Stealing Faces (30 page)

No one would ever find evidence of amphetamine poisoning or a massive dose of sedative administered immediately prior to death. No one who mattered would ever suspect a thing.

“You cost me a great deal, Kaylie,” Cray whispered to the crowd of faces that were his silent audience. “More than you know. Now you’ll pay the price.”

50

In the hall, the squeak of rubber-soled shoes.

Kaylie knew that sound. The night nurse, whose name tag read CUNNINGHAM, had left her station and was coming this way.

“Talk to her,” she murmured, “Make her understand.”

It won’t work,
 
Justin said coldly.
 
Nobody’ll
 
listen to a sad little piece of shit like you.

Kaylie ignored him. She had to get the nurse to listen. Cray had promised to be back after nightfall, and although she couldn’t judge the time of day in her windowless room, she knew from the crawl of hunger in her belly that evening had drawn near.

She had no idea how he would gain entrance, what subterfuge he would use, no idea how he would end her life and how he expected to cover it up. But she knew he would find a way.

Since Cray’s departure she had not moved from the floor. Now she struggled to her feet, dizzy with the effort, while the voices of Anson and Justin blended in a singsong mockery of her failing strength.

Weak as a baby.... She’s always been weak.... Running scared, hiding like a mouse in one cubbyhole or another.... Weaklings never last, not in this world....

She staggered under the deluge of insults. For a moment she could only sway on unsteady legs, the room blurring around her.

Then she saw the nurse pass by the plate-glass window in the door, and a sudden fear that she had missed her chance drove her across the room in two steps. She pounded the glass.

“Nurse! Nurse Cunningham!
 
Nurse!”

The shoes stopped squeaking. A momentary silence. Then with surprising abruptness the small window filled with Nurse Cunningham’s face, a face both stern and sad.

“Yes, Kaylie?” Spoken through the glass.

“I need to talk to you.” That was good, it had come out fine, it had sounded calm and lucid.

“Go ahead.”

“Can you open the door?”

“I’m afraid not.” Hesitation. “I saw what you did to Dr. Cray. That was bad, Kaylie. You mustn’t keep misbehaving like that.”

Cray? What had she done to him? Oh, yes, scratched his cheek—a few lines of blood, quickly dabbed up with a handkerchief.

“I need your help,” Kaylie whispered.

The nurse tapped her ear impatiently, and Kaylie realized the words had been inaudible through the glass.

She repeated herself more loudly. “I need your help.”

“We all want to help you.”

“No, that’s not true. Dr. Cray doesn’t want to help me. He wants to kill me.”

“Oh, Kaylie.” No trace of belief in the nurse’s voice, only a tired pity.

“It’s true. I know it sounds ... I know you think I’m ... But I’m not.”

She had been in this situation before, she was sure of it—insisting she wasn’t crazy, warning of the danger Cray posed, and hearing only patronizing solicitude....

The 911 call. Yes. This was like that.

Time had passed, things had happened, but nothing ever changed.

No one listened. No one believed. No one cared. No one could be counted on. No one anywhere, ever.

“It’s
 
true!”
 
she screamed in a rush of uncontainable frustration, and suddenly she was beating her fists on the glass and weeping. “It’s
 
true,
 
why won’t anybody help me, what’s wrong with all you people, what’s the
 
matter
 
with you?”

“That’s enough!”

Nurse Cunningham barked the command, startling Kaylie into stillness.

“Now,” the nurse added more gently, “just get hold of yourself. I know what the problem is, and I’ve taken steps to fix it.”

Kaylie heard this without comprehension. “Steps?” she echoed blankly.

“It’s the medicine you’re taking. It doesn’t seem to work at this dosage. But I’ve spoken with Dr. Cray, and he’s agreed to consider lowering the dose, starting tomorrow. That should help you, Kaylie. If it doesn’t, we’ll try something else.”

Kaylie lowered her head, worn out. “He was lying,” she said softly, no longer caring if the nurse could hear. “He knows I’ll be dead tomorrow.”

“You won’t be dead, Kaylie. You’re just imagining things, that’s all.”

