by Dean Koontz
She appreciated his attempt to make her smile, but she couldn’t find the will to do so.
The thump-thump-thump of the windshield wipers sounded like a strange, inhuman heartbeat.
Charlie said, “We’ll go into L.A., I think. The Church of the Twilight does some work in the city, but most of its activities are centered in Orange and San Diego Counties. There’re fewer of Grace’s people floating around in L.A., so there’ll be less chance of anyone accidentally spotting us. In fact, almost no chance at all.”
“They’re everywhere,” she said.
“Be optimistic,” he said. “Remember little ears.”
She glanced back at Joey, a pang of guilt cutting through her at the realization that she might be frightening him. But he seemed not to have been paying attention to the conversation in the front seat. He still stared out the window, not at the ocean any longer but at the array of shops along the highway in Corona Del Mar.
“In L.A., we’ll buy suitcases, clothes, toiletries, whatever you need,” Charlie said.
“Then?”
“We’ll have dinner.”
“Then?”
“Find a hotel.”
“What if one of her people works at the hotel?”
“What if one of her people is mayor of Peking?” Charlie said. “We’d better not go to China, either.”
She found a weak smile for him, after all. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had in her, and she was surprised she could respond even that well.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what? Being human? Human and afraid?”
“I don’t want to get hysterical.”
“Then don’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Because there are favorable developments.”
“Such as?”
“One of the three dead men from last night—the redhead you shot—has been identified. His name’s Pat O’Hara. They were able to get positive ID on him because he’s a professional burglar with three arrests and one conviction on his record.”
“Burglar?” she said, baffled by this unexpected introduction of a more ordinary criminal element.
“The cops have done better than come up with a name for him. They can also tie him to Grace.”
She sat up straight, startled. “How?”
“His family and friends say he joined the Church of the Twilight eight months ago.”
“Then there it is!” she said, excited. “There’s what they need to go after Grace Spivey.”
“Well, they’ve gone back to the church to talk to her again, of course.”
“That’s all? Just talk to her?”
“At this point, they don’t have any proof—”
“O’Hara was one of hers!”
“But there’s no proof he was acting on her say-so.”
“They all do what she tells them, exactly what she tells them.”
“But Grace claims her church believes in free will, that none of her people is any more controlled than Catholics or Presbyterians, no more brainwashed than any Jew in any synagogue.”
“Bullshit,” she said softly but with feeling.
“True,” he said. “But it’s damned hard to prove it, especially since we can’t put our hands on any ex-members of the church who might tell us what it’s like in there.”
Some of her excitement drained away. “Then what good does it do us to have O’Hara identified as a Twilighter?”
“Well, it gives some substance to your claims that Grace is harassing you. The cops take your story a whole lot more seriously now than they first did, and that can’t hurt.”
“We need more than that.”
“There’s a little something else.”
“What?”
“O’Hara—or maybe it was the other guy who came with him—left something outside your house. An airline flight bag. There were burglary tools in it, but there were other things, too. A large plastic jar full of a colorless liquid that turned out to be ordinary water. They don’t know why it was there, what purpose it was meant to serve. More of interest was a small brass cross—and a copy of the Bible.”
“Doesn’t that prove they were there on some crackpot religious mission?”
“Doesn’t prove it, no, but it’s interesting, anyway. It’s one more knot in the hangman’s noose, one more little thing that helps build a case against Grace Spivey.”
“At this rate we’ll have her in court by the turn of the century,” Christine said sourly.
They were traveling MacArthur Boulevard now, climbing and descending a series of hills that took them past Fashion Island, past hundreds of million-dollar homes, a marshy area of backwater from Newport Bay, and fields of tall grass that bent with the driving rain and then stood straight up and quivered as the erratic storm wind abruptly changed directions. In spite of the fact that it was midday, most of the cars in the oncoming lane had their headlights on.
Christine said, “The police know what Grace Spivey teaches—about the coming of Twilight, doomsday, the Antichrist?”
“Yes. They know all of it,” Charlie said.
“They know she thinks the Antichrist is already among us?”
“Yes.”
“And they know that she’s spent the past few years searching for him?”
“Yes.”
“And that she intends to kill him when she finds him?”
“She’s never said as much in a speech or in any of the religious literature she’s had published.”
“But that is what she intends. We know it.”
“What we know and what we can prove are two different things.”
“The police should be able to see that this is why she’s fixated on Joey and—”
“Last night, when the police questioned her, she denied knowing you and Joey, denied the scene at South Coast Plaza. She says she doesn’t understand what you have against her, why you’re trying to smear her. She said she hadn’t found the Antichrist yet and didn’t even think she was close. They asked her what she would do if she ever found him, and she said she’d direct prayers against him. They asked if she would try to kill him, and she pretended to be outraged by the very idea. She said she was a woman of God, not a criminal. She said prayer would be enough. She said she’d chain the devil in prayers, bind him up with prayers, drive him back to Hell with nothing but prayer.”
