Stealing Faces (10 page)

16

Elizabeth
drove three miles on the freeway, until the crowded part of town was behind her. She considered taking the
Speedway Boulevard
exit, but decided to go a little farther.

At
Grant Road
, a mile north of
Speedway
, she exited, heading east. Within two blocks she found a Circle K convenience store. Two phone kiosks were stationed at the side of the building, away from the main entrance.

Perfect.

She wondered if she was reckless to try this. It would be safer to simply mail the satchel to the police.

But mailing it would take more time. She was determined to have Cray arrested as soon as possible. Today, even.

He was a monster, and she wanted him caged.

She parked a block away from the convenience mart—close enough so she could run to her car after making the call, but not so close that somebody loitering near the phones might happen to see the
Chevette
 
and link it to her.

Her luggage was in the hatchback compartment.

She opened the larger suitcase and found her winter gloves, pulling them on.

No fingerprints on the phone handset.

She was thinking of everything. This would be an error-free performance. It had to be.

She shouldered her purse and picked up the satchel. Her heart was drumming fast, and the air seemed very hot, but she was all right. She was going to do this and do it perfectly, no mistakes.

Halfway to the phone she stopped with a sudden thought. Slowly she opened the satchel, and inside she found her photo album, twenty-eight pictures of herself in various guises throughout the years, and alongside it, the manila envelope containing the false documentation she had purchased or created.

She’d nearly forgotten about those items. Nearly left the satchel for the police with her photos and her phony birth certificates inside.

“Oh, Christ, Elizabeth,” she whispered, feeling something worse than fear—a kind of disorienting embarrassment, a sense of humiliation so deep it was almost physical pain.

She hurried back to the car. In the driver’s seat she fumbled open the satchel and took out the damn photo album and the damn envelope, and then she searched it thoroughly with her gloved hands, checking to be sure nothing else of hers was in there.

When she was done, she checked again. She no longer trusted herself.

Wallace Zepeda had been right. This was too much, this burden she carried. It was making her—

—
crazy
—

—a nervous wreck, and she couldn’t bear up under it much longer.

* * *

Cray passed the exit for downtown without slowing. Kaylie wouldn’t go into the heart of the city. Too much traffic. Too great a risk of encountering a delay after she had made her call.

The next major street was
Speedway
. He got off there, heading west for six blocks, looking for the
 
Chevette
.

Nothing.

This was hopeless. He would never find her. She would call, and even though the police would surely be skeptical, a squad car would be dispatched to pick up the package she had left.

Squad car.

Of course.

Cray pulled onto the roadside and opened his glove compartment, hoping fervently that Kaylie McMillan, clever as she was, had not thought to look inside and clean out its contents.

She hadn’t. The police-band transceiver was still there.

Six of the channels were preset to Tucson PD frequencies. He activated the scan mode, dialing the volume high. Coded cross talk chattered over the speaker. If the patrol unit had not yet been dispatched, he might hear the call go out.

The scanner, roaming among the various frequencies, buzzed and chirruped with ten-codes and half-intelligible inquiries and responses. He listened for the particular assignment he was waiting for.

Obviously there was a chance Kaylie had gone outside city limits, in which case the call would be handled by a sheriff’s department cruiser. Cray wasn’t monitoring those bands; he couldn’t listen to a dozen channels at once.

Or, if she had called already, he might have missed the dispatcher’s signal. Or the assignment could have been conveyed electronically via the mobile computers installed in
 
TPD
 
cars. Perhaps even now the police had the satchel in their hands, and an evidence technician was examining each separate, incriminating item.

He pulled back into traffic and made a U-turn, then headed east on
Speedway
.
 
He would travel it for a mile or two beyond the freeway. If he still hadn’t found her car, he would continue north.
 

Grant Road
was the next exit. Maybe he would find her there.

* * *

Elizabeth
almost got out of the car again, and then in an excess of self-doubt she opened the satchel and checked its contents one last time.

She was sure there was something she’d forgotten. But no, it was all here.

Chloroform. Duct tape. Smelling salts. Pocket flashlight. Locksmith tools. Glass cutter. Suction cup. Spare clip for the gun. And the knife in its sheath.