“Don’t let him in my room.”

“Kaylie—”

“That’s all I’m asking.” She looked through the window again, trying one last time to reach the nurse. “Just for tonight. Don’t let him in my room.”

“There’s no reason Dr. Cray would be visiting your room tonight.”

“But if he shows up—don’t let him see me.”

“He won’t show up.”

“Don’t let him see me.”

The nurse looked away, fatigue written in the puffy flesh under her eyes, the slack muscles of her face. “Dr. Cray is the director of the institute,” she answered tonelessly. “If he needs to see you, Kaylie, of course I have to let him.”

No hope then.

No chance.

Told you,
 
Justin chortled, but Kaylie barely heard.

“All right,” she mumbled, surrendering.

“I have to check on another patient. Okay?”

“Go ahead.” The nurse began to move away, when Kaylie added for no reason, “After I’m dead, you’ll know he did it.”

Nurse Cunningham frowned sadly. “Kaylie, don’t think that way. It doesn’t help you to get better.”

“After I’m dead,” Kaylie repeated stubbornly, “you’ll know.
 
He
 
did it. Remember that. Will you remember that, at least?”

“Dr. Cray would never hurt you, Kaylie. He would never hurt anyone.”

Kaylie sagged. She pressed her face against the glass, feeling its cold kiss.

“You bitch,” she whispered. “Stupid, stupid bitch.”

“I’m sorry,” Nurse Cunningham said from what seemed like a great distance.

Kaylie didn’t respond.

“Your dinner will be here shortly,” the nurse added, as if this would make everything better.

“Don’t want dinner.”

“You need to eat. You had no breakfast, no lunch.”

“Not hungry,” she said, though she was.

“I hate to see you starve yourself, Kaylie.”

Cray was going to kill her, win his final victory, and all this prattling idiot could think about was food.

Last meal for the condemned,
 
Justin said.

Don’t turn it down,
 
Anson advised.
 
If you’re not hungry, girl—we are.

Laughter from them both.

“Shut up,” she said weakly.

The nurse assumed the comment was aimed at her. “Fine, then,” she said stiffly. “If that’s the way you want to be, we won’t bring you any dinner. You’ll be ready to eat by morning, I’ll bet.”

There would be no morning. But Kaylie knew it was pointless to say so.

The nurse lingered another moment, perhaps expecting Kaylie to reconsider, but Kaylie was silent, leaning disconsolately against the door.

“Sometimes,” Nurse Cunningham said finally, “I wonder why I even try.”

Her shoes squeaked again as she stalked off down the hall. Kaylie heard her go.

It was the sound of hope retreating ... fading ... gone.

The nurse would not stop Cray. No one would stop him.

You’re dead, girl,
 
Anson said, and Justin added,
 
As dead as me.

They kept talking, saying awful things.

Kaylie turned away from the door and stumbled to the bed and fell on it, her fist jammed in her mouth, her whole body shaking as she contracted into a fetal curl.

This wasn’t happening. None of it was real. It couldn’t be. Cray and Nurse Cunningham and this room and the bed with rubber sheets and the steel toilet in the corner—all of it—this cramped and dismal universe she inhabited alone—it was a fake conjured by her mind, a cell that existed in imagination only, and if she concentrated hard enough, if she wished very hard, like a child wishing for a visit from Santa, then maybe it would all go away and she would be free.

But she knew she could never be free, not really. There was no exit from this nightmare, no escape from Cray ... except the one he himself had pointed out.

She lifted her head, blinking at the harsh overhead bulb in its wire cage, and then slowly her gaze traveled to the air vent in the ceiling, the grille fastened to the frame.

For a long time she stared at it while a thought took shape, a thought floating in space, offered for her inspection and approval.

Kaylie sat very still, contemplating that thought.

For once the voices were gone. There was silence inside her and around her, the hurricane’s serene eye, and in that calm place she was herself again, at least for the moment.

She saw her situation plainly.

And she knew that there was only one way out. One plan that could work. One chance, and one hope.

