He went up the stairs feeling good. When he pushed open the door, Davy shot him once in the stomach. Phil didn’t, have time to make him realize the mistake he was making before the second bullet struck him in the center of his forehead.
Face of Evil
by David Alexander
Five had been butchered. There would be more — unless Detective Romano could get Ferguson to identify the killer.
It was nook and the stocky detective with the swarthy face waited in the corridor of the City Hospital. He was a middle-aged man with heavily defined features. His coarse dark hair was salted with gray and a little string of sweat beads glistened on his forehead. His heavy shoulders drooped from fatigue. His eyes were large and dark and there was weary compassion in them as if they had looked upon the thousand faces of human life, neither with despair nor hope, but only with a patient acceptance. The whites of the eyes were filamented with bloody threads. He had not slept the night before. He had stayed on duty because the psychopathic killer the papers called The Butcher was loose again.
The detective’s name was Romano. He was a lieutenant of Homicide, Manhattan West.
A doctor in a white coat came out of a nearby hospital room and closed the door after him. He was accompanied by a nurse. The nurse was dark and young and pretty and Romano thought of his own daughter who was a student at Marymount College. Romano rose slowly from the hard chair in the corridor, sighing with exhaustion. His feet had begun to throb and ache. That was always the first sign that his body was rebelling against the demands he made of it. Soon his nervous stomach would start acting up and he’d feel the painful little twinges of rising blood pressure. He was getting old. He would have to take his pension soon. Years ago he would have been driven and sustained by excitement, when a big squeal was this close to the break. He felt nothing like that now. He was just dead-tired.
The man in the hospital room was the only living person who could identify The Butcher, who had murdered five women and dismembered their bodies in a manner horrible enough to justify the name the papers had awarded him.
Romano lumbered slowly toward the doctor, his big feet slapping heavily on the rubber linoleum of the floor.
“Has he come out of it, Doc?” Romano asked.
The doctor was a thin man with high cheekbones and a small mustache. His slim, white fingers toyed with the stethoscope that dangled around his neck.
“He’s out of coma, if that’s what you mean,” the doctor answered, “But he’s hardly rational. I would say he’s still suffering from shock. He has a heart condition, we’ve determined that. The experience he went through last night — well, it’s a wonder he’s alive under the circumstances. It might be better to wait awhile, Lieutenant.”
Romano said, “It’s pretty urgent. Doc. It’s about as urgent as it can get. Time may mean a lot.”
The doctor hesitated. The pretty nurse looked disapprovingly at Romand. She does look kind of like my daughter Ellie, Romano thought. She doesn’t like me. Maybe she hates me, even, because she thinks I’m callous, that I want to torture a poor, sick man.
The doctor said, “I suppose you can go in for a little while, if you insist. But try to be considerate. Don’t press him too much. You have to realize what he’s been through.”
Romano nodded. “I know,” he said.
It sounded false, perhaps. But he did know. That was the tough part about being a cop. You saw all the violence and sadness and suffering there was and unless you were made of rock it became a part of you and you understood it and shared it. You understood afresh each time you saw the wild anguish in a woman’s face, each time you looked into a man’s dazed eyes and saw his quivering lips.
The doctor drew aside, said, “Just a few minutes, then. A very few minutes, please.”
Romano opened the door and walked into the hospital room. He closed the door behind him.
The man on the bed stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. His name was Lester Ferguson. The Butcher had murdered his wife the night before. Ferguson had found her body on the floor of their bedroom when he returned from choir practice.
Romano stood quietly by the bed for moment. The man did not even look at him.
Romano said, “Do you remember me, Mr. Ferguson?”
With an obvious physical effort, Ferguson turned his head toward the detective. He said, “I–I’m not quite sure.”
“I’m a police officer, Mr. Ferguson. Lieutenant Romano, Homicide. I talked to you a moment last night at your house before you collapsed. You told me you saw his face. You said you could identify the man.”
Ferguson’s voice was a whisper. “The face,” he said.
Romano waited. Ferguson said nothing else. He was off in a world of his own again.
“You told me you saw the murderer’s face, Mr. Ferguson,” Romano persisted. “When I asked you if you could identify it, you answered, ‘Yes, yes, I will remember it forever.’ It was right after that you became ill. Can you describe the face to me, Mr. Ferguson? I hate to do this. I know what you’ve been through. But this man is an insane killer. Your wife was the fifth woman he has killed. The same sadist, the same psychopath committed all the murders, because his method was always the same. He’ll kill again, Mr. Ferguson, unless we find him first. And you’re the only person on earth who can identify him.”
Ferguson had drifted off again. Finally, he said, “The face.”
“Yes, sir,” said Romano eagerly. “The face you saw last night. The face at the window. Can you describe the face, Mr. Ferguson?”
Ferguson’s voice was husky. “It — it was the Face of Evil,” he said.
Romano sighed heavily and seated himself on the edge of a straight chair beside the bed.
“It was an evil face,” he prompted. “Can you tell me a little more, Mr. Ferguson? Was it a young face or an old one? Was it broad or thin? Were there any scars or other distinguishing marks, perhaps?”
Ferguson said, “You cannot describe the Face of Evil in such terms.”
Romano wiped the sweat beads from his face with the edge of his hand. Why were hospitals always such stuffy places? Sick people should have fresh air.
“Please try to help me, Mr. Ferguson,” he pleaded patiently. “We’ll have to have a little more than that to go on.”
“What did you say your name was?” Ferguson asked.
“Romano. Lieutenant Romano. I’m a detective assigned to investigate the murder of your wife.”
“Are you a religious man, Lieutenant?” Ferguson asked.
Romano winced. His wife Rosa and Father Riordan were always needling him about missing Mass. A cop’s hours were so unpredictable. A cop got so damned tired.
“I believe in God, Mr. Ferguson,” he said. “I’m a member of the church.”
“All religious men have looked upon the face of God,” Ferguson declared, his voice suddenly clear, animation coming into his dead-white face. “But how can you describe the face of God? You cannot describe the face of God as old or young or broad or thin or scarred or smooth.”
The effort seemed to have exhausted the man on the bed. He fell back on the pillow, breathing heavily. Romano waited. Finally he said, “It was a human face you saw last night, Mr. Ferguson. You said you saw it staring at you through the window. It was the face of the man who murdered your wife.”
Ferguson seemed exasperated at the detective’s obtuseness. “Who can say if the Face of Evil is a human face?” he asked. “I mean no blasphemy, but it is like the face of God, because it is so many things. It is the face of a wanton woman who waits in shadows. It is the face of a soldier who is killing his enemy. It is the face of a maniac who runs amok with a flaming torch. It is the broad, red face of a lecherous sot who mouths obscenities. And it is the pinched, white face of a narcotics addict. Does that answer you? The Face of Evil is all these things.”