Relentless

by Koontz, Dean

  “Cullen, he didn’t want any of you to die in the explosion, because he breaks us down to ruins, step by step, not all at once. And now I am in the tower de Paris with—”

  A noise both wretched and pitiable came through the phone line, and at first I thought that emotion had returned to Clitherow in a sudden stroke, that he was choking with grief.

  A moment later, I realized this was more agony than anguish. It had been precipitated by a sound not made by the writer: a ripping noise, vicious and wet. I was listening to a man being murdered.

  His phone dropped from his hand, clattered on the floor, did not disconnect. Briefly, his death throes issued from a distance.

  But then came the thud-and-clump of a body falling. Perhaps his head was again close to the phone, because I heard him clearly. He seemed to be trying simultaneously to gasp for breath and to vomit.

  I imagined that his throat had been slashed, that he was choking on his own blood.

  I prayed for an end to his misery and at the same time hoped for one last gargled word, a revelation.

  In mere seconds, Clitherow was finished and silent.

  Earlier, when he became emotional and I suggested he call me back later or not at all, he said something that now had new meaning: “I have to tell you. You don’t understand. I have to tell you.”

  He had not been surprised during the call by his murderer. They placed the call together. At the point of a knife, John Clitherow was forced to repeat the hideous story of his family’s destruction both for my benefit and for his humiliation.

  Before me, hard shatters of rain rattled off the windshield.

  At some point after the calls that John made to me at our house earlier in the day, he fell into Waxx’s hands. He used a disposable phone, but he called my listed number, not knowing that Waxx was already after me, and somehow that was his undoing.

  We swept past a vehicle parked on the shoulder of the highway. I got only a rain-blurred glimpse of it, but I thought it was a black SUV. Not a Cadillac Escalade, surely not. Waxx couldn’t be everywhere at once. No headlights appeared behind us in the side mirror.

  Over the open phone line, from the scene of the murder, other noises arose: the killer in motion. He fumbled the phone when he picked it up. Then came his slow steady breathing.

  Determined not to be the first to speak, I listened to him as he listened to me. My resolution did not hold, and although I knew who he must be, I said, “Who is this?”

  His voice was low and gravelly, ripe with a false good humor that could not conceal the underlying menace: “Hello there, brother.”

  This was not Shearman Waxx, unless he was a man of many voices.

  “Brother,” he said, “are you with me?”

  “I’m not your brother,” I said.

  “All men are my brothers,” he assured me.

  “Waxx? Is that you? Who are you?”

  “I am my brothers’ reaper,” he said. His soft laugh was ugly.

  I put down the passenger-door window, pressed END on my cell phone, and threw it into the night.

  Twenty minutes before midnight, Penny exited the interstate at the first truck stop that appeared after I tossed away the phone. Bad weather put the long-haulers behind schedule, and they did not linger at the diner. The parking lot was mostly empty, and business slow.

  She stopped under the shelter of one of several service islands, where ours was the sole vehicle at the pumps. We got out, leaving Milo and Lassie asleep in the backseat.

  Neither of us thought it wise to run one of our credit cards through the scanner. Loath to leave her and Milo, I nevertheless hurried inside to put down the cash to get the pump unlocked.

  The cashier was a good old boy with a plug of chaw tucked in his cheek, the kind who could talk the quills off a porcupine, and who was no doubt full of entertaining stories. He was great material for a novelist, but I was neither in Florida nor doing book research.

  I pretended to be unable to speak English and invented a quasi-Slavic language of my own, which complicated communication enough to discourage him without insulting him. By the time I got back to the Mountaineer, Penny had the hose nozzle in the tank, and the numbers were spinning on the totalizers.

  Beyond the service-island overhang, in the windless night, the rain came down in such straight skeins that the rigorous lines should have proved the law of gravity to any disbeliever, of which I’m sure there are multitudes, considering we live in an age of enthusiastic ignorance, when anything well-known for centuries is not only suspect but also considered worthy of being rejected in favor of a new theory more appealing to movie stars and deep-thinking rock musicians.

