Last Light (Novella)

by Dean Koontz

  By turning to him for help, by revealing her own darkest secret, she had put their friendship at risk. He might well be offended that she had read him since first touch and had not until now revealed her gift. Though she believed that he was sufficiently comfortable with himself and too generous a soul to retreat into anger or fear, she also knew there was truth in what Rainer Sparks had said about anyone with her power being seen as a freak and a threat.

  Pogo pushed his chair back from the table, got to his feet, carried his mug to the kitchen sink, and poured out his coffee.

  “Pogo?”

  “I’m thinking,” he said.

  He returned to the table, took her mug, and poured that coffee down the drain as well.

  Having lost interest in the blue bunny, Bob came to Makani’s side and laid his head in her lap. He rolled his eyes, following Pogo from sink to refrigerator.

  Pogo took two bottles of beer from the fridge, opened them, and said, “Come on, let’s get some real air, where we can hear the surf,” and he opened the back door for her and Bob.

  From the patio, the softly lighted lawn sloped gently to a stainless-steel-post-and-glass-panel fence along the bluff. On the right, at the corner of the property, a gate led to stairs that switchbacked down to the beach.

  Near the gate stood a small white gazebo with decorative wood details and a peaked roof. Inside were a table and four chairs. She and Pogo took the two chairs that most directly faced the sea and the beach below, where the black water cast foaming surf, as white as bridal lace, onto the paler sand.

  Bob stood with his head between two balusters of the railing that formed the low wall of the gazebo, the twenty-four muscles in his nose working the air as the four muscles in the human nose could never do. The sea was a rich source of subtle scents, and any dog’s sense of smell was its best tool for observing and understanding the world.

  “You can really do it,” Pogo said.

  “Yes.”

  “Just by a touch.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t see everything.”

  “Just flashes. I see what, at that moment, the other person is most concentrating on, most obsessed about…and wouldn’t want known.”

  He was silent for a while.

  They both stared out to sea.

  Makani was grateful for the beer. At first, gripped in one trembling hand, the bottle clicked against her teeth when she took a drink, but then not.

  Eventually, he said, “It’s something you wish with all your heart you couldn’t do.”

  “God, yes.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She spoke of being sixteen and burdened with this wild talent. Of friends and family suddenly too well known. Of leaving Hawaii before she became irrevocably estranged from those she loved.

  When she began, the recently risen moon was too far in the east to paint the sea. By the time she got to Rainer Sparks, Pogo went into the house to fetch two more beers. When she finished, they sat in silence again, gazing at the frost of moonlight on the crests of the breakers and the distorted reflection of the lunar face drawn long across the vast waters.

  She could bear the silence less well than Pogo could. She spoke first. “I shouldn’t have dumped this on you. There’s nothing you can do. And there’s nothing I can do but run.”

  Stroking Bob’s head, which was resting on his left knee, Pogo said, “Don’t go Kerouac on me, O’Brien.”

  “Which means?”

  “When you called, I was trying to read On the Road for like the thousandth time. I’m not going to try again.”

  Pogo came from a family of achievers. His older brother and sister were driven and successful in their different professions, just as were their parents. He wanted none of that, only the sun and the sea and the surfing community. He avoided college by crafting an image of intellectual vacuity and by maintaining a perfect 2.0 grade average throughout his school years, which made him unwelcome at institutions of higher learning. His parents had great affection for him, but also pitied him for what they imagined were his limitations. They had never seen him with a book, though he was a voracious reader.

  “It’s not Kerouac’s gonzo style that’s off-putting,” Pogo said. “It’s those beat-generation ideas of what’s important in life, all the posturing and the recklessness in relationships. You aren’t going on the run again, O’Brien. That’s Kerouac. You don’t find life by fleeing from it.”

  11

  Beauty Sleeps

  The owner of the house kept a pistol in his nightstand drawer. Pogo said that it was a .40-caliber Ruger P944 with a ten-round magazine. The mere sight of a handgun usually made Makani uneasy, but not this one, perhaps because Pogo meant to use it himself, if the need arose, and she trusted him to do the right thing.

  The weapon lay on the kitchen table while they ate a dinner of salad and pizza.

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.

  “Cheese and pepperoni? Cholesterol’s just a racket.”

  “I mean, I’m putting you at risk.”

  “We’re at risk when we’re born.”

  “Are you as mellow as you seem?”

  “Is there some law against it?”

  “Really, I should go.”

  “Don’t make me shoot you in the foot to keep you here.”

  She smiled in spite of her fear and her sense of guilt.

  Pogo carried the pistol when they took Bob into the backyard for his last toileting of the day.

  As they waited for the dog, Makani said, “You really believe me about all this.”

  “Totally. You proved you can read minds.”

  “But Rainer Sparks and all that—it’s pretty far out.”

  “A year or so ago, I saw some things.”

  “What things?”

  “Nothing like this. But since then the world looks different.”

  “Different how?” she asked.

  “Weirder than it used to. Mysterious.”

  Under the ever-receding stars, the moon floated high and round, and farther down the night, its trembling ghost haunted the sea.

  “Mysterious,” Makani agreed. “And so damn beautiful.”

