Michael Prescott: Stealing Faces

“Taking that much methamphetamine every day would make anybody crazy.” The smile slipped off his face. “How’s your treatment coming?”

“I’ve gotten over the addiction. The withdrawal symptoms weren’t too pleasant. But I can’t really complain.” She spread her arms to take in the room, with its sterile bedding and gleaming countertops, its private bath. “This place is a lot nicer than my previous accommodations — and I’m including the motels I used to stay in, not just Hawk Ridge.”

“You have the room all to yourself.”

“The institute’s paying for it.” She raised a mischievous eyebrow. “They’ll be paying for quite a few things. That lawyer Anson hired is pretty darn good.” Then she frowned. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“First I’d like an answer to one of mine.” He took a small manila envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. “I want you to look at this.” He unclasped the envelope and removed a photograph, then hesitated. “It may upset you.”

“After all that’s happened to me recently, I’m past being upset.”

Even so, her hands trembled slightly as she studied the photo during a long, thoughtful silence.

“It’s her,” she said finally. “The one in the garage, twelve years ago.”

“We thought it was. She’s the only victim who disappeared in the right time frame. This is her yearbook photo, senior year.”

“Who was she?”

“Rebecca Morgan. Age nineteen when she was reported missing. She was never found. She got into a fight with her boyfriend and went out to the highway to thumb a ride home.”

“And Justin picked her up. Justin… and Cray.”

“They must have.”

Kaylie nodded slowly. “Nineteen. My age at the time. I wonder if Justin would’ve gotten around to hunting me before long.”

Shepherd didn’t answer.

“When I saw her,” Kaylie went on softly, “she was only a face. Like a mask. A rubber mask. That’s what I thought it was, at first, until I touched it, felt the texture…. Justin had preserved her with some sort of tanning oil, and pressed her between two plywood planks, like a dry leaf pressed in a book.”

“Cray used a different method later on,” Shepherd said, but she didn’t seem to hear, and he knew she was not in this room, but in the garage of the house she’d shared with her young husband, the garage with its secrets, its insanity.

“I went in there,” she whispered, “because Justin was always ordering me to stay out, mind my own business. I knew he was hiding something, and finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. But I never imagined — until I found that… trophy…”

“And then he found you.”

Her eyes closed briefly in confirmation. “He’d gone out that night, in his camouflage fatigues. Normally when he went hunting, he didn’t return for hours, even days. I thought it was safe to poke around. But that time he came back only a few minutes after he’d left. He’d forgotten something, I guess. He walked right in on me — while I was holding it in my hands — that girl, Rebecca Morgan — her face in my hands—”

Shepherd stepped beside the chair and touched her shoulder gently. She managed a weak, faltering smile.

“I guess you were right,” she said. “I guess I am still capable of getting upset. It’s just that I’ve dreamed about it so often in the years since. Nightmares, awful ones. And seeing her picture now just brings it all back.”

“I’m sorry. But we needed to confirm that last detail.”

“I’ll be okay.” She remembered the photo she was holding, and handed it back without another look. “Anyway, I’m glad to know her name. For all these years she’s been a mystery to me. She didn’t live in Safford, did she?”

“Miles away. A whole different county. Justin and Cray must have been cruising far from home when they gave her a lift.”

“That’s why I never heard about her disappearance. If she’d been local, I would have known. As it was, I only knew she was some stranger Justin had murdered, and he’d kept part of her — kept it the way he kept the antlers and hides of other things he’d killed. And later… later I began to think he hadn’t acted alone.”

“Because the evidence vanished. There was nothing in the garage when the police searched the house.”

“It was all gone. The girl’s face, and the jars of blood, the tapes with Indian chanting on them — everything. So nobody ever believed a word I said. They didn’t even listen.” She shook her head. “If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have taken some of it as proof, gone straight to the police. But I couldn’t think at all. After I shot him…”

The words trailed off, and for a moment Shepherd thought she wouldn’t speak again, but then she lifted her head, determined to finish the story.

“I had no choice about it. He had backed me up against the garage wall, and he was closing in, and his eyes — I’ve never seen eyes like that, so wild and dangerous, tiger’s eyes.” She stared into some far distance, and Shepherd knew she was seeing those eyes now. “All I could do was grab a pistol off the gun rack. He always kept them loaded. I squeezed the trigger once, and it was so loud, the noise, and there was blood, a lot of blood, spraying me, my hands, all red….”

Her fingers interlaced, her wrists twisting.

“After that, I lost it. I just went away somewhere, and whatever I did, I was only going through the motions. When they found me in the desert, I was on my knees, crying, and I couldn’t say a word.”

“You were in shock, Kaylie. That’s all.”

“I thought I was insane. And when I heard all the evidence was gone, I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing — that maybe there never had been any woman’s face, that Justin hadn’t tried to kill me, that all of it was in my mind, and I’d killed him, murdered him, for no reason at all….” She took a breath, then added, “And Cray, of course — my therapist — Cray did his best to convince me that I was crazy. He told me I was a hopeless case, and there would never be a cure.”

“When did you start to suspect him as Justin’s accomplice?”

“Only later, after I’d escaped from Hawk Ridge. I asked myself if there was any way the evidence could have really existed and then vanished. There was only one answer. Justin had a partner — whoever he was meeting that night. And when Justin didn’t show up, his partner came to our house, found him dead, and cleaned out the garage so the police would find nothing incriminating.”

“You still didn’t know it was Cray.”

“No. I was never sure. Even after I read about Sharon Andrews — how she was found in the river, found without a face — even then, I didn’t know if Cray had been Justin’s accomplice, or if it was someone else, or if I really was deluding myself about the whole thing. But I knew Cray might be the one. Because at Hawk Ridge he’d hated me so much. And why would he hate me, unless I’d killed someone who mattered to him? He’s a loner — a lone wolf — but with Justin he found someone who understood him. Justin must have been the only person who ever meant anything to Cray. The one person he loved.”

Shepherd realized he was still holding the photograph. He took a last look at Rebecca Morgan, smiling into the abyss of her future, and then he slipped the photo back into the envelope and fastened its clasp.

“Well,” he said, “that wraps it up, I think. Case closed, after twelve years.”

“I guess so. I guess…” Then Kaylie lifted her head, playful annoyance furrowing her brow. “ Hey. You’re still holding out on me. The air shaft — remember?”

Shepherd shrugged. “It’s getting late. You can wait another few days, can’t you?”