Cody McFadyen - The Face of Death

The girl has a gun in her hand, and she's pressing the barrel against her right temple. She hadn't turned around at the sound of the door opening.

I can't blame her. I wouldn't want to turn around either. Even as my heart hammers, the clinical part of me takes notes. The blood on the walls was put there by the killer. I know this because I can see patterns. Slashes, swirls, and curlicues. He played here. Used their blood like finger paint to make patterns. To say something. I look over at Sarah. She continues to gaze out the window, unaware of me. She's not the perpetrator. Not enough blood on her, and the corpses are all too big. She'd never have gotten any of them up the stairs by herself.

I move forward into the room, trying not to step on evidence. I give up; I'd have to levitate.

Too much blood, but none of it in the right places. Where's the murder scene?

Every bit of blood evidence I could see was purposeful. None of this was the result of a throat being slit.

Focus.

The investigator in me is a detached creature. It can view the worst of the worst with dispassion. But detachment isn't what I need right now. I need empathy. I force myself to stop examining the scene, to stop calculating, and focus all of my attention on the girl.

"Sarah?" I keep my voice soft, unthreatening.

No response. She continues to sing in that awful monotone whisper.

"Sarah." A little louder now.

Still no reaction. The gun stays at her temple. She keeps on singing.

"Sarah! It's Smoky. Smoky Barrett!" My voice booms, louder than I'd intended. I startle myself.

Startle her too. The singing stops.

Quieter: "You asked for me, honey. I'm here. Look at me."

This sudden silence is as bad in its own way as the singing had been. She's still looking out the window. The gun hasn't moved from her temple.

Sarah begins turning toward me. It's a montage of slow, jerky motions, an old door opening on rusted hinges. The first thing I notice is her beauty, because of its contrast with the horror around her. She is ethereal, something from another world. She has dark, shimmering hair, the impossible hair you see on models in shampoo commercials. She's Caucasian, with an exoticness about her that speaks of European roots. French, perhaps. Her features have that ideal symmetry that most women dream of having, and too many living in Los Angeles go under the knife to get.

Her face is the mirror opposite of mine, a counterpoint of perfection to my flaws. She has blood splattered on her arms and face, and soaked into the short-sleeved long white nightgown she's wearing. She has full, cupid-lips, and while I'm sure they're normally a beautiful pink, right now they are the pale white of a fish belly.

I wonder about that nightgown. Why had she been wearing it in the afternoon?

Her eyes are a rich blue, heart-stopping. The look of defeat I find in them is so profound, it makes me queasy.

Pressed to all that beauty, the barrel of what I can now tell is a nine-mm Browning. This is no weak twenty-two. If she pulls the trigger, she'll die.

"Sarah? Can you hear me now?"

She continues to look at me with those defeated, blue-flame eyes.

"Honey, it's me. Smoky Barrett. They said you asked for me, and I got here as fast as I could. Can you talk to me?"

She sighs. It's a full-body sigh, straight from the pit of her stomach. A sigh that says, I want to lie down now, I want to lie down and die . No other reply, but at least she keeps looking at me. I want this. I don't want those eyes to start roaming, to remember the bodies on the bed.

"Sarah? I have an idea. Why don't we walk out into the hallway?

We don't have to go anywhere else--we can sit at the top of the stairs, if you want. You can keep that gun pointed right where it is. We'll just sit down, and I'll wait until you're ready to talk." I lick my lips. "How about it, sweetheart?"

She cocks her head at me, a casual motion that becomes horrifying because she keeps the gun barrel against her temple as she does it. It makes her seem hollow. Puppet-like.

Another deep sigh, even more ragged sounding. Her face is expressionless. Only the sighs and the eyes show me what's going on inside her. Located somewhere in hell, I'd say.

A long moment passes, and then she nods.

I am almost thankful, at this moment, for Bonnie's muteness. It's made me comfortable with nonverbal communication, able to understand nuanced meaning regardless of words. Okay, that nod says. But the gun stays, and I'll probably still use it. Just get her out of this room, I think. That's the first step.

"Great, Sarah," I reply, nodding back to her. "I'm going to put away my gun." Her eyes follow my hands as I do this. "Now, I'm going to back out of the room. I want you to follow me. I want you to keep your eyes on mine. That's important, Sarah. Only on me. Don't look right or left or up or down. Look at me."

I start to move backward, going in a straight line. I keep my eyes locked on hers, willing her to do the same. I stop when I'm standing in the doorway.

"Come on, honey. I'm right here. Walk to me."

A hesitation, and then she slides off the windowsill. Kind of pours off it, like water. The gun is still at her head. Her eyes stay on mine as she moves toward the doorway. They never stray to the bed, not once. Good, I think. Nothing like looking at that mess to make you want to kill yourself.

Now that she's standing, I can tell that she's about five foot two inches. In spite of her shock, her movements are graceful and precise. She glides.

She looks small surrounded by the murdered dead. Her bare feet are splashed with blood; she either doesn't notice, or doesn't care. I walk back to let her move through the doorway. She plods past me, keeping her eyes on my hands. A watchful zombie.

"I'm going to reach over and close the door. Okay, honey?"

She nods. I don't care, the nod says. About living or dying or anything at all.

I close the door and allow myself a moment of relief. I wipe sweat from my forehead with a trembling hand.

I take a deep breath and turn to Sarah. Now let's see if I can get her to give me that gun.

"You know what? I'm going to sit down."

I take a seat so the bedroom doors are at my back. I do this without breaking eye contact. I'm here, I see you, you have all my attention, I'm saying.

"It's a little hard to talk while you're up there and I'm down here,"

I say, squinting up at her. I indicate the space in front of me. "Why don't you take a seat?" I examine her face. "You look tired, sweetheart."

That eerie head-cocking gesture again. I lean forward and pat the carpet.

"Come on, Sarah. It's just you and me. No one is going to come in here until I tell them to. No one's going to hurt you while I'm here. You wanted to see me." I pat the carpet again, still maintaining eye contact. "Sit down and relax. I'll shut up and we'll wait here until you're ready to tell me whatever it is you wanted to tell me."

She moves without warning, stepping backward and then lowering herself to the floor. It's done with the same pouring-of-water grace that she displayed as she slid off the windowsill. I wonder idly if she's a dancer, or perhaps a gymnast.

I give her a reassuring smile. "Good, honey," I say. "Very good."

Her eyes stay on mine. The gun is still glued to her right temple. As I consider my next move, I remember one of the key lessons my negotiations instructor gave:

"Speaking when you want, not speaking when you want, it's all about control," he'd observed. "When you're dealing with someone who's refusing to speak, and you don't know what buttons to push--

don't know much about them personally, in other words--you need to shut up. Your instinct will be to fill that silence. Resist it. It's like letting a phone ring--it makes you crazy, but it'll stop ringing sooner or later. Same thing here. Wait them out, and they'll fill that silence for you."