Stealing Faces (24 page)

40

Wheelihan
 
watched the Lexus cruise past. He waited another twenty seconds, watching the car with no headlights as it approached in the green fog of the night scope.

A small car, subcompact, not new, in poor condition.

Lone occupant, hunched over the wheel, a smeared glow of green.

Close now.

Almost
 
here ...

Wheelihan
 
lifted his rover radio and scrambled his troops with a one-word command: “Go.”

Three pairs of high beams snapped on, bright fans of light crisscrossing the desert brush, and a moment later the dome lights burst into whirls of furious color.

The trio of patrol cars skidded around clumps of mesquite and careened onto the gravel road, then halted, forming a disorderly row that blocked both lanes. They waited there, garish in the pulsing varicolored light, but silent;
 
Wheelihan
 
had told his men to keep their sirens off.

The little car was still coming, confronted now by a barricade of steel.

For a tense moment
 
Wheelihan
 
wondered if Kaylie would stop and surrender peacefully, or panic and try to ram through the roadblock.

His men were ready for that eventuality. If Kaylie offered resistance, they were under orders to shoot.

Shoot to kill.

He didn’t want it to end that way, and so he was relieved when the subcompact slowed, brakes squealing, and finally stuttered to a stop a few yards from the blockade.

His men stayed in their vehicles, as they’d been told. Every one of them had his weapon sighted on the suspect huddled behind the wheel. From the ground by his feet,
 
Wheelihan
 
picked up an electronic bullhorn, a toy he’d rarely had the opportunity to use,

“Turn off your engine,” he said, speaking normally. It was a mistake to shout into one of these things.

There was a moment’s hesitation, and the little car shuddered as the motor died.

Good. Very good.

“Now raise your hands. Raise them where we can see them.”

Another pause. Then slowly two pale, trembling hands were lifted out of the shadows.

“Keep them raised. Do not move. You will not be harmed.”

His men were emerging from their vehicles now, first using the open doors for cover, then approaching fast and low, their guns leading them.

When the subcompact was surrounded,
 
Wheelihan
 
allowed himself to breathe.

“Got her,” he whispered.

He was still congratulating himself on a smooth operation, damn smooth, when Mel Baylor, who had missed his wife’s pot roast this evening, called out, “Chuck, we got a problem here.”

Problem?

Wheelihan
 
set down his bullhorn and hurried to the car, a battered and dented Toyota
 
Tercel
. As he drew near, he saw what the problem was. Yes, indeed.

Hunched in the front seat was the driver, who was not Kaylie McMillan, but instead a very large, very bald man blubbering like a child.

* * *

Cray reached the scene at a run, his medical bag swinging at his side, and found Walter standing in tears by the side of his car. He kept repeating two words, “Dr. Cray,” with imbecilic insistence.

“This guy seems to know you, Doc,”
 
Undersheriff
 
Wheelihan
 
said, disgust souring his voice.

Cray hated being called Doc. He pushed his irritation away.

“He’s a patient,” he said, trying to be calm, but afraid suddenly—terribly afraid of what Walter might say. “He lives at the institute. But he’s not confined there. He has a car, this car, and he runs errands.”

“Runs ’
em
 
at night? With his lights off?”

“That isn’t standard procedure, obviously. Let me speak with him.”

“He’s all yours.”

Cray hoped the
 
undersheriff
 
and his deputies would move away, afford him some privacy with Walter, but none of them moved.

Gingerly he touched the big man’s arm. “Walter,” he began in his best professional tone, “why don’t you tell me what’s happened here.”

“Got arrested,” Walter said, his eyes hollow with fear.

“No, you’re not under arrest. There’s been a misunderstanding. A mistake. Now, why were you out driving around after dark?”

A pendulous thread of mucus dangled from Walter’s left nostril. With an equine snort, he sniffed it back.

“Following you,” he whispered.

“I see. That’s why you had your headlights off. So I wouldn’t see you?”

“That’s right, Dr. Cray”

“Now, why was it so important to follow me?”

“Because of Kaylie. I thought you’d go looking for her, like
 
I—”

“Yes, I understand now.” It was imperative to cut off this dangerous line of discussion. “You asked me earlier today why the police had come by, and I told you about Kaylie. You were worried that I’d try to find her somehow. You were hoping to protect me.”

“Protect you.” Walter seized on these words, as Cray had hoped he would. “Yes, protect you, it’s all I wanted to do, just protect you, Dr. Cray.”

“That’s fine, Walter.”

“Because I know how dangerous she is.”

“Yes, fine.”

“She could hurt you. She tried to hurt—”

“That’s enough, Walter. We all understand you. You’re not in any trouble. You haven’t broken any laws.”

Wheelihan
 
coughed. “Well, Doc, he was driving without his headlights.”

Doc again. Cray was growing tired of this man. “Write up a ticket,” he snapped. “I’ll pay it for him.”

