Sissy walked slowly toward the center elevator, the one with the OUT OF ORDER sign. She pressed both hands against the doors and took a deep breath, and held it, and then another. She heard somebody say, Mary? Is that you, Mary? A different woman, older. Without turning around, she called out, “Mike!”
Detective Kunzel hurried up to her and jabbed at the elevator button. The doors refused to open, but he shouted out, “Kraussman! Hey, Kraussman! Somebody get that goddamned super for me!”
Mr. Kraussman came out of his office, blinking.
“Get these elevator doors open, and get them open now!”
“Okay, for sure. I got a key.”
He came hurrying across with his bunch of keys jingling, knelt down in front of the elevator. He unlocked the hoistway doors and wound them open, but the doors to the elevator car were still firmly closed.
“You wait, I bring crowbar!”
He returned to his office and came back with a crowbar and a tire iron. He handed the tire iron to the burliest of the uniformed officers, and between them, inch by inch, they forced the elevator doors apart.
As they were opened wider and wider, the doors gave out intermittent groans, as if they were in pain. A little at a time, the floodlights began to illuminate the interior of the elevator car. It was wall-to-wall red.
Three people were huddled on the floor — two women and a man. All three of them were wearing pale blue coveralls, but they were soaked and spattered in so much blood that they looked as if they had been attacked by an action painter with a bucket of scarlet paint.
“Gott im Himmel,” coughed Mr. Kraussman. “It’s the cleaning crew.”
“Paramedics!” bellowed Detective Kunzel. “Paramedics, and quick!”
Mr. Kraussman swayed and stumbled as if somebody had pushed him. “I thought they finish up hours ago. Most nights, they’re all through by two. I thought they went home. I swear it.”
“Hey, steady,” said Detective Bellman. “This wasn’t your fault.”
Detective Kunzel hunkered down beside the elevator and pressed his fingertips against the victims’ carotid arteries, one after the other.
“That’s Mary,” said Sissy, trying to stop her voice from trembling. “The one in the middle, with the eyeglasses. Is she still alive?”
Detective Kunzel felt for Mary’s pulse a second time, but then he shook his head. “They’re all deceased, all three of them. I’m sorry.”
“Just before she passed over, do you know what Mary told me? She said that she didn’t want to die in the dark.”
Molly put her arm around Sissy’s shoulders and gave her a sympathetic squeeze. “At least you found them.”
Detective Kunzel stood up. “I don’t know how you did that, Mrs. Sawyer, but I have to admit that I’m impressed.”
“If only I’d heard her sooner.”
“By the look of her injuries, Mrs. Sawyer, I don’t think she could have survived, even if you had.”
Detective Bellman was clearly upset and kept blowing out his cheeks. “Guy’s a total maniac. I never saw anybody with so many stab wounds, ever.”
“You know what nice people these were?” said Mr. Kraussman. “Always smiling. Always got time for laughing. What kind of person would want to hurt them so bad?”
“You were right about one thing, Mrs. Sawyer,” said Detective Kunzel. “Red Mask did kill more people this time. Molly — how about you take that composite over to headquarters pronto? The sooner we get it out to the media the better. We have to nail this bastard before he attacks anybody else.”
“I just wish I could sense where he went,” said Sissy. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried — but nothing.”
“Come on, Sissy,” Molly told her. “You’re in shock. We all are. Why don’t you let the officer drive you home? Make yourself some of that chamomile tea.”
Sissy nodded. She was more frustrated than distressed. Usually, she could feel where somebody had gone, because everybody left a psychic wake behind them — a shivering in the air, a refraction in the daylight — in the same way that everybody left their scent or their footprints behind them. Sometimes, if a person was very angry, or agitated, they left a trembling in the air that could persist for hours.
But Red Mask had vanished without a trace, as if he had stepped out of the world altogether and closed the door behind him. No emotion, no afterimage, no distortion in the daylight. Not even the faintest of distant echoes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Voice of 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?”