Dean Koontz - (1984)

by The Servants Of Twilight(Lit)

The boy's usual verve was gone. It was disturbing to see him so gray-faced and bereft of spirit.

  Charlie and Christine tried to kid him into a better mood, but he was having none of it.

  Later, at nine-thirty, they ate breakfast in a nearby coffee shop .

  Charlie and Christine were starved, but they repeatedly had to urge Joey to eat. They were in a booth by one of the big windows, and Joey kept looking out at the sky, where a few strips of blue seemed like gaily colored ropes holding the drab clouds together. He looked as glum as a six-year-old could look.

  Charlie wondered why the boy's eyes were drawn repeatedly to the sky. Was he expecting the witch to come sailing in on her broom?

  Yes, in fact, that was probably just what he was worried about .

  When you were six years old, it wasn't always possible to distinguish between real and imaginary dangers. At that age you believed in the monster-that-lives-in-the-closet, and you are convinced that something even worse was crouching under your bed. To Joey, it probably made as much sense to search for broomsticks in the sky as to look for white Ford vans on the highway.

  Chewbacca had been left in the car outside the coffee shop .

  When they were finished with breakfast, they brought him an order of ham and eggs, which he devoured eagerly.

  "Last night it was hamburgers, this morning ham and eggs,"

  Christine said ." We've got to find a grocery store and buy some real dog food before this mutt gets the idea that he's always going to eat this well."

  They went shopping again for clothes and personal effects in a mall just off East State Street. Joey tried on some clothes, but listlessly, without the enthusiasm he had shown yesterday. He said little, smiled not at all.

  Christine was obviously worried about him. So was Charlie.

  They were finished shopping before lunch. The last thing they bought was a small electronic device at Radio Shack. It was the size of a pack of cigarettes, a product of the paranoid T0s and '80s that would not have had any buyers in a more trusting era: a tap detector that could tell you if your telephone line was being monitored by a recorder or a tracing mechanism of any kind.

  In a phone booth near the side entrance of Sears, Charlie unscrewed the earpiece on the handset, screwed on another earpiece that came with the tap detector. He removed the mouthpiece, used a car key to short the inhibitor that made it impossible to place a long-distance call without operator assistance, and dialed Klemet-Harrison in Costa Mesa, toll-free. If his equipment indicated a tap, he'd be able to hang up in the first fraction of a second after the connection was made and, most likely, cut the line before anyone had a chance even to determine that the call was from another area code.

  The number rang twice, then there was a click on the line.

  The meter in Charlie's hand gave no indication of a tap.

  But instead of Sherry Ordway's familiar voice, the call was answered by telephone company recording: "The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please consult your directory for the correct number or dial the operator for . .

  Charlie hung up.

  Tried it again.

  He got the same response.

  With a presentiment of disaster chewing at him, he dialed Henry Rankin's home number. It was picked up on the first ring, and again the meter indicated no tap, but this time the voice was not a recording.

  "Hello?" Henry said.

  Charlie said, "It's me, Henry. I just called the office-"

  "I've been waiting here by the phone, figuring you'd try me sooner or later," Henry said ." We got trouble, Charlie. We got lots of trouble."

  From outside the booth, Christine couldn't hear what Charlie was saying, but she could tell something bad had happened .

  When he finally hung up and opened the folding door, he was ashen.

  " What's wrong?" she asked.

  He glanced at Joey and said, "Nothing's wrong. I talked to Henry Rankin. They're still working on the case, but there's nothing new to report yet."

  He was lying for Joey's sake, but the boy sensed it just as Christine did, and said, "Whatd she do now? Whatd the witch do now?"

  "Nothing," Charlie said ." She can't find us, so she's throwing tantrums down there in Orange County. That's all."

  " What's a tantrum?" Joey asked.

  "Don't worry about it. We're okay. Everything's ticking along as planned. Now let's go back to the car, find a supermarket, and stock up on groceries."

