The Naked Face (17 page)

“Sounds right,” McGreavy said. “We’re on our way.”

“How far are you from there?”

“Ten miles.”

“Good luck.”

“Yeah.”

McGreavy switched off the radio, hit the siren, and slammed the accelerator to the floorboard.

The sky was spinning in wet circles overhead and something was pounding at him, tearing his body apart. He tried to see, but his eyes were swollen shut. A fist smashed into his ribs, and he felt the agonizing splinter of bones breaking. He could feel DeMarco’s hot breath on his face, coming in quick, excited gasps. He tried to see him, but he was locked in darkness. He opened his mouth and forced words past his thick, swollen tongue. “Yous-see,” he gasped. “I was r-right… You can—you can only hit a man—when he’s down…”

The breathing in his face stopped. He felt two hands grab him and pull him to his feet.

“You’re a dead man, Doctor. And I did it with my bare hands.”

Judd backed away from the voice. “You’re an—an a-animal,” he said, gasping for breath. “A psychopath.…You should be locked up .. . in an…insane asylum.”

DeMarco’s voice was thick with rage. “You’re a liar!”

“It’s the t-truth,” Judd said, moving back. “Your…your brain is diseased… Your mind is going to…snap and you’ll be…like an idiot baby.” Judd backed away, unable to see where he was going. Behind him he heard the faint hum of the closed pipeline, waiting like a sleeping giant.

DeMarco lunged at Judd, his huge hands clutching his throat. “I’m going to break your neck!” His enormous fingers closed on Judd’s windpipe, squeezing.

Judd felt his head begin to swim. This was his last chance. Every instinct in him screamed out to grab DeMarco’s hands and pull them away from his throat so that he could breathe.
Instead, with a final tremendous effort of will, he put his hands in back of him, fumbling for the pipe valve. He felt himself beginning to slide into unconsciousness, and in that instant his hands closed on the valve. With a final, desperate burst of energy, he turned the handle and swerved his body around so that DeMarco was nearest the opening. A tremendous vacuum of air suddenly blasted at them, trying to pull them into the vortex of the pipe. Judd clung frantically to the valve with both hands, fighting the cyclonic fury of the wind. He felt DeMarco’s fingers digging into his throat as DeMarco was pulled toward the pipe. DeMarco could have saved himself, but in his mindless insane fury, he refused to let go. Judd could not see DeMarco’s face, but the voice was a demented animal cry, the words lost in the roar of the wind.

Judd’s fingers started to slip off the valve. He was going to be pulled into the pipeline with DeMarco. He gave a quick, last prayer, and in that instant he felt DeMarco’s hands slip away from his throat. There was a loud, reverberating scream, and then only the roar from the pipeline. DeMarco had vanished.

Judd stood there, bone weary, unable to move, waiting for the shot from Vaccaro.

A moment later it rang out.

He stood there, wondering why Vaccaro had missed. Through the dull haze of pain, he heard more shots, and the sound of feet running, and then his name being called. And then someone had an arm around him and McGreavy’s voice was saying, “Mother of God! Look at his face!”

Strong hands gripped his arm and pulled him away from the awful roaring tug of the pipeline. Something wet was running down his cheeks and he did not know whether it was blood or rain or tears, and he did not care.

It was over.

He forced one puffed eye open and through a narrow,
blood-red slit, he could dimly see McGreavy. “Anne’s at the house,” Judd said. “DeMarco’s wife. We’ve got to go to her.”

McGreavy was looking at him strangely, not moving, and Judd realized that no words had come out. He lifted his mouth up to McGreavy’s ear and spoke slowly, in a hoarse, broken croak. “Anne DeMarco… She’s at the…house…help.”

McGreavy walked over to the police car, picked up the radio transmitter, and issued instructions. Judd stood there, unsteady, still rocking back and forth from DeMarco’s blows, letting the cold, biting wind wash over him. In front of him he could see a body lying on the ground, and he knew it was Rocky Vaccaro.

We’ve won,
he thought.
We’ve won.
He kept saying the phrase over and over in his mind. And even as he said it, he knew it was meaningless. What kind of victory was it? He had thought of himself as a decent, civilized human being—a doctor, a healer—and he had turned into a savage animal filled with the lust to kill. He had sent a sick man over the brink of insanity and then murdered him. It was a terrible burden he would have to live with always. Because even though he could tell himself it was in self-defense, he knew—God help him—that he had enjoyed doing it. And for that he could never forgive himself. He was no better than DeMarco, or the Vaccaro brothers, or any of the others. Civilization was a thin, dangerously fragile veneer, and when that veneer cracked, man became one with the beasts again, falling back into the slime of the primeval abyss he prided himself on having climbed up from.

Judd was too weary to think about it any longer. Now he wanted only to see that Anne was safe.

McGreavy was standing there, his manner strangely gentle.

“There’s a police car on the way to her house, Dr. Stevens. OK?”

Judd nodded gratefully.

McGreavy took his arm and guided him toward a car. As he moved slowly, painfully, across the courtyard, he realized that it had stopped raining. On the far horizon the thunderheads had been swept away by the raw December wind, and the sky was clearing. In the west a small ray of light appeared as the sun began to fight its way through, growing brighter and brighter.

It was going to be a beautiful Christmas.

Copyright © 1970 by Sidney Sheldon

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