John Saul - Faces of Fear

“What’s her name?” the policeman asked.

“Kimberly,” she said as she stared at that sad shoe. “Kimberly Elmont. She was here to meet…” Jennifer’s voice trailed off. “I was looking for her,” she finally managed to say. “I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t find her and…” Her voice trailed off once again, and now the policeman took her arm to steady her.

“Come with me,” he said, and led her over to a police car. He opened the back door. “Why don’t you sit down? I’m going to send someone over to talk to you.”

“Is it Kimberly?” Jennifer asked, searching his eyes.

He didn’t answer, but she knew, because even from the backseat she could see that the matching shoe to the one she’d found was on the body that lay on the asphalt.

She put her face in her hands and began crying as grief overwhelmed her.

Grief, and guilt that she had let Kimberly talk her into coming here at all.

TINA WONG DROVE slowly past the crime scene. Police cars had blocked every driveway leading to the warehouse, and a dozen uniformed officers were trying to control the crowd of kids, most of whom seemed to be either on their cell phones or complaining to the police, or both. It was clear that they could hardly wait to get away from there.

She, on the other hand, wouldn’t have been anywhere else in the world right now.

Tina drove another block, then parked her SUV, grabbed her digital camera and cell phone, and headed for the area that had been cordoned off. With any luck, she’d get a clear view and at least a few seconds of video before anybody saw her.

But climbing over a low cinder-block wall wouldn’t be easy in the little black cocktail dress and heels she’d worn on her date with Richard Sexton, who was probably still sitting alone in the restaurant where she’d gotten the call from the newsroom about the murder report picked up on the police scanner. Poor Richard — this was at least the fourth time it had happened to him — but this was her life, and if he couldn’t deal with it, the hell with him. She just hoped this wasn’t another of the gang knifings that had become so common lately they weren’t even bothering to report them anymore.

Dumping her high heels in favor of the sneakers she always kept in the car for just such moments as this, Tina stepped over the wall and started across the asphalt.

Then she saw what lay in the center of the area the police had cordoned off, and knew this was no gang slaying.

A teenage girl, clad in what was left of a skimpy yellow tank top, lay sprawled on her back, flayed open like she’d been field-dressed by a drunken hunter. A tangle of intestines gleamed in the garish floodlights the police had already set up, and scraps of other tissue — some identifiable, some not — were strewn in what looked like a rough circle.

What was left of the girl lay in the center of that circle of gore.

She’d seen this before — in a Starbucks bathroom — and recognized the handiwork in an instant. It was the same sort of havoc wreaked on Caroline Fisher a year ago.

This was the body she’d been waiting for, ever since Michael Shaw had told her she’d need another body for the special she wanted to do.

Well, here it was. The killer was back in action, and if the amount of blood was any indication, he was in top form. If there’d been anyone around to take the bet, she would have put any amount of money on her certainty that when the coroner put all the carnage back together, he’d discover that part of this girl had disappeared.

Tima looked more closely, saw that the girl was facing away, covered with blood. But there was something odd about her head. She took a step closer.

Her ear was gone! All that was left on the side of her head was a mass of bloody hair and a gaping wound on the side of her head where her ear had been.

Tina fumbled opened her phone and speed-dialed the station. “Send a camera crew to the murder site in Van Nuys. And use the chopper! Now!”

“Hey!” a cop yelled as she snapped the phone closed and dropped it back in her purse. “Get out of here.”

Tina nodded, smiled affably, and held up her hand. “It’s okay,” she said, and turned on her digital camera. “I’m supposed to be here.”

By the time the cop recognized her as a television reporter, she had already snapped off a half-dozen zoom shots of the dead girl and wide angle shots of the whole area.

“No press!” the cop yelled, heading toward her with a look on his face that might have intimidated anyone else.

“Lighten up,” she said, still snapping pictures. Then she turned the camera directly on the cop. “Don’t you want to be on TV?” She was about to snap the shutter, and blind the cop with the flash, when she saw something else in the camera’s bright screen. A few yards behind the cop a young girl was sitting in the back of a police cruiser, a blanket around her shoulders, her head in her hands.

A witness?

Turning away from the angry policeman, Tina headed back the way she’d come, feeling the cop’s eyes on her until she was back at the cinder-block wall at the edge of the cordoned-off area. The officer had turned back to the crime scene by then, and she’d worked out a plan to get close to the girl in the back of the black-and-white. She knew she would never blend in with the crowd of stoned kids, so she’d just have to act like she was part of the investigative team.

She strode down the street a few yards, then reentered the parking lot, ducking under the yellow tape as if she’d done it thousands of times before — which, in truth, she had. “It’s okay,” she said to a cop who seemed about to question her, and turned directly toward the girl sitting in the back of the cruiser, whose teary eyes kept glancing toward the crime scene.

“Hi,” Tina said, coming up to the car. “I’m Tina, and I’m so sorry.” She crouched down and put a comforting hand on the girl’s knee. “You knew her?” The girl bit her lip but said nothing. “It’s all right,” Tina soothed. “Take your time.”

“We — she’s my best friend,” the girl said. “We came together, but I told her it was a bad idea.”

Tina felt a tingle of anticipation, certain something important was coming. “Oh?” she asked as casually as she could. “Why was that?”

The girl looked up at her. “It was an Internet date. I knew she was being set up for something — I just knew it. You don’t do that. You don’t go out with guys you meet on the Internet. I told her.” She began to cry again. “I told her.”

“Did you see him?”

The girl shook her head and blew her nose.

“What’s your name?” Tina asked.

“Jennifer Livingston.”

“Has anyone called your mother yet, Jennifer?”

Jennifer sniffed and shook her head. “The cops want to talk to me.”

“Yes, I’m sure—” Tina began, but her words were cut off by a cold voice.

“Hello, Tina.”

She didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Evan Sands’s voice was unmistable.

Tina offered Jennifer a reassuring smile, then stood up to face the detective and his partner, Rick McCoy.

“How do you do it, Tina?” Sands asked, easing her inexorably away from the girl, and leaving McCoy to get all the information Tina so desperately wanted. “How did you manage to get here before us?”

Tina shrugged and smiled at the detective. “Call it a special gift,” she said.

“Well, here’s a gift for you,” Sands replied. “Scram. We’re busy here.”

“The public has a right to know—” she began, but Sands just nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you can be sure we’ll have a press conference. Until then…” He jerked a thumb toward the other side of the yellow tape, just as the Channel 3 helicopter began to drop out of the sky.