Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place
Page 47
Julie's desk was aslant and askew: tilting on one shattered leg; the top
no longer was properly aligned with the base, as if someone had gone at
it with prybars and hammers.
"Hal?" No answer.
He gingerly pushed open the door to the adjoining bat
"Hal?" The bathroom was deserted.
He went to the broken window. A few small shards of gi still clung to
the frame. Caught the light. Jagged.
With one hand against the wall, Lee Chen carefully lea out. He looked
down. In a much different tone of voice, he"Hal?" CANDY MATERIALIZED in
the foyer of the Dakotas' house which was dark and silent. He stood
quietly for a mom head cocked, until he was confident that he was alone.
His throat was healed. He was whole again, and excited the prospects of
the night.
He began the search from there, putting his hand on doorknob in hope of
finding some of the residue that,lacking physical substance,
nevertheless provided the nourishment for his visions. He felt nothing,
no doubt partly because the Dakotas had touched it only briefly upon
entering and parting the house.
Of course, a person could handle a hundred items, leaving psychic images
of himself on only one of them, then touch same hundred an hour later
and contaminate every onehis aura. The reason for that was as
mysterious, to Candy, was so many people's interest in sex. He remained
as grate to his mother for this talent as he was for all the others,
tracking his prey with psychometry was not always an or infallible
process.
The Dakotas, living room and dining room were unfurnished, which gave
him little to work with, although for so reason the emptiness made him
feel comfortable and at home That response puzzled him. The rooms in
his mother's house were all furnished-as much with mold and fungus and!"
these days as with chairs, sofas, tables, and lamps; but hedenly
realized that, like the Dakotas, he lived in such a small Percentage of
the house that most of its chambers might as well have been bare,
carpetless, and sealed off.
The Dakotas' kitchen and family room were furnished a obviously lived
in. Though it was unlikely that they had us the family room during
their brief stop between the office and wherever they had gone from
here, he hoped they might have lingered in the kitchen for a bite of
food or a drink. But the handles of the cabinets, microwave, oven, and
refrigerator provided him with no images whatsoever.
On his way to the second floor, Candy climbed the steps slowly, letting
his left hand slide searchingly along the oak balustrade. At several
points along the way, he was rewarded by psychic images that, while
brief and not clear, encouraged him, and led him to believe that he
would find what he needed in their bedroom or bath.
INSTEAD OF immediately dialing 911 to reportmurder of Hal Yamataka, Lee
ran first to the reception and, as he had been trained, removed a small
brown notebo from the back of the bottom drawer on the right side. For
benefit of employees, like Lee, who did not often get into field and
seldom interfaced directly with the county's many lice agencies but
might one day need to deal with them in emergency, Bobby had composed a
list of some of the office detectives, and administrators who were most
profession reasonable, and reliable in every majorjurisdiction. The bro
notebook contained a second list of cops to avoid: thosehad an
instinctive dislike for anyone in the private investigation and security
business; those who were just pains in ass in general; and those who
were always on the lookout a little green grease to lubricate the wheels
of justice. It a testament to the high quality of the county's law
enforcem that the first list was much longer than the second.
According to Bobby and Julie, it was preferable to try manage the
introduction of the police into a situation that quired them, even going
so far as to try to select one of detectives who would show up at the
scene-if it was a scene that needed detectives. Relying on the luck of
the draw dispatcher's whim was considered unwise.
Lee wondered if he should even call the cops. He had doubt who had
killed Hal. Mr. Blue. Candy. But also he knew that Bobby would not
want to reveal more about Frank a the case than was truly necessary; the
agency-client privile was not as legally airtight as that of
lawyer-client or doct patient, but it was important too. Since Julie
and Bobby on the road and temporarily unreachable, Lee could get
guidance on what and how much to say to the police.
But he couldn't let a dead body lie in front of the building, hoping
nobody would notice! Especially not when the victim was a man he had
known and liked.
Call the cops, then. But play dumb.
Consulting the notebook, Lee dialed the Newport Beach Police and asked
for Detective Harry Ladshroke, but Ladshroke was off duty. So was
Detective Janet Heisinger. Detective Kyle Ostov was available, however,
and when he came on the line he sounded reassuringly big and competent;
his voice was a mellow baritone, and he spoke crisply.
Lee identified himself, aware that his own voice was higher than usual,
almost squeaky, and that he was speaking too fast.
