The Faceless One (14 page)

* * *

It was the next morning before the acid-ravaged body was positively identified as Jackson Purcival, formerly of Breckforth, Gunderson, and Mayfield.

Schiffman made himself scarce when Stan and Richie showed up, which was fine by Stan. Any more of that douche bag’s shenanigans, and Stan was liable to lock him in a drawer along with the messier remains of the day. He pictured himself putting a note on the drawer: “Don’t fucking open ’til Christmas.” Sweet.

They went to Jackson Purcival’s home, a fashionable residence in New Rochelle. The house was big enough that they probably retained a housekeeper and cook but not a butler. They found Mrs. Purcival in the front yard, cutting roses from large bushes that grew in one corner near the white picket fence. Dressed simply in jeans and a red-and-white-pin-striped blouse with the sleeves rolled up, she was a thin woman with short brown hair, most of which was hidden under a large straw hat. She had large eyes, and Stan saw that she had been very pretty in her youth. Bees and butterflies moved lazily around her, the air filled with the scent of flowers and sun-soaked grass.

“Mrs. Purcival?”

She looked up, just placing a large yellow rose in a basket. “Yes?”

Stan and Richie both held out their badges. She looked at them as if they might be radioactive. Objects that seemed innocuous and yet were quite deadly. He guessed that was true. No news following the display of their shields was ever positive.

“I’m Detective Stan Roberts of the New York Police Department. This is my partner, Richie Matthews.”

She stood immediately, her eyes suddenly wide with concern.

“What’s happened?”

Shit, he hated this part. He had half hoped she would have heard from someone else.

“Could we go inside please, ma’am?”

“Just tell me. Please.”

Stan sighed.

“There was an incident in the subway. I’m afraid your husband was killed.”

She dropped the basket of roses and small clippers. The flowers bounced slightly as they hit the ground. Several petals flew up like pale butterflies, then fell back around the basket. The clippers glinted in the summer sun like silver teeth. Stan and Richie watched her, both ready to catch her if she fell. Of course, they were also gauging her response, to determine whether she was indeed surprised, whether she felt real grief.

She wavered a moment, then composed herself.
Strong woman
, Stan thought.

The silver shears lay forgotten. Soon, they would be too hot to touch.

“Please come inside,” she said, and turned toward the front door.

It was cool inside, the place modern and sparsely furnished. Mrs. Purcival preferred to accent the place with fresh flowers rather than knickknacks or the cutesy-pooh shit that some went in for. To keep the house in flowers was a constant task, and again it was something Stan Roberts found admirable. Here was a woman who didn’t spend all her time shopping or watching television. She was active and helped create a beautiful place for her family.

She started to offer them something to drink, and Stan and Richie both passed—better to get this over with. They sat in the living room, the bright yellow and pink roses bringing a false gaiety to the proceedings.

“What happened to Jackson?” Mrs. Purcival asked at last.

“Your husband was struck by one of the trains near Central Park,” Stan said.

“My God,” she replied, her voice a whisper.

“Mrs. Purcival, it looks like he was attacked first.”

“Attacked?”

“There’s evidence that someone threw acid on him.”

Mrs. Purcival went pale. She began to cry, her eyes welling up. She dabbed at them with a tissue.

“Jackson wasn’t very good about pain,” she said. “He was a big man, but he wasn’t thick-skinned. I used to tease him about it.”

She sat there a moment, remembering. A small smile flitted across her face, and was gone, like the fleeting shadow of a bird.

“I hate to think of him in pain,” she whispered.

“Mrs. Purcival,” Stan said, “can you think of anyone who would want to harm your husband?’

She looked at Stan as if she had just now seen him. She thought about his question and shook her head.

“Everyone liked him,” she said, and dabbed at her eyes.

“He was a lawyer,” Richie said, “sometimes they tick people off.”

“He was a corporate lawyer, Detective,” she said. “I doubt that one of the large banks or publishing houses he worked with had him murdered.”

Stan looked at her.

“I have to ask you, Mrs. Purcival, was he involved with drugs or gambling, something that might have gotten him in trouble with organized crime?”

“He was a good husband,” she said, “and a good father.” At the thought of her son, she began to cry again.

