So, when he came to a panel he was certain was transparent, he stood before her and stared. Slowly her smile seemed to widen. Then suddenly, magically, she disappeared.
Gelsey studied him. I've got him! He looks for me but can't find me.
Finally he sees me… then suddenly I'm gone!
Even though he seemed to be staring at her, she knew he could not see her. Examining him now at her leisure, she decided he did not look much like a mark. Where was the fear she liked to see? The terror?
The acknowledgment in his eyes that the predicament he was in had been brought about by his own stupid lust? That it was his weakness that had brought him to this point of danger? That he had been jerk, a fool, a buffoon?
In fact, as she examined Janek, she saw a man who did not appear to acknowledge anything of the kind. Rather, he seemed to be searching out her weakness, regarding her as if she were a creature in a cage.
Janek thought: To her I'm just a rat in the maze. But even though she was gone, he sensed that she still was there, watching him. So he addressed her missing image:
"Okay, that's pretty good, but now I've had enough. Time to come out where I can see you."
"You've only seen the half of it." Her voice, disembodied, came to him from above.
"Where are you?"
"In mirror world." She intoned the word mysteriously. Her words, he realized, were being broadcast to him through speakers in the mirrored ceiling.
"I'm going back."
"You won't find your way," she taunted.
Don't think so? I can play tough, too.
"if I get lost I'll just break a few mirrors."
When she suddenly reappeared on the other side of the glass, she did not appear amused.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
He stared into her eyes, noting the same vulnerability he'd observed in the police sketches.
"Come out," he said. "I'm not going to talk to you through glass."
"It's about Dietz, isn't it?"
He nodded. "And other things."
She studied him, then seemed to make a decision. "Make two rights, then a left. I'll meet you at the exit."
Again she disappeared.
Ten minutes later they stood facing each other in her loft in the building above. They had barely exchanged a word. She had simply met him, guided him outside, then led him up the exterior stairs, making sure he saw a considerable amount of leg and butt in the process. Now, inside her house above the mirror-maze structure, she watched him as he peered around.
If the building below, with its rigorously arranged mirror maze, had surprised Janek, the wooden house above-filled with art, art supplies, tools, a workbench, mirrored panels and jagged pieces of broken mirrors-was a revelation. It spoke of eccentricity, talent and, most of all, obsession. It had been one thing to see the Leering Man in Erica Hawkins's gallery. Now he stared at twenty drafts and versions of the same subject, in various styles and formats, hanging on or leaning against the walls.
He turned to her. "I never imagined you in a place like this. "
"What did you imagine?" She snickered. "A gaffet?"
"Lived here long, Beth?"
She looked away. "Do me a favor, don't call me that."
"What should I call you?"
"Gelsey'll do."
He nodded, peered around again. A ceiling fan whipped the air. His eyes fell on a table covered with coins, Cuff links, money clips and assorted men's jewelry.
"How long have you lived here?"
"All my life."
"Really?"
"Me and my folks. This was our house." She addressed him as if he were a moron or a child. "And the maze?"
"My father built it."
"Lots of mirrors down there."
"I like mirrors." His eyes fell on a rack filled with huge mirrored panels. "What do you like about them?"
"The way they Make things look." She studied him. "People think when they look into a mirror what they see is what they get. They're wrong.
In a mirror everything's reversed." She paused. "How'd you find Erica?"
"Just followed the mirrors," he said.
She slumped into a chair. "I knew you'd turn up. I suppose I ought to feel relieved."
He took a chair across from her. "Just be damn grateful it was me."
She stared at him with disgust. It was easy to read her face: She loathed him and wanted him to know it.
Way to handle this one, he thought, is to refuse to take til@v other shit.
Still, for all her surliness, he was struck by her beauty, and the depths he saw reflected in her eyes.
"Yeah? Why should I be damn grateful?" She stuck out her legs, just the way Roger Carlson had described. Then she stared at him with curiosity.
He remembered Carlson's words: ".. – looking at me like I was some kind of pinneddown bug."