Night Mask (20 page)

“Monstrous!” Dick said, reading the day-old newspaper he'd found in the street. He wadded it up and tossed it aside. “There is no justice in this world.” He slobbered for a moment, then picked his nose, and farted.

Dick picked up the ragged, old, discarded topcoat he'd found, and took out his knife, cutting away a few threads that lingered after his tailoring job. The back of the coat would be perfect for what he had in mind. Part of one sleeve would do nicely, too. He'd already fashioned that. He'd found a pair of long-handled underwear amid the trash at a newer landfill, and carefully washed and dried them. He'd found a pair of boots and repaired them with some strips of leather shoelaces. Dick was going to bring justice back into society. He'd by God show everybody what he was made of! He'd become a legend that people would be talking about for years to come.

Yeah, but not quite like Dick imagined in his sick mind.

* * *

“We know you didn't have anything to do with those terrible crimes,” the mother said to her son at the dinner table.

“Of course, I didn't,” the lying, little, beady-eyed zit-head replied smoothly. “I just wanted to be with my friends.”

“That's only natural,” the father said.

“The cops beat me every day I was in jail,” the prick said. “And they tried to make me have oral sex with them, too. They're really terrible people.”

“We know,” mommy cooed. “And we're going to sue them for that. Our attorney says you'll be rich.” Translation:
we'll
be rich, and the attorney will be richer.

Tommy Williams had taken an active part in a dozen of the torture/murders/rapes. He'd been a leader of one of the youth cells. He had planned and taken part in the kidnapping of many of the victims. Tommy Williams had begun his career of perversion and evil as a very young child, torturing dogs and cats and birds. That had been called to the attention of his parents, but, of course, they didn't believe a word of it. Naturally. Mommy and daddy's precious, little, perfect darling would never, ever, do anything like that.

How could they be so sure? Why, they asked him.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams did not see the dark shape slipping silently into their backyard. A rather peculiarly dressed shape, wearing an eye mask and a cape over long-handled underwear and flat-heeled boots.

Mommy and daddy left to go to the club for drinks and dancing, and Tommy was alone in the house. He was under court order not to leave the premises, and he had enough sense to obey that order. He wandered aimlessly from room to room. He put heavy metal on his stereo and turned the volume up to an ear-splitting level. “Stupid goddamn cops,” Dick Hale heard him mutter, just before the sounds of shrieking and howling and banging and thumping filled the night air and caused neighbors to wince in annoyance and dogs to howl.

“Turn down that damn racket!” a neighbor hollered over the fence.

“Fuck you!” Tommy shouted. Such a polite, young man. Very respectful to his elders and so considerate of the rights of others.

“I'll call the cops!” the neighbor shouted.

“You do and I'll poison your dogs!” Tommy yelled.

The neighbor knew the punk would do just that. He'd poisoned other dogs in the neighborhood, when people had complained about the music. The man closed up his house, flipped on the air-conditioning, and turned up the volume on the TV. For the thousandth time, he wished Tommy Williams would fall off the edge of the world and burn forever in the pits of hell. He would get at least part of his wish that evening.

Tommy Williams walked back to his bedroom and opened all the windows and turned up the volume just as loud as his speakers could take. He smiled an evil upturning of the lips, as he walked back to the den. Tommy opened the sliding glass doors and looked out. He blinked and stared.

“What the fuck?” he said, and stepped out into the lawn. “Hey, you!” he shouted. “You with the cape! What the hell do you want?”

“Justice,” the caped figure said.

“Justice?”

“That's what I said. Are you deaf from listening to that crap you call music?”

“Hey man, go screw yourself, you goofy-lookin' bastard. And get off this property.”

“No.”

“I ain't believin' this shit,” Tommy muttered. “How come all the nuts move into this neighborhood.”

The area would soon be minus one.

“You're a murdering piece of trash,” the caped and masked figure said.

“Yeah? Well, the cops couldn't prove it, and neither can you. So haul your ass on out of here.”

That was the last thing Tommy Williams ever said on the face of this earth. Tommy would murder and torture no more humans, no more animals, and he would never again annoy his neighbors with loud music. The caped figure lifted a shotgun and blew Tommy's head all over the sliding-glass doors. The music was so loud, the shotgun blasts could not be heard over the grunting and groaning of the singers and crashing of cymbals and the roar of guitars.

The caped man stepped into the house and walked toward the source of the music. He stood in the doorway and blew the offending stereo into a jumble of pieces.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” a neighbor hollered.

