FACES
Bite her face off.
No pain. Her dead already. Kill her quick like others. Not want make pain. Not her fault.
The boyfriend groan but not move. Face way on ground now. Got from behind. Got quick. Never see. He can live.
Girl look me after the boyfriend go down. Gasp first. When see face start scream. Two claws not cut short rip her throat before sound get loud.
Her sick-scared look just like all others. Hate that look. Hate it terrible.
Sorry, girl. Not your fault.
Chew her face skin. Chew all. Chew hard and swallow. Warm wet redness make sickish but chew and chew. Must eat face. Must get all down. Keep down.
Leave the eyes.
The boyfriend groan again. Move arm. Must leave quick. Take last look blood and teeth and stare-eyes that once pretty girl face.
Sorry, girl. Not your fault.
Got go. Get way hurry. First take money. Girl money. Take the boyfriend wallet, also too. Always take money. Need money.
Go now. Not too far. Climb wall of near building. Find dark spot where can see and not be seen. Where can wait. Soon the Detective Harrison arrive.
In down below can see the boyfriend roll over. Get to knees. Sway. See him look the girlfriend.
The boyfriend scream terrible. Bad to hear. Make so sad. Make cry.
Kevin Harrison heard Jacobi’s voice on the other end of the line and wanted to be sick.
“Don’t say it,” he groaned.
“Sorry,” said Jacobi. “It’s another one.”
“Where?”
“West Forty-ninth, right near-“
“I’ll find it.” All he had to do was look for the flashing red lights. “I’m on my way. Shouldn’t take me too long to get in from Monroe at this hour.”
“We’ve got all night, lieutenant.” Unsaid but well understood was an admonishing, You’re the one who wants to live on Long Island.
Beside him in the bed, Martha spoke form deep in her pillow as he hung up.
“Not another one?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, God! When is it going to stop?”
“When I catch the guy.”
Her hand touched his arm, gently. “I know all this responsibility’s not easy. I’m here when you need me.”
“I know.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Thanks.”
He left the warm bed and skipped the shower. No time for that. A fresh shirt, yesterday’s rumpled suit, a tie shoved into his pocket, and he was off into the winter night.
With his secure little ranch house falling away behind him, Harrison felt naked and vulnerable out here in the dark. As he headed south on Glen Cove Road toward the LIE, he realized that Martha and the kids were all that were holding him together these days. His family had become an island of sanity and stability in a world gone mad.
Everything else was in flux. For reasons he still could not comprehend, he had volunteered to head up the search for this killer. Now his whole future in the department had come to hinge on his success in finding him.
The papers had named the maniac ‘The Facelift Killer.’ As apt a name as the tabloids could want, but Harrison resented it. The moniker was callous, trivializing the mutilations perpetrated on the victims. But it had caught on with the public and they were stuck with it, especially with all the ink the story was getting.
Six killings, one a week for six weeks in a row, and eight million people in a panic. Then, for almost two weeks, the city had gone without a new slaying.
Until tonight.
Harrison’s stomach pitched and rolled at the thought of having to look at one of those corpses again.
“That’s enough,” Harrison said, averting his eyes from the faceless thing.
The raw, gouged, bloody flesh, the exposed muscle and bone were bad enough, but it was the eyes-those naked, lidless, staring eyes were the worst.
“This makes seven,” Jacobi said at his side. Squat, dark, jowly, the sergeant was chewing a big wad of gum, noisily, aggressively, as if he had a grudge against it.
“I can count. Anything new?”
“Nah. Same M.O. as ever-throat slashed, money stolen, face gnawed off.”
Harrison shuddered. He had come in as Special Investigator after the third Facelift killing. He had inspected the first three via coroner’s photos. Those had been awful. But nothing could match the effect of the real thing up close and still warm and oozing. This was the fourth fresh victim he had seen. There was no getting used to this kind of mutilation, no matter how many he saw. Jacobi put on a good show, but Harrison sensed the revulsion under the sergeant’s armor.
And yet...
* * * * *
Beneath all the horror, Harrison sensed something. There was anger here, sick anger and hatred of spectacular proportions. But beyond that, something else, an indefinable something that had drawn him to this case. Whatever it was, that something called to him, and still held him captive.
If he could identify it, maybe he could solve this case and wrap it up. And save his ass.
If he did solve it, it would be all on his own. Because he wasn’t getting much help from Jacobi, and even less from his assigned staff. He knew what they all thought-that he had taken the job as a glory grab, a shortcut to the top. Sure, they wanted to see this thing wrapped up, too, but they weren’t shedding any tears over the shit he was taking in the press and on TV and from City Hall.
Their attitude was clear: If you want the spotlight, Harrison, you gotta take the heat that goes with it.
They were right, of course. He could have been working on a quieter case, like where all the winos were disappearing to. He’d chosen this instead. But he wasn’t after the spotlight, dammit! It was this case-something about this case!
He suddenly realized that there was no one around him. The body had been carted off, Jacobi had wandered back to his car. He had been left standing alone at the far end of the alley.
And yet not alone.
Someone was watching him. He could feel it. The realization sent a little chill-one completely unrelated to the cold February wind-trickling down his back. A quick glance around showed no one paying him the slightest bit of attention. He looked up.
There!
Somewhere in the darkness above, someone was watching him. Probably from the roof. He could sense the piercing scrutiny and it made him a little weak. That was no ghoulish neighborhood voyeur, up there. That was the Facelift Killer.
He had to get to Jacobi, have him seal off the building. But he couldn’t act spooked. He had to act calm, casual.