Walter’s lip trembled in the prelude to another sob.

The
 
undersheriff
 
looked at the big man, then at Cray, then shrugged. “Aw, to hell with it. I’m just pissed off, is all. I thought we had her. As it turns out, probably she was never even here.”

“She was here.
 
I—”
 
I felt her,
 
Cray almost said.
 
I sensed her presence with the tips of my nerve endings.
 
But he couldn’t say that. “I know her well enough to anticipate her behavior patterns. She came here tonight.”

Wheelihan
 
looked dubious. “Well, if so, she’s gone by now. All this commotion would’ve scared her off for sure.”

“Unless she wasn’t on this road, because she never meant to follow me in the first place.”

“The house, you mean?”

Cray nodded. Of course. It would be the house. Now that he thought about it, the house was the only thing that really made sense.

She hadn’t come here to kill him. She wasn’t a killer, not really, though neither Shepherd nor
 
Wheelihan
 
knew it. She had come for evidence—hard evidence, conclusive, impossible for the police to ignore.

His trophies.

That was what she was after, crafty Kaylie. The faces of his victims, the totems he had collected during twelve years of nocturnal sport, which she hoped to find in his residence while he was away.

“Yes ...” he murmured, and then remembering he was surrounded by people, he added more loudly, “yes, she’ll try to break into my house.”

41

Security at the Hawk Ridge Institute was tight. The hospital compound was entirely fenced in, patrolled by a small but vigilant guard detail. The front gate was monitored by a guard in a gatehouse.

But the gate across Cray’s private driveway was not monitored by anyone.

Elizabeth
 
had thought about that gate many times on the long nights when she watched Cray’s house. She thought of it again as she left her perch on the ridge and descended the foot trail to the fire road.

Her car was parked on the road, but she wouldn’t need it. She paused only long enough to stow her binoculars inside. Then she jogged down the winding road toward flatter ground. Had to hurry. She needed to be in position near the gate by the time Cray left for the evening.

When he departed, the gate would briefly swing wide, and for a few seconds the sealed perimeter of the institute would open just a bit.

She reached the main road, a strip of washboard gravel with no streetlights, illuminated only by the stars and the faint glow of the hospital complex.

At the roadside she paused. The director’s residence was directly across the way. She saw movement in a first-floor window. Cray, slipping past. Heading for the garage, it appeared. On his way out.

She crossed the road at a run, then hunkered down in the bushes at the edge of the driveway, ten feet from the spear-pointed gate with its elaborate
 
torsade
 
of wrought-iron curlicues.

There was nothing to do now but wait for Cray’s Lexus to emerge from the garage.

The night was still, the air velvety and fine. She wished she could be somewhere else, in the arms of a lover, perhaps, or swinging on a hammock on a veranda, a cool drink in her hand.

Instead she was crouching in the weeds like an animal, hunting the faces Cray collected like totems, like scalps.

The idea had come to her as she sat on the bus-stop bench with the crumpled newspaper in her hands.

The police had not believed her. Either the satchel had not persuaded them, or they had never received it. But suppose she found evidence they could not ignore. Evidence so compelling it could not be open to any possible doubt.

The faces.

She was sure Cray kept them. She could even guess how they would be preserved.

She could guess—because she had seen one, many years ago.

That one must be in Cray’s possession now, along with the others he had collected since.

How many victims? She couldn’t guess. Six or ten or
 
more....

A bevy of faces, skinned from their victims’ skulls, preserved like parchment, perhaps pressed like leaves between the pages of a book—or hanging from a wall, pasted under glass—or pinned on mounting boards, like prize butterflies.

He had them.

In his house, almost certainly. Where else would he keep his treasures?

They would be hidden away, safe from accidental discovery by a housekeeper or a dinner guest. She would need time to find them. From experience she knew that Cray, when on the prowl, would be gone for hours.

When he got back, his beauties would be gone.

And then? The next step?

She didn’t like to think about it. But there was only one thing she could do.

No phone call this time. No frantic pleading with an anonymous officer on the 911 line, who would dismiss her as a crank.

She would take her evidence directly to the police, take it in person. She would give herself up—Kaylie McMillan, wanted fugitive, desperado—surrender to the authorities, with the trophies as proof that she was not crazy and not a criminal.

And she simply would have to trust in the representatives of law and order to hear her out, to believe her at last.

Trust. A difficult idea to embrace, but she had no choice. She had gone nearly as far as she could on her own. She was tired. She was worn out. She needed to set down her burden, and she would.

After tonight.

At the far end of the driveway, the garage door rumbled open. Cray was leaving.

Elizabeth
 
peered through a veil of foliage and saw red taillights throwing dim cones of light through a haze of dust.

The Lexus backed out. She crouched lower.

Faint music reached her. An opera. Pretty.

Then the gracious notes were erased behind the low squeal of the gate, swinging wide in response to an electric eye within the grounds.