“And your marriage was okay?” Stan asked.

“Until today,” she said, a wan smile playing on her face. She looked like she might never truly smile again. Stan wished he could assure her they would catch the person or persons who had murdered him, or something, anything that might give her some measure of comfort. There was nothing.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Purcival. If you should think of something, will you please give us a call?”

She nodded.

“How do I—” she faltered. “How do I go about making arrangements?”

“The coroner will need to examine him, then he’ll be released. Whatever funeral home you deal with will make the necessary arrangements.”

She nodded. “I hate to think of him in pain,” she said again, twisting her tissue into tight knots, like a magician about to perform some miraculous trick. She let the tissue drop to the floor. She had no magic to perform.

Stan and Richie again made their apologies and left. Three deaths, all bizarre, and no real suspects. The only real clue might lie in the package that was sent to Steven Slater. Stan decided they’d have to intercept the UPS truck.

* * *

Stan and Richie grabbed a couple of sandwiches at Manny’s and sat down at one of the chipped Formica tables near the back. Stan had a Reuben with a cup of coffee, and Richie opted for pastrami and a Coke.

Richie asked for a side of mayo to go with his sandwich. The waitress had almost said something but nodded politely and went to fetch some. She had returned and placed it on the table quietly but had given Stan a knowing look. After she walked to another table, Stan frowned
at his partner.

“Jesus, Matthews, you are the most ignorant fuck I know.”

“And why is that?” Richie asked, slathering the Hellmann’s on his onion roll.

“Because only an ignorant asshole like you would put mayonnaise on a kosher sandwich.”

“I’m not Jewish,” Richie answered.

“No shit,” Stan replied. His stomach was getting queasy just looking at the mess Richie was creating. He belched, and a small amount of bile burned the back of his throat. He could imagine gallons of acid being dumped into his stomach, his organs being consumed from within while Richie ate his fucking sandwich.

“So why should I be kosher? I like pastrami with mayonnaise.”

“Goddamn it, that’s like putting ketchup on prime rib.”

“For your information, I like that, too.”

“You are a fuckin’ Neanderthal, Richie.”

“Don’t get nasty,” Richie said, a glob of mayonnaise at the corner of his mouth.

Roberts ended up pushing his sandwich away and plopping three Alka-Seltzer in his water glass. He let out a large belch that he barely contained in his mouth, but it didn’t really help.

“Stomach again?” Richie asked, taking an enormous bite of dill pickle.

Stan nodded, hoping for another belch to bring him relief.

“Why do you let this shit chew you up?” Richie asked.

Stan looked at him, and Richie grinned. He cared as much as Stan did but seemed to have kept the cast-iron stomach he had had since his days at the academy.

Richie wiped his mouth, then looked down, his expression taking on a more serious air, a slight tinge of fear in it.

“Maybe it’s time you got out, Stan,” he said quietly, almost as if he hoped Stan wouldn’t hear him.

“And do what?” Stan asked. “Work at a desk all day, eat donuts until my ass is too big for anything except those industrial pieces of furniture they give sergeants and captains?”

Richie grinned at the thought, but then his face again took on a serious cast.

“You could transfer, maybe vice or narcotics.”

“What, and quit show business? Homicide is where I belong. You know it, I know it. It’s the one place where I can do some good. Make a difference.” Stan took a sip of coffee and winced. “Jesus, I sound like a fucking commercial. But it’s true, my bleeding gut notwithstanding. Besides, who’s gonna keep a fucking snot-nosed punk like you in line if not me?”

“Fuck you,” Richie said, but there was no malice in it. “I just thought the case was getting to you,” he said finally.

“Nah,” Stan said, and tried to make a show of eating his sandwich. Meanwhile, his stomach twisted in on itself, and his thoughts were of shadowy figures with unknowable motivations. He felt like a kid in some vast, dark cavern, his last match burning down to singe his fingers.

It was early, just before seven, but Jimmy couldn’t sleep. His rest had been interrupted by several nightmares, but he couldn’t really remember much of them. The last one had had him being eaten alive by little men with bright copper eyes and needle teeth. He woke up thrashing in the bed, becoming thoroughly tangled in sheets that were damp with sweat.