* * * * *
See the Detective Harrison’s eyes. See from way up in dark. Tall-thin. Hair brown. Nice eyes. Soft brown eyes. Not hard like many-many eyes. Look here. Even from here see eyes make wide. Him know it me.
Watch the Detective Harrison turn slow. Walk slow. Tell inside him want to run. Must leave here. Leave quick.
Bend low. Run cross roof. Jump to next. And next. Again till most block away. Then down wall. Wrap scarf round head. Hide bad-face. Hunch inside big-big coat. Walk through lighted spots.
Hate light. Hate crowds. Theatres here. Movies and plays. Like them. Some night sneak in and see. See one with man in mask. Hang from wall behind big drapes. Make cry.
Wish there mask for me.
Follow street long way to river. See many lights across river. Far past there is place where grew. Never want go back to there. Never.
Catch back of truck. Ride home.
Home. Bright bulb hang ceiling. Not care. The Old Jessi waiting. The Jessi friend. Only friend. The Jessi’s eyes not see. Ever. When the Jessi look me, her face not wear sick-scared look. Hate that look.
Come in kitchen window. The Jessi’s face wrinkle-black. Smile when hear me come. TV on. Always on. The Jessi cannot watch. Say it company for her.
“You’re so late tonight.”
“Hard work. Get moneys tonight.”
Feel sick. Want cry. Hate kill. Wish stop.
“That’s nice. Are you going to put it in the drawer?”
“Doing now.”
Empty wallets. Put money in slots. Ones first slot. Fives next slot. Then tens and twenties. So the Jessi can pay when boy bring foods. Sometimes eat stealed foods. Mostly the Jessi call for foods.
The Old Jessi hardly walk. Good. Do not want her go out. Bad peoples round here. Many. Hurt one who not see. One bad man try hurt Jessi once. Push through door. Thought only the blind Old Jessi live here.
Lucky the Jessi not alone that day.
Not lucky bad man. Hit the Jessi. Laugh hard. Then look me. Get sick-scared look. Hate that look. Kill him quick. Put in tub. Bleed there. Bad man friend come soon after. Kill him also too. Late at night take both dead bad men out. Go through window. Carry down wall. Throw in river.
No bad men come again. Ever.
“I’ve been waiting all night for my bath. Do you think you can help me a little?”
Always help. But the Old Jessi always ask. The Jessi very polite.
Sponge the Old Jessi back in tub. Rinse her hair. Think of the Detective Harrison. His kind eyes. Must talk him. Want stop this. Stop now. Maybe will understand. Will. Can feel.
* * * * *
Seven grisly murders in eight weeks.
Kevin Harrison studied a photo of the latest victim, taken before she was mutilated. A nice eight by ten glossy furnished by her agent. A real beauty. A dancer with Broadway dreams.
He tossed the photo aside and pulled the stack of files toward him.
The remnants of six lives in this pile. Somewhere within had to be an answer, the thread that linked each of them to the Facelift Killer.
But what if there was no common link? What if all the killings were at random, linked only by the fact that they were beautiful? Seven deaths, all over the city. All with their faces gnawed off. Gnawed.
He flipped through the victims one by one and studied their photos. He had begun to feel he knew each one of them personally.
Mary Detrick, 20, a junior at N.Y.U., killed in Washington Square Park on January 5. She was the first.
Mia Chandler, 25, a secretary at Merrill Lynch, killed January 13 in Battery Park.
Ellen Beasley, 22, a photographer’s assistant, killed in an alley in Chelsea on January 22.
Hazel Hauge, 30, artist agent, killed in her Soho loft on January 27.
Elisabeth Paine, 28, housewife, killed on February 2 while jogging late in Central Park.
Joan Perrin, 25, a model from Brooklyn, pulled from her car while stopped at a light on the Upper East Side on February 8.
He picked up the eight by ten again. And the last: Liza Lee, 21, Dancer. Lived across the river in Jersey City. Ducked into an alley for a toot with her boyfriend tonight and never came out.
Three blondes, three brunettes, one redhead. Some stacked, some on the flat side. All caucs except for Perrin. All lookers. But besides that, how in the world could these women be linked? They came from all over town, and they met their respective ends all over town. What could-
“Well, you sure hit the bullseye about that roof!” Jacobi said as he burst into the office.
Harrison straightened in his chair. “What did you find?”
“Blood.”
“Whose?”
“The victim’s.”
“No prints? No hairs? No fibers?”
“We’re working on it. But how’d you figure to check the roof top?”
“Lucky guess.”
Harrison didn’t want to provide Jacobi with more grist for the departmental gossip mill by mentioning his feeling of being watched from up there.
But the killer had been watching, hadn’t he?
“Any prelims from pathology?”
Jacobi shrugged and stuffed three sticks of gum into his mouth. Then he tried to talk.
“Same as ever. Money gone, throat ripped open by a pair of sharp pointed instruments, not knives, the bite marks on the face are the usual: the teeth that made them aren’t human, but the saliva is.”
The ‘non-human’ teeth part-more teeth, bigger and sharper than found in any human mouth-had baffled them all from the start. Early on someone remembered a horror novel or movie where the killer used some weird sort of false teeth to bite his victims. That had sent them off on a wild goose chase to all the dental labs looking for records of bizarre bite prostheses. No dice. No one had seen or even heard of teeth that could gnaw off a person’s face.
Harrison shuddered. What could explain wounds like that? What were they dealing with here?
