The Face (50 page)

CHAPTER 91

A
T ONE OF THE BRONZE-AND-BEVELED-GLASS French doors that looked out on the half-acre of patio, the fountains, and the swimming pool, Corky Laputa used the security guard’s keys to let himself into the grand drawing room.

With the fine brocade drapes, he toweled himself as dry as he could. When he began moving through the house along limestone-floored hallways, he must not leave a betraying trail that Truman might find before he found Truman.

He switched on the lights.

He had no fear of being noticed. Only three of them were afoot in a house larger than some shopping centers. They were not likely to blunder into one another by accident.

A magnificently decorated Christmas tree graced the room. He was tempted to poke around until he found the string-light switch, to see this spruce beauty in its full twinkling glory. But chaos could at times be a tough taskmaster, and he had to remain focused on the plot that had brought him here by blimp and bluster.

Crossing the enormous room, he squinched his feet back and forth in the antique Persian carpets with each step, thoroughly drying his boots.

Two widely separated sets of double doors led to the north hall. Beside one of these exits, a Crestron touch-control unit was mounted flush in the wall.

He touched the dead gray screen. The panel at once came to life, presenting him with three columns of icons.

Mick Sachatone had given Corky basic instructions in its use. Mick hadn’t made him an absolute master of the system, but he knew enough to get by.

He fingered the icon for the interior motion detectors, and a list of ninety-six locations appeared. Per Ned Hokenberry, no motion detectors had been installed in bedrooms and bathrooms, or in any rooms of Charming Manheim’s third-floor suite.

At the bottom of the list was the word
SCAN,
which he pressed. This gave him the option of scanning for movement on the third floor, the second floor, the ground floor, the first subterranean level, and the second subterranean level.

Later he would use this feature to search for the boy. First, he needed to locate Ethan Truman and kill him.

He might have been able to snare the boy and spirit him out of the house under the security chief’s nose. He’d feel more comfortable dealing with Aelfric, however, if he knew the ex-cop was dead meat.

Any floor of the mansion was too large to fit entirely on the Crestron screen in a scale easy to read. Consequently, the eastern half of the ground level appeared first.

A single blip of light blinked, indicating Corky’s position in the grand drawing room. He wasn’t moving, but the motion detectors were in fact motion
and
heat detectors. Even in his insulated storm suit, he produced a sufficient heat signature to register with the sensitive sensors.

He took two sideways steps to his right.

On the screen, the Corky blip moved a tiny bit to the right, in synch with him.

When he stepped back in front of the touch-control panel, his blip moved, as well.

The complex floor plan of the western half of the ground level appeared on the screen, also with only a single lonely blip blinking in all those chambers and hallways: Ethan Truman, no doubt, in the living room of his apartment.

This was where Corky had hoped and expected to find the man.

He exited the motion-detector display, went to the nearest set of double doors, and stepped quietly into the north hall.

Ahead of him lay the entrance rotunda and another spectacular Christmas tree. The residents and staff were rich with the Christmas spirit in Palazzo Rospo.

Corky wondered what exquisite holiday cookies people of this wealth enjoyed. Once he had killed Truman and secured the boy, maybe he would dare to take a few minutes to investigate the stock of baked goods in the kitchen. He might pack a tin of homemade treats to enjoy later at home.

He turned right and followed the north hall past the tea room, the intimate dining room, the grand dining room, toward the kitchen and ultimately toward the west hall where Truman waited to be killed in his apartment.

CHAPTER 92

O
N THE DESK IN ETHAN’S STUDY, THE TELEPHONE produced no dial tone, and when he tried to use his cell phone, he discovered that he had no service.

Land lines might on rare occasion experience disruption after a two-day downpour. Not cell phones.

In the bedroom, when he tried the telephone on his nightstand, he heard only a dead line. No surprise.

From the nightstand drawer, he extracted a second magazine of ammunition for his pistol.

He had prepared this spare on the evening of his first day in Palazzo Rospo, ten months ago. At the time, he’d seemed to be taking an unnecessary precaution. An extended shootout requiring more than ten rounds, within these well-protected walls, had been a possibility so slim as to be beyond calculation.

Dropping the magazine in a pants pocket, Ethan hurried back into his study.

The apple of his eye.

Fric.
Fric must still be on the second floor, in the library, selecting a book to get him through the night.

