Stealing Faces (32 page)

53

Cray pulled on his black slacks and shirt, then smiled at himself in the bedroom mirror.

Black. His favorite color. Camouflage for a predator.

Camouflage that was unnecessary tonight, of course—but he felt the need to clothe himself in darkness.

It had been months since he’d taken Sharon Andrews from the parking lot outside the auto dealership. The deepest part of him, the elemental self that announced its presence only in the dark, was restless for blood sport.

What he’d done to Walter had sated his urges not at all. He needed a worthy victim. Kaylie. That was the prey his blood required. And he would have her. In mere minutes, she would trouble him no more, ever.

He checked his shirt pocket for the cigarettes, the lighter. The only other item he would need was a syringe filled with sedative. Then he would be ready for this special kill.

With his hair combed back, his heart beating fast and steady, he descended the stairs to the living room. Mozart played on the stereo system wired throughout the ground floor of his house. He found the music relaxing, and he preferred to be relaxed before the start of a nocturnal outing.

The piece now playing was the
 
Requiem.
 
It had been composed as a tribute to things spiritual—the majesty of God, the highest aspirations of the human heart. In Mozart’s era, so long ago, such notions had not yet been rendered laughable and quaint. People had believed, back then. They had yearned.

Cray knew better. He was a man of the new millennium. He believed in nothing but brute facts, measurable, reducible to numbers. He yearned for nothing high, great, or noble. He knew that Mozart’s gift had been no more than the excited firing of neurons, his moments of highest passion merely a surge of stress hormones—adrenaline,
 
noradrenaline
,
 
cortisol
—triggered by electrical
 
overstimulation
 
of the brain. Cray himself could duplicate this neurological phenomenon quite easily in the operating room adjacent to the anteroom of Ward B, where he sometimes performed electroconvulsive therapy on the most recalcitrant patients. By passing a hundred joules of voltage through a patient’s two cerebral hemispheres, he could produce a storm of excitation equal to anything Mozart had experienced.

But he could not produce the
 
Requiem.
 
This stray thought, irritatingly provocative, teased him as he went into the den and turned off the stereo.

The house was silent, Mozart’s hymn muted.

Cray was leaving the den when the phone rang.

“Yes?” he answered, hoping it was nothing important, impatient to get going.

“Sir, it’s
 
Blysdale
.” Bob
 
Blysdale
 
was the Institute’s chief security officer, and he sounded nervous. “Got a problem. The new patient, the forensic case—McMillan.”

Cray stiffened. Kaylie.

Was it possible she’d accepted his advice? Taken her own life? Part of him would be almost sorry if she had. Although it would simplify matters a great deal, he would prefer to take care of her personally.

“What about her?” Cray asked, proper concern in his voice.

“She broke out.”

Cray heard this, but it made no sense. It was some sort of unintelligible message in another language, or a joke, or insanity.

“What?” he breathed.

“She ambushed the RN and a tech. Got out into the yard. She’s on the loose right now.”

On the loose.

Kaylie, on the loose.

The only successful escapee in his tenure as director of Hawk Ridge, and now again she was out, she was
 
uncaged
—and his plan—the fire, the fake suicide—it was all spoiled now.

She’d cheated him, the bitch.

He held his voice steady. “When did this happen?”

“Couple minutes ago, is all.”

Then she hadn’t had time to go far.

She could be caught.

Cray’s anger vanished, replaced by a sudden warmth of good feeling. Every crisis, as the cliché had it, could be seen to represent an opportunity.

“I’ll meet you and your men outside the administration building,” Cray said coolly. “In five minutes.”

“Ten-four. And, sir? Should I call the sheriff?”

“Not yet. We’ll handle this on our own.”

“She’s a felon, sir. I think procedure—”

“On our own, Bob.”

He slammed down the phone, then ran to the foyer closet. With all the repair work that had been done on his Lexus in the last week, he had felt it prudent not to keep his satchel in the vehicle’s storage compartment. It was stowed in the back of the closet, behind an empty suitcase.