“You're welcome,” the caped and masked man muttered, then walked out the back door, stepping over the headless body of Tommy Williams. He paused for a moment, looking down at the body, unaware that several neighbors were staring out their windows, wondering what had happened to bless them with such quiet. “Punk,” the man said, then walked on.

* * *

“The woman over there said it was Batman,” Gene Clark told Leo, pointing.

“The neighbor across the street said it looked like Zorro to her,” another uniform said.

“The kid on the other side of the house swears it was Flash Gordon,” a deputy said.

“Oh, hell, it was Dick Hale,” Leo said. “The fool has gone completely around the bend.”

Lani looked down at the blanket-covered body of the headless Tommy Williams. “There is justice in the world after all,” she whispered, careful that the sobbing mother and father holding on to each other in the den would not hear her words.

“Yeah,” Gene Clark said. “This was one sorry punk.”

“Easy,” Brenda said. “Agnes Peters just drove up.”

“Somebody be sure to ask her if her ass is healing nicely,” Leo said with a smile.

None of the cops present could work up even a modicum of sorrow for the kid sprawled in death at their feet. Tommy Williams had been giving the La Barca PD and the Hancock County Sheriff's Department headaches for years. But being a semiprecious juvenile, he had to be handled with kid gloves. Up until now.

“Oh, my baby!” Mrs. Williams squalled. “Why? He was such a good boy.”

“Excuse me while I look for a place to puke,” Sergeant Clark said, upon hearing those words.

Mr. Williams stepped to the glass doors and pointed a trembling finger at the knot of cops on the patio. “You goddamn cops better find out who did this,” he threatened.

A neighbor, who was standing on his own property, peering over the five-foot-high security fence, said, “Goddamn punk finally got what was coming to him.”

“What a terrible thing to say at a time like this!” Agnes Peters hollered from the side of the house, standing behind the yellow and black CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS tape.

“Why?” the neighbor questioned. “It's the truth. You should try the truth sometime, Ms. Peters. It would be a refreshing change.”

“I'll whip your ass, Beeson!” Mr. Williams shouted.

“Come on,” the neighbor said.

“How dare you say that to me!” Agnes hollered.

“How's your ass, Agnes?” Lani asked.

“You can't say those things about my boy, Beeson!” Mr. Williams screamed.

“I just did, Williams,” the neighbor said quietly. “And I don't apologize for it.”

“Shut up,” Leo warned, pointing at the man. “No matter what you thought of the kid, can the nasty remarks for now.”

“Your ass is mine, Beeson!” Mr. Williams shouted.

“I doubt it,” Beeson said, and stepped back into his own house.

“I'll kill that no-good rotten son of a bitch!” Mr. Williams said.

“Just remember that a half-dozen cops heard you say that,” Lani reminded him.

Someone else heard him say it, too.

* * *

Every cop working the case felt that Stacy Ryan was guilty as hell. But no one could prove it, and Stacy Ryan was staying squeaky clean. No one challenged Carla Upton's will, and Stacy was now legally a rich, young woman.

Sensing that public opinion was running high against the young people involved in the hideous torture /murders, and the majority of the public would not tolerate them making a martyr of the dickhead, the press played down the killing of Tommy Williams... instead of their usual weeping and sobbing and hanky-stomping. Even Agnes Peters decided not to write about the killing.

But all that was about to change.

The teenagers (all minors) who had been freed from jail, met secretly the morning after Tommy Williams was killed and came to the conclusion that someone was stalking them and that their lives were in danger. They called their attorneys, and the lawyers asked for a meeting with the chief of police of La Barca and with Sheriff Brownwood.

Brownie was the first to speak after hearing the astonishing request. “Get out of my goddamn office!” he angrily told the group of attorneys.

The chief of police grabbed a fistful of one attorney's shirt and tie and drew back his right fist, about two seconds away from popping him, when a deputy wisely grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

“It's a legitimate request, Sheriff,” a lawyer, said. “The young people are in danger. They're being stalked.”

Brownie almost said that he hoped the stalker got every one of them, but he bit that off short of speech. “There is no goddamn way this office is going to provide security for that pack of savages!”

“Ditto for my office!” the chief of police said.

“Then you leave us no alternative, but to seek a court order forcing you to do so,” another attorney told the top lawmen of city and county.

That did it for the chief. He lost his cool and wrapped both big hands around the neck of the attorney and starting choking him and shaking him like a doll. Brownie, the deputy, and the assistant chief of police finally separated the two men, and when the lawyer caught his breath, he predictably yelled, “I'll sue you!”

The chief of police balled one hand into a huge fist and knocked the attorney right through Brownie's office door.

