Night Mask Read online

  Leo reached over and stilled the ringing of the phone. “Oh, shit!” he said, and that stopped everybody’s movement to the dining area. “Okay, Sheriff. We’re on the way.”

  “I gather dinner is delayed,” Brenda said.

  Leo stood up. “Yeah. Now it gets real ugly. A girl is missing. She vanished this afternoon. Mother says she’s been acting trancelike for several days.”

  “Like the way that citizen said Dick and Tammy were behaving?” Lani asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How old is the girl?” Brenda asked.

  “Ten,” Leo said grimly.

  Chapter 13

  The girl, Theresa Lopeno, was found four days later. Her body had been dumped at the southernmost part of the county. Using tactical frequencies that the press, so far, had not discovered, the cops gathered at the scene. It was the ugliest rape and mutilation any of the four cops had ever seen.

  Brenda Yee excused herself, walked off into the bushes, and barfed.

  “Nothing like seeing it up close, is there?” Ted asked, a strain to his words.

  “Especially when it’s a child,” Lani said. She stood with the others, waiting until the lab people finished.

  The child had been sexually assaulted, tortured, and then her face had been cut away. The silent wish was that the last at least had been done after she had died, and not before.

  “Parents been notified?” Leo asked, squatting down where the body had been. What was left of Theresa was now on the way to the ME’s lab.

  “Brownie’s going himself,” a uniform said.

  “Tire impressions?” Brenda asked, walking up.

  The uniform shook his head. “This is a favorite turning-around place. Must be fifty different sets here.”

  Leo stood up. “This is the most frustrating damn case I have ever worked on.”

  Back at the office, Leo had just sat down at his desk when his phone rang.

  “Cal Denning, Leo. Look, some of my memory is returning. I’m calling from a pay phone, because I’m afraid to use the phones at the station. Can you meet me at my place this evening?”

  “Sure. You think our people work at the station?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. But what I’ve found is intriguing. See you about five?”

  “We’ll be there.”

  * * *

  “I don’t hear anything,” Ted bitched.

  The four of them were standing in Cal’s home workshop. Cal had made dubs of the commercials and a few songs with hidden messages behind them before he’d been conked on the head. The memory had returned to him only that day.

  Cal slowed the tape down further. “Now listen.”

  They all heard it that time. Tammy Larson.

  “Jesus!” Lani said. “Subliminal suggestion.”

  “What?” Leo looked at her.

  “I looked it up,” Cal said. “What it means is this: repetition that is inserted into a particular person’s subconscious without that person knowing it. It’s below the threshold of consciousness.”

  “And it works, too,” Brenda said. “I took some courses on it. One of the courses involved half the class going to a movie with only the standard advertising for soft drinks and popcorn and candy, and the other half being subjected to split-second advertising on the screen, coming so fast your conscious mind doesn’t register it. But the eye picks it up and sends it to your subconscious. Gang, when the intermission came, it was a stampede; and we bought out the concession stand.”

  “Subtle brain-washing,” Leo said.

  “You could call it that, sure.”

  “Where was this commercial made, Cal?” Lani asked.

  “Well, the original tape was made in San Francisco, for a local car dealership. But with the sophisticated equipment we have now—eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty-four tracks and up—inserting whatever you want behind words and music is easy. Anybody with a third-class engineer’s license could do it. But it would take some time.”

  “Mr. Denning,” Ted said. “Considering the fact that you’ve been attacked, and this,” he pointed to the tape, “is probably the reason for it—your life is in danger. I’ll okay a gun permit for you, if you want to carry one.”

  Leo laughed. “He’s been carrying one as long as I’ve known him.”

  “Did your department issue him a concealed weapons permit?” Brenda asked.

  “Hell, no!” Leo told her. “Law-abiding citizens have a right to keep and bear arms, if they so desire. As a matter of fact, I encourage them to do so.”

  “That’s against the law, Leo,” Ted said, a disapproving look on his face.

