The Mask

own daughter, the mother with a drinking problem, the poor girl caught in the middle. The victimized young girl subjected to hideous psychological pressures beyond her understanding, beyond her tolerance, until at last she simply —snapped. That’s how I saw it. That’s how I wrote it up. I thought I was a brilliant detective, digging to the deepest roots of the Bektermann tragedy. But all I ever saw was the window-dressing. The real story was far stranger than anything I ever imagined. Hell, it was too strange for any serious reporter to risk handling it. No reputable paper would have printed it as news. If had known the truth, and if! had somehow gotten it published, I’d have destroyed my career.”
    What the devil’s going on? Grace wondered. He seems obsessed with telling me about this in detail, compelled to tell me, even though he’s never even seen me before. Is this life imitating art—Coleridge’s poem reset in a rose garden? Am I the partygoer and Wainwright the Ancient Mariner?
    As she looked into Wainwright’s beige eyes, she suddenly realized how alone she was, even here in the yard. Her property was ringed by trees, sheltered, private.
    “Was it a murder case?” she asked.
    “Was and is,” Wainwright said. “It didn’t end with the Bektermanns. It’s still going on. This damned, endless pursuit. It’s still going on, and it’s got to be stopped this time around. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to tell you that your Carol is in the middle of it. Caught in the middle. You’ve got to help her. Get her out of the girl’s way.”
    Grace gaped at him, reluctant to believe that she had heard what she knew she had heard.
    “There are certain forces, dark and powerful forces,” Wainwright said calmly, “that want to see—” Shrieking angrily, Aristophanes sprang at Wainwright with berserk passion. He landed on the man’s chest and scrambled onto his face.
    Grace screamed and jumped back in fright.
    Wainwright staggered to one side, grabbed the cat with both hands, and tried unsuccessfully to wrench it off his face.
    “Ari!” Grace cried. “Stop it!”
    Aristophanes had his claws in the man’s neck and was biting his cheek.
    Wainwright wasn’t screaming as he ought to have been. He was eerily silent as he wrestled with the cat, even though the creature seemed determined to tear off his face.
    Grace moved toward Wainwright, wanting to help, not knowing what to do.
    The cat was squealing. It bit off a gobbet of flesh from Wainwright’s cheek.
    Oh Jesus, no!
    Grace moved in quickly, raising the trowel, but hesitated. She was afraid of hitting the man instead of the cat.
    Wainwright suddenly turned away from her and stumbled through the rose bushes, past white and yellow blooms, the cat still clinging to him. He walked into a waist-high hedge, fell through it, onto the lawn On the other side, out of sight.
    Grace hurried to the end of the hedgerow, stepped around it, heart hammering, and discovered that Wainwright had vanished. Only the cat was there, and it bolted past her, sprinted across the garden, up the back porch steps, and into the house through the half-open rear door.
    Where was Wainwright? Had he crawled away, dazed, wounded? Had he passed out in some sheltered corner of the garden, bleeding to death?
    The yard contained half a dozen shrubs large and dense enough to conceal the body of a man Wainwright’s size. She looked around all of them, but she could find no trace of the reporter.
    She looked toward the garden gate that led to the street. No. He couldn’t have gone that far without drawing her attention.
    Frightened, confused, Grace blinked at the sun-dappled garden, trying to understand.
     
    The Harrisburg telephone book contained neither a listing for Mr. Randolph Parker nor one for Herbert Bektermann. Carol was perplexed but not surprised.
    After she saw her final patient of the day, she and Jane drove to the address on Front Street where Millicent Parker had claimed to live. It was a huge, impressive Victorian mansion, but it hadn’t been anyone's home for a long time. The front lawn had been paved over for a parking lot. There was a small, tasteful sign by the entrance drive:
     

    MAUGHAM & CRICHTON, INC.
A MEDICAL CORPORATION
     
    Many years ago, this portion of Front Street had been one of the most elegant neighborhoods in Pennsylvania’s capital city. During the past couple of decades, however, many of the riverfront boulevard’s grand old houses had been razed to make room for sterile,