by Dean Koontz
distraught, so all these thoughts, and countless more, machine-gunned through his mind as he ran to the El Camino, started the engine, and drove out of the parking lot.
By the time Ahriman reached the Pacific Coast Highway, the Rolls-Royce was gone.
The rich ditz and her clam-dull husband lived in nearby Newport Coast, but she might not go directly home. Indeed, if her phobia had progressed to a more serious condition than he’d previously realized, to some form of paranoid psychosis, she might be reluctant to return home ever again, for fear that Keanu or one of his henchmen—such as her own pistol-packing psychiatrist—would be waiting there to do her harm.
Even if he’d thought she was headed home, Ahriman wouldn’t have pursued her there. She and her husband were certain to have a lot of household staff, each one a potential witness, and considerable security.
Instead, the doctor tore off his ski mask and drove to his own house as fast as he dared.
71
On the way home, no more poetic observations about time tumbled out of Mark Ahriman’s overturned memory chest, but during the first half of the ten-minute journey, he foamed at the mouth with vicious obscenities—all aimed at the Keanuphobe, as if she could hear—and with vivid oaths to humiliate, brutalize, mutilate, and dismember her in imaginative ways. This fit was adolescent and not worthy of him, which he realized, but he needed to vent.
During the second half of the trip, he pondered when or whether she would call the police to report the two murders. Paranoid, she might suspect that the nefarious Keanu controlled every police agency from the local cops to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in which case she would keep silent or at least take time to mull and fret over whether to approach the authorities.
She might go away for a while, even flee the country and hide until she had puzzled out a strategy. With half a billion bucks to draw upon, she could go far and be difficult to find.
The thought of her possible vanishment alarmed him, and an icy sweat oozed out of the nape of his neck. His friends in high places could easily help him conceal his links to any number of outrageous crimes committed by others who were under his control; but it was a very different thing, and a lot iffier, to expect them to protect him from the consequences of murders committed by his own hand, which was one reason he hadn’t taken such risks in twenty years. The sweat from the nape of his neck was now trickling down his spine.
A man of sublime confidence, he had never felt anything remotely like this before. He realized that he had better quickly get a grip on himself.
He was the lord of memory, the father of lies, and he could meet any challenge. Okay, all right, a few things had gone wrong lately, but a little adversity now and then was a welcome spice.
By the time he drove into his labyrinthine underground garage, he was fully in control of himself once again.
He got out of the El Camino and looked with dismay at all the sand smeared on the upholstery and mashed into the carpeting.
Sand or soil of any kind was admissible evidence in a criminal trial. The scientific-investigation division of any competent police department would be able to compare the composition, grain size, and other aspects of this sand with a sample of sand taken from the scene of the murders—and make a match.
Leaving the keys in the ignition, Ahriman salvaged only two items from the El Camino. The knotted blue plastic bag of Valet’s best work. The Green Acres sack half full of cookies. These he carefully set aside on the flamed-granite floor of the garage.
Quickly, the doctor pried off his ruined shoes, stripped off his socks and pants, and shrugged out of his suit coat, piling the garments on the floor. He put his wallet, the mini-9mm, and the shoulder holster aside with the two bags. The sand-crusted necktie and white shirt came off next and were added to the pile, although he salvaged the 24-karat tie chain.
Amazingly, considerable sand had even caked in his underwear. Consequently, he completely disrobed and committed his T-shirt and briefs to the heap of discards.
The doctor used his belt to cinch the garments together in a neat bundle. He placed it on the car seat.
An annoyance of sand, rather than a significant quantity, was stuck in his body hair. With his hands, he brushed himself off as best he could.
Naked except for his wristwatch, carrying the few items that he had salvaged, he entered the lowest floor of the house and took the elevator up to the third-floor master suite.
Using the Crestron touch panel, he opened the secret safe in the fireplace. He put the Taurus PT-111 Millennium in the small padded box with the jar containing his father’s eyes, and after consideration, he added the blue bag.
This was only temporary storage for the incriminating handgun, until he had a day or two to decide how to dispose of it permanently. The poop he might need as early as the morning.
After donning a lime-green silk robe with black silk lapels and a black sash, Ahriman phoned downstairs to the house manager’s apartment and asked Cedrick Hawthorne to come to the master-suite sitting room at once.