He hefted the satchel and swung it in one easy motion onto the sofa by the front window, then rummaged in it for his flashlight—a mini-flash with a red filter to preserve his night vision. He pocketed it, then searched further until he found his knife.

Justin’s knife, originally. But Cray’s, for the past twelve years.

The leather sheath, blood-spotted and worn with use, was as familiar to his touch as a lover’s hand.

He slipped the sheath inside his jacket. There was nothing else in the satchel he could use. His burglar’s tools were of no value in this situation, and his gun, the Glock 9mm, had no silencer. He couldn’t risk firing a shot. The noise would travel for miles in the stillness of the desert foothills.

That was all right. He wouldn’t need a bullet for Kaylie. Only the knife’s keen blade.

He left the house at a run. Crossing the hospital grounds, passing the cemetery where Walter had been laid to rest a few hours earlier, Cray reflected that Kaylie would have been better off had she committed suicide, as he’d suggested.

A slipknot, a short jump, an instant’s pain. Her death would have been quick that way.

Not now.

54

Bob
 
Blysdale
 
and four security officers in khaki uniforms were assembling before the entrance to the administration building when Cray arrived. He had sprinted the full distance from his house to the meeting place, four hundred yards, but he was not the least bit winded.

He was, in point of fact, invigorated.

“How did she get through the exterior door?” he asked
 
Blysdale
.

“Stole a set of keys.”

“Then she has access to every building on these grounds.”

“Sure. But you don’t think she’ll hang around, do you? I figure she’ll try to find a way out.”

“Quite likely. But how?” Cray was thinking aloud. “Last time she just climbed the fence.”

She couldn’t do that now. After Kaylie’s escape twelve years ago, the perimeter fence had been topped with spear points and razor wire.

“She could try one of the gates,” an officer named Collins suggested.

“Main gate’s guarded,”
 
Blysdale
 
said, cocking a thumb at the gatehouse, where the silhouette of a guard was visible in a lighted rectangle of glass.

“But not the gate at my driveway,” Cray said. “It’s how she got in the other night. It may be how she tries to get out.”

“I’ll send a man there, have him stand post.”

“And the others should fan out, search the perimeter. She may be looking for gaps in the fence.” There weren’t any, but she wouldn’t know that.

“All right, Dr. Cray.”
 
Blysdale
 
sent Collins to watch the driveway, and then he and the rest of his men scattered to the four points of the compass.

Cray watched them go. The various assignments ought to keep them busy. But none of them would find Kaylie. That was his job, and his alone.

He was the hunter. She was his prey.

Running again, past the administration building, to the side door of Ward B, the exit Kaylie had taken.

He switched on the mini-flash, beaming a dim red cone of light at the ground. The grass had been trampled by too many shoes. Some of the guards must have rushed to this spot in the first frantic moments after the reported escape.

He moved farther from the door, into virgin ground. Here the grass was stiff and smooth. He detected no tracks, no spoor.

He drifted away from the building, not in a straight line but in a wide semicircle. Standard technique. When unable to pick up a trail, circle ahead in the hope of intercepting the tracks.

Cray walked in silence, his toes pointed forward to feel their way, each step taken with the ball of his foot only. He kept to a fast stride, arms swinging loosely, gaze sweeping the grass. Looking not for shoe prints alone, but for less obvious signs as well: scattered twigs, crushed leaves, clots of dirt kicked up by racing feet.

Justin had taught him all this. Justin had taught him so much in their brief partnership.

There.

A puddle of standing water, residue of the sprinkler system, which soaked the lawns each morning in the predawn dark. At the edge of the puddle, the partial impression of a shoe heel.

But was it Kaylie’s? Or a false lead, a print left hours earlier by some wandering patient or groundskeeper?

Cray knelt, examined blades of grass flattened by the footstep. Bent but not broken, even now springing back. The track was recent.

It was hers.

Cray felt a twitch brush the corners of his mouth. He required an instant to identify it as a smile.

He stood. Looked ahead, following the direction of the print.

The wide expanse of the lawn was interrupted here and there by eucalyptus trees, some growing close together, others majestic in solitude. Small thickets of mesquite and purple sage glimmered in the starlight.

