The Face of Fear (12 page)

He tried the door to Cragmont Imports. It wasn’t locked.

He walked into the reception lounge. The room was gloomy. The only light came from an adjacent office where the door was standing halfway open.

He went to the shaft of light, stood in it, listened to the men talking in the inner office. At last he pushed open the door and went inside.

They were sitting at a conference table that was piled high with papers and bound folders. They weren’t wearing their suit jackets or their ties, and their shirt sleeves were rolled up; one was wearing a blue shirt, the other a white shirt. They saw the pistol at once, but they needed several seconds to adjust before they could raise their eyes to look at his face.

“This place smells like perfume,” Bollinger said.

They stared at him.

“Is one of you wearing perfume?”

“No,” said blue shirt. “Perfume’s one of the things we import.”

“Is one of you MacDonald?”

They looked at the gun, at each other, then at the gun again.

“MacDonald?” Bollinger asked.

The one in the blue shirt said, “He’s MacDonald.”

The one in the white shirt said,
“He’s
MacDonald.”

“That’s a lie,” said the one in the blue shirt.

“No,
he’s
lying,” said the other.

“I don’t know what you want with MacDonald,” said the one in the blue shirt. “Just leave me out of it. Do what you have to do to him and go away.”

“Christ almighty!” said the one in the white shirt. “I’m
not
MacDonald! You want
him,
that son of a bitch there, not me!”

Bollinger laughed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m also here
t
o get Mr. Ott.”

“Me?”
said the one in the blue shirt. “Who in the hell would want me killed?”

Connie said, “You’ll have to call Preduski.”

“Why?”

“To get police protection.”

“It’s no use.”

“He believes in your visions.”

“I know he does.”

“He’ll give you protection.”

“Of course,” Graham said. “But that’s not what I meant.”

“Explain.”

“Connie, I’ve seen myself shot in the back. It’s going to happen. Things I see
always
happen. Nobody can do anything to stop this.”

“There’s no such thing as predestination. The future can be changed.”

“Can it?”

“You know it can.”

A haunted look filled his bright blue eyes. “I doubt that very much.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“But I am sure.”

This attitude of his, this willingness to ascribe all of his failings to predestination, worried and upset her more than anything else about him. It was an especially pernicious form of cowardice. He was rejecting all responsibility for his own life.

“Call Preduski,” she said.

He lowered his eyes and stared at her hand but didn’t seem to see how tightly he was gripping it.

She said, “If this man comes to the house to kill you, I’ll probably be there too. Do you think he’s going to shoot you, then just walk away and let me live?”

Shocked, as she had known he would be, by the thought of her under the Butcher’s knife, he said, “My God.”

“Call Preduski.”

“All right.” He let go of her hand. He picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, played with the dial, jiggled the buttons.

“What’s wrong?”

Frowning, he said, “No dial tone.” He hung up, waited a few seconds, picked up the receiver again. “Still nothing.”

She slid off the desk. “Let’s try your secretary’s phone.”

They went out to the reception room.

That phone was dead too.

“Funny,” he said.

Her heartbeat quickening, she said, “Is he going to come after you tonight?”

“I told you, I don’t know for sure.”

“Is he in the building right now?”

“You think he cut the telephone line.”

She nodded.

“That’s pretty farfetched,” he said. “It’s just a breakdown in service.”

She went to the door, opened it, stepped into the hall. He came behind her, favoring his injured leg.

Darkness lay on most of the corridor. Dim red emergency lights shone at each end of the hall, above the doors to the staircases. Fifty feet away a pool of wan blue light marked the elevator alcove.

Except for the sound of their breathing, the fortieth floor was silent.

“I’m not a clairvoyant,” she said, “but I don’t like the way it feels. I sense it, Graham. Something’s wrong.”

“In a building like this, the telephone lines are in the walls. Outside of the building they’re underground. All the lines are underground in this city. How would he get to them?”

“I don’t know. But maybe he knows.”

“He’d be taking such a risk,” Graham said.

“He’s taken risks before. Ten times before.”

“But not like this. We’re not alone. The security guards are in the building.”

“They’re forty stories below.”

“A long way,” he agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We’re probably being silly.”

“Probably.”

“We’re probably safe where we are.”

“Probably.”

“I’ll grab our coats.”

“Forget the coats.” He took hold of her hand. “Come on. Let’s get to those elevators.”

 
Bollinger needed eight shots to finish off Macdonald and Ott. They kept ducking behind the furniture.

By the time he had killed them, the Walther PPK was no longer firing silently. No silencer could function at peak efficiency for more than a dozen shots
_;
the baffles and wadding were compacted by the bullets, and sound escaped. The last three shots were like the sharp barks of a medium-sized guard dog. But that didn’t matter. The noise wouldn’t carry to the street or up to the fortieth floor.

In the outer office of Cragmont Imports, he switched on a light. He sat on a couch, reloaded the Walther’s magazine, unscrewed the silencer and put it into his pocket. He didn’t want to risk fouling the barrel with loose steel fibers from the silencer
_;
besides, there was no one left in the building to hear shots when he killed Harris and the woman. And a shot fired on the fortieth floor would not penetrate walls and windows and travel all the way down to Lexington Avenue.

He looked at his watch. 8:25.

He turned off the light, left Cragmont Imports, and went down the hall to the elevator.

Eight elevators served the fortieth floor, but none of them was working.

Connie pushed the call button on the last lift. When nothing happened, she said, “The telephone, and now this.”

In the spare yet harsh fluorescent light, Graham’s laugh lines looked deeper and sharper than usual; his face resembled that of a kabuki actor painted to represent extreme anxiety. “We’re trapped.”

