Night Mask (8 page)

“Hell, I don't blame him,” Brownie whispered. “Not after getting gang-shagged by that pack of scum in jail.”

“Sheriff, I heard him call those poor unfortunates you have locked up niggers!” a reporter yelled from the road. “I'm going to see that the FCC hears about this.”

“Yeah, you do that, you son of a bitch!” Brownie muttered.

“I bet he'd change his song and dance routine if we put
his
cherry ass in lock-up,” Leo uncharacteristically said, glancing at the oh-so-politically-correct reporter.

“I'd give a hundred dollars to see it,” Lani added.

Brownie and Leo looked at her and smiled. Like so many cops, they had very little use for the nation's liberal press.

“Dick,” Brownie called. “We'll come in. But we're armed, and we intend to remain armed.”

“That's fine. Just remember, so am I.”

The front door opened.

Dick stood in the foyer with a pistol in each hand. “Come on in,” he said. “Over by the phone in the den.” He stepped back and followed the trio of cops into the den.

“I received the call last evening,” he said. “At the advice of my lawyer, I had that tape recorder installed. It's a good one. Punch the play button.”

It was a young woman's voice on the tape, somewhat muffled. She said she had information that would clear Dick, and would he meet her at the crossroads near that old, abandoned service station. They heard Dick ask her what time she had, and the woman give the time. They heard Dick agree to meet her, and she hung up. Dick said, “This is a setup, and I know it. But I have to go.”

Dick laid a small, portable cassette-recorder on the coffee table. “I talked the entire time I was gone,” he said. “I had KSIN FM on the entire time. BJ gave the time and temperature several times and played commercials. All this can be checked on the logs.”

“You're wising up, Dick,” Brownie said. “But if this happens again, call us first. I've told you repeatedly, I don't believe you committed any of the murders. Now, I'm going to let slide the fact that you're armed and you threatened us. But don't you ever do it again.”

“Goddamnit, Sheriff! Somebody is out to get me. To frame me. To frame me for something I didn't do!”

“That is our thinking, too, Dick. But the fact remains that you cannot threaten police officers with a gun and expect to get away with it.”

“How about those goddamn savages who raped me in
your
jail, Brownie? Do they get punished?”

Sheriff Brownwood faced the red-faced man. “Let me tell you something, Dick. You want to know what you can do about gang-rape in jails and prisons? I'll tell you what you can do? And you can be the first to do it. It'll make you a hero among the conservative voters and boost your ratings.”

“You tell me; I'll do it.”

“You can editorialize. You can take a hard law and order stance and work the citizens up into a frenzy. Shake them out of their complacency. Interview kids and adults alike who have been tossed in the bucket and gang-raped. Get brutal with it. Get down dirty and raw with it. When enough of you broadcasters do that, the public will demand action. And the government will be forced to act. Get some of these federal judges off our backs and let us enforce the law. You know what I mean.”

Dick shook his head. “I can't do that. The government would pull my license.”

“What?” Leo asked, startled by that remark. “What do you mean by that? Pull your license?”

“It's been tried by others,” Dick said, sitting down and wiping his sweaty face with a handkerchief. “You want to know what happens to broadcasters who come down too hard on the IRS? Hammer away at them? Demand change and less Gestapo-like power for the IRS? Funny things happen. Like they get audited, year after year after year. The government claims it doesn't happen. But it happens. You want to know what happens when small independents like me start talking tough about crime, and why don't we take a hard-line stance? Let's put it this way: the major networks are all run by liberals. The news anchors are all sobbing-sisters. The commentators are all hanky-stompers. I defy any one of you to find me a true conservative with power on any network news program or talk show ... ” He paused for breath and for a drink of water.

This was a side of Dick Hale that none of the three cops even knew existed, and they were fascinated. The man was actually making sense without being obnoxious or demeaning to anybody.

“Are you all right in there, Sheriff!”
the voice boomed over a bullhorn.

“Handle that, Lani,” Brownie said.

Lani walked to the door. “We're all right! Everything is okay.”

Brownie sat down and unloaded the pistols on the coffee table. “Go on, Dick. I never heard this side of you before.”