  In spite of Milo’s admonition that he was a kid but not a kid, I had not wanted him to hear about John Clitherow’s brutal murder or what the writer had told me about the fate of his wife and two daughters. Now I gave Penny a condensed version but spared her none of the grim truth.

  Although she didn’t say my story had given her an appetite, she took the grisly details well, glancing worriedly at the backseat windows of the Mountaineer, in the direction of our sleeping son, only thirty or forty times.

  She pumped all the gasoline we paid for and racked the hose in the nozzle boot, but we remained standing under the shelter, pale plumes of our breath smoking in the chilly air.

  “So Waxx has a partner,” she said, “a psycho best friend.”

  “And he sounds like a real peach, too.”

  “That explains why he was able to do so much, so fast.”

  “John Clitherow called him relentless. Easier to be relentless when you’ve got a posse.”

  “What the hell is this all about, Cubby? This morning, Clitherow told you Waxx was not just a critic with opinions but a critic with an agenda. What agenda?”

  “I don’t think he knew. It’s just what he felt. But can a madman have an agenda that’s anything else but mad? If we knew his agenda, we still wouldn’t understand him or be able to deal more effectively with him. He’d still be nuts, and nutcases are unpredictable.”

  “I’m not so sure he’s certifiably insane.”

  “Careful, sugar, or I’m going to think you’re certifiable.”

  “Oh,” she said, “he’s freaking insane, all right, but he’s pretty much one of the elite class that determines the rules of the culture, including who’s certifiable and who’s not. They don’t lock themselves up. They carry the keys.”

  “Inmates in charge of the asylum, huh?”

  “Are you going to pretend you haven’t noticed?”

  “Sounds like you’re about ready to build our own stronghold.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”

  “Listen, Penny, we’ve got to change plans now.”

  “Change what plans? Landulf?”

  Thomas Landulf, the author of The Falconer and the Monk, who was reputed to have cruelly tortured and murdered his wife and daughter before setting himself afire, had lived and died in a small Northern California community not far from the Oregon border, a place called Smokeville. That’s where we were currently headed.

  In our desperation, the Landulf murders appeared to be the only place we could start building a case against Waxx. If Landulf had been well-liked in Smokeville, the locals might not buy the official story. They might know things that were never brought up at the inquest or reported in the media, things we might find worth knowing.

  I said, “Clitherow is a lesson to us. He was safe. Then he tried to help us. By helping us, he gave Waxx a chance to get a new bead on him. If we start poking around up there in Smokeville, maybe Waxx or his buddy, the brother of all humanity, will hear about it.”

  The look she gave me was not one I would have photographed and kept forever in our book of fond memories.

  “So what do you want to do instead?” she asked. “You want to go to Waxx’s house in Laguna Beach, knock on the door, confront him?”

  “No thanks, no way. I’ve seen The Silence of the Lambs. I
know what happens to people who go into Mr. Gumb’s house.”

  “So then what is your Plan B?”

  I listened carefully, but I didn’t hear myself saying anything. Only frosty plumes of breath came from my slack-jawed mouth.

  “You just want to give up our lives and go on the run forever, like Clitherow?” she asked.

  “No, no. I know that won’t work. We Greenwiches, we’re runners, but not the Booms.”

  “Damn right. Now more than ever, we have to go to Smokeville.”

  I stood there nodding stupidly, like one of those novelty dogs with a bobble head.

  “Is this discussion over?” she asked.

  “Well, I don’t seem to be able to hold up my end of it, so I guess it’s over.”

  “Good. We’re maybe three hours south of San Francisco. You drive. It’s my turn to catch some Z’s.”

  I got behind the wheel. She settled in the shotgun position.

  In the backseat, Milo was sleeping, and Lassie was sleeping but also farting. Fortunately, when she passed gas, the mutt produced a high flutelike note but no stink. Barkless, odorless, she seemed to strive always to give no offense.

