Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place
Page 14
granite and stone marble, flint and field stone, slate and iron and
lodesto which some alchemist had transmuted into living flesh.
broad countenance, though handsome enough, also looked if it had been
chiseled from rock. In a search for a sign of weariness in his face,
one could say only that, though strong, so features were not as strong
as others. He had a rocklike personality too: steady, reliable,
imperturbable. Few people i pressed Clint, and fewer still pierced his
reserve and elicit more than a polite, businesslike response from him.
Hint of the client's first name seemed to be a subtle expression of
sympathy for Pollard and a vote of confidence in the truthfulness of
whatever tale the man had to tell.
"If Clint thinks this is something for us, that's good enough for me,"
Bobby said.
"What's your problem, Frank?" Julie was not impressed that Bobby had
used the client's first name so immediately, casually. Bobby liked
everyone he met at least until they emphatically proved themselves
unworthy of being liked. In fact, you had to stab him in the back
repeatedly, virtually giggling with malice, before he would finally a
regretfully consider the possibility that maybe he shouldn't like you.
Sometimes she thought she had married a big puppy that was pretending to
be human.
Before Pollard could begin, Julie said,
"One thing, first.
we decide to accept your case-and I stress the if-we are cheap."
"That's no problem," Pollard said. He lifted a leather flight bag from
the floor at his feet. It was one of two he'd brought with him. He put
it on his lap and unzippered it. He withdrew a couple of packs of
currency and put them on the desk. Twenties and hundreds.
As Julie took the money to inspect it, Bobby pushed away from the
windowsill and went to Pollard's side. He look down into the flight bag
and said,
"It's crammed full."
"One hundred and forty thousand dollars," Pollard said Upon quick
inspection, the money on the desk did not appear to be counterfeit.
Julie pushed it aside and said,
"Mr. Pollard, are you in the habit of carrying so much cash?"
"I don't know," Pollard said.
"You don't know?"
"I don't know," he repeated miserably.
"He literally doesn't know,"
Clint said.
"Hear him out." In a voice at once subdued yet heavy with emotion,
Pollard said,
"You've got to help me find out where I go at night. What in God's name
am I doing when I should be sleeping?"
"Hey, this sounds interesting," Bobby said, sitting down on one corner
of Julie's desk.
Bobby's boyish enthusiasm made Julie nervous. He might commit them to
Pollard before they knew enough to be sure that it was wise to take the
case. She also didn't like him sitting on her desk. It just didn't
seem businesslike. She felt that it gave the prospective client an
impression of amateurism.
From the sofa, Clint said,
"Should I start the tape?"
"Definitely,"
Bobby said.
Clint was holding a compact, battery-powered tape recorder. He flicked
the switch and set the recorder on the coffee table in front of the
sofa, with the built-in microphone aimed at Pollard, Julie, and Bobby.
The slightly chubby, round-faced man looked up at them. The rings of
bluish skin around his eyes, the watery redness of the eyes themselves,
and the paleness of his lips belied any image of robust health to which
his ruddy cheeks might have lent credence. A hesitant smile flickered
across his mouth. He met Julie's eyes for no more than a second, looked
down at his hands again. He seemed frightened, beaten, altogether
pitiable. In spite of herself she felt a pang of sympathy for him.
As Pollard began to speak, Julie sighed and slumped back in her chair.
Two minutes later, she was leaning forward again, listening intently to
Pollard's soft voice. She did not want to be fascinated, but she was.
Even phlegmatic Clint Karaghiosis, hearing the story for the second
time, was obviously captivated by it.
If Pollard was not a liar or a raving lunatic-and most likely he was
both-then he was caught up in events of an almost supernatural nature.
Julie did not believe in the SUPERNATURAL.
She tried to remain skeptical, but Pollard's demeanor and dent
conviction persuaded her against her will.
Bobby began making holy-jeez-gosh-wow sounds and slurping the desk in
astonishment at the revelation of each twist in the tale. When the
client- No. Pollard. Not
"the client." He wasn't their client yet. Pollard. When Pollard told
them about waking in a motel room Thursday afternoon, blood on his
hands, Bobby blurted,
"We'll take the case!"
"Bobby, wait," Julie said.
