Chapter 21
“The first thing we need to hide is that hair,” Isabel said, eyeing my head with skepticism. “It's like a neon beacon.”
I frowned, grabbed a shank of my hair, and held it in front of my face. “My red isn't that bad, is it?”
“No, in fact it's quite lovely, which is why we have to hide it. It draws attention.”
She removed a wig from the suitcaseâa brunette, chin-length bobâand set it on the table. Next she took out several bottles, each one containing some type of liquid. Most of them were skin-toned, but there was one that was clear, one that was white, and one that was green. She lined them up on the table and removed a small machine that was basically a box with a power cord on one end and some sort of wand that was attached to the other end with a narrow plastic hose.
“What is that?” I asked.
“An airbrush,” she said. “I use it to apply makeup. It allows me to be very precise and artistic.” She set it on the table and went back to the suitcase. Out came a plastic container that held a variety of contact lenses: blue, green, various shades of brown, hazel, and a few bizarre ones that looked like lizard or zombie eyes.
As Isabel was assembling her wares, my cell phone rang. It was Duncan.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said. “Is Isabel there yet?”
“She is. We're just about to get started.”
“Good.”
“Did you get the pictures I sent you?”
“I did. It's quite the assortment this time around. Any idea what it means?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Mal and I tried to figure it out, but so far we're both drawing a blank.”
“Can you bag the items up for me?”
“Already did,” I said, feeling a little proud of myself. I was getting to be quite the evidence expert, I thought.
“Bring it all with you when you come down to the station. Given all the items there were in that envelope, our sender might have gotten careless with something and left us a print or some DNA.”
“That's what Mal said.”
“I know you don't want to involve the lab for fear of our letter writer finding out, butâ”
“Save your breath,” I said, interrupting him. “Mal convinced me that this is too big for me to deal with on my own. We just have to be careful.”
“Well, then, be sure to thank Mal for me.” Something in his voice changed with that, turning the chocolate taste a little bitter.
“I better go,” I said, seeing that Isabel had her wares ready to go. “Isabel said this is going to take a while. I'll see you soon, okay?”
“Okay.”
With that, I disconnected the call and submitted myself to Isabel's administrations. She began by brushing my hair and pulling it into a tight bun on the crown of my head. After that she applied a wide cloth hairband around my head along my hairline. “Have you ever worn contacts before?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Okay, quick lesson then.”
A few minutes later my eyes were a dark brown color, nearly black. At first I kept blinking every few seconds, keenly aware of them in my eyes, but after a bit they became more comfortable.
Next Isabel took some flesh-colored pieces of latex and began putting them on my face, securing them in place with some type of glue. I wished I could see what she was doing, but there was no mirror close by, so I just gave myself over to the process. It took her just over forty minutes to finish, and the last thing she did was put the wig on me. She stood back then and looked at me with a critical eye.
“What do you think?” she said to Mal, who had sat across the table from me in awed silence watching the entire process.
“I think you're a genius,” he said, his voice rife with admiration. “If I didn't know that was Mack beneath all that latex and makeup, I'd never guess it. Go look in a mirror, Mack. You truly are unrecognizable.”
I hopped up from the chair and went into the bathroom. Looking in the mirror was a shock. It was a strange feeling, both disconcerting and exciting at the same time. Parts of my face felt a little stiff, but after some practice making different expressions, I grew more comfortable with it and felt like I was ready to give it a road test.
“I guess I'm ready to head out,” I said, emerging from the bathroom.
“Should we sneak out a back door?” Mal said.
“
We
aren't doing anything,” I said. “You can't go with me, Mal. It would be too much of a giveaway.”
He scowled at this, but said nothing more.
“I think I'm going to walk right out through the bar. If anyone there recognizes me, we'll need to go back to square one. If they don't, I'll grab a taxi and take it to the police station.”
“You can't go yet,” Isabel said. “We're not done. You need to change your clothes.”
“Oh, right,” I said feeling stupid. “I can't be seen wearing the same thing I was earlier.”
“And we need to change both your walk and your voice,” Isabel said.
Now it was my turn to give her a skeptical look.
“If you're being watched, someone might pick up on something like that. You may not look the same, but your voice is a dead giveaway.”
I realized she was right. After ten minutes of voice coaching, I donned a generic pair of jeans, a nondescript navy blue sweatshirt, and a pair of old boots I hadn't worn since two winters ago. I also dragged an old winter parka out of the closet and resurrected a purse I had abandoned four years ago but had never tossed because it was in good condition. I'd simply grown tired of it. Then I went in to my father's old office and put all the bagged evidence into the purse.
“Now you're ready,” Isabel said when I came back to the dining room. I put my wallet in the purse, sticking it in a different section from where the evidence bags were. Then I grabbed for my cell phone, but Mal stopped me.
“Silence it first, and whatever you do, don't answer it or look at a text unless you are somewhere alone and private. Easiest way to prove who you are if someone is watching and has a suspicion is to call your cell and see if you answer it.”
I hadn't thought of that, just like I hadn't thought about the clothes and speech. My earlier confidence, brought about by the startling change in my appearance, was beginning to fade away.
Mal must have sensed my hesitation because he walked over and gave me a one-armed hug, whispering in my ear, “You can do this, Mack. You're one of the strongest women I've ever known.”
His words boosted my confidence and as I went downstairs to the apartment door, I felt energized. I had Isabel go out first to see if anyone was standing in the hallway. I didn't want anyone to see me exiting from my apartment. Once she indicated the coast was clear, I stepped into the hallway, strode down it into the bar, and walked straight to the front door. No one said a word, and no one gave me a second look. I stepped outside and realized I'd been holding my breath. I exhaled a huge plume of relief and walked several blocks away. Then I hailed a passing cab.