Cray let thought leave him, summoning instinct in its place.

A fleeing animal tends to take the easiest route, cutting through the widest spaces between the trees, avoiding thickets of underbrush that would impede progress. The hunter, seeing the lie of the land as his prey would see it, could sometimes deduce his quarry’s line of advance.

The most direct and least obstructed path would have taken Kaylie McMillan on a zigzag run between a ragged colonnade of trees, bypassing any snarls of ground cover.

Cray followed this route, running hard, not bothering to look for other tracks. He knew that a hunted animal would normally proceed as far as possible along its original avenue of escape.

He stopped only when he reached a denser thicket of ground cover bordering a duck pond. In the scatter of bird droppings along the muddy shore, he found more shoe prints.

She had turned here. Turned south.

That was odd. The nearest stretch of perimeter fencing lay to the east. He would have expected her to head for the fence in search of a way out.

Instead she had veered in a different direction—back toward the buildings of the institute.

The last place she would want to go, or so it seemed. The administration building and the two active wards were staffed twenty-four hours a day.

But the other building, Ward C, the abandoned ward ...

A person could hide in there. A person who had stolen a full set of keys, as Kaylie had. And she knew the building. It was where she been incarcerated during her first stay at Hawk Ridge.

Had she planned to conceal herself in the abandoned ward from the start? Or had she panicked after escaping, when she realized the guards would be called immediately and she would have no chance to find a way out of the hospital compound?

The answer didn’t matter. In either case, she was in the old ward, hunkered down, a huddle of fear. Easy prey.

Grinning fiercely, heart thumping with a familiar savage joy, Cray started running again.

55

The guard at the gatehouse took a long look at Shepherd’s badge before handing back his I.D. holder. “You here about the McMillan woman?” he asked.

Shepherd leaned out the window of his idling sedan. “How’d you know?”

The answer came with a shrug. “She’s the only escapee we’ve got at the moment.”

It took Shepherd a moment to absorb this. “She escaped? Tonight?”

Another shrug. “Thought you knew. You said you were here about her.”

“I want to ask her some questions.”

“Our
 
guys’ll
 
have to find her first. She busted out. Pretty hard case, that one—though you wouldn’t think it to look at her.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Ten minutes, is all.”

If he couldn’t talk to Kaylie, he would do the next best thing. “Where’s Dr. Cray?”

“That, I don’t know. In his residence, I’d guess. Want me to ring him up for you?”

Shepherd preferred not to give Cray any advance notice of his arrival. “That’s all right. Can I drive to his house from here?”

“Sure. Go straight to the parking lot, hook left on the maintenance road, and when you’re past the utility shed make a hard right.”

“Thanks.”

The gate opened, and Shepherd pulled through, then followed the directions, driving fast but not recklessly, his thoughts racing.

During the drive from Anson McMillan’s house, he’d had time to piece together a possible scenario, still hypothetical, quite conceivably all wrong.

But suppose ... just suppose ...

Suppose Cray was a killer, as Kaylie believed. Killers might be born or made—Shepherd had no opinion about that—but however they got started, there was always one critical moment in their development, the moment of transition from fantasy and speculation and preparation to the deed itself.

Now just suppose Cray had needed help with that step.

Shepherd could picture him as he’d been twelve years ago, a much younger man, a man who’d passed his time in classrooms and seminars, a man with soft hands.

A murderer in embryo. Evolving by degrees toward the final, fatal commitment.

How had he started along that path? With a man like Cray, his progress would have begun as an intellectual proposition. At least this was how he would have rationalized and justified any strange new emotions that invaded the cool sanctuary of his self-control.

We are animals at heart. The self is mere window dressing. A mask, a false front. We hear about “mind over matter.” It would be more true to say that the mind doesn’t matter.

Cray had said that to Shepherd. The idea obsessed him. He’d written a book on it.

Shepherd had slept through most of his mandatory Philosophy 101 course in college. He was no expert in the subject. But he knew that Cray’s viewpoint was grounded in a deep aversion to humanity, an aversion that could easily translate into contempt or hatred.

