by Dean Koontz
“If you’re working for a government intelligence agency, then go away and come back with the legal papers,” Elliot said. “Show me search warrants and subpoenas.”
“You know better than that,” Vince said harshly.
“The agency we work for doesn’t officially exist,” Bob said. “So how can an agency that doesn’t exist go to court for a subpoena? Get serious, Mr. Stryker.”
“If I do submit to the drug, what happens to me after you’ve got your answers?” Elliot asked.
“Nothing,” Vince said.
“Nothing at all,” Bob said.
“How can I be sure?”
At this indication of imminent surrender, the tall man relaxed slightly, although his lumpish face was still flushed with anger. “I told you. When we’ve got what we want, we’ll leave. We just have to find out exactly why the Evans woman wants the grave reopened. We have to know if someone’s ratted to her. If someone has, then we gotta spike his ass to a barn door. But we don’t have anything against you. Not personally, you know. After we find out what we want to know, we’ll leave.”
“And let me go to the police?” Elliot asked.
“Cops don’t scare us,” Vince said arrogantly. “Hell, you won’t be able to tell them who we were or where they can start looking for us. They won’t get anywhere. Nowhere. Zip. And if they do pick up our trail somehow, we can put pressure on them to drop it fast. This is national security business, pal, the biggest of the big time. The government is allowed to bend the rules if it wants. After all, it makes them.”
“That’s not quite the way they explained the system in law school,” Elliot said.
“Yeah, well, that’s ivory tower stuff,” Bob said, nervously straightening his tie.
“Right,” Vince said. “And this is real life. Now sit down at the table like a good boy.”
“Please, Mr. Stryker,” Bob said.
“No.”
When they got their answers, they would kill him. If they had intended to let him live, they wouldn’t have used their real names in front of him. And they wouldn’t have wasted so much time coaxing him to cooperate; they would have used force without hesitation. They wanted to gain his cooperation without violence because they were reluctant to mark him; their intention was that his death should appear to be an accident or a suicide. The scenario was obvious. Probably a suicide. While he was still under the influence of the drug, they might be able to make him write a suicide note and sign it in a legible, identifiable script. Then they would carry him out to the garage, prop him up in his little Mercedes, put the seat belt snugly around him, and start the engine without opening the garage door. He would be too drugged to move, and the carbon monoxide would do the rest. In a day or two someone would find him out there, his face blue-green-gray, his tongue dark and lolling, his eyes bulging in their sockets as he stared through the windshield as if on a drive to Hell. If there were no unusual marks on his body, no injuries incompatible with the coroner’s determination of suicide, the police would be quickly satisfied.
“No,” he said again, louder this time. “If you bastards want me to sit down at that table, you’re going to have to drag me there.”
16
TINA RESOLUTELY CLEANED UP THE MESS IN Danny’s room and packed his belongings. She intended to donate everything to Goodwill Industries.
Several times she was on the verge of tears as the sight of one object or another released a flood of memories. She gritted her teeth, however, and restrained the urge to leave the room with the job uncompleted.
Not much remained to be done: The contents of three cartons in the back of the deep closet had to be sorted. She tried to lift one of them, but it was too heavy. She dragged it into the bedroom, across the carpet, into the shafts of reddish-gold afternoon sunlight that filtered through the sheltering trees outside and then through the dust-filmed window.
When she opened the carton, she saw that it contained part of Danny’s collection of comic books and graphic novels. They were mostly horror comics.
She’d never been able to understand this morbid streak in him. Monster movies. Horror comics. Vampire novels. Scary stories of every kind, in every medium. Initially his growing fascination with the macabre had not seemed entirely healthy to her, but she had never denied him the freedom to pursue it. Most of his friends had shared his avid interest in ghosts and ghouls; besides, the grotesque hadn’t been his only interest, so she had decided not to worry about it.
In the carton were two stacks of comic books, and the two issues on top sported gruesome, full-color covers. On the first, a black carriage, drawn by four black horses with evil glaring eyes, rushed along a night highway, beneath a gibbous moon, and a headless man held the reins, urging the frenzied horses forward. Bright blood streamed from the ragged stump of the coachman’s neck, and gelatinous clots of blood clung to his white, ruffled shirt. His grisly head stood on the driver’s seat beside him, grinning fiendishly, filled with malevolent life even though it had been brutally severed from his body.
Tina grimaced. If this was what Danny had read before going to bed at night, how had he been able to sleep so well? He’d always been a deep, unmoving sleeper, never troubled by bad dreams.
She dragged another carton out of the closet. It was as heavy as the first, and she figured it contained more comic books, but she opened it to be sure.
She gasped in shock.
He was glaring up at her from inside the box. From the cover of a graphic novel. Him. The man dressed all in black. That same face. Mostly skull and withered flesh. Prominent sockets of bone, and the menacing, inhuman crimson eyes staring out with intense hatred. The cluster of maggots squirming on his cheek, at the corner of one eye. The rotten, yellow-toothed grin. In every repulsive detail, he was precisely like the hideous creature that stalked her nightmares.