While that was going on, Williams's neighbor, Mr. Beeson, an insurance agent, was driving out into the country to see a prospective new client. He was found around four o'clock that afternoon, shot four times in the back of the head with a .357 mag.

Mr. Williams was immediately picked up for questioning.

“I was alone, driving around, trying to clear my head,” Williams said. “My son was
killed
last night, you bastards! This is a very trying time for me and my wife.”

La Barca homicide detectives tossed the Williams home and found a stainless steel .357 mag.

“That isn't mine!” Williams said. “I don't own a gun.”

“Test his hands,” the chief said, after meeting with Leo and Lani. “This thing stinks like a setup.”

Tests proved that Mr. Williams had not fired any type of gun that day.

“Try to recall who was in the crowd last night,” Lani asked all the cops who had been present at the Williams home. “Somebody heard Williams threaten Beeson.”

“There must have been several hundred people who eventually gathered around there,” Ted said. “We had to block off the street to traffic, remember? And Williams was shouting when he threatened Beeson.”

“Okay,” Leo said wearily. “We reconstruct the scene. Try to remember everybody you saw at the Williams home. Don't leave out anyone just because they're a cop, an EMT, a doctor, a minister, a respected member of the community, or a friend. Let's meet back here in the morning.”

* * *

“Ten possibilities,” Brenda said. “Two of the kids there used to buddy with some of those kids we arrested. Seven people who have kids arrested were present, and one Patricia Sessions.”

“That name is familiar,” Ted said.

“She's a salesperson out at KSIN TV.”

“She live close by?”

“She lives clear across town.”

Det. Bill Bourne, who had left the La Barca PD to work for the sheriffs department, slowly raised his head. “Wait a minute. Hold it. Why does that name ring a bell with me? Give me a second, folks.” He got up and walked around the room for several minutes. Then he snapped his fingers. “Got it! My wife saw them at the airport in L.A. Last year. Alice had taken a commuter flight down to visit her sister. They were boarding a plane to Mexico. All three of them, together.”

“All three?” Brenda said. “Who?”

“Carla Upton, Patricia Sessions, and Stacy Ryan.”

Before they could react, the phone rang. The psychic, Anna Kokalis, had arrived.

“Show her in,” Lani said.

Brenda had deliberately not told Ted much about Anna, and she was amused at the expression on his face when the woman walked in. Anna was in her early thirties, very petite, very shapely, and very pretty. Her hair was as black as a raven's wing, and her skin was smooth and flawless. Her eyes were gray, and slightly Slavic-appearing. She was introduced all around.

“Nice to see you again, Lani,” Anna said. She had a very soft voice.

Leo took one look at the expression on Ted's face and winked at Lani. Ted was smitten—hard.

“We've got a bit of a problem here, Anna,” Brenda said.

Anna's smile was sad. “You have more than that, and you know it. You would not have contacted me, if you felt any other way.”

“I'm the one who convinced the others to bring you in,” Lani said.

“I know,” the woman replied.

Lani wisely decided not to pursue that. She really wasn't sure she wanted to know how Anna knew. “I alone am firmly convinced that something . . . well, beyond the normal is at work here.”

“The supernatural?” Anna asked.

“That or something very close to it. Let us walk you through this thing, starting with what Leo and I found out in New York State.”

Anna sat for twenty minutes, listening to the detectives retrace their steps. She asked no questions until the four cops had finished.

“You're convinced the Longwood mansion is evil?”

“I am,” Lani said. “I can't speak for Leo.”

Anna looked at Leo. His only reply was a shrug of his shoulders. She looked first at Brenda, then at Ted.

“We haven't been to the mansion,” Brenda said.

Anna stood up. “I need to visit the ruins of the country home that blew up.”

“There's nothing there except rubble,” Brenda told her.

“Oh, yes, there is,” Anna said mysteriously. “It isn't visible. But it's there.”

* * *

Sitting inside the rusting hulk of an ancient vehicle he was now calling home, Dick Hale cleaned his shotgun and then carefully brushed his cape. He had chosen the next person to bring to justice.

The story of the subliminal messages had leaked out, and the DJs at KSIN were understandably edgy, knowing they were all under suspicion. To a person, they maintained a high visibility when not on the air. It was an unnecessary move on their part, for the police had taken them off the suspect list—all but one of them. And Stacy Ryan was being very careful in everything she did. However, she did smile a lot. Cathy Young had taken over Stacy's slot on the air and was doing a good job.

A judge had taken under advisement a motion for the cops to provide around-the-clock protection for those young people arrested in connection with the killing-club murders and released to the custody of their parents. The whole idea was very repugnant to the judge.