“And of course they believed her.”
“No. I talked to a detective this morning, read the report of their session with her. They think she’s unbalanced, probably dangerous, and ought to be considered the primary suspect in the attempts on your lives.”
She was surprised.
He said, “You see? You’ve got to be more positive. Things are happening. Not as fast as you’d like, no, because there are procedures the police must follow, rules of evidence, constitutional rights that must be respected—”
“Sometimes it seems like the only people who have constitutional rights are the criminals among us.”
“I know. But we’ve got to work within the system as best we can.”
They passed the Orange County Airport and got on the San Diego Freeway, heading north toward Los Angeles.
Christine glanced back at Joey. He was no longer staring out the window or petting the dog. He was slumped down in a corner of the backseat, eyes closed, mouth open, breathing softly and deeply. The motion of the car had lulled him to sleep.
To Charlie, she said, “What worries me is that while we have to work within the system, slowly and carefully, that Spivey bitch doesn’t have any rules holding her back. She can move fast and be brutal. While we’re treading carefully around her rights, she’ll kill us all.”
“She might self-destruct first,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I went to the church this morning. I met her. She’s completely around the bend, Christine. Utterly irrational. Coming apart at the seams.”
He told her about his meeting with t
he old woman, about the bloody stigmata on her hands and feet.
If he intended to reassure her by painting a picture of Grace Spivey as a babbling lunatic teetering on the edge of collapse, he failed. The intensity of the old woman’s madness only made her seem more threatening, more predictable, more relentless than ever.
“Have you reported this to the cops?” Christine asked. “Have you told them that she threatened Joey to your face?”
“No. It would just be my word against hers.”
He told her about his discussion with Denton Boothe, his friend the psychologist. “Boo says a psychotic of this sort has surprising strength. He says we shouldn’t expect her to collapse and solve this problem for us—but then he didn’t see her. If he’d been there with me and Henry, in her office, when she held up her bleeding hands, he’d know she can’t hold it together much longer.”
“Did he have any suggestions, any ideas about how to stop her?”
“He said the best way was to kill her,” Charlie said, smiling.
Christine didn’t smile.
He glanced away from the rain-swept freeway long enough to gauge her reaction, then said, “Of course, Boo was joking.”
“Was he really?”
“Well . . . no . . . he sort of meant it . . . but he knew it wasn’t an option we could seriously consider.”
“Maybe it is the only answer.”
He looked at her again, his brow creased with worry. “I hope you’re joking.”
She said nothing.
“Christine, if you could somehow get her with a gun, if you killed her, you’d only wind up in prison. The state would take Joey away from you. You’d lose him anyway. Killing Grace Spivey isn’t the answer.”
She sighed and nodded. She didn’t want to argue about it.
But she wondered . . .
Maybe she would end up in prison, and maybe they would take Joey away from her, but at least he would still be alive.
When Charlie pulled the Mercedes off the freeway at the Wilshire Boulevard ramp, on the west side of L.A., Joey woke and yawned noisily and wanted to know where they were.
“Westwood,” Charlie said.
“I never been to Westwood,” Joey said.
“Oh?” Charlie said. “I thought you were a man of the world. I thought you’d been everywhere.”
“How could I have been everywhere?” the boy asked. “I’m only six.”
“Plenty old enough to’ve been everywhere,” Charlie said. “Why, by the time I was six, I’d been all the way from my home in Indiana clear to Peoria.”
“Is that a dirty word?” the boy asked suspiciously.
Charlie laughed and saw that Christine was laughing, too. “Peoria? No, that’s not a dirty word; it’s a place. I guess you aren’t a man of the world after all. A man of the world would know Peoria as well as he’d know Paris.”
“Mom, what’s he talking about?”
“He’s just being silly, honey.”
“That’s what I thought,” the boy said. “Lots of detectives act that way sometimes. Jim Rockford’s silly like that sometimes, too.”
“That’s where I picked it up,” Charlie said. “From good old Jim Rockford.”
They parked the car in the underground garage beside the Westwood Playhouse, across the street from UCLA, and went shopping for clothes and necessities in Westwood Village, putting everything on credit cards. In spite of the circumstances, in spite of the weather, it was a rather pleasant excursion. There were overhangs or awnings in front of all the stores, and they could always find a dry place to tie Chewbacca while they went inside to browse. The incredible downpour, which was the main topic of conversation among all the salesclerks, helped explain Joey’s and Christine’s rumpled and bedraggled appearance; no one looked at them askance. Charlie made jokes about some of the clothes they tried on, and Joey held his nose as if detecting a pungent odor when Charlie pretended to consider a loud orange sportshirt, and after a while it almost seemed as if they were an ordinary family on an ordinary outing in a world where all the religious fanatics were over in the Middle East somewhere, fighting over their oil and their mosques. It was nice to think that the three of them were a unit, sharing special bonds, and Charlie felt another surge of that domestic yearning that had never come upon him until he had met Christine Scavello.
