The Face of Death

  “Go on,” I say.

  “He kept on talking. He likes to hear himself talk. ‘Our time together is going to be done soon. I’m almost ready to complete my work. I’ve found the last few pieces I’ve been searching for, and soon, I’ll reveal my masterpiece.’ He stuffed the camera back into the bag and stood up. ‘It’s time for the next leg of your journey, Little Pain. Follow me.’”

  “Why does he call you ‘Little Pain’?” I ask.

  “It’s his pet name for me. His ‘Little Pain.’” The look in her eyes is savage. “I hate it!”

  “I don’t blame you,” I murmur. “What happened next?”

  “I started to move toward the door, like he asked, but then I stopped. Useless, I know, but I felt like I needed to make him force me to walk out that door. Like it meant something that I didn’t go on my own. Silly.”

  Maybe, I think, but it gives me hope for you.

  “What then?”

  “‘Don’t be difficult,’ he said, and he grabbed me by the arm. He was wearing thick gloves, but I could still feel how hard and strong his hands were. He led me down the hall to Dean and Laurel’s bedroom.” She gives me a wistful look. “That window I was sitting at when you came in? I remember seeing it then, thinking what a beautiful day it was.”

  “Go on,” I coax her.

  “He pushed me down the hallway that leads to their bathroom.” She shivers. “That’s where he had them. Dean and Laurel.”

  “Were they alive?”

  Her gaze at me is weary. “Of course they were. They were naked, and they were alive. They weren’t moving. I didn’t know why until he told me. ‘Drugged,’ he said. ‘I gave them an injection.’ Miva-something chloride he called it. I can’t remember the exact name. He said it kept them aware, that they could feel pain and hear us but that they couldn’t move much.”

  Score one for me on the drugs, and one for Tommy on the muscle relaxant, I think.

  Something occurs to me. “Sarah, his voice—would you recognize it if you heard it? Not just the words or the way he speaks, but the tone of it?”

  She nods, somber. “I can’t forget it. I dream about it sometimes.”

  “Go on.”

  “He had Dean facedown. Laurel was on her back. He set his camera on a tripod, and put it on record. Then he picked Dean up like a baby, no effort at all, and stood him in the bathtub. ‘Come here, Little Pain,’ he said to me. I walked over to the tub. ‘Look into his eyes,’ he told me. I did.” Sarah swallows. “I could see that he’d told the truth. Dean was…there. He knew what was going on. He was aware.” She shivers. “He was also terrified. You could see it in his eyes. He was so scared.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The Stranger told me to step back. He angled Dean’s head forward, so his chin stuck out.” She cranes her own neck, showing me. “‘When you know the moment of your own death, you know the meaning of both truth and fear, Mr. Kingsley,’ he said. ‘It makes you wonder what comes next: the glory of heaven or the fires of hell? I tortured a student of philosophy not long ago, a bad, evil man. I cut him, I burned him, I shocked him. I was waiting. I had told him before we began: If he could come up with a single original observation about life, I would end the pain. On the morning of the second day, while I was castrating him, he screamed: ‘We are all living in the moments before our own death!’ I kept my promise, and gave him release. I remember that truth before I kill someone.’”

  Sarah swallows. “Then The Stranger cut Dean’s throat. Just like that.” Her voice sounds distant and amazed. “No warning. So quick. The blood spurted out. The Stranger kept Dean’s neck angled so the blood would go into the tub. I remember thinking that I couldn’t believe how much of it there was.”

  About five or six quarts in the average human body. Not even enough to fill up a kitchen sink halfway, but blood is supposed to stay inside, so six quarts can seem like sixty.

  “What happened then?”

  “It went on for a while. The blood was spurting at first, then it was dribbling. Then it stopped. ‘Look into his eyes again,’ he told me. I did.” She closes her own eyes. “Dean was gone. Nobody home.”

  She’s quiet for a moment, remembering.

  “He lifted Dean out of the tub and laid him down on the carpet.”

  A long silence.

  “And then?” I prod.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she whispers.

