Night Mask Page 2

  * * *

  “Dick,” Tally-Ho sat down in his office. “I thought we had cleared the air as to who runs what in this station?”

  “Didn’t take long for that prima donna to call you,” Dick replied, leaning back in his expensive chair; where he kept his butt most of the day. That is, when he wasn’t going home to take naps or visiting his mistress.

  “Frenchy isn’t a prima donna, and he didn’t call me. I called him after I heard his show go flat. Dick, if you had the common sense to know horseshit from peanut butter, you’d have understood long ago that there is a time and a place to chew on DJs.”

  Dick flushed deeply and pointed a finger at her. “Little girlie, you do not talk to me in that manner.”

  Tally smiled. “I have a legal, binding contract with this station,” she stood her ground. “That document spells out, very clearly, my duties at this operation. It further states that it is my responsibility, and mine solely, to hire and fire and discipline on-air personalities. Now, if you want to argue that, Mrs. Upton is awaiting your call.” She met his gaze without wavering.

  Dick tried to meet her steady gaze. But like most very insecure people, he could not maintain the eye-to-eye contact. He dropped his gaze and cursed. “You goddamn libbers really think you have us men by the balls, don’t you, little girlie?”

  “You call me Little Girlie again, and that’s exactly where I will have you, Little Dickie.”

  Dick jumped to his feet. “By God, this is my station, Stacy! I run it.”

  Tally stood up, meeting him eyeball to eyeball. “Run it? That’s a joke. You can’t even splice a tape or cue up a record, before we went to CD and cart, that is. You don’t know anything about a control room. You don’t know anything about on-air personalities. You’ve never sat behind a mike in your life. You wouldn’t last five minutes, if you really had to work in radio or TV. If your daddy hadn’t given you the stock in this operation, you’d be out on the street panhandling. We’ve got the best salespeople in this city here at KSIN, Dick. They’re the ones selling the time, not you. You couldn’t sell a heater to an Eskimo. The only thing you do around here is draw a check ... and a damn good check, thanks to the efforts of those who work here. Now we have a contract, Dick, and by god, I’m going to hold you to that contract. Now, if that is not agreeable, you can buy out my contract. Right now. I take my format with me, and every DJ you’ve got here will walk out with me.”

  Dick paled. Her contract had just been renegotiated. “That’s a three-year contract, Stacy.”

  “That’s right, Dickie,” she said with a smile. “So the next move is yours.”

  Dick did some quick math. As usual, he got it wrong, but he came close enough. He swallowed hard. “There will come a day of reckoning, litt—Stacy. Bet on it.”

  Tally’s smile changed, becoming hard and mean. “I’m looking forward to it, Dick. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Get out of my office, you—cunt!”

  She laughed and flipped him the rigid digit, then walked out, slamming the door behind her.

  “You bitch!” Dick fumed at the closed door. Then he took his anger out on his secretary. “Bring me a cup of coffee!” he shouted over the intercom. “And do it right now!”

  “Sorry, Paula,” Tally said to the receptionist. “I got him all stirred up.”

  Paula Darling smiled her understanding as she stood up and moved to the coffeepot. “One of these days I’m going to work up the courage to pour this on his head.”

  “Get it good and hot and dump the whole pot on his crotch,” Tally suggested. “That’ll really get his attention.”

  * * *

  Gil Brown, the Windjammer, called in sick that day. Said he had a sore throat. Everybody extended their air time one hour and covered for him.

  * * *

  Instead of driving straight back to her apartment, as was her custom Monday through Friday, Jessica Kress pointed the nose of her Toyota north, toward the northernmost knuckle of Puno Bay, up in the hills. Before leaving work, she had called KSIN and asked the DJ to play a song for her at precisely five-thirty that afternoon. At five thirty, right after the ID, one of her favorite oldies pushed through the speakers in her car.

  “Yes,” she said several times while the music drifted all around her. “Yes. That’s right.”

  She turned off onto a blacktop road, followed that for a few miles, then turned onto a gravel road. She parked by a field and sat for a time. Then she got out of the car and walked over to a stand of trees.