“I know what people think of me,” Dick said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “And I know what I've turned into. And I don't like it. I came back here and tried to run a real broadcasting complex. I tried for several years. I tried everything I knew to do. But that bitch Carla Upton blocked me at every turn. Believe me, gentlemen and lady, when your teenage daughter is fucking and sucking everything that wears pants, your only son is a queer, your wife is involved in some sort of a bizarre cult doing God only knows what, and your program director and major stockholder are both a couple of dykes, having an affair, you soon realize that the odds are stacked against you.” Dick tore open a pack of cigarettes and lit up. “Try living with all that for a while and see what you become ... before you judge me too harshly.”

The trio of cops were silent for a moment. “I didn't know you smoked, Dick,” Brownie said.

“I hadn't in twenty years. I started up again in jail.”

“You were going to be a surgeon, weren't you, Mr. Hale?” Lani asked, surprisingly gentle.

“Yeah. But I suddenly developed an aversion to blood.” He laughed sourly. “Isn't that something? I was twenty-two years old, making top grades in medical school, and suddenly the sight of blood caused me to get light-headed, nauseous, and sometimes pass out on the floor. Still does. The doctors say it happens. Sure happened to me. When my wife has her period, I can't even sleep in the same bed with her.” He laughed again. “Of course, we haven't slept together in ten years anyway.”

“What is your personal physician's name, Dick?” Brownie asked.

“Henson. Over at the center. But he's on vacation in Hawaii. Be back next week. He can verify what the sight of blood does to me. And so can a dozen other people who've seen me hit the floor and barf and anything else you can imagine. No way I could have killed and done those things to those women. I'd have been passed out right beside the body.”

Brownie stood up. “Dick, I know you're a reasonably wealthy man. My suggestion is that you hire off-duty deputies to stay with you twenty-four hours a day. Don't move without them. That way you can have a credible witness as to your every movement. I'll set it up, if you like.”

“Do that, Brownie. I'd appreciate it. I'll pay them well.” He looked at Leo and Lani. “Please find out who is killing these women. Get me off the hook.”

“We'll do our best,” Lani said. “But you never finished what you were saying about why broadcasters won't take a hard-line stance against crime and criminals.”

“Oh, boycotts, for one thing. They're a very effective tool in shutting people up. And you're powerless to prevent them. There is no law against a boycott... not that I know of. And you can set off minority groups without ever knowing—until it's too late—how you did it.” He sighed, then smiled sadly. “The age of political correctness. What do you call a fat person now? This is no joke. A calorically adventurous person. You think I'm kidding? I guarantee you that my stations are going to be boycotted because I let slip the word ‘nigger.' Bet on it. And you know what else? I don't care. I'm coming out from under this cloud of suspicion fighting. For as long as the government lets me, that is. Which won't be very long. For if they don't stop me, some goddamn minority group will. Bet on that, too.”

* * *

“This is going to get interesting,” Brownie said, standing by the road, leaning against his car.

“How much of what Dick said in there do you buy?” Lani asked the sheriff.

“Oh ... fifty/sixty percent of it. Dick was a horse's butt as a kid, a young man, and a grown man. He just blames his family for all of it. But he came by it naturally. His father was a horse's butt, too.”

“So if Dick Hale didn't kill those women—and I don't believe he did—then who did?” Leo asked.

Brownie smiled. “That's what the county is paying you two to find out.”

* * *

Dr. Henson had a good laugh when he found out that Dick was under suspicion for killing and mutilating two women. “No way!” he said firmly. “Dick faints at the sight of blood. A classic and quite severe case of hemophobia.”

That and all the other evidence that pointed away from Dick, caused the DA to quietly drop the charges.

But Dick was anything but quiet about his lockup and his experiences while in jail. He moved Stacy back to program director, moved Cathy Young back to part-time, and over loud objections from Carla and Stacy, he began editorializing. He warned Carla that if she tried to interfere, he would fight her and use every dirty trick he could dredge up. “And,” he added, grim-faced. “I can get plenty damn dirty if I have to, Carla.”

Carla backed down. She knew exactly what he meant, and did not want any personal dirty linen flapping out in public.