  “It isn’t against my law,” Leo replied, his tone suggesting to all that the subject was closed. “Goddamn street gangs and thugs and punks stealing and raping and assaulting and killing with damn near impunity.”

  “I’ll get you a permit, so you can be legal,” Brenda verbally stepped in.

  Cal shrugged his total indifference to whether he was legal or not. That is an attitude that many Californians have adopted over the past few years.

  “Needless to say, but it bears repeating, you keep your mouth shut about this, Cal,” Leo told him. “And you start being extra careful.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll have my own security system in place by this time tomorrow.” He grinned, and it took years off his age. “I was a spook in the military. Worked with some real bright CIA boys.”

  “If it’s dangerous to anyone entering your place of residence,” Ted said, “it’s probably illegal.”

  “Ted,” Brenda said, an exasperated look on her face. “Did you know that your fly is open, and your dick is hanging out?”

  Ted’s mouth dropped open, he grabbed at himself, and the room rocked in laughter.

  * * *

  The two Hancock County deputies and the two members of the CBI met with Sheriff Brownwood, and then began exhaustive background checking on every employee of KSIN TV and radio. Dick Hale was finally and forever taken off the list of suspects, because he could prove without a doubt where he was when the Lopeno child was taken. But Stacy Ryan could not, and was reluctant to talk with the cops. They zeroed in on Tally-Ho.

  But their investigation of the program director and disc jockey did not last long. Sheriff Brownwood called it off abruptly.

  “What the hell, Sheriff?” Leo demanded.

  “She was with Carla Upton,” Brownie said. “Mrs. Upton called me a few hours ago. Not only that, but a couple of other women were there as well. Ladies whose names we all know quite well. They would prefer that their husbands not know of their, ah, outside interests.”

  “Doesn’t anyone enjoy a plain ol’ man/woman relationship anymore?” Leo bitched.

  Lani laughed at the expression on her partner’s face.

  “Well, I sure as hell do!” Brownie quickly stated.

  Lani held up a hand. “Sheriff, I believe the altered tapes can only play a part in luring the victims,” she said. “Physical contact has to be made first. Whoever it is doing this, has to know the victims, has to know what songs they like, what commercials make them laugh. I’ve spoken with Dick Hale, and he’s agreed to allow us to secretly tape record every incoming phone call to KSIN. The CBI has agreed to send in technicians to do just that. Now we need a judge’s approval.”

  “I can get that,” Brownie said.

  The door to Brownie’s office was pushed open, and a uniform stuck her head in. “Sheriff, we’ve got another one missing. The call just came in.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Brownie cursed.

  “Lady out in the county says she sent her daughter to the supermarket hours ago. The car’s just been found in the parking lot of the supermarket. No sign of the girl. And, Sheriff? The family lives about three miles from the house that blew up.”

  * * *

  The girl’s mother had been sedated and put to bed. The father was holding up, but just barely.

  “No,” he said, responding to Leo’s question. “Gin
ny never listened to KSIN. And my wife and I don’t either. We have a satellite system—you saw the dish outside—and don’t watch much local TV. What’s this about KSIN?”

  “Just a hunch that didn’t work out,” Brenda said quickly. “We’re playing all the angles, Mr. Atkins.”

  “We’d like a list of all Ginny’s friends,” Lani said. “We want to know who she dates, where she hangs out in town, everything you can think of that might help us.”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” the father said numbly.

  “We don’t know that, Mr. Atkins,” Ted said.

  “Ginny wasn’t the type to get in a car with someone she didn’t know,” the father said, after taking a long sigh. “You’ll discover that when you talk with her friends. And she’s brown-belt karate. She’s tough. A boy she used to date tried to get too familiar with her last year. She broke his arm.”

  “I remember that,” Leo said. “Try to keep your spirits up, Mr. Atkins.” He looked down at the eight by ten picture of Ginny Atkins. Hang in there, kid, he thought.