“It could be just an ordinary breakdown of some sort,” she said. “Mechanical failure. They might be making repairs right now.”

“The telephones?”

“Coincidence. Maybe there’s nothing sinister about it.”

Suddenly the numerals above the elevator doors in front of them began to light up, one after the other: 16... 17... 18... 19 ... 20....

“Someone’s coming,” Graham said.

A chill passed down her spine.

... 25 ... 26 ... 27....

“Maybe it’s the security guards,” she said.

He said nothing.

She wanted to turn and run, but she could not move. The numbers mesmerized her.

...30...31 ...32....

She thought of women lying in bloody bedclothes, women with their throats cut and their fingers chopped off and their ears cut off.

...33....

“The stairs!” Graham said, startling her.

“Stairs?”

“The emergency stairs.”

...34....

“What about them?”

“We’ve got to go down.”

“Hide out a few floors below?”

...35....

“No. All the way down to the lobby.”

“That’s too far!”

“That’s where there’s help.”

...36....

“Maybe we don’t need help.”

“We need it,” he said.

...37....

“But your leg—”

“I’m not a
complete
cripple,” he said sharply.

...38....

He grabbed her by the shoulder. His fingers hurt her, but she knew he wasn’t aware of how fiercely he was gripping her. “Come on, Connie!”

...39....

Frustrated with her hesitation, he gave her a shove, propelled her out of the alcove. She stumbled, and for an instant she thought she would fall. He kept her upright.

As they hurried down the dark corridor, she heard the elevator doors open behind them.

 
When Bollinger came out of the elevator alcove, he saw two people running away from him. They were nothing but ghostly shapes, vaguely silhouetted against the eerie glow of the red emergency light at the end of the corridor.

Harris and the woman? he wondered. Have they been alerted? Do they know who I am? How can they know?

“Mr. Harris?” Bollinger called.

They stopped two-thirds of the way down the hall, in front of the open door to the Harris Publications suite. They turned toward him, but he could not see their faces even with the red light spilling over their shoulders.

“Mr. Harris, is that you?”

“Who are you?”

“Police,” Bollinger said. He took a step toward them, then another. As he moved he took the wallet with his badge from his inside coat pocket. With the elevator light behind him, he knew they could see more than he could.

“Don’t come any closer,” Harris said.

Bollinger stopped. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want you to come closer.”

“Why
^?
”

“We don’t know who you are.”

“I’m a detective. Frank Bollinger. We have an appointment for eight-thirty. Remember?” Another step. Then another.

“How did you get up here?” Harris’s voice was shrill.

He’s scared to death, Bollinger thought. He smiled and said, “Hey, what’s going on with you? Why are you so uptight? You were expecting me.” Bollinger took slow steps, easy steps, so as not to frighten the animals.

“How did you get up here?” Harris asked again. “The elevators aren’t working.”

“You’re mistaken. I came up on an elevator.” He held the badge in front of him in his left hand, arm extended, hoping the light from behind would gleam on the gold finish. He had covered perhaps a fifth of the distance between them.

“The telephones are out,” Harris said.

“They are?” Step. Step.

He put his right hand in his coat pocket and gripped the butt of the pistol.

 
Connie couldn’t take her eyes off the shadowy form moving steadily toward them. To Graham she said softly, “You remember what you said on the Prine show?”

“What?” His voice cracked.

Don’t let the fear take you, she thought. Don’t break down and leave me to handle this alone.

She said, “In your vision you saw that the police know the killer well.”

“What about it?”

“Maybe the Butcher is a cop.”

“Christ, that’s it!”

He spoke so softly that she could barely hear him.

Bollinger kept coming, a big man, bearish. His face was in shadow. He had closed the distance between them by at least half.

“Stop right there,” Graham said. But there was no force in his voice, no authority.

Bollinger stopped anyway. “Mr. Harris, you’re acting very strange. I’m a policeman. You know ... you’re acting as if you’ve just done something that you want to hide from me.” He took a step, another, a third.

“The stairs?” Connie asked.

“No,” Graham said. “We don’t have enough of a lead. With my game leg, he’d catch us in a minute.”

“Mr. Harris?” Bollinger said. “What are you two saying? Please don’t whisper.”

“Where then?” Connie whispered.

“The office.”

He nudged her, and they ducked quickly into the Harris Publications suite, slammed and locked the reception room door.

A second later, Bollinger hit the outside of the door with his shoulder. It trembled in its frame. He rattled the knob violently.

“He’s probably got a gun,” Connie said. “He’ll get in sooner or later.”

Graham nodded. “I know.”

22

Ira Preduski parked at the end of a string of three squad cars and two unmarked police sedans that blocked one half of the two-lane street. Although there was no one in any of the five vehicles, all the engines were running, headlights blazing
_;
the trio of blue-and-whites were crowned with revolving red beacons. Preduski got out of his car and locked it.

A half inch of snow made the street look clean and pretty. As he walked toward the apartment house, Preduski scuffed his shoes against the sidewalk, sending up puffs of white flakes in front of him. The wind whipped the falling snow into his back, and cold flakes found their way past his collar. He was reminded of that February, in his fourth year, when his family moved to Albany, New York, where he saw his first winter storm.

A uniformed patrolman in his late twenties was standing at the bottom of the outside steps to the apartment house.

“Tough job you’ve got tonight,” Preduski said.

“I don’t mind it. I like snow.”

“Yeah? So do I.”

“Besides,” the patrolman said, “it’s better standing out here in the cold than up there in all that blood.”

 
The room smelled of blood, excrement and dusting powder.

Fingers bent like claws, the dead woman lay on the floor beside the bed. Her eyes were open.