The irritating pops, snaps, and cracks of Jacobi’s gum filled the office.
“I liked you better when you smoked.”
Jacobi’s reply was cut off by the phone. The sergeant picked it up.
“Detective Harrison’s office!” he said, listened a moment, then, with his hand over the mouthpiece, passed the receiver to Harrison. “Some fairy wants to shpeak to you,” he said with an evil grin.
“Fairy?”
“Hey,” he said, getting up and walking toward the door. “I don’t mind. I’m a liberal kinda guy, y’know?”
Harrison shook his head with disgust. Jacobi was getting less likeable every day.
“Hello. Harrison here.”
“Shorry dishturb you, Detective Harrishon.”
The voice was soft, pitched somewhere between a man’s and a woman’s, and sounded as if the speaker had half a mouthful of saliva. Harrison had never heard anything like it. Who could be-?
And then it struck him: It was three a.m. Only a handful of people knew he was here.
“Do I know you?”
“No. Watch you tonight. You almosht shee me in dark.”
That same chill from earlier tonight ran down Harrison’s back again.
“Are... are you who I think you are?”
There was a pause, then one soft word, more sobbed than spoken:
“Yesh.”
If the reply had been cocky, something along the line of - And just who do you think I am? Harrison would have looked for much more in the way of corroboration. But that single word, and the soul deep heartbreak that propelled it, banished all doubt.
My God! He looked around frantically. No one in sight. Where the fuck was Jacobi now when he needed him? This was the Facelift Killer! He needed a trace!
Got to keep him on the line!
“I have to ask you something to be sure you are who you say you are.”
“Yesh?”
“Do you take anything from the victims-I mean, besides their faces?”
“Money. Take money.”
This is him! The department had withheld the money part from the papers. Only the real Facelift Killer could know!
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Yes.”
Harrison was asking this one for himself.
“What do you do with the faces?”
He had to know. The question drove him crazy at night. He dreamed about those faces. Did the killer tack them on the wall, or press them in a book, or freeze them, or did he wear them around the house like that Leatherface character from that chainsaw movie?
On the other end of the line he sensed sudden agitation and panic: “No! Cannot shay! Can…not!”
“Okay, okay. Take it easy.”
“You will help shtop?”
“Oh, yes! Oh, God, yes, I’ll help you stop!” He prayed his genuine heartfelt desire to end this was coming through. “I’ll help you any way I can!”
There was a long pause, then:
“You hate? Hate me?”
Harrison didn’t trust himself to answer that right away. He searched his feelings quickly, but carefully.
“No,” he said finally. “I think you have done some awful, horrible things but, strangely enough, I don’t hate you.”
And that was true. Why didn’t he hate this murdering maniac? Oh, he wanted to stop him more than anything in the world, and wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him dead if the situation required it, but there was no personal hatred for the Facelift Killer.
What is it in you that speaks to me? he wondered.
“Shank you,” said the voice, couched once more in a sob.
And then the killer hung up.
Harrison shouted into the dead phone, banged it on his desk, but the line was dead.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Jacobi said from the office door.
“That so-called ‘fairy’ on the phone was the Facelift Killer, you idiot! We could have had a trace if you’d stuck around!”
“Bullshit!”
“He knew about taking the money!”
“So why’d he talk like that? That’s a dumb-ass way to try to disguise your voice.”
And then it suddenly hit Harrison like a sucker punch to the gut. He swallowed hard and said:
“Jacobi, how do you think your voice would sound if you had a jaw crammed full of teeth much larger and sharper than the kind found in the typical human mouth?”
Harrison took genuine pleasure in the way Jacobi’s face blanched slowly to yellow-white.
He didn’t get home again until after seven the following night. The whole department had been in an uproar all day. This was the first break they had had in the case. It wasn’t much, but contact had been made. That was the important part. And although Harrison had done nothing he could think of to deserve any credit, he had accepted the commissioner’s compliments and encouragement on the phone shortly before he had left the office tonight.
But what was most important to Harrison was the evidence from the call-Damn! he wished it had been taped-that the killer wanted to stop. They didn’t have one more goddamn clue tonight than they’d had yesterday, but the call offered hope that soon there might be an end to this horror.
Martha had dinner waiting. The kids were scrubbed and pyjamaed and waiting for their goodnight kiss. He gave them each a hug and poured himself a stiff scotch while Martha put them in the sack.
“Do you feel as tired as you look?” she said as she returned from the bedroom wing.
She was a big woman with bright blue eyes and natural dark blond hair. Harrison toasted her with his glass.
“The expression ‘dead on his feet’ has taken on a whole new meaning for me.”
She kissed him, then they sat down to eat.
He had spoken to Martha a couple of times since he had left the house twenty hours ago. She knew about the phone call from the Facelift Killer, about the new hope in the department about the case, but he was glad she didn’t bring it up now. He was sick of talking about it. Instead, he sat in front of his cooling meatloaf and wrestled with the images that had been nibbling at the edges of his consciousness all day.
“What are you daydreaming about?” Martha said.
Without thinking, Harrison said, “Annie.”
“Annie who?”
“My sister.”
Martha put her fork down. “Your sister? Kevin, you don’t have a sister.”
“Not any more. But I did.”
Her expression was alarmed now. “Kevin, are you all right? I’ve known your family for ten years. Your mother has never once mentioned-“
“We don’t talk about Annie, Mar. We try not to even think about her. She died when she was five.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Annie was... deformed. Terribly deformed. She never really had a chance.”