  * * *

  The girl dangled about six inches off the floor, hanging by her wrists at the end of a rope. She was naked except for the hood over her head. The rape had been brutal, painful, and degrading. After the man had taken her, the woman had strapped on some sort of rubber penis and used her like an animal. She knew it was a woman, because Ginny could feel her breasts against her naked back. The more Ginny had screamed, the more the woman became aroused. Ginny finally endured the assault in silence.

  Then the two of them had beaten her with whips. They had left only moments ago, saying they would be back in a few hours. Then the fun would really start. They told her to hang in there. They both thought that was really, really funny.

  Just before they left, one of them had given her a shot of something. She’d heard all about what had happened to Tina Gamble, and figured the shot had been to knock her out. She didn’t know how much time she had before the drug took effect, but she was determined to use every minute of it.

  Ginny was agile and strong, and fear and anger made her even stronger. She began working her legs, swaying back and forth, gaining a few more inches with each effort, working like a trapeze artist. She finally was able to touch her toes against the overhead, and on the fifth try, hooked her ankles around a pipe of some sort. That released the tension on the rope around her wrists. Working calmly considering what she had just gone through, and the predicament she was in, Ginny got one hand loose and then the other. She dropped to the floor and jerked the hood from her head.

  “Oh, my God!” she whispered, looking around her.

  * * *

  All dispatchers had standing orders about what to do if any of the Ripper’s victims managed to escape and were picked up by units from the city or county: stay off the radio, and keep the press the hell away for as long as possible.

  A sheriff’s department unit spotted Ginny frantically waving for help and whisked her to a hospital. There, the deputy called in by phone.

  Working very quickly and very furtively, the homes immediately surrounding the suspect house were cleared of residents, and city and county sharpshooters were stationed on all sides of the house. Ginny was being questioned by female cops even as she was being treated, over the strong objections of the doctors.

  “It’s a copycat,” Leo said, crouching behind the shrubs on the north side of the home where Ginny had been raped and beaten. “Got to be.”

  “I agree,” Lani said. “But, Jesus! Who would have ever suspected these two?”

  The two people Ginny had very adamantly named—between some pretty fancy cuss words—were a very successful high school football coach and a French teacher. Both from the same school.

  Leo grunted and Lani smiled at him. She knew that Leo was not a football fan. He couldn’t even tell you who won last year’s Super Bowl or where it was held. “Weirdos in every profession, Lani. And here they are.”

  The car pulled into the drive, and the man and woman got out. Leo, Lani, Brenda, and Ted all rose from behind the bushes, cocked pistols held in a two-handed shooting grip pointed at the couple.

  “Sheriff’s department!” Lani said. “Just freeze right there. Both of you!”

  For a moment, it looked as though the couple was going to obey the orders. Then the coach screamed an obscenity at the cops and jerked out a pistol.

  Four slugs hit the man. Two .357’s, one 9mm, and one .45 caliber ... Hydra-Shok. The coach was flung backward by the impact and was dead before he hit the ground. The woman began screaming and jumping up and down.

  Lani was across the drive and tackled the woman, sitting on her while Brenda cuffed her. The French teacher was doing some rather heated cussing, in English.

  “Get off me, you goddamn, murdering pig bitch!” she yelled at Lani.

  Lani resisted an impulse to hammer the woman’s face in with her pistol. She read the woman her rights, and not too gently jerked her to her feet and shoved her at a couple of uniforms.

  “Police brutality!” the French teacher screamed. “I’ll sue you.”

  Lani smiled at the woman. Leo knew that smile and grabbed his partner by the arm. “Let’s check out the house, Lani.”

  The French teacher had switched to French and was really calling Lani some choice names, as she was stuffed into the backseat of a unit.

  “I wonder what she’s calling me?” Lani asked.

  “She said she hopes you get the clap and your tits rot off,” Leo said matter-of-factly.

