Death Mask

CHAPTER TWENTY

Red Mask Panic

On their way back home they stopped off at the Rook-wood Pavilion in Norwood so that Molly could buy some more crayons and paints from an artist’s supply store called Arts Of Gold and some purple beaded cushion covers from Stein Mart. Then they bought themselves strawberry ice-cream cones and walked through the mall, window- shopping.

“So where do you think we go from here?” said Molly.

“I’m not sure yet,” Sissy admitted. “But I do think that George told us something important. Or rather, he lied about something important.”

“But he’s dead. Why should he lie about anything? What would be the point?”

“People usually lie because they’ve done something that they’re ashamed of.”

“Being murdered is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yes, but why was he murdered?”

They were looking at summer dresses in T.J. Maxx when Molly’s cell phone warbled. She answered it and said, “Yes,” and then, “Yes,” and then, “Oh God, not again.”

“What’s happened?” Sissy asked her.

“Red Mask,” said Molly. “He’s killed seven more people in an elevator at the Giley Building. But it looks like there’s a copycat killer, too. Eleven people were stabbed in an elevator at the Four Days Mall, but at almost the same time.”

“There are two Red Masks?” said Sissy. “That’s just terrible. How can there be two of them?”

“Mike Kunzel says he has witnesses. Three people survived — one at the Giley Building and two at the Four Days Mall. He wants me to go to the hospital and talk to them. He says they all described a red-faced man with two knives.”

“This is just awful. No wonder the cards predicted so much blood.”

“Do you want to come with me?” asked Molly. “Maybe if you sit in while I’m drawing my composites, you might get some kind of insight.” “Sure, yes, I’ll come along.”

They walked back to Molly’s car. The skies had cleared now, and a gilded sun was shining, but the morning was still steamy, and thousands of cicadas were chirruping in the trees that surrounded the parking lot. They drove out of the gates, splashing through the puddles, and headed toward Allison Street.

Molly turned on the radio. On 700 AM, a reporter was talking to Lieutenant Colonel Whalen, the commander of the investigations bureau.

Lieutenant Colonel Whalen sounded shaken. “It’s far too early for us to say exactly who we’re looking for. It could be a copycat killer, yes. But then again, it could be an organization of two or more terrorists. Whoever it is — and whatever perverted purpose they have in mind — they are obviously determined to cause as much panic and disruption as they can.”

“But what would you say to the general public in Cincinnati?” asked the reporter. “What special precautions would you advise them to take?”

“We all need to keep our eyes open. We all need to be aware of what these men look like, and to check out our fellow passengers whenever we step onto an elevator.”

“But if we can’t be sure of our safety in a glass-paneled elevator that’s in full view of two crowded streets and a crowded shopping mall. where can we?”

“Right now, I’d advise Cincinnatians to stay on a high level of personal alert no matter where they’re going or what they’re doing. Riding in elevators, walking in the park, going out shopping — even at home. So far, yes, these men have attacked people only on elevators. But we have no guarantee that they won’t diversify their assaults, and we have no idea when, or where, or even if they are planning to strike again.”

“So you couldn’t even guess at a motive?”

“Not yet. It’s perfectly possible that the perpetrators have an agenda that makes some kind of twisted sense to them. Last year, if you remember, James Kellman shot two innocent children on a bus because he thought they were laughing at his private thoughts. But — no — we have no idea at this time why any of these people were attacked.

“All I can say on behalf of the CPD is that their loved ones have our deepest sympathy.”

Chrissie had survived. Elaine had been stabbed in the face with both knives at once and had fallen backward, with Chrissie underneath her. Chrissie had been stabbed three times in the left arm, and once in the left leg, above the knee — but even though the knife blade had penetrated so deeply that the point had momentarily stuck in her thighbone, it had missed her femoral artery by a quarter of an inch.

She was sedated and confused, and her eyes kept roaming around the room as if she was fearful that her attacker was suddenly going to reappear.

But Molly kept on saying, “You’re safe now, Chrissie. He’s gone, and he won’t be coming back. I promise you.”

“I was so scared. He kept shouting, ‘Wicked! Wicked!’ He was trying to kill all of us.”

“I know. That’s why I need you to tell me what he looked like.”

“His face. His face was so red. It was like he was burned.”

Molly held up one of her Caran d’Ache crayons. “Was it red like this?”

“No. It was redder than that.”

Molly held up another crayon, torch red. “How about this?”

Chrissie nodded. “That’s how red he was. And his eyes. It was like he had no eyes at all.”

Sissy sat on the opposite side of the hospital bed, a little way back. She could feel Chrissie’s fear, as tight as an overwound clock. But, oddly, she had no sense of Red Mask himself, only emptiness. It was just as if Chrissie were describing a figure that she had seen in a nightmare, rather than a real person.

Usually, when she talked to women who were being intimidated or beaten, she could pick up a distinct sense of the people who were frightening them so much. Bullies and abusing husbands lived inside their victims’ consciousness, possessing them like malevolent spirits. But Chrissie’s description of Red Mask evoked nothing at all. Blackness. Coldness. No more soul than a cicada.

She moved her chair closer to the bed and reached out for Chrissie’s hand.

“Do you mind?” she asked her.

“Of course not,” said Chrissie.

Sissy turned Chrissie’s hand over and examined her palm. She had a long, double life line, which meant that she had an outstanding resistance to negative events in her life and would live to a very old age — even though there were two significant breaks in it. The first of those breaks was probably an indication of the knife attack that she had just suffered. The other showed that she had another life-threatening incident in store for her when she was very much older, but she would survive that, too. Maybe an accident, maybe an illness.

Her line of Venus was perforated, which revealed sensitivity and a willingness to listen to other people’s problems. But her line of Apollo was short and broken, meaning that she was a dreamer and a procrastinator, who lacked concentration.

Her fate line, though, was highly unusual. It had a complicated whorl in it that Sissy had only seen once before, on a woman who had claimed that a statue in the ornamental gardens in Darien, Connecticut, had spoken to her and given her a warning that her daughter was about to die.

The whorl meant that Chrissie had witnessed a highly potent psychic phenomenon — something that most people would never witness even if they lived a hundred lifetimes. A miracle.

Molly was quickly sketching the face of Chrissie’s assailant. His head looked slightly narrower than her previous two drawings of Red Mask, and his cheeks were more chiseled, but there was no question that it was the same man.

When she had finished, she lifted up her sketch pad and turned it around so that Chrissie could tell her how accurate it was. Chrissie immediately turned her head away. “That’s him. Please, I don’t want to look at it. That’s