"There's been a... well, a murder." Before hee could go on, Ostov
said,
"Jesus, you mean Bobby and Julie know already? I just found out myself.
It was pushed on to me to tell them, and I was just sitting here, trying
to figure how best to break the news. I had my hand on the phone, going
to call them, when you rang through. How're they taking it?" Confused,
Lee said,
"I don't think they know. I mean, it must have happened just a few
minutes ago."
"A little longer than that," Ostov said.
"When did you guys find out? I just looked, and there weren't any
patrol cars, nothing." Finally the shakes hit him.
"God, I was talking to him not that long ago, took him some pizza, and
now he's splattered all over the concrete six floors down." Ostov was
silent. Then:
"What murder you talking about, ?"
"Hal Yamataka. There must've been a fight here, and then-" He stopped,
blinked, and said,.'What murder are you talking about?"
"Thomas," Ostov said.
Heed felt sick. He had only met Thomas once, but he knew that Julie and
Bobby were devoted to him.
Ostov said,
"Thomas and his roommate. And maybe more in the fire if they didn't get
them all out of the building in time." The computer that Lee had been
born with was not functioning as smoothly as the ones made by IBM in his
office, and he needed a moment to grasp the implications of the
information that he and Ostov had exchanged. "They've got to be
conected, don't they?",Ild bet on it. You know of anybody who has a gru
against Julie and Bobby?" Lee looked around the reception lounge,
thought about other deserted rooms at Dakota & Dakota, the lonely offing
on the rest of the sixth floor, and the unpeopled levels bel the sixth.
He thought of Can
dy, too, all those people bitten torn, the giant Bobby
had seen on Punaluu Beach, the way guy could zap himself from place to
place. He began to very much alone.
"Detective Ostov, could you get some peo here really fast?"
"I've entered the call on the computer while I've been ting to you,"
Ostov said.
"A couple of units are on the now." WITH HIS fingertips, Candy traced
lazy circles on the su of the dresser, then explored the contours of
each brass hang on the drawers. He touched the light switch on the wall
the switches on both bedside lamps. He let his hands glidedoorframes on
the off-chance that one of his intended p might have paused and leaned
there while in conversation, amined the handles on the mirrored closet
doors, and cares each number and switchpad on the remote-control device
the TV, hoping that they had clicked on the set even dur the short time
they had been home.
Nothing.
Because he needed to be calm and methodical in his sea if he were to
succeed, Candy had to repress his rage and frustration. But his anger
grew even as he struggled to contain and in him the thirst of anger was
always a thirst for blo that wine of vengeance. Only blood would slake
his thi quench his fury, and allow him an interlude of relative peace By
the time he moved from the Dakotas' bedroom into adjoining bath, Candy
was possessed of a need for blood alm as undeniable and critical as his
need for air. Looking at mirror, he did not see himself for a moment,
as if he cast reflection; he saw only red blood, as if the mirror were a
p hole on one of the lower decks of a ship in Hell, on a cr through a
sea of gore. When that illusion faded and he saw his own face, he
quickly looked away.
He clenched his jaws, struggled even harder to control himself, and
touched the hot-water faucet, searching, seeking....
THE MOTEL Room in Santa Barbara was spacious, quiet, clean, and
furnished without the jarring clash of colors and patterns that seemed
de rigueur in most American motels-but it was not a place in which Julie
would have chosen to receive the terrible news that came to her there.
The blow seemed greater, the ache in the heart more piercing, for having
to be home in a strange and impersonal place.
She really had thought that Bobby was letting his imagination run away
with him again, that Thomas was perfectly fine. Because the phone was
on the nightstand, he sat on the, edge of the bed to make the call, and
Julie watched him and listened from a chair only a few feet away. When
he got that recording again, explaining that the Cielo Vista number was
temporarily out of service due to line problems, she was vaguely uneasy
but still sure that all was well with her brother.
However, when he called the office in Newport to talk with Hal, got Lee
Chen instead, and spent the first minute or so listening in shocked
silence, responding with a cryptic word or two, she knew this was to be
a night that cleaved her life, and that the years to come inevitably
would be darker than the years she had lived on the other side of that
cleft. As he began to ask questions of Lee, Bobby avoided looking at
Julie, which confirmed her intuition and made her heart pound faster.
