The Face of Death

  My eyes go to the girl. She’s sitting on the windowsill, looking out into the night and what I can only guess is the backyard. I can see the dim silhouettes of other rooftops in the distance. It’s a twilight world, caught between the dying sun and the awakening streetlamps. Apropos.

  The girl has a gun in her hand, and she’s pressing the barrel against her right temple. She hadn’t turned around at the sound of the door opening.

  I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to turn around either.

  Even as my heart hammers, the clinical part of me takes notes.

  The blood on the walls was put there by the killer. I know this because I can see patterns. Slashes, swirls, and curlicues.

  He played here. Used their blood like finger paint to make patterns. To say something.

  I look over at Sarah. She continues to gaze out the window, unaware of me.

  She’s not the perpetrator. Not enough blood on her, and the corpses are all too big. She’d never have gotten any of them up the stairs by herself.

  I move forward into the room, trying not to step on evidence. I give up; I’d have to levitate.

  Too much blood, but none of it in the right places. Where’s the murder scene?

  Every bit of blood evidence I could see was purposeful. None of this was the result of a throat being slit.

  Focus.

  The investigator in me is a detached creature. It can view the worst of the worst with dispassion. But detachment isn’t what I need right now. I need empathy. I force myself to stop examining the scene, to stop calculating, and focus all of my attention on the girl.

  “Sarah?” I keep my voice soft, unthreatening.

  No response. She continues to sing in that awful monotone whisper.

  “Sarah.” A little louder now.

  Still no reaction. The gun stays at her temple. She keeps on singing.

  “Sarah! It’s Smoky. Smoky Barrett!” My voice booms, louder than I’d intended. I startle myself.

  Startle her too. The singing stops.

  Quieter: “You asked for me, honey. I’m here. Look at me.”

  This sudden silence is as bad in its own way as the singing had been. She’s still looking out the window. The gun hasn’t moved from her temple.

  Sarah begins turning toward me. It’s a montage of slow, jerky motions, an old door opening on rusted hinges. The first thing I notice is her beauty, because of its contrast with the horror around her. She is ethereal, something from another world. She has dark, shimmering hair, the impossible hair you see on models in shampoo commercials. She’s Caucasian, with an exoticness about her that speaks of European roots. French, perhaps. Her features have that ideal symmetry that most women dream of having, and too many living in Los Angeles go under the knife to get.

  Her face is the mirror opposite of mine, a counterpoint of perfection to my flaws.

  She has blood splattered on her arms and face, and soaked into the short-sleeved long white nightgown she’s wearing. She has full, cupid-lips, and while I’m sure they’re normally a beautiful pink, right now they are the pale white of a fish belly.

  I wonder about that nightgown. Why had she been wearing it in the afternoon?

  Her eyes are a rich blue, heart-stopping. The look of defeat I find in them is so profound, it makes me queasy.

  Pressed to all that beauty, the barrel of what I can now tell is a nine-mm Browning. This is no weak twenty-two. If she pulls the trigger, she’ll die.

  “Sarah? Can you hear me now?”

  She continues to look at me with those defeated, blue-flame eyes.

  “Honey, it’s me. Smoky Barrett. They said you asked for me, and I got here as fast as I could. Can you talk to me?”

  She sighs. It’s a full-body sigh, straight from the pit of her stomach. A sigh that says, I want to lie down now, I want to lie down and die. No other reply, but at least she keeps looking at me. I want this. I don’t want those eyes to start roaming, to remember the bodies on the bed.

  “Sarah? I have an idea. Why don’t we walk out into the hallway? We don’t have to go anywhere else—we can sit at the top of the stairs, if you want. You can keep that gun pointed right where it is. We’ll just sit down, and I’ll wait until you’re ready to talk.” I lick my lips. “How about it, sweetheart?”

  She cocks her head at me, a casual motion that becomes horrifying because she keeps the gun barrel against her temple as she does it. It makes her seem hollow. Puppet-like.