They made two trips back to the car to put their purchases in the trunk. When Christine and Joey had everything they needed, they went to a couple of stores to outfit Charlie, as well. Because he didn’t want to risk returning to his own house, where he might pick up a tail, he bought a suitcase, toiletries, and three days’ worth of clothes.
Several times they saw people on the street who seemed to be watching them or were otherwise suspicious, but in each instance the danger proved to be imaginary, and gradually they relaxed a bit. They were still watchful, alert, but they no longer felt as if there were armed maniacs lurking around every corner.
They finished shopping just as the stores were closing, and by the time they found a cozy-looking restaurant—nothing fancy but with lots of satiny-looking dark wood and stained-glass windows, and a menu rich with fattening specialties like potato skins stuffed with cheese and bacon—it was almost five-thirty. It was early for dinner, but they hadn’t eaten lunch, and they were starved.
They ordered drinks, and then Christine took Joey to the ladies’ room with her, where both of them washed up a bit and changed into some of the new clothes they’d bought.
While they were thus engaged, Charlie used a pay phone to ring the office. Sherry was still at her desk, and she put him through to Henry Rankin, who’d been awaiting his call, but Henry didn’t have much news to report. From the results of lab tests, the police believed the stolen blue Dodge van had been carrying a couple of cases of a moldable plastic explosive favored by more than one branch of the United States armed forces, but they couldn’t possibly work back to the point at which the stuff had been purchased or stolen. Henry’s aunt Miriam had been reached in Mexico, was shocked at the news that her house was gone, but didn’t blame Henry. She didn’t seem disposed to return early from her trip, partly because there wasn’t anything left to salvage from the rubble anyway, partly because insurance would cover the loss, partly because she had always taken bad news well, but mainly because she had encountered an interesting man in Acapulco. His name was Ernesto. Those were the only recent developments.
“I’ll check in twice a day to see how the case is progressing and to make suggestions,” Charlie said.
“If I have any news about Aunt Miriam and Ernesto, I’ll save that for you, too.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
They were both silent a moment, neither of them in a mood to carry the joke any further.
Finally Henry said, “You think it’s wise for you to try to protect them all by yourself?”
“It’s the only way.”
“I find it hard to believe Spivey has someone planted here, but I’m putting everyone under the microscope, looking for the disease. If one of them’s a Twilighter, I’ll find him.”
“I know you will,” Charlie said. He wasn’t going to mention that another operative, Mike Specklovitch, was checking up on Henry, at Charlie’s orders, while Henry was checking up on everyone else. He felt guilty about that betrayal of trust, even though it was unavoidable.
“Where are you now?” Henry asked.
“The Australian outback,” Charlie said.
“What? Oh. None of my business, huh?”
“I’m sorry, Henry.”
“That’s all right. You’re playing it the only way you possibly can,” Henry said, but he sounded slightly wounded by Charlie’s distrust.
Depressed about the way this case was fracturing the much-valued camaraderie among his employees, Charlie hung up and returned to the table. The waitress was just putting down his vodka martini. He ordered another one even before sipping the first, then took a look at the menu.
Christine
returned from the ladies’ room in tan corduroy jeans and a green blouse, carrying a bag filled with their old clothes and a few toiletries. Joey wore blue jeans and a cowboy shirt of which he was particularly proud. Their outfits were in need of a steam iron, but they were cleaner and fresher than the clothes they had been wearing since fleeing Miriam Rankin’s doomed house in Laguna Beach. Indeed, regardless of the wrinkles in her blouse, Christine looked no worse than stunning, and Charlie’s heart lifted again at the sight of her.
By the time they left the restaurant, carrying two hamburgers for Chewbacca, night had settled in completely, and the rain had let up. A light drizzle was falling, and the humid air was oppressively heavy, but it no longer seemed as if they should start building an ark. The dog smelled the burgers, sensed they were for him, and insisted on being fed before they got back to the garage. He gobbled both sandwiches right there in front of the restaurant, and Christine said, “You know, he even has Brandy’s manners.”
“You always said Brandy had no manners,” Joey reminded her.
“That’s what I mean.”
Now that the storm seemed to be subsiding, the sidewalks along Westwood Boulevard were filling up with students from UCLA on their way to dinner or a movie, window-shoppers, and theatergoers killing some time before heading to the Playhouse. Californians have little or no tolerance for rain, and after a storm like this one, they always burst forth, eager to be out and around, in an almost festive mood. Charlie was sorry it was time to leave; the Village seemed like an oasis of sanity in a deranged world, and he was thankful for the respite it had provided.
The parking garage had been almost full when they’d arrived this afternoon, and they’d had to leave the car on the lowest level. Now, as they took the elevator down to the bottom of the structure, they were all in a better state of mind than they would have thought possible only a few hours ago. There was nothing like good food, a couple of drinks, and several hours of walking freely on public streets without being shot at to convince you that God was in His heaven and that all was right with the world.
But it was a short-lived feeling. It ended when the elevator doors opened.