He got up and washed his face in his tiny bathroom. The face that stared back at him was going from thin to gaunt; his dark eyes were now accompanied by dark circles underneath, giving him the look of a frightened, nocturnal creature. His nose, slightly crooked but never broken, was now beginning to dominate his face.

He was looking at the face of an old man.

Shit, he was old—seventy-two—that was old, wasn’t it?

But that wasn’t it. He was feeling old, old before his time.

Lack of sleep was making him irritable and he could almost feel his body’s defenses losing strength. A rest home was no place for a weakened immune system.

He still had a couple of contacts in Yanut. He figured they would know of someone either in town or a neighboring village who could make use of his visions and the talismans he was given. He could even send the talismans by Express Mail.

Let them worry about The Faceless One and Raven.

Jimmy picked up the phone, shaking slightly as he dialed the number.

His first call was to Milo Grant, who was a cousin on his father’s side. Milo was one of the few who had never abandoned the ancient ways. He had always sought out Jimmy’s blessing before his boat went out, and once asked Jimmy to help exorcise a demon from his youngest child. They had been the closest of friends as kids, then drifted apart as adults do, slowly, like two ice floes gradually catching different currents and moving farther and farther apart. Last Jimmy had heard, Milo had become a sort of handyman and guide, taking any number of odd jobs once the cannery had closed up. The line rang twice, then was interrupted by a computerized voice telling him that the number was no longer in service, that he should check the number and dial again. He dialed again and received the same recording. He tried a third time, dialing very slowly and methodically, like someone just learning to use a telephone.

“The number you have reached is not in service, and there is no new num—”

Jimmy hung up. He thought a moment, then tried Dodd Nils, who owned the filling station near the outskirts of town, the same station he had worked at when he and Rose first met. Though the station had changed hands more than once (he believed it was a Chevron, now), Dodd Nils was the one constant. Surely in his late eighties now, Dodd would shuffle out to every car and laboriously clean windows, pump gas, and check oil—whether the customer wanted it or not.

Though it was an hour earlier in Alaska, he knew Dodd would be up. The man had never slept more than three hours a night, even as a teenager. Two tries on that got him the same recording.

He looked up a number for Heck, who was a desk clerk at the small hotel, and the number for Gary Wilkes, the white principal of the public school. Both yielded that same cold recording.

He tried the number of Dick Hawsbeth, a cardplayer to whom he still owed fifty dollars. The two had stopped speaking to one another long before Jimmy had come to Golden Summer. He had caught the man trying to kiss Rose at a tribal dance and nearly taken his head off with the broken end of a whiskey bottle.

Dick’s number was also not in service.

Puzzled and sleepy, he went to the cafeteria and got a cup of coffee. He was early enough that one of the maple spice muffins was still available, but the thought of eating made him queasy. He returned to his room and stared out the window until ten.

At 10:05, he called the Chamber of Commerce in Anchorage.

“Chamber of Commerce, Dorothy speaking.”

“Dorothy, this is Jimmy Kalmaku. I used to live up that way.”

“Oh, good morning. What can I do for you, Mr. Kalmaku?”

“I’m trying to reach friends in Yanut, but nobody’s phone is working. Can you tell me if there’s a problem with the lines up there?”

There was a troubled pause on the line.

“You’re asking about Yanut?”

Something in the way she said it filled him with dread. He had been feeling it since the first fruitless call but had calmed himself with the rationale that a storm had knocked out phone service for Alaska’s harsher regions.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kalmaku, but there’s no one there. The whole town was wiped out about six months ago.”

“How?” His voice sounded foreign to him.

“It was a blizzard, very bad. It was in all the papers up here. I’m surprised you didn’t hear
about it.”

“I don’t keep up on the news much. Everyone died?”

“I’m afraid so. So terrible, something like three hundred people.”

Jimmy hung up without another word.

There was a computer in the rec room. It wasn’t very fast, but that suited most of the residents, who only used it to send e-mail or look up information on the Web. George had tried to show Jimmy how to look up porn sites, but all those had been blocked. The best he could do were cheesecake photos of girls who seemed to be too young to be out of the house, let alone posing in such skimpy clothes.