Death Mask

way down.”

“Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better — not,” said one of the cappuccino carriers.

The elevator gave another jerk and dropped another two feet, and then another, and another. With each jerk, they all shouted out, in a terrible off-key chorus.

Chrissie had wanted to go to the bathroom even before she had arrived at the Giley Building, and now she wet herself. Only a little, but enough to make her feel even more terrified and out of control.

“We need to shout again and go on shouting,” said Elaine.

The black man yelled out, “Get us out of here! Get us out of here!” and thumped on the doors with both fists, denting the metal.

The elevator dropped at least fifteen feet, and then stopped with a sickening thump, sending them all sprawling and splashing hot coffee all over them. Before they could manage to stand up, it dropped again, and stopped; and then again. They had no choice but to crouch on the floor on their hands and knees while the elevator took them down and down in a series of staccato jolts — sometimes six inches and sometimes as much as twenty feet. By the time they were down to the ninth floor, they had stopped shouting and moaning and crying for help. They simply knelt on the floor, grim-faced, each of them silently praying that the elevator would reach ground level without dropping too fast.

They passed eight — seven — six — five. Just past five, they dropped over thirty feet, all the way down to the third story, and when the elevator came bang! to a halt, Chrissie was flung against one of the junior executives and knocked her forehead against his teeth. Blood ran into her eyes, so that she could hardly see.

The elevator fell past three — two — one, but as it did so it slowed down to a shuddering crawl. When it reached basement level it was sinking so gradually that they hardly felt it come to a standstill.

“We’ve stopped,” said the black man. “Thank God, we’ve stopped.”

They clambered to their feet. One of the junior executives pressed the button for the doors to open, but they stayed firmly closed.

“Now we should shout,” said the black man. “They must be able to hear us down here.”

“Help!” shrilled out one of the secretaries. “Help, let us out of here!”

But then, quite unexpectedly, the doors slid open. There was a split-second hesitation, and then a figure in red rushed into the elevator with two butcher knives in his upraised hands, chopping and stabbing at them in a frenzy. They staggered back, screaming, tumbling over each other in confusion. But the figure kept on stabbing and hacking until blood was flying everywhere, like a dark red rainstorm.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Bloodbath

At almost the same time, in the new Four Days Mall on Fountain Square West, Marshall Willis and his fiancee Dawn Priennik were leaning over the counter at Newman’s Jewelry, trying to decide which wedding bands to buy.

Marshall favored a wide band with diamond-shaped facets on it, “so it kind of catches the light,” while Dawn preferred a thinner band with alternating twists of yellow and white gold.

“There’s no law that stipulates that a married couple are obliged to wear matching bands,” said the jewelry store assistant, his bald head gleaming under the spotlights. “After all, sir’s fingers are very generously sized. Compared to madam’s, that is.”

It wasn’t only Marshall’s fingers that were generously sized. He was generously sized all over — six feet three inches tall with a rugged head that looked as if it had been hacked in a hurry out of hardwood, a massive neck, and a chest as deep as a bison’s.

Dawn, on the other hand, was tiny — only five feet two inches tall, with long shiny chestnut hair and a round, Kewpie-doll face. She had long black eyelashes that blinked like hummingbird wings, especially when she was excited. Her two most prominent features were her breasts, which filled her little pink vest to the bursting point. Marshall had paid for her breast enlargement last April, as a birthday gift. Dawn’s mother, disgusted, had said that it was a gift for himself, rather than her.

“I’m pretty much set on matching bands,” said Marshall. “When you have matching bands, it shows people, like, we totally belong to each other.”

“But we know we totally belong to each other. Why do we need to prove it to anybody else?”

Marshall slowly shook his head. Now he was showing his dark, possessive side. He had given Dawn much bigger breasts, but if he caught any man ogling her, he would instantly confront him. You checking out my girl? Well, take a good look, dude, because that’s the last thing on this earth you’re ever going to see. And if Dawn even smiled at anybody else, he would slap her when he took her home and accuse her of acting like a “two-bit back-alley whore.” He would always apologize afterward. He would always bring her flowers. But he would always do it again.

“Maybe we should go for a latte or something and talk it over,” Dawn suggested. She could see that Marshall was working himself up into one of his gnarly moods — moods that he always blamed on everybody else. Now look what you fricking made me do! he always used to protest, after he had kicked over the television or thrown his supper up against the wall or grabbed Dawn so hard that he bruised her upper arms.

Dawn’s mother said that Dawn was crazy to marry him — crazy. He was a brute. Worse than that, he was a childish brute. But Dawn loved him and knew how gentle and thoughtful he could be. He was childish, yes. But that made her all the more determined to protect him. It wasn’t his fault that the world was so much against him.

They left the jewelry store and walked across the balcony toward the elevators. The Four Days Mall was only eighteen months old. It was shiny and marble clad and smelled of women’s perfume and new leather belts, and the aroma of freshly ground coffee. The central atrium rose five stories to a clear glass ceiling, so that the center was flooded in brilliant natural sunlight, and everything sparkled. Four floors below them, a stainless-steel fountain represented the Orleans, the first steamboat to sail up the Ohio River to Cincinnati, in 1811.

Four glass-walled elevators slid up and down the outside of the building, giving their occupants vertiginous views down to Race Street and Seventh Street. From the top floor, they could even see the river, which glittered in the morning sun, and Covington, Kentucky, on the opposite side.

The doors of the nearest elevator opened, and Marshall and Dawn stepped onto it. Dawn immediately went to the rail and peered down at the traffic below. “Look! They’re like little toy cars!”

“Oh, really?” said Marshall. He had never liked heights, and he stayed well back.

For a few seconds they had the elevator to themselves, but just before the doors closed, a crowd of eight or nine noisy teenagers piled their way into it, hooting and laughing and jostling each other.

One of the boys had a pale spotty face and a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap with the long black brim turned sideways. He produced a pink girl’s thong from out of his sweatshirt pocket and whirled it in the air. It still had the price labels attached. “Hey — see what I just boosted!”

“Oh, Mikey!” shrilled one of the girls. “Aren’t you going to try it on for us?”

Another boy wrapped his arm around his shoulders and said, “You never told us you were a cross-dresser, Mikey! I woulda bought you a peephole bra for your birthday, instead of that T-shirt!”

“Get outta here, Tyler, it’s a present for Linda.”

“Oh, sure — Linda! I’ll bet she got tired of you wearing her panties, that’s all, so you had to buy some of your own!”

“Hey, cool it, guys,” said Marshall. “We got a lady in here.”

The boy in the Cincinnati Reds cap swiveled his head around, mouth open, blinking. “Lady? Where? Where? I