Unreason
Sissy and Molly were about to push their way through the revolving door when three paramedics came bustling through, so they had to step back. As they did so, Detective Kunzel's cell phone played "Hang On Sloopy."
Detective Kunzel said "Kunzel." Then, "Who?" Then, "Who is this?" Then he lifted his hand and called out, "Molly! Mrs. Sawyer! Hold up a moment!"
Reluctantly, they returned. The paramedics were already kneeling by the bodies in the elevator, double-checking that none of the three victims showed any signs of life. Sissy looked away, but not before she noticed Mary's upswept eyeglasses, with congealing blood on the lenses, lying on the floor.
Detective Kunzel had switched his phone to speaker. A grating voice was saying, "-too late now for one and all-"
"It's him," mouthed Detective Kunzel.
Sissy said nothing, but stood closer so that she could hear the voice more clearly.
"What's done is done, and it can't be undone, no matter what. And it has to be done again, and again, until amends are made, and dues are paid, and justice is satisfied. No rest for the wicked, Detective. No rest for the guilty, neither."
"What do you want?" asked Detective Kunzel. "If we knew what you wanted, maybe we could come to some kind of compromise."
"You can't compromise when it comes to justice. You can only take what's due to you until justice has been satisfied."
"So what do you believe is due to you? I'm pretty sure that we could work something out, if only I knew what it was."
"Do you know what I lost, Detective? I lost my happiness. I lost everything that made me what I was. My self-confidence, my very identity. I lost me."
"So what are you trying to tell me? That you've taken the lives of five innocent people, just because your ego took a bruising? That doesn't sound like checks and balances to me."
"You don't think so? You wait. Tomorrow, even more innocents are going to meet their maker. And the day after that, even more again. It's going to be a massacre, Detective, and the people of this city should be warned about it. You need to tell them that Red Mask is hell-bent on justice, and that none of them is safe."
"Red Mask? That's the name that we thought up for you. How about telling me your real name?"
"Red Mask will do fine. Red Mask is what you decided to call me. Red Mask is what I am."
"How about a first name? I can't call you Red Mask all the time, can I?"
"You can call me anything you like. I'm not choosy. You can call me the Elevator Murderer or the Butcher-Knife Maniac or the Scarlet-Faced Slasher. You can call me Sudden Death on Legs, if you want to. All's I'm saying is, the people of Cincinnati should be warned what I intend to do to them."
"Listen to me-" Detective Kunzel began, but then they heard a sharp click, followed by a buzzing noise.
"Hey-are you still there?" Detective Kunzel demanded. "Red Mask? Are you still there?"
"I think he's said all he needs to say to us," Sissy put in. "For the time being, anyhow."
Detective Kunzel said, "You guessed that he was going to call me, didn't you?"
"I didn't guess, Mike. I knew. It was forecast by the cards, very specifically."
"I don't suppose the cards told you his home address? Hey-sorry. I didn't mean to be sarcastic."
"Actually, no, you don't have to apologize. The cards often give me a strong sense of where people live. Which neighborhood, anyhow-which general locality-even if they don't actually give me a street number. But for Red Mask they've given me nothing. Not even which side of the river he comes from. And they haven't explained his motive. They've told me what he's going to do, yes. But they haven't given me even the slightest inkling why."
Detective Kunzel turned to the officers who were gathered all around him. "Anybody pick up anything from that conversation? Accent? Speech mannerisms? Anything at all?"
"Sounded local to me," said Detective Bellman. "But he's kind of sissy for a serial killer, don't you think? All that stuff about losing his happiness. 'I lost me.' Sounded like something out of a woman's magazine."
"He's educated," said one of the uniformed cops. "He's trying to talk tough and streetwise, but I'd lay bets that he's been through college. It's the words he uses. And he didn't cuss once."
"Age?"
"Difficult to say, but I think he's younger than he's trying to make out. Mid to late twenties, maybe. He's straining his voice to make it sound gruff."
"This I do not like at all," said Detective Kunzel. "I prefer mad-dog psychos to educated misfits. Remember the Lincoln Penny Killer? Never caught him. Smartest serial murderer we ever had to deal with."
"Who was he?" asked Sissy.
"Copycat killer. Historical copycat killer. Cut off three women's heads to imitate the murder of a girl called Pearl Bryan in 1896-Cincinnati's most notorious homicide. Pearl Bryan's head was never found. We never found these women's heads, neither.
"It's kind of a tradition when people visit Pearl Bryan's grave they leave pennies with the Lincoln side up, so that poor Pearl will have a head when it comes to Resurrection day. The Lincoln Penny Killer always left a penny where his victim's head had been. Kind of an intellectual joke."