  As I followed the long entry ramp to the northbound lanes of the interstate, Penny said, “What was that last thing Clitherow said, the bit that didn’t make sense, just before his throat was cut?”

  “I think it was ‘and now I’m in the tower de Paris with—’ Then just gagging-wheezing noises.”

  “De Paris. ‘Of Paris.’ The Eiffel Tower? Was he calling you from Paris?”

  “No. I don’t think so. The knife was at his throat, he was done with the story they wanted him to tell me, he knew he was about to be cut—so maybe his mind snapped and he was just babbling.”

  “Did it sound like babble?”

  “No,” I admitted. “It was in that same terrible, flat tone of voice.”

  “Then it meant something,” Penny said. “It meant something.”

  I alone remained awake in the Mountaineer, unable to engage anyone in therapeutic conversation, and nothing relieved the solemn drum-drum-drumming of the rain except an occasional flute note from the musical dog.

  My thoughts returned to John Clitherow’s story of the murders of his wife and daughters. Waxx had wanted me to hear it directly from the doomed writer.

  His purpose must be in part to demoralize me, to frighten me to the extent that fear ceased to motivate me and instead inhibited me from taking aggressive action in defense of myself and my family.

  Remembering how I pressed Penny not to proceed to Smokeville, I realized with dismay how effective Waxx’s strategy had already been.

  Demoralization to the point of paralysis, however, was not his entire intent. Before killing John, Waxx had wanted to grind him down until he abandoned the view of life that had informed his books.

  Embedded in that second intention was a clue to Waxx’s agenda, the reason why—besides the thrill of murder—he wanted to kill John and Tom Landulf and me.

  As I motored on through the night and rain, I became aware of Penny murmuring in what seemed to be a pleasant dream and of Milo snoring in the backseat—and just then Lassie orchestrated their noises into a serenade by adding a series of odorless toots.

  This humble interval not only amused me but also struck me as immeasurably precious, one of those prosaic moments from which so much delight can be taken that the world must have been created as a place of joy. No machine universe, stupidly cranking onward, could produce moments of grace from such lowly material.

  Here was why Waxx and men like him must not be allowed to achieve their ends. The world wasn’t theirs. They could claim it only with the use of lies, intimidation, and violence. If we let them win, there would be no moments of grace, humble or glorious, ever again.

  For most of my life, I had a covenant with Death to spare others as once I was spared, to be a man of peace. Such a covenant ceased to be noble and in fact became a shameful thing if it required that I not defend my life or the lives of the innocent.

  Soon after dawn, we needed to find a lonely place where Penny could teach me rudimentary marksmanship.

  Then, too, she would learn that early in our relationship, I deceived her by omission, and also deceived myself by pretending that withholding information from her was not a kind of lie, when indeed it could be nothing else.

  She knew my parents died when I was six. She misunderstood that they perished in a car accident, and I allowed her misunderstanding to go uncorrected.

  She knew that I had been raised thereafter by a wise and caring maiden aunt—Edith Greenwich—who had died of a swift-moving cancer when I was twenty.

  Penny assumed that Aunt Edith must be my father’s sister. I did not correct her assumption.

  Gentle Edith, my mother’s only sister, adopted me to ensure that I would not grow up as a figure of either pity or suspicion, bearing a notorious surname associated in the nation’s mind with horror and extreme violence.

  Because I had no living relatives except a couple of second cousins with whom I was not in contact, Penny also assumed that I came from a small family, the branches of which had withered away over the generations. I allowed that assumption to go uncorrected.

  Once I had a brother, Phelim, who was six years my senior. The name Phelim is Irish and means “constantly good.” As much as I can remember of him, he was true to his name, a kind brother.

  My father’s first name was Farrel, which is Celtic and means “valiant man.” My most vivid memory of him proves that he was worthy of that designation.