  Her voice is filled with self-loathing, and she can’t meet my eyes.

  “What, Sarah? What am I thinking?”

  “How could I just stand there while he did these things and not try to get away?”

  “Look at me.” I put some force into my tone and make her face me. “I wasn’t thinking that. I know: He could move fast. He had a knife. You didn’t think you’d be able to get away.”

  Her face twists, once. She shudders, a wave, head to toe, involving the whole of her.

  “That part is true, but…it’s not the only reason.”

  Once again, she can’t meet my eyes.

  “What’s the other reason?” I keep my voice gentle, free of judgment.

  It’s a sad little shrug. “I knew he wouldn’t kill me. I knew if I just stood there and watched, and did what he said, and didn’t try to get away, he wouldn’t hurt me. Because that’s how he wants me. Alive and in pain.”

  “In my opinion and experience,” I say, after a moment, my voice careful, “alive and in pain is better than dead.”

  She appraises me. “You think so?”

  “I do.” I point at my scars. “I have to look at these every day, and remember what they mean. It hurts. I’d still rather be alive.”

  A bitter smile. “You might not feel that way if you had to go through it all again every few years.”

  “I might not,” I say. “But the important thing is that, right now, you still do.”

  I can see her considering this. I can’t tell what she decides.

  “So,” she continues, “he stood over Laurel for a minute, just looking down at her. Her body didn’t move, she didn’t even blink—but she cried.” Sarah shakes her head, her expression haunted. “A single line of tears from the corner of each eye. The Stranger smiled at her, but it wasn’t a happy smile. He wasn’t making fun of her or anything. He almost seemed sad. He leaned forward and he closed her eyes with his fingers.”

  We hadn’t known until now that he closed their eyes pre-mortem. It confirms my belief that men are his primary target. He closed Laurel’s eyes because he didn’t want her to see what was coming.

  Big deal—he still killed her.

  I park these thoughts, for now.

  “And then?” I ask.

  Sarah looks away from me. Her face changes, along with her voice, becoming wooden, mechanical. When she speaks, it’s a staccato. “He stood up. Picked her up, stood her in the tub. He slit her throat. Bled her out, dropped her on the rug.” She’s trying to hurry through this memory. It takes me a moment to realize why.

  “You were closer to Laurel than you were to Dean, weren’t you?” I ask softly.

  She doesn’t cry, but she closes her eyes tight for a moment.

  “She was nice to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. What happened next?”

  “He had me help him move their bodies into the bedroom. He didn’t really need my help. I think he just wanted to keep my hands occupied so I couldn’t run away. We carried Dean in first, and then Laurel. He grabbed them under their arms, I took them by the feet. They were so pale. I’ve never seen a person white like that. Like milk. We laid them on the bed.”

  She goes silent.

  “What, Sarah?”

  I see a little bit of that same emptiness I’d seen in her last night. Some of the girl at the window, gun to her head, singing a one-note song.

  “He had a long leather case in his pocket. He opened it up and took out a scalpel. He handed it to me, and he told me…he told me…he told me…how to cut them. ‘Throat to wais
t,’ he said. ‘One slice, no hesitation. I’m letting you do this, Sarah. Letting you expose what they really are, inside.’” Her eyes are a little glazed. “It’s like I wasn’t really there. Like I wasn’t in myself. I just remember thinking, ‘Do what you have to do to stay alive.’ Thinking that, over and over and over, as I took the scalpel and I went over to Laurel and cut her open and I went over to Dean and cut him open and I peeled their skin back because The Stranger told me to and there was muscle, and he made me cut that too, and peel that away and now there’s bone and guts and he made me put my hands inside and pull and pull and pull and it was like rubber Jell-O and wet and it smelled and then it was”—her head slumps forward—“over.”

  The words had rushed out of her, not stopping, a flood. Emptying her and filling me, sewer water, a death-river, horror at high tide. I want to stand up and run away and never see or hear or think of Sarah again.

  But you can’t. She’s got more to say.