  “Hello,” the voice came from behind her.

  Jessica turned around, a smile on her lips. The smile faded as her eyes took in the horror standing before her. Reality returned in a wild rush. She looked around her. She did not know where she was or how she got there. Then she began screaming.

  * * *

  “Up and at ’em,” Leo Franks told his partner. It was a warm and pleasant morning. “Time to go to work.”

  Lani Prejean looked over the rim of her coffee cup. “So early in the morning?”

  “We’ve got another disappearance.”

  “Damn!” Lani sat her cup down on the desk.

  “City wants some county help on this one. Same MO as the others. Woman leaves work and vanishes. This one is a Jessica Kress. Left work yesterday afternoon, and drops off the face of the earth. She was supposed to see her fiance last evening, both of them to meet with the priest, to go over marriage plans. She never showed up.”

  “Cold feet, maybe. It happens, Leo.”

  “Not this one. Bet on it. Very devout Catholic. Homebody. Real good kid—”

  The intercom on Lani’s desk buzzed. “Yeah?”

  “CHP just found the car belonging to the Kress woman. Just off One North on County 45. You two get up there. And don’t do it on a full stomach.”

  Lani looked at the remnants of a sweet roll on her desk. She’d already had two that morning. “Why, Captain?”

  “Because Jessica Kress is scattered all over a field. Her heart was cut out of her chest and nailed to a fence post.”

  Chapter 3

  Neither detective had ever seen anything like what greeted them in the meadow. They were both seasoned cops, with years of witnessing the worst in human behavior. But this topped it all.

  After recovering from her shock, Lani said, “Where the hell is her face?”

  “We can’t find it,” the CHP man said. “We’ve found and staked out most of the other body parts, but no sign of her face. Whoever did this skinned her head.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Leo blurted. “This guy just keeps getting worse and worse.”

  “If it’s a guy,” Lani amended that.

  “We’re pretty sure it is,” the highway cop said. “We found some footprints ... shoe prints, rather. If it’s a woman, she’s got a hell of a foot on her.”

  The county cops squatted down and looked at the shoe prints. “ ’Bout an eleven,” Lani guessed. “That would be a big-footed woman, for sure.”

  “Take a look at that stride,” Leo pointed. “That’s a good twenty-eight to thirty-inch step.”

  They backed off as the forensic crew went to work.

  “We have a real nut on our hands,” Leo said softly.

  “Certifiable,” Lani agreed.

  “And here comes the crew from KSIN TV,” Leo said, watching the dust kick up behind the wheels of the mobile van. “We have them to thank for naming this bastard. The Ripper. Not very original of them.”

  “Well, you’re senior to me,” Lani said with a smile. “You handle it.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” Lani said sweetly.

  * * *

  The Ripper brushed the wig carefully, then replaced it on its mount. The bloody jeans and shirt had been burned the previous evening, when the night chill of the bay drifted into the coastal town and people lit their fireplaces. The Ripper smiled at the face of Jessica Kress, floating in a jar
of preservative, the long hair fanning out around the face. Such a lovely face; so expressive even in death.

  The Ripper glanced at the clock on the dresser. Time to go to work, and after work, the next love affair would be selected. The Ripper loved all the dead faces in the collection; it was quite a collection. The Ripper did not always take the faces. Sometimes the faces were ugly, and the Ripper did not like ugliness. The Ripper liked beautiful things. Most of the Ripper’s victims’ bodies had not yet been found, having been carefully buried over the long years and several thousand miles. But after awhile, that had turned boring. If the bodies could not be found, where was the challenge?

  The Ripper lovingly carried each large jar back to its hiding place, placing a long and wet kiss against the glass. The Ripper longed to kiss the dead lips, but knew once sealed in the fluid, living lips would have to touch only the coolness of the glass and play pretend.

  The Ripper had been playing pretend for years. Ever since childhood. Oh, to be a child again, and gaze up into the faces of adults and lie so smoothly and convincingly after a disappearance of a playmate. That had been such fun!

