Death Mask

reached the twenty-third floor, she began to feel the faintest of tingling sensations, and her closed eyes were gradually suffused with opalescent light.

She rose higher, to the twenty-fourth floor. There was no question about it: Victoria was here, on the twenty-fifth floor, almost directly above her. She could sense her, almost as if she could actually reach out and stroke her hair. She could see her — a pale, flickering outline, with two dark smudges for eyes.

Victoria, it’s Grandma. We’re here. We’re coming to find you.

Grandma? Where are you? I’m so scared, Grandma.

Don’t say a word, sweetheart. Stay where you are. Don’t let on that you can hear me.

He says he wants to kill us, Grandma. He says he wants to stab us and stab us and chop us into bits.

Don’t you worry, Victoria. We won’t let him hurt you, I promise. Just hold on.

She let herself sink back down again, down to the lobby. She opened her eyes. Molly was standing right beside her, biting her thumbnail with anxiety.

“Did you find her?” asked Molly. “Is she here? Oh, please tell me you’ve found her!”

“Twenty-fifth floor,” said Sissy. “It feels to me like he’s shut her up someplace dark.”

“He hasn’t hurt her, has he?”

“He’s threatened her — but, no, he hasn’t hurt her.”

All this time, Deputy had been snuffling around the lobby. When he arrived at the center elevator, he let out a single sharp bark.

“Are the elevators working now?” asked Sissy.

“I hope so,” said Detective Bellman. “I don’t want a repeat experience of yesterday. I get claustrophobia in the Tower Place Mall, let alone an elevator car with seven overweight cops in it.”

“Well. either we risk the elevator or we have to climb the stairs,” said Sissy. “And I, for one, am not going to climb those stairs again. I don’t have many breaths left in this life, and I don’t want to use them all up in one day.”

The indicator light showed that the elevator was up on the seventeenth floor. Frank pressed the button, and the lights gradually began to descend: thirteen — eleven — nine — seven.

Detective Bellman unholstered his gun and said, “Let’s stay well back, shall we? Seeing as how this Red Mask character has a penchant for rushing out with his knives going like Edward Scissorhands.”

With an arthritic groan, the elevator arrived at lobby level and the doors shuddered open. Detective Bellman cocked his gun and jabbed it into the elevator car, but there was nobody in there.

“Okay, folks. Let’s do it.”

They stepped onto the elevator. Frank had his thumb on the button for the twenty-fifth floor when they heard an echoing shout of “Wait!” It was Trevor, pushing his way through the revolving door. He jogged across the lobby and joined them, panting almost as hard as Deputy.

“Sorry — traffic. Is Victoria here?”

Sissy pointed straight upward. “Top floor. Red Mask has her locked up someplace. That’s what it feels like, anyhow. He hasn’t hurt her.”

“I’m going to kill him,” said Trevor. “I mean that. Painting or no painting, I’m going to rip his goddamned head off.”

Frank glanced across the elevator car at Sissy and raised his eyebrows. Neither of them had ever heard Trevor talk so ferociously before. But then, Trevor’s family had never been threatened before, not like this.

The elevator rose painfully slowly, with its mechanism grinding and squeaking, and it hesitated at every floor, and lurched, even though its doors stayed shut. None of them spoke as they rose higher and higher, although Deputy was growing increasingly agitated and kept jumping up on his hind legs and clawing at the doors.

At last they reached the twenty-fifth floor. The doors opened, and they cautiously stepped out. The offices were in darkness, and when Sissy saw the sign on the reception area she realized why: HAMILTON PHOTO PROCESSING, INC. All of the photographic equipment had been removed, but the windows were still blacked out, with only a few scratches to show that it was sunny outside.

There was a sour smell of developing fluids, and something else, too. Something rotten, like a dead animal.

Deputy wasn’t put off by the gloom. He circled around the reception area, sniffing and wuffling, and then suddenly he began to pull Frank along the corridor off to their right.

Sissy followed close behind. She couldn’t sense Red Mask at all, but she could feel Victoria. It was almost as if she could hear her singing, in another room.

“Left,” she said, although she didn’t need to, because Deputy was already tugging Frank around to the left. He was straining even harder on his leash, so that he sounded as if he were strangling.

The corridor was lined with black-and-white framed photographs of thunderstorms and city skylines and women half concealed in shadow. At the very end of it, there was a black door marked “Darkroom.” Deputy rushed straight up to it and barked, and wouldn’t stop barking.

“Sissy?” said Frank.

“Victoria’s in there,” said Sissy. “She’s right on the other side of that door.”

Frank wound Deputy’s leash more tightly around his fist. “Trouble is, so is Red Mask.”

“What do we do now?” asked Molly. “We have to get her out of there! Victoria! Victoria! It’s Mommy!”

Frank touched his finger to his lips to quiet her. “All we can do is play it his way for now.”

Trevor said, “I think we should kick the goddamned door down and rush him. Come on, there are three of us, right? — and only one of him.”

“There were ten SWAT officers, Trevor, and two FBI agents, and only two of him.”

“Dad — that’s our daughter in there! And that’s your granddaughter, too! We can’t just leave her in there with that psycho!”

Abruptly, Deputy stopped barking and backed away from the darkroom door. Detective Bellman unholstered his gun and cocked it again.

“What is it, boy?” Frank asked him. “What’s wrong?”

They heard a key turning in the lock, and the darkroom door swung open. Deputy’s fur bristled and he lowered his head and growled. Inside the darkroom, only a red lamp was shining, so that at first they could see nothing more than a silhouette. A bulky silhouette, with a squarish head. But in front of this silhouette, there was a smaller, paler figure.

“Well, well, well,” said Red Mask, thickly. “So you came in force, Molly? You brought your own little army?”

“Give me back my daughter!” Molly screamed at him. She tried to lunge forward, but Trevor took hold of her arm and held her back. “Give me back my daughter, you monster!”

Detective Bellman said, “Hands on your head, mister! Drop whatever weapons you’re carrying, and down on your knees!”

“I don’t think so,” said Red Mask. With that, he stepped out of the darkroom into the corridor, pushing Victoria out in front of him. He was gripping her left shoulder and holding one of his butcher knives across her throat.

“Always such a waste, don’t you think, to spill a child’s blood? Think of all the years they might have had. But revenge is revenge, Molly. And justice is blind. No rest for the wicked, don’t you know. No mercy for the innocent, neither.”

“Let her go,” Molly whispered. “Please let her go.”

Victoria looked very pale, and her eyelashes were stuck together with dried tears. But Red Mask was holding his knife so close to her throat that she couldn’t lower her chin and she didn’t dare to speak.

“You created me, Molly. You drew me in the image of a real man. So I am that man, and a man is an independent being, sacred unto God, no matter how he was created. So you have no right — you have no right — to come hunting for me with this dog of yours, and these raggle-taggle friends of yours — seeking to destroy me.”

Red Mask was breathing deeply now and working himself up into a righteous rage. “What you