  “There may be nothing as enchanting,” Pogo said, “as a large black dog piddling in the moonlight.”

  After he had retrieved Makani’s suitcase from her car, Pogo set the perimeter alarm.

  Shortly after 9:00, together he and Makani shut the draperies and dressed the bed in the second of two guest rooms. The sheets had a high thread count and felt as soft as sleep itself.

  “I’ll just lie awake,” she said.

  “Try anyway. I’ll keep Bob with me. We’ll be on patrol. You’re safe here. This Sparks guy can’t know where you are.”

  “He’ll find me somehow. There’s no way he won’t.” She didn’t like the fatalism in her voice, but she knew that it was also the truth.

  “Even if he does, you’ve got some time to sleep. He said the next round would be in the morning.”

  She remembered how the murderer, with mock courtliness, had opened the driver’s door of the Chevy for her. Work up a clever plan, girl. Give me a run for my money.

  She had no plan. Unless she could count Pogo as a plan.

  “But when does he think morning begins?” she wondered. “With the dawn—or just a few hours from now, at midnight?”

  “Mellow out, O’Brien. Don’t worry too much about the future. The past is past. The future is an illusion. All we have is now, and we’ll get through it minute by minute.”

  “Until we don’t.”

  To Bob, Pogo said, “Did you hear me say ‘Mellow out’? I heard me say it. Your mistress isn’t deaf, is she, Bobby? No? I thought she wasn’t.” He looked at Makani. “Chill, gel, relax, fear not.”

  He took Bob with him and closed the bedroom door behind them.

  Makani wished he would have held her for a moment before he went. He had not touched her since he’d learned of her gift. She wondered if
he would ever touch her again.

  There were towels in the adjacent bathroom. She took the long hot shower that she’d not had time for when she’d fled from Rainer Sparks to her home in Newport Heights.

  After she’d blown her hair dry, she put on clothes once more, dimmed the nightstand lamp, and lay down on the bed, atop the covers, certain that she would not sleep.

  Sleep began to steal upon her sooner than she expected. Maybe the long day of sun and surfing had exhausted her more than she thought. Maybe the tension and terror of being stalked—and the Tasering—had taken a toll. Maybe the beers and hot shower had unwound her coiled nerves. But as she slid into a silken slumber, the last thing she saw in her mind’s eye was Pogo, and even in these circumstances, with his face came a sense of peace.

  12

  Beast Awakens

  Rainer Sparks woke refreshed at midnight, having breathed the scent of Makani through all his dreams of her.

  He withdrew her clothes from under the pillow. He fingered them in the dark. Draped selected items across his face. Breathed deeply.

  Naked, he went into her study. Switched on a desk lamp. Fired up her computer.

  He had decided not to set her house on fire.

  He would set her on fire. After he was done using her.

  Bringing forth the blood of his victims was an art. He had created many masterpieces.

  Flames, however, were also a worthwhile medium.

  Online, he accessed public records to determine who owned the house at the address in Laguna Beach that he had gotten from the GPS with which he’d tracked her.

  Maybe she parked at that residence but didn’t enter. It was a place to start.

  The city directory listed the owner as Oliver Bertram Watkins.

  Ollie to his friends. A visit to Facebook produced a photo of Ollie. He was sixty-one.

  He was a venture-capital executive. Liked antiques shopping. Fine wines. Playing competition bridge.

  No more dangerous than a five-year-old girl.

  Considering the expensive neighborhood, the house would have a security system.

  Rainer was a most professional assassin. He didn’t rely solely on his paranormal powers.

  He had long ago hacked Central Station, the alarm-reporting facility that served all the private security companies in the county. He’d built a back door for himself. Quick, easy access.

  Ollie Watkins contracted with Worry Free Security. Competent company. But ignorant of the hyphen needed in their name.

  For alarm purposes, the house had nine zones.

  Three keypads. Front door. Back door. Side garage door. There were no cameras tied into the system.

  Rainer exited Central Station.

  He went to a celebrity gossip site. Just to see what was up.

  It must be hard to be Tom Cruise.

  He took a quick shower in Makani’s bathroom. Used her soap.

  Her roll-on deodorant. Her toothbrush.

  At 1:02 A.M. he set out for Laguna Beach.

  13

  Round Two

  Pogo regretted drinking the beers earlier and chased them now with black Armenian coffee potent enough to keep a tree sloth in a frenzy. Mug in one hand, pistol in the other, dog dutifully at his side, he drank as he patrolled the house, listening for suspicious noises.

  He had never met this Rainer Sparks, never heard of him until this evening, which meant the guy wasn’t tight with the local surf community. Sparks must have been a lone wolf since, at the age of fourteen, he had suddenly been different from everyone else, gifted and corrupted by his gift, living out his sick dreams, fulfilling his darkest desires, even in the bright and waking world.

  A year ago, Pogo would have had a more difficult time believing that anyone could do the things Makani claimed Rainer could do. But then he’d been through an epic and life-changing experience with Beebs—Bibi Blair—his best friend ever and always, and Pax Thorpe, the guy she loved. Now he knew the world to be a fascinating place where what could never happen occasionally did.

