Faces of Fear (25 page)

But she already knew what had changed. It was the fact that it was actually going to happen on Friday afternoon. Someone from Conrad's office was going to pick her up at Wilson and take her up to Le Chateau, and they were going to put her under anesthetics, and Conrad would operate on her.

And suddenly she was frightened. Just thinking about it made her heart beat faster and her skin feel clammy and—

Don't think about it,
she told herself.
Just do your homework and go to bed and stop worrying.

She reopened her history book and found the paragraph she'd been reading over and over again. Her paper on the Boer War wasn't actually due until Friday morning, so maybe instead of trying to work on it tonight, she should do something else.

Like try to relax.

Like that was going to happen.

Three sharp knocks on her bedroom door startled Alison out of her reverie, and she reflexively pulled the book closer, as if that would convince whoever was in the hall that she'd been studying rather than worrying. "It's not locked," she called out. "Come on in."

Conrad Dunn opened the door and held up three small bottles of pills. "Hey," he said. "In the middle of something? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Just trying to get through my history assignment," she replied.

"And not getting anywhere with it, right?" Conrad stepped into her room, and when he didn't close the door behind him, Alison felt a strange sense of relief, and found herself nodding in agreement with what he'd said.

"I thought so. Unless you're completely different from everyone else, you've been sitting up here thinking about Friday afternoon and wishing you could change your mind."

She stared at him. How could he have known what was going on in her mind? But before she could ask the question, he answered it.

"Happens to everyone. Until the surgery's actually scheduled, it's all just an abstraction. But then suddenly you know exactly what day and what time it's going to happen, and it all becomes real. And scary. Which is one of the reasons I came up here—couldn't let you go to bed terrified and feeling guilty about wanting to change your mind. If you want to change your mind, do it. I penciled in the appointment, remember? One word from you and it goes away." Conrad crossed the room and put the three vials on Alison's desk, and when she didn't stand up, he crouched awkwardly next to her chair. "But if you don't change your mind, I want you to start taking these. They're homeopathic medicines that do absolutely amazing things to reduce bleeding and bruising from surgery, and there are others I'll give you afterward that will speed your recovery time."

She picked up the bottles one by one to read the labels as he explained each one.

"Arnica reduces swelling and bruising, and ferrum phos is good for inflammation and any kind of fever. That last one is a combination of hormones. I want you to take two capsules three times a day," he finished as she studied the label on the third bottle. "Starting now."

"And you really think I can go back to school on Monday?" she asked with disbelief.

"Barring any complications," he said, as if he hadn't heard the doubt in her voice. He stood up, his knees cracking. "You should be off all pain meds by then, except maybe for a little Tylenol. I'll keep you on the homeopathics for a week afterward, but you won't even notice them—they have absolutely no side effects whatsoever. There will still be stitches, of course, and possibly some very minor swelling, so no gym class, no running, throwing, or anything like that at all for a month. Okay?"

"Okay," Alison said, setting the three bottles on the edge of her desk.

"Okay, then," Conrad said, touching her shoulder lightly. "And don't forget—say the word, and we cancel the whole thing."

Alison looked up at him. "Thanks," she said softly. "I'll think about it, but I think I'm gonna be okay now. Maybe all I needed was a little pep talk."

"Well, if you need another, just come find me. Good night."

"Good night."

As soon as her stepfather was gone, she logged on to the Internet to look up the medicines he'd given her. Arnica and ferrum phos—which turned out to be short for phosphoricum—were easy to find and turned out to be exactly what Conrad had told her they were: fairly common remedies for pre-and postsurgical procedures.

But there was no information on the label of the bottle containing the pink capsules. All it said was:
3x/day for 3 days before and 5 days after surgery.

That, and the name of the manufacturer, Healing Health Laboratories, which was in Beverly Hills.

She found the HHL website, and after hunting all over the site finally figured out that the company was a subsidiary of DeLorian Cosmetics. But when she tried to find out more about the pink capsules Conrad had given her, she was confronted with a page asking for a user name and password. At the bottom of the screen was a notice to the effect that more information about Healing Health products could be obtained from any one of a short list of doctors. The fourth name on the list was "Dunn, Conrad," followed by his office address and telephone number.

After trying a couple more searches for either the pills or Healing Health products, she logged off. Though she hadn't found much, she knew DeLorian Cosmetics was one of the best—and most expensive—around. And she remembered meeting Danielle DeLorian at her mother's and Conrad's wedding.

She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, doing her best to rid herself of the last of her misgivings. She was just nervous, that was all. But not as nervous as she'd been before Conrad had told her she could back out at any time. And, as she thought about it, she realized she didn't want to back out of it. It was scheduled, and everybody at school knew about it, and—

—and she kept seeing herself in that beautiful dress hanging in her closet, and in her mind's eye its bodice was filled not with Kleenex, or even falsies.

It was filled with her own perfect breasts.

She shook out the pink capsules from their bottles, took them into her bathroom, got a glass of water, and washed them down.

Back in her room, she put the homeopathic tablets under her tongue and let them dissolve, just like the labels instructed.

And suddenly she couldn't wait for Friday.

Or, more exactly, for Friday evening, when it would all be over.

TINA WONG LEANED BACK IN HER DESK CHAIR, CLOSED HER EYES, AND rubbed at her right shoulder, even though she knew the pain from hours of manipulating her computer's mouse wouldn't ease for at least three days. And the work had barely begun: her editing bay wouldn't be available until five-thirty, though at least Pete had taken the footage home to make a rough cut on his personal equipment so they could get a running start this evening. So if everything went smoothly—which, of course, it never did—they'd have a good cut by morning. Then Michael could review it, run it by any executives who needed to approve it, and they could recut it if they had to.