Sissy said, "If only we could find out why Red Mask is feeling so vengeful."
"Who knows?" asked Detective Kunzel. "Look at Columbine. Look at that shooting at Virginia Tech. There wasn't any why. The perpetrators had a giant-sized chip on their shoulders, that's all."
"I think I need to ask one of his victims," Sissy told him.
"Please? Apart from that one girl-what's her name, Jane Becker-all of his victims are dead. And Jane Becker's told us everything she witnessed, which wasn't very much."
"Maybe the other victims saw more."
Detective Kunzel's eyes narrowed. "What are we talking about here?"
"A séance, I think you'd call it. I can talk to people who have passed over, Mike, especially if they feel an urgent need to explain what happened to them, which many of them do."
"I see. Well, I guess you can try. But I can't officially involve the homicide unit in anything like that."
Sissy cocked her head to one side. "I wouldn't expect you to. I'm just pleased that you don't seem quite so skeptical anymore."
"Hey-don't think for one minute that you've made me a true believer. I still think that the future doesn't happen till it happens, and I still think that when you're dead, you're dead. But after what you did here today-let's say that I have more of an open mind. Maybe you can sense things that other people can't. Maybe you can guess how tomorrow is going to turn out."
"Who was Red Mask's first victim?" asked Sissy.
"He was a Realtor called George Woods," said Molly.
"Do you have an address for him?"
"Sure," said Detective Kunzel. He took out his notebook, licked his thumb, and leafed through it. "Here you are-1445 Riddle Road, Avondale. There's a phone number, too. I mean, his address is no secret, it was in the papers, and the number's listed in the phone book, but don't tell Mrs. Woods that I gave them to you, will you?"
"I'll be very discreet," Sissy assured him. "She may not agree to my holding a séance, but I doubt it. In all my years I've only had a handful of out-and-out refusals. Most people will do anything to hear their loved ones again."
Detective Kunzel turned to Molly. "Can she really do it? Like, if I wanted to talk to my pops…?"
"You always told me you hated your pops," said Detective Bellman. "You always said he was a world-class word-I-can't-use-in-front-of-present-company."
"I did. I did. But I never got the chance to tell him to his face, before he died, and I would give anything to be able to do that."
Three men and two women from the coroner's office were wheeling in gurneys to take away the three victims in the elevator.
Sissy lifted the little silver and pearl cross she wore around her neck and said, "Good-bye, Mary, rest in peace. Please forgive me for letting you die in the dark."
Sissy and Molly kissed on the steps of the Giley Building. The street outside was crowded with squad cars and ambulances and television vans, as well as scores of rubberneckers. From the hubbub of excitement going through the crowd, anybody would have thought that they were expecting the imminent arrival of a famous movie star.
"Cincinnati sightseers," said Molly, in disgust. "Look, I'll see you later, Sissy. Take care of Victoria for me. And Trevor. Well, I know you've been taking care of Trevor all of your life."
Molly climbed into one of the squad cars to be taken over to Cincinnati police headquarters on Ezzard Charles Drive. A big, heavily built officer with curly white hair was waiting to escort Sissy down the steps to another squad car, to drive her back to Blue Ash.
She settled into the backseat. The interior of the squad car smelled strongly of cheeseburger.
"Excuse the fragrance, lady," the officer apologized. "I haven't eaten in six hours straight. Not even a candy bar."
As he pulled away from the curb, he opened up a yellow polystyrene box and lifted out a twelve-ounce cheeseburger and took an enormous bite.
"I'm sorry, you know, but my captain thinks I'm what? The starving millions in Africa? I always say you gotta eat to function. Nobody can function on an empty stomach."
"Well, you're right," said Sissy. She was looking out of the window, but she couldn't help sensing the officer's heartbeat.
Bom-pause-badom-pause. Clogged arteries. She could feel them. She could feel a pain clutching at her left arm, too, as if she were just about to have a heart attack.
"Got this at Zip's," he said, holding it up. "Best damned burgers in Cincinnati."
"All the same," Sissy told him. "You should watch what you eat, and how you eat it."
"Lady, I wish I had the luxury. If I had the luxury, I wouldn't be eating no cheeseburger in no squad car. I'd be sitting down proper with my napkin tucked in my collar and I'd be eating T-bone steak and mashed potatoes and plenty of gravy, with a plate of hot corn-bread on the side, and blueberry pie and ice cream for dessert."
"What's your name?" Sissy asked him.
"You want to know my name? It's Gerald. Gerald Clyde. Forty-one years old, proud father of three little girls."
"You want to see your little girls grow up, Gerald?"