Okay. She was set. She was ready to go.

No, she wasn’t.

Cray’s ignition key. That was the item she’d overlooked.

The key to the Lexus was the one item that could be definitively connected to Cray. And it was still in the pocket of her blouse.

“You’re cracking up,” she told herself, and she wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not.

If she could overlook so many obvious details, what else was she failing to see? Maybe she ought to wait, have some breakfast. She hadn’t eaten since—when?—since yesterday afternoon, actually. She could find a coffee shop, have some eggs, some coffee. Clear her head.

That was the smart thing to do, but she knew it wasn’t a real option. She had to get this over with. Her fear would only get worse the longer she delayed.

She found the key in her pocket and placed it in the satchel, then carefully knotted the drawstring.

This time she was ready.

She looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Her pale, frightened face.

“Ready,” she said, confirming the fact, just in case there was any doubt.

Out of the car again. She approached the convenience store. The two phones at the side of the building were both unused at the moment. Good.

She checked out the street. No patrol cars. She looked through the glass wall of the store. No cops inside. Not even a security guard, from what she could tell.

Better and better.

She placed the satchel on the ground below the kiosk, pushing it against the brick wall of the building to hide it from a casual observer. Then she lifted the telephone handset in her gloved hand.

Calling the police. She was really doing it, really calling the police.

She took a breath, fighting for composure, and then with a trembling finger she stabbed three digits.

A long ring. Another.

She was shaking so hard she could barely breathe.

A third ring, cut off early as a businesslike male voice came on the line.

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

* * *

The bitch wasn’t on
Speedway
.

Cray had covered the wide, well-traveled boulevard in two directions. Twice he’d seen a red hatchback that might have been the
 
Chevette
, but both times the sighting had been a false alarm.

At the corner of Grant and Campbell he hooked north. Returning to I-10 would take too long. He would take
Campbell
to
Grant Road
and head west.

On the passenger seat, the transceiver stuttered and crackled, his lifeline to the police—and just possibly his last hope.

17

“I’m calling with information,”
 
Elizabeth
said, her
 
mouth pressed close to the handset, “about Sharon Andrews, the woman who was killed in the
White Mountains
.
 
I know who did it.”

“All right,” the man on the other end said in a low, neutral tone.

She’d heard that tone before, though she wasn’t quite sure where.

“His name is John Cray.” She spelled it. “He lives in Safford. Just outside Safford, I mean. Lives there and works there.”

The words had come out in curiously disjointed blocks of speech. She had rehearsed this conversation many times, but now she couldn’t remember a single thing she’d meant to say.

“Go on,” the man said.

If he was impatient or skeptical, he hid it well. He sounded interested, open to whatever she might say. A calm, reassuring, practiced voice, a doctor’s voice ...

Then she remembered where she’d encountered that tone before. It was the quiet, unstressed monotone a psychiatrist used when humoring a difficult patient.

For a moment she froze up, old memories blasting her like a cold wind, and she couldn’t say anything.

“Ma’am?” the 911 operator prompted.

“John Cray,” she said again, just to kick her mind into gear. “He killed Sharon Andrews.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because he tried to kill me, too.”

No, God, that had come out wrong. It sounded paranoid, delusional.

“Tried to kill you?” the man asked with the faintest lilt of skepticism.

“I’ve been watching him, following him.” Still all wrong. She could hear the desperate craziness in her words. “No, look, forget about that. It doesn’t matter how I know. All right? It doesn’t matter....”

She was screwing up, blowing it. If she got this wrong, she might never have another chance. Cray would go on killing, and she couldn’t stop him, couldn’t do anything.

There was too much at stake, and she was too scared. After what she’d been through last night, she wouldn’t have thought she could ever be scared again, but here she was, in a state of stupid panic over a phone call.

Eyes shut, she fought for calm.

“I’m sorry to sound so flustered,” she said softly. “This is hard for me.”

“Of course it is.”

There it was again, that psychiatrist’s voice of his. She hated that voice. It mocked her, and without thinking she snapped, “Damn it, I’m not crazy.”

Shit.

