The Face of Fear Read online

  He was pleased with the flattery, and she was delighted by his reaction. She felt that she was gradually chipping away at his inferiority complex, peeling it layer by layer.

  18

  The building engineer for the night shift was a stocky, fair-skinned blond in his late forties. He was wearing gray slacks and a gray-white-blue checkered shirt. He was smoking a pipe.

  When Bollinger came down the steps from the lobby corridor, the gun in his right hand, the engineer said, “Who the hell are you?” He spoke with a slight German accent.

  “Sie sind Herr Schiller, nicht wahr?” Bollinger asked. His grandfather and grandmother had been German-Americans; he had learned the language when he was young and had never forgotten it.

  Surprised to hear German spoken, worried about the gun but confused by Bollinger’s smile, Schiller said, “Ja, ich bin’s.”

  “Es freut mich sehr Sie kennenzulernen. ”

  Schiller took the pipe from his mouth. He licked his lips nervously. “Die Pistole?”

  “Fur den Mord, ” Bollinger said. He squeezed off two shots.

  The narrow room was lined with telephone and power company equipment. The ceiling and walls were unfinished concrete. Two bright red fire extinguishers were hung where they could be reached quickly.

  He went to the far side of the room, to a pair of yard-square metal cabinets that were fixed to the wall. The lid of each cabinet bore the insignia of the telephone company. Although the destruction of the contents would render useless all other routing boxes, switch-boards and backup systems, neither of the cabinets was locked. Each housed twenty-six small levers, circuit breakers in a fuse box. They were all inclined toward the “on” mark. Bollinger switched them off, one by one.

  He moved to a box labeled “Fire Emergency,” forced it open, and tinkered with the wires inside.

  That done, he went to the guards’ room across the hall. He stepped around the bodies and picked up one of the two telephones that stood in front of the closed-circuit television screens.

  No dial tone.

  He jiggled the cut-off spikes.

  Still no dial tone.

  He hung up, picked up the other phone: another dead line.

  Whistling softly, Bollinger entered the first elevator.

  There were two keyholes in the control panel. The top one opened the panel for repairs. The one at the bottom shut down the lift mechanism.

  He tried the keys that he had taken from the dead guard. The third one fit the bottom lock.

  He pushed the button for the fifth floor. The number didn’t light; the doors didn’t close; the elevator didn’t move.

  Whistling louder than before, he proceeded to shut down fourteen of the remaining fifteen elevators. He would use the last one to go to the sixteenth floor, where Ott and MacDonald were working, and later to the fortieth floor, where Harris and his woman were waiting.

  19

  Although Graham hadn’t spoken, Connie knew that something was wrong. He was breathing heavily. She looked up from her book and saw that he had stopped working and was staring at empty air, his mouth slightly open, his eyes sort of glazed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re pale.”

  “Just a headache.”

  “You’re shaking.”

  He said nothing.

  She got up, put down her book, went to him. She sat on the corner of his desk. “Graham?”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine now.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “There for a minute you weren’t.”

  “For a minute I wasn’t,” he agreed.

  She took his hand; it was icy. “A vision?”

  “Yeah,” Graham said.

  “Of what?”

  “Me. Getting shot.”

  “That’s not the least bit funny.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “You’ve never had a personal vision before. You’ve always said the clairvoyance works only when other people are involved.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong.”

  “I doubt it. I felt as if I had been hit between the shoulders with a sledgehammer. The wind was knocked out of me. I saw myself falling.” His blue eyes grew wide. “There was blood. A great deal of blood.”

  She felt sick in her soul, in her heart. He had never been wrong, and now he was predicting he would be shot.

  He squeezed her hand tightly, as if he were trying to press strength from her into him.

  “Do you mean shot—and killed?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe killed or maybe just wounded. Shot in the back. That much is clear.”

  “Who did it—will do it?”

  “The Butcher, I think.”

  “You saw him?”

  “No. Just a strong impression.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “Someplace I know well.”

  “Here?”

  “Maybe...”

  “At home?”

  “Maybe.”

  A fierce gust of wind boomed along the side of the highrise. The office windows vibrated behind the drapes.

  “When will it happen?” she asked.

  “Soon.”

  “Tonight?”

  “I can’t be sure.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Sunday?”

  “Not as late as that.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  20

  The lift stopped at the sixteenth floor.

  Bollinger used the key to shut off the elevator before he stepped out of it. The cab would remain where it was, doors open, until he needed it again.

  For the most part, the sixteenth floor was shrouded in darkness. An overhead fluorescent tube brightened the elevator alcove, but the only light in the corridor came from two dim red emergency exit bulbs, one at each end of the building.

  Bollinger had anticipated the darkness. He took a pencil flashlight from an inside coat pocket, flicked it on.

  Ten small businesses maintained offices on the sixteenth floor, six to the right and four to the left of the elevators. He went to the right. Two suites down the hall he found a door that bore the words CRAGMONT IMPORTS.