* * * * *
Open trunk from inside. Get out. The Detective Harrison’s house here. Cold night. Cold feel good. Trunk air make sick, dizzy.
Light here. Hurry round side of house.
Darker here. No one see. Look in window. Dark but see good. Two little ones there. Sleeping. Move away. Not want them cry.
Go more round. The Detective Harrison with lady. Sit table near window. Must be wife. Pretty but not oh-so-beauty. Not have mom-face. Not like ones who die.
Watch behind tree. Hungry. They not eat food. Talk-talk-talk. Cannot hear.
The Detective Harrison do most talk. Kind face. Kind eyes. Some terrible sad there. Hides. Him understands. Heard in phone voice. Understands. Him one can stop kills.
Spent day watch the Detective Harrison car. All day watch at police house. Saw him come-go many times. Soon dark, open trunk with claw. Ride with him. Ride long. Wonder what town this?
The Detective Harrison look this way. Stare like last night. Must not see me! Must not!
Harrison stopped in mid-sentence and stared out the window as his skin prickled.
That watched feeling again.
It was the same as last night. Something was out in the backyard watching them. He strained to see through the wooded darkness outside the window but saw only shadows within shadows.
But something was there! He could feel it!
He got up and turned on the outside spotlights, hoping, praying that the backyard would be empty.
It was.
He smiled to hide his relief and glanced at Martha.
“Thought that raccoon was back.”
He left the spots on and settled back into his place at the table. But the thoughts racing through his mind made eating unthinkable.
What if that maniac had followed him out here? What if the call had been a ploy to get him off-guard so the Facelift Killer could do to Martha what he had done to the other women?
My God...
First thing tomorrow morning he was going to call the local alarm boys and put in a security system. Cost be damned, he had to have it. Immediately!
As for tonight...
Tonight he’d keep the .38 under the pillow.
* * * * *
Run away. Run low and fast. Get bushes before light come. Must stay way now. Not come back.
The Detective Harrison feel me. Know when watched. Him the one, sure.
Walk in dark, in woods. See back many houses. Come park. Feel strange. See this park before. Cannot be…
Then know.
Monroe! This Monroe! Born here! Live here! Hate Monroe! Monroe bad place, bad people! House, home, old home near here! There! Cross park! Old home! New color but same house.
Hate house!
Sit on froze park grass. Cry. Why Monroe? Do not want be in Monroe. The Mom gone. The Sissy gone. The Jimmy very gone. House here.
Dry tears. Watch old home long time till light go out. Wait more. Go to windows. See new folks inside. The Mom took the Sissy and go. Where? Don’t know.
Go to back. Push cellar window. Crawl in. See good in dark. New folks make nice cellar. Wood on walls. Rug on floor. No chain.
Sit floor. Remember...
Remember hanging on wall. Look little window near ceiling. Watch kids play in park cross street. Want go with kids. Want play there with kids. Want have friends.
But the Mom won’t let. Never leave basement. Too strong. Break everything. Have TV. Broke it. Have toys. Broke them. Stay in basement. Chain round waist hold to center pole. Cannot leave.
Remember terrible bad things happen.
Run. Run way Monroe. Never come back.
Till now.
Now back. Still hate house! Want hurt house. See cigarettes. With matches. Light all. Burn now!
Watch rug burn. Chair burn. So hot. Run back to cold park. Watch house burn. See new folks run out. Trucks come throw water. House burn and burn.
Glad but tears come anyway.
Hate house. Now house gone. Hate Monroe.
Wonder where the Mom and the Sissy live now.
Leave Monroe for new home and the Old Jessi.
* * * * *
The second call came the next day. And this time they were ready for it. The tape recorders were set, the computers were waiting to begin the tracing protocol. As soon as Harrison recognized the voice, he gave the signal. On the other side of the desk, Jacobi put on a headset and people started running in all directions. Off to the races.
“I’m glad you called,” Harrison said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
“You undershtand?” said the soft voice.
“I’m not sure.”
“Musht help shtop.”
“I will! I will! Tell me how!”
“Not know.”
There was a pause. Harrison wasn’t sure what to say next. He didn’t want to push, but he had to keep him on the line.
“Did you... hurt anyone last night?”
“No. Shaw houshes. Your houshe. Your wife.”
Harrison’s blood froze. Last night-in the backyard. That had been the Facelift Killer in the dark. He looked up and saw genuine concern in Jacobi’s eyes. He forced himself to speak.
“You were at my house? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“No-no! Cannot let shee! Run way your house. Go mine!”
“Yours? You live in Monroe?”
“No! Hate Monroe! Once lived. Gone long! Burn old houshe. Never go back!”
This could be important. Harrison phrased the next question carefully.
“You burned your old house? When was that?”
If he could just get a date, a year...
“Lasht night.”
“Last night?” Harrison remembered hearing the sirens and fire horns in the early morning darkness.
“Yesh! Hate houshe!”
And then the line went dead.
He looked at Jacobi who had picked up another line.
“Did we get the trace?”
“Waiting to hear. Christ, he sounds retarded, doesn’t he?”
* * * * *
Retarded.
The word sent ripples across the surface of his brain. Non-human teeth... Monroe... retarded... a picture was forming in the settling sediment, a picture he felt he should avoid.
“Maybe he is.”
“You’d think that would make him easy to-“
Jacobi stopped, listened to the receiver, then shook his head disgustedly.
“What?”