What a man hated, he might wish to destroy. But being soft and cloistered, he would not know how.

And then into his office comes Justin’s mother, telling him of this son of hers, with his guns and his blood lust and his sick obsessions and his skills at tracking game.

The man Cray needs. The partner he has been seeking—seeking perhaps unconsciously, as the last missing piece of himself.

So Cray goes to Justin McMillan, feels him out. There are ways for a clever, manipulative man to gain the trust of someone younger and inexperienced.

He proposes an arrangement. They will hunt together. Justin will teach him to stalk and kill. And Cray—Cray will procure a more interesting quarry than any bobcat or mule deer.

Cray has the intellect, the talent to plan a crime and execute it without leaving clues. Justin has the practical experience at killing. Each completes the other.

And so they hunt. Twelve years ago ...

In his investigation of the
White Mountains
case. Shepherd had compiled a list of possible abductees and other missing persons throughout southeastern
Arizona
over the past fifteen years. There had been no fewer than four disappearances in the early spring of 1987, the proper time frame.

It was unlikely that Cray and Justin were responsible for all four cases. But perhaps for one. Just one.

And if Kaylie had found out? If she had learned that her husband had killed a woman, skinned her face as a trophy?

If she tried to go to the police, and Justin attacked her, and she shot him, then went into shock afterward, mute, helpless, entrusted to a doctor’s care ...?

Cray’s care.

Only a scenario, a sketch of what might have happened. All of it could be wrong. But if it was true, then an unforgivable injustice had been done to Kaylie McMillan.

And Shepherd, though unwitting, had played his own role in that injustice, and bore his own measure of guilt.

Cray’s house appeared in the headlights. Shepherd braked the sedan and got out. At the front door he leaned his fist on the buzzer.

“The doc’s not in.”

Shepherd turned, saw a guard in khaki approaching from the shadowy foliage near the gate.

“Hey,” the guard added, “I know you. You’re the cop from
Tucson
.”

“Right.”

“I saw you here the night you collared her. My name’s Collins. I always wanted to be a cop.”

“Roy Shepherd.”

“Yeah, I know. That was nice work, what you did.”

We’ll see how nice it was, Shepherd thought grimly.

“Any idea where Dr. Cray might be?” he asked Collins.

“Oh, probably out helping to look for McMillan.” The guard shrugged. “I get stuck playing sentry at a goddamned driveway. Waste of time. She won’t come here.”

“No?”

“She’ll try to go over the fence, like she did last time. But she won’t make it. Security’s tighter than it was way back when. At least that’s what the older guys tell me.”

Shepherd figured that he himself would qualify as an older guy in Collins’ estimation. The guard must be all of twenty-two. “So you’ve been standing post for the last few minutes?”

“Yeah. No action. Maybe you can find Cray out in the yard. I can radio the boss and ask him about it.”

Shepherd didn’t want to give Cray any warning. “That’s not necessary.” He turned back toward his car.

“It’s no problem,” Collins said, eager to help. “I was going to do it anyway. I think Dr. Cray forgot something of his, which he might want.”

Shepherd looked at him. “What did he forget?”

“His black bag. His medical kit, you know. He left it on the sofa. He’ll need it if he has to subdue McMillan with a sedative.”

“You were inside the house?”

“No, saw it through the window. Shouldn’t have been peeking in, but ...”

“Which window?”

“Living room. Right there.”

Shepherd stepped to the bay window near the front door and looked in.

The sofa lay adjacent to the window, the black bag clearly visible. It had been left open, the drawstring clasp untied.

He had seen Cray’s medical kit on the night of Kaylie’s arrest. This wasn’t it. This was ...

A bag.
 
Kaylie’s voice on tape came back to him.
 
A
 
satchel. It’s got all his stuff, the stuff he uses to break into places and kidnap women.

Shepherd’s heart quickened. “You have a key to this house?”

“Dr. Cray’s residence? No way. Nobody ever goes in there.”

“Until now,” Shepherd said, and with a thrust of his elbow he punched through a three-foot pane of the bay window, then swept the glass shards clear of the frame with his jacket sleeve.

