Faces of Fear (21 page)

"I told you—they never caught him."

"I meant the surgeon—if you can call him that—who tried to repair the damage? He'd have done better just to sew her up and let someone else do the real fix later."

"The name's probably in the file," Corinne replied. "The point is, can you repair the damage?" She stood and moved around behind her brother, to gaze over his shoulder at the girl's high school picture. "And there's something else—I'm not sure what it is." Leaning over, she traced the girl's brows with her forefinger. "There's something about her that looks sort of familiar, but I can't think what it is."

"Let me read what her mother wrote," Conrad said, taking the letter out of the folder and laying it over the photographs.

Corinne straightened as he began to read, and found herself looking straight into the eyes of Margot Dunn, who gazed out at her from the framed blow-up of a
Vogue
cover that still hung on Conrad's office wall.

"My God," she said. "That's it! Her eyebrows are exactly like Margot's."

"What?" Conrad said, looking up at her.

Corinne pulled the school photograph from under the mother's letter and held it up. "See? Her brows are exactly like Margot's, before her accident."

Conrad scowled. "I hardly think—"

"Look," Corinne insisted, walking over to the photograph on the wall and holding the five-by-seven school photo next to it.

Conrad shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not," he finally said. "But there are only so many variations on eyebrows."

"And these are an exact match," Corinne declared. She moved back to Conrad and set the photograph down on the open file. "What do you think?" she asked, her voice suddenly gentle. "Maybe you can do for this girl what you didn't have time to do for Margot?"

Conrad leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the photograph of his former wife. "You're right," he finally said. "I can certainly help with the botched grafts." He turned his gaze away from the image of Margot and looked up at his sister. "But I can't give her back those eyebrows. I can build fairly good ones, but they won't be like Margot's. Besides, even if they were, the girl's bone structure isn't right—it's not just the shape of the features that matters, but what's under them. And those perfect bones don't come along more than once—or maybe twice—in a lifetime."

"Whatever you can do has to be better than this," Corinne said, gazing at the picture again.

She put the photos and the letter back in the file, closed it, and left her brother's office, already composing a press release in her head. Now all she had to do was put it on paper and give Jillian Oglesby and her mother the good news.

Alone in his office, Conrad Dunn gazed once more at the picture of Margot hanging on the wall. Jillian Oglesby's brows had, indeed, resembled Margot's, but no matter what he did, he wouldn't be able to replace them. Margot, after all, had been one in a million.

On the other hand, there might still be the possibility of re-creating Margot's perfection.

Given the right bone structure.

And, of course, the right features.

* * *

TINA WONG STRODE into the Channel 3 newsroom, mentally organizing the details of the special report on the series of killings even as she spoke to everyone she passed. By the time she hit her desk, she already knew the order of the first dozen calls to make, decided who she'd recruit to help her assemble and edit the video, and made up her mind to direct the show herself. San Jose and San Diego had both been great—the mothers of both victims had shed more tears than even she would have tried to evoke, and the stepfather of the girl in San Diego had an expression on his face when he talked about his wife's daughter that she was sure would put him very high on the suspects list if the cops were smart enough to watch her show.

She dropped her briefcase on the floor next to her desk, logged on to the computer, and checked her interoffice e-mail while sipping her coffee.

She'd asked for one of the editing bays from noon on, and it had been approved until 5:00 A.M. tomorrow morning, when the station would need all the editing bays to put together the morning news.

Excellent.

She forwarded that e-mail as a text message to Pete Biner, the cameraman she'd tapped to help her put the footage together. Pete was not only great with the camera, but remembered every frame of every sequence he'd ever shot, and always knew exactly where to find whatever she wanted. But even with his expertise, they'd take up the entire time they had, and probably need even more over the next couple of nights.

Still, though the pressure was starting to build, the special had been taking shape in her mind ever since Caroline Fisher's murder, and on the way to San Jose she'd sketched out the introductory graphics, and come up with a few ideas about the music and sound effects as well. If she got it right—and she was damned sure she
would
get it right—this special would be her ticket to a correspondent gig at the network, and she'd make sure her fingerprints were on every aspect of every second of the hour.

