Stealing Faces

“I had no choice about it. He had backed me up against the garage wall, and he was closing in, and his eyes — I’ve never seen eyes like that, so wild and dangerous, tiger’s eyes.” She stared into some far distance, and Shepherd knew she was seeing those eyes now. “All I could do was grab a pistol off the gun rack. He always kept them loaded. I squeezed the trigger once, and it was so loud, the noise, and there was blood, a lot of blood, spraying me, my hands, all red….”

Her fingers interlaced, her wrists twisting.

“After that, I lost it. I just went away somewhere, and whatever I did, I was only going through the motions. When they found me in the desert, I was on my knees, crying, and I couldn’t say a word.”

“You were in shock, Kaylie. That’s all.”

“I thought I was insane. And when I heard all the evidence was gone, I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing — that maybe there never had been any woman’s face, that Justin hadn’t tried to kill me, that all of it was in my mind, and I’d killed him, murdered him, for no reason at all….” She took a breath, then added, “And Cray, of course — my therapist — Cray did his best to convince me that I was crazy. He told me I was a hopeless case, and there would never be a cure.”

“When did you start to suspect him as Justin’s accomplice?”

“Only later, after I’d escaped from Hawk Ridge. I asked myself if there was any way the evidence could have really existed and then vanished. There was only one answer. Justin had a partner — whoever he was meeting that night. And when Justin didn’t show up, his partner came to our house, found him dead, and cleaned out the garage so the police would find nothing incriminating.”

“You still didn’t know it was Cray.”

“No. I was never sure. Even after I read about Sharon Andrews — how she was found in the river, found without a face — even then, I didn’t know if Cray had been Justin’s accomplice, or if it was someone else, or if I really was deluding myself about the whole thing. But I knew Cray might be the one. Because at Hawk Ridge he’d hated me so much. And why would he hate me, unless I’d killed someone who mattered to him? He’s a loner — a lone wolf — but with Justin he found someone who understood him. Justin must have been the only person who ever meant anything to Cray. The one person he loved.”

Shepherd realized he was still holding the photograph. He took a last look at Rebecca Morgan, smiling into the abyss of her future, and then he slipped the photo back into the envelope and fastened its clasp.

“Well,” he said, “that wraps it up, I think. Case closed, after twelve years.”

“I guess so. I guess…” Then Kaylie lifted her head, playful annoyance furrowing her brow. “Hey. You’re still holding out on me. The air shaft — remember?”

Shepherd shrugged. “It’s getting late. You can wait another few days, can’t you?”

“Tell me, or I’ll get violent. I’m good at it. Ask that poor nurse I ambushed at Hawk Ridge.”

He smiled, giving in. “It’s less of a miracle than it might have seemed. See, I was looking for you. I knew Cray was on the hunt. Then I heard the noises he was making inside the abandoned ward. Animal cries, but it was no animal. I couldn’t unlock the doors, didn’t have any keys, but I remembered Cray telling me how you’d gotten out years ago through an air shaft. I figured I could get in the same way. I climbed to the roof, dropped into the vent — and saw you coming, with Cray right behind.” He shrugged. “That’s it.”

She nodded, absorbing this. “Thanks,” she said after a moment. “I just wanted to know.”

Shepherd could hear fatigue in her voice, and he knew he ought to depart, but he lingered, reluctant to leave her.

“They letting you out of here soon?” he asked.

“Couple days.”

“Then what?”

“I’ll stay with Anson for a while. Don’t know what I’ll do afterward. I have to get used to thinking of a long- term future, not just living moment to moment, on the run.”

“You’ll handle it.”

“Oh, sure.” She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking I might try to find a way to help other people like me. People on the street, with nowhere to turn.” A shrug. “I don’t know how. But it’s what I’d like to do.”

Shepherd thought of his wife’s computer, untouched for two years. Her project. A way to help people on the street.

“I might have an idea about that,” he said slowly.

“Do you?”

“I don’t know if you’d be interested. We can talk about it some other time. When you’re feeling all better.”

Still he didn’t go, and suddenly he knew why. There was something he had to say, something she deserved to hear.

“I should have listened to you, Kaylie. That night when I put you under arrest, you told me to look in Cray’s house. You told me.”

“You thought I was a psycho.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

Unexpectedly she smiled at him, a light and easy smile, girlish on her freckled face. “Roy, you’re the first person, other than Anson, who ever did listen to me in all this time. Not to mention that you saved my life. So don’t be too rough on yourself.”

“I’ll try not to be. And… thanks.”

“Anson feels the same way, incidentally. He wants to have you over for dinner once I’m staying with him.”

“I’d like that. I, uh, I’d like to see you again — if it’s all right.”

“Of course you can. You’ve got an idea for my future, remember? I want to hear it.” Her smile widened. “I need all the help I can get.”

Shepherd suddenly felt young, younger than he had since Ginnie’s death. The world was new again, a burden lifted.

“Well,” he said, “I’d better move along. You can get back to your book. What are you reading, anyway?”

He took a step closer to the table where the slim hardcover volume lay, and he read the title.

The Mask of Self.

Cray’s book.

“I asked Anson to bring it to me,” Kaylie said.

Shepherd stared at the book as if it were a spider. His voice was low and puzzled. “Why?”

“I wanted to understand Cray. I thought this might help.”

“Has it?”

“Yes. I think so.” She picked up the book and flipped idly through the pages. “Everything we ought to revere in people, he saw as an illusion. When you think that way, you shut off the best parts of yourself, and all that’s left is the animal inside.”

“He would say that’s all there is.”

“And look where it got him.” The book thumped on the table, released from her hand. “We have to believe there’s more to us than just instincts and chemicals. Even if we can’t prove it, even if it’s not even true, we can’t live any other way.”

*

The afternoon sun was golden on the desert when Shepherd drove back to Tucson. He let the highway flow under him, the Pinaleno range passing to the north, then dropping back as shadows lengthened.

Dusk would arrive soon, and the desert would stir with the prowling of the sly and hungry things that waited for the close of day. They were all around him, even now. They were always there, and always waiting. Sharon Andrews had fallen to one of their number, as had Rebecca Morgan and the rest.

Ginnie too. Shepherd tightened his grip on the wheel, thinking of Timothy Fries with his rusty knife and his insanity.

His wife had fallen in the same kind of fight, victim of the same darkness.

Instincts and chemicals. If Cray was right, if that was all Ginnie had been — all any of them had been — then life was only accident and pain, and the predators had won already, and would always win.

But perhaps there was something more. Something not to be lost, even in the dark. Something a knife’s