you’d oblige me by proving more compliant. But I was prepared for your intransigence. I’m always prepared, Kaylie, for any eventuality. Surely you’ve discovered that by now.”

  She was tired, suddenly. She couldn’t fight him, couldn’t bear to listen to him anymore.

  “Go away,” she murmured.

  “Yes. I think I will. Enough therapy for one day. But I’ll be back.”

  Cray moved toward the door, walking slowly, gracefully, in his liquid, leonine way. He was a stalking animal; why could no one see it except her? Why was the whole world blind?

  At the door he stopped, favoring her with his insolent gaze. “You won’t have to wait long, Kaylie. When night falls, I’ll make my move. Some things are best done in the dark.”

  She found her voice. “It’s not going to work. You can’t get away with it.”

  “You know I can. And I will.”

  He left her, shutting the door. She heard the thunk of the pneumatic bolt, a sound as final as the dropping of a casket lid. He hadn’t lied. She knew that.

  Tonight, sometime after the dinner hour, when the patients were safe in their cells and the room lights had been dimmed, he would be back, and he would take her life.

  48

  "You’ll say I’m crazy.”

  Paul Brookings smiled. “What else is new?” The smile faded as he saw the look on Shepherd’s face. “Sit down, Roy. Talk to me.”

  Shepherd didn’t sit. He was restless, and he needed movement, action. He paced Brookings’ office, while outside, the late afternoon traffic crawled past on Stone Avenue. Five o’clock, the start of rush hour.

  “It has to do with Kaylie McMillan,” he said.

  He expected the same reaction he’d gotten from Alvarez. Gentle ribbing, and a reminder that he had higher priorities. It was his certainty that he would make a fool of himself that had kept him out of the lieutenant’s office for hours, fighting the urge to discuss the problem, until finally he’d had no choice.

  But Brookings didn’t challenge him. He said only, “What about her?”

  “It’s not my case, right?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, I’ve never been much for rhetoric, so why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind, and why I ought to doubt your sanity.”

  The lieutenant said it lightly, with just the right blend of humor and understanding, and Shepherd knew he had underestimated the man.

  He shouldn’t have. He should have remembered how Paul Brookings had been there for him during the hellish days when Ginnie was hospitalized, and the still worse months after her death.

  At the hospital Brookings had visited Shepherd and Ginnie every day. Twice he had stayed up nearly all night with Shepherd, the two of them sitting together in an alcove near a noisy freight elevator. Shepherd talking aimlessly, the lieutenant doing the work of listening.

  The morning Ginnie died. Shepherd had called Brookings, waking him in the dawn twilight. Brookings had handled most of the details—paperwork, funeral arrangements—while Shepherd drifted in a mist of grief.

  Later, there had been fishing trips, long walks, dinners at Brookings’ house where Paul’s wife, Chloris, served homemade, multicourse meals and soft music played.

  Br
ookings had nursed Shepherd through the hardest part of his life. Of course he was the right person, the only person, for Shepherd to turn to now.

  “Okay,” Shepherd said. “Here it is. I talked to Chuck Wheelihan over in Graham County a few hours ago. He told me some things that got me thinking. I don’t know why, really. It’s nothing specific. But I can’t seem to let it go.”

  “Not sure I follow you. The woman’s under arrest. As I understand it, no one’s ever disputed the fact that she killed her husband.”

  “No.”

  “And she accused her psychiatrist of being the White Mountains Killer. So she’s clearly delusional. Right?”

  Shepherd hesitated, and Brookings pursed his lips.

  “Oh,” the lieutenant said. “You think maybe she’s not delusional.”

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far.” Shepherd felt himself backing away from his suspicions, which seemed so obscure, so insubstantial, now that they were on the verge of being stated aloud. “I don’t know what to think,” he added lamely.

  Brookings was quiet for a moment. He played with a stapler on his desk. On the street below, a car’s horn squalled briefly.

