Come home. Jenna’s heart twisted as she took a chair across the table from her daughter. Cassie had never thought of this house as her home, still considered Southern California as where she belonged. “Maybe that would be a good idea,” she said, hating the words. “In the meantime you can help me put up decorations around here. Now…let’s talk about sex and drugs and alcohol.”
Cassie groaned. “Do we have to?”
“Oh, yeah,” Jenna said, taking a warming sip of her coffee. “We have to.”
Carefully, he painted her face. Dipping his brush in the pallet, gently blending the flesh tones, he worked tirelessly. Music was playing, the score from Bystander reverberating from nearly twenty speakers that he’d wired throughout his own personal soundstage and workroom. He loved this music; it was his favorite, and as he looked up to the stage where mannequins were posed, he felt a sense of pride.
Most of the figures were dressed in perfect replicas of originals from his favorite Jenna Hughes movies. Some were still naked, waiting for the right costume, and all, so far, were faceless, no features distinguishable on their blank, bald heads. That part was changing.
He studied the stage where the women of his dreams stood motionless. Though not finished, he imagined them as perfect as they had been in Jenna’s films.
Marnie Sylvane, the lonely schoolteacher of Summer’s End, stood next to Katrina Petrova of Innocence Lost. Katrina had been Jenna’s first movie; she was a teenager when she’d played the young prostitute. Facing away from Katrina was Anne Parks, the psychotic murderess of Resurrection. A little farther upstage was Paris Knowlton, the young, frightened mother from Beneath the Shadows, who shared the spotlight with Rebecca Lange, the downhill racer of the never-finished White Out. In the far corner, Zoey Trammel, an autistic woman of A Silent Snow, sat in the rocking chair that had been used in the movie and now, in his hands, Faye Tyler, a sexually adventurous woman of the seventies, was nearly finished. How much he’d accomplished in so little time!
And there was still so much to do. Soon, he would have to get rid of the corpse and the car. He had a plan, but had to wait for a while before he drove Faye…no…not Faye, just the cadaver which was the shell for his art. He had to drive the husk of Faye in the hatchback to the cliffs overlooking the Columbia River, then let it roll over the edge. The car wouldn’t be found for a long, long while…if ever. The body, trapped inside, would stay in the river and slowly decompose.
Getting rid of her would be easy. All evidence destroyed.
No muss. No fuss.
But sculpting and painting the faces, that was the difficult part of his mission. He just couldn’t get the features right, no matter how hard he tried. It seemed impossible to capture Jenna Hughes’s beauty. The faces he cast, from women who had a resemblance to her, never turned out quite to his liking. They somehow cheapened her image and seemed amateurish.
Frowning at the mask in his hands, he worked even harder, feeling the sweat bead upon his brow despite the cool temperature. With a steady hand, he outlined the eye hole, making a thin black line around the lid where he would insert the lashes, imagining what his work would look like when the false eye, a perfect shade of green, would be inserted. He already had the wig, shaped in the style Jenna wore as Faye Tyler, a chin-length bob with feathered bangs cut just beneath the eyebrow ridge.
He paused for a minute, set down his brush, and picked up his remote control. As he’d done a hundred times before, he clicked on the big-screen television he’d mounted into a far wall, then fast-forwarded the DVD of Bystander already inserted into the player. He knew exactly where the scene he wanted was—a close-up of Jenna Hughes’s beautiful face. He found it easily and there she was, staring directly into the camera, her eyes taking on an erotic, catch-me-if-you-can spark, the hint of a smile pulling at the corners of lips tinted a soft rose…
His heartbeat accelerated as he imagined she was looking directly at him. Flirting with him. Teasing him. Enticing him. She wanted him. His gaze never leaving the screen, he hit the Play button. Watched as she carelessly tossed her hair away from her face, turned, and began walking…slowly away. The camera focused on her buttocks, covered by a swingy, light skirt and bare legs lifted by four-inch heels.
He trembled inside.
Licked his lips.
Waited.
Then it came. The second in time he lived for.
Slowly, Faye Tyler turned her head and looked over her shoulder.
He hit the Pause button. Studied that come-hither glance and felt his groin tighten, blood pumping furiously through his veins.
She was so perfect.
Tears filled his eyes as he stared at her unadorned beauty.
Softly he vowed, “You are my woman. Today. Tomorrow. Endlessly. I will come for you.”
CHAPTER 21
The good news was that the storm had abated. Near-zero temperatures had warmed, and the digital display on his Blazer hovered in the low thirties.
The bad news was that another cold front, worse than the first, was on its way, and nothing was going to melt soon. Add to that the fact that, after nearly a week, there was no sign of Sonja Hatchell. He doubted she was alive, though he’d never admit it to Lester. At least not yet.
Carter drove along a winding stretch of road leading to Falls Crossing and listened to the police radio as the defroster in his Blazer worked overtime. He’d checked twice daily with the Oregon State Police and Sparks had kept him updated, but there was just nothing to report. They still had no idea who Jane Doe really was, even with the widened missing persons sweep; nor did they yet have a composite picture of the woman, either from the computers or by having an artist sculpt a face onto the bones. The alginate lead hadn’t come up with anything, either, but the lab technicians had found traces of another substance in Jane Doe’s hair, a fine little piece of plaster that made no sense whatsoever.
But it was something.
Not much, but something.
It was morning, the first light of dawn filtering through the ice-crusted trees that lined this stretch of the highway, heavy snow piled high on the roadsides. He passed a few abandoned cars on his way into town, met a snowplow headed the opposite direction, and noticed a sanding crew not far behind. He was dog tired, a knot of tension twisting between his shoulder blades, and all the coffee in the world couldn’t chase away the fatigue that had settled upon him.