"Excuse me?"
"You have a health crisis coming," Sissy warned him. "You really need to ease up and visit your doctor for a physical."
The officer stared at her in his rearview mirror. "Lady, I'm a little stressed is all. Maybe a touch overweight. Otherwise, I'm two hundred percent fit. I could stop this car right now and do ten one-arm push-ups on the sidewalk."
"I'm sorry," said Sissy. "It really is none of my business, is it? It's just that I get these very strong feelings about people."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Really-don't take any notice. I'm only a silly old woman, that's all."
The officer chewed his cheeseburger slower and slower. "You got a feeling about me?" he asked her. "Like what?"
"Please, I shouldn't have said anything. I'm upset, that's all. Seeing those people murdered-"
"I know. It's tough."
The officer drove for three or four minutes in silence. Then he said, "You feel there's something wrong with me? Like I'm sick or something?"
"No. Really. Forget it, please."
They stopped at the intersection of Madison Road and Dana Avenue. The officer turned around in his seat and for a split second, his face was transformed. His eyes were rolled up into his head, showing nothing but white, like cue balls, and his lips were white, too, as if he had been drinking bleach.
Then he said, "Believe me, lady, I take care of myself. So don't you worry. I eat plenty of fruit. And yogurt, too. And I spend fifteen minutes every day on the treadmill." And his face returned to normal-red cheeked, blue eyed, and grinning. Before the signals changed, he took another large bite of cheeseburger.
When Sissy arrived back at Blue Ash, Trevor and Victoria were already home. Victoria was watching School of Rock in the living room, while Trevor was out in the backyard, sweeping up dried cicada skins. The trees and the bushes were still clustered with hundreds of glistening cicadas, gradually drying out in the afternoon sun. Mr. Boots came wuffling up to greet her, licking her hand.
"How was it?" asked Trevor.
"Bad. Horrible. He didn't only kill that poor young man. He killed three office cleaners, too."
"Molly told me, on the phone. She said you heard his voice, too."
Sissy nodded. "It's so terrible. He seems to want revenge on anybody and everybody, and I still can't understand why."
"Come on, Momma. You shouldn't let it worry you so much. It's not your responsibility to catch him."
"But if I can help, Trevor-"
"Momma…the cops know what they're doing. They'll track him down him sooner or later, and they won't need fortune-telling cards or séances."
"Oh, I see. Molly told you about the séance?"
"Of course she told me about it. But, you're a seventy-one-year-old woman. I can't stop you, can I? No matter what I think about this talking-to-the-dead stuff."
Sissy laid her hand on his arm very gently. "Just like your father. He refused to believe in spirits even when I got through to his sister Joan and she told him where her diary was hidden."
Trevor scooped up the last of the cicada skins and dead leaves onto a piece of cardboard and tipped them into the trash can. "Hey-have you seen these?" he asked Sissy, and pointed to the roses and the hollyhock and the Shasta daisy. "They're beautiful, aren't they? I don't know how, but I never even saw them grow."
"They're miraculous," said Sissy.
"I was thinking of cutting the roses before the cicadas suck the life out of them."
"Why not? I'll put them in a vase for you."
Trevor took out his pocketknife and cut each of the roses at the bottom of the stem. "Just beautiful," he said. "They remind me of New Milford. You remember, the roses that Dad used to grow around the porch."
"Yes," said Sissy. "I remember." And for a moment, she thought she could see Frank standing under the vine trellis, but it was only a trick of the sunlight and shadow.
They went back inside, into the kitchen. Sissy looked in the cupboard next to the sink and found a narrow glass vase. Victoria came in and watched her as she arranged the roses with a few ferns around them.
"How was school today?" Sissy asked her.
"Okay."
"Just okay?"
"I was tired. I nearly fell asleep in geography, and Mr. Pulaski came right up behind me and clapped his hands together to wake me up."
"Why were you so tired? Didn't you sleep well last night? After all that spaghetti you ate, I thought you would have slept like a pig in clover."
"I slept okay, but I had too many bad dreams."
"Bad dreams? What about?"
"I dreamed that a giant was chasing me."
Sissy placed the vase of roses on the hutch. "A giant? What did he look like?"
Uncle Henry, I'm frightened of giants. Uncle Henry, can't we go back?
"I didn't see. It was much too dark, and I was running away as fast as I could run."
"The giant didn't catch you, did he?"
"No. I made myself wake up. I said, 'There's no such thing as giants,' and I felt better after that. But then I fell asleep again and I dreamed that I was falling down this dark hole, like Alice in Wonderland."
"What horrible dreams! I'm not surprised you were tired."