  Walking through the open-air mall and all the way out to the car, Charlie looked around uneasily, with a visible tension he hadn't shown all morning.

  Christine had begun to accept his assurances that they were safe in Santa Barbara, but now fear crawled up out of her subconscious and took possession of her once more.

  As if it were an omen of renewed danger, the weather worsened again. The sky began to clot up with black clouds.

  They found a supermarket, and as they shopped, Joey moved down the aisles ahead of them. Ordinarily, he scampered ahead, searching for items on their shopping list, eager to help. Today he moved slowly and studied the shelves with little interest.

  When the boy was far enough away, Charlie said softly, "Last night my offices were torched."

  "Torched?" Christine said. There was suddenly a greasy, roiling feeling in her stomach ." You mean . . . burned?"

  He nodded, taking a couple of cans of Mandarin orange slices

  from the shelf and putting them in the shopping cart ." Everything's ... lost ... furniture, equipment, all the files ...

  gone." He paused while two women with carts moved past them .

  Then: "The files were in fire-proof cabinets, but someone got the drawers open anyway, pulled out all the papers, and poured gasoline on them."

  Shocked, Christine said, "But in a business like yours, don't you have burglar alarms-"

  "Two systems, each independent of the other, both with backup power sources in case of a blackout," Charlie said.

  "But that sounds fool-proof."

  "It was supposed tove been, yeah. But her people got through somehow ."

  Christine felt sick ." You think it was Grace Spivey."

  "I know it was Grace. You haven't heard everything that happened last night. Besides, it had to be her because there's such a quality of rage about it, such an air of desperation, and she must be angry and desperate right now because we've given her the slip. She doesn't know where we've gone, can't get her hands on Joey, so she's striking out wherever she can, flailing away in a mad frenzy."

  She remembered the Henredon desk in his office, the Martin Green paintings, and she said, "Oh, dammit, Charlie, I'm so sorry. Because of me, you've lost your business and all your-"

  "It can all be replaced," he said, although she could see that the loss disturbed him ." The important files are on microfilm and stored elsewhere. They can be recreated. We can find new offices. Insurance will cover most everything. It's not the money or the inconvenience that bothers me. It's the fact that, for a few days at least, until Henry gets things organized down there, my people won't be able to keep after Grace Spivey-and we won't have them behind us, supporting us. Temporarily, we're pretty much on our own."

  That was a disturbing thought.

  Joey came back with a can of pineapple rings ." Can I have these, Mom?"

  "Sure," she said, putting the can in the cart. If it would have brought a smile to his small glum face, she'd have allowed him

  to get a whole package of Almond Joys or some other item he was usually not permitted to have.

  Joey went off to scout the rest of the aisle ahead.

  To Charlie, Christine said, "You mentioned that something else happened last night . . . It

  He hesitated. He put two jars of applesauce in the cart. Then, with a look of sympathy and concern, he said, "Your house was also torched."

  Instantly, without conscious intent, she began to catalogue what she had lost, the sentimental as well as the truly valuable things that this act
of arson had stolen from her: all Joey's baby pictures; the fifteen-thousand-dollar oriental carpet in the living room, which was the first expensive thing she'd owned, her first gesture of self-indulgence after the years of self-denial her mother had demanded of her; photographs of Tony, her long-dead brother; her collection of Lalique crystal . . .

  For an awful moment she almost burst into tears, but then Joey returned to say that the dairy case was at the end of this aisle and that he would like some cottage cheese to go with the pineapple rings. And Christine realized that losing the oriental carpets, the paintings, and even the old photographs was of little importance as long as she still had Joey. He was the only thing in her life that was irreplaceable. No longer on the verge of tears, she told him to get the cottage cheese.

  When Joey moved away again, Charlie said, "My house, too."

  For a moment she wasn't sure she understood ." Burned?"

  "To the ground," he said.

  "Oh my God."

  It was too much. Christine felt like a plague-carrier. She had brought disaster to everyone who was trying to help her.