"We haven't heard everything Mr. Pollard came here to tell us. We
shouldn't-"
"Yeah, Frank," Bobby said,
"what the hell happened the Julie said, "What I mean is, we have to hear
his whole story before we can possibly know whether or not we can help
him
"Oh, we can help him, all right," Bobby said.
"We-"
"Bobby," she said firmly,
"could I see you alone for a moment?" She got up, crossed the office,
opened the door to adjoining bathroom, and turned on the light in there.
Bobby said,
"Be right back, Frank." He followed Julie i the bathroom, closing the
door behind them.
She switched on the ceiling exhaust fan to help muffle the voices, and
spoke in a whisper.
"What's wrong with you?
"Well, I have flat feet, no arches at all, and I've got that mole in the
middle of my back."
"You're impossible."
"Flat feet and a mole are too many faults for you to hand You're a hard
woman." The room was small. They were standing between the sink and
the toilet, almost nose to nose. He kissed her forehead
"Bobby, for God's sake, you just told Pollard we'll take case. Maybe we
won't."
"Why wouldn't we? It's fascinating."
"For one thing, he sounds like a nut."
"No, he doesn't."
"He says some strange power caused that car to disintegrate blew out
streetlights. Strange flute music, mysterious blue lights... This
guy's been reading the National Enquirer too long."
"But that's just it. A true nut would already be able to plain what
happened to him. He'd claim he'd met God or Magicians. This guy is
baffled, looking for answers. That strikes as a sane response."
"Besides, we're in business, Bobby. Business. Not for fun.
For money. We're not a couple of damned hobbyists."
"He's got money. You saw it."
"What if it's hot money?"
"Frank's no thief."
"You know him less than an hour and you're sure he's no thief'? You're
so trusting, Bobby."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment. How can you do the kind of work you do, and be
so trusting?" He grinned.
"I trusted you, and that turned out okay." She refu
sed to be charmed.
"He says he doesn't know where he got the money, and just for the sake
of the argument, let's say we buy that part of the story. And let's
also say you're right about him not being a thief. So maybe he's a drug
dealer. Or something else. There's a thousand ways it could be hot
money without being stolen. And if we find out that it's hot, we can't
keep what he pays us. We'll have to turn it over to the cops. We'll
have wasted our time and energy. Besides... it's going to be messy."
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
"Why do I say that? He just told you about waking up in a motel room
with blood all over his hands!"
"Keep your voice down. You might hurt his feelings."
"God forbid!"
"Remember, there was no body. It must've been his own blood."
Frustrated, she said, "How do we know there was no body?
Because he says there wasn't? He might be such a nut case that he
wouldn't even notice the body if he stepped in its steaming bowels and
stumbled over its decapitated head."
"What a vivid image." "Bobby, he says maybe he clawed at himself, but
that's not very damned likely. Probably some poor woman, some innocent
girl, maybe even a child, a helpless schoolgirl, was attacked by that
man, dragged into his car, raped and beaten and raped again, forced to
perform every humiliating act a perverse mind could imagine, then driven
to some lonely desert canyon, maybe tortured with needles and knives and
God knows what, then clubbed to death, and pitched naked into a dry
wash, where coyotes are even now chewing on the softer parts of with
flies crawling in and out of her open mouth."
"Julie, you're forgetting something."
"What?"
"I'm the one with the overactive imagination." She laughed. She
couldn't help it. She wanted to thump skull hard enough to knock some
sense into him, but laughed instead and shook her head.
He kissed her cheek, then reached for the doorknob.
She put her hand on his.
"Promise we won't take the case until we've heard his whole story and
have time to think about it."
"All right." They returned to the office.
Beyond the windows, the sky resembled a sheet of steel that had been
scorched black in places, with a few scattered incrustations of
mustard-yellow corrosion. Rain had not begun to fall, but the air
seemed tense in expectation of it.
The only lights in the room were two brass lamps on tables that flanked
the sofa, and a silk-shaded brass floorlamp in the corner. The overhead
fluorescence were not on, because both hated the glare and believed that
an office should be as cozy lighted as a den in a private home. Julie
thought it should look and feel like an office. But she humored Bobby
and usually left the fluorescence off. Now as the oncoming storm
darkened the day, she wanted to switch on the overhead and chase away
the shadows that had begun to gather in the corners untouched by the
amber glow of the lamps.