"Maybe I should pop a couple of Valium before I go to bed tonight."
"Pop a couple of Valium?-I don't think so. But I could make you a nice warm mug of malted milk."
The phone rang. Trevor came back into the kitchen and answered it, but then he handed it to Sissy. "It's Mike Kunzel, for you."
Sissy said, "Mike?"
"Hi there, Mrs. Sawyer. Just thought you'd like to know that you were right. We searched the Giley Building from the roof to the basement. Every office, every closet. We even checked the garbage chutes. No sign of Red Mask anywhere. No fingerprints, either, and the footprints were a bust."
"Did you manage to work out how he could have gotten away?"
"My guess is he walked straight out the front door while the super was dialing nine-one-one. It's amazing what people don't notice when they're panicking."
"So what are you going to do now?"
"There's nothing much we can do, except to keep on looking for him and appeal to the public to keep their eyes open, too. By the way, Molly left about fifteen minutes ago. She's a really great artist, that girl."
"Yes, she is," said Sissy, looking at the roses on the hutch. "Even better than you know."
Trevor said, "What's happening? Any news?"
Sissy thanked Detective Kunzel for calling and then hung up. "Not yet," she told Trevor. "But Molly should be home soon. Do you want me to make you some supper? How about some fried chicken, with salad and French fries?"
"No, no. I'm good. I had lunch at Nick Tony's with a guy from Brussels. Euro Investments…They're looking for a foothold here in the States."
"Trevor-"
"Yes?"
She wanted to tell him how special he was, and how special Molly was, and Victoria, too, but for some reason she couldn't find the words. She was feeling protective, but she didn't think that Trevor would appreciate her mothering him, not right now. He was a man, after all. Whatever happened to him or his family, he had to take care of them the way he thought best.
"Don't say I'm just like Dad," said Trevor. "You always say that, but Dad was Dad, and I'm me. Dad took risks. I only calculate them."
"I was only going to tell you that I'm proud of you. Is that such a crime?"
He held her close. It made him aware of how frail and ribby she was. "No, that's not a crime."
Victoria said, "Giants must be real, don't you think? If they're not real, who made them up, and why did everybody believe them?"
"If I knew the answer to that, honey," said Trevor, "I'd be a very wealthy man."
About ten minutes later, Molly arrived home looking pale and distracted. She lifted her fringed satchel over her head and hung it over the back of the kitchen chair.
"Boy, I am totally pooped. Drawing that Red Mask…For some reason it took so much out of me."
"Well, he's not a very pleasant character to think about, is he?" said Sissy. "Let alone draw."
"I don't know. It was more than that. It was like he was staring at me out of my sketch pad and saying Go on, then, let's see how much life you can breathe into me."
"How about a glass of wine?" asked Sissy.
"No, I think I'll take a shower first. I feel kind of tainted, you know, like he's been pawing me."
"He's only a drawing, hon," said Trevor. "You shouldn't let yourself get so upset."
"I know… But while I was drawing him, I kept thinking, 'Okay, that's it, I've finished.' But then I felt like I had to shade his eyebrows some more, and thicken his hair, and change the expression in his eyes. By the time I was finished, he looked so much younger-and, like, pleased with himself. And pleased with me, too."
Sissy took hold of her hand. "Come on, sweetheart. It was really traumatic, what we saw today, all of those people dead. And in a way, when you were drawing him, it was like you were face-to-face with the man who murdered them, wasn't it?"
"I guess so. Yes, it felt like that."
Trevor put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. "From now on, you stick to drawing fairies, okay?"
"Okay," Molly smiled. Then she said, "Victoria-did you finish your homework?"
"Yes! It was cool. It was all about cicadas. I love cicadas."
"I'm glad somebody does. They're starting to fly already, and when the police officer was driving me home, they kept going splatter-splatter-splatter all over the windshield."
Without taking a breath, Victoria said, "Cicadas live underground for seventeen years, feeding on the sap from tree roots. Then they tunnel their way out so that they can reproduce. They have yellow skins, which are very tough. The men cicadas make their mating calls by flexing their stomachs, and some of them are as loud as a hundred decibels."
"What about the women cicadas?" asked Sissy.
"They never make any noise at all."
"See?" said Trevor. "The perfect species."
"After they mate, the men cicadas drop down dead."
"I agree with you," said Molly. "The perfect species."
She turned to leave the kitchen, and it was then that she noticed the vase of roses on the hutch. She gave Sissy a quick, quizzical look and said, "Did you cut these roses?"
"Trevor did," said Sissy, as calmly as she could. "Pretty, aren't they?"
"Strange thing was," said Trevor, "I never even noticed them growing."