by Dean Koontz
“Or I could sleep on your sofa, and you wouldn’t have to give up your bed.”
“That’s thoughtful of you, Fric. But I’ve already changed the sheets on my bed in case that was the option you chose. Now if it turns out I changed them for no reason and used up an unscheduled set of linens, I’ll have to answer to Mrs. McBee. Don’t put me in that position, I beg of you.”
Fric knew that Mr. Truman wanted the sofa for one reason and one only: He intended to be stationed between the entrance door to his apartment and the bedroom in which Fric would be sleeping, not because Fric might fall down a set of stairs while sleepwalking, but because maybe some thugs would break down the apartment door and try to get to Fric, in which case they’d have to go through Mr. Truman.
Something was going on, for sure.
“All right,” Fric said, worried but also pleasantly excited. “I’ll come to your place, and you can have the sofa. This’ll be great. I’ve never stayed overnight away from home.”
“Well, you’re not exactly going to be away from home.”
“No, sir, but I’ve never been in your apartment,” Fric said. “Not even before you came here. It’s unknown territory, like the dark side of the moon—you know?—so this is like a totally real sleepover.”
While he should have been brooding about how to avoid being kidnapped and killed, Fric instead found himself thinking that if they stayed up late, maybe they could make s’mores and sit on the floor by candlelight and tell ghost stories. He knew that this was a stupid idea, everything from the stupid s’mores to the stupid ghost stories, but the thought delighted him, anyway.
Consulting his wristwatch, Mr. Truman said, “It’s almost eight o’clock.” He got to his feet and began transferring dishes from the table to the stainless-steel cart on which he’d brought them. “I’ll haul these to the kitchen, then we’ll get you set up at my place.”
“I’d like to go up to the library and get a book,” Fric said, though he actually wanted to pee in the potted palm.
Even in the security chief’s apartment, with a former cop standing armed guard, Fric wasn’t too keen on the idea of using the bathroom, where there would be mirrors. You were seriously vulnerable when you were peeing.
Mr. Truman hesitated, glancing toward the windows, at the night, the rain, the fog.
“I always fall asleep reading,” Fric pressed.
“All right. But don’t take too long, okay? And once you’ve got the book you want, come straight to my apartment.”
“Yes, sir.” He headed toward the exit from the pool room, but halted after two steps. “Maybe later we can tell ghost stories.”
Frowning as if Fric had suggested that they blow up the west wing, maybe even turning just a little pale, Mr. Truman said, “Ghost stories? Why would you say that?”
“Well, ummm, because that’s, you know, what people do, like, at sleepovers. At least that’s what I’ve heard.” Stupid. But he couldn’t stop talking. “They sit on the floor, ummm, by candlelight, you know, and they tell real scary stories, and then they, ummm, like sometimes they make s’mores.” Stupid, stupid. “Or you can make, ummm, popcorn instead, and you can tell secrets.” Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Mr. Truman’s frown phased into a smile. “Are you telling me that after all we ate for dinner, you could chow down on s’mores, too?”
“Not right now, sir, no, but maybe in an hour.”
“And you have some deep dark secrets to reveal, do you?”
“Ummm, I’ve got some stuff, yeah, some experiences I’ve had.”
“Experiences. Do they involve big greasy extraterrestrials?”
“No, sir. Nothing that simple.”
“Then when I take these dishes to the kitchen, I’ll pick up the ingredients for a pile of s’mores. You’ve got me curious.”
Relieved in one sense, needing relief in a different sense, Fric went to the library to deal another blow to the dying palm tree.
CHAPTER 78
IN HIS DEPARTMENT SEDAN, HAZARD FELT AS adrift as any sailor’s ghost on an abandoned and rotting ship, chained to his floating haunt by nothing more than the stubborn habit of living. Disoriented, with no purpose that made sense.
In the rain and mist, the streets seemed like the shipping lanes of a strange spook-ridden sea, and it was easy to imagine—and almost possible to believe—that many of the seemingly diaphanous vehicles gliding past him in the veiled night were piloted by spirits that had given up the flesh but not the city.
He had phoned in the license number on the Land Rover and had learned that it was registered to Kurtz Ivory International, whatever that might be. According to DMV records, the only vehicle registered to Vladimir Laputa was a 2002 BMW, not an Acura like the one that had been salted in the parking garage.
Having obtained that information, Hazard didn’t know what he could do next. He didn’t like being at a loss for action.