She was about to make her first phone call when her office door slammed open and Michael Shaw stood in the doorway holding a sheet of paper. "Wait until you see this," he said. "You're not going to believe it."

Tina picked up the single sheet he'd dropped on her desk. It was some kind of press release—not the kind of thing either she or Michael Shaw ever paid much attention to. "What's so special about this one?"

"My ex-wife's new husband is going to do a little reconstructive surgery on a very interesting charity case."

Tina quickly scanned the release from the Dunn Foundation, her heart beating faster as she did.

A twenty-year-old girl from Bakersfield who had had her throat cut and her eyebrows torn off.

"Eyebrows," Tina said. "So now we have breasts, ears, and eyebrows." She looked up at Michael. "When was she attacked?"

He shook his head. "You know everything I know," he said, indicating the brief press release.

"I'm going to need a helicopter to get up to Bakersfield," Tina said, her schedule of phone calls forgotten as she grabbed her briefcase.

"No helicopter," he declared. "Bakersfield is hardly more than two hours away."

"But I'm in editing at noon," she countered.

He shook his head firmly. "Sorry."

"I don't have time to argue with you, Michael," she told him as she speed-dialed Pete Biner.

"You can take a van and Pete," Michael said. "The editing bay will be waiting when you get back."

"We're going to need it tomorrow, too."

Michael shook his head. "No."

Tina's eyes shot darts at him. "It's either the helicopter or the bay, Michael. I only have so much time, so if I have to drive to Bakersfield and back—"

"All right, all right," he said, holding up his hands to stem her flood of words. "I'll see what I can do."

But Tina was no longer even listening. She was on her phone. "Meet me in the parking lot in thirty seconds," she was saying, and he knew she was talking to Biner. "We're going to Bakersfield." She snapped her phone shut. "You know, Michael," she said, her eyes narrow, "if you're not going to help me on this, you'd better at least stay out of my way."

"Have a good trip," he said, deciding to ignore the implied threat.

But Tina Wong was already halfway down the hallway.

Not that she would have cared what he said even if she'd heard him.

RISA CHECKED HER WATCH, DECIDED THAT STRETCHING DINNER WITH her husband and daughter even another five minutes could ruin the deal she'd been working on for the last week, and waved off the waiter who was about to refill her coffee cup. "Have to run," she announced. "If the sunset's any good at all tonight, I'll be coming home with an offer. When the clients ask to see a house at night, you know you've almost got them. And this is a tough one—it's practically a tear-down, and it's six million."

"Go get 'em," Conrad said, squeezing her hand as she passed behind him.

She kissed Alison on the forehead. "I might be late."

"I'll still be up," Alison sighed. "I've got tons of homework."

"Okay. I'll come in to say good-night."

As if Risa's departure was a signal, the waiter brought the check for Conrad to sign. "Would you mind if we stopped up at Le Chateau on the way home?" he asked Alison. "I'd like to check on a patient."

"Really?" Alison said, eyeing her stepfather uncertainly. Though she'd been to his office in Beverly Hills, she had only heard about the house he kept up in the hills so the wealthiest—or most famous—of his patients could convalesce from their surgery in complete privacy. "I thought nobody but you and the patients got in there."

"Me, my family, and the patients," Conrad replied.

Fifteen minutes later he parked in a large garage under a house high in the hills of Bel Air that was almost directly below their own house, though you had to wind through almost a mile of twisting roads to get from one to the other. The elevator that carried them up from the garage opened directly into a reception area that looked to Alison like the lobby of a very expensive hotel. The floors were thickly carpeted, the walls paneled in walnut, and comfortable-looking chairs flanked either side of a fireplace in which gas logs were burning even though the evening wasn't particularly cold. The room was softly lit, and a beautiful young woman sat at the mahogany reception desk, making notes in a file.

"Hi, Teresa," Conrad said. "I've come to look in on Mrs. Wilson." Teresa stood. "This is my stepdaughter, Alison Shaw," he went on, then turned to Alison. "This is Teresa, our evening nurse."

