The Forbidden Door

by Dean Koontz

  He doesn’t doubt the truth of it, however, because he recalls how lost he was as a young man, how self-destructive and afraid, before taking the class in which he learned there is no objective basis for truth, that nothing can be proved either by science or math, or by religion. All is illusion.

  If he were a better radical nihilist, he would be neither tense nor frustrated. He should just let himself be carried along by the script, enjoy the ride, go with the flow.

  * * *

  Like some huge nocturnal dragonfly, the helo passes over the Houston sprawl, descends into it, and puts down in an empty lot across the street from the bus station. The wind from the churning blades stirs up ghostly winged figures of dust that fly away into the lamplit streets. Gottfrey and his men wait until the blades cease whisking the air and the dust settles before they disembark and walk to the nearby terminal.

  The head of vehicle maintenance is Louis Calloway. Off duty at this hour, he has returned from his home to walk them through what happened with the bus from Killeen when Lonnie John Bricker signed over possession of it and drove another coach to San Antonio.

  What it boils down to is this:

  The garage has a number of high-ceiling bays in which buses are parked between trips. Here the interiors are cleaned and a mechanic inspects the vehicle’s engine, drive train, and other systems, using a checklist of items to be confirmed. There are no walls between the bays. It’s a cavernous space, shadowy in places. If Ancel and Clare failed to disembark on arrival from Killeen, if they hid in the tiny lavatory, they might have gotten out of the bus once it arrived in one of these bays and might have entered another bus that had been serviced. They could have hidden in the second coach’s recently cleaned lavatory, waiting to be on the road before stepping out of the cramped lavatory to take seats for which they never purchased tickets.

  Although this scenario is possible, there are problems with it, most of which even Vince Penn is able to identify. For one thing, no passengers are allowed here. Ancel and Clare would have needed to be as schooled and skilled as covert agents, as well as supernaturally lucky, to slip out of the Killeen bus and into another one without being seen by the workers in the garage.

  Furthermore, they would have needed to exit the first coach quickly, before someone came to clean it, and within seconds board another bus on which service had been completed, there to hide in the lav. But how would they know which vehicles were serviced and which were not? And what would they do if the new vehicle in which they hid was fully booked and later proved to have no open seats when they emerged from its lavatory?

  Perhaps they took the risk. If so, it has paid off. No driver in mid-trip has reported an excess of passengers.

  But would they commit to a bus without knowing its destination? Maybe. Because of their daughter-in-law, they know surveillance of travelers is ubiquitous these days. To disappear during a trip via any form of public transportation, they need some ruse like this.

  From Louis Calloway, head of vehicle maintenance, Gottfrey requests a list identifying the buses that were in the service bays when the coach from Killeen was there, the cities to which those buses were next dispatched, the addresses of the terminals that were ultimate destinations, an ETA for each, and other scheduled stops between Houston and the end-of-trip terminals, if any.

  Following up on these leads and reviewing the archived video from all these terminals in search of Jane Hawk’s in-laws will be a huge amount of work. After a long and eventful day, Gottfrey and his men are too tired to take on this task.

  As it seems the script requires, he emails his immediate Arcadian superior and attaches the list that Calloway provides. He asks for support staff to follow these leads while he, Rupert, and Vince catch a few hours of sleep.

  * * *

  In the back of the taxi, for the trip to the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Rupert takes the hump seat, with Gottfrey to his left and Vince to his right, to spare his boss the ordeal of sitting beside the ever-chatty Agent Penn. The Medexpress carrier is on the floor between Gottfrey’s feet, the readout showing forty-one degrees, still plenty cool enough to keep the nanomechanisms in stasis.

  They aren’t a block from the bus station when Gottfrey receives a call from the leader of their cell, Sheila Draper-Cruxton, a court of appeals judge. Their smartphones share an NSA-devised encryption program guaranteeing a private conversation. She has received the Calloway list and is assigning people to follow up on it.