  He turned off the flashlight and put it away.

  He took out the Walther PPK.

  Christ, he thought, it’s going so smoothly. So easily. As soon as he finished at Cragmont Imports, he could go after the primary targets. Harris first. Then the woman. If she was good-looking ... well, he was so far ahead of schedule now that he had an hour to spare. An hour for the woman if she rated it. He was ready for a woman, full of energy and appetite and excitement. A woman, a table filled with good food, and a lot of fine whiskey. But mostly a woman. In an hour he could use her up, really use her up.

  He tried the door to Cragmont Imports. It wasn’t locked.

  He walked into the reception lounge. The room was gloomy. The only light came from an adjacent office where the door was standing halfway open.

  He went to the shaft of light, stood in it, listened to the men talking in the inner office. At last he pushed open the door and went inside.

  They were sitting at a conference table that was piled high with papers and bound folders. They weren’t wearing their suit jackets or their ties, and their shirt sleeves were rolled up; one was wearing a blue shirt, the other a white shirt. They saw the pistol at once, but they needed several seconds to adjust before they could raise their eyes to look at his face.

  “This place smells like perfume,” Bollinger said.

  They stared at him.

  “Is one of you wearing perfume?”

  “No,” said blue shirt. “Perfume’s one of the things we import.”

  “Is one of you MacDonald?”

  They looked at the gun, at each other, then at the gun again.

  “MacDonald?” Bollinger asked.

  The o
ne in the blue shirt said, “He’s MacDonald.”

  The one in the white shirt said, “He’s MacDonald.”

  “That’s a lie,” said the one in the blue shirt.

  “No, he’s lying,” said the other.

  “I don’t know what you want with MacDonald,” said the one in the blue shirt. “Just leave me out of it. Do what you have to do to him and go away.”

  “Christ almighty!” said the one in the white shirt. “I’m not MacDonald! You want him, that son of a bitch there, not me!”

  Bollinger laughed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m also here to get Mr. Ott.”

  “Me?” said the one in the blue shirt. “Who in the hell would want me killed?”

  21

  Connie said, “You’ll have to call Preduski.”

  “Why?”

  “To get police protection.”

  “It’s no use.”

  “He believes in your visions.”

  “I know he does.”

  “He’ll give you protection.”

  “Of course,” Graham said. “But that’s not what I meant.”

  “Explain.”

  “Connie, I’ve seen myself shot in the back. It’s going to happen. Things I see always happen. Nobody can do anything to stop this.”

  “There’s no such thing as predestination. The future can be changed.”

  “Can it?”

  “You know it can.”

  A haunted look filled his bright blue eyes. “I doubt that very much.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “But I am sure.”

  This attitude of his, this willingness to ascribe all of his failings to predestination, worried and upset her more than anything else about him. It was an especially pernicious form of cowardice. He was rejecting all responsibility for his own life.

  “Call Preduski,” she said.

  He lowered his eyes and stared at her hand but didn’t seem to see how tightly he was gripping it.

  She said, “If this man comes to the house to kill you, I’ll probably be there too. Do you think he’s going to shoot you, then just walk away and let me live?”

  Shocked, as she had known he would be, by the thought of her under the Butcher’s knife, he said, “My God.”

  “Call Preduski.”

  “All right.” He let go of her hand. He picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, played with the dial, jiggled the buttons.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Frowning, he said, “No dial tone.” He hung up, waited a few seconds, picked up the receiver again. “Still nothing.”

  She slid off the desk. “Let’s try your secretary’s phone.”

  They went out to the reception room.

  That phone was dead too.

  “Funny,” he said.

  Her heartbeat quickening, she said, “Is he going to come after you tonight?”

  “I told you, I don’t know for sure.”

  “Is he in the building right now?”

  “You think he cut the telephone line.”

  She nodded.

  “That’s pretty farfetched,” he said. “It’s just a breakdown in service.”

  She went to the door, opened it, stepped into the hall. He came behind her, favoring his injured leg.

  Darkness lay on most of the corridor. Dim red emergency lights shone at each end of the hall, above the doors to the staircases. Fifty feet away a pool of wan blue light marked the elevator alcove.

  Except for the sound of their breathing, the fortieth floor was silent.

  “I’m not a clairvoyant,” she said, “but I don’t like the way it feels. I sense it, Graham. Something’s wrong.”

  “In a building like this, the telephone lines are in the walls. Outside of the building they’re underground. All the lines are underground in this city. How would he get to them?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe he knows.”

  “He’d be taking such a risk,” Graham said.

  “He’s taken risks before. Ten times before.”

  “But not like this. We’re not alone. The security guards are in the building.”

  “They’re forty stories below.”

  “A long way,” he agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We’re probably being silly.”

  “Probably.”