  Another deep sigh, even more ragged sounding. Her face is expressionless. Only the sighs and the eyes show me what’s going on inside her.

  Located somewhere in hell, I’d say.

  A long moment passes, and then she nods.

  I am almost thankful, at this moment, for Bonnie’s muteness. It’s made me comfortable with nonverbal communication, able to understand nuanced meaning regardless of words.

  Okay, that nod says. But the gun stays, and I’ll probably still use it.

  Just get her out of this room, I think. That’s the first step.

  “Great, Sarah,” I reply, nodding back to her. “I’m going to put away my gun.” Her eyes follow my hands as I do this. “Now, I’m going to back out of the room. I want you to follow me. I want you to keep your eyes on mine. That’s important, Sarah. Only on me. Don’t look right or left or up or down. Look at me.”

  I start to move backward, going in a straight line. I keep my eyes locked on hers, willing her to do the same. I stop when I’m standing in the doorway.

  “Come on, honey. I’m right here. Walk to me.”

  A hesitation, and then she slides off the windowsill. Kind of pours off it, like water. The gun is still at her head. Her eyes stay on mine as she moves toward the doorway. They never stray to the bed, not once.

  Good, I think. Nothing like looking at that mess to make you want to kill yourself.

  Now that she’s standing, I can tell that she’s about five foot two inches. In spite of her shock, her movements are graceful and precise. She glides.

  She looks small surrounded by the murdered dead. Her bare feet are splashed with blood; she either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care.

  I walk back to let her move through the doorway. She plods past me, keeping her eyes on my hands. A watchful zombie.

  “I’m going to reach over and close the door. Okay, honey?”

  She nods. I don’t care, the nod says. About living or dying or anything at all.

  I close the door and allow myself a moment of relief. I wipe sweat from my forehead with a trembling hand.

  I take a deep breath and turn to Sarah. Now let’s see if I can get her to give me that gun.

  “You know what? I’m going to sit down.”

  I take a seat so the bedroom doors are at my back. I do this without breaking eye contact. I’m here, I see you, you have all my attention, I’m saying.

  “It’s a little hard to talk while you’re up there and I’m down here,” I say, squinting up at her. I indicate the space in front of me. “Why don’t you take a seat?” I examine her face. “You look tired, sweetheart.”

  That eerie head-cocking gesture again. I lean forward and pat the carpet.

  “Come on, Sarah. It’s just you and me. No one is going to come in here until I tell them to. No one’s going to hurt you while I’m here. You wanted to see me.” I pat the carpet again, still maintaining eye contact. “Sit down and relax. I’ll shut up and we’ll wait here until you’re ready to tell me whatever it is you wanted to tell me.”

  She moves without warning, stepping backward and then lowering herself to the floor. It’s done with the same pouring-of-water grace that she displayed as she slid off the windowsill. I wonder idly if she’s a dancer, or perhaps a gymnast.

  I give her a reassuring smile. “Good, honey,” I say. “Very good.”

  Her eyes stay on mine. The gun is still glued to her right temple.

  As I consider my next move, I remember one of the key lessons my negotiations instructor gav
e:

  “Speaking when you want, not speaking when you want, it’s all about control,” he’d observed. “When you’re dealing with someone who’s refusing to speak, and you don’t know what buttons to push—don’t know much about them personally, in other words—you need to shut up. Your instinct will be to fill that silence. Resist it. It’s like letting a phone ring—it makes you crazy, but it’ll stop ringing sooner or later. Same thing here. Wait them out, and they’ll fill that silence for you.”

  I keep my face calm, my eyes on hers, and I stay silent.

  Sarah’s face is a superlative of stillness, and absence of motion, formed from wax. The corners of her mouth don’t twitch. I feel like I’m having a staring contest with a mannequin that blinks.

  Her blue eyes are the most “alive” part of her, and even they seem glassy and unreal.

  I examine the blood on her as I wait.

  The spatter on the right side of her face looks like a collection of sideways teardrops. Elongated, as though each drop hit her skin with force and then was stretched by inertia.