Every time he tried to puzzle out his next move, however, into his memory came the image of Dunny Whistler sorcerously transformed from flesh into a cascade of water, in an instant becoming one with the puddle in which he had stood, performing a splashless vanishment.
In the wake of that sight, in the cold continuing echo of the conversation with the dead Hector X, logical reasoning failed Hazard. He found his thoughts spiraling again and again through the same disturbing chambers, down into a nautilus shell of dread.
Although he had missed lunch, he wasn’t hungry. Although he had no appetite, he stopped at a drive-in fast-food palace for a king’s plate of cheeseburgers and French fries.
The king’s plate proved to be a bag, of course, and the chalice of coffee was a Styrofoam cup full of a bitter swill that had been brewed with tree bark. Probably hemlock.
He remained too agitated to sit in the restaurant parking lot to have dinner. He drove while he ate.
He needed to keep moving. Like a shark, he felt that he would die if ever he stopped.
Eventually he returned to the tony neighborhood in which the professor lived. He parked across the street from the house.
Sitting there, he heard in his mind the warning voice of Dunny—Two bullets in the brain—and he knew beyond doubt that he would have suffered precisely that end if he had rung Laputa’s doorbell.
For now the hyena, as Rachel Dalton had called him, was out on an Acura adventure. Without its resident demon, the house was just a house, not a killing ground.
Hazard phoned Robbery/Homicide and obtained Sam Kesselman’s home telephone number.
In possession of the number, he considered what he was about to do. He knew that with this move he might be handing his enemies all the weapons they would need to destroy him.
His Granny Rose had once told him that woven throughout the very fabric of the world is an invisible web of evil, and that across this vast construction, deadly spiders quiver to the same secret seductive music, and do the same dark work, each in its own way. If you don’t resist this sticky web when you feel it plucking at you, as often it does, then you will become one of the twisted eight-legged souls that dance upon it. And if the poisonous spiders are not crushed at every opportunity, there will sooner than later be spiders uncountable, but no humanity at all.
Hazard keyed in the number.
Sam Kesselman himself answered, first with a cough and a sneeze and a curse, but then in a voice so cracked and rough that he sounded like the product of a genetic-engineering lab working on human-frog crossbreeds.
“Man, you sound bad. You seen a doctor?”
“Yeah. Flu’s a virus. Antibiotics don’t work. Doctor gave me some cough medicine. Said get lots of rest, drink lots of fluid. Been drinkin’ ten beers a day, but I think I’m gonna die anyway.”
“Go to twelve.”
Kesselman knew about Rolf Reynerd’s murder by Hector X, and he knew that Hazard had in turn shot the shooter. “How are you with the OIS team?”
“I’ll come through with a clean report. Sounds like they’re ready to g
ive it to me now. Listen, Sam, there’s a connection with the murder of Reynerd’s mother, and that’s your case.”
“You’re gonna tell me Reynerd was involved with it.”
“You’ve smelled something wrong with him all along, huh?”
“His alibi was just too airtight.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
Hazard told Kesselman about the partial screenplay, but he edited the story line. He recounted the part about the swap of a killing for a killing, as in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, but not the part about the scheme to murder a movie star.
“So you think…Reynerd had…a kill buddy,” Kesselman said between explosive coughs.
“I know he did. I’m pretty sure it’s this guy named Vladimir Laputa. I know Vamp and the Lamp is your case, Sam, but I’d like to develop this further, nail this Laputa if I can.”
Maybe Kesselman really did need to hack up a Guinness-record weight of phlegm, or maybe all the throat clearing was a delaying tactic to give him time to think. Finally he said, “Why? I mean, you have your own caseload.”
“Well, I think this one is on both our desks as of last night.” He hadn’t directly lied to Kesselman yet. Now he started: “Because I think Laputa didn’t just murder Mina Reynerd, he also hired the hit man, Hector X, who dropped Rolf.”
“Then even though the file’s on my desk, it’s de facto your case, too. The way I feel now, I’m gonna have to stay at all times less than twenty steps from a bathroom until at least next week, so you might as well go for it.”
“Thanks, Sam. Just one more thing. If you’re ever asked about you and me and this, could I have stopped by your house instead of phoning you, and could we have had this conversation earlier today, like twelve hours ago?”
Kesselman was silent. Then he said, “What kind of hellacious destruction are you bringing down on us?”
“When I’m done,” Hazard said, “they’ll kick your ass out of the department, strip away your pension, and clean a public toilet with your reputation, but they’ll probably let you go on being a Jew.”