Frank Pollard was still in his chair, staring at the framed posters of
Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Uncle Scrooge that adorned the walls.
They were another burden under who Julie labored. She was a fan of
Warner Brothers cartoons, because they had a harder edge than Disney's
creations, and owned videotape collections of them, plus a couple of
additional cells of Daffy Duck, but she kept that stuff at home. Bobby
brought the Disney cartoon characters into the office because (he said)
they relaxed him, made him feel good, and helped him think. No clients
ever questioned their professionalism merely because of the
unconventional artwork on the walls, but she still worried about what
they might think.
She went behind her desk again, and again Bobby perched on it.
After winking at Julie, Bobby said, "Frank, I was premature in accepting
the case. We really can't make that decision until we've heard your
whole story."
"Sure," Frank said, looking quickly at Bobby, at Julie, then down at his
scratched hands, which were now clutching the open flight bag.
"That's perfectly understandable."
"Of course it is," Julie said.
Clint switched on the tape recorder again.
Exchanging the flight bag on his lap for the one on the floor, Pollard
said, "I should give you these."
He unzippered the second satchel and withdrew a plastic bag that
contained a small portion of the handsful of black sand he'd been
clutching when he had awakened after his brief sleep Thursday morning.
He also withdrew the bloody shirt he had been wearing when he had arisen
from his even shorter nap later that same day.
"I saved them because... well, they seemed like evidence. Clues. Maybe
they'll help you figure out what's going on, what I've done."
Bobby accepted the shirt and the sand, examined them briefly, then put
them on the desk beside him.
Julie noted that the shirt had been thoroughly saturated with blood, not
merely spotted. Now the dry brownish stains made the material stiffer.
"So you were in the motel Thursday afternoon," Bobby prompted.
Pollard nodded.
"Nothing much happened that night. I went to a movie, couldn't get
interested in it. Drove around a while. I was tired, real tired, in
spite of the nap, but I couldn't sleep at all. I was afraid to sleep.
Next morning I moved to another motel."
"When did you finally sleep again?" Julie asked.
"The next evening."
"Friday evening that was?"
"Yeah. I tried to stay awake with lots of coffee. Sat at the counter
in the little restaurant attached to the motel, and drank coffee until I
started to float off the stool. Stomach got so acidic, I had to stop.
Went back to my room. Every time I started nodding off, I went out for
a walk. But it was pointless. I couldn't stay awake forever. I was
coming apart at the seams.
I Had to get some rest. So I went to bed shortly past eight in the
evening, fell asleep instantly, and didn't wake up until half past five
in the morning."
"Saturday morning."
"Yeah."
"And everything was okay?" Bobby asked.
"At least there was no blood. But there was something else They waited.
Pollard licked his lips, nodded as if confirming to himself his
willingness to continue.
"See, I'd gone to bed in my boxer shorts... but when I woke up I was
fully clothed."
"So you were sleepwalking, and you dressed in your sleep. Julie said.
"But the clothes I was wearing weren't any I'd ever seen before."
Julie blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"They weren't the clothes I was wearing when I came to that alleyway two
nights before, and they weren't the clothes I bought at the mall on
Thursday morning."
"Whose clothes were they?" Bobby asked.
"Oh, they must be mine," Pollard said, "because they fit too well to
belong to anyone else. They fit perfectly. Even the shoes fit
perfectly. I couldn't have lifted that outfit from some one else and
been lucky enough to have it
all fit so well."
Bobby slipped off the desk and began to pace.
"So what are you saying? That you left that motel in your underwear,
went out to some store, bought clothes, and nobody objected to your
modesty or even questioned you about it?"
Shaking his head, Pollard said, "I don't know."
Clint Karaghiosis said, "He could've dressed in his room while
sleepwalking, then went out, bought other clothes changed into them."
"But why would he do that?" Julie asked.
Clint shrugged.
"I'm just offering a possible explanation
"Mr. Pollard," Bobby said, "why would you have done something like
that?"
"I don't know."
Pollard had used those three words so oft that he was wearing them out;
each time he repeated them his voice seemed softer and fuzzier than
before.