To his credit, Dick openly and on-air admitted to being gang-raped while in jail, and urged others to come forward with their jail or prison experiences. He ended his first editorial thusly: “The good, decent members of the Black community will support me in calling for jail and prison reform. The niggers will boycott the station.”

“Oh, shit!” Lani said.

Carla Upton and Stacy “Tally-Ho” Ryan almost had simultaneous heart attacks; while the Ripper was highly amused at the content of the editorial.

This was even better than Dick in jail, the Ripper thought. Let him destroy himself financially.

The Federal Communications Commission, whose members (many people think), are no more than notoriously self-righteous “Morality Police” of broadcasters, threatened to pull the license of KSIN. Dick Hale told the FCC to go to hell. All he was doing was exercising his right of free speech.

“You can't offend others and call it free speech,” Dick was told.

That gave Dick what he thought was a fine idea, and he retired to write another editorial. Since all charges against him had been dropped by the DA, Dick no longer employed off-duty deputies and city police officers. Bad mistake on his part.

Certain minority groups gathered and voted to boycott the KSIN complex. The leader of the boycott was a very pretty young Black woman who really did have the best interests of the Black community at heart. But like so many other groups who wave placards and march around demanding this and that, Tina Gamble had never learned that there are a great many people who don't like to be forced into doing something... whether they support that particular cause or not. Freedom of choice must be a door that swings both ways.

The Ripper watched Tina Gamble on TV and smiled.

Cal Denning was getting quick mental flashes of his lost memory. Flashes that were returning so fast he could not pin any of them down.

Dick Hale drove down to Los Angeles to meet with his attorney. But his attorney had been called to New York City, and Dick decided to make a day of it in the city ... alone.

Gil Brown, the Windjammer, called in sick and a part-timer, George “Gunda” Dan, was pulled in to work the Windjammer's shift.

Lani Prejean and Leo Franks sat at a desk in the station, surrounded by mounds of material they had gathered on the Ripper, and looked at each other. They were stumped.

At four o'clock that afternoon, Tina Gamble vanished.

* * *

Lani listened to the ringing of the telephone and sighed. It was seven o'clock. She had been looking forward to a quiet evening at home, an early dinner, and bed by ten o'clock. She jerked up the receiver.

“Yeah?”

“Lani? Brownie here. I've got people crawling all over me down at the office. Get cracking. Tina Gamble's disappeared, and Dick Hale is nowhere to be found.”

“Where is his escort?”

“He stopped using them. I warned him, but he just wouldn't listen to me.”

“On my way.”

* * *

Tina Gamble was surrounded by faces. There appeared to be hundreds of them, but that was an illusion created by the careful placement of many mirrors of various sizes and extremely bright lights. Tina had been raped repeatedly, and beaten in between the sexual assaults. But she was alive, and determined to get away from this awful place. She forced herself to ignore the faces floating in clear liquid in what appeared to be gallon jars.

She knew she didn't have much time, for she had felt the sting of a needle in her arm and already was becoming very light-headed. But she had been left alone for a few minutes, strapped naked to the floor. For her small size, Tina was an incredibly strong woman, physically and mentally. Mentally, she fought the drugs in her system, and physically, she strained against the leather straps that were fastened around her wrists and ankles. She was beginning to hallucinate mildly, wild colors exploding in her brain. She wondered what kind of a drug had been injected into her system?

The leather straps around her wrists became slick with her blood, as the straps lacerated her flesh. She slipped one small hand through the strap and quickly unbuckled the other strap. Both hands freed, she worked frantically freeing her ankles. Then she was on her feet, looking wildly around her for a way out. She carefully picked her way through the lights and mirrors and floating faces, until she stood in darkness.

She was beginning to hallucinate badly now, and realized she had perhaps only minutes before she lost all control of her mind. She could hear footsteps above her. Tina found a small window, covered with the dust and grime of years, and pushed it open, crawling out into the coolness of night. She pushed the window closed just as the drugs began to take effect, colors and wild shapes mingling and bursting in her brain. She began to run. Rocks cut her bare feet, and brush tore at the flesh of her legs. She fell down a dozen times, bruising and cutting her knees. She ignored the pain and ran.