Death Mask

a second time — not willingly, anyhow. I guess I could read his cards. That might tell us something. I was going to read them anyhow, to see if they would give me clues about how we find Red Mask.”

“You and those darned cards, Sissy.”

“I know you never believed in them, Frank. But even if they speak in riddles, they always turn out to be telling the truth, one way or another. And they’ve been a comfort to me, too, just like smoking. At least I always have some idea of what’s coming down the line.”

Frank said, “I’ve come across perpetrators like Red Mask a few times before. The first time they kill, they’re doing it for a very specific reason — mostly because they’re angry, or because they feel that they’ve been wronged or insulted or not given the respect they think they deserve. They’re seriously looking for justice. But when they find out how exciting it is to kill another human being, and what a feeling of power it gives them — ”

Sissy quickly dealt out the cards, with her cigarette dangling from one side of her mouth and one eye closed against the rising smoke.

“Hmm,” she said, when she was finished. “Not a whole lot of change. A few cards haven’t reappeared, though. L’Avertissement has gone, the Warning — that’s because that attack on the skywalk is yesterday’s news now, not tomorrow’s. The Cache-cache card has gone, too — the Game of Hide-and-Go-Seek.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I’m hoping it’s good. It predicted that any police who went looking for Red Mask would be massacred, and that doesn’t seem to have happened, thank God.”

She turned over the second-to-last card. It was the blood card again, totally scarlet.

“What does that mean?”

“There’s still some more killing to come, I’m afraid. But it isn’t the ultimate card, which means that there might be a way of stopping it.”

She turned over the very last card. She had turned it up only once before in the whole of her fortune-telling career, when a four-year-old girl had gone missing in the Litchfield Hills close to the Massachusetts border. At Sissy’s suggestion, troopers with tracker dogs went searching for her deep in the furthest recesses of the legendary Colebrook cavern. After three days she was found hungry and shivering, but alive.

The card was called le Flambeau de la vertu, the Torch of Righteousness. It showed a man in a dark blue cloak walking through a shadowy place that could have been a cavern or a forest or a tunnel. He was holding up a fiery torch so that he could see where he was going, but he was also being led by a large black bloodhound, or St. Hubert hound, as the French called them.

Around its neck, the bloodhound wore a collar of wilted roses.

“This is it,” said Sissy. “This is what we have to do to find those Red Masks.”

“We have to take a dog for a walk?”

“This is a tracker dog. We need a tracker dog to find them, and a torch to set fire to them.”

“Set fire to them?”

“Of course. They’re paintings. They’re inflammable. They can burn.”

“Just like me,” said Frank.

“I guess so, my darling. Just like you. But I’m still so happy that you’re here.”

“So where are we going to find ourselves a bloodhound?” demanded Trevor. “Mr. Boots isn’t much of a tracker. I threw a stick for him the other day, and he came back with somebody’s bicycle pump.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Mr. Boots. We need a scenting dog. Molly can paint us one.”

Trevor said, “Whoa! Hold on here, Sissy! You’ve gone against nature by bringing my dad back to life. Now you want to create a dog?”

“We have to! Red Mask doesn’t have a scent that a real dog can follow. But a painted dog could. Think of what happened this morning, when your daddy looked at that painting of the New Milford Green. He could hear it and feel it and smell it, and a painted dog should be able to do the same.”

“My God,” said Trevor.

Sissy crushed out her cigarette. “Molly?” she said. “Do you think you can do it?”

Molly looked up at Trevor and took hold of his hand. “Come on, sweetheart. We’ve come this far. And it’s only a dog.”

“For Christ’s sake. Why don’t you paint some horses, too, while you’re at it? Then you’ll be able to ride downtown.”

“Trevor,” said Sissy, and her voice was stern. “Over forty people have already been killed, and if we don’t do something about it, a whole lot more are going to die, too.”

Trevor was about to answer when his cell warbled. He fished it out of his shirt pocket and said, “Trevor Sawyer.”

He listened, and nodded, and then he passed it over to Sissy. “It’s for you, Momma. Detective Bellman. Something really bad has happened.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Mask Hunt

A huge black traffic cop waved them through the police barrier on Seventh Street and told them to take a left on Vine and then a right on Sixth. They drew up to the curb outside the Giley Building and found Detective Bellman waiting for them on the steps outside.

Although it was still warm and humid, the sky was slate gray, and there were snakes’ tongues of lightning across the river to the southwest. Further up Race Street, at least ten ambulances were parked in a line with their emergency lights flashing, as well as cars and vans from the coroner’s office.

Detective Bellman opened the passenger door for them and helped Sissy to climb down.

“I was so shocked when you told me about Detective Kunzel,” she said. “That was one death I didn’t see coming.”

“We’re all shocked,” said Detective Bellman. “Mike Kunzel — it was like he was invulnerable, you know? Bulletproof, knifeproof. Deathproof.”

“No witnesses?”

Detective Bellman shook his head. “Like I told you on the phone, he said he had a call from Red Mask inviting him to meet him here. Red Mask even challenged him to bring as much backup as he wanted.”

“How many casualties?” asked Molly.

“Twenty-three, all told, including Mike. Twelve stabbed to death on the third parking level, six stabbed to death on the stairs between the fifth-and the sixth-level landings — that was a really frenzied attack, believe me. Another four fatally injured when the elevator dropped to the basement.”

Frank came around the SUV and nodded to Detective Bellman.

Sissy said, “Detective Bellman, this is my younger brother Frank.”

“Good to meet you,” said Detective Bellman. “Connecticut State Police, yes?”

Frank held up the eagle-crested badge that Molly had painted for him. “That’s right, Detective. Glad I’ve got the opportunity to help you out.”

Detective Bellman pointed up to the parking structure. “We’ve had more than seventy officers searching the parking levels roof to basement, and they found absolutely no sign of the perpetrators nowhere. Not even a footprint.”

“Anybody see them leave the parking structure after it was all over?”

“Nope. There’s an alley at the rear, but that was covered, and there’s no direct access from the parking structure to the Giley Building itself. There used to be a third-story walkway between the two of them, but they demolished it about three years ago for security and safety reasons.”

“How about the Giley Building itself? Have you searched that again?”

Detective Bellman shook his head. “It’s been locked and guarded ever since the last attack, so there’s no way that the perpetrators could have gotten back in there.”