The Face Of Fear Part 15

When Bollinger came out of the elevator alcove, he saw two people running away from him. They were nothing but ghostly shapes, vaguely silhouetted against the eerie glow of the red emergency light at the end of the corridor.

Harris and the woman? he wondered. Have they been alerted? Do they know who I am? How can they know?

"Mr. Harris?" Bollinger called.

They stopped two-thirds of the way down the hall, in front of the open door to the Harris Publications suite. They turned toward him, but he could not see their faces even with the red light spilling over their shoulders.

"Mr. Harris, is that you?"

"Who are you?"

"Police," Bollinger said. He took a step toward them, then another. As he moved he took the wallet with his badge from his inside coat pocket. With the elevator light behind him, he knew they could see more than he could.

"Don't come any closer," Harris said.

Bollinger stopped. "What's the matter?"

"I don't want you to come closer."

"Why?"

"We don't know who you are."

"I'm a detective. Frank Bollinger. We have an appointment for eight-thirty. Remember?" Another step. Then another.

"How did you get up here?" Harris's voice was shrill.

He's scared to death, Bollinger thought. He smiled and said, "Hey, what's going on with you? Why are you so uptight? You were expecting me." Bollinger took slow steps, easy steps, so as not to frighten the animals.

"How did you get up here?" Harris asked again. "The elevators aren't working."

"You're mistaken. I came up on an elevator." He held the badge in front of him in his left hand, arm extended, hoping the light from behind would gleam on the gold finish. He had covered perhaps a fifth of the distance between them.

"The telephones are out," Harris said.

"They are?" Step. Step.

He put his right hand in his coat pocket and gripped the b.u.t.t of the pistol.

Connie couldn't take her eyes off the shadowy form moving steadily toward them. To Graham she said softly, "You remember what you said on the Prine show?"

"What?" His voice cracked.

Don't let the fear take you, she thought. Don't break down and leave me to handle this alone.

She said, "In your vision you saw that the police know the killer well."

"What about it?"

"Maybe the Butcher is a cop."

"Christ, that's it!"

He spoke so softly that she could barely hear him.

Bollinger kept coming, a big man, bearish. His face was in shadow. He had closed the distance between them by at least half.

"Stop right there," Graham said. But there was no force in his voice, no authority.

Bollinger stopped anyway. "Mr. Harris, you're acting very strange. I'm a policeman. You know ... you're acting as if you've just done something that you want to hide from me." He took a step, another, a third.

"The stairs?" Connie asked.

"No," Graham said. "We don't have enough of a lead. With my game leg, he'd catch us in a minute."

"Mr. Harris?" Bollinger said. "What are you two saying? Please don't whisper."

"Where then?" Connie whispered.

"The office."

He nudged her, and they ducked quickly into the Harris Publications suite, slammed and locked the reception room door.

A second later, Bollinger hit the outside of the door with his shoulder. It trembled in its frame. He rattled the k.n.o.b violently.

"He's probably got a gun," Connie said. "He'll get in sooner or later."

Graham nodded. "I know."

part three

FRIDAY 8:30 P.M. 10:30 P.M.

22.

Ira Preduski parked at the end of a string of three squad cars and two unmarked police sedans that blocked one half of the two-lane street. Although there was no one in any of the five vehicles, all the engines were running, headlights blazing; the trio of blue-and-whites were crowned with revolving red beacons. Preduski got out of his car and locked it. the trio of blue-and-whites were crowned with revolving red beacons. Preduski got out of his car and locked it.

A half inch of snow made the street look clean and pretty. As he walked toward the apartment house, Preduski scuffed his shoes against the sidewalk, sending up puffs of white flakes in front of him. The wind whipped the falling snow into his back, and cold flakes found their way past his collar. He was reminded of that February, in his fourth year, when his family moved to Albany, New York, where he saw his first winter storm.

A uniformed patrolman in his late twenties was standing at the bottom of the outside steps to the apartment house.

"Tough job you've got tonight," Preduski said.

"I don't mind it. I like snow."

"Yeah? So do I."

"Besides," the patrolman said, "it's better standing out here in the cold than up there in all that blood."

The room smelled of blood, excrement and dusting powder.

Fingers bent like claws, the dead woman lay on the floor beside the bed. Her eyes were open.

Two lab technicians were working around the body, studying it carefully before chalking its position and moving it.

Ralph Martin was the detective handling the on-scene investigation. He was chubby, completely bald, with bushy eyebrows and dark-rimmed gla.s.ses. He avoided looking at the corpse.

"The call from the Butcher came in at ten of seven," Martin said. "We tried your home number immediately, but we weren't able to get through until almost eight o'clock."

"My phone was off the hook. I just got out of bed at a quarter past eight. I'm working graveyard." He sighed and turned away from the corpse. "What did he say-this Butcher?"

Martin took two folded sheets of paper from his pocket, unfolded them. "I dictated the conversation, as well as I could recall it, and one of the girls made copies."

Preduski read the two pages. "He gave you no clue to who else he's going to kill tonight?"

"Just what's there."

"This phone call is out of character."

"And it's out of character for him to strike two nights in a row," Martin said.

"It's also not like him to kill two women who knew each other and worked together."

Martin raised his eyebrows. "You think Sarah Piper knew something?"

"You mean, did she know who killed her friend?"

"Yeah. You think he killed Sarah to keep her from talking?"

"No. He probably just saw both of them at the Rhinestone Palace and couldn't make up his mind which he wanted the most. She didn't know who murdered Edna Mowry. I'd bet my life on that. Of course I'm not the best judge of character you'll ever meet. I'm pretty dense when it comes to people. G.o.d knows. Dense as stone. But this time I think I'm right. If she had known, she would have told me. She wasn't the kind of girl who could hide a thing like that. She was open. Forthright. Honest in her way. She was d.a.m.ned nice."

Glancing at the dead woman's face, which was surprisingly unmarked and clear of blood in the midst of so much gore, Martin said. "She was lovely."

"I didn't mean just nice-looking," Preduski said. "She was a nice person. person. " "

Martin nodded.

"She had a soft Georgia accent that reminded me of home."

"Home?" Martin was confused. "You're "You're from Georgia?" from Georgia?"

"Why not?"

"Ira Preduski from Georgia?"

"They do do have Jews and Slavs down there." have Jews and Slavs down there."

"Where's your accent?"

"My parents weren't born in the South, so they didn't have an accent to pa.s.s on to me. And we moved North when I was four, before I had time to pick it up."

For a moment they stared at the late Sarah Piper and at the pair of technicians who bent over her like Egyptian attendants of death.

Preduski turned away from the corpse, took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

"The coroner's in the kitchen," Martin said. His face was pale and greasy with sweat. "He said he wanted to see you when you checked in."

"Give me a few minutes," Preduski said. "I want to look around here a bit and talk with these fellows."

"Mind if I wait in the living room?"

"No. Go ahead."

Martin shuddered. "This is a rotten job."

"Rotten," Preduski agreed.

23.