Strip the sheet from the bed, then tie a knot ...

A sli
pknot.

With a trembling hand she touched the rubber sheet. It was smooth and cool between her thumb and forefinger.

How would it feel, wrapped around her neck and drawn taut as she dangled, dangled ... ?

“No,” she murmured, “I can’t.”

But she had to.

If she didn’t, Cray would come, and he would kill her.

Could she give him that final victory? After everything he had done to her, could she allow him the obscene triumph of taking her life by his own hand?

This new thought of hers was the only alternative, her only choice.

If she dared to do it.

If she had the will.

The strength.

Time for you to go, Kaylie,
 
said a voice that seemed oddly familiar, not at all threatening—a gentle, persuasive voice. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own.

Slowly she nodded.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s time for me to go.”

All right, then. Do it.

Now—quickly—before the nurse returned for the day’s last injection.

Kaylie rose from the bed with a sleepwalker’s unselfconscious grace and, moving fast but with no sense of strain, began to strip the top sheet from the bed.

“Yes,” she was saying in a quiet monotone. “Yes, it’s time. It’s time. It’s time, at last, for me to go.”

51

Shepherd found Anson McMillan in an unfenced desert lot at the rear of his house, an ax in his hands, logs of mesquite scattered on the ground.

The sun was low over the
 
Pinaleno
 
range, the sky burning with fever. Shepherd had expected to find Kaylie’s father-in-law indoors, perhaps fixing a leisurely dinner or nursing a beer in a frosted glass—not splitting mesquite cords while his lank gray hair dripped with sweat.

He watched the ax rise, then drop in a gleaming arc to bisect another dark brown trunk. Then he took a step forward and lifted his hand in a wave.

“Mr. McMillan?”

The older man wrenched the ax head free of the wood before looking up with unhurried curiosity. His face was square and tan, bristling with a silver mat of beard. He stood for a moment, the ax half-raised like a weapon, and then he remembered courtesy and lowered it to his side.

“That’s me,” he said, his soft, growling baritone traveling easily across the few yards of prickly pear and
 
agave
 
that separated him from his visitor. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m Detective Roy Shepherd,
 
Tucson
 
police.”

“
 
Tucson
?” McMillan digested this. “You helped arrest her, didn’t you?”

Shepherd almost asked how he knew, then recalled that the local paper had given the story extensive coverage. Though he had not granted any interviews, his name had been mentioned.

“I did,” he answered. “Now I’ve come to talk with you about her.”

McMillan let the ax fall. He wiped his hands on a flap of his denim shirt. “What for?” he asked.

“
Undersheriff
 
Wheelihan
 
tells me you’re concerned about Kaylie. I’d like to know why.”

“It’s a long way to come, just to chat about a girl who’s already locked up. You city cops must have a lot of time on your hands.”

Shepherd took this with a smile. “Could be. It looks like you’re putting your time to good use, anyway. Laying up firewood for the winter?”

“Hell, no.” McMillan surprised him by looking at the cut logs in disgust. “I hardly ever start a fire. Got good electric heat. I’m doing this”—his shoulders slumped—“just because I need to work it off somehow.”

“Work what off?”

“The frustration. My damn lawyer says it’ll be a couple of days before he gets me in to see her. A couple of days ... Somehow I think that might be too long.”

“Too long for what?”

“I’m not even sure. It’s just a feeling I have. A bad feeling. And
 
dammit
, there’s nothing I can do.”

“There’s one thing.”

“Yeah. I can talk to you. Right?”

“That’s it.”

“I’ve said it all before. Years ago. Said it to the sheriff and to every friend I’ve got and to any soul who’ll listen.”

“But you haven’t said it to me.”

McMillan squinted at him, taking Shepherd’s measure. Slowly he nodded.

“Okay, Detective. Let’s go sit on the porch and watch the sunset like a couple of old ladies, shall we? And I’ll tell it all again. I’ll explain to you why I care so much about the woman who shot my boy.”

* * *

The porch was up high, offering a good view of the desert around the McMillan house—a ranch house with adobe walls, resting on an acre of unincorporated county land west of Safford.