That was exactly the sort of thing a crazy person would say.

She was messing up so badly. She’d had no idea she could be such a fool.

“No one’s suggesting—” the man began, but she cut him off.

“Cray drives a black Lexus sport-utility vehicle. If you look at it, you’ll see it’s pretty banged up. I drove it through the desert to escape from him.”

“You were in the desert?”

“Yes, he took me there. He always takes his victims into the wilderness. Mountains, desert—he
 
hunts
 
them. It’s a sport for him. He lets them go, and he tracks them, hunts them down like animals. It’s what he was going to do to me, but ... but I got away.”

This sounded rather unlikely even to her.

“I have proof,” she added.

“What sort of proof?” The voice sounded almost bored now.

Had he already dismissed her as a nut? Maybe she shouldn’t have called 911. Maybe it would have been smarter to try talking to one of the detectives. Or a desk officer. Maybe ...

“A bag,” she said. “A satchel. Cray’s satchel—I took it from him. It’s got all his stuff, the stuff he uses to break into places and kidnap women. There’s some ammunition in it, and a knife. The knife he used on Sharon Andrews and the others. And the ignition key to the Lexus. It’s all in here, the proof you need, and all you have to do is come and get it.”

“Perhaps you could bring it in.”

“I’m leaving it for you. Here, at this phone. You already know where I’m calling from. You do an instant trace on nine-one-one calls.”

“Actually, our trace equipment is malfunctioning at the moment. If you could tell me your location ...”

This had to be a lie, and why would he lie to her, if not to buy time?

The squad car had already been dispatched. It was coming.

Coming right now.

“Ma’am?”

Elizabeth
 
slammed down the handset, and then she was running to her car.

* * *

Cray was cruising west on
Grant Road
in heavy traffic, scanning the roadside for a parked
 
Chevette
, when the call came over the transceiver.

“Mary Twelve”—the dispatcher was calling for a patrol unit—“requesting a ten-twenty.”

“Uh, we’re at Oracle and Prince,” the unit answered.

“Okay, we need you to make contact with a female RP at a pay phone. Circle K store.
Grant and Fifteenth Avenue
. This is a code two incident, code two.”

“Ten-four.”

An RP was a reporting person.

It was Kaylie. Had to be.

Cray locked in that channel on the radio, then accelerated, weaving between two cars into a clear stretch of road.
Fifteenth Avenue
was twenty blocks away. Near the interstate.

She was calling from a phone at a convenience store, and she meant to make a quick escape and leave the satchel for the cops to find.

The plan might work. He wasn’t sure he could beat the squad car to the scene.

“Mary Twelve, we got some additional information on that RP. She’s not expecting to be contacted. Nine-one’s holding her on the line. It’s a—sounds like it could be a disturbed individual.”

“Ten-four.”

Disturbed individual. Cray smiled at that diagnosis as he maneuvered from lane to lane, blowing past slower traffic.

Ahead, the stoplight at
First Avenue
cycled to red, stopping a logjam of cars. He couldn’t afford to be stuck at the light. With a spin of the wheel, he whipped into the right lane and cut north on First, then veered west on the first side street.

He sped through a residential neighborhood, past rows of one-story homes with dirt yards and RVs in the driveways.

“ETA, Mary Twelve?” the dispatcher asked.

“ETA in two minutes.”

Two minutes.

It would be close.

The next major street was
Stone Avenue
. Traffic was running
 
north and south, but he skidded into a gap, southbound, and immediately hooked onto Grant again, racing west.

“Mary Twelve, we got a nine-one hang-up on that RP.”

She’d fled.

“ETA one minute,” the patrol unit responded.

They were still hoping to catch her.

Probably they wouldn’t succeed, but they would find the package she had left for them—unless Cray found it first.

He looked ahead. Coming up was
Oracle Road
, the six-lane highway
 
he’d taken last night when he followed the
 
Chevette
 
south from the foothills.

A red light at that intersection would last a good two minutes, and he would have no chance.

The light was green as he approached, but the DON’T WALK sign was solid red, and he knew a change was coming.

Yellow.

He floored the gas, and his tachometer buzzed into the danger zone.