“Hey,
Roy
—I mean, Detective—I mean ...” Panic jumped in the guard’s voice. “I mean, what the hell are you fucking
 
doing?”

“I’m taking a look at what’s inside that bag.”

Shepherd climbed through the window, onto the couch, then grabbed the satchel and dumped its contents on a teakwood coffee table.

Duct tape, glass cutter, suction cup, locksmith tools, Glock pistol with a spare magazine ...

It was true, then—what Kaylie had said. All true.

“
Roy
.” Collins, at the window. “I
 
gotta
 
radio my boss about this. I’ll lose my damn job—”

“I thought you didn’t like this job. I thought you wanted to be a cop.”

“Well ... yeah.”

“Then get in here. I need you to find a phone and make a call.” Shepherd found Chuck
 
Wheelihan’s
 
name in his address book and read off the
 
undersheriff’s
 
home phone number. “Say I need some backup fast. All the patrol units they’ve got. But no lights and siren. They come in quietly. Okay?”

“Shit, Detective, what is going on?”

“Just do it.”

Shepherd left the living room while Collins was still scrambling through the window.

The house was large. He had no time to do a thorough inspection. But he had to check out the obvious places.

Kaylie had told him to search the house, had insisted Cray kept his trophies inside. She’d been right about the rest of it. Maybe about this part too.

He made a quick circuit of the ground floor—den, bathroom, kitchen. The freezer held no surprises.

Garage? The Lexus was parked in there. He found some tools in a cabinet, cans of paint and other innocuous items on the shelves.

He stepped back into the alcove that led to the garage, then noticed another door. He opened it. Stairs descended into the dark.

A cellar.

Shepherd knew then. He knew even before he found the wall switch just inside the doorway and switched on the single,
 
unshaded
 
ceiling bulb.

I steal their faces.

Mitch’s voice floated back to him, Mitch with his warehouse gallery of photo cutouts.

Shepherd walked halfway down the cellar stairs, looking at the walls, concrete walls streaked with mildew, and on the walls a series of unframed plastic blocks, transparent and smooth.

In each block, a woman’s face.

Cray had preserved his trophies in plastic, sealed away from air and germs. Eyeless faces. Open mouths. Ragged edges where the blade had sliced through the tender flesh of their chins and foreheads.

The blade ...

There had been no knife in the satchel.

Cray had taken it.

He’d left the gun, because an
 
unsilenced
 
firearm was useless to him on the institute’s grounds. But the knife he had carried with him when he left the house.

He needed it. He was hunting her.

Shepherd had turned to climb the stairs when Collins appeared in the doorway. “I talked to him. You didn’t tell me I was calling the goddamned
 
undersheriff
. This better be—”

Then he saw the things in the cellar, and he blinked.

“They’re not real,” he whispered, “are they?”

“Cray’s been busy.” Shepherd reached the top of the stairs. “He still is.”

He guided Collins away from the cellar door and shook him gently to get his attention. “Here’s what you need to do now,” Shepherd said. “Find your boss, the chief security officer. What’s his name?”

He didn’t care about the man’s name. He just wanted the kid to start thinking again, to unfreeze his mind.

“
Blysdale
,” Collins said after a moment.

“Good,
 
Blysdale
. Track him down. Tell him what’s going on.”

“I can hail him on the radio.”

Shepherd had already thought of this—and had remembered how the satchel Kaylie left for the police had vanished before the squad car got there.

Cray had retrieved it. He could have found it only by monitoring police cross talk, beating the patrol unit to its destination.

“No,” he said, “I don’t want you on the air. Cray may be listening in. We can’t afford to tip him off. Got it?”

“Think so.” Collins nodded, then said more firmly, “Sure I do.”

Shepherd patted his shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”

He moved away, toward the door at the rear of the kitchen, which led outside.

“What about you?” Collins called after him. “What are you going to do?”

Shepherd opened the door on the night, then looked back.

“I’ll find Cray,” he said, “and make up for a bad mistake I made ... if I still can.”