Shepherd had obtained the address from a phone book—as he’d expected, there was only one Anson McMillan in Graham County—and had tracked down the one-lane rural route after only a few wrong turns.

On the porch McMillan offered him a root beer, which Shepherd accepted out of politeness, though he hated the beverage. He sipped a little, swallowed it without a grimace, and set down the bottle on a hardwood table that had been hewed by hand.

Anson’s hand, surely. The man’s thick fingers were callused and misshapen from a lifetime of serious labor.

“So,” Shepherd said, letting silence complete the question.

McMillan stared at the sun now kissing the rim of the mountain range, its harsh theatrical light ruddy on his face.

“To understand Kaylie,” he began finally, “you first have to know about Justin. And about the guns.”

“Guns?”

“That’s what did it, I think. Or at least, what brought it out in him.”

“I don’t follow you, Mr. McMillan.”

“Hell, call me Anson.”

“And I’m
 
Roy
”

“Okay,
 
Roy
. That root beer cold enough, by the way?”

“Perfect,” Shepherd said. He hadn’t touched the bottle after his first reluctant sip.

“I love a good root beer. Takes me back. Well, anyhow, the guns. Thing is, my wife,
 
Regina
—may she rest in peace—never permitted a single gun in this house. That was her ironclad rule, and I went along with it, which marked me as unusual among fellows in these parts. Most of them would sooner die than give up their guns, or at least that’s what their bumper stickers say. Me, though—well, I just never cared for the damn things.”

Shepherd, who had seen what a gun could do in the hands of a drunk or a
 
gangbanger
 
or a child, nodded slowly.

“So Justin grew up playing softball and washing the neighbors’ cars for pocket money, and he never had a rifle to his name. Never went hunting. None of that.”

Hunting. The word stirred a small, furtive anxiety in the back of Shepherd’s mind.

He hunts them,
 
Kaylie had said to the 911 operator.
 
It’s a sport for him. He lets them go, and he tracks them, hunts them down like animals.

“Now, I don’t want to mislead you, Roy. When I speak of Justin’s boyhood, I don’t want you to think he was any sort of angel. Guns or not, he did get into trouble. He hot-wired cars, for one thing. Got himself a rap sheet by the age of fourteen for joyriding around.”

“Did he?” Shepherd said softly.

McMillan showed him a sly look. “Yes, sir. You’re thinking of Kaylie, aren’t you? The way she hot-wired a truck after she busted out of the institute twelve years ago?”

“As a matter of fact, I was.”

“She learned it from Justin. Must have. He was chock-full of these special talents.” The man sighed, releasing a great billow of breath. “I don’t mean to make light of it. Fact is, matters got pretty serious for a while. Justin set a fire in the high school gymnasium. Might’ve done some real damage if the gym teacher hadn’t smelled smoke and doused the flames with a fire extinguisher.”

“Why did Justin do that?”

A lift of McMillan’s shoulders. “Why does a cat play with a ball of string? For the sheer pleasure of it, I expect.”

“Were there other fires?”

“None that were linked to him. There were a few, though, that were never explained. The
 
Gilfoyles
 
lost their mobile home in one blaze. Justin swore he didn’t do it. Me and
 
Regina
—we wanted to believe him.”

Shepherd had read up on the behavioral development of psychopaths. Fire starting was often one of the earliest warning signs.

“This sort of thing went on for couple years,” McMillan said quietly. “Then a miracle. Justin straightened out. He quit the joyriding, the shoplifting—yes, there’d been some of that, too. But not anymore. He was a normal kid suddenly. Better than normal. Outstanding. Folks started saying that Justin McMillan, after a spate of hell-raising, had turned out all right.”

“What happened? Why did he change?”

“There was no reason. Certainly nothing we did for him. It appeared to be just what I said—a miracle.” Anson stared at the far mountains, their humped backs red with the ebbing glow of the sunset. “But maybe there are no miracles. Maybe he never really changed at all. Maybe he just pushed it down deep—that part of him—and it took a while to burrow its way back to the surface.”