I gave the cab driver an address near the police station, using my newly honed Southern accent. He didn't look at me twice. I paid him in cash, got out, and headed in the opposite direction from where I wanted to go. As soon as the cab pulled away, I turned around and went into the police station. At the check-in window, I again used my Southern accent and asked to see Detective Duncan Albright, giving my name as Susan Smith, something Isabel had instructed me to do. I was told to take a seat, did so, and then got another boost to my confidence when Duncan came through a door, glanced around the room, and then asked the receptionist where Susan Smith was. When she pointed me out, Duncan stared at me, blinking hard several times. Finally, he said, “Ms. Smith, would you please come with me?”
I got up and followed him through the station hallways and into the observation room located at the center of the interrogation rooms. I had been there before, observing Duncan as he questioned suspects in the cases I worked with him several weeks ago. Duncan didn't say a word until we were inside, then he took me by the shoulders and held me at arm's length, shaking his head in amazement. “I knew she was good, but not this good. That is you, Mack, right?”
“It is,” I said with a smile, dropping my Southern accent. “Isabel really is amazing. I didn't recognize myself when she was done, and when I left the bar, no one gave me a second look.”
Duncan wrapped my face between his palms and kissed me long and hard. When he was done, he leaned back, looked at me for a second, and then started laughing.
“What's so funny? Laughing at a girl right after you kiss her doesn't do much for her confidence.”
“Sorry, it's just that I've really missed you and now that you're here, I kind of still miss you because it's like I'm kissing someone else. I feel like I'm cheating. And in an odd way, that's sort of titillating. Quite the conundrum.”
I couldn't decide if I was amused or bothered by this, but when he kissed me again I stopped caring. When we broke apart, I felt breathless and relieved. The magic was still there.
“Okay, much as I hate the idea of stopping, we need to get down to business,” Duncan said. “Where is the evidence?”
I opened my purse and took out all the baggies, laying them out on a small counter that ran the length of the walls in the room just below the observation windows.
“How are you explaining all this evidence to whoever is running it?”
“I told her that my sister has a stalker and that I'm trying to figure out who it might be. She understands that I don't want it to be an actual case file and need to keep it private. It hasn't been an issue so far, and I don't think it will be.”
I hoped he was right.
“Any more thoughts on this stuff?” he asked me, eyeing the baggies.
“Not really. I thought at one point that it might be some kind of recipe, but I'll be darned if I can think of one that uses fish, cinnamon, water, coffee, and wine. Plus I can't figure out how some of the other items fit in, like the rose petal and that tiny section of map.”
Duncan bent down to get a closer look at the map piece. “Do you still have these pictures in your phone?”
“I do.”
“Send the one of the map to Cora. I'm betting she can figure out where it is. In fact, send her all the pictures. Maybe she'll have some ideas.”
It was a great idea and I kicked myself for not thinking of it on my own. I took out my phone and did just that as Duncan gathered up all the evidence in a large manila envelope. “I'll take this to Carrie when we're done here,” he said. “Maybe we'll get lucky.”
I had my doubts.
When I was done sending the pictures to Cora, Duncan said, “This Apostle Mike guy, whose real name is Michael Treat, is due any minute. I seriously considered having Jimmy conduct the interview thinking that the fewer people who know I'm doing something on the side the better, but after thinking it over I decided to let some other detectives do it to make sure there's no connection to me.”
“Thank you for that,” I said, feeling some sense of relief. “How much of all this does Jimmy know?”
“Very little. It's not that I don't trust Jimmy, but he tends to be a by-the-book guy who doesn't like stepping outside of the rules and regulations.”
“Yeah, I got that loud and clear when he was working with me.”
“He's come around a lot,” Duncan said. “In fact, the other day he said he kind of missed having your input on a case we were banging our heads over.”
“Seriously?”
Duncan held his hand up like he was about to swear an oath. “No lie,” he said.
“So how much of my situation now is he aware of?”
“He knows I'm looking into a private matter and doing some stuff off the books, but he thinks it's because I have someone who is stalking me. He has no idea you're involved and I haven't discussed any details with him. Carrie, the lab tech, is trustworthy and she promised she wouldn't share any info with anyone, and I specifically included Jimmy in that request. The less he knows about it, the better for now.”
“I agree.”
“Now back to Apostle Mike, aka Michael Treat. They'll bring him into room one and talk to him about an assault we're pretty sure his group was involved in. At the end, they'll ask him about Lewis Carmichael's death.”
“Do you think that's wise? If he is the one writing the letters that might be just enough to push him over the edge.”
“I got it covered. They're going to tell him they found info in Lewis's apartment that suggests he was into the occult. Since Apostle Mike knows we are aware of his hatred of that sort of stuff, it makes sense that we would question him on it. And if he is behind it, the idea that he might have overlooked a connection might rattle him enough to put him off his game. One of the detectives will be wearing an earpiece so I can coach him if need be.”
“Do the guys doing the questioning know why they're doing it?”
Duncan shook his head. “I just told them it was for another case I'm working on. I didn't offer specifics.”
“I'll need some sort of barometer, a test question that we know is a lie in order to identify any changes in his voice.”
“I've got it covered. You remember how this works, right?” I nodded as he handed me the headphones. “You won't be able to say anything to the detectives, but if there's something you want me to have them do or ask, just let me know.”
He donned his own headset and a mike, and we both settled in on the stools and waited. Less than a minute later, the door to the interview room opened and I got my first look at Apostle Mike.