When Cedric arrived moments later, Ahriman accessed him with the name of a suspicious butler from an old Dorothy Sayers mystery novel and then took him through his enabling haiku.
The doctor had a policy against programming employees in his businesses, but in the interest of absolute privacy, he felt that it was vital to have such total control over the two key personnel on his household staff. He did not, of course, use his power to take undue advantage of them. They were paid well, provided with superb health-care and retirement plans, and given adequate vacation—although he had implanted in each of them an iron restriction against exploiting their kitchen rights to poach upon supplies of his favorite nibbles.
Succinctly, he instructed Cedric to drive the El Camino to the nearest Goodwill collection station and deposit the bundle of sand-filled clothes. From there, Cedric would top off the fuel tank and cruise directly to Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego. In one of Tijuana’s more dangerous neighborhoods, if the valuable vehicle were not first stolen out from under him, he would park it with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition to ensure its disappearance. He would walk to the nearest major hotel, arrange for a rental car, and drive back to Newport Beach well before morning. (As it was not yet 8:00 P.M., the doctor estimated that Cedric should be able to return by 3:00 A.M.) In Orange County once more, he would turn the rental car in at the airport and hire a cab to bring him home. Thereupon, he would go to bed, sleep two hours, and wake rested, with no recollection of having gone anywhere.
Some of these arrangements would be tricky, considering the late hour when he would arrive in Mexico, but with five thousand dollars packed in a money belt—which Ahriman provided—he should be able to get done what was necessary. And cash left less of a trail.
“I understand,” Cedric said.
“I hope I see you alive again, Cedric.”
“Thank you, sir.”
After Cedric departed, the doctor phoned downstairs to Nella Hawthorne and asked her to come at once to the master-suite sitting room from which her husband had just been dispatched on a Mexican adventure.
When Nella arrived, Ahriman accessed her with the name of the scheming head housekeeper of Manderley, the mansion in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. He instructed her to sweep the garage clear of every trace of sand, to dig a deep hole in one of the backyard planting beds, and to bury the sweeper bag therein. When these tasks were completed, she was to forget that she had performed them.
“Then return to your quarters and await further instructions,” Ahriman directed.
“I understand.”
With Cedric on his way to Mexico and with Nella busily occupied, the doctor went down one floor to his lacewood-paneled office. His computer required only seven seconds to rise out of the desktop on its electric lift, but he tapped his fingers impatiently as he waited for it to lock into place and switch on.
Networked with his office computer, he wa
s able to access his patient records and call up the Keanuphobe’s telephone number. She had given two: home and mobile.
Less than forty minutes had passed since her hasty exit from the beach parking lot.
Although he regretted having to call her from his home phone, time was of the essence—as well as the fire in which we burn—and he couldn’t worry about leaving an evidence trail. He tried the mobile number.
He recognized her voice when she answered on the fourth ring: “Hello?”
Apparently, as he suspected, she was in a state of paranoid perplexion, driving around aimlessly as she tried to decide what to do about what she’d witnessed.
Oh, how he wished she were programmed.
This would be a delicate conversation. While instructing the Hawthornes and dealing with sundry other matters, he’d been thinking furiously about how best to approach her. As far as he could see, there was but a single strategy that might work.
“Hello?” she repeated.
“You know who this is,” he said.
She didn’t reply, because she recognized his voice.
“Have you spoken to anyone about…the incident?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
“But I will. Don’t you think I won’t.”
Remaining calm, the doctor asked: “Did you see The Matrix?”
The question was unnecessary, as he already knew that she had seen every Keanu Reeves film at least twenty times in the privacy of her forty-seat home theater.
“Of course, I saw it,” she said. “How could you even ask the question if you were listening to me in the office? But you were probably woolgathering, as usual.”
“It’s not just a movie.”
“Then what is it?”
“Reality,” the doctor said, imbuing that single word with as much ominousness as his considerable acting talent made possible.
She was silent.
“As in the movie, this is not the beginning of a new millennium, as you think. It’s actually the year 2300…and humanity has been enslaved for centuries.”
Although she said nothing, she was drawing shallower, faster breaths, a reliable physiological indicator of paranoid fantasizing.
“And, as in the movie,” he continued, “this world you think is real—is not real. It’s nothing but an illusion, a deception, a virtual reality, a stunningly detailed matrix created by an evil computer to keep you docile.”
Her silence seemed thoughtful rather than hostile, and her soft rapid breathing continued to encourage the doctor.
