John Saul - Faces of Fear

He swore out loud as a black Mercedes cut in front of him, then decided that breaking two laws wasn’t any worse than breaking one, and dropped over to the shoulder of the freeway. “Can’t you just send someone up there?” he pleaded with the operator as he drove on the shoulder. “Surely there’s got to be some way for you to get Conrad Dunn’s home address!”

“This is an emergency line, sir,” the operator explained with a patience that was starting to grate on him. “If you can’t give us any specifics at all, I can’t see how—”

“Fine!” Scott barked into the phone. “I’ll call you when I get there and know exactly what’s going on.” Snapping the phone shut and dropping it on the passenger seat, he pressed down on the accelerator and in less than a minute was pulling off the freeway.

And not a cop in sight, which he wasn’t sure was a blessing. At least an actual officer might have been willing to follow him up to Dunn’s place. Barely glancing to the left as Skirball Center Drive merged into Mulholland, he passed half a dozen cars before abruptly cutting back into the right lane to turn on Roscomare. Minutes later he pulled into the Dunn driveway and parked behind Michael’s car.

Though nothing looked terribly wrong, a chill still ran up his spine.

He retrieved his cell phone from the passenger seat, got out, and approached the front door.

He rang the bell a couple of times, then circled the house, searching for a way in.

On the back terrace, one of the French doors stood half open. He pushed it wide. “Michael?” he called out.

No answer. And the sound of his own voice had that oddly hollow note peculiar to empty houses.

“Anybody home?” he called out, stepping into the library. “Michael?”

Scott’s fingers tightened on the cell phone, and he opened it as he moved farther into the house.

“Michael! Risa! Alison!”

No answer.

He dialed 911 for the second time in less than fifteen minutes, and when the operator answered, knew he still couldn’t tell her exactly what the emergency was. But now at least he had an exact address, and a door that had been standing open at an apparently empty house.

A house Michael had been in fifteen minutes ago, and in front of which his car was still parked.

“Something is terribly wrong at the residence of Conrad Dunn,” he said, then gave the operator the exact address.

“What do you mean, ‘terribly wrong’?”

“I mean I got a call saying something was wrong and to call the police. Nobody would do anything because I didn’t have the address. Now I’m here and my friend is missing. His car is here, but he’s not. Nobody’s here. A door was left standing open and there’s no one here.”

“All right, sir,” the operator said calmly. “I’m sending a car right away. I don’t want you to do anything at all. Do not go into the house or anywhere else until the officers arrive, unless you are in immediate danger. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Scott said, but even as he folded his phone and dropped it into his pocket, he knew he wasn’t about to follow the woman’s orders. Michael was in trouble, and if there was anything he could do to help, he would do it.

And there was no telling when the cops would arrive.

Doing his best to make no sound whatsoever, Scott Lawrence made his way through the house.

Somewhere — somewhere not far away — Michael needed him.

Needed him right now.

He could feel it.

MICHAEL SHAW GAZED ABOUT HIM IN STUNNED CONFUSION. WHEREVER he’d thought the door behind the screen might lead, he’d never imagined the bizarre scene spread before him.

He was in a huge windowless room that was obviously underground.

It was some kind of laboratory, with stainless steel counters and sinks, all of it lit by the shadowless glare of the fluorescents that filled the entire ceiling. But even in the white brilliance of the lights, a large tank glowed a poisonous shade of green, as if it were filled with some kind of algae.

A pump was running steadily, and he could see some kind of gas being slowly forced through the green substance in the tank.

To the right, taking up nearly half the space in the laboratory, was what looked like an operating room, entirely enclosed by glass walls, with what looked like an airlock sealing off its interior from the rest of the laboratory.

Every wall of the operating room held a large flat-panel monitor, and both the monitors he could see displayed the same image.

His daughter’s face.

Her face, marked with heavy black lines.

But it wasn’t possible — none of it was possible!

Yet even as he tried to reject the reality of the scene, he found himself charging toward the glassed-in enclosure and pounding on it with both fists. “Alison!” he howled. “Alison!”

He moved around to the outer door of the airlock and wrenched at its handle, but it was locked. Swearing, and bellowing his daughter’s name again, he scanned the area for something to smash the glass with. On one of the stainless steel counters there was a metal stand holding some kind of beaker. Michael seized the stand, knocking the beaker to the floor, and ignored the shards of the shattered object as he swung the stand at the glass.

Nothing — not even a chip, let alone a crack.

THE SCALPEL IN CONRAD DUNN’S RIGHT HAND STOPPED in midair, barely a millimeter above the cut line he’d so carefully drawn on Alison’s face. The noise that had penetrated the strains of Vivaldi filling the operating room had come from behind him, and now he turned and looked for its source.

The ex-husband.

How had he gotten in here?

Not that it mattered. The surgery had already begun, and there was no point in stopping now. Even if the ex-husband were to call someone, he would be far enough along by the time they arrived that no one would dare stop him.

If they did, they would not only destroy Alison Shaw’s beauty, but might easily kill her as well. And when he was finished, and everyone saw what he had accomplished — saw that he had once again created perfection — that would be the end of it.

Taking a deep breath to recover the total concentration he needed to finish the surgery, Conrad turned back to his patient.

He gazed at the monitors for several long seconds, rehearsing each careful incision in his mind.

Using the remote control to turn the Vivaldi up enough to cover any further commotion from outside, he used the fingers of his left hand to pull the skin taut around Alison’s upper lip.

Once again he readied the scalpel.

MICHAEL SEARCHED for something else, and spotted a chair almost hidden by a large bundle wrapped in a plastic sheet. In two steps he crossed to the chair and yanked it off the floor. The bundle tipped over and the plastic sheet fell away, and he was staring into Risa’s face, ashen in the pallor of death, her empty eyes staring up at him.

It froze him for a moment, and he was seized again by the certainty that none of this could be real, that it was all a terrible dream from which he would awaken and find himself home in bed, with Scott sleeping peacefully next to him.

He took an involuntary step back, his heel catching in the plastic sheet and pulling it all the way off Risa’s body, and now he saw her ruined torso, slashed open from just above the pubis all the way up to her chest.

Her ribs had been cut open, and what had once been her internal organs lay in a bloody heap on her thighs. Michael’s gorge rose and a wave of towering fury came over him. Turning away from Risa’s body, he crashed the chair against the wall of the operating room, but instead of the glass shattering, the chair’s frame broke.