  "Grace is desperate, you see," Charlie said excitedly ." She doesn't know where we've gone, and she really thinks that Joey is the Antichrist, and she's afraid she's failed in her God-given mission. She's furious and frightened, and she's striking out blindly. The very fact that she's done these things means we're safe here. Better than that, it means she's rapidly destroying herself. She's gone too far. She's stepped way, way over the line .

  The cops can't help but connect those three torchings with the murders at your place last night and with the bomb at Miriam

  Rankin's house in Laguna . This is now the biggest story in Orange County, maybe the biggest story in the whole state. She can't go around blowing up houses, burning them down. She's brought war to Orange County, for Christ's sake, and no one's going to tolerate that. The cops are going to come down hard on her now. They're going to be grilling her and everyone in her church. They'll go over her affairs with a microscope. She'll have made a mistake last night; she'll have left incriminating evidence. Somewhere. Somehow. One little mistake is all the cops need. They'll seize on it and pull her alibi apart. She's done for. It's only a matter of time. All we've got to do is lie low here for a few days, stay in the motel, and wait for the Church of the Twilight to fall apart."

  " hope you're right," she said, but she wasn't going to get her hopes up. Not again.

  Joey returned with the cottage cheese and stayed close to them for a while, until they entered an aisle that contained a small toy section, where he drifted away to look at the plastic guns.

  Charlie said, "We'll finish shopping, get a bunch of magazines, a deck of cards, a few games, whatever we need to keep us occupied for the rest of the week. After we've taken everything back to the room, I'll get rid of the car-"

  "But I thought it wouldn't turn up on any hot sheets for a few days yet. That's what you said."

  He was trying not to look grim, but he couldn't keep the worry out of either his face or his voice. He took a package of Oreos from the cookie section and put them in the cart ." Yeah, well, according to Henry, the cops have already found the yellow Cadillac we abandoned in Ventura, and they've already linked it with the stolen LTD and the missing plates. They lifted fingerprints from the Caddy, and because my prints are on file with my PI license application, they made a quick connection."

  "But from what you said, I didn't think they ever worked that fast ."

  "Ordinarily, no. But we had a piece of bad luck."

  "Another one?"

  "That Cadillac belongs to a state senator. The police didn't treat this like they would an ordinary stolen car report."

  "Are we jinxed or what?"

  "Just a bit of bad luck," he said, but he was clearly unnerved by this development.

  Across the aisle from the cookies were potato chips, corn chips, and other snack foods, just the stuff she tried to keep Joey away from. But now she put potato chips, cheese puffs, and Fritos in the cart. She did it partly because she wanted to cheer Joey up-but also because it seemed foolish to deny themselves anything when the time left to them might be very short.

  "So now the cops aren't just looking for the LTD," she said .

  "They're looking for you, too."

  "There's worse," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  She stared at him, not sure she wanted to hear what he had to tell her. During the last couple of days, she'd had the feeling they were all caught in a vise. For the past few hours, the jaws of the vise had loosened a bit, but now Grace Spivey was turning the handle tight again.

  He said, "They found my Mercedes in the garage in Westwood. A phone tip sent them to it. In the trunk . . . they found a dead body."

  Stunned, Christine said, "Who?"

  "They don't know yet. A man. In his thirties. No identification. He'd been shot twice."

  "Spivey's people killed him and put him in your car?" she asked, keeping an eye on Joey as he checked out the toy guns at the end of the aisle.

  "Yeah. That's what I figure. Maybe he was in the garage when they attacked us. Maybe he saw too much and had to be eliminated, and they realized they could use his body to put the police on my tail. Now Grace doesn't have just her thousand or two thousand followers out looking for us; she's got every cop in the state helping with the search."

  They were at a standstill now, speaking softly but intently, no longer pretending to be interested only in groceries.

  "But surely the police don't think you killed him."

  "They have to assume I'm involved somehow."

