Shuddering, he leaned against the counter. He turned on the cold water,
bent forward, and splashed his face. Dripping, he looked at his
reflection again and met his eyes. He whispered to himself.
"What the hell was that?" CANDY PROWLED.
The eastern end of the Pollard family's two-acre property dropped into a
canyon. The walls were steep, composed mostly of dry crumbling soil
veined in places by pink and gray shale Only the expansive root systems
of the hardy, desert vegetation-chapparal, thick clumps of bunchgrass,
pampas grass scattered mesquite-kept the slopes from eroding extensively
in every heavy rain. A few eucalyptuses, laurels, and melaleucas grew
on the walls of the canyon, and where the floor was broad enough,
melaleucas and California live oaks sank roots deep into the earth along
the runoff channel. That channel only a dry stream bed now, but during
a heavy rain it over flowed.
Fleet and silent in spite of his size, Candy followed the canyon
eastward, moving upslope, until he came to a junction wit another
declivity that was too narrow to be called a canyon There, he turned
north. The land continued to climb, though not as steeply as before.
Sheer walls soared on both sides of him, and in places the passage was
nearly pinched off, narrowing to only a couple of feet. Brittle
tumbleweeds, blown into the ravine by the wind, had collected in mounds
at some those choke points, and they scratched Candy as he pushed
through them.
Without even a fragment moon, the night was unusually dark at the bottom
of that fissure in the land, but he seldom stumbled and never hesitated.
His gifts did not include super human vision; he was as blinded by
lightlessness as anyone However, even in the blackest night, he knew
when an obstacle lay before him, sensed the contours of the land so well
that he could proceed with surefooted confidence. He did not know how
this sixth sense served him, and he did nothing to encourage it; he
simply had an uncanny awareness of his relationship with his
surroundings, knew his place at all times, much as the best high-wire
walkers, though blindfolded, could proceed with self-assurance along a
taut line above the upturned faces of a circus crowd.
This was another gift from his mother.
All of her children were gifted. But Candy's talents exceeded those of
Violet, Verbina, and Frank.
The narrow passage opened into another canyon, and Candy turned east
again, along a rocky runoff channel, hurrying now as his need grew.
Though ever more widely separated, houses were still perched high above,
on the canyon rim; their bright windows were too far away to illuminate
the ground before him, but now and then he glanced up longingly because
within those homes was the blood he needed.
God had given Candy a taste for blood, made him a predator, and
therefore God was responsible for whatever Candy did; his mother had
explained all of that long ago. God wanted him to be selective in his
killing; but when Candy was unable to restrain himself, the ultimate
blame was God's, for He had instilled the blood lust in Candy but had
not provided him with the strength to control it.
Like that of all predators, Candy's mission was to kill the sick and the
weak from the herd. In his case, morally degenerate members of the
human herd were the intended prey: thieves, liars, cheats, adulterers.
Unfortunately he did not always recognize sinners when he met them.
Fulfilling his mission had been far easier when his mother had been
alive, for she had no trouble spotting the blighted souls for him.
Tonight he would try as best he could to confine his killing to wild
animals. Slaughtering people-especially close to home-was chancy; it
might bring him under the eye of the police. He could risk killing
locals only when they had crossed the family in some way and simply
could not be allowed to live.
If he was unable to satisfy his need with animals, he would go
somewhere, anywhere, and kill people. His mother, up there in Heaven,
would be angry with him and disappointed by his lack of control, but God
would not be able to blame him. After all, he was only what God had
made him.
With the lights of the last house well behind him, he stopped in a grove
of melaieucas. The day's strong winds had blown out of the high hills,
down through the canyons, and out sea; currently the air seemed utterly
still. Drooping from the branches of the melaleucas, and every I
blade-sleek leaf was motionless.
His eyes had adapted to the darkness. The trees were silent in the dim
starlight, and their cascading trailers contributed to an illusion that
he was surrounded by a silent waterfall frozen in a paperweight
blizzard. He could even make out ragged scrolls of bark that curled
away from the trunks limbs in the perpetual peeling process that lent a
unique be to the species.
He could not see any prey.
He could hear no furtive movement of wildlife in the brush However, he
knew that many small creatures, filled warm blood, were huddled nearby
in burrows, in secreting drifts of old leaves, and in the sheltered
niches of rocks.
The very thought of them made him half mad with hunger.
