Michael Prescott - Stealing Faces

At the rear there was a gap in the fence, professionally cut. Mitch hadn’t done that. The work was too clean, too competent.

The four of them slipped through the gap and came to the back of the building, where Mitch pointed at a door that had been chained shut.

The chain links had been severed — again, a neat, professional job.

“Somebody busted in here,” Hector Alvarez said, “probably hoping there was still some merchandise inside.”

Janice Hirst studied the broken chain. “Long time ago. See? The links are rusty even where they were cut through.”

Mitch just stood, waiting.

“So they’re inside?” Shepherd asked him. “The faces?”

Nod.

“Anybody else in there? Friends of yours?”

Head shake.

It was probably true. But Shepherd unholstered his Beretta anyway.

“Janice, stand post out here with our friend Mitch. Hector, give me some cover.”

Alvarez snapped his Juicy Fruit. “Right.”

Shepherd tested the doorknob. It turned freely. He eased the door an inch ajar, then took out his flashlight.

Flash in one hand, gun in the other, he pushed the door wide and sidestepped in, not lingering in the doorway where he was silhouetted against the glare. Then he turned on the flashlight, holding it away from his body, and panned the beam over the windowless, cavernous room.

He saw them.

Faces.

They leaped out of the shadows, face after face, tacked to walls and support columns, faces young and old, in many hues, all staring eyelessly.

Mitch had cut out the eyes. Perhaps his trophies’ lifeless gazes had disturbed him.

“Jesus,” Alvarez muttered.

Outside, Mitch released a giggle. “Told you,” he said. “I steal their faces. I steal their faces.”

Shepherd nodded. “You sure do.” To Alvarez he added, “Hang back for a minute. I want to check it out.”

His flashlight leading him, Shepherd advanced into the gloom.

The ceiling was high, the walls far away, his every step on the concrete floor echoing from distant corners. Clusters of trash were piled here and there like atolls in a sea of dust. Magazines, mostly. Mitch must have scavenged them from Dumpsters. He—

There was movement to Shepherd’s left, and he swung the flash at it, glimpsing a pink tail and a scurrying blur.

Nice place, he thought grimly.

When he was satisfied that the warehouse was empty except for the rats and the faces, he approached the nearest pylon. It was steel, reinforced with concrete, and Mitch’s artistry had made it a totem pole of faces.

Most were women, but there were a few men. Shepherd recognized some of them. Fashion models, actresses, other celebrities.

Nearly all the photos were in color, glossy, and large enough to be almost life-size.

Mitch had cut them out very neatly, omitting the eyes, and with thumbtacks or finishing nails he had mounted the photos around the warehouse, scores of them, hundreds of them, the work of a lifetime.

“This is quite impressive, Mitch,” Shepherd said. “You’re an artist.”

“I steal their faces,” Mitch informed him from the doorway.

“It’s good you told us. Work like this deserves an audience.”

“I steal their faces.”

“Yes. We got that.”

Shepherd loitered in the warehouse for a minute or two. He truly was impressed with the man’s achievement. Mitch was like those people who build monuments out of junk or amass the world’s largest ball of string. He was crazy, to be sure, and compulsive or obsessive or whatever the term was, but he had demonstrated a degree of diligence and sheer persistence that few sane people could equal. The warehouse was a kind of art gallery, and stamped on it was Mitch’s personality, fascinating and unique.

“You could charge admission,” he told Mitch as he rejoined the others in the sunlight.

Mitch only blinked, but Shepherd thought he detected a hint of shy gratitude in the man’s twitchy smile.

They returned to the car, easing their prisoner into the backseat. Janice Hirst looked sad.

“It’s almost a shame,” she said.

Shepherd asked what she meant.

She lowered her voice. “Well, they’ll put him away, at least for a while. It’s too bad. He’s harmless, don’t you think?”

Hirst was a transfer from the sheriff’s department in Pinal County and there were a lot of things she didn’t know. Alvarez, though, had been with Tucson PD nearly as long as Shepherd himself, and he turned away, uncomfortable.

Shepherd ought to have let it go, but he couldn’t. “When they’re this far gone, they’re not harmless.”

“But you said he ought to charge admission.”

“What he’s done here is harmless. Interesting, even. But who knows what he might do next?”

“You mean violence?” Hirst frowned. “That’s rare among schizophrenics.”

“So I’ve been told. You handle a lot of street people in Pinal?”

“Not really. Rural area, you know. Illegals camping out in the woods…”

“Mental patients? Deinstitutionalized? Mainstreamed?”

“Hardly ever.” She lifted her chin. “But I’ve read up on it. I know—”

“You don’t know a fucking thing,” Shepherd said without emphasis. “Now let’s get out of here.”

There was silence on the drive back, except for Mitch, who hummed an unmelodic time and stared at distant visions only he could see.

Elizabeth had eaten nothing in twenty hours. Her last meal had been a couple of granola bars consumed while she staked out Cray’s residence late on Monday afternoon.

She had not realized how utterly famished she was until she opened the menu at the coffee shop and read the list of selections. She wanted one of everything. She wanted breakfast, lunch, and dinner all at once.

The bored waitress drifted back to Elizabeth’s corner table after serving a tray of steaming dishes to a boisterous group of utility workers across the room. “Decided yet?” she said without interest.

Elizabeth, who had waited tables in a coffee shop not very different from this one, appraised the woman’s technique as poor. You got better tips with a cheery welcome and a smile.

She ordered two eggs, scrambled, with hash browns and sausage links and toast with jam and a large orange juice and coffee with cream and sugar and a cinnamon roll on the side.

“Did I remember to say hash browns?” she asked.

The waitress jotted down a few scribbles. “Sweetie, you remembered to say every darn thing on the menu. How do you keep your figure?”

“I run marathons.”

It was true, in a sense. She’d been running for twelve years, and that had to be some kind of record.

She shifted anxiously in the leatherette bench seat, awaiting the food’s arrival. Her hunger, now that she had permitted herself to notice it, was like a living thing inside her, a restless animal clawing and twisting in her belly. She felt weak and faint.

But it didn’t matter. The discomfort was only physical, and it couldn’t compete with the sheer elation lifting her like a concentrated adrenaline hit.

She’d done it.

Called the police.

Left the satchel.

The 911 operator hadn’t believed her, but so what? The package would prove her story.

She just hoped the patrol cops didn’t paw through the contents and smear any fingerprints Cray might have left.

Even now the satchel would be on the desk of some homicide detective at Tucson PD’s downtown headquarters. Or maybe it was in the criminalistics lab, its contents being photographed and measured by careful people with gloved hands. How long would it take before they realized this was the real thing? The knife would surely confirm it. Probably they could match the blade to nicks on Sharon Andrews’ skull.