“Got as far as the Lower East Side. He was probably calling from somewhere in one of the projects. If we’d had another thirty seconds-“
“We’ve got something better than a trace to some lousy pay phone,” Harrison said. “We’ve got his old address!” He picked up his suit coat and headed for the door.
“Where we goin’?”
“Not ‘we.’ Me. I’m going out to Monroe.”
* * * * *
Once he reached the town, it took Harrison less than an hour to find the Facelift Killer’s last name.
He first checked with the Monroe Fire Department to find the address of last night’s house fire. Then he went down to the brick fronted Town Hall and found the lot and block number. After that it was easy to look up its history of ownership. Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Scott were the current owners of the land and the charred shell of a three-bedroom ranch that sat upon it.
There had only been one other set of owners: Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Baker. He had lived most of his life in Monroe but knew nothing about the Baker family. But he knew where to find out: Captain Jeremy Hall, Chief of Police in the Incorporated Village of Monroe.
Captain Hall hadn’t changed much over the years. Still had a big belly, long sideburns, and hair cut bristly short on the sides. That was the ‘in’ look these days, but Hall had been wearing his hair like that for at least thirty years. If not for his Bronx accent, he could have played a redneck sheriff in any one of those southern chain gang movies.
After pleasantries and local-boy-leaves-home-to-become-big-city-cop-and-now-comes-to-question-small-town-cop banter, they got down to business.
“The Bakers from North Park Drive?” Hall said after he had noisily sucked the top layer off his steaming coffee. “Who could forget them? There was the mother, divorced, I believe, and the three kids-two girls and the boy.”
Harrison pulled out his note pad. “The boy’s name-what was it?”
“Tommy, I believe. Yeah-Tommy. I’m sure of it.”
“He’s the one I want.”
Hall’s eyes narrowed. “He is, is he? You’re working on that Facelift case aren’t you?”
“Right.”
“And you think Tommy Baker might be your man?”
“It’s a possibility. What do you know about him?”
“I know he’s dead.”
Harrison froze. “Dead? That can’t be!”
“It sure as hell can be!” Without rising from his seat, he shouted through his office door. “Murph! Pull out that old file on the Baker case! Nineteen eighty-four, I believe!”
“Eighty-four?” Harrison said. He and Martha had been living in Queens then. They hadn’t moved back to Monroe yet.
“Right. A real messy affair. Tommy Baker was thirteen years old when he bought it. And he bought it. Believe me, he bought it!”
* * * * *
Harrison sat in glum silence, watching his whole theory go up in smoke.
The Old Jessi sleeps. Stand by mirror near tub. Only mirror have. No like them. The Jessi not need one.
Stare face. Bad face. Teeth, teeth, teeth. And hair. Arms too thin, too long. Claws. None have claws like my. None have face like my.
Face not better. Ate pretty faces but face still same. Still cause sick-scared look. Just like at home.
Remember home. Do not want but thoughts will not go.
Faces.
The Sissy get the Mom-face. Beauty face. The Tommy get the Dad-face. Not see the Dad. Never come home anymore. Who my face? Never see where come. Where my face come? My hands come?
Remember home cellar. Hate home! Hate cellar more! Pull on chain round waist. Pull and pull. Want out. Want play. Please. No one let.
One day when the Mom and the Sissy go, the Tommy bring friends. Come down cellar. Bunch on stairs. Stare. First time see sick-scared look. Not understand.
Friends! Play! Throw ball them. They run. Come back with rocks and sticks. Still sick-scared look. Throw me, hit me.
Make cry. Make the Tommy laugh.
Whenever the Mom and the Sissy go, the Tommy come with boys and sticks. Poke and hit. Hurt. Little hurt on skin. Big hurt inside. Sick-scared look hurt most of all. Hate look. Hate hurt. Hate them.
Most hate the Tommy.
One night chain breaks. Wait on wall for the Tommy. Hurt him. Hurt the Tommy outside. Hurt the Tommy inside. Know because pull inside outside. The Tommy quiet. Quiet, wet, red. The Mom and the Sissy get sick-scared look and scream.
Hate that look. Run way. Hide. Never come back. Till last night.
Cry more now. Cry quiet. In tub. So the Jessi not hear.
* * * * *
Harrison flipped through the slim file on the Tommy Baker murder.
“This is it?”
“We didn’t need to collect much paper,” Captain Hall said. “I mean, the mother and sister were witnesses. There’s some photos in that manila envelope at the back.”
Harrison pulled it free and slipped out some large black and whites. His stomach lurched immediately.
“My God!”
“Yeah, he was a mess. Gutted by his older sister.”
“His sister!”
“Yeah. Apparently she was some sort of freak of nature.”
Harrison felt the floor tilt under him, felt as if he were going to slide off the chair.
“Freak?” he said, hoping Hall wouldn’t notice the tremor in his voice. “What did she look like?”
“Never saw her. She took off after she killed the brother. No one’s seen hide nor hair of her since. But there’s a picture of the rest of the family in there.”
Harrison shuffled through the file until he came to a large color family portrait. He held it up. Four people: two adults seated in chairs; a boy and a girl, about ten and eight, kneeling on the floor in front of them. A perfectly normal American family. Four smiling faces.
But where’s your oldest child. Where’s your big sister? Where did you hide that fifth face while posing for this?
“What was her name? The one who’s not here?”
“Not sure. Carla, maybe? Look at the front sheet under Suspect.”
Harrison did: “Carla Baker-called ‘Carly,’” he said.
Hall grinned. “Right. Carly. Not bad for a guy getting ready for retirement.”
