Death Mask

Sissy turned toward the window. Outside, in the bright unfocused sunshine, the scarlet rose nodded and nodded, and the yellow ladybug continued to crawl slowly up its stem.

She turned back to Molly. “Paint something else,” she told her. “Another rose. A bird, maybe. Anything.”

CHAPTER THREE The Red Elevator

Jimmy jabbed the elevator button yet again, and said, “What the hell are they doing up there? My slider’s going cold.”

“Some doofus has probably jammed the doors open,” said Newton. “They’re always doing that when they’re moving their furniture from floor to floor. Tough shit if anybody else wants to get back to their office.”

Jimmy pressed his finger on the button and kept it there, but the elevator’s indicator remained stuck at fifteeen. Six or seven other office workers had gathered around the elevator now, carrying box lunches and Styrofoam cups of coffee, as well as a delivery boy from Skyline with a persistent sniff and a large bag that smelled strongly of cinnamon chili.

“This is goddamned intolerable,” grumbled a shirtsleeved accountant who was trying to balance three La Rosa’s pizzas and three cups of soup on top of his briefcase. “Any volunteers to run upstairs and check out what’s wrong?”

Jimmy pressed his hand against his chest and wheezed. “Sorry, dude. It’s my asthma. Fifteen floors, that’d kill me. Newton, how about you, man? I’ll hold your cheeseburger for you.”

Three more office workers arrived, all of them carrying take-out lunches.

“Goddamned elevator’s jammed again,” explained the shirtsleeved accountant, as if it weren’t obvious.

There were three elevators in the Giley Building in downtown Cincinnati, but most of the time only one of them was working, and even when it did, its doors shuddered so violently whenever they were closing that Jimmy was always worried that they would refuse to open again, and he would be trapped inside.

The Giley Building had been built in less than eleven months, during the Depression, by hundreds of hands eager for the work. It had been scheduled for demolition more than three years ago, but local conservationists had fought to preserve its brown-brick Italianate facade, as well as its gloomy brown marble lobby, with murals of Cincinnati’s history, like the arrival of the first riverboat, and the building of the first suspension bridge over the Ohio River, and the opening of the Procter & Gamble soap factory.

Today, the building was less than two-thirds occupied, and many of the floors were deserted, with echoing corridors and tipped-over chairs and notice boards that were still covered with yellowing sales charts.

Newton said, “Oh, man,” but handed Jimmy his White Castle burger box all the same. He crossed over to the staircase, and he had already opened the door when there was a bing! and the elevator’s indicator light went from fifteen to fourteen, and then to twelve.

“Hallelujah,” said the shirtsleeved accountant, and the rest of the office workers gave a cynical cheer.

Newton came back and reclaimed his cheeseburger. “I’m going to change my job, man. I’m going to work in a building with elevators that actually go up and down, and the fricking air-conditioning actually conditions the fricking air, and half of the offices ain’t populated by ghosts.”

Newton thought that he had heard people walking around the empty floors late in the evening, and echoing voices, and telephones ringing that nobody answered.

“You’re crazy, dude,” Jimmy told him. “You know there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Oh, yeah? And where do you think that dead people go when they die?”

“They don’t go nowhere. When you die it’s like someone switches the lights off, that’s all, and doesn’t never switch them back on again. And even if dead people did go somewhere, they sure as hell wouldn’t go to the office.”

“I know I darn well wouldn’t,” put in the shirtsleeved accountant. “When I die, I’m going to Vegas.”

The elevator’s indicator continued to bing! its way from twelve to eleven and ten and nine, and eventually it reached the lobby. The office workers crowded around it, waiting for the doors to shudder open.

At last, they did — chug-chug-chug — and everybody took a step forward. But as they did so, a figure inside the elevator toppled to the floor, and they immediately took a step back.

“Jesus,” said Jimmy.

“Oh my good God,” said a woman right behind him.

A young woman was crouched facedown in the middle of the elevator floor, where she had just fallen, and underneath her a middle-aged man was lying on his side with his back to them. The young woman was dressed in a cream-colored pantsuit, and the middle-aged man was wearing a pale blue sport coat, but both of them were covered in blood. The elevator was plastered in blood, too, all the way up to the ceiling. There were sprays and runs and dozens of bloody handprints all over the mirrors.

Most horrific of all, a large kitchen knife was still sticking out of the young woman’s right shoulder.

Without any hesitation, the shirtsleeved accountant tossed his cups of soup and his pizzas and his briefcase onto the lobby floor.

“Call nine-one-one!” he shouted. He stepped into the elevator and placed two fingertips against the young woman’s neck. “She’s still alive! Help me!”

Jimmy pushed his box lunch into Newton’s hands and stepped into the elevator, too. The floor was so slippery with blood that he skidded and almost lost his balance.

“What do you want me to do, dude?” he asked the shirtsleeved accountant.

“Let’s lift her out of here — gently. Lay her on her side on the floor. Has anybody called nine-one-one? We need coats, blankets — something to keep her warm. And we need to find out where she’s been stabbed — keep some pressure on any arterial wounds.”

Jimmy said, “Shouldn’t we take out the knife?”

“No, leave it there. The paramedics can do that. A lot of stab victims die like that, taking the knife out.”

Between them, he and Jimmy dragged the young woman out of the elevator and laid her on the floor. A matronly secretary knelt down beside her and unbuttoned her coat and her blouse, trying to locate her wounds.

The shirtsleeved accountant went back into the elevator and checked the pulse of the middle-aged man.

“How about him?” asked Jimmy, but the shirtsleeved accountant looked up and shook his head.

“Looks like he was stabbed straight in the heart. Couple of times in the lungs, too.”

“Unbelievable,” said Newton. “Fricking unbelievable.”

The matronly secretary said, “This young lady’s been lucky, I think. I can only find cuts on her hands and her arms. She must have been fighting for her life.”

Jimmy hunkered down beside her. The young woman’s hazel-colored eyes were open, although she appeared to be staring at nothing at all. She was midtwentiesish, with light brown hair that was cut in a long bob, but which was now stuck together with drying blood. There were bloody fingerprints all over her forehead and her right cheek.

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asked her. The young woman didn’t answer, but she was still breathing, and he could see her lips move slightly.

“You’re going to be fine,” Jimmy told her. “I promise you, you’re going to be fine.”

They heard sirens outside as paramedics and police arrived, and the lobby was filled by the kaleidoscopic reflections of red and blue lights.

Jimmy stood up. The shirtsleeved accountant came up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You did good, son. Thanks.”

“Hey, I didn’t do nothing. You a first-aider?”

“Ex-marine. Served in Iraq. You get plenty of practice out there, I can tell you, patching up people with various kinds of holes in them.”

“Shit!” said Newton. “Whoever did this, he’s still in the building, right? He didn’t come down the stairs, did he? So there’s no way he could have gotten out.”