“In truth, you and billions of other human beings, all but a few rebels, are kept in pods, fed intravenously, wired to the computer to provide it with your bioelectric power, and fed the fantasy of this matrix.”
She said nothing.
He waited.
She outwaited him.
Finally he said, “Those two that you saw…on the beach tonight. They weren’t men. They were machines, policing the matrix, just like in the movie.”
“You must think I’m insane,” she said.
“Precisely the opposite. We’ve identified you as one of those in the pods who have begun to question the validity of this virtual reality. A potential rebel. And we want to help set you free.”
Though she said not a word, she was panting softly, like a toy poodle or some other little rag mop of a dog contemplating a mental image of a biscuit treat.
If she was already a functional paranoid, as he suspected, this scenario the doctor had laid out for her would have enormous appeal. The world must suddenly seem less confusing to her. Previously she had sensed enemies on all sides, with numerous, often inexplicable, and frequently conflicting motives, whereas now she had one enemy to focus upon: the giant, evil, world-dominating computer and its drone machines. Her obsession with Keanu—first based on love, then based on fear—had often baffled and distressed her, because it seemed so bizarre to vest so much importance in someone who was only an actor; but now she might come to understand that he wasn’t just a movie star but also The One, the chosen who would save humanity from machines, the hero of heroes, and therefore worthy of her intense interest. As a paranoid, she was convinced that reality as the mass of humanity accepted it was a sham, that the truth was stranger and more fearsome than the false reality that most people accepted, and now the doctor was confirming her suspicions. He was offering paranoia with a logical format and a comforting sense of order, which ought to be irresistible.
Finally she said, “Your implication seems to be that K-K-Keanu is my friend, my ally. But I know now he’s…dangerous.”
“You once loved him.”
“Yes, well, then I saw the truth.”
“No,” the doctor assured her. “Your original feelings toward The One were perceptive. Your instinctive sense that he is special and worthy of adoration is true and right. Your subsequent fear of him was implanted in you by the evil computer, which wants to keep you productive in your battery pod.”
Listening to himself, to the compassion and the sincerity in his voice, the doctor was beginning to feel like a raving lunatic.
She retreated into silence once more. But she didn’t hang up.
Ahriman gave her all the time she needed to brood. He must not appear to be selling this concept to her.
While he waited, he thought about what he would like for dinner. About ordering a new Ermenegildo Zegna suit. About clever uses for the bag of poop. About the thrill of pulling the trigger. About Capone’s surprising triumph at the Alamo.
“I’m going to need time to consider this,” she said at last.
“Of course.”
“Don’t try to find me.”
“Go anywhere you want in the virtual reality of the matrix,” Ahriman said, “and in reality you’re still suspended in the same battery pod.”
After a moment of reflection, she said, “I suppose that’s true.”
Sensing that she was beginning to embrace the scenario he had put before her, the doctor took one daring step: “I have been given the authority to tell you that The One does not consider you to be just another potential rebel recruit.”
A breathless silence was followed by more of the soft, shallow, rag-mop-dog panting, though this time the sound was different, with a subtle erotic quality.
Then she said, “Keanu has a personal interest in me?”
She hadn’t stuttered on the actor’s name.
Interpreting this as a sign of progress, the doctor carefully crafted his reply: “I’ve said everything on this subject that I’m authorized to say. By all means, take the night to think about what we’ve discussed. I’ll make myself available in the office all day tomorrow, whenever you’re ready to call me.”
“If I call you,” she said.
“If,” he agreed.
She terminated the call.
“Rich bitch ditz nitwit,” the doctor said, as he put down his phone. “And that’s my professional diagnosis.”
He was confident that she would call him and that he would be able to maneuver her into a face-to-face meeting. Then program her.
After a few rocky moments, the lord of memory was secure in his throne once more.
Before calling Nella Hawthorne to order dinner, Ahriman reviewed his E-mail and discovered two encrypted messages from the institute in New Mexico. He put them through decryption and then, after reading them, permanently burned each off his hard disk.
The first had come in this morning and was an acknowledgment of the communication that he’d sent the previous evening. Mr. and Mrs. Dustin Rhodes would be under continuous observation from the moment they stepped off the airplane at Santa Fe Municipal. Prior to their arrival, their rental car had been fitted with a transponder to allow electronic tracking. Curly, in maintenance, wanted Ahriman to know that he and his new fiancée had originally decided to start dating after discovering a mutual enthusiasm for Learn to Love Yourself.