Harrison didn’t answer. An ineluctable sadness filled him as he stared at the incomplete family portrait.
Carly Baker... poor Carly... where did they hide you away? In the cellar? Locked in the attic? How did your brother treat you? Bad enough to deserve killing?
Probably.
“No pictures of Carly, I suppose.”
“Not a one.”
That figures.
“How about a description?”
“The mother gave us one but it sounded so weird, we threw it out. I mean, the girl sounded like she was half spider or something!” He drained his cup. “Then later on I got into a discussion with Doc Alberts about it. He told me he was doing deliveries back about the time this kid was born. Said they had a whole rash of monsters, all delivered within a few weeks of each other.”
The room started to tilt under Harrison again.
“Early December, 1968, by chance?”
“Yeah! How’d you know?”
He felt queasy. “Lucky guess.”
“Huh. Anyway, Doc Alberts said they kept it quiet while they looked into a cause, but that little group of freaks-‘cluster,’ he called them-was all there was. They figured that a bunch of mothers had been exposed to something nine months before, but whatever it had been was long gone. No monsters since. I understand most of them died shortly after birth, anyway.”
“Not all of them.”
“Not that it matters,” Hall said, getting up and pouring himself a refill from the coffee pot. “Someday someone will find her skeleton, probably somewhere out in Haskins’ marshes.”
“Maybe.” But I wouldn’t count on it. He held up the file. “Can I get a xerox of this?”
“You mean the Facelift Killer is a twenty-year-old girl?”
Martha’s face clearly registered her disbelief.
“Not just any girl. A freak. Someone so deformed she really doesn’t look human. Completely uneducated and probably mentally retarded to boot.”
Harrison hadn’t returned to Manhattan. Instead, he’d headed straight for home, less than a mile from Town Hall. He knew the kids were at school and that Martha would be there alone. That was what he had wanted. He needed to talk this out with someone a lot more sensitive than Jacobi.
Besides, what he had learned from Captain Hall and the Baker file had dredged up the most painful memories of his life.
“A monster,” Martha said.
“Yeah. Born one on the outside, made one on the inside. But there’s another child monster I want to talk about. Not Carly Baker. Annie... Ann Harrison.”
Martha gasped. “That sister you told me about last night?”
Harrison nodded. He knew this was going to hurt, but he had to do it, had to get it out. He was going to explode into a thousand twitching bloody pieces if he didn’t.
“I was nine when she was born. December 2, 1968-a week after Carly Baker. Seven pounds, four ounces of horror. She looked more fish than human.”
His sister’s image was imprinted on the rear wall of his brain. And it should have been after all those hours he had spent studying her loathsome face. Only her eyes looked human. The rest of her was awful. A lipless mouth, flattened nose, sloping forehead, fingers and toes fused so that they looked more like flippers than hands and feet, a bloated body covered with shiny skin that was a dusky gray-blue. The doctors said she was that color because her heart was bad, had a defect that caused mixing of blue blood and red blood.
A repulsed nine-year-old Kevin Harrison had dubbed her The Tuna-but never within earshot of his parents.
“She wasn’t supposed to live long. A few months, they said, and she’d be dead. But she didn’t die. Annie lived on and on. One year. Two. My father and the doctors tried to get my mother to put her into some sort of institution, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. She kept Annie in the third bedroom and talked to her and cooed over her and cleaned up her shit and just hung over her all the time. All the time, Martha!”
Martha gripped his hand and nodded for him to go on.
“After a while, it got so there was nothing else in Mom’s life. She wouldn’t leave Annie. Family trips became a thing of the past. Christ, if she and Dad went out to a movie, I had to stay with Annie. No babysitter was trustworthy enough. Our whole lives seemed to center around that freak in the back bedroom. And me? I was forgotten.
“After a while I began to hate my sister.”
“Kevin, you don’t have to-“
“Yes, I do! I’ve got to tell you how it was! By the time I was fourteen-just about Tommy Baker’s age when he bought it-I thought I was going to go crazy. I was getting all B’s in school but did that matter? Hell, no! ‘Annie rolled halfway over today. Isn’t that wonderful?’ Big deal! She was five years old, for Christ sake! I was starting point guard on the high school junior varsity basketball team as a goddamn freshman, but did anyone come to my games? Hell no!
“I tell you, Martha, after five years of caring for Annie, our house was a powder-keg. Looking back now I can see it was my mother’s fault for becoming so obsessed. But back then, at age fourteen, I blamed it all on Annie. I really hated her for being born a freak.”
He paused before going on. This was the really hard part.
“One night, when my dad had managed to drag my mother out to some company banquet that he had to attend, I was left alone to babysit Annie. On those rare occasions, my mother would always tell me to keep Annie company-you know, read her stories and such. But I never did. I’d let her lie back there alone with our old black and white TV while I sat in the living room watching the family set. This time, however, I went into her room.”
He remembered the sight of her, lying there with the covers half way up her fat little tuna body that couldn’t have been much more than a yard in length. It was winter, like now, and his mother had dressed her in a flannel nightshirt. The coarse hair that grew off the back of her head had been wound into two braids and fastened with pink bows.
“Annie’s eyes brightened as I came into the room. She had never spoken. Couldn’t, it seemed. Her face could do virtually nothing in the way of expression, and her flipper-like arms weren’t good for much, either. You had to read her eyes, and that wasn’t easy. None of us knew how much of a brain Annie had, or how much she understood of what was going on around her. My mother said she was bright, but I think Mom was a little whacko on the subject of Annie.