Kesselman laughed, and the laugh turned into a cough, but when the coughing finally ended, he finished the laugh. “As long as we wind up in the same gutter, at least it’ll be entertaining.”
After he concluded the call, Hazard sat in the car for a while, staring at the Laputa house, thinking through his approach. He was committed to bold action, but he didn’t want to act rashly.
Getting into the place was the easy—even if not legal—part. He still had the Lockaid lock-release gun that he had used to spring the deadbolt at Reynerd’s apartment.
Conducting a search without leaving evidence that he had been there, then getting out again, all as smooth as an apparition first manifesting and then fading back to the spirit world: that was the hard part.
Throughout his career, he’d largely gone by the book, no matter how incoherent the text sometimes might be. Now he had to convince himself that the justification for rogue action was overwhelming.
From a jacket pocket, he removed the set of silvery bells. He turned them over and over in his hand.
At ten minutes past eight o’clock, he got out of the car.
CHAPTER 79
FOLLOWING A BRIEF STOP IN THE KITCHEN, Ethan returned to his apartment, intending to put away the six items that had come in the black gift boxes. If Fric saw them, he would inevitably ask questions that couldn’t be answered without making him worry unnecessarily about his father’s safety.
In the study, the computer screen glowed. Ethan had not switched it on since coming home.
He quickly searched the apartment but found no intruder. Someone must have been here, however. Perhaps someone who had come and gone by mirrors.
Returning to the desk, taking a closer look at the screen, Ethan saw that a message had been left for him: HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR NETWORK E-MAIL?
Network e-mail—netmail for short—originated from computers on the estate, those in Channing Manheim’s offices on the studio lot, and those in the hands of the security detail on location with the actor in Florida. Netmail was sorted into a different box from the one containing e-mail sent by all other correspondents.
Ethan had just three messages in the netmail box. The first was from Archie Devonshire, one of the porters.
MR. TRUMAN, AS YOU KNOW, I AM NOT ONE WHO FINDS IT INCUMBENT UPON HIMSELF TO MONITOR AELFRIC AND TATTLE ON HIS BEHAVIOR. IN ANY EVENT, HE’S AS WELL BEHAVED AS ANY CHILD CAN BE AND USUALLY ALL BUT INVISIBLE. THIS AFTERNOON, HOWEVER, HE WAS ENGAGED IN SOME CURIOUS BITS OF BUSINESS THAT I MIGHT HAVE DISCUSSED WITH MRS. MCBEE HAD SHE BEEN IN-HOUSE. YOUR VISITING FRIEND, MR. WHISTLER, BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT AELFRIC—
Ethan read the startling revelation without fully comprehending it, and had to back up to read it again.
YOUR VISITING FRIEND, MR. WHISTLER, BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION—
The ghost or walking dead man, whichever he might be, if either, had ceased to perform his mysterious work at the edges of perception, and had boldly walked the halls of the mansion, talking to staff.
—BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT AELFRIC WAS UNPLUGGING QUAKE LIGHTS FROM ODD PLACES IN THE HOUSE, GATHERING THEM IN A PICNIC HAMPER. MRS. MCBEE WOULD SURELY DISAPPROVE OF THIS BECAUSE OF THE RISK THAT, IN A NIGHT EMERGENCY, SOME MEMBER OF STAFF OR FAMILY MIGHT FIND HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOUSE HINDERED OR ENTIRELY THWARTED BY THE ABSENCE OF THE VERY QUAKE LIGHT CRUCIAL TO HIS EXIT.
Up in Santa Barbara, Mrs. McBee was no doubt uneasily aware that something had changed.
Archie Devonshire’s netmail continued:
LATER, WHEN I ENCOUNTERED AELFRIC WITH THE HAMPER, HE TOLD ME IT CONTAINED HAM SANDWICHES, WHICH HE CLAIMED TO HAVE MADE HIMSELF, AND THAT HE INTENDED TO HAVE A PICNIC IN THE ROSE ROOM. LATER I FOUND THE HAMPER EMPTY IN THAT VERY ROOM, WITH NO EVIDENCE OF BREADCRUMBS OR SANDWICH WRAPPINGS. THIS SEEMS ALL VERY ODD TO ME, AS AELFRIC IS GENERALLY A TRUTHFUL BOY. MR. YORN HAS LIKEWISE HAD AN UNUSUAL ENCOUNTER AND INTENDS TO WRITE YOU ABOUT THAT SEPARATELY. YOURS IN SERVICE TO THE FAMILY, A. F. DEVONSHIRE.