  “We’re probably safe where we are.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll grab our coats.”

  “Forget the coats.” He took hold of her hand. “Come on. Let’s get to those elevators.”

  By the time he had killed them, the Walther PPK was no longer firing silently. No silencer could function at peak efficiency for more than a dozen shots; the baffles and wadding were compacted by the bullets, and sound escaped. The last three shots were like the sharp barks of a medium-sized guard dog. But that didn’t matter. The noise wouldn’t carry to the street or up to the fortieth floor.

  In the outer office of Cragmont Imports, he switched on a light. He sat on a couch, reloaded the Walther’s magazine, unscrewed the silencer and put it into his pocket. He didn’t want to risk fouling the barrel with loose steel fibers from the silencer; besides, there was no one left in the building to hear shots when he killed Harris and the woman. And a shot fired on the fortieth floor would not penetrate walls and windows and travel all the way down to Lexington Avenue.

  He looked at his watch. 8:25.

  He turned off the light, left Cragmont Imports, and went down the hall to the elevator.

  Eight elevators served the fortieth floor, but none of them was working.

  Connie pushed the call button on the last lift. When nothing happened, she said, “The telephone, and now this.”

  In the spare yet harsh fluorescent light, Graham’s laugh lines looked deeper and sharper than usual; his face resembled that of a kabuki actor painted to represent extreme anxiety. “We’re trapped.”

  “It could be just an ordinary breakdown of some sort,” she said. “Mechanical failure. They might be making repairs right now.”

  “The telephones?”

  “Coincidence. Maybe there’s nothing sinister about it.”

  Suddenly the numerals above the elevator doors in front of them began to light up, one after the other: 16... 17... 18... 19 ... 20....

  “Someone’s coming,” Graham said.

  A chill passed down her spine.

  ... 25 ... 26 ... 27....

  “Maybe it’s the security guards,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  She wanted to turn and run, but she could not move. The numbers mesmerized her.

  ...30...31 ...32....

  She thought of women lying in bloody bedclothes, women with their throats cut and their fingers chopped off and their ears cut off.

  ...33....

  “The stairs!” Graham said, startling her.

  “Stairs?”

  “The emergency stairs.”

  ...34....

  “What about them?”

  “We’ve got to go down.”

  “Hide out a few floors below?”

  ...35....

  “No. All the way down to the lobby.”

  “That’s too far!”

  “That’s where there’s help.”

  ...36....

  “Maybe we don’t need help.”

  “We need it,” he said.

  ...37....

  “But your leg—”

  “I’m not a complete cripple,” he said sharply.

  ...38....

  He grabbed her by the shoulder. His fingers hurt her, but she knew he wasn’t aware of how fiercely he was gripping her. “Come on, Connie!”

  ...39....

  Frustrated with her hesitation, he gave her a shove, propelled her out of the alcove. She stumbled, and for an instant she thought she would fall. He kept her upright.

  As they hurried down the dark corridor, she heard the elevator doors open behind them.

  Harris and the woman? he wondered.
Have they been alerted? Do they know who I am? How can they know?

  “Mr. Harris?” Bollinger called.

  They stopped two-thirds of the way down the hall, in front of the open door to the Harris Publications suite. They turned toward him, but he could not see their faces even with the red light spilling over their shoulders.

  “Mr. Harris, is that you?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Police,” Bollinger said. He took a step toward them, then another. As he moved he took the wallet with his badge from his inside coat pocket. With the elevator light behind him, he knew they could see more than he could.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Harris said.

  Bollinger stopped. “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t want you to come closer.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know who you are.”

  “I’m a detective. Frank Bollinger. We have an appointment for eight-thirty. Remember?” Another step. Then another.

  “How did you get up here?” Harris’s voice was shrill.

  He’s scared to death, Bollinger thought. He smiled and said, “Hey, what’s going on with you? Why are you so uptight? You were expecting me.” Bollinger took slow steps, easy steps, so as not to frighten the animals.

  “How did you get up here?” Harris asked again. “The elevators aren’t working.”

  “You’re mistaken. I came up on an elevator.” He held the badge in front of him in his left hand, arm extended, hoping the light from behind would gleam on the gold finish. He had covered perhaps a fifth of the distance between them.

  “The telephones are out,” Harris said.

  “They are?” Step. Step.

  He put his right hand in his coat pocket and gripped the butt of the pistol.

  “What?” His voice cracked.

  Don’t let the fear take you, she thought. Don’t break down and leave me to handle this alone.

  She said, “In your vision you saw that the police know the killer well.”

  “What about it?”

  “Maybe the Butcher is a cop.”

  “Christ, that’s it!”

  He spoke so softly that she could barely hear him.

  Bollinger kept coming, a big man, bearish. His face was in shadow. He had closed the distance between them by at least half.

  “Stop right there,” Graham said. But there was no force in his voice, no authority.