The Face (34 page)

CHAPTER 55

F
REE OF BOTH INSIPID MUSIC AND VOICES FROM Beyond, four flights of stairs led down to the lowest of the three subterranean levels of the hospital.

Ethan and Hazard followed the familiar, brightly lighted white corridor past the garden room to a set of double doors. Beyond lay the ambulance garage.

Among other vehicles belonging to the hospital, four van-type ambulances stood side by side. Empty parking stalls suggested that additional units in the fleet were at work in the rainy day.

Ethan went to the nearest ambulance. He hesitated, then opened the rear door.

Inside, red tinsel was strung at the ceiling along both the left and right sides of the compartment. Six clusters of tiny bells hung here, as well, one set at the beginning, another at the middle, and a third at the end of each garland of tinsel.

At the second ambulance, Hazard said, “Here.”

Ethan joined him at the open back door.

Two lengths of red tinsel. Only five sets of bells. The missing set, in the middle of the right-hand garland of tinsel, was the one that had been given to him as he lay dying.

A cold tremble, almost a pressure, moved slowly down the center of his back, as if the fleshless tip of a skeletal finger were tracing his spine from cervical vertebrae to coccyx.

Hazard said, “One set of bells is missing, but between us we have two.”

“Maybe not. Maybe we have the same set.”

“What do you mean?”

Behind them, a man said, “May I help you?”

Turning, Ethan saw the paramedic who had attended to him in the racing ambulance less than twenty-four hours ago.

The discovery of the bells in his hand outside Forever Roses had already been one piece of dark magic too many. Now, to come face to face with this man, seen before only in that dream, made the death in the ambulance seem real even though he still breathed, still lived.

The shock of recognition was not mutual. The paramedic regarded Ethan with no greater interest than he might have shown toward any stranger.

Hazard flashed his department ID. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Cameron Sheen.”

“Mr. Sheen, we need to know what calls this particular ambulance answered yesterday afternoon.”

“What time exactly?” the paramedic asked.

Hazard looked at Ethan, and Ethan found his voice. “Between five and six o’clock.”

“I was crewing it then with Rick Laslow,” Sheen said. “Couple minutes after five, there’s a police call, an eleven-eighty, accident with major injury, corner of Westwood Boulevard and Wilshire.”

That was miles from the location at which Ethan had bounced off the PT Cruiser.

“Honda tangled with a Hummer,” Sheen said. “We carried the guy in the car. He looked like he’d butted heads with a Peterbilt, not just a Hummer. We took him street to surgery in personal-best time, and from what I hear, he’ll come out of it good enough to jump and hump again.”

Ethan named the two streets that formed the intersection half a block from Forever Roses. “You catch calls that far west?”

“Sure. If we figure we know a way to beat the gridlock, we go wherever the blood is.”

“Did you answer a call to that intersection yesterday?”

The paramedic shook his head. “Not me and Rick. Maybe one of the other units. You could check the dispatcher’s log.”

“You look familiar to me,” Ethan said. “Have we met somewhere before?”

Sheen frowned, seemed to search his memory. Then: “Not that I recall. So do you want to check the dispatcher’s log?”

“No,” Hazard said, “but there’s one more thing.” He pointed at one of the garlands of tinsel in the back of the ambulance. “The middle set of bells is missing.”

Peering into the van, Sheen said, “Missing bells? Are they? I guess so. What about it?”

“We’re wondering what happened to them.”

Puzzlement worked Sheen’s face into a squint. “You are? Those little bells? Don’t recall anything happening to them during my watch. Maybe one of the guys on another shift could help you.”

At a glance from Hazard, Ethan shrugged. Hazard slammed shut the ambulance door.

Sheen’s puzzlement resolved into amazement. “You don’t mean they send two detectives ’cause maybe someone stole a two-dollar Christmas ornament?”

Neither Ethan nor Hazard had an answer for that.

Sheen should have let it go then, but like a lot of people these days, his ignorance of the true nature of a cop’s work allowed him to feel smugly superior to anyone with a badge. “What’s it take to get a kitten out of a tree—a SWAT team?”

Hazard said, “The missing ornament isn’t simply a matter of two dollars, is it, Detective Truman?”

“No,” Ethan agreed, falling into their old rhythm, “it’s the principle of the thing. And it’s a hate crime.”

“Definitely a felony hate crime under the California Criminal Code,” Hazard deadpanned.

“For the duration of the season,” Ethan said, “we’re assigned to the Ornament and Manger Scene Defacement Response Team.”