How could she have dreamed about this hideous creature just last night and then find it waiting for her here, today, only hours later?
She stepped back from the cardboard box.
The burning, scarlet eyes of the monstrous figure in the drawing seemed to follow her.
She must have seen this lurid cover illustration when Danny had first brought the magazine into the house. The memory of it was fixed in her subconscious, festering, until she eventually incorporated it into her nightmares.
That seemed to be the only logical explanation.
But she knew it wasn’t true.
She had never seen this drawing before. When Danny had first begun collecting horror comics with his allowance, she had closely examined those books to decide whether or not they were harmful to him. But after she had made up her mind to let him read such stuff, she never thereafter even glanced at his purchases.
Yet she had dreamed about the man in black.
And here he was. Grinning at her.
Curious about the story from which the illustration had been taken, Tina stepped to the box again to pluck out the graphic novel. It was thicker than a comic book and printed on slick paper.
As her fingers touched the glossy cover, a bell rang.
She flinched and gasped.
The bell rang again, and she realized that someone was at the front door.
Heart thumping, she went to the foyer.
Through the fish-eye lens in the door, she saw a young, clean-cut man wearing a blue cap with an unidentifiable emblem on it. He was smiling, waiting to be acknowledged.
She didn’t open the door. “What do you want?”
“Gas-company repair. We need to check our lines where they come into your house.”
Tina frowned. “On New Year’s Day?”
“Emergency crew,” the repairman said through the closed door. “We’re investigating a possible gas leak in the neighborhood.”
She hesitated, but then opened the door without removing the heavy-duty security chain. She studied him through the narrow gap. “Gas leak?”
He smiled reassuringly. “There probably isn’t any d
anger. We’ve lost some pressure in our lines, and we’re trying to find the cause of it. No reason to evacuate people or panic or anything. But we’re trying to check every house. Do you have a gas stove in the kitchen?”
“No. Electric.”
“What about the heating system?”
“Yes. There’s a gas furnace.”
“Yeah. I think all the houses in this area have gas furnaces. I’d better have a look at it, check the fittings, the incoming feed, all that.”
She looked him over carefully. He was wearing a gas-company uniform, and he was carrying a large tool kit with the gas-company emblem on it.
She said, “Can I see some identification?”
“Sure.” From his shirt pocket, he withdrew a laminated ID card with the gas-company seal, his picture, his name, and his physical statistics.
Feeling slightly foolish, like an easily spooked old woman, Tina said, “I’m sorry. It’s not that you strike me as a dangerous person or anything. I just — ”
“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t apologize. You did the right thing, asking for an ID. These days, you’re crazy if you open your door without knowing exactly who’s on the other side of it.”
She closed the door long enough to slip off the security chain. Then she opened it again and stepped back. “Come in.”
“Where’s the furnace? In the garage?”
Few Vegas houses had basements. “Yes. The garage.”
“If you want, I could just go in through the garage door.”
“No. That’s all right. Come in.”
He stepped across the threshold.
She closed and locked the door.
“Nice place you’ve got here.”
“Thank you.”
“Cozy. Good sense of color. All these earth tones. I like that. It’s a little bit like our house. My wife has a real good sense of color.”
“It’s relaxing,” Tina said.
“Isn’t it? So nice and natural.”
“The garage is this way,” she said.
He followed her past the kitchen, into the short hall, into the laundry room, and from there into the garage.
Tina switched on the light. The darkness was dispelled, but shadows remained along the walls and in the corners.
The garage was slightly musty, but Tina wasn’t able to detect the odor of gas.
“Doesn’t smell like there’s trouble here,” she said.
“You’re probably right. But you never can tell. It could be an underground break on your property. Gas might be leaking under the concrete slab and building up down there, in which case it’s possible you wouldn’t detect it right away, but you’d still be sitting on top of a bomb.”
“What a lovely thought.”
“Makes life interesting.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not working in the gas company’s public relations department.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry. If I really believed there was even the tiniest chance of anything like that, would I be standing here so cheerful?”
“I guess not.”
“You can bet on it. Really. Don’t worry. This is just going to be a routine check.”
He went to the furnace, put his heavy tool kit on the floor, and hunkered down. He opened a hinged plate, exposing the furnace’s workings. A ring of brilliant, pulsing flame was visible in there, and it bathed his face in an eerie blue light.
“Well?” she said.
He looked up at her. “This will take me maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“Oh. I thought it was just a simple thing.”
“It’s best to be thorough in a situation like this.”
“By all means, be thorough.”
“Hey, if you’ve got something to do, feel free to go ahead with it. I won’t be needing anything.”
Tina thought of the graphic novel with the man in black on its cover. She was curious about the story out of which that creature had stepped, for she had the peculiar feeling that, in some way, it would be similar to the story of Danny’s death. This was a bizarre notion, and she didn’t know where it had come from, but she couldn’t dispel it.
“Well,” she said, “I was cleaning the back room. If you’re sure — ”
“Oh, certainly,” he said. “Go ahead. Don’t let me interrupt your housework.”