Okay. The thing to do was go to the library. Hustle the boy into the nearest panic room. Tuck him away safely in that comfy, armored, self-contained vault. Then chase this situation to its source, find out what the hell was happening.

He stepped out of his apartment, turned left in the west hall, and ran to the back stairs that earlier he had taken to the third floor and the white room.

Goofing, having more fun than the law allowed, proceeding at times with exaggerated stealth, in a crouch like a commando slipping through an enemy fortress, at other times strutting like Vin Diesel when he knows the script specifies that all bullets will miss him, Corky followed the north hall past the breakfast room, the butler’s pantry, the kitchen.

He wished that it would have been practical to wear his yellow slicker and his droopy yellow hat. He would have enormously enjoyed seeing Truman’s amazed expression when confronted by a banana-bright assassin spitting death.

In the west hall, the door to the security chief’s apartment stood open.

At the sight of this, Corky at once grew more serious. With caution he approached the apartment. He stood with his back to the hallway wall, beside the open door, listening.

When he crossed the threshold, he went in low and fast, holding the Glock in two hands, sweeping left to right, right to left.

The study was deserted.

Quickly but prudently, he searched the rest of the apartment and found no sign of his quarry.

Returning to the front room, he noticed the contents of the six black boxes on the desk. Evidently, Truman was still trying to solve the riddle. Amusing.

Lines of text on the computer screen drew his attention. Truman appeared to have stepped out in the middle of reading e-mail.

Indulging the curiosity that was such a fundamental part of him and that had served him remarkably well over the years, Corky spotted Y
ORN
at the end of the e-mail. William Yorn, the groundskeeper.

He read the message from the top: F
RIC IS MAKING HIMSELF A HIDEY-HOLE IN THE CONSERVATORY
…. Much of Yorn’s complaint meant nothing to Corky, but the stuff about the hidey-hole definitely interested him.

With his two targets roving beyond Corky’s ken, he needed to get to another Crestron panel, and fast. One was inlaid in the bedroom wall here in the security chief’s apartment, but Truman might return at any moment, while Corky was distracted in the other room.

He saw something on the floor, near the sofa. A cell phone. As if it had been not dropped but flung aside.

Cautiously he returned to the west hall. He followed it to the door of the McBees’ apartment.

The blueprints had specified a Crestron panel in their living room. Happily, they were in Santa Barbara.

According to Ned Hokenberry, in order to facilitate cleaning and other household services, the live-in staff seldom locked the doors to their private quarters other than when they were in residence.

Good old dead Hokenberry, the freak, proved to be as reliable as the blueprints. Corky entered the McBee apartment and closed the door behind him.

Next to the front door, the Crestron panel brightened at his touch. He didn’t bother with a lamp.

A quick motion-detector scan through the ground floor showed no blip except Corky’s, here in the McBee living room.

On the second floor, someone turned out of the west hall into the long north wing, proceeding in the direction of the library. Perhaps Truman. Perhaps the young Manheim. Whichever, he appeared to be hurrying.

No movement or detectable body heat on the third floor.

He surveyed the two subterranean levels. Nothing.

The figure on the second floor had reached the library. The blip had to be Ethan Truman. He must have gone up there by the back stairs in the west wing.

Where was the boy? Undetected. Not moving. Not producing any heat within range of the sensors.

The kid could be in his bedroom or a bathroom. No sensors in those areas.

Or he might be hunkered in his hidey-hole in the conservatory.

This hidey-hole business was odd. Judging by Yorn’s message, the staff thought it was peculiar, too.

Truman running to the library. The kid missing. The cell phone flung aside on the floor of Truman’s apartment.

Corky Laputa believed in meticulous planning and on the faithful execution of the plan. He was also a friend of chaos.

He recognized the hand of chaos in this moment. He suspected that Truman knew the property had been breached.

Ditching the plan for the time being, his heart thrilling to this unexpected development, Corky trusted chaos and sprinted for the conservatory.

Leaving Maxwell Dalton alone with assurances that he would return in a minute, Hazard Yancy hurried downstairs while the window-breaking can of pine-scented disinfectant was still bouncing from the porch roof to the lawn.

Tall sidelights flanked the front door, but neither was wide enough to accommodate a man, especially not one as large as Hazard. Furthermore, the relationship of the sidelights to the door lock made it impossible for him to claim to have reached inside and disengaged the deadbolt after smashing either pane.