“Anyway, I stood over her crib and started shouting at her. She quivered at the sound. I called her every dirty name in the book. And as I said each one, I poked her with my fingers-not enough to leave a bruise, but enough to let out some of the violence in me. I called her a lousy goddamn tunafish with feet. I told her how much I hated her and how I wished she had never been born. I told her everybody hated her and the only thing she was good for was a freak show. Then I said, ‘I wish you were dead! Why don’t you die? You were supposed to die years ago! Why don’t you do everyone a favor and do it now!
“When I ran out of breath, she looked at me with those big eyes of hers and I could see the tears in them and I knew she had understood me. She rolled over and faced the wall. I ran from the room.
“I cried myself to sleep that night. I’d thought I’d feel good telling her off, but all I kept seeing in my mind’s eye was this fourteen-year-old bully shouting at a helpless five-year-old. I felt awful. I promised myself that the first opportunity I had to be alone with her the next day I’d apologize, tell her I really didn’t mean the hateful things I’d said, promise to read to her and be her best friend, anything to make it up to her.
“I awoke the next morning to the sound of my mother screaming. Annie was dead.”
“Oh, my God!” Martha said, her fingers digging into his arm.
“Naturally, I blamed myself.”
“But you said she had a heart defect!”
“Yeah. I know. And the autopsy showed that’s what killed her-her heart finally gave out. But I’ve never been able to get it out of my head that my words were what made her heart give up. Sounds sappy and melodramatic, I know, but I’ve always felt that she was just hanging on to life by the slimmest margin and that I pushed her over the edge.”
“Kevin, you shouldn’t have to carry that around with you! Nobody should!”
The old grief and guilt were like a slowly expanding balloon in his chest. It was getting hard to breathe.
“In my coolest, calmest, most dispassionate moments I convince myself that it was all a terrible coincidence, that she would have died that night anyway and that I had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s probably true, so-“
“But that doesn’t change the fact that the last memory of her life was of her big brother-the guy she probably thought was the neatest kid on earth, who could run and play basketball, one of the three human beings who made up her whole world, who should have been her champion, her defender against a world that could only greet her with revulsion and rejection-standing over her crib telling her how much he hated her and how he wished she was dead!”
He felt the sobs begin to quake in his chest. He hadn’t cried in over a dozen years and he had no intention of allowing himself to start now, but there didn’t seem to be any stopping it. It was like running down hill at top speed-if he tried to stop before he reached bottom, he’d go head over heels and break his neck.
“Kevin, you were only fourteen,” Martha said soothingly.
“Yeah, I know. But if I could go back in time for just a few seconds, I’d go back to that night and rap that rotten hateful fourteen-year-old in the mouth before he got a chance to say a single word. But I can’t. I can’t even say I’m sorry to Annie! I never got a chance to take it back, Martha! I never got a chance to make it up to her!”
And then he was blubbering like a goddamn wimp, letting loose half a lifetime’s worth of grief and guilt, and Martha’s arms were around him and she was telling him everything would be all right, all right, all right...
* * * * *
The Detective Harrison understand. Can tell. Want to go kill another face now. Must not. The Detective Harrison not like. Must stop. The Detective Harrison help stop.
Stop for good.
Best way. Only one way stop for good. Not jail. No chain, no little window. Not ever again. Never!
Only one way stop for good. The Detective Harrison will know. Will understand. Will do.
Must call. Call now. Before dark. Before pretty faces come out in night.
Harrison had pulled himself together by the time the kids came home from school. He felt buoyant inside, like he’d been purged in some way. Maybe all those shrinks were right after all: sharing old hurts did help.
He played with the kids for a while, then went into the kitchen to see if Martha needed any help with slicing and dicing. He felt as close to her now as he ever had.
“You okay?” she said with a smile.
“Fine.”
She had just started slicing a red pepper for the salad. He took over for her.
“Have you decided what to do?” she asked.
He had been thinking about it a lot, and had come to a decision.
“Well, I’ve got to inform the department about Carly Baker, but I’m going to keep her out of the papers for a while.”
“Why? I’d think if she’s that freakish looking, the publicity might turn up someone who’s seen her.”
“Possibly it will come to that. But this case is sensational enough without tabloids like the Post and The Light turning it into a circus. Besides, I’m afraid of panic leading to some poor deformed innocent getting lynched. I think I can bring her in. She wants to come in.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“She so much as told me so. Besides, I can sense it in her.” He saw Martha giving him a dubious look. “I’m serious. We’re somehow connected, like there’s an invisible wire between us. Maybe it’s because the same thing that deformed her and those other kids deformed Annie, too. And Annie was my sister. Maybe that link is why I volunteered for this case in the first place.”
He finished slicing the pepper, then moved on to the mushrooms.
* * * * *
“And after I bring her in, I’m going to track down her mother and start prying into what went on in Monroe in February and March of sixty-eight to cause that so-called ‘cluster’ of freaks nine months later.”
He would do that for Annie. It would be his way of saying goodbye and I’m sorry to his sister.
“But why does she take their faces?” Martha said.
“I don’t know. Maybe because theirs were beautiful and hers is no doubt hideous.”
“But what does she do with them?”
“Who knows? I’m not all that sure I want to know. But right now-“
The phone rang. Even before he picked it up, he had an inkling of who it was. The first sibilant syllable left no doubt.
“Ish thish the Detective Harrison?”
“Yes.”
Harrison stretched the coiled cord around the corner from the kitchen into the dining room, out of Martha’s hearing.
“Will you shtop me tonight?”