Citizens of La Barca and Hancock County had extra locks put on their doors, many had armed themselves, and nearly everybody had become very cautious when outside their homes. Armed citizens stood guard around the city's parks and playgrounds, and the police were under orders not to attempt to seize privately owned weapons. That, of course, did not set too well with those who belonged to groups whose main focus in life was to disarm American citizens. But after the second person got his jaw broken by the butt of a rifle (it's called being butt-stroked), those types wisely decided to keep their mouths shut and stay faraway from those men and women who had armed themselves solely to protect their kids.

And Agnes Peters's ass was healing nicely.

* * *

“Monumental evil,” Anna Kokalis finally spoke, standing amid the rubble of the blown-apart country home. She turned and walked quickly back to the road, the investigators right behind her.

“Well?” Lani asked.

“I ... don't know,” the psychic admitted. “I've never experienced a feeling quite like it. All murderers and rapists and kidnappers and others of that ilk are evil to some degree. But the evil I experienced here is... different. It's . . . indescribable. I don't know what to say.”

“Pure?” Lani prompted.

Anna looked at her. “Yes,” she said slowly. “That would describe it. Pure evil. But supernatural?” She shook her head. “I don't know. I have tried all my life to not venture into that area. People like myself . . . we have to be careful. So many times we stand so close to the edge. I don't know how to put it any other way.”

“Anna,” Brenda said. “You don't have to do this. You can turn right around and go back home.”

The woman shook her head. “No. I'll help. But I want to speak with a priest this evening. I must. It's important that I do.”

“I'll be happy to escort you,” Ted said quickly.

She smiled at him. “Thank you. I accept your offer.”

As they walked to the cars, Ted gave Brenda a very dirty look. She was whistling, off-key, music from South Pacific: “Some Enchanting Evening.”

* * *

Cecil Harrison sat in the backyard of his parents' home and stared out at the gathering darkness. His thoughts were darker than the growing night. He missed the weekly meetings of the killing club. He missed the screaming of the tortured. He missed the heady feeling of power, when he raped and sodomized the screaming unwilling victim of perversion . . . male or female; it hadn't made a bit of difference to Cecil. He missed the smell of blood. The sixteen-year-old grew conscious of someone staring at him from over a security fence. Pat Judson, the turdy next-door neighbor who had started a petition to get Cecil placed in a mental institution, a boys' home, back in jail, somewhere,
anywhere
other than this neighborhood.

“What are you starin' at, you puke-faced son of a bitch?” Cecil snarled at the man.

“A rotten, evil punk,” Pat bluntly told the young man.

Cecil's father rushed out of the house. “Hey, Judson!” he shouted. “You don't talk to my boy that way.”

“I'll talk to that piece of shit anyway I like, Harrison,” the neighbor stood his ground. “And I've got a right to do just that.”

“Goddamnit, Judson, the boy apologized for killing your stupid dog! Goddamn mutt barked too much anyway.”

“It's what he did to my son that gives me the right, Harrison.”

The father had no comeback for that. Although it had never been conclusively proven that his son forced the little boy next door to have oral sex with him—it was one kid's word against the other—the father knew in his heart it was true. But how do you not stand up for your kid? “The courts will sort all this out, Judson.”

“How does that repair the mental scars that my boy will carry for the rest of his life, Harrison?”

“Give it a rest, Judson,” the father said wearily. “Just get off my boy's back.”

“I want that worthless piece of garbage in prison, and I'll not rest until I see him there,” Judson vowed.

“Come on in the house, boy,” the father urged.

“I like it here,” the punk said. “Fuck-face over there don't bother me none.”

“Dinner's ready, honey,” Judson's wife called from the back door.

Cecil Harrison's father looked at his son, shook his head, and walked back into his own house, his back stiff with anger. He stopped for a moment, staring at the Judson home. It had been a very nice dog; didn't bark any more than other dogs. He sighed. Hell, Pat was a nice guy. He closed the sliding-glass door and shut the world out.

“And pull the drapes!” Cecil told his father. “I like the night.”

“Right,” the father said, holding back his own anger. He fought away the urge to pick up a poker from the fireplace and beat his son's head in with it. He pulled the drapes closed, thinking: where did the wife and I go wrong? Cecil's older brother and sister turned out great. The last chick in the nest turned out . . . shit sorry, the father concluded. Boy, the grief that you have brought your mother and me. But you don't care about that, you miserable, selfish, evil, little bastard. He locked the sliding-glass doors. “Get your coat, Helen,” he called to his wife. “Let's go see a movie.”

“What about Cecil?” she asked.

“Fuck Cecil!” the disgusted father said.