She left him there in the shadowy garage, his face painted by shimmering blue light, his eyes gleaming with twin reflections of fire.
17
WHEN ELLIOT REFUSED TO MOVE AWAY FROM THE sink to the breakfast table in the far corner of the big kitchen, Bob, the smaller of the two men, hesitated, then reluctantly took a step toward him.
“Wait,” Vince said.
Bob stopped, obviously relieved that his hulking accomplice was going to deal with Elliot.
“Don’t get in my way,” Vince advised. He tucked the sheaf of typewritten questions into his coat pocket. “Let me handle this bastard.”
Bob retreated to the table, and Elliot turned his attention to the larger intruder.
Vince held the pistol in his right hand and made a fist with his left. “You really think you want to tangle with me, little man? Hell, my fist is just about as big as your head. You know what this fist is going to feel like when it hits, little man?”
Elliot had a pretty good idea of what it would feel like, and he was sweating under his arms and in the small of his back, but he didn’t move, and he didn’t respond to the stranger’s taunting.
“It’s going to feel like a freight train ramming straight through you,” Vince said. “So stop being so damn stubborn.”
They were going to great lengths to avoid using violence, which confirmed Elliot’s suspicion that they wanted to leave him unmarked, so that later his body would bear no cuts or bruises incompatible with suicide.
The bear-who-would-be-a-man shambled toward him. “You want to change your mind, be cooperative?”
Elliot held his ground.
“One good punch in the belly,” Vince said, “and you’ll be puking your guts out on your shoes.”
Another step.
“And when you’re done puking your guts out,” Vince said, “I’m going to grab you by your balls and drag you over to the table.”
One more step.
Then the big man stopped.
They were only an arm’s length apart.
Elliot glanced at Bob, who was still standing at the breakfast table, the packet of syringes in his hand.
“Last chance to do it the easy way,” Vince said.
In one smooth lightning-fast movement, Elliot seized the measuring cup into which he had poured four ounces of vinegar a few minutes ago, and he threw the contents in Vince’s face. The big man cried out in surprise and pain, temporarily blinded. Elliot dropped the measuring cup and seized the gun, but Vince reflexively squeezed off a shot that breezed past Elliot’s face and smashed the window behind the sink. Elliot ducked a wild roundhouse punch, stepped in close, still holding on to the pistol that the other man wouldn’t surrender. He swung one arm around, slamming his bent elbow into Vince’s throat. The big man’s head snapped back, and Elliot chopped the exposed Adam’s apple with the flat blade of his hand. He rammed his knee into his adversary’s crotch and tore the gun out of the bear-paw hand as those clutching fingers went slack. Vince bent forward, gagging, and Elliot slammed the butt of the gun against the side of his head, with a sound like stone meeting stone.
Elliot stepped back.
Vince dropped to his knees, then onto his face. He stayed there, tongue-kissing the floor tiles.
The entire battle had taken less than ten seconds.
The big man had been overconfident, certain that his six-inch advantage in height and his extra eighty pounds of muscle made him unbeatable. He had been wrong.
Elliot swung toward the other intruder, pointing the confiscated pistol.
Bob was already out of the kitchen, in the dining room, running toward the front of the house. Evidently he wasn�
�t carrying a gun, and he was impressed by the speed and ease with which his partner had been taken out of action.
Elliot went after him but was slowed by the dining-room chairs, which the fleeing man had overturned in his wake. In the living room, other furniture was knocked over, and books were strewn on the floor. The route to the entrance foyer was an obstacle course.
By the time Elliot reached the front door and rushed out of the house, Bob had run the length of the driveway and crossed the street. He was climbing into a dark-green, unmarked Chevy sedan. Elliot got to the street in time to watch the Chevy pull away, tires squealing, engine roaring.
He couldn’t get the license number. The plates were smeared with mud.
He hurried back to the house.
The man in the kitchen was still unconscious and would probably remain that way for another ten or fifteen minutes. Elliot checked his pulse and pulled back one of his eyelids. Vince would survive, although he might need hospitalization, and he wouldn’t be able to swallow without pain for days to come.
Elliot went through the thug’s pockets. He found some small change, a comb, a wallet, and the sheaf of papers on which were typed the questions that Elliot had been expected to answer.
He folded the pages and stuffed them into his hip pocket.
Vince’s wallet contained ninety-two dollars, no credit cards, no driver’s license, no identification of any kind. Definitely not FBI. Bureau men carried the proper credentials. Not CIA, either. CIA operatives were loaded with ID, even if it was in a phony name. As far as Elliot was concerned, the absence of ID was more sinister than a collection of patently false papers would have been, because this absolute anonymity smacked of a secret police organization.
Secret police. Such a possibility scared the hell out of Elliot. Not in the good old U. S. of A. Surely not. In China, in the new Russia, in Iran or Iraq — yes. In a South American banana republic — yes. In half the countries in the world, there were secret police, modern gestapos, and citizens lived in fear of a late-night knock on the door. But not in America, damn it.