  Flung there, maybe? By fingertips soaked in blood?

  Her nightgown is a mess. The front is soaked. I see spots at the knees.

  As if she knelt. Maybe she was trying to revive someone?

  My train of thought derails when she blinks, sighs, and then looks away.

  “Are you really Smoky Barrett?” she asks. It’s a tired voice, filled with defeat and doubt.

  Hearing her speak is both elating and surreal. Her voice is dusky and subdued, older than she is, a hint of the woman she’ll become.

  “Yep,” I reply. I point to my scars. “Can’t fake these.”

  She keeps the gun to her head, but as she looks at my scars, sorrow replaces some of the deadness in her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “For what happened to you. I read about it. It made me cry.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wait for her. Don’t press.

  She looks down. Sighs. Looks back up at me.

  “I know what it’s like,” she says.

  “What, honey?” I ask in a soft voice. “You know what what’s like?”

  I watch the pain rise in her eyes, like two moons being filled up with blood.

  “I know what it’s like to lose everything you love,” she says, her voice cracking, then dropping to a whisper. “I’ve been losing things since I was six.”

  “Is that why you wanted to see me? To tell me about what happened then?”

  “When I was six,” she says, continuing as though I hadn’t said anything, “he started it all by murdering my mother and my father.”

  “Who is ‘he,’ Sarah?”

  She locks eyes with me, something in them flares up for a moment before dying back down.

  What was that? I wonder. Sorrow? Anger?

  It was something huge, that’s for sure. That was no minnow that had swum to the surface before diving back down into deeper waters, it was a soul-leviathan.

  “He,” she says, her voice flat. “The Stranger. The one who killed my parents. The one who kills anything I love. The…artist.” The way she says “artist,” she could be saying “child molester” or “shit on a hot sidewalk.” The revulsion is strong and pure and palpable.

  “Did The Stranger do this, Sarah? Was he here, in this house?”

  Her sorrow and fear are swept away by a look of cynicism that rocks me. It’s far, far too terrible and cunning for a sixteen-year-old girl. If that dusky voice belongs to a twenty-five-year-old woman, this look belongs to a world-worn hag.

  “Don’t humor me!” she cries, her voice high-pitched and derisive. “I know you’re only listening to me because of”—she wiggles the gun—“this. You don’t really believe me!”

  What just happened here?

  The quiet air between us starts to hum.

  You’re losing her, I realize. Fear thrills through me.

  Do something!

  I gaze into those rage-filled eyes. I remember what Alan said.

  Don’t lie, I think. Truth. Only truth. She’ll smell a lie from a thousand yards away right now and then it’s game over.

  My words come from somewhere effortless, almost extemporaneous. “I’ll tell you what I care about right now, Sarah,” I say, my voice strong. “I care about you. I know you didn’t do what happened here. I know that you’re very close to killing yourself. I know you asked for me, and that means that maybe I have something to give you, something to tell you, that will keep you from pulling that trigger.” I lean forward. “Honey, I don’t know enough about anything going on here to humor you, I promise. All I’m trying to do is understand. Help me understand. Please. You asked for me. Why? Why did you ask for me, Sarah?” I wish I could reach out and shake her. I plead instead. “Please tell me.”

  Don’t die, I think. Not here, not like this.

  “Please, Sarah. Talk to me. Make me understand.”

  The words work: The anger leaves her eyes. Her trigger finger relaxes and she looks away.

  Thank God, I think, fighting down a bubble of semi-hysteria, a bout of the

  (clangy-jitters)

  When she looks back, anguish has replaced the rage.

  “You’re my last hope,” she says. Her voice is small and hollow.

  “I’m listening, Sarah,” I urge her. “Tell me. Last hope for what?”

  “Last hope…” She sighs, and it rattles in her throat. “Of finding someone that’ll believe I’m not just bad luck,” she whispers. “That’ll believe The Stranger is real.”

  I stare at her, incredulous.

  “Believe you?” I blurt. I yank a thumb behind me, indicating the bedroom and what’s inside. “Sarah, I know something happened here that you didn’t have anything to do with. And I’m willing to listen to whatever you have to say.”