“That’s a division,” Hazard added, “of the Christmas Spirit Task Force established pursuant to the Anti-Hate Act of 2001.”

A tentative smile crept across Sheen’s face as he cocked his head first at Ethan, then at Hazard. “You’re goofing me, right, doing
Dragnet.
”

Employing the intense and disapproving stare with which he could wither everything from hard-case thugs to flower arrangements, Hazard said, “Are you a Christian hater, Mr. Sheen?”

Sheen’s creeping smile froze before it fully formed. “What?”

“Do you,” Ethan asked, “believe in freedom of religion or are you one of those who think the United States Constitution guarantees you freedom
from
religion?”

Blinking the smile out of his eyes, licking it off his lips, the paramedic said, “Sure, of course, freedom of religion, who doesn’t believe in it?”

“If we were to obtain a warrant to search your residence right now,” Hazard said, “would we find a collection of anti-Christian hate literature, Mr. Sheen?”

“What? Me? I don’t hate anybody. I’m a get-along guy. What’re you talking about?”

“Would we find bomb-making materials?” Ethan asked.

As Sheen’s smirk had frozen and cracked apart under Hazard’s cold stare, so now the color drained from his face, leaving him as gray as the unpainted concrete walls of the ambulance garage.

Backing away from Hazard and Ethan, raising his hands as if to call a time-out, Sheen said, “What is this? Are you serious? This is crazy. What—there’s a two-dollar Christmas ornament missing, so I should get a lawyer?”

“If you have one,” Hazard said solemnly, “maybe you’d be smart to give him a call.”

Still not sure what to believe, Sheen backed away another step, two, then pivoted from them and hurried toward the dayroom in which ambulance crews waited to be dispatched.

“SWAT team, my ass,” Hazard grumbled.

Ethan smiled. “You da man.”

“
You
da man.”

Ethan had forgotten how much easier life could be with backup, especially backup with a sense of humor.

“You should rejoin the force,” Hazard said as they crossed the garage toward the doors to the garden-room corridor. “We could save the world, have some fun.”

On the stairs to the upper level of the public garage, Ethan said, “Supposing all this craziness stops sooner or later—being gut shot but not, the bells, the voice on the phone, a guy walking into your closet mirror. You think it’s possible just to go back to the usual cop stuff like nothing strange ever happened?”

“What am I supposed to do—become a monk?”

“Seems like this ought to…change things.”

“I’m happy who I am,” Hazard said. “I’m already as cool as cool gets. Don’t you think I’m cool to the chromosomes?”

“You’re walking ice.”

“Not to say I don’t have heat.”

“Not to say,” Ethan agreed.

“I’ve got plenty of heat.”

“You’re so cool, you’re hot.”

“Exactly. So there’s no reason for me to change unless maybe I meet Jesus, and He slaps me upside the head.”

They weren’t in a graveyard, weren’t whistling, but the tenor of their words, echoing off the crypt-cold walls of the stairwell, brought to Ethan’s mind old movie images of boys masking their fear with bravado as they journeyed through a cemetery at high midnight.

CHAPTER 56

O
N A GRINDSTONE OF SELF-DENIAL, WITH THE diligence of a true obsessive, Brittina Dowd had sharpened herself into a long thin blade. When she walked, her clothes seemed certain to be cut to shreds by the scissoring movement of her body.

Her hips had been honed until they were almost as fragile as bird bones. Her legs resembled those of a flamingo. Her arms had no more substance than wings stripped of their feathers. Brittina seemed to be determined to whittle herself until a brisk breeze could carry her aloft, high into the realm of wren and sparrow.

She was not a single blade, in fact, but an entire Swiss Army knife with all its cutting edges and pointed tools deployed.

Corky Laputa might have loved her if she had not also been ugly.

Although he didn’t love Brittina, he made love to her. The disorder into which she had shaped her skeletal body thrilled him. This was like making love to Death.

Only twenty-six, she had assiduously prepared herself for early-onset osteoporosis, as though she yearned to be shattered in a fall, reduced to fragments as completely as a crystal vase knocked off a shelf onto a stone floor.

In their passion, Corky always expected to be punctured by one of her knees or elbows, or to hear Brittina crack apart beneath him.

“Do me,” she said, “do me,” and managed to make it sound less like an invitation to sex than like a request for assisted suicide.

Her bed was narrow, suitable only for a sleeper who did not toss and turn, who lay as unmoving as the average occupant of a casket, by far too narrow for the wild rutting of which they both were capable.