He took a long swig of his root beer, and Shepherd, out of courtesy, made a pretense of swallowing another sip.

“Justin graduated from high school, moved out on his own. He got a good job clerking in the hardware store. He was going to night school to learn the computer trade. You know anything about computers, Roy?”

“Not much. My wife was the expert.”

“Was? You divorced?”

“She died.”

“Sorry to hear it. My
 
Regina
’s gone too. I visit her grave once a week and on holidays. Never miss her birthday. You visit your wife?”

“Sometimes.”

“We all lose what we love, don’t we? In the old country they have a saying about it. In the end, they say, the world will break your heart.”

Shepherd watched the sunset’s afterglow. He was silent,

“Anyway, Justin was learning all about computers. He had a future, or so we all thought. Then to top it off, he started dating Kaylie Henderson, who was, I believe, just about the prettiest girl in town. She was the quiet type, sort of aloof, and people got the idea she was stuck up. They were wrong. She was shy, that’s all, painfully shy. You couldn’t blame her, after the life she’d had.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t know? She’d had it rough,
 
Roy
. Her mom and dad both died in a car wreck back when she was ten years old. After that she was raised by an uncle who hardly gave her the time of day. She learned to keep to herself. She still does. She’s never told me—I mean, she never did tell me exactly what happened on the day Justin died.”

Shepherd noted the slip. He was unsurprised. No doubt Anson McMillan had stayed in touch with Kaylie for years. After her escape from Hawk Ridge, she would have needed cash, a fair amount of cash, to obtain transportation and lodging and a false identity. Someone had to funnel the money to her. Since she had no family of her own to turn to, Anson and
 
Regina
 
would have been her only hope.

“Anyway,” Anson went on, “Justin proposed to her after six months’ courting. They got married, both of them nineteen. Rented a house not far from here. We helped out with the rent money. Things were fine.”

He paused, perhaps savoring the last good memories he had.

Then quietly he added, “Not long after he wed Kaylie, Justin got some new friends. Guys he’d met at the hardware store. They persuaded him to buy a rifle and take up hunting.”

“You and
 
Regina
 
didn’t object?”

“
 
Regina
 
did. I held my tongue. The sport’s not for me, it’s true. I can’t see what pleasure a man can take in blowing some dumb animal’s brains out. But there are those who like it, and I’ve known plenty of them, and mostly they’re fine. Mostly. There are a few, though, who maybe like it too much. Like it in an unhealthy way.”

“Justin’s friends were like that?”

“No, not at all. Far as I know, they were decent fellows. Couple of them were Justin’s age, and the others were older. They all were married, raising families, holding down honest jobs. They could go in for their weekend adventures and come back Sunday night ready for the next day’s nine-to-five.”

“Then what was the problem?” Shepherd asked, already knowing the answer.

McMillan tossed back another gulp of root beer, and then the answer rushed out of him in a spill of words.

“Problem was Justin himself. He got a taste of hunting wild game, and it was like he was a starving man who’d gotten hold of a bone. The more he gnawed at it, hungrier he got, till he couldn’t ever get his fill. Justin took to hunting in a way that wasn’t natural, or maybe it would be fairer to say—wasn’t civilized. It was more than sport to him. It was something ugly, born of the same wildness that had made him start fires and heist the neighbors’ jalopies. He’d pushed it down, covered it over, tried to stamp it out, but some things you can’t hold down forever. They come out in a new disguise, and worse than before. Not wildness anymore. Sickness.”

Shepherd let a moment pass. A fly traced lazy loops around his head, drawn by the root beer’s sugary scent. He brushed it away.

“Sickness is a strong word, Anson,” he said quietly.

“Then you tell me what to call it when a man starts drinking blood.”

Shepherd blinked. “Say that again.”

“He’d heard some hocus-pocus nonsense about how you could absorb the strength and courage of the animal you killed by drinking its blood. Heart blood, the richest kind. He came back from the woods one night with a gutted bobcat slung over his shoulder and his mouth stained bright red. Kaylie told me that one.”