  My mother was Kirsten, which is a name from the Old English word meaning “church,” which itself is derived from the Greek word meaning “of the Lord.” After twenty-eight years, I recall most clearly three things about her: the beauty of her green eyes, the tenderness with which she treated me and Phelim, and her rich and contagious laugh.

  My father had three brothers: Ewen, a name that is a Welsh form of John; Kenton, which derives from a Gaelic word for “handsome;” and Trahern, called Tray, which is Old Welsh meaning “strong as iron.”

  Of Ewen and Kenton, my father’s older brothers, I remember too little. They were businessmen and, like my father, always working.

  Trahern, the youngest of the four brothers, had a close-cropped stubble of blond hair, a two-inch livid scar slanting across his forehead, bloodshot blue eyes, chapped lips, sour breath, grime under his fingernails, and icy hands.

  I vividly remember those things about him from that long-ago day in September, but I recall nothing about him from prior encounters. For me, he seems to have been reborn on that autumn evening, so new and singular that his past was washed out of time’s record, much as a born-again man of faith will say that his sins were washed away in baptism, though Tray baptized himself that evening, not in water but in blood.

  Tray’s last name—also my father’s, also mine back in that September—was Durant, which may ring a bell less loudly now than it did in the day when it was above the fold on all newspapers for weeks, in six-inch letters on the covers of the sleazier tabloids, and repeated like an evil mantra on TV news.

  I opened the door to him.

  I am six years old. Every morning is a call to adventure. Every evening is a promise of mystery, especially this evening in mid-September.

  The air is cool and the light is sharp, but by late afternoon, the edge wears off the sun, whereafter the day is blue and gold and magical during the drive out from the city.

  Twilight distills blue into purple, reduces purple to crimson, by the time the family gathers for a celebration at the spacious farmhouse Uncle Ewen has bought and restored.

  His forty-acre property by the river is not a working farm. A large freehold has been subdivided into smaller parcels.

  The river runs red under the stain of sunset. Ripples, whorls, and lapping wavelets imply that exotic forms of life swarm under the surface.

  My uncle has bought the place to have a weekend refuge from
the city. As a man who plans ahead, he intends to retire to these fields and gentle hills in two decades.

  In the dining-room fireplace, the andirons are brass griffins. They have wings and seem to be flying toward me, out of the fire.

  My father, Ewen, and Kenton own a numismatics business. They buy and sell collectible antique coins as well as contemporary gold coins and bars desired for the protection they offer against inflation.

  The brothers also have expanded into a proprietary line of gold and silver jewelry. They find good profits with every endeavor.

  As I wander through the party, an unusual grandfather clock in the living room enchants me. Carved from mahogany, a monkey climbs the cabinet. His long arms, reaching up, encircle the face, while the fingers of his hands entwine above the twelve. His tail is the pendulum.

  “Time is a monkey,” Uncle Ewen tells me. “Full of mischief, unpredictable, quick as a cat, with a nasty bite.”

  At six, I have no idea what he means, but I like his words and their enigmatic quality.

  Ewen, Kenton, and my father are the kind of men who view success as a reason to share. The entire family is lifted on their shoulders. Every employee is a relative, and enjoys a profit-sharing plan.

  Only Tray is not part of the enterprise. He lacks the sense of responsibility for a position with his brothers. Besides, having no interest in real work, he would turn them down if made an offer.

  Tray remains out of jail in spite of scrapes with the law. As will be discovered, he operates an illegal methamphetamine lab.

  Ewen’s housewarming draws all the family except Tray, who has not been invited, and my mother’s sister, Edith, who lives nine hundred miles away.

  Counting Ewen, his wife, Nora, and their daughter, Colleen, thirty-nine family members are present, including children.

  An hour after sunset, Tray arrives unexpectedly. He is so estranged from the family that none of them has seen him in six months. No one imagines he knows about the gathering.

  I am in the front hall when he knocks.

  Through a moon-and-cloud pattern of clear and frosted leaded glass, I recognize Tray on the front porch. Seeing me, he puts his eye to the clear moon and winks.