And they'd have time to spare before airing the special on Sunday night.

If everything went smoothly.

Which, of course, it never did.

There were too many things that could go wrong. If the police caught the killer, the whole thing would have to be redone, and all the air would go out of it. Who would care about a rehash of a solved series of killings?

On the other hand, if another murder occurred, the special would still have to be completely recut, but she'd have the run of the station and all its resources to get it done on time, and the network might want to pick it up as well. It would be the biggest thing on TV that night.

She tried not to hope that another murder would take place—and soon enough so she'd have time to include it in her special—but there was no denying that one more killing would make her career. She'd be in L.A. long enough to stay with the case for the whole network, and then it would be New York.

New York, and eventually an anchor spot on the national news.

Not, of course, that she wanted it to happen, at least not that way. Still, it didn't hurt to be prepared for any eventuality, so she righted her chair, picked up the bundle of still shots from the promos Michael had okayed, and flipped through them.

They looked good. The art department had mercifully not succumbed to its original urge to use the same drippy Frankenstein font from the old movies, which would have instantly turned her special from news into nothing more than schlocky entertainment. The promos were almost ready to run, and in five minutes she was due over in production to take a final look at them and make sure they were using the best footage of her.

And that they weren't giving too much away in the voice-over.

The Frankenstein Killer.

It had been a stroke of genius—there was no denying it.

And what if it turned out that it hadn't only been a stroke of genius, but of prophecy, too? What if this guy—whoever he was—
was
trying to make someone out of all these parts he was harvesting?

What if someone was trying to put together his idea of the perfect woman? Suddenly, she had a vision of the killer. He'd be a misfit, of course—the kind of guy who could only get a date on the Internet, where he could use a picture of anybody to sucker in the kind of girl who would never go out with him if she actually met him. He probably spent most of his time alone in some crappy one-room apartment somewhere, jerking off while he paged through magazines, looking at the girls he could never have.

Then he'd started focusing in on what attracted him about each girl.

When had he decided to make his
own
girl? To find the parts, and put them together into his twisted idea of perfection? A year ago? A decade ago?

And what did she look like, this perfect girl?

The promos suddenly forgotten, Tina began to comb through the files she'd amassed on the series of killings.

Kimberly Elmont's ears had been taken.

Natalie Owen's lips.

Caroline Fisher's breasts.

Her excitement growing, Tina pulled the best photographs she could find of Kimberly and Natalie and scanned them into Photoshop, then cut-and-pasted Kimberly's ears and Natalie's lips onto a blank file.

The lips were a little lopsided because of the angle from which Natalie's picture had been taken, and only Kimberly's right ear was clear. Tina made a mirror image of it, then slid both ears into position above the lips.

But how far apart should they be? How wide was this guy's ideal woman's head?

She went back to the files, found a photograph of Jillian Oglesby before the attack, and scanned it in. Even though Jillian's eyebrows had been ripped from her face almost a year ago, it was far more likely to be related to the group of recent attacks, and not the ones in San Jose and San Diego fifteen years ago.

Was this a copycat or was the same character still around?

A shiver went through her, and she had to rub away the goose bumps that prickled on her arms.

She maneuvered the mouse until Jillian's eyebrows were cut from her photograph and pasted into place.

Now a face—very rough, but recognizable as a human face—began to emerge on the computer screen.

And fear began to creep up her spine.

The face was missing a nose.

Which meant that there would, indeed, be at least one more killing. But when?

She looked up at the calendar pinned to her corkboard, the calendar that covered the full year since Michael had promised her the special if there was another murder, and on which she'd been marking everything that had happened and everything she'd done that related to the killings.

The killings themselves had been marked with a bloodred Sharpie.

The killings were getting closer together.

Also, the killer was nearing the completion of his project.

Suddenly, she knew exactly what he was feeling: just as with her career-making special, this guy was eager to finish his collecting and get on to the next step—the actual putting together of the parts into his twisted idea of perfection.

Tina stared at the calendar, mesmerized. The time between Kimberly's and Natalie's murders was half the time that had lapsed between Caroline Fisher's and Kimberly's.

If the time was cut in half again between Natalie's murder and the next one, that would put the next murder…

On Friday.

This Friday!

Tina put a big X on Sunday, when her special would air, then put the tip of her pen on Friday and drew a large question mark.

If she was right—and she knew it was a very large "if"—there would be another murder on Friday.

So exactly how big was the "if"? Should she bet her career that somewhere in Los Angeles a young woman would lose her life because a maniac wanted her nose?

And her glands, too.

What was that about?

Tina saved the rough face she'd created, attached it to an e-mail to Michael, then tore the calendar off the corkboard and headed to his office. She wasn't sure what her obligation was to the police at this point, but Michael would know, and he'd surely want to consult with the station's attorneys right now.

If they did nothing, and the murder took place when she thought it would, she could use whatever footage they got in her special. She'd just have to make two cuts, one with room for footage of the latest killing, one without it.

But it might be even better to run the rough face she'd constructed with Photoshop on the next newscast tonight at six, which would give her an opportunity to speculate on the murder she was certain was going to happen. That would at least put the whole area on alert.

Michael Shaw, of course, would insist that it was too provocative and could incite panic.

Of course, it would be best to prevent the murder from happening at all. That would make Tina Wong not only famous, but a hero as well.

But how could she make that happen?

She didn't know.

At least, she didn't know
yet.

* * *

CONRAD DUNN RAPPED briskly on the examination room door, then opened it and walked in.