Teresa smiled and extended her hand to Alison.

"See if you can keep Alison occupied until I get back." A moment later Conrad disappeared back into the elevator.

"Make yourself comfortable," Teresa said. "I just need to make a couple of entries in this chart."

While Teresa went back to her file, Alison wandered over to a credenza covered with framed photographs of women. Beautiful women. "Are these some of Conrad's patients?"

"Mmm-hmm," Teresa said. She opened a drawer and brought out a photo album. "Here's some more—except these have before pictures, too. And believe me when I tell you this is one album that never leaves this room."

Alison took the album, dropped into one of the chairs by the fireplace, and began turning pages, gazing at before-and-after photographs of face-lifts, tummy tucks, breast augmentations and reductions, and dozens of other procedures she had never even heard of. Far more of the pictures were of girls who looked about her own age than she would have expected. Most had been as flat-chested as her before the surgery, but they all looked beautiful afterward. And not only did their breasts look perfect, but natural as well.

Near the end of the album she found a photo she was almost sure was of Tasha. At least, the "after" shot was of Tasha.

In the "before" picture, her friend was almost unrecognizable.

She was still gazing at the pictures of Tasha when Teresa sat down next to her. "Are you considering breast augmentation?"

"No," Alison said, a little too quickly, and felt herself flush. "Well, I—I don't know," she stammered. "Maybe."

"I had implants when I was sixteen," Teresa said. "Best thing I've ever done."

Alison stared at Teresa. How was it possible? She was tall, and lithe, and perfectly proportioned. How could it have been faked? "Really?" she blurted. "You weren't born looking like this?"

"Nobody is," Teresa said flatly. "And believe me, I had nothing. I mean nothing, nada, zero. Zippo! But not anymore. Now I have exactly the shape I always wanted—nothing too much, nothing not enough. Nothing dramatic, except to me."

"Who did them?"

Teresa rolled her eyes. "Dr. Dunn, of course—do you think he'd let someone else's patient work here? And believe me, if you're thinking about having anything done, I wouldn't go to anyone else."

"But he's my stepfather," Alison said, feeling her face redden again. "Just the thought of him looking at my…" Her voice trailed off in embarrassment, but Teresa only shrugged.

"I suppose that might seem…what? Awkward? But don't forget, he sees thousands of breasts every year. And all kinds of other things, too. But believe me again, it's not an intimate thing. He's a doctor, you know? Hasn't your regular doctor ever seen you naked?"

"Yeah, but—"

"But nothing," Teresa declared. "If you're even thinking about getting something done, don't go anywhere else. You'll have one moment of shyness, and then you'll be past it. Ask anyone—they'll all tell you the same thing."

Alison looked back down at the photographs of the girl she was almost sure was Tasha, but Teresa reached over and flipped back a few pages. "That's me," she said, tapping one of the before pictures.

Alison gazed at the photograph of a torso in bikini panties that might as well have been a picture of herself—slim-hipped, with a small, flat stomach and virtually no breasts under small nipples. Then her gaze shifted to the after photograph, and she saw exactly what Teresa—and Conrad Dunn—had accomplished. Though she thought both Tasha and Dawn had breasts that were a bit too big for their physiques, Teresa had chosen perfectly. She had small, well-formed breasts that Alison knew would fit as well on her own body as they did on Teresa's. They looked good, but were compact enough so they wouldn't be a problem even if she kept running track in college.

Looking up she gazed at Teresa with something like awe. "He made you look absolutely fantastic!"

Teresa smiled. "Best thing I ever did," she said again as the elevator door opened and Conrad stepped out.

"What's the best thing you ever did?" he asked. "Besides come to work for me."

"That was second best. Best was getting
you
to work on
me.
Which," she went on, taking Alison's hand in her own, "is what Alison is also thinking about doing."

Alison felt a rush of heat rise through her neck to her face. "Teresa! I didn't say—"

"Oh, come on," Teresa cut in. "The only way to get you past this is to just do it." She turned back to Conrad. "She was looking at my before-and-after shots, and I think they looked pretty good to her."