He stood vacantly, swaying and humming, his wrists handcuffed behind him. Shepherd had insisted on the handcuffs. He knew you couldn’t take any chances with these people.
Shepherd himself got out last, unfolding himself from the close confines of the sedan’s rear compartment. He was tall and slim, and at thirty-eight he kept himself in shape by rising at 5:30 every day to play vigorous handball at Fort Lowell Park. This morning, after his game, he had driven directly to Tucson police headquarters and showered there. Somehow he had misplaced his comb, and he’d had to smooth and part his close-cropped brown hair with his fingers, a procedure that had left him slightly unkempt.
As he stood by the car, a dusty breeze kicked up and made mischief with his hair, and he knew that if Ginnie were here, he would catch gentle hell from her for the state of his appearance. Ginnie had been the one who’d always straightened his tie, exclaimed over loose threads in his slacks, and made tut-tutting noises when he came down to breakfast in a week-old, unwashed sweatshirt and Jockey briefs.
He smiled, thinking of his wife, but the smile turned to sadness as the wind blew harder. He had not been able to think of Ginnie without sorrow for a long time now. There was a hurt in him, deep and raw, and even an hour of pounding the handball until his palms were numb could not assuage it.
“Show us how to get in,” he told Mitch, hoping the man was sufficiently lucid to comprehend the order.
With a nod, Mitch led the three cops through knee-high weeds and swirls of windblown dust toward the tall chicken-wire fence surrounding the warehouse. He took long, stiff, clumsy strides. He hummed louder.
At the rear there was a gap in the fence, professionally cut. Mitch hadn’t done that. The work was too clean, too competent.
The four of them slipped through the gap and came to the back of the building, where Mitch pointed at a door that had been chained shut.
The chain links had been severed — again, a neat, professional job.
“Somebody busted in here,” Hector Alvarez said, “probably hoping there was still some merchandise inside.”
Janice Hirst studied the broken chain. “Long time ago. See? The links are rusty even where they were cut through.”
Mitch just stood, waiting.
“So they’re inside?” Shepherd asked him. “The faces?”
Nod.
“Anybody else in there? Friends of yours?”
Head shake.
It was probably true. But Shepherd unholstered his Beretta anyway.
“Janice, stand post out here with our friend Mitch. Hector, give me some cover.”
Alvarez snapped his Juicy Fruit. “Right.”
Shepherd tested the doorknob. It turned freely. He eased the door an inch ajar, then took out his flashlight.
Flash in one hand, gun in the other, he pushed the door wide and sidestepped in, not lingering in the doorway where he was silhouetted against the glare. Then he turned on the flashlight, holding it away from his body, and panned the beam over the windowless, cavernous room.
He saw them.
Faces.
They leaped out of the shadows, face after face, tacked to walls and support columns, faces young and old, in many hues, all staring eyelessly.
Mitch had cut out the eyes. Perhaps his trophies’ lifeless gazes had disturbed him.
“Jesus,” Alvarez muttered.
Outside, Mitch released a giggle. “Told you,” he said. “I steal their faces. I steal their faces.”
Shepherd nodded. “You sure do.” To Alvarez he added, “Hang back for a minute. I want to check it out.”
His flashlight leading him, Shepherd advanced into the gloom.
The ceiling was high, the walls far away, his every step on the concrete floor echoing from distant corners. Clusters of trash were piled here and there like atolls in a sea of dust. Magazines, mostly. Mitch must have scavenged them from Dumpsters. He—
There was movement to Shepherd’s left, and he swung the flash at it, glimpsing a pink tail and a scurrying blur.
Nice place, he thought grimly.
When he was satisfied that the warehouse was empty except for the rats and the faces, he approached the nearest pylon. It was steel, reinforced with concrete, and Mitch’s artistry had made it a totem pole of faces.
Most were women, but there were a few men. Shepherd recognized some of them. Fashion models, actresses, other celebrities.
Nearly all the photos were in color, glossy, and large enough to be almost life-size.
Mitch had cut them out very neatly, omitting the eyes, and with thumbtacks or finishing nails he had mounted the photos around the warehouse, scores of them, hundreds of them, the work of a lifetime.
“This is quite impressive, Mitch,” Shepherd said. “You’re an artist.”
“I steal their faces,” Mitch informed him from the doorway.
“It’s good you told us. Work like this deserves an audience.”
“I steal their faces.”
“Yes. We got that.”
Shepherd loitered in the warehouse for a minute or two. He truly was impressed with the man’s achievement. Mitch was like those people who build monuments out of junk or amass the world’s largest ball of string. He was crazy, to be sure, and compulsive or obsessive or whatever the term was, but he had demonstrated a degree of diligence and sheer persistence that few sane people could equal. The warehouse was a kind of art gallery, and stamped on it was Mitch’s personality, fascinating and unique.
“You could charge admission,” he told Mitch as he rejoined the others in the sunlight.
Mitch only blinked, but Shepherd thought he detected a hint of shy gratitude in the man’s twitchy smile.
They returned to the car, easing their prisoner into the backseat. Janice Hirst looked sad.
“It’s almost a shame,” she said.
Shepherd asked what she meant.
She lowered her voice. “Well, they’ll put him away, at least for a while. It’s too bad. He’s harmless, don’t you think?”
Hirst was a transfer from the sheriff’s department in Pinal County and there were a lot of things she didn’t know. Alvarez, though, had been with Tucson PD nearly as long as Shepherd himself, and he turned away, uncomfortable.