The netmail from William Yorn, the groundskeeper, proved to be in a tone different from Devonshire’s.
FRIC IS MAKING HIMSELF A HIDEY-HOLE IN THE CONSERVATORY, STOCKED WITH FOOD, DRINK, AND QUAKE LIGHTS. YOUR FRIEND WHISTLER BROUGHT IT TO MY ATTENTION. IT’S NONE OF MY BUSINESS. OR WHISTLER’S. BOYS PLAY AT ROBINSON CRUSOE. THAT’S NORMAL. FRANKLY, YOUR FRIEND WHISTLER SCRAPES MY NERVES. IF HE TELLS YOU I WAS ABRUPT WITH HIM, PLEASE UNDERSTAND I MEANT TO BE. LATER, I SAW FRIC AT THE ROSE-ROOM WINDOWS. HE SEEMED TO BE IN A TRANCE. THEN HE SHOUTED SOMETHING AT ME ABOUT HAM SANDWICHES. LATER, IN RAIN GEAR, HE WENT OUT TO THE LITTLE WOODS PAST THE ROSE GARDEN. HAD BINOCULARS. SAID HE WAS BIRD WATCHING. IN THE RAIN. HE WAS OUT THERE TEN MINUTES. HE HAS A RIGHT TO BE ECCENTRIC. HELL, IF I WAS IN HIS SHOES, I’D BE FULL CRAZY. I’M WRITING YOU ABOUT THIS ONLY BECAUSE ARCHIE DEVONSHIRE INSISTED. ARCHIE GETS ON MY NERVES, TOO. I’M GLAD I WORK OUTSIDE. YORN.
The thought of Duncan Whistler, dead or alive, prowling Palazzo Rospo, secretly watching Fric, brought a chill to the nape of Ethan’s neck.
He suspected that the mind of a detective was inadequate to solve this increasingly Byzantine puzzle. Deductive and inductive reasoning are poor tools for dealing with things that go bump in the night.
CHAPTER 80
BEFORE COMMITTING AN ILLEGAL ENTRY, HAZARD rang the doorbell. When no one responded, he rang it again.
Darkness in the Laputa house didn’t mean that the place was deserted.
Rather than slinking around to the back of the residence, where his furtive behavior might catch the attention of a neighbor, Hazard entered boldly by the front. With the Lockaid, he popped both locks.
Pushing the door inward, he called out, “Anyone home or is it just us chickens?”
This was prudence, not comedy. Even when silence greeted his question, he crossed the threshold cautiously.
Immediately upon entering, however, he located the wall switch an
d flicked on the foyer-ceiling fixture. In spite of the rain and fog, some passing motorist or pedestrian might have seen him enter. The unhesitating use of lights would establish his legitimacy in suspicious minds.
Besides, if Laputa came home unexpectedly, he would be alarmed to see one lamp lit that had not been on when he’d left, or the beam of an inquiring flashlight in the darkness, but he would be disarmed to find the house blazing with light. The success of an operation like this depended upon boldness and quickness.
Hazard closed the door but didn’t lock it. He wanted easy exit in the event of an unexpected confrontation.
The ground floor most likely did not contain the incriminating evidence that he sought. Murderers tended to keep mementos of their crimes, gruesome and otherwise, in their bedrooms.
The second-favorite repository for their treasures was the basement, often in concealed or locked rooms where they were able to visit their collections without fear of discovery. There, in an atmosphere of calculated dementia, they could dreamily relive the bloody past without fear of discovery.
In respect of land prone to earthquakes and mud slides, houses in southern California seldom had basements. This one, as well, had been built on a slab, with no door that opened to a lower darkness.
Hazard toured the ground floor, not bothering to search cabinets and drawers. If he found nothing upstairs, he would take a second pass at these rooms, probing them with greater care.
Right now he cared only about establishing that no one lurked in any of these chambers. He left lights on everywhere behind him. Darkness was not his friend.
In the kitchen, he unlocked the back door and left it standing ajar, providing himself with a second unobstructed exit.
Tentacles of fog wove through the open door, drawn by the warmth but dissipating in it.
Everything in the house appeared to have been scoured, scrubbed, vacuumed, polished, and buffed to a degree that approached obsession. Collections of decorative items—Lalique glass, ceramic boxes, small bronze figures—were arranged not with an artful eye but with a rigid sense of order reminiscent of a chess set. Every book on every shelf stood precisely half an inch from the edge.