  I look at Sarah. She’s gazing down at her hands.

  “‘Do what you have to do to stay alive,’ that’s what I kept thinking,” she whispers. “He just smiled and filmed the whole thing. Do what you have to do to stay alive. To stay alive.”

  “Should we stop?” I ask.

  She turns to me, dreamy-eyed but confused.

  “What?”

  “Should we stop? Do you need a break?”

  She stares at me. She seems to come back to herself. She presses her lips together and shakes her head.

  “No. I want to get through this.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Maybe, maybe not. But I need to hear the rest of it, and I think she needs to tell it.

  “Okay. What happened next?”

  She rubs her face with her hands. “He told me to come downstairs with him. I followed him, down to the family room. Michael was there, sitting on the couch, naked. He was paralyzed too.

  “The Stranger laughed, and patted Michael on the head. ‘Boys will be boys. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Little Pain? Michael was a nasty boy. He had a video camera going while you were down on your knees. I found the tapes on one of my prior trips here to reconnoiter. Don’t worry though, I’ll be taking them with me. It can be our little secret.’ He yanked Michael off the couch and dragged him across the rug.” She frowns. “I still had the scalpel. He hadn’t taken it away from me. That’s how sure he was that I wouldn’t try anything.” She shrugs, miserable. “Anyway. He dragged Michael over to me, and he told me it was my turn. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You saw how I did it upstairs. Ear to ear, a big red grin.’ I told him no.” She shakes her head, a gesture of despair. “Like it mattered. Like it would make a difference.” Her smile is pained and crooked and full of self-hate. “In the end, one thing you can count on about me—I’ll do what it takes to survive. ‘Do it,’ he said, ‘or I’ll cut the nipples off your breasts and feed them to you.’” She pauses, looking down at her lap. “I did it, of course,” she says in a small voice. She looks up at me, fearful of what I might think. “I didn’t want him to die,” she says, her voice quavering. “Even though he blackmailed me and made me have sex with him and all those things, I didn’t want him to die.”

  I reach over and take her hand. “I know you didn’t.”

  She lets me hold the hand for a moment before pulling it away.

  “God. Michael just bled and bled and bled. God. And then The Stranger had me help him carry the body upstairs. He put him on the bed, in between Dean and Laurel.

  “‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. I thought he was talking to me, but then I realized he was talking to Michael. I was afraid he was going to make me cut him open too, but he didn’t.” She pauses. “I started to get mad. I think he saw it, thought I might actually try to do something, because he told me to drop the scalpel. I did think about trying to stab him. I really did. In the end, I did what he told me to.”

  “And you’re here and alive,” I say, trying to encourage her.

  “Yeah.” Tired again.

  “What happened next?”

  “He told me to come into the bathroom with him. He went over to the tub, and dipped his hand down into the blood. He started flicking it at me, saying, ‘In the name of the Father and the daughter and the Holy Spirit.’ He got blood on my face and other parts of me.”

  The teardrop spatter I’d seen last night, I think.

  “Is that exactly what he said? ‘In the name of the Father and the daughter and the Holy Spirit’? Not ‘Father and the Son’?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Go on.”

  “Then he told me it was time to get busy. He said he needed to express himself. He took off his clothes.”

  “Did you notice anything about him?” I ask her. “Any birthmarks, scars, anything at all?”

  “A tattoo. On his right thigh, where no one would ever see it unless he was naked.”

  “Of what?”

  “An angel. Not a nice angel, though. It had a mean face and a flaming sword. Kind of scary.”

  An avenging angel, maybe? Is that how he sees himself, or is it just a symbol of what he’s doing?

  “If I had a sketch artist work with you, could you describe the tattoo?”

  “Sure.”

  I don’t see this perpetrator settling for a design selected from a book. He would have had the tattoo done to his custom and exact specifications. It’s possible we could track down the artist.

  “Anything else about him?”

  “When I saw him naked, I could tell that he shaves his body. Armpits, chest, legs, his cock, everywhere.”