“You want to give yourself up?”
“Yesh. Pleashe, yesh.”
“Can you meet me at the precinct house?”
“No!”
“Okay! Okay!” God, he didn’t want to spook her now. “Where? Anywhere you say.”
“Jusht you.”
“All right.”
“Midnight. Plashe where lasht fashe took. Bring gun but not more cop.”
“All right.”
He was automatically agreeing to everything. He’d work out the details later.
“You undershtand, Detective Harrishon?”
“Oh, Carly, Carly, I understand more than you know!”
There was a sharp intake of breath and then silence at the other end of the line. Finally:
“You know Carly?”
“Yes, Carly. I know you.” The sadness welled up in him again and it was all he could do to keep his voice from breaking. “I had a sister like you once. And you... you had a brother like me.”
“Yesh,” said that soft, breathy voice. “You undershtand. Come tonight, Detective Harrishon.”
The line went dead.
* * * * *
Wait in shadows. The Detective Harrison will come. Will bring lots cop. Always see on TV show. Always bring lots. Protect him. Many guns.
No need. Only one gun. The Detective Harrison’s gun. Him’s will shoot. Stop kills. Stop forever.
The Detective Harrison must do. No one else. The Carly can not. Must be the Detective Harrison. Smart. Know the Carly. Understand.
After stop, no more ugly Carly. No more sick-scared look. Bad face will go away. Forever and ever.
Harrison had decided to go it alone.
Not completely alone. He had a van waiting a block and a half away on Seventh Avenue and a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, but he hadn’t told anyone who he was meeting or why. He knew if he did, they’d swarm all over the area and scare Carly off completely. So he had told Jacobi he was meeting an informant and that the van was just a safety measure.
He was on his own here and wanted it that way. Carly Baker wanted to surrender to him and him alone. He understood that. It was part of that strange tenuous bond between them. No one else would do. After he had cuffed her, he would call in the wagon.
After that he would be a hero for a while. He didn’t want to be a hero. All he wanted was to end this thing, end the nightmare for the city and for poor Carly Baker. She’d get help, the kind she needed, and he’d use the publicity to springboard an investigation into what had made Annie and Carly and the others in their ‘cluster’ what they were.
It’s all going to work out fine, he told himself as he entered the alley.
He walked half its length and stood in the darkness. The brick walls of the buildings on either side soared up into the night. The ceaseless roar of the city echoed dimly behind him. The alley itself was quiet-no sound, no movement. He took out his flashlight and flicked it on.
“Carly?”
No answer.
“Carly Baker-are you here?”
More silence, then, ahead to his left, the sound of a garbage can scraping along the stony floor of the alley. He swung the light that way, and gasped.
A looming figure stood a dozen feet in front of him. It could only be Carly Baker. She stood easily as tall as he a good six foot two-and looked like a homeless street person, one of those animated rag-piles that live on subway grates in the winter. Her head was wrapped in a dirty scarf, leaving only her glittery dark eyes showing. The rest of her was muffled in a huge, shapeless overcoat, baggy old polyester slacks with dragging cuffs, and torn sneakers.
“Where the Detective Harrishon’s gun?” said the voice.
Harrison’s mouth was dry but he managed to get his tongue working.
“In its holster.”
“Take out. Pleashe.”
Harrison didn’t argue with her. The grip of his heavy Chief Special felt damn good in his hand.
The figure spread its arms; within the folds of her coat those arms seem to bend the wrong way. And were those black hooked claws protruding from the cuffs of the sleeves?
She said, “Shoot.”
Harrison gaped in shock.
The Detective Harrison not shoot. Eyes wide. Hands with gun and light shake.
Say again: “Shoot!”
“Carly, no! I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to take you in, just as we agreed.”
“No!”
Wrong! The Detective Harrison not understand! Must shoot the Carly! Kill the Carly!
“Not jail! Shoot! Shtop the kills! Shtop the Carly!”
“No! I can get you help, Carly. Really, I can! You’ll go to a place where no one will hurt you. You’ll get medicine to make you feel better!”
Thought him understand! Not understand! Move closer. Put claw out. Him back way. Back to wall.
“Shoot! Kill! Now!”
“No, Annie, please!”
“Not Annie! Carly! Carly!”
“Right. Carly! Don’t make me do this!”
Only inches way now. Still not shoot. Other cops hiding not shoot. Why not protect?
“Shoot!” Pull scarf off face. Point claw at face. “End! End! Pleashe!”
The Detective Harrison face go white. Mouth hang open. Say, “Oh, my God!”
Get sick-scared look. Hate that look! Thought him understand! Say he know the Carly! Not! Stop look! Stop!
Not think. Claw go out. Rip throat of the Detective Harrison. Blood fly just like others.
No-No-No! Not want hurt!
The Detective Harrison gurgle. Drop gun and light. Fall. Stare.
Wait other cops shoot. Please kill the Carly. Wait.
No shoot. Then know. No cops. Only the poor Detective Harrison. Cry for the Detective Harrison. Then run. Run and climb. Up and down. Back to new home with the Old Jessi.
The Jessi glad hear Carly come. The Jessi try talk. Carly go sit tub. Close door. Cry for the Detective Harrison. Cry long time. Break mirror million piece. Not see face again. Not ever. Never.
The Jessi say, “Carly, I want my bath. Will you scrub my back?”
Stop cry. Do the Old Jessi’s black back.
Comb the Jessi’s hair.
Feel very sad.
None ever comb the Carly’s hair.
Ever.