Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

by Steven Leonard

  "Just for white guys. No blacks, Japs, Jews, or anybody else welcome, just white guys."

  Chase waited as she sipped her drink.

  "Bunch of guys who're willing to stand up for themselves, if it ever comes to that, guys who aren't going to let the nappy-heads or the Jew bankers or anybody else push them around and take what they have." She clearly approved of any such organization. Then she frowned. "Did I just screw up my chances?"

  "Chances?"

  "Are you maybe a Jew?"

  "No."

  "You don't look like a Jew."

  "I'm not."

  "Listen, even if you were a Jew, it wouldn't matter much to me. I find you real attractive. You know?"

  "So the killer might be a white supremacist?"

  "They're just guys who won't take any crap the way everyone else will. That's all. You have to admire that."

  "This guy who dated your mother - did he tell you the name of this club?"

  "The Aryan Alliance."

  "You remember his name?"

  "Vic. Victor. Don't remember his last name."

  "Could you ask your mom for me?"

  "Okay. When she gets home. Listen, you're absolutely sure you're not a Jew?"

  "I'm sure."

  "Because ever since I said it, you've been looking at me sort of funny."

  As he might have looked at something pale and squirming that he'd discovered under an overturned rock.

  He said, "Did you tell Wallace about this?"

  "No, I just now thought of it. You loosened me up, and it just came back to me in a flash."

  Chase imagined nothing more gratifying than establishing a body of information about Judge - working from this essential bit of data - and then presenting it to the detective.

  "It may be helpful," he said.

  She slid next to him with the oiled smoothness of a machine made for seduction, all sleek lines and golden tan. "Do you think so, Ben?"

  He nodded, trying to decide how best to excuse himself without hurting her feelings. He had to keep on the good side of her until she got that name from her mother.

  Her thigh was pressed against his. She put her drink down and turned to him, expecting to be embraced.

  Chase stood abruptly. "I ought to be going. This has given me something concrete to consider, more than I had hoped for."

  She rose too, remaining close to him. "It's early. Not even midnight. Mom won't be home for hours."

  She smelled of soap, shampoo, a pleasant perfume. It was such a clean smell - but he knew now that she was corrupted in her heart.

  He was fiercely aroused - and sickened by his arousal. This cheap, coldhearted, hate-filled girl reached him in a way that no woman had reached him in longer than a year, and he despised himself for wanting her so intensely. At that moment, of course, virtually any attractive woman might have affected him the same way. Perhaps the pent-up sexual energy of many lonely months had become too great to repress, and perhaps the reawakening of sexual desire was the result of being forced out of his self-imposed isolation. Once he admitted to a healthy survival instinct, once he decided not to stand still and be a target for Judge, he was able to admit to all the desires and needs that were the essence of life. Nevertheless, he despised himself.

  "No," he said, edging away from her. "I have other people to see."

  "At this hour?"

  "One or two other people."

  She pressed against him, pulled his face down to hers, and licked his lips. No kiss. Just the maddeningly quick flicking of her warm tongue - an exquisitely erotic promise.

  "We've got the house for several hours yet," she said. "We don't even have to use the couch. I've got a great big white bed with a white

  canopy."

  "You're something else," he said, meaning something other than what she thought he meant.

  "You don't know the half of it," she said.

  "But I can't. I really can't, because these people are waiting for me."

  She was experienced enough to know when the moment for seduction had passed. She stepped back and smiled. "But I do want to thank you. For saving my life. That deserves a big reward."

  "You don't owe me anything," he said.

  "I do. Some other night, when you don't have plans?"

  He kissed her, telling himself that he did so only to remain in her good graces. "Definitely some other night."

  "Mmmmm. And we'll be good together."

  She was all polish, fast and easy, no jagged edges to get hung up on.

  He said, "If Detective Wallace questions you again, do you think you could sort of ... forget about the ring"

  "Sure. I don't like cops. They're the ones who put the guns to our heads, make us kiss the asses of the nappy-heads and the Jews and all of them. They're part of the problem. But why are you carrying on with this by yourself? I never did ask."

  "Personal," he said. "For personal reasons."

  At home again, he undressed and went directly to bed. The darkness was heavy and warm and, for the first time in longer than he could remember, comforting.

  Alone, he began to wonder if he had been a fool not to respond to Louise Allenby's offer. He had been a long time without a woman, without even a desire for one.

  He had told himself that he'd rejected Louise because he'd found her as personally repulsive as she was physically attractive. But he wondered if, instead, he'd retreated from the prospect because he feared it would draw him even further into the world, further away from his precious routines. A relationship with a woman, regardless of how transitory, would be one more crack in his carefully mortared walls.

  On the edge of sleep, he realized that something had happened that was far more important than either his strong physical response to Louise or his rejection of her. For the first time in longer than Chase could recall, he hadn't needed whiskey before bed. A natural sleep claimed him - although it was still populated by the grasping dead.