  “This isn’t like you, Roy,” Brookings said finally. “When a case is cleared, you let it go. What’s different now?”

  “It just feels incomplete. But hell, you’re right. I’m probably just getting carried away.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Forget it, okay? Forget I was even here.”

  He took a step toward the door. Brookings stopped him with a command. “Hold on.”

  Shepherd turned to look at him. The lieutenant clicked the stapler again, then raised his head to meet Shepherd’s gaze.

  “It’s Ginnie,” Brookings said softly, “isn’t it?”

  “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “A lot, I think. Maybe everything. You can’t bring her back, Roy.”

  Shepherd stiffened. “I’m fairly certain I already knew that.”

  “Too late to save her. You wish you could. So you try to save the next one. You try to get all the crazies off the street.”

  “I don’t really see where this is going.”

  “Sure you do. It’s why you went after the McMillan woman so hard. Above and beyond the call of duty. You needed to put her away, because she was another Tim Fries. Another lighted fuse.”

  “All right. So what?”

  “Now you’re having second thoughts. But you don’t want to admit it. You don’t want to help her in any way. Helping her feels like a betrayal. Like you’re letting Ginnie die all over again.”

  Shepherd didn’t answer.

  “It’s not a betrayal, Roy.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it is.”

  “No. Take a look at this woman, Kaylie McMillan. Who is she, really? She’s been on the run for years. Got no money, no home. Scared all the time. Looking for help. Maybe she’s a psycho. Probably she is. Or maybe not. Either way, there’s one thing about her we can say for sure.”

  “What?”

  “She’s exactly the kind of person your wife would have wanted to help.”

  Shepherd nodded slowly. He thought of Ginnie in her study, working on her Internet project to aid the homeless. He thought of her in the health clinic, welcoming the people of the street.

  “That’s true,” he said, his voice low.

  “It’s only a betrayal if you don’t help her. So go. Do whatever you have to do.”

  “I need to talk to Kaylie’s father-in-law. He seems to think she shouldn’t be locked up.”

  “Sounds like a conversation worth having. Just don’t break any speed limits to get there.”

  “I won’t.” Shepherd felt lighter suddenly. “Thanks, Paul. Thanks.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “I don’t know if this kind of thing is part of the job description. Maybe you should’ve been a shrink.”

  “And give up a civil service salary? I don’t think so. Now get going. Traffic’s already getting bad out there.”

  Shepherd was at the door when Brookings added in a quieter voice, “And, Roy?”

  He turned.

  The lieutenant studied him, calm wisdom on his face.

  “Caring about this woman,” he said, “this Kaylie—that’s not a betrayal, either.”

  There was nothing Shepherd could say to this. He left without a word.

  49

  The director’s residence at the Hawk Ridge Institute predated the rest of the complex. It had been a farmhouse once, surrounded by fields of barley. The orchard beside the house had provided oranges and lemons, which the farmer’s wife had put up as preserves in a small, tidy fruit cellar.

  It was in this cellar that Cray now kept his trophies.

  The stone walls were crowded with faces, all of them female, all beautiful in their various ways, and all embedded in rectangles of solid plastic, protected from decomposition.

  Cray had developed the method of preservation himself, inspired by the phenomenon of insects in amber. He purchased thermosetting polyester resin—liquid plastic—from a biological supply outfit on the East Coast. When blended with a peroxide catalyst, the resin would gel into a hard, transparent mass.

  He kept each victim’s face preserved in a jar of formalin, like any wet specimen, until he was ready to make a permanent mount. A ceramic mold, lightly lubricated with kerosene, was used to contain the plastic. Cray put down a bottom layer of liquid resin and let it harden, then cleaned the face under running water, dried it, and centered it carefully in the mold. Then he filled the mold with plastic, pouring it on like syrup until the face was entirely covered.

  Over a week’s time, the plastic would polymerize at room temperature, sealing the face inside. Decay could not touch it. Its beauty was saved forever.