He held his arms out in front of him, palms facing away from him,
fingers spread. Blue light, the shade of pale sapphire, as the glow of
a quarter-moon, perhaps a second in duration pulsed from his hands. The
leaves trembled, and the sparse bunchgrass stirred, then all was still
as darkness reclaimed canyon floor.
Again, blue light shone forth from his hands, as if they were hooded
lanterns from which the shutters had been brightly lifted. This time
the light was twice as bright as before, a deep blue, and it lasted
perhaps two seconds. The leaves rustled, a few of the drooping trailers
swayed, and the grass shivered for thirty or forty feet in front of him.
Disturbed by those queer vibrations, something scurried toward Candy,
started past him. With that special sense of surroundings that did not
rely on sight or sound or smell, reached to his left and snatched at the
unseen darting creature His reflexes were as uncanny as anything else
about him, he seized his prey. A field mouse. For an instant it froze
in horror. Then it squirmed in his grasp, but he held fast to it.
His power had no effect on living things. He could not use it on prey
with the telekinetic energy that radiated from his 0 palms. He could
not draw them forth or call them to him, frighten them out of hiding. He
could have shattered on the melaieucas or sent geysers of dirt and
stones into the air, but no matter how hard he strained, he could not
have stirred one hair on the mouse by using just his mind. He didn't
know why he was hampered by that limitation. Violet and Verbina, whose
gifts were not half as impressive as his, seemed to have power only over
living things, smaller animals like the cats. Plants bent to Candy's
will, of course, and sometimes insects, but nothing with a mind, not
even so
mething with a mind as weak as that of a mouse.
Kneeling under the silvery trees, he was swaddled in gloom so deep that
he could see nothing of the mouse except its dimly gleaming eyes. He
brought the fist-wrapped creature to his mouth.
It made a thing, terrified sound, more of a peep than a squeal.
He bit off its head, spat it out, and fastened his lips upon the torn
neck. The blood was sweet, but there was too little of it.
He cast the dead rodent aside and raised his arms again, palms out,
fingers spread. This time the splash of spectral light was an intense,
electric, sapphire blue. Although it was of no longer duration than
before, its effect was startlingly greater. A half dozen waves of
vibrations, each a fraction of a second apart, slammed up the inclined
floor of the canyon. The tall trees shook, and the hundreds of drooping
trailers lashed the air, and the leaves thrashed with a sound like
swarms of bees. Pebbles and smaller stones were flung up from the
ground, and loose rocks rattled against one another. Every blade of
bunchgrass stood up stiff and straight, like hair on a frightened man's
nape, and a few clumps tore out of the soil and tumbled away into the
night, along with showers of dead leaves, as if a wind had captured
them. But no wind disturbed the night-only the brief burst of sapphire
light and the powerful vibrations that accompanied it.
Wildlife erupted from concealment, and some of the animals streamed
toward him, heading down the canyon. He had learned long ago that they
never recognized his scent as that of a human being. They were as
likely to flee toward him as away from him. Either he had no scent that
they could detect... or they smelled something wild in him, something
more like themselves than like a human being, and in their panic they
did not realize that he was a predator.
They were visible, at best, as shapeless dark forms, streaming past him,
like shadows flung off by a spinning lamp. But also sensed them with
his psychic gift. Coyotes loped by, a panicked raccoon brushed against
his leg; he did not reach out for those, because he wanted to avoid
being badly clawed or bitten. At least a double score of mice streamed
wit reach, as well, but he wanted something more full of life, he
with-blood.
He snatched at what he thought was a squirrel, missed, a moment later
seized a rabbit by its hind legs. It shrieked thrashed with its less
formidable forepaws, but he got hold of those, too, not only
immobilizing the creature but paralyzed it with fear.
He held it up to his face.
Its fur had a dusty, musky smell.
Its red eyes glistened with terror.
He could hear its thunderous heart.
He bit into its throat. The fur, hide, and muscle resisted teeth, but
blood flowed.
The rabbit twitched, not in an attempt to escape but a to express its
resignation to its fate; they were slow spas strangely sensuous, as if
the creature almost welcomed death. Over the years Candy had seen this
behavior in countless animals, especially in rabbits, and he always
thrilled to it, it gave him a heady sense of power, made him feel as one
the fox and the wolf.
The spasms ceased, and the rabbit went limp in his hand Though it was
still alive, it had acknowledged the immanence of death and had entered
a trance like state in which it felt no pain. This seemed to be a grace
that God bestowed small prey.
Candy bit into its throat again, harder this time, deeper,bit again,
deeper still, and the life of the rabbit spurted bubbled into his greedy
mouth.
