The Face

plastic bag to protect it further from foul weather. A red gift bow, stapled to the bag, ensured that the contents would not be mistaken for garbage.
        Dave Ladman, one of two guards on the graveyard shift, retrieved the delivery at 3:56 A.M. Handling the bag with care, he had carried it to the security office in the groundskeeper’s building at the back of the estate.
        Dave and his shift partner, Tom Mack, x-rayed the package with a fluoroscope. They were looking for wires and other metal components of an explosive device or a spring-loaded killing machine.
        These days, some bombs could be constructed with no metal parts. Consequently, following fluoroscopy, Dave and Tom employed a trace-scent analyzer capable of recognizing thirty-two explosive [4] compounds from as few as three signature molecules per cubic centimeter of air.
        When the package proved clean, the guards unwrapped it, Upon discovering the black gift box, they had left a message on Ethan’s voice mail and had set the delivery aside for his attention.
        At 8:35 this morning, one of the two guards on the early shift, Benny Nguyen, had brought the box to Ethan’s apartment in the main house. Benny also arrived with a videocassette containing pertinent segments of tape from perimeter cameras that captured the delivery.
        In addition, he offered a traditional Vietnamese clay cooking pot full of his mother’s com tay cam, a chicken-and-rice dish of which Ethan was fond.
        “Mom’s been reading candle drippings again,” Benny said. “She lit a candle in your name, read it, says you need to be fortified.”
        “For what? The most strenuous thing I do these days is get up in the morning.”
        “She didn’t say for what. But not just for Christmas shopping. She had that temple-dragon look when she talked about it.”
        “The one that makes pit bulls bare their bellies?”
        “That one. She said you need to eat well, say prayers without fail each morning and night, and avoid drinking strong spirits.”
        “One problem. Drinking strong spirits is how I pray.”
        “I’ll just tell Mom you poured your whiskey down the drain, and when I left, you were on your knees thanking God for making chickens so she could cook com tay cam .”
        “Never knew your mom to take no for an answer,” Ethan said.
        Benny smiled. “She won’t take yes for an answer, either. She doesn’t expect an answer at all. Only dutiful obedience.”
        Now, an hour later, Ethan stood at a window, gazing at the thin rain, like threads of seed pearls, accessorizing the hills of Bel Air.
        Watching weather clarified his thinking.
        [5] Sometimes only nature felt real, while all human monuments and actions seemed to be the settings and the plots of dreams.
        From his uniform days through his plainclothes career, friends on the force had said that he did too much thinking. Some of them were dead.
        The apple had come in the sixth black box received in ten days. The contents of the previous five had been disturbing.
        Courses in criminal psychology, combined with years of street experience, made Ethan hard to impress in matters regarding the human capacity for evil. Yet these gifts provoked his deep concern.
        In recent years, influenced by the operatically flamboyant villains in films, every common gangbanger and every would-be serial killer, starring in his own mind movie, could not simply do his dirty work and move along. Most seemed to be obsessed with developing a dramatic persona, colorful crime-scene signatures, and ingenious taunts either to torment their victims beforehand or, after a murder, to scoff at the claimed competence of law-enforcement agencies.
        Their sources of inspiration, however, were all hackneyed. They succeeded only in making fearsome acts of cruelty seem as tiresome as the antics of an unfunny clown.
        The sender of the black boxes succeeded where others failed. For one thing, his wordless threats were inventive.
        When his intentions were at last known and the threats could be better understood in light of whatever actions he took, they might also prove to be clever. Even fiendishly so.
        In addition, he conferred on himself no silly or clumsy name to delight the tabloid press when eventually they became aware of his game. He signed no name at all, which indicated self-assurance and no desperate