  Like revolutionary political movements since time immemorial, the Techno Arcadians are organized into cells, with a limited number of people in each. If one Arcadian goes rogue, he won’t know enough names to betray a significant portion of the conspiracy and destroy it. Those at the top of each cell receive instructions through a regional commander who is known to them only by a nom de guerre, and all the regional commanders get their orders from the members of a mysterious central committee who, through surrogates, recruited them.

  The Unknown Playwright seems to love all this hugger-muggery, though Gottfrey could do with less of it.

  Anyway, Judge Draper-Cruxton has received word from her regional commander that the people with whom Jane Hawk secreted her child were killed Sunday afternoon in Borrego Springs, California. The boy is surely hidden somewhere in Borrego Valley.

  In the past twenty-four hours, Arcadians from various agencies have quietly established observation posts at every road entering the valley. A substantial contingent of agents has infiltrated the territory, not merely to search for the boy but also to be ready for the mother, because it is believed she will come for her child.

  In fact, according to Judge Draper-Cruxton, earlier today an Arcadian attached to the Department of Homeland Security was shot to death in an oak woods north of Los Angeles. A fire was set to cover the crime. There is reason to believe that the dead man crossed paths with Jane Hawk and that she is already on her way to the boy.

  The elegant Sheila Draper-Cruxton is a deeply cultured woman, a paragon of refinement, and Egon likes to listen to her feminine and mannerly yet very direct voice as she says, “These developments make the search for the in-laws more urgent by the hour.”

  “We’re doing all we can,” Gottfrey assures her, keeping his voice low enough that the cab driver can’t hear. “I’m trying my best to follow the script.”

  “I assure you I did not intend those to be words of criticism. I have every confidence in your ability and dedication. However, if the in-laws know anything about where the unfortunate child might be hidden in Borrego Valley, we must extract the information from them posthaste. When Jane goes there for the boy, we should already be waiting with him. We can play the spider and she the buzzing fly.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You should get some sleep, but be prepared to jump at a moment’s notice if the Calloway list should lead us to the in-laws somewhere there in Texas.”

  “I can do that, I can jump, you know I can jump,” Gottfrey says. Listening to himself, he realizes he is mentally fuzzy.

  “Are you quite all right?” Judge Draper-Cruxton asks.

  “Just tired. Been a lot of busy scenes in the script lately.”

  “How very true,” says the judge. “We are forcing Hawk into a corner. This little drama is accelerating to an endgame. Another thing—those control mechanisms that were sent to you in Worstead. Did you leave them with your people there?”

  “No. I’ve kept them with me. They were meant for the in-laws.”

  “Very well, then. I will send six agents to support your people at the Longrin ranch. They will bring more control mechanisms. Just in case we are unable to find the in-laws, it has been decided that we must inject Chase and Alexis Longrin on the off chance they know Ancel and Clare’s ultimate destination.”

  “I doubt the in-laws shared that with them.”

  “I doubt it, as well,” says the jud
ge. “However, Chase and Alexis have fucked us over. I have no patience for coddling such human debris. We’ll zombify these ignorant shitkickers and peel their brains for what they know.”

  Never before has Gottfrey heard such dialogue coming from his poised and cultivated cell leader. He wonders what the Unknown Playwright means to signify by her descent into crudity. Is the intention to convey that perhaps in spite of the judge’s expressed certainty, she isn’t really sure they can bring down Jane Hawk?

  53

  THE ROOM IN DARKNESS BUT for the drapery-filtered light from the window opposite the foot of the bed, a soft and spectral glow ribbed with thin shadows marking the folds of fabric, like an X-ray of some alien species with strange bone structure…

  The motel stood on a quiet street, but Jane couldn’t rest.