Far away in another canyon, a coyote howled. It was answered by others
in its pack. A chorus of eerie voices rose fell and rose again, as if
the coyotes were aware that they were not the only hunters in the night,
as if they smelled the kill.
When he had supped, Candy cast the drained corpse aside. His need was
still great. He would have to break open blood reservoirs within more
rabbits or squirrels before his thirst was slaked.
He got to his feet and headed farther up into the canyon, where the
wildlife had not been disturbed by his first use of the power, where
creatures of many kinds waited in their burrows and hidey-holes to be
harvested. The night was deep and bountiful.
MAYBE IT was just Monday morning blues. May it was the bruised sky and
the promise of rain that formed her mood. Or maybe she was tense and
sour because the violent events at Decodyne were only four days in the
past and the fore still too fresh. But for some reason, Julie did not
want take on this Frank Pollard's case. Or any other new case, that
matter. They had a few ongoing security contracts with firms they had
served for years, and she wanted to stick to the comfortable, familiar
business. Most of the work they did was about as risky as going to the
supermarket for a quart of milk but danger was a potential of the job,
and the degree of danger in each new case was unknown. If a frail,
elderly lady had come to them that Monday morning, seeking help in
finding a lost cat, Julie probably would have regarded her as a menace a
par with an ax-wielding psychopath. She was edgy. After a if luck had
not been with them last week, Bobby would no be four days dead Sitting
forward in her chair, leaning over her sturdy met and-Formica desk, arms
crossed on the green-felt blotter, Julie studied Pollard. He could not
meet her eyes, and that evasiveness aroused her suspicion in spite of
his harmless -even his appearance.
He looked as if he ought to have a Vegas comedian's nam Shecky, Buddy,
something like that. He was about thirty yea old, Jive ten, maybe a
hundred and eighty pounds, which him was thirty pounds too much;
however, it was his face that was most suited for a career in comedy.
Except for a coup of curious scratches that were mostly healed, it was a
pleasant mug: open, kind, round enough to be jolly, deeply dimple A
permanent flush tinted his cheeks, as if he had been standing in an
arctic wind for most of his life. His nose was reddish too, apparently
not from too great a fondness for booze, but from having been broken a
few times; it was lumpish enough to be amusing, but not sufficiently
squashed to make him look like a thug.
Shoulders slumped, he sat in one of the two leather-arm chrome chairs in
front of Julie's desk. His voice was soft and pleasant, almost musical.
"I need help. I don't know where else to go for it." In spite of his
comedic looks, his manner was bleak. Though it was mellifluous, his
voice was heavy with despair and weariness. With one hand he
periodically wiped his face, as if pulling off cobwebs, then peered at
his hand with puzzlement each time it came away empty.
The backs of his hands were marked with scabbed-over scratches, too, a
couple of which were slightly swollen and inflamed.
"But frankly," he said,
"seeking help from private detectives seems ridiculous, as if this isn't
real life but a TV show."
"I've got heartburn, so it's real life
, all right," Bobby said. He was
standing at one of the big sixth-floor windows that faced out toward the
mist-obscured sea and down on the nearby buildings of Fashion Island,
the Newport Beach shopping center adjacent to the office tower in which
Dakota & Dakota leased a seven-room suite. He turned from the view,
leaned against the sill, and extracted a roll of Rolaids from the pocket
of his jacket.
"TV detectives never suffer heartburn, dandruff, or the heartbreak of
psoriasis."
"Mr. Pollard," Julie said,
"I'm sure Mr. Karaghiosis has explained to you that strictly speaking we
aren't private detectives."
"Yes."
"We're security consultants. We primarily work with corporations and
private institutions. We have eleven employees with sophisticated
skills and years of security experience, which is a lot different from
the one-man PI fantasies on TV. We don't shadow men's wives to see if
they're being unfaithful, and we don't do divorce work or any of the
other things that people usually come to private detectives for."
"Mr. Karaghiosis explained that to me," Pollard said, looking down at
his hands, which were clenched on his thighs.
From the sofa to the left of the desk, Clint Karaghiosis said,
"Frank told me his story, and I really think you ought to h why he needs
us." Julie noted that Clint had used the would-be client's first name,
which he had never done before during six years with Dakota & Dakota.
Clint was solidly built-five foot eight, hundred and sixty pounds. He
looked as though he had on been an inanimate assemblage of chunks of
Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Page 13