She had furnished the room with a single bed because she’d never had a lover and had expected to remain a virgin. Corky had romanced her as easily as he could have crushed a hummingbird in his fist.

The narrow bed stood in a room on the top floor of a narrow two-story Victorian house. The lot was deep but too narrow to qualify as a residential building site under current city codes.

Almost sixty years ago, just after the war, an eccentric dog fancier had designed and built the curious place. He lived in it with two greyhounds and two whippets.

Eventually he’d been paralyzed by a stroke. After several days passed during which their master had not fed them, the starving dogs ate him.

That had been forty years ago. The subsequent history of this residence at times had been as colorful and on occasion nearly as grisly as the life and ghastly death of its first owner.

The vibe of the house caught Brittina’s attention just like the high-frequency shriek of a dog whistle might have pricked the ears of a whippet. She’d purchased it with a portion of an inheritance that she received from her paternal grandmother.

Brittina was a graduate student at the same university that had provided multigeneration employment for the Laputa family. In another eighteen months, she would earn a doctorate in American literature, which she largely despised.

Although she had not blown her entire inheritance on the house, she needed to supplement her investment income with other revenue. She had served as a graduate assistant to keep herself in chocolate-flavored Slim-Fast and ipecac.

Then, six months ago, Channing Manheim’s personal assistant had approached the chairperson of the university’s English department to explain that a new tutor would be required for the famous actor’s son. Only academicians of the highest caliber need apply.

The chairperson consulted Corky, who was vice-chairperson of the department, and Corky recommended Ms. Dowd.

He’d known that she would be hired because, first of all, the idiot movie star would be impressed by her dramatic appearance. Cadaverous paleness, a gaunt face, and the body of an anorexic nun would be seen as proof that Brittina cared little for the pleasures of the flesh, that she enjoyed largely a life of the mind, that she was therefore a genuine intellectual.

In the entertainment business, only image mattered. Manheim would believe, therefore, that appearance equaled reality in other professions, as well.

Furthermore, Brittina Dowd was an intellectual snob who peppered her speech with academic jargon more impenetrable than the lab-speak of microbiologists. If the young woman’s emaciation didn’t convince the movie star of her intellectual credentials, her big words would.

The evening before Brittina went to her job interview, Corky poured on charm as thick as clotted cream, and she at once proved to be famished not only for food but also for flattery. She allowed herself to indulge her appetite for adoration, and Corky bedded her then for the first time.

Ultimately, she became Aelfric Manheim’s tutor in English and literature, making regularly scheduled visits to Palazzo Rospo.

Prior to this, Rolf Reynerd and Corky had discussed, in general terms, the blow that might be struck in the name of social disorder by proving that even a celebrity of worldwide renown was vulnerable to the agents of chaos. They had not been able to settle on an ideal target until Corky’s lover was hired by Channing Manheim.

From Brittina, in bed and out, Corky had learned much about the Manheim estate. Indeed, she disclosed the existence of Line 24—and, more important, told him about the security guard, Ned Hokenberry, valiant defender of Peaches and Herb, who according to Fric had been dismissed for leaving phony messages from the dead on that answering machine.

Brittina had also painted for Corky a detailed psychological portrait of Channing’s son. This would be invaluable when, with Aelfric prisoner, he proceeded to destroy the boy emotionally.

In the afterglow of insect-frenzy sex, Brittina never once had been suspicious that Corky’s interest in all things Manheim might be related to anything other than simple curiosity. She was an unwitting conspirator, a naive girl in love.

“Do me,” Brittina insisted now, “do me,” and Corky obliged.

Wind battered the narrow house and hard rain lashed its skinny flanks, and on the narrow bed, Brittina thrashed like an agitated mantis.

This time, in their dreamy postcoital cuddle, Corky had no need to ask questions related to Manheim. He had more information on that subject than he needed to know.

As occasionally was her wont, Brittina drifted into a monologue about the uselessness of literature: the antiquated nature of the written word; the coming triumph of image over language; those ideas that she called memes, which supposedly spread like viruses from mind to mind, creating new ways of thinking in society.

Corky figured that his brain would explode if she didn’t shut up, after which he would
need
a new way to think.

Eventually, Brittina clattered up from their love nest with the intention of rattling off to the bathroom.

Reaching under the bed, Corky retrieved the pistol where earlier he had hidden it.

When he shot her twice in the back, he half expected Brittina to shatter into bone splinters and dust, as if she were an ancient mummy made brittle by two centuries of dehydration, but she only dropped dead in a pale, angular heap.