  After replacing all the jars, the Ripper consulted a leather-bound ledger and carefully wrote in another name. The Ripper never wrote in the latest love’s real name, but a name that came to mind just at the moment of death. It never failed. It always came to mind. Jessica was renamed Swallow. Just like a lovely swallow. Oh, my yes.

  And now Swallow belonged to the Ripper. Forever and ever.

  * * *

  Lani sat down wearily at her desk. The Ripper had been handed to Lani and Leo. Exclusively. All their other cases had been given to other detectives. Her feet hurt and she longed to go home, stretch out in a tub of hot soapy water, and just soak all the aches away. Leo had gone home and the room was deserted, the second shift having reported in and gone. She looked at the huge stack of reports from other departments around the country, and sighed. She opened the bottom left-hand drawer and took out a bottle of Crown Royal and a glass, pouring a good three fingers of the liquid. She took off her shoes, took a sip of Canadian whiskey, and began working her way through the stack. Thirty minutes and three phone calls later, her weariness vanished, the whiskey was forgotten, and Lani was rapidly jotting down notes on a long legal pad.

  “You screwed up, my man,” she muttered. “You made a mistake, and I caught it.”

  She reached over and turned on the radio. It stayed tuned to KSIN FM. Just like the radio in her car and the radios in her home. BJ the DJ was on. She smiled as BJ introed the old Floyd Cramer hit “Last Date.” She vaguely recalled her parents dancing to that. They had just moved from Louisiana to California. Lani still remembered some of the Cajun French she’d spoken as a child. A few words.

  Her parents, both factory workers, had retired and moved back to bayou country. Lani stayed in California and became a cop after graduating from college. She was thirty-five, divorced after five years of marriage. No kids. She was the stereotypical California girl, blond and blue-eyed, tanned and very attractive. She was also a very good cop. She and Leo had been partners for several years and worked well together. Leo was married with four kids, hopelessly in love with his wife, Virginia, and Virginia and Lani were good friends.

  Lani hummed along with the old forties’ hit, “Amapola,” and straightened up her desk, placing the reports in the top right-hand drawer and locking it. Now she had a place to start, and she and Leo would start first thing in the morning. She headed for home.

  After a long, hot soak in the tub, Lani piled up in bed and watched the late news. The anchor at KSIN played up the recent killing, inferring in not-too-subtle terms that the La Barca and Hancock County cops didn’t have a clue as to the Ripper’s identity and probably never would.

  “Screw you,” Lani said. She clicked off the set and went to sleep.

  * * *

  Three days later.

  “Nineteen seventy-one?” Leo questioned. “Outside of Albany, New York. Christ, Lani, that’s three thousand miles away and twenty-three years ago!”

  “I’m just getting warmed up,” she said with a smile. She unfolded a map of the United States and spread it out on the hood of the car. She and Leo had agreed not to discuss the case back at the station. Too many leaks were occurring. “Look here,” Lani said, pointing. “In 1972, a kid’s body was found here, his face missing.”

  “Albany, again,” Leo said softly.

  “In 1973, the body of a little girl was found, here,” she said, pointing. “No face.”

  “Rochester.”

  “Two years later, the body of a teenage girl was found here.” She pointed. “No face.”

  “Buffalo.”

  “In 1977, the body of a woman was found here.” She jabbed at the map. “No face.”

  “Akron. He’s moving west.”

  “More than that, Leo. Can’t you see it?”

  Leo frowned, then shook his head. “You’re past me, Lani. I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “This monster started his killing as a child. He’s been doing this since childhood. As he grew older, he progressed to killing adults.”

  “If it’s the same person.”

  “It’s the same person. Look. In 1978, another body was found. Right here. No face.”

  “Peoria, Illinois.”

  She pointed at the map. “Nineteen eighty-two. Another body.”

  “Des Moines. Why the four-year gap?”

  “Several options, buddy. The bodies were not found. The person was in prison. Or more than likely, committed to some sort of mental institution.”

  “I buy the latter.”

  “Me, too. Look.” She jabbed the map. “Nineteen eighty-three. Two bodies found. A man and a woman. No faces.”