  "But won't they realize it's related to the church, to that crazy woman-"

  "Sure. But they might think the guy in my trunk is one of her

  people and that I've eliminated him. Or even if they do suspect I'm being framed, they've still got to talk to me. They've still got to put a warrant out for me."

  The whole world was after them now. It seemed hopeless .

  Like a toxic chemical, despair settled into her bones, leeching her strength. She just wanted to lie down, close her eyes, and sleep for a while.

  Charlie said, "Come on. Let's get the shopping done, take everything back to the motel, and then dump the car. I want to hole up inside before some cop spots our license plates or recognizes me."

  "Do you think the police know we headed for Santa Barbara after we left Ventura?"

  "They can't know for sure. But they've got to figure we were running from L.A., moving north, so Santa Barbara's a good bet ."

  As they went up and down the remaining aisles, as they checked out and paid for the groceries, Christine found it difficult to breathe. She felt as if a spotlight were trained on them .

  She kept waiting for sirens and alarms.

  Joey became even more lethargic and solemn than before. He sensed that they were hiding something from him, and maybe it wasn't good to withhold the truth, but she decided it would be worse to tell him that the witch had burned down their house .

  That would convince him they were never going back, never going home again, which might be more than he could handle.

  It was almost more than she could handle.

  Because maybe it was the truth. Maybe they'd never be able to go home again.

  Charlie drove the LTD into the motel lot, parked in the slot in front of their unit-and saw movement at the small window in the kitchenette. It might have been his imagination, of course .

  Or it might have been the maid. He didn't think it was either.

  Instead of switching the engine off, he immediately threw the LTD into reverse and began backing out of the parking space.

  Christine said, "What's wrong?"

  "Company," he said.

  "What? Where?"

  In the rear seat, in a voice that was the essence of terror, Joey said, "The witch."

  In front of them, as they backed away from it, the door to their unit began to open.

  How the
hell did theyfind us so soon? Charlie wondered.

  Not wanting to waste the time required to turn the car around, he kept it in reverse and backed rapidly toward the avenue in front of the motel.

  Out in the street, a white van appeared and swung to the curb, blocking the exit from the Wile-Away Lodge.

  Charlie saw it in the rearview mirror, jammed on the brakes to avoid hitting it.

  He heard gunfire. Two men with automatic weapons had come out of the motel room.

  "Get down!"

  Christine looked back at Joey ." Get on the floor!" she told him.

  "You too," Charlie said, tramping on the accelerator again, pulling on the steering wheel, angling away from the van behind them.

  She popped her seatbelt and crouched down, keeping her head below the windows.

  If a bullet came through the door, she'd be killed anyway.

  There wasn't anything Charlie could do about that. Except get the hell out of there.

  Chewbacca barked, an ear-rupturing sound in the closed car.

  Charlie reversed across the lot, nearly sideswiping a Toyota, clipping one corner of the wrought-iron fence that encircled the swimming pool. There was no other exit to the street, but he didn't care. He'd make an exit of his own. He drove backwards, over the sidewalk and over the curb. The undercarriage scraped, and Charlie prayed the fuel tank hadn't been torn open, and the LTD slammed to the pavement with a jolt. The engine didn't cut out. Thank God. His heart pounding as fast as the sedan's six

  people and that I've eliminated him. Or even if they do suspect I'm being framed, they've still got to talk to me. They've still got to put a warrant out for me."

  The whole world was after them now. It seemed hopeless .

  Like a toxic chemical, despair settled into her bones, leeching her strength. She just wanted to lie down, close her eyes, and sleep for a while.

  Charlie said, "Come on. Let's get the shopping done, take everything back to the motel, and then dump the car. I want to hole up inside before some cop spots our license plates or recognizes me."

  "Do you think the police know we headed for Santa Barbara after we left Ventura?"

  "They can't know for sure. But they've got to figure we were running from L.A., moving north, so Santa Barbara's a good bet ."