Having holstered his handgun, opening the door, Hazard suddenly expected to be confronted by Laputa. Or Hector X. Only the night came face to face with him, cold and wet.

He stepped onto the front porch. As far as he could see, the sound of shattering glass hadn’t brought curious neighbors outside.

Someone might be watching at a window. He’d taken bigger risks.

On the porch were several potted plants. He picked a small one.

After waiting for a car to splash past in the street, he threw the ten-pound terra-cotta pot, with plant, through one of the living-room windows. The consequent crash-clink-clatter of exploding and falling glass ought to have attracted attention in the most mind-your-own-damn-business neighborhood.

He drew his gun and used the butt to smash out a few stubborn shards still bristling from the sash. Then he climbed inside through the window, thrusting aside the drapes, knocking over a pedestal and a vase, blundering as though he had never been in the Laputa house before.

He had his story now. In answer to the cry for help that had come through the broken bedroom window, he had rung the bell, pounded on the door. When he received no response, he broke a window, went upstairs, and found Maxwell Dalton.

This concoction had the texture not of smooth sweet truth but of a cow pie; however, it was
his
cow pie, and he was going to serve it with enthusiasm.

After returning to the front porch by the more conventional route of the door, in consideration of Dalton’s perilous condition, Hazard used his cell phone to call 911. He gave the dispatcher his badge number and explained the situation. “I need paramedics and some jakes here sooner than soon.” As an afterthought he said, “Jakes are uniformed officers.”

“I know,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’s all right,” she said.

“I need a CSU—”

“I know,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you new, Detective?”

“I’m forty-one,” he said, immediately realizing that his reply qualified for a stupidity commendation.

“I mean new to Robbery/Homicide,” she said.

“No, ma’am. I’ve been washed so many times I shouldn’t have any color left.”

This was, however, his first case involving a ghost, or whatever the hell Dunny Whistler might be when he could shape your dreams and disappear into a mirror. This was also his first involving a phone call from a dead hit man, and his first involving a perp who starved and tortured a victim while keeping him alive on an IV drip.

Some days you thought you had seen everything. This wasn’t one of them.

Having concluded the 911 call, he darted across the street in the rain, to his department sedan. He stowed the Lockaid lock-release gun under the driver’s seat.

By the time he returned to the front porch, he heard approaching sirens.

Coming through the library door, Ethan saw the creased and tattered photograph on the floor. Hannah. The same picture that had once stood on the desk in Dunny’s apartment, that had been torn out of the silver frame.

The disappearance of the string of little bells from Ethan’s desk suggested that Dunny had been in Palazzo Rospo. The e-mails from Devonshire, Yorn, and Hachette had supported what the missing bells suggested. As far as Ethan was concerned, this photo qualified as hard proof.

Dead, stone-solid-perfect dead, according to Dr. O’Brien at Our Lady of Angels, Dunny remained at large in the world, but with powers that defied reason and that
defined
a supernatural entity.

He had been in Palazzo Rospo.

He was here now.

Ethan wouldn’t have believed in a walking dead man if he hadn’t been shot point-blank in the gut, hadn’t died and been resurrected, if he hadn’t been trashed by a PT Cruiser and a truck, hadn’t been on his feet again an instant after his second death. He himself wasn’t a ghost, but after the events of the past two days, he could believe in a ghost, all right, and in lots of things to which previously he had given no credence.

Maybe Dunny wasn’t a ghost, either. He might be something else for which Ethan had no name.

Whatever Dunny proved to be, he was no longer merely a man. His motives, therefore, couldn’t be identified either by the process of deduction or by the intuition on which a cop relied.

Nevertheless, Ethan sensed now that his childhood friend, so long estranged, wasn’t the source of the threat to Fric, that Dunny’s role in these bizarre events was more benign than not. A man who had loved Hannah, who had kept her picture five years after her death, must have within him at least the potential for good and surely could not harbor the purity of evil required to harm a blameless child.

Folding the photo away into a pocket, Ethan called out, “Fric! Fric, where are you?”

When he received no answer, he hurried through the library, along the canyons of books, from Aesop and Conrad Aiken to Alexandre Dumas, from Gustave Flaubert to Victor Hugo, from Somerset Maugham to Shakespeare, all the way to Emile Zola, afraid of finding the boy dead and of not finding him at all.