  “Wichita.”

  “Five years go by. It’s 1988. A body found here, just outside of Denver. A nun. No face. She had been raped and sodomized repeatedly. Go back a decade, to 1977. To Akron. That woman was a nun. Go back to 1972. To Albany. Both those kids were reported missing from a Catholic school.”

  “What happened between ’83 and ’88?”

  “Institutionalized, probably.” She touched the map with a finger. “Nineteen eighty-nine, just outside of Albuquerque. A priest and a nun were found. They were naked and tests revealed both had sex before they were killed. They both had been tortured. No faces.”

  “This guy is twisted, Lani. You know the first thought that popped into my mind?”

  “The priest and nun were tortured into having sex.”

  “You’re a mind reader. How old was the first kid in Albany?”

  “Six.”

  “The second kid in Albany?”

  “Nine.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Nineteen ninety. A woman’s body was discovered outside Phoenix. No face. Nineteen ninety-one. Salt Lake City. Two sisters, twins. No faces. Nothing between ’91 and late ’93. Then bodies started popping up in this area.”

  “Five bodies in five months. Now what?”

  “We go see Dennis Potter.”

  “The father of the first girl killed in this area ... that we know of. Why?”

  “Because he’s offered a quarter-of-a-million-dollar reward for the capture of the killer, and we don’t have the budget to go traipsing all over the country chasing down these leads.”

  Leo stared at her. “You’re really going to ask Mister Potter for the money to do that? Lani, you’ve got more brass on your ass than Batman!”

  She smiled sweetly. “Batwoman, Leo. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Dennis Potter listened as Lani laid it all out for him. She left nothing out. Dennis Potter was one of the wealthiest men in the state, and an avowed conservative. He was a self-made man, the son of itinerant fruit-pickers. He hated criminals and thought that the judicial system—the way it was presently being administered—sucked. After Lani had finished, Dennis walked to the phone and called one of the banks he owned. “I want Master
Cards and Visa Cards in the name of Lani Prejean and Leo Franks. No limits. I want them tomorrow; have the statements sent to my office.” He called American Express and told them the same thing. Then he called the sheriff. “Lani Prejean and Leo Franks will be working the Ripper case exclusively, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” the sheriff was very respectful. Dennis Potter owned Hancock County.

  “Fine. You probably won’t be seeing much of them for the next couple of months. They’ll be flying around the country, chasing down leads. You have any objections to that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Fine. And not one word about this, Sheriff. Not one word.” He hung up and turned to the cops. “Be out here tomorrow afternoon for your credit cards. Where will you go first?”

  “Albany,” Lani said.

  “Good hunting,” Dennis Potter said.

  * * *

  Cal Denning was reading a manual on a piece of equipment when something in a commercial caught his ear. He listened until the commercial was over. Cal had started out as a DJ, and still did the occasional voice-over just to keep his hand in it. What the hell was wrong with that commercial?

  He started to get up, to go into the control room to pull that cart and listen to it more closely, then he paused and sat back down. No, he thought, he’d wait until shift change.

  Now why would I want to do that? he questioned. He could come up with no answer, but he still decided to wait. Something was sure odd about that commercial.

  “Ah, hell,” he muttered. “You’re just getting old, Cal. Imagining things.”

  But he knew he wasn’t imagining anything. Something was out of sync with that commercial. He’d check it later.

  * * *

  Sheriff Brownwood, Brownie to his friends, leaned back in his chair and thought about his brief conversation with Dennis Potter. He had known Dennis for nearly forty years. They both were the sons of itinerant workers, had met in labor camps, and both had risen to some degree of prominence in the county ... Dennis far and away more than Brownie in terms of wealth. And Brownie knew something else about Dennis: he was utterly, totally, relentlessly ruthless when it came to his family, his horses, or his dogs. He loved them all, in that order. Ruthie had been the youngest, and was the apple of Dennis’s eye. The man had very nearly lost it when the Ripper had killed his daughter. If Lani and Leo didn’t find the Ripper, Dennis would hire someone who would, and Dennis would not give one damn about the legality of it all.