Cecil heard his parents leave the house and drive off. Just as the sound of the car faded, his eyes caught the movement of a dark shape, slipping silently outside the fence. A strange-looking figure, almost comical, the cape billowing out behind him. But the shotgun made the scene very real and menacing. Cecil stared at the funny-looking shape and knew instantly what it represented. Cecil felt fear clutch at him. This time Cecil didn't have the upper hand. He jumped for the sliding-glass doors. Locked.

“Shit!” the punk whispered.

“Justice,” the dark figure behind the fence called.

“Hey, man!” Cecil called, panic in his voice. “I got rights.”

Pat Judson heard the commotion and stepped out onto his patio. He saw the man in the cape and mask outside the Harrisons' fence. He smiled. He could practically feel the panic welling up in Cecil.

“Hey, man!” Cecil called to his neighbor, standing in the light from his den. “Call the cops, man! That nut's here with a gun!”

“There is justice in this world after all,” Pat Judson said, then turned and walked back into his house, closing the doors and pulling the drapes.

Cecil ran to the edge of the house and tried the gate. Locked. “Goddamnit!” he shouted. He looked up, the man and wife living in the house on the other side were staring out of the kitchen window at him. They were smiling. Cecil had poisoned their cats and dogs, too. “Call the cops, damn you!” he screamed. The man reached up and lowered the kitchen blind.

Cecil turned and had just a few seconds in which to ask the Lord's forgiveness for all the hurt and degradation he had caused in his years. He chose not to do that. “Fuck you!” he screamed at the masked and caped man.

Dick leveled the twelve-gauge shotgun, loaded with three-inch double-ought buckshot, and pulled the trigger. Cecil's head exploded in a gush of blood and brains and bits of bone.

“What was that?” Pat Judson's wife asked.

“Justice,” her husband replied. “Pass the mashed potatoes, please.”

* * *

CAPED AVENGER STRIKES AGAIN, the morning headlines silently screamed.

“Caped avenger,” Leo said. “Good god.”

“If none of the neighbors saw anything,” Ted said, “how does this reporter know it's the same person?”

“They don't,” Lani said. “But it sells newspapers.”

“You can bet several of the neighbors saw something,” Brenda said. “I pulled Cecil's file. He's poisoned dogs and cats all up and down that block; and that's just for starters.”

“We know all about Cecil Harrison,” Leo said. “Just like that punk Tommy Williams, Cecil Harrison was well known to every cop in the city and county.”

Sheriff Brownwood stuck his head into the room. “The judge just ruled, boys and girls. We have to provide around-the-clock protection for the remainder of those out on bail and/or in the custody of their parents.”

Lani hurled her coffee cup against the wall. “Goddamnit!” she yelled, summing up the feelings of every cop in the county and every cop in the country who had been following the case.

* * *

Leo asked Ted to work with Anna Kokalis and naturally Ted accepted. Since Leo still wasn't sure exactly what Anna was going to do, if anything, that left him and Lani and Brenda to do some more old-fashioned police work. Like wearing out shoe leather.

Of the fifty-odd teenagers arrested at the warehouses, about half of them had been released to their parents. Guarding twenty or so people, around-the-clock, was going to put a terrible strain on the manpower of the PD and the sheriff's department. Brownie laid it on the line to the judge.

“We just don't have the people to do it. It's going to take over sixty officers to do it. We can't do it and still give law-abiding citizens the protection they're paying for.”

“You'll find a way.”

Brownie smiled, sort of, at the judge. It was very similar to the smile a mongoose gives a cobra. “Now, Brownie,” the judge said.

“The public is not going to like this decision of yours, Homer. And if you think I'm going to take the heat for pulling all those officers off the street to guard a bunch of goddamn, sorry-assed, worthless punks, you'd better think again.”

“You don't threaten me, Brownie!” the judge warned.

“Oh, I'm not threatening you, Judge. I'm just telling you the way it is.”

“Brownie, those kids have not yet been convicted of anything. They still deserve protection, just like any other citizen. I shouldn't have to tell you that.”

“Oh, I know the law, Homer. Look, ask the governor to call out the National Guard. Ask him to send the Highway Patrol in here. Do something . . .
anything!
But don't lay all this strain on us. Even if we
could
do it, it would bankrupt the city and county in overtime pay.”

The judge held up a hand. “All right, Brownie. All right. We'll work it out. I'll hold this order until I can get you some help.
If
I can get you some help. And there are no guarantees of that.”

“Thank you, Homer.”

“You're welcome, Brownie.” The judge smiled. “You can be a real horse's ass at times, you know that?”