  Lying in bed, head raised on pillows, she wasn’t able to keep her eyes closed. Faces foiled sleep, materializing in her interior darkness. Gavin and Jessie Washington. Nathan Silverman, her mentor at the Bureau. Nick. Repeatedly, Nick. Her mother, lost these many years. Most disturbing of all, Travis. Disturbing because her unconscious chose to include him among the gallery of those other faces, all of which belonged to people who had gone to graves.

  She turned on a bedside lamp.

  She went into the bathroom. On the vanity stood a motel ice bucket, a can of Coke, and a half-full pint bottle of Belvedere.

  Too often, she needed vodka to sleep. She was determined not to make a habit of it. But she had to be rested tomorrow for the ordeal in Borrego Valley. Anyway, it wouldn’t be vodka that killed her.

  For something to do while she finished a Belvedere and Coke, she retrieved the titanium-alloy attaché case from under the skirted chair. She took it to the bed and opened it and considered the twenty-one banded packets of hundred-dollar bills. $210,000.

  She’d stolen it from a thief, though such street justice didn’t make the money clean. This was war, however. Wars were expensive.

  She took twelve packets from the case and set them aside: the money she owed Enrique de Soto for the motor home and the vehicle it would be towing when it arrived in Indio.

  A white plastic bag lined the little waste can in the bathroom. With a pair of scissors that she carried in one of two suitcases, she cut the bag into a flat sheet and used it to wrap the brick of money. She sealed the folded ends with Scotch tape that she also carried in a suitcase.

  She was a well-prepared traveler. Scissors, tape, antacid, vodka, .45 Compact with sound suppressor, switchblade, zip-ties, spray bottle of chloroform that she had made herself from art-store acetone by the action of chloride of lime…

  “Damn if I’m not a regular Girl Scout.”

  She went to bed, turned off the lamp, and slept.

  54

  CHRIS ROBERTS OPENS THE DOOR to Laurie Longrin’s room, and Janis Dern looks up from the pile of books that she has torn apart.

  “See you a minute?” Chris asks.

  Leaving the chastened girl to lick the blood from the corner of her mouth, Janis steps into the hall and shuts the door behind her.

  Chris says, “I just got a call from Egon. They don’t have the in-laws yet, but they’re still in the chase.”

  “Damn, Chris, we can’t hold all these people indefinitely.”

  “Won’t have to. A support team of six is already on the road from Austin, be here in maybe half an hour. They’ll do sharp-elbow one-on-one interviews with all the employees being held in Stable Two, threaten them with prosecution for aiding and abetting Jane Hawk, scare the spunk out of them, and then send them home.”

  “What about the Longrins?”

  “Injections.”

  “Shit, yeah!” Janis high-fives Chris. “Maybe we’ll get Ancel and Clare before Egon does. Chase and Nick were best friends in high school. If the sonofabitch doesn’t know where the in-laws went, if he hasn’t been the contact between Jane and them, I’ll tongue-kiss a rattlesnake.”

  Chris grins. “Probably wouldn’t be your first.”

  “The quality of men these days, I’m either giving tongue to a rattlesnake or a gerbil. How many injection sets are we gonna have?”

  “Egon didn’t say what they’re bringing. All we need is two.”

  “If there’s extra, I have a use for one.”

  He looks at the closed door to Laurie’s room. “But she’s only twelve, brain still growing. Inject before they’re sixteen…you know what’ll happen.”

  “I know what happened to a few. The sample was too small. It doesn’t mean anything. Besides, after we convert the parents, the kids will know. Kids always know. They detect the difference. We’ll have to do something with all three of the kids, anyway.”

  Chris is uneasy, but after the work they’ve done together, he wants to be a good partner. “All right, but I won’t be there when you do it…or through the wait.”

  Earlier generations of the nanomechanism took eight to twelve hours from the time of injection to the moment when control of the subject was established and he—or she—became an adjusted person. The newest generation of control mechanism requires only four hours.

  Janis says, “If they bring just two injection sets, we could do Chase first, squeeze him for what he knows. If he gives us Ancel and Clare, we don’t want wifey. I’ll use the second set”—she gestures toward the bedroom door—“with the smart-mouth tomboy in there.”