The gate was hinged on one side only, the side farthest from her. It opened with ponderous majesty, the iron spikes catching the taillights’ glow, dripping blood.

Still she didn’t move. She couldn’t risk Cray seeing her.

She squeezed herself compactly against the shrubbery, trying to blend in, wishing she hadn’t lost her luggage, because she would have liked to change into darker clothes that melded with the night.

The gate was wide open now, the Lexus easing through.

She saw Cray at the wheel, his face in profile, the glow of the dashboard filling in the hollows of his cheeks.

Was he thinking of her at this moment? Was he asking himself where she was hiding, where he might find her?

The Lexus emerged fully onto the road, its headlights bright, their spill creeping close to her hiding place.

If she was speared in the glare, would he see her? She thought he might. She bent lower, compressing herself into a tight, shivering huddle of fear.

Then the headlights swung away as the Lexus pivoted toward the open road.

She was safe.

But the gate was closing.

She uncoiled from her crouch and hurried forward, hugging the fence, staying low, still afraid Cray would glance back toward the driveway and glimpse a pale, moving shadow amid the bushes.

The Lexus started forward, down the road. A wisp of an aria reached her through the open window on the driver’s side, then trailed off into silence as the big black vehicle receded.

She was near the gate now, less than two yards away, but it was swinging shut too fast, and she didn’t think she could slip through in time.

Only a narrow gap was left between the leading edge of the gate and the masonry gate post, a post also topped with spikes to discourage intruders.

In a moment the gate would slip into place against the post, the latch fastening automatically, and she would be locked out.

She dived headlong for the opening, aware that if she misjudged her jump she would be caught between metal and stone, with a crushed leg or snapped ribs as her reward—immobilized, stuck here to wait for Cray’s return.

The ground came up fast and shocked her with its impact, and she heard iron squealing on its hinges on one side, felt cold stone on the other, and with a gasping effort she scrambled through, pulling both feet clear just before the gate clanged shut.

Made it.

She lay on the lawn near a flower bed, gulping air, wishing she were on the road to
San Antonio
right now. Then she raised herself to a half-crouch and carefully made her way down the driveway to the front of the house.

She had no idea how to break in. The last time she’d trespassed on somebody’s property, she had been on the run after escaping from this hospital. She’d found a truck in a farmer’s barn and hot-wired it, a skill she’d learned from Justin, of course—Justin, who knew so many things he shouldn’t have known.

Justin could have told her how to break into Cray’s house, if he were here, if he were alive, if she hadn’t shot him in the heart.

But of course, had she not shot him, she wouldn’t be on the trail of John Cray’s secrets. Had she not shot him, she would still be Kaylie McMillan and not Elizabeth Palmer or Paula Neilson or whoever she was now.

Anyway, there had to be some way in.

She tested the front door, hoping absurdly that it was unlocked. No luck, naturally. The front windows, too, were locked. Cray was careful.

Through the windows she could see his living room, part of the house that had not been visible from her vantage point on the ridge. She noted a fireplace, bookshelves, an overstuffed sofa and armchair, plush carpet, soft lighting, all the graces and amenities she had been denied in her long flight from what the world called justice.

But somewhere in this house there was the evidence that would take Cray’s comforts away from him, put him in a cell with a steel toilet and bunk beds.

The thought—the hope—buoyed her as she crept around the side of the residence, to the garage.

Somewhere close, a mockingbird announced its presence, running through a litany of bird calls. A breeze stirred the leafy branches of an arbor looming on her right. She smelled fresh-cut grass, a rarity in the desert.

Birds and trees and green lawns—she’d never imagined any of these things when she was imprisoned in this hospital, confined to a windowless isolation room in Ward C, the oldest ward, now abandoned to the deer mice and scorpions.

For her, there had been only concrete and steel, loneliness and terror, and the gibbering complaints of other patients down the hall.

The bird stopped singing. She heard a rustle of wings, and it was gone. Something had scared it off. A predator perhaps. The night was crowded with them.

There was a side door to the garage. She tested it. Like the front door and front windows, it was locked. But nearby, almost at eye level, was a window.

A broken window.

Elizabeth
 
stared at it, baffled. It was like an invitation to enter.

And suddenly she knew something was wrong.

She didn’t know what, precisely. She knew only that the window, open and welcoming, was a stroke of fortune too good to be believed.

She had learned suspicion over the past twelve years. She had learned to trust the tingle at the back of her neck, warning her of danger.

She felt that tingle now.

Get away, she told herself. Get away now, run, hide—

She turned from the window, and the lights came on.

Two lights from the arbor where the mockingbird had sung, the mockingbird that had not been scared off by any predator, except the human kind, the kind that hunted her.

Flashlights.

A pair of them, beams wavering through a scrim of leaves, and from the shadows—a voice.

“Don’t move, Kaylie. Just stay where you are.”