  Lani blinked a couple of times. “Well ... the nerve of that bitch! I didn’t know you spoke French, Leo.”

  Leo smiled. “I don’t.”

  Chapter 14

  They found the basement of the house exactly as the girl had described it. The rope was dangling from a rafter. Ginny’s tennis shoes were still there, as were her bra and panties. Then the lab people shooed them out while they went to work.

  Lani and Brenda were staring at a complicated-looking strap-on dildo. “Be sure and get some pictures of this ... thing,” Brenda said, disgust very plain behind her words.

  Outside, they stepped over the body of the coach. The press was on the scene and making a nuisance of themselves. A line of city and county police were holding them behind a CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER tape.

  “Which one of you killed the coach?” a reporter yelled.

  “We did have a good chance of winning state this year,” a maggot-brain said. “But we can forget it now. Thanks to the cops.” That statement even shocked some of the press present.

  This time it was Lani who grabbed Leo. “Come on, Leo. It’s not worth it. You know the mentality of some people.”

  Sheriff Brownwood walked up. “Settle down, Leo,” he said.

  “I hope the cameras got his face,” Leo said darkly. “And the Ripper is watching.”

  “And I hope nobody else heard you say that,” Brownie said.

  “How can people get so worked up over a goddamn stupid game, that they lose all perspective of right and wrong and moral values?” Leo muttered.

  “Get him in the car and out of here, Lani,” Brownie said. “Please.”

  * * *

  A few members of the press asked their usual stupid questions at the press conference later on that evening. “Why did the police have to kill him? Couldn’t they have just shot him in the leg, or something?” And so on and so forth.

  Luckily, Leo was not in attendance at the press conference. Leo, Lani, Brenda, and Ted were sweating the French teacher, and sweating her hard.

  When she broke, she opened a spillgate of sexual perversion and told her tale of horrors. She and the coach had been sexually active with selected students for about a decade. But this was the first time they had ever kidnapped one. They had used coercion before; threats of grade failure and other methods. But never kidnapping. Until this time.

  But she and the dead coach were not the team called the Ripper.

  “What am I facing?” t
he French teacher asked.

  “You’ll be presented a list of all charges,” Leo told her.

  “I don’t want to go to prison,” she said. “They do terrible things to women in prison, and I’m not really a bad person. Really, I’m not.”

  Lani and Leo walked out of the interrogation room after hearing that.

  * * *

  “The problem is,” Leo said, after building his third bourbon and water and knocking back half of it, “we’re trying to deal with these characters logically and rationally. The killers do not have logical or rational minds.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Ted asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m getting tight, I know that. And I know that we’re missing something. It’s right there in front of us, but we can’t get a handle on it. And it’s frustrating the hell out of me.”

  “You think you’re alone in that?” Lani questioned. “Twin brothers, identical twins, with access to enormous wealth, just do not drop out of sight. We’ve plastered the entire West with pictures of how they probably look at age thirty-three, and we’ve had zip response. Nothing.”

  “We know they’ve left a trail of bodies all across this country,” Leo picked it up. “Yet they’ve managed to elude the police for years. How?”

  “We’re closer than we’ve ever been,” Ted tried to turn the conversation upbeat. “So far, the technicians have discovered ten doctored tapes at KSIN. Radio and TV. Those songs and commercials are played at the same time, every day or night. But so far no names of actual people have showed up. Just suggestions. ‘Drink your morning coffee. Take your bath. I’m your friend. I won’t hurt you. Trust me. Listen to KSIN.’ But all the employees check out. They are who they say they are. Birth records, employment records, service records. Shit!” he concluded.

  “And we can’t tip our hand just yet,” Brenda said. “You can’t hold someone just because they flunk a polygraph. If we started that, the party, or parties, would just run again.”

  “And how much longer can we sit on what we’re doing?” Lani questioned. “It’s going to leak. Bet on that.”

  Leo hummed “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” then frowned. “And what the hell does that mean?”