The car in front of him was stopping, damn it, and the lane to his left was jammed.

On the shoulder, then.

He swung the wheel, and the Lexus bounded around the slowing traffic and streaked through the intersection under a red light. Somewhere a horn blared.

Close now.
Fifteenth Avenue
was within sight.

The Circle K appeared in waves of shimmering heat, a mirage of hope.

Patrol car? He didn’t see one. Not yet.

Then he saw a flash of red shoot away from the curb a block past the Circle K, and he knew it was the hatchback with Kaylie McMillan at the wheel.

For an insane moment all he wanted to do was follow the little car, yes, follow it at a distance, unseen, follow until Kaylie thought she was safe, and when she pulled over—

Grab her. Take her away. Kill her slowly. And at the climax, lift her face from her skull, his greatest prize.

But he couldn’t do that.

The satchel was what mattered.

She must have left it by the phone.

The
 
Chevette
 
disappeared down the road, streaking toward the freeway, and Cray let it go.

Cutting speed, he hauled the Lexus into the Circle
 
K’s
 
parking lot and killed the engine.

Then he was out and looking around desperately for a pay phone. None was in sight. But there had to be one here. At the side of the building, perhaps. He checked one side—nothing. Ran to the other.

Two phone kiosks, neither in use.

The satchel, where was the satchel?

There. On the ground beneath the nearer phone.

He seized it, then looked outside and saw a Tucson PD Crown
Victoria
roll into the lot.

They were here.

And he was trapped at the side of the building with the evidence in his hands.

The store’s brick wall loomed on his left. A hurricane fence, too high to climb, faced him to his right.

Directly ahead of him, the two cops were getting out of the car.

He could ambush them, kill them both.

Except he couldn’t. He’d left his Glock in the Lexus.

Anyway, the bitch would have mentioned his name over the phone. Killing these two errand boys would serve no purpose except to confirm her story.

Run, then.

He turned and sprinted toward the rear of the store, the satchel thudding against his hip. Between the back wall and the fence protecting the adjacent vacant lot, there was a narrow gap, barely wide enough to squeeze through.

Cray eased into the gap and came up against a clutter of planks and cinder blocks, the remnants of some minor construction job, thrown back here and forgotten. The mess was high enough to block his path. He couldn’t advance.

Breathing hard, he hugged the wall and listened as the cops came around to the phones.

“—said there was some kind of bag she left,” one of them was saying.

“What are we, UPS, picking up parcels?”

“I’m just telling you what it said on the MDT.”

Mobile Data Terminal. The squad car’s computer. A fuller explanation must have been transmitted electronically, and the cop riding shotgun had read it while his partner drove.

“Well,” the driver said, “I don’t see any damn bag.”

“She was probably a mental case anyway.”

“Did they say what kind of bag?”

“Nah.”

“Like a shopping bag? Or a suitcase?”

“They just said bag. What difference does it make? Nothing’s here.”

There was a pause, long enough to let Cray think they had gone away, and then the driver said, “Think she could’ve taken off around back?”

“We can check it out.”

Cray stiffened.

They would come back here and find him boxed in by a wall and a fence and a mound of discarded refuse.

He untied the satchel’s drawstring. Reaching in, he touched the leather sheath of his knife. He could kill one of them, at least, before the other opened fire.

It was better to go out that way than to be carted off to prison, a freak and a laughingstock.

“Ah, fuck it.” That was the driver. “I’m getting too old for this shit. Let’s get out of here.”

“We can ask in the store if they saw anything.”

“Let’s just go,” the driver said, then added in his radio voice, “Mary Twelve.”

He was on his portable, calling in. Cray heard a soft sizzle of static, then the driver again, his words fainter as the two cops walked away.

“The RP is
GOA
." Gone on arrival.
 
“Negative on the ten-thirty-one.... Yeah, she didn’t leave anything behind.... We’re code four here.”

Cray did not move until he heard the double slam of the squad car’s doors. Then he stepped out from behind the wall. Hidden in shadow at the rear of the alley, he watched the car pull out of the parking lot into the traffic stream on
Grant Road
. Finally he exhaled a
 
slow breath and lowered his head.