  8

  WHEN HE WOKE IN THE MORNING, CHASE WAS RACKED WITH PAIN FROM the fall that he had taken the previous evening on Kanackaway Ridge Road. Each contusion and laceration throbbed. His eyes felt sunken, and his headache was as intense as if he'd been fitted with an exotic torture device - an iron helmet - that would be slowly tightened until his skull imploded. When he tried to get out of bed, his muscles cramped and spasmed.

  In the bathroom, when he leaned toward the mirror above the sink, he saw that he was drawn and pale. His chest and back were spotted with bruises, most about as large as a thumbprint, from the gravel over which he'd rolled to avoid the hurtling truck.

  A hot bath didn't soothe him, so he forced himself to do a couple of dozen situps, pushups, and deep knee bends until he was dizzy. The exercises proved more therapeutic than the bath.

  The only cure for his misery was activity - which, he supposed, was a prescription for his emotional and spiritual miseries as well.

  Wincing at the pain in his legs, he went downstairs.

  "Maul for you," said Mrs. Fielding as she shuffled out of the gameshow-audience laughter in the living room. She took a plain brown envelope from the table in the hall and gave it to him. "As you can see, there's no return address."

  "Probably advertisements," Chase said. He took a step toward the front door, hoping that she wouldn't notice his stiffness and inquire about his health.

  He need not have worried, because she was more interested in the contents of the envelope than in him. "It can't be an ad in a plain envelope. The only things that come in plain envelopes without return addresses are wedding invitations - which this isn't - and dirty literature." Her expression was uncharacteristically stern. "I won't tolerate dirty literature in my house."

  "And I don't blame you," Chase said.

  "Then it isn't?"

  "No." He opened the envelope and withdrew the psychiatric file and journal articles that Judge had promised to send to him. "I'm interested in psychology, and this friend of mine sometimes sends me particularly interesti
ng articles on the subject when he comes across them."

  "Oh." Mrs. Fielding was obviously surprised that Chase harbored such intellectual and hitherto unknown interests. "Well ... I hope I didn't embarrass you-"

  "Not at all."

  "-but I couldn't tolerate having pornography in my home."

  Barely refraining from commenting on the half-undone bodice of her housedress, he said, "I understand."

  He went out to his car and drove three blocks before pulling to the curb. Letting the engine idle, he examined the Xeroxes.

  The extensive handwritten notes that Dr. Fauvel had made during their sessions were so difficult to read that Chase passed over them for the time being, but he studied the five articles - three in the form of magazine tearsheets, two in typescript. In all five pieces, Fauvel's high self-esteem was evident, his egotism unrelenting. The doctor referred to the subject as "Patient C"; however, Chase recognized himself - even though he was portrayed through a radically distorting lens. Every symptom that he suffered had been exaggerated to make its eventual amelioration appear to be a greater achievement on Fauvel's part. All

  the clumsy probes that Fauvel had initiated were never mentioned, and he claimed to have succeeded with strategies of therapy that he had never employed but that he'd apparently developed through hindsight. Chase was, according to Fauvel: one of those young men who go to war with no well-formed moral beliefs and who, therefore, are clay in the hands of manipulative superiors, capable of being induced to commit any atrocities without questioning their orders. Elsewhere, he observed that Patient C: came to me from a military hospital, where he had recovered sufficiently from a total nervous breakdown to attempt social reintegration. The cause of his breakdown had been not a sense of guilt but extreme terror at the prospect of his own death, not a concern for others but a crippling recognition - and fear - of his own mortality.

  "You bastard," Chase said.

  Guilt had been his constant companion, whether he was awake or asleep. Recognition of his mortality had not been a source of fear, for God's sake; instead, it had been his only consolation, and for a long time he had hoped for nothing more than the strength to end his own life.

  Fauvel had written: He still suffered nightmares and impotence, which

  he felt were his only afflictions and were a result of his fear. I recognized, however, that the real problem for Patient C was an underlying lack of moral values. He could never heal himself psychologically until he made peace with his horrific past, and he could not make peace with his past until he fully understood and acknowledged the gravity of the crimes that he had committed, even if in war.

  Understood and acknowledged! As if Chase had blithely pulled the trigger, waded through the blood of his victims, and then had gone in search of a good shoeshine boy to buff the stains off his boots. Jesus.

  Dr. G. Sloan Fauvel - psychiatrist extraordinaire, confessor, and tower of moral rectitude - had therefore: at last commenced the long, difficult process of inculcating in Patient C, by diverse and subtle means, an understanding of the concept of morality and a capacity for guilt. If he could develop a sincere sense of guilt about what he had done, then the guilt subsequently could be relieved through classic therapy. A cure might then be possible.

  Chase returned the material to the plain brown envelope. He tucked the envelope under the passenger seat.

  He was shaken by the realization that he had spent so much time in the care of a physician who neither understood him nor possessed the capacity to understand. For too long, Chase had trusted in others to save him, but the only salvation was to be found in God and in himself. And after his experiences in Southeast Asia, he still was not entirely sure of God.

  In the Metropolitan Bureau of Vital Statistics, in the basement of the courthouse, three women hammered away at typewriters with a rhythmic swiftness that seemed to have been arranged and conducted with all the care of a symphony-orchestra performance.

  Chase stood at the reception counter, waiting for service.