  She doesn’t need a translator to know the meaning of the look Chris gives her, but he’s forthright about his desire. “Nobody can get a hate-on faster or harder than you. You’re so damn intense, I’d give just about anything to know what you’re like in bed.”

  “More than you could ever handle, sweet thing. We’ve been here before, and you know how it is. Partners don’t do each other. Not if they want to stay sharp on the job.”

  He sighs. “When the revolution’s over, I’m going to want to be totally in you.”

  She likes Chris, she really does, but his vision is limited to the short term, while she takes the long view. “A good revolution,” she says, “is never over. It’s a way of life.”

  55

  IN THE LIBRARY OF MANY chairs, there were also two deep, long, comfortable sofas facing each other from opposite ends of a gold-blue-maroon Persian carpet. Cornell often slept in one or the other. When he spent the night in the library instead of in the bunker, he was more likely to have pleasant sleep, as if his favorite authors were writing his dreams.

  This night, he put plump pillows and a blanket on each sofa. He placed small, chilled bottles of water on coasters, on the tables that served the sofas. Beside each coaster, in a small plastic bag, he set a lemon cookie with chocolate chips in case either of them should wake in the night and want a convenient snack before going back to sleep.

  Travis used the bathroom first and brushed his teeth and put on white-and-black pajamas like a karate costume. Both sofas were big, but he took the smaller of the two.

  When Cornell entered the bathroom and saw what the boy had left there, his heart raced and his stomach turned over, and he needed to leave the room at once.

  The boy was lying on the sofa, arranging the blanket around himself, one dog up there with him, the other dog on the floor next to its master’s slippers.

  Cornell said, “Umm. Umm. Umm. You left a thing in there so I can’t use the sink.”

  “I flushed,” the boy assured him.

  “Yes, yes, yes. You did flush, please and thank you. But beside the sink you left a little plastic glass. Umm. Umm. Umm. And in the glass you left a little tube of toothpaste and…and…and your toothbrush, left it in the little glass, in the little glass. In the little glass.”

  “Where should I leave it?”

  “Not in the bathroom. Leave it with your things. On the table there with your water and your cookie would be okay. That would be okay. That would
be good.”

  The boy folded back the blanket and sat up. “Okay, sure. Sorry I left it there. But why?”

  Cornell stood fidgeting, shifting from foot to foot, wondering if the dogs would decide to attack him, after all. “Umm. Umm. Well, it’s a toothbrush, and a toothbrush is a very personal thing, very, and when there’s a toothbrush not mine standing by the sink where I’m going to brush my own teeth…it’s like being gouged, no, I mean like being touched, and I can never be touched.”

  “Uncle Gavin explained how that is.” The boy stepped into his slippers. “But I guess I didn’t know about the toothbrush thing.”

  “Neither did I.” Cornell shuddered. “Umm. It’s a surprise.”

  The boy got the plastic glass with the toothbrush and brought it back to his sofa and put it on the table beside his cookie. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jasperson.”

  “No need to be sorry, no need, no need. You didn’t know, I didn’t know, nobody knew.”

  Cornell went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth and changed into his pajamas, which were soft and blue like the sky. He could sleep well only in soft and blue.

  In the library once more, he turned out all the lights except for a blown-glass lamp at the end of the sofa farthest from his head. A soft peach-color glow issued from it.

  “I always leave on one lamp,” Cornell said. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Even though there aren’t boogeymen or nothing, it’s still nice not to sleep in the dark.”

  Cornell settled on his sofa. Pulled the blanket over himself. He turned on his side and looked across the Persian carpet to the boy with his dogs. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I guess. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. Umm. Umm. Umm.”

  “What do you want to say?” the boy asked.

  Cornell pointed behind his head to the table that stood beside the sofa. “Do you see the iPod there?”