They walked across to the center of the lobby. It was gloomy and silent, and the only sound was their footsteps on the polished marble floor and the clicking Deputy’s claws.
“Where do you want to start, sir?” asked Officer Gillow.
Sissy opened her purse and drew out a length of red cotton. It was Red Mask’s shirtsleeve, or — more accurately — a replica of Red Mask’s shirtsleeve. Molly had painted it at the same time as Frank’s Connecticut State Police badge, based on the description that Mr. Kraussman had given her. “Red shirt, like he was soaked in blood already.”
She bent down and held the sleeve under Deputy’s nose. Deputy sniffed, and growled, and shook his head.
“He sure doesn’t like that,” said Frank.
But quietly, Sissy said, “The most important thing is, he can actually smell it. If he was a real dog, he couldn’t.”
Deputy barked, and barked again, and then he started to pull at his leash, trying to head toward the elevator.
“Seems like he wants to go up,” said Frank. “All right with you, Officer?”
Officer Gillow unhooked his radio and said, “Char-lie, we’re taking the elevator. I’ll check back with you as soon as I know which floor we’re on.”
He pushed the button for the center elevator. The doors shuddered open and they stepped inside. Sissy looked at herself in the mirror. She thought she looked surprisingly unperturbed, considering what they were doing. But as Officer Gillow pushed the button to close the doors and the elevator began to rise, she thought she could see shadows in the mirror, standing around her. The shadows of Mary Clay, the cleaner who had died in the dark in this elevator, and her two companions.
We’re here. Please help us. We’re here. Don’t let us die in the dark.
They went past floor after floor, and at each floor Office Gillow opened the doors so that Deputy could sniff at the air.
“I’m beginning to feel that this mutt just likes riding on elevators,” said Trevor, as they stopped at the sixteenth floor. The doors opened and Deputy sniffed at the reception area, but stayed where he was.
“Onward and upward,” said Sissy.
But as they rose toward the seventeenth floor, Deputy began to grow increasingly agitated and to circle around the interior of the elevator, lashing his tail against the walls.
“What is it, boy?” Frank asked him. “Do you smell something? Red Masks, maybe?”
They reached the seventeenth floor. Deputy was jumping up and down now, scrabbling his claws against the elevator doors. Officer Gillow unholstered his gun before he pressed the button to open them.
“I want you all to stay way back,” he instructed them. “Any sign of trouble, and we’re out of here.”
With a series of squeaks, the elevator doors juddered apart. If Frank hadn’t had him on a leash, Deputy would have gone tearing off into the reception area and along the corridor before he could have stopped him. As it was, he reared up, panting and whining, half choked by his collar, and it took all of Frank’s strength to hold him back.
“Come on, boy, what can you smell?”
Deputy dragged Frank along the corridor into the main office, with all of its half-abandoned cubicles and worn-out carpets.
“Come on, boy, take it easy, boy.”
“What do you think he’s picked up?” asked Trevor.
“A trail, most like,” said Sissy. “This must have been where Red Mask was hiding out before — except real police bloodhounds couldn’t scent him, and I couldn’t sense him, either.”
She lifted her head and closed her eyes for a moment. She had no sense of Red Mask’s having been here, even now. Nothing at all, except the barely audible echoes of all the people who used to work in this office before it had closed down. Faint baby voices, from the family photographs. Fainter sounds of laughter from the vacation pictures. The plink-plink-plink of a glossy red beach ball bouncing along a concrete pathway, someplace long ago and very far away.
“Here — I think there’s something in here!” Frank called out. Deputy had reached a supply closet and was growling and scratching at the paintwork.
Officer Gillow came forward with his revolver held up high in his right hand. “Okay, sir, let’s take it real easy, shall we?”
Sissy said, “He’s right, Frank. Please be careful. It’s probably nothing — just a scent that’s gotten him all excited. But you don’t know for sure.”
Frank reached cautiously across the door and rattled the handle. It was locked. But still Deputy kept clawing at it and keening, and it was obvious that he wasn’t going to stop until they opened it up.
Officer Gillow took a letter opener from one of the office desks. He holstered his gun and hunkered down in front of the doorway, poking the letter opener into the lock. “There’s no key on the other side. Unless the perp has taken it out, there’s nobody in here.”
With that, he stood up again, and gave the door a devastating kick. Even Deputy jumped back, on all fours.
The side of the doorframe was splintered, but the door was still hanging on. Officer Gillow gave it another kick and it collapsed inward, bouncing sideways on top of a stack of stationery boxes.
Deputy hurtled forward, so violently that Frank lost his grip on his leash. He threw himself into the darkness of the supply closet, furiously barking.
“Deputy!” Frank shouted at him, but none of them was prepared for what happened next. They heard more boxes falling and a heavy crash like a fax machine falling over. Then a hoarse, unintelligible roar, more like a beast than a human being.
Officer Gillow immediately yanked out his handgun again and yelled into his radio for backup.
“Seventeenth floor! Seventeenth floor! Newman! Bitzer! Get your asses up here right now, you guys! We got the bastards cornered!”
There was another shout, and then Red Mask almost exploded out of the supply-closet door in a snowstorm of copy paper. He was clutching Deputy by the neck, holding him in the air up so that his hind legs were barely touching the floor. His fingers were digging so deeply into Deputy’s neck that the dog’s eyes were protruding and his breath came in high-pitched shrieks.
Red Mask was scarlet faced, huge, and bursting with rage. He was stabbing at Deputy with a large triangular kitchen knife, so that the fur on Deputy’s chest and belly was matted with blood, and blood was splattering onto the floor.
“Drop the dog, or I shoot!” shouted Officer Gillow. “I said drop —!”
Frank tried to step forward, but Red Mask brandished his knife at him, and he couldn’t get close.
“This is your last warning!” warned Officer Gillow, and fired.
Red Mask shuddered, the way that a reflection shudders when you throw a stone into a darkened pool, but apart from that the shot didn’t appear to affect him at all. He let out another roar and swung Deputy wildly from side to side. Deputy screamed in pain, until Red Mask swung him sideways and hurled him clear across the office, so that he collided with a thump with the side of one of the cubicles and left streaks of blood down the side of it.
“Hold it right there!” Officer Gillow demanded. “Put your hands on top of your head and kneel down on the floor!”
Red Mask held up the knife in his right hand and then slowly and defiantly drew a second knife out of his coat. His eyes were black slits. His mouth was a gash, like a lizard’s.