  Beebs was twenty-three, two years older than Pogo. He had known her nearly all his life. She taught him to surf, polished him from a clueless young goob into a credible waverider. He loved her and she loved him. They were tight. Nobody could have been tighter, but by the time either of them was old enough to give a thought to romance, their bond was so much like brother-sister that hooking up in an intimate sense would have been too creepy to contemplate.

  He didn’t have to get along without women in his life. Women came after him. In fact, it was embarrassing sometimes. He couldn’t help the way he looked, and they couldn’t seem to help themselves. But he didn’t want it that way, as easy as all that. The world was full of users. He didn’t want to be one. He couldn’t use anyone, and when sex was easy, it felt like using. Anyway, the man-woman business could be a lot more than sex; it could be everything. He had learned that much from Bibi. He knew what it could be, and that was what he wanted. He didn’t have to get along without women, but for the most part, that’s the way it was—until the right one came along, if she ever did.

  There were days when he thought Makani might be the one, and not just days but weeks at a time. Although sweet and smart and kind and more, she had always been…distant. Not cold. Not aloof. She held the world at arm’s length. There was an essential part of herself, the core of herself, that she wouldn’t share. Now he knew what and why. The thing is, I’m a witch or something. As he and Bob patrolled the house, Pogo wondered if the revelations she made would at last bring them together—or if the very fact of her psychic gift made intimacy too difficult.

  * * *

  All was quiet on the Laguna coast. The air was pleasantly cool and dead still. The trees without rustle, the night birds without song. The breaking surf only a whisper.

  Rainer parked a block from Ollie Watkins’s house.

  He was rested and on his game.

  He walked the silent night. Past the ’54 Chevy, as black and shiny as a hearse that had been washed and waxed and made ready for a funeral.

  Lights glowed in some rooms of the single-story house. The draperies were drawn at all the windows.

  Makani and Ollie were probably waiting for him.

  They might have a gun. Or guns.

  No problem.

  A hundred guns wouldn’t worry Rainer. He had no fear.

  A privacy wall and a tall ficus hedge separated Ollie’s place from the house next door.

  A wrought-iron gate with worked-iron privacy panels. No lock. Just a gravity latch. The hinges didn’t rasp or squeak.

  Between the hedge and the garage wall, a narrow brick-paved walkway. A little moonglow, a lot of moonshadows.

  The side door to the garage. No window in it. Neither the side door nor the roll-up doors for the cars were on the security system, which was standard procedure, for convenience coming and going.

  Like most side garage doors, this one had no deadbolt. Rainer was able quickly to loid the simple lockset with a credit card.

  He stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.

  Using a penlight, he navigated the three-car garage and located the connecting door to the house. Beside it was one of the three security-system keypads.

  He wore a three-quarter-length khaki jacket. Epaulet straps on the shoulders. Faux-ivory buttons. Velcro cuff closures. Several bellows cargo pockets. Large interior pockets.

  Cool. Stylin’.

  And just the thing for carrying a burglar’s gear.

  The lighted keypad featured four labeled indicator LEDs in the upper left corner: POWER, HOME, AWAY, STATUS. The first glowed yellow, the second red, and the other two were dark.

  The system was set on HOME. So the perimeter was armed, door and window sensors, but not the motion detectors in hallways and public rooms, which would have been engaged if no one was at home or if the residents were in bed.

  Someone must be moving around in there.

  Good to know.


  Of the fifteen lighted buttons on the keypad, ten bore numbers. Four others were labeled STATUS, MONITOR, A, and H. The fifth featured an asterisk.

  If he entered the numerical code that would disarm the system, a tone would sound throughout the house as each button was pushed. The occupants would be alerted.

  Not good.

  Besides, Rainer didn’t have the code. It wasn’t known to Worry Free Security. So it couldn’t be obtained from their computer. Only the homeowner—and whomever he shared it with—knew the code.

  With a small tool that was illegal in most jurisdictions, Rainer extracted the spanner screws securing the keypad faceplate.

  From a cargo pocket, he removed an electronic device for which he’d had to kill a highly placed Homeland Security agent.

  The agent was corrupt. Rainer could have paid the guy to get the device. Killing was cheaper. And more enjoyable.

  The size of a pack of cigarettes, the instrument bore no name, no logo. Black plastic casing. An LED readout. Four control buttons.

  The Homeland Security agent called it a “circuit bridger.” But he was an idiot and only half understood how the device worked.

  His colleagues who were equally highly placed called it “hack in a pack” or “packhack.”

  The only keypad offering that interested Rainer was STATUS.

  A six-inch probe extruded from the packhack. The last inch and a half appeared to be a flattened copper wire, though it was highly flexible and break-resistant.

  He worked the tip of the probe past the side of the snugly fitted STATUS button.

  When contact with a live wire was made, green letters appeared on the LED readout: READY.

  The good but hyphen-challenged folks at Worry Free Security would say it was impossible to follow an electric current along a wire from the keypad to the dedicated logic unit that served as the simple—therefore defenseless—brain of the alarm system, penetrate the integrated circuitry on the microchip, and read the programming.