Michael Prescott - Stealing Faces

Carefully he unfolded it and compared the license number with the string of letters and numerals on the plate.

The same.

He checked again. He checked a third time. Then, because he was a conscientious person and he did not want to fail in his important mission, he checked once more.

It was her car. Kaylie McMillan’s car.

His big hands flexed. He thought of last Christmas, when he and some of the other patients had been treated to a turkey dinner, and he’d gotten to play with the wishbone. It had snapped so easily in his fingers, just the way Kaylie McMillan’s neck would snap when he wrenched her head sideways on her shoulders.

He was not prone to violence. He’d never killed anybody, never even hurt an animal. Still, he didn’t imagine it would be too hard.

He just had to find her. She could be behind any of the motel room doors. He supposed the easiest way was to just knock on every door until eventually she answered. Then he would break her neck and walk away.

The nearest door had the number 27 on it in big letters. “Twenty-seven,” Walter said, for no particular reason. He often announced the names of things.

He knocked, but there was no answer. Nobody home.

“Twenty-eight,” he said at his next stop.

This time a person did answer, but it wasn’t Kaylie. It was some guy in a bathrobe, who said, “Yeah?” in a belligerent way.

“Is Kaylie in there?”

“I don’t know no fucking Kaylie. You got the wrong fucking room, asshole.”

The door slammed.

Walter nodded. The man had been helpful. He had made it very plain that Walter had the wrong room. If everyone in the motel was equally cooperative, he would find Kaylie in no time.

His knocking drew no response at rooms 29, 30, and 31.

The door to room 32 was already open. A maid was at work changing the sheets. “Is Kaylie in here?” Walter asked.

The maid was a young woman with dark hair and a round, dark face. She did not speak English. Walter was temporarily flummoxed. Then he thought of a way to get his point across.

He took a pad of motel stationery from a bureau and in a few deft strokes he sketched Kaylie’s face, as he remembered it.

Drawing was one of his few talents. He had heard Dr. Cray remark several times that his skill in this area was really exceptional, which Walter took to mean good. Some of the other patients couldn’t draw at all, couldn’t draw even a stick figure or a cartoon face, and some of them couldn’t recognize a human portrait when they saw one.

Walter might have his problems, but this was not one of them. The drawing he produced was a perfect likeness of Kaylie McMillan at age nineteen, an image culled from a library of faces in his photographic memory and put on paper without a single smudge or wasted line.

He showed it to the maid, and her face brightened.

“Ah, the senora,” she said. “I make up room for her. Very pretty, very nice.”

Walter nodded. He thought Kaylie was pretty too. He thought he might even kiss her once, smack on the lips, after she was dead.

“Where is she?” Walter asked. “I’m looking for her.” He rarely lied, but the importance of this moment inspired him to a brilliant prevarication. “I’m her brother, and I’m here to pick her up.”

This sounded convincing, though he wasn’t sure the maid quite understood.

Whether she did or not, she seemed happy to help. “She is in room, uh… how you say nombre? Three and seven.”

Three and seven? Room 10? No, that couldn’t be right.

Then Walter understood.

Room 37. Just a few doors down.

“Thank you,” Walter said. He took the drawing with him when he left.

Well, that had been easy. Now he would kill Kaylie and go home. His stomach was getting a little restless, and he suspected that lunchtime had passed. He hoped he would not miss dinner.

“Thirty-seven,” he said, and rapped on the door.

No answer.

He knocked again. “Kaylie,” he called. “Are you there? Come out, Kaylie.”

Nothing.

He was rather disappointed. It appeared she was out.

The idea that she might not open the door never occurred to him. At the hospital, the only world he knew well, people always responded when he knocked on their doors or called out to them or pressed a buzzer for help.

If Kaylie was not responding, then she wasn’t home. But she would be back. He could wait.

Waiting was another thing he was good at. He could sit in the same position for hours without moving.

Next to room 37 there was a stairwell. A good place to hide.

Walter retreated into the far corner of the stairwell and leaned back against the wall, his arms at his sides, his gaze focused straight ahead on nothing, no thoughts in his mind, no distractions, and he waited for Kaylie to return.

“Ma’am? You okay?”

Elizabeth heard the words and looked up.

Two small boys, no older than ten, stood watching her with wary concern. One had a book bag slung over his shoulder, and the other wore a Diamondbacks baseball cap cocked on his head.

“Ma’am?” the boy with the book bag said again, his face scrunching up in a puzzled frown.

“I’m fine,” she answered automatically, wondering why he and his friend had stopped to ask.

Then she realized that unconsciously, while sitting on the bus-stop bench, she had begun to shred the newspaper in her hands. Long curling strips lay everywhere on the bench and sidewalk, a scatter of confetti.

“You’re not s’posed to litter,” the boy in the baseball cap said sternly. “It’s against the law.”

He seemed less helpful than the other boy, and more afraid.

Elizabeth found a smile for him. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” Her gaze widened to include them both. “I won’t do it again.”

The second boy did not return the smile. He just stood silently appraising her, worried by what he saw.

His companion, more trusting, said, “That’s okay. You didn’t mean to. What’s your name?”

Before Elizabeth could answer, the other boy cut in. “I don’t think we should be talking to her, Tommy.”

Tommy ignored this. “You waiting for the bus?”

“No. Just sitting down. I wanted to get out of the wind for a while.” She got up, taking care not to scatter the loose strips of newsprint in her grasp. “Guess I’d better get going.”

“We go to Sewell Elementary,” Tommy said.

“Come on.” The other boy tugged at Tommy’s arm. He seemed even more concerned now that Elizabeth was on her feet. “Let’s go.”

Tommy reluctantly yielded to the pressure. “Okay, well… we’ll see you.”

He produced a slightly goofy, lopsided smile, and Elizabeth realized that he was enamored of her, in his boyish way. That was why he’d stopped to talk.

She was charmed, yet at the same time oddly saddened. It took her a moment to realize that she was wondering how much time had passed since anybody had smiled at her like that.

She hadn’t dared intimacy in years. A serious relationship posed the risk of exposing her safeguarded secrets, or of drawing another person into the dangerous mess of her life.

“Bye, Tommy,” she said, with a smile of her own.

She glimpsed a red tinge inflaming his cheeks as he turned quickly away.

The two boys walked off, and she heard the one in the baseball cap saying, “What’s the matter with you, man? You nuts or something?”

She watched them go. They were heading west on their way home from school; her motel lay in the same direction. She didn’t want them to think she was following them. She had a feeling Tommy’s companion wouldn’t care for that development.

When they were well down the street, she wedged the newspaper under her arm and started walking. She knew what she had to do, and she had better get moving if she intended to do it tonight.