When at last he glanced at her, she had to look away from the sadness in
his eyes. His questions to Lee were clipped, and she couldn't ascertain
much from them. Maybe she didn't want to.
Finally the call seemed to be drawing to an end.
"No, you've done well, Lee. Keep handling it just the way you have
been. What? Thank you, Lee. No, we'll be all right. We'll be okay,
Lee. One way or another, we'll be okay." When Bobby hung up, he sat
for a moment, staring at his hands, which he clasped between his knees.
Julie did not ask him what had happened, as if what Lee had told him was
not yet fact, as if her question was a dar magic and as if the
unrevealed tragedy would not become re until she asked about it.
Bobby got off the bed and knelt on the floor in front of her chair. He
took both of her hands in his and gently kissed the She knew then that
the news was as bad as it could get.
Softly he said,
"Thomas is dead." She had steeled herself for that news, but the words
cut deep
"I'm sorry, Julie. God, I'm so sorry. And it doesn't end there." He
told her about Hal.
"And just a couple minutes before he talked to me, Lee received a call
about Clint and Felina Both dead." The horror was too much to
assimilate. Julie had liked an respected Hal, Clint, and Felina
enormously, and her admiration for the deaf woman's courage and
self-sufficiency washounded. It was unfair that she could not mourn
each of the individually; they deserved that much. She also felt that
she was somehow betraying them because her sorrow at their deaths was
only a pale reflection of the grief she felt at the lose of Thomas,
though that was, of course, the only way it could be.
Her breath caught in her throat, and when it flew free, i was not just
an exhalation but a sob. That was no good. Sh could not allow herself
to break down. At no point in her life had she needed to be as strong
as she needed to be now; the murders committed in Orange County tonight
were the fir in a domino-fall of death that would take down her and
Bobby too, if misery dulled their edge.
While Bobby continued to kneel before her and reveal moor details-Derek
was dead, too, and perhaps others at Ciel Vista-she gripped his hands
tightly, inexpressibly gratefulhave him for an anchor in this
turbulence. Her vision was blurry, but she held back the tears with a
sheer effort of will though she dared not make eye contact with Bobby
just seeing that would be the end of her self-control.
When he finished, she said,
"It was Frank's brother,course,"
and was dismayed by the way her voice quavered.
"Almost certainly," Bobby said.
"But how did he find out Frank was our client?"
"I don't know. He saw me on the beach at Punaluu-"
"Yeah, but didn't follow you. He has no way of knowin who you were. And
for God's sake, how did he find out about Thomas?"
"There's some crucial bit of information missing, so we can't understand
the pattern."
"What's the bastard after?" she said. Now her voice was marked by
nearly as much anger as grief, and that was good.
"He's hunting Frank," Bobby said.
"For seven years Frank was a loner, and that made him harder to find.
Now Frank has friends, and that gives Candy more ways to search for
him."
"I as good as killed Thomas when I took the case," she said.
"You didn't want to take it. I had to talk you into it."
"I talked you into it, you wanted to back out."
"If there's guilt, we share it, but there isn't any. We took on a new
client, that's all, and everything... just happened." Julie nodded and
finally met his eyes. Although his voice had remained steady, tears
slid down his cheeks. Preoccupied with her own grief, she had forgotten
that the friends lo
st were his as well as hers, and that he had come to
love Thomas nearly as much as she did. She had to look away from him
again.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"For now, I have to be. Later, I want to talk about Thomas, how brave
he was about being different, how he never complained, how sweet he was.
I want to talk about all of it, you and me, and I don't want us to
forget. Nobody's ever going to build a monument to Thomas, he wasn't
famous, he was, just a little guy who never did anything great except be
the best person he knew how, and the only monument he's ever going to
have is our memories. So we'll keep him alive,-won't we?"
"Yes."
"We'll keep him alive... until we're gone. But that's for later, when
there's time. Now we have to keep ourselves alive, because that son of
a bitch will be coming for us, won't he?"
"I think he will," Bobby said.
He rose from his knees and pulled her up from the chair.
He was wearing his dark brown Ultraseude jacket with the shoulder
holster under it. She'd taken off her corduroy blazer and her holster;
she put both of them on again. The weight of the revolver, against her
left side, felt good. She hoped she'd have a chance to use it.
Her vision had cleared; her eyes were dry. She said,
"One' thing for sure-no more dreams for me. What good is it, haing
dreams, when they never come true?"