  I think she’s caught off guard by the fact that my response comes as such a reflex action and that I seem so genuinely astonished at the idea of not taking her seriously. Hope lights up her eyes and wars with that terrible cynicism. Her face twists, her mouth wrenches. She looks like a fish drowning in the air.

  “Really?” she asks in an agonized whisper.

  “Really.” I pause. “Sarah, I don’t understand what’s happened to you up to this point. But from what I’ve seen so far, the person responsible for this had to be strong. Stronger than you. Or me, for that matter.”

  A kind of fearful wonder runs through her eyes. “Did he…” Her lower lip trembles. “Do you mean that you can tell he was here?”

  “Yep.”

  Is that so?

  But there’s another possibility, yes? Maybe she made the father do all the heavy lifting at gunpoint. She could still be the one.

  I dismiss the thought with an imaginary wave of my hand.

  Too advanced, too dark. She’s too young to have honed her tastes to that degree.

  “Maybe,” Sarah whispers, more to herself than me. “Maybe he screwed up this time.”

  Her face crumples, then smoothes back out, crumples, then smoothes back out. Hope and despair battle for the steering wheel. She drops the gun. She brings her hands to her face. A moment later, that raw, naked anguish again. It bursts from her, piercing, primal, terrible, pure. The sound of a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf.

  I grab the gun from the carpet, say “Thank God” to myself once, safety it, and stuff it into the waist of my jeans. I grab Sarah as she shrieks, and stuff her into the space between my arms and my chest.

  Her grief is a hurricane. It pounds against me.

  I hold her tight, and we ride out the storm.

  I rock and croon and say wordless things and feel helpless and miserable and yet relieved.

  Better crying than dead.

  When it’s over, I’m soaked with tears. Sarah clings to me, semi-boneless. She’s exhausted.

  In spite of this, she struggles and pushes away from me. Her face is swollen from crying, and pale.

  “Smoky?” she says. Her voice
is faint.

  “Yes, Sarah?”

  She looks at me, and I’m surprised at the strength I see, swimming up through the exhaustion that’s pulling her down.

  “I need you to promise me you’ll do something.”

  “What?”

  She points down the hall. “My bedroom is back there. In a drawer by the bed is my diary. Everything is in it, everything about The Stranger.” She grips my arms. “Promise me you’ll read it. You—not someone else.” Her voice is fierce. “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I say without hesitation.

  At this point, you couldn’t keep me from it.

  “Thanks,” she whispers.

  Her eyes roll up into her head and she passes out in my arms.

  I shiver once, an after-reaction. I unclip the radio from my belt and turn it on.

  “All clear in here,” I say into it, my voice steadier than I feel. “Send in a medic for the girl.”

  10

  NIGHT HAS OFFICIALLY FALLEN IN CANOGA PARK. THE HOUSE IS lit up by patrol cars and streetlamps, but SWAT is getting ready to leave and the helicopter has gone. The neighborhood is quiet again, though I can hear the sounds of the city just a few blocks away. Windows are lit up along the street, families are inside, every curtain is drawn. I imagine if I checked them, I’d find every door locked too.

  “Good work,” Dawes said to me as we watched the EMTs load an unconscious Sarah into the back of an ambulance. They were moving fast; she’d started to turn gray and her teeth were chattering. Signs of shock.

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it, Agent Barrett. This could have turned out a lot worse.” He pauses. “We had a hostage situation six months ago. A meth-freak dad with a gun. He’d beat up his wife, but what really worried us was the fact that he was waving that gun around with one hand while he cradled his five-month-old daughter in his free arm.”

  “Bad,” I say.

  “Real bad. Add to it that he was high, I mean flying. You ever see a meth-freak when they’re wigging out? It’s a combination of hallucinations and paranoia. Not much for a hostage negotiator to work with.”

  “So what happened?”

  Dawes looks away for a moment, but not before I catch a glimpse of the grief in his eyes.