  This isn’t uncommon for a clever, organized offender. Most make a study of basic forensics and work to reduce their chances of leaving trace evidence behind. Shaving body hair is something serial rapists do all the time.

  “What about moles? Scars?”

  “Just the tattoo.”

  “That’s good, Sarah. When we find him, that’s going to help us nail him.”

  “Okay.” She seems listless.

  “He took his clothes off. Then what?”

  “He was hard.”

  “You mean he was erect?”

  “Yeah.”

  I bite my lower lip, ask the question I’m dreading. “Did he…touch you?”

  “No. He’s never fucked me, or tried to.”

  “What did he do next?”

  “He took two pairs of handcuffs out of the back pockets of his pants. ‘I need to lock you down now,’ he said, ‘so I can do my work without worrying about you running off.’ He cuffed my hands behind my back, and then he cuffed my ankles. He carried me into the bedroom and sat me on the floor. I didn’t fight him.”

  “Go on.”

  “He went downstairs and came back up with a big pot.”

  “A cooking pot?”

  “Yes. He filled it with blood from the tub and then…” She shrugs. “You saw the bedroom.”

  He’d had himself a little party. Splashed the walls, finger paints from hell.

  “How long did that go on?”

  “I have no idea,” she says, toneless. “I just know that when he was done, there was blood everywhere. He was covered in it.” She grimaces. “God, he was so proud! He finished up and he stood in front of the window for a second, looking out. ‘A beautiful day,’ he said. ‘God made this day.’ He slid it open and stood there, naked and covered in blood.”

  “He went swimming after that, didn’t he?”

  She nods. “He left me there, left the room, and a few minutes later I heard him splashing around in the pool.” She looks at me. “I was starting to get fuzzy by then. Starting to go in and out. Getting crazy.”

  Who wouldn’t?

  “Anyway.” She sighs. “I don’t know how much time went by. I just remember lying there, and I felt like I was falling asleep and then waking up, but I wasn’t really falling asleep—I don’t know. It’s like I was fainting, over and over and over. One o
f the times I woke up, he was back.” She shivers. “He was clean again, no blood on him. He was looking down at me. I fainted again. When I woke up, I was downstairs, and he was dressed. He had that pot in his hands. ‘A little here,’ he said. And he tipped it, let some blood spill onto the rug in the family room. Then he said, ‘A little there,’ and went into the backyard and dumped the rest of the blood from the pot into the pool.”

  “Do you know why he did that?” I ask her.

  The hard, too-old eyes are back. “I think…it seemed right to him. Like a painting. That spot on the rug, the water in the pool, they needed a little more red to be just right.”

  I stare at her for a moment before clearing my throat. “Fair enough. What happened next?”

  “He sat down in front of me with the camera, pointed it at me. ‘You’ve been many things, Little Pain. An orphan, a liar, a whore. My pain-angel. Now you’re a murderer. You just killed another human being. Think about that for a minute.’ He went quiet then, just pointing the camera at my face and recording away. I don’t know how long it went on. I was out of it.

  “He undid the handcuffs and told me he was leaving. ‘We’re almost there, Sarah. Almost at the end of our journey. I want you to remember, it’s not your fault, but your pain is my justice.’

  “Then he was gone.” She gazes at me. “I went in and out for a little while. Things went black. The next thing I remember is talking to you in the bedroom.”

  “You don’t remember asking for me?”

  “No.”

  I cock my head at her. “Why did you?”

  She gives me a measured look of consideration that reminds me, for a moment, of Bonnie.

  “Since I was six years old, a man has been coming into my life, taking away anything and anyone I love. And no one believes he exists.” Her eyes move across my face, dancing along my scars. “I read about what happened to you, and I thought, Maybe she’d believe me. I could tell you knew what it was like. To lose everything. To be reminded of it, every day. To wonder whether dying might be better than living.” She pauses. “I got the diary a few months ago and I wrote it all down. Every ugly thing. I was going to find a way to contact you and give it to you.” The shrug is small and bleak. “I guess I did.”