The second message had come in only a few hours ago and
was terse. Throughout the day, Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes had been aggressively questioning people involved in the Glyson and Pastore cases, and they had been receiving support from those they interviewed. Thus, they would be staying in the Santa Fe area forever or until the universe collapsed into a nugget of matter the size of a pea, whichever came first.
Ahriman was relieved that his colleagues could be depended upon to protect his interests, but he was dismayed that his current game—one of the most important of his life—would now have to be canceled and reconceived. He needed at least Skeet or Dusty, or Martie—and preferably two of them—to make it possible to play out his elaborate strategy, and now they were all dead or dying.
He hadn’t received confirmation of the executions in Santa Fe, but that would arrive soon, probably before he went to bed.
Well, he was still a player. As long as he remained a player, the outcome of any single contest was not of cataclysmic importance. As long as he was a player, there would always be another game, and by tomorrow he would have devised a new one.
Consoled, he phoned downstairs to Nella Hawthorne and ordered dinner: two chili dogs with chopped onions and cheddar cheese, a bag of potato chips, two bottles of root beer, and a slice of Black Forest cake.
When he returned upstairs to the master suite, he found that reliable Cedric had earlier gone to the car dealership and removed the morning purchases from the Mercedes; he had put them on the bedroom desk. The die-cast Johnny Lightning Custom Ferrari. The mint-condition Gunsmoke Dodge City playset by Marx.
He sat at the desk, opened the playset, and examined some of the small plastic figures. Lawmen and gunfighters. A dance-hall girl. The detail was superb, exciting to the imagination, as with virtually all of the late Louis Marx’s products.
The doctor admired people who approached their work, regardless of its nature, with attention to detail, as he himself always did. An old folk saying passed through his always busy, always fertile mind: The devil is in the details. This tickled him perhaps more than it should have. He laughed and laughed.
Then he recalled a variation of the aphorism: God is in the details. Although the doctor was a player, not a believer, this thought stopped his laughter. For the second time this evening, and only for the second time in his life, an icy sweat oozed out of the nape of his neck.
Frowning, he thought back through the long, surprise-filled day, searching his memory for a crucial detail that he might heretofore have misunderstood or overlooked. Like the white Rolls-Royce in the Green Acres parking lot, which he had grossly misunderstood.
Ahriman went into the bathroom and repeatedly washed his hands, using a lot of liquid soap and scrubbing at them with a soft-bristled brush meant for cleaning under fingernails. He worked the bristles vigorously from fingertips to wrists, both sides of each hand, with particular attention to the knuckle creases.
The Keanuphobe was not likely to call the police and report that the doctor had killed two men on the beach, and it was unlikely that anyone else had seen him in the vicinity of the murders. If the cops suddenly showed up, however, he couldn’t afford to have any traces of gunpowder on his hands, which might show up in lab tests and prove that he had fired a weapon this evening.
He could think of no other detail that he needed to address.
After drying his hands, Ahriman returned to the desk in the bedroom, where he positioned Marshal Dillon and a badass gunslinger in a showdown.
“Bang, bang, bang,” he said, and with a flick of his finger, he snapped the dead marshal so hard that the figure bounced off the wall twenty feet away.
Marshals and gunmen. Shootouts in the western sun. Vultures always eat.
He felt better.
Dinner arrived.
Life was good.
So was death when you dealt it.
From the higher desert to the high desert, descending more than two thousand feet from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, Dusty covered sixty miles in ninety minutes. The intensity of the storm diminished with the altitude, but snow was falling steadily in the lower city, too.
They found a suitable motel and checked in, paying cash because by morning someone might be trying to track them through the use of their credit cards.
After putting their suitcases in the room, they drove the BMW about a mile and left it on a side street where it wasn’t likely to seem out of place or draw attention for days. Dusty had wanted to make this trip himself, while Martie remained in the warm motel room, but she refused to be separated from him.
Martie used the second utility cloth to wipe off the steering wheel, dashboard, door handles, and other surfaces that they might have touched.
Dusty didn’t leave the keys in the car. If it were stolen and cracked up by kids on a joyride, the cops would contact the BMW’s owners, and the institute would immediately shift their search to Albuquerque. He locked the car and