  The stoutest and oldest of the three women - her desk plate read NANCY ONUFER, Manager - typed to the end of a page, pulled the page from her typewriter, and placed it in a clear-plastic tray full of similar forms. "May I help you?"

  He had already figured what tact Judge must have used when asking to search the files here, and he said, "I'm doing a family history, and I was wondering if I could be permitted to look up a few things in the city records."

  "Certainly," said Nancy Onufer. She popped up from her chair, came to the gate at the end of the service counter, and opened it for him.

  The other two women continued to type with machine-gun rapidity. There was a high degree of efficiency in the Bureau of Statistics that was unusual for any government office, no doubt because Nancy Onufer would accept no less. Her brisk but not unfriendly manner reminded Chase of the better drill sergeants whom he had known in the service.

  He followed her through the office area behind the counter, past desks and worktables, and through a fire door into a large concrete-walled chamber lined with metal filing cabinets. More cabinets stood in rows down the center of the room, and to one side was a scarred worktable with three hard chairs.

  "The cabinets are all labeled," Nancy Onufer said crisply. "The section to the right contains birth certificates, death certificates there, then health-department records over there, bar and restaurant licenses in that corner. Against the far wall we keep carbons of the draft-board records, then the minutes and budgets of the city council going back thirty years. You get the idea. Depending on the contents, each drawer is primarily organized either alphabetically or by date. Whatever you remove from the files must be left on this table. Do not attempt to replace the material yourself. That's my job, and I do it far more accurately than you would. No offense."

  "None taken."

  "You may not remove anything from this room. For a nominal fee, one of my assistants will provide photocopies of documents that interest you. If anything should be removed from this room, you will be subjected to a five-thousand-dollar fine and two years in prison."

  "Ouch."

  "We enforce it too."

  "I've no doubt. Thanks for your help."

  "And no smoking," she added.

  "I don't."

  "Good."

  She left the room, closing the door behind her.

  It had been this easy for Judge too. Chase had hoped that the city would require a sign-in procedure by which those who wanted to use the files were identified. Considering Nancy Onufer's efficiency and the law against removing documents, Chase was surprised that she didn't keep a meticulous log of visitors.

  He looked up his own birth certificate and also found the minutes of the city-council meeting during which a vote had been taken to hold an awards dinner in his honor. In the carbons of the selective-service records, he located the pertinent facts regarding his past eligibility for the draft and the document calling him for service in the United States Army.

  Easy. Too easy.

  When he left the storage vault, Nancy Onufer said, "Find what you were looking for?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "No trouble, Mr. Chase," she said, immediately turning back to her work.

  Her reply stopped him. "You know me?"

  She glanced up and flashed a smile. "Who doesn't?"

  He crossed the open office area to her desk. "If you hadn't known who I was, would you have asked for a name and ID before I went into the file room?"

  "Certainly. No one's ever taken any records in the twelve years I've been here, but I still keep a log of visitors." She tapped a notebook on the edge of her desk. "I just put your name down."

  "This may sound like an odd request, but could you tell me who was here this past Tuesday?" When Mrs. Onufer hesitated, he said, "I'm being bothered a lot by reporters, and I don't care for all the publicity. They've said everything about me there is to be said, after all. It's getting to be overkill. I've heard there's a local man working
on a series for a national magazine, against my wishes, and I was wondering if he'd been here Tuesday."

  He thought that the lie was transparent, but she trusted him. He was a war hero, after all. "It must be a pain in the butt. But journalists - they can never leave anyone alone. Anyway, I don't see the harm in telling you who was here. There's nothing confidential about the visitors' log." She consulted the notebook. "Only nine people came around all Tuesday. These two are from an architectural firm, checking some power-and-water easements on properties they're developing. I know them. These four were women, and you're looking for a man, so we can rule them out. That leaves three - here, here, and here."

  As she showed him the names, Chase tried to commit them to memory. "No ... I guess ... none of them is him."

  "Anything else?"

  "Do you ordinarily just take names - or ask for ID?"

  "Always ID, unless I know the person."

  "Well, thanks for your help."

  Acutely conscious of all the work on her desk, Nancy Onufer shut the notebook, dismissed Chase with a quick smile, and returned to her typing.

  When he left the courthouse, it was a quarter till noon, and he was starving. He went to a drive-in restaurant - Diamond Dell - that had been a favorite hangout when he'd been in high school.

  He was surprised by his appetite. Sitting in the car, he ate two cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and cole slaw, washing it all down with a Pepsi. That was more than he had eaten in any three meals during the past year.

  After lunch, at a nearby service station, he used the phone-booth directory to find numbers for the men who were possibles in Nancy Onufer's log. When he called the first, he got the guy's wife; she gave him a work number for her husband. Chase dialed it and spoke to the suspect - who sounded nothing whatsoever like Judge. The second man was at home, and he sounded even less like Judge than the first.

  The directory had no number for the third man - Howard Devore which might only mean that his telephone was unlisted. Or it might mean that the name was phony. Of course, Mrs. Onufer always asked for ID, so if Judge was using a phony name, he also must have access to a source of false identification.