  Finally the mold was removed—an easy task owing to the lubricant he’d applied and the slight, natural shrinkage of the resin as it set—and his prize was ready for display.

  A woman’s face, afloat in a crystalline block of plastic, a thing of eerie loveliness.

  Cray had become an expert in this technique over the years, as his collection grew. There were fourteen faces now. Every one of them, even those harvested a decade earlier, remained as fresh and vibrant as young life.

  Cray stood admiring them now, in the sharp light of a ceiling bulb. He was still in his business suit, having descended to the cellar immediately upon arriving home from the office. There would be time to change clothes soon enough. First he needed a few moments with his trove of lovelies.

  “Sweet,” Cray whispered, scanning the eyeless faces, the smooth skin and parted lips. “Sweet.”

  He had known each victim’s name when he acquired her, but such details were quick to fade from his memory. Now only Sharon Andrews remained real to him as a distinct person, and even her identity was gradually losing its sharp outlines in his mind. Soon he would know her only as the latest one, the blonde. He would recall nothing of her name or place of business. Already he had all but forgotten the news accounts that told of a young son she’d left behind.

  But the hunt itself he would remember. His liberation from the ordinary, his mad steeplechase under the moon.

  Those memories would not fade. Not ever. The first hunt, twelve years ago, remained as vivid in his thoughts as the most recent.

  But on the first hunt, he had not hunted alone.

  Justin had been with him. Leading him.

  His guide. His mentor, in some ways. Most of all, his partner and soul mate, the only human being who had ever understood Cray, and the only human being Cray had loved.

  Justin had loved him too. They had shared something—no, it was not sexual—something of the spirit, or if that word was too anachronistic for a new millennium, then something instinctual, a common inheritance in the blood.

  Whatever satisfaction Justin had found in his brief marriage to Kaylie, it could not compare with what he and Cray had known together, on the
one night when they ran free as wolves, chasing their prey through the White Mountains until they brought her down.

  They had made a perfect team. Justin was a natural hunter, cruel and patient and starved for blood. A natural sociopath as well—Cray knew the type. The combination of an outdoorsman’s skills and a killer’s instincts had made Justin McMillan the ideal partner for John Cray—Cray, who had never killed anything other than the schnauzer, Shoe, which he’d strangled and secretly buried in the woods.

  Except for that one incident, Cray’s nearest encounter with death had been the dissection of corpses in medical school. But he had come to realize that he would have to widen his horizons if he were ever to grasp the full reality of his essential nature. Observation and analysis were useful within limits, but some things must be experienced firsthand.

  Aware of the need to take this next step in his evolution, he had sought out Justin, befriended him, and persuaded the younger man that they could do great things together.

  And so one night they’d gone cruising, venturing miles afield, until Cray spotted a female hitchhiker on a dark highway.

  There’s one.

  Cray still remembered the tremor of exhilaration in his voice, and how he’d leaned forward in the passenger seat of Justin’s pickup truck to point to the girl on the shoulder of the road. A girl disheveled, forlorn in the night, and utterly alone.

  Justin had slowed the truck. You’re sure? he asked, the question coming slowly but without the least quaver of fear.

  Cray nodded. She’s perfect. She’ll never be missed.

  The girl, still a teenager, had been wary of the two men who’d stopped for her. But preferring their company to the nocturnal desolation of the highway, she’d accepted the ride.

  Later, when she realized her mistake, she had put up a fight, scratching and pummeling until Cray subdued her with an ampoule of sedative.

  She awoke in the White Mountains, beyond the reach of help. The moon was high and nearly full, the ridgeline shiny in the light.

  Cray hadn’t made any sort of speech to her. On later occasions it would become his practice to inform the victim fully of the lethal sport that was about to be played, but on that first night he and Justin had exchanged no words with the girl, had not even acknowledged her confused questions and pleas.