"He did all this behind your back?" she asked.
"Yes. He-"
"if he said all this behind your back, how do you really know he said anything at all?"
He could not tolerate the sympathy in her voice, for it was too much like pity. "Did you hear him? You didn't hear him yourself, did you, George?"
"Don't talk to me like that. Don't try to say it was my imagination."
She was quiet, as ordered.
He looked to see if she was still there. She smiled at him, more solid than she had been a few minutes before.
He looked at the setting sun, but did not see it. He was now only minimally conscious of the highway ahead. Unsettled by her magical presence, he no longer handled the Chevrolet van as well as he could.
It drifted back and forth within the right-hand lane, now and then running onto the gravel shoulder.
After a while he said, "Did you know that after I called you that day just to ask for a date, after I found you were already three weeks married-I almost went out of my mind? I followed you for a week, day in and day out, just watching you. Did you know?
You had said you were flying to Frisco, that this man Doyle and your brother would follow in a week, and you said you didn't think you'd ever come back to Philly again. That nearly killed me, Courtney.
Everything was going so badly for me. I remembered how good we had it once . . . So I called to see if maybe we could get together again.
I was going to ask for a date. Did you know that?
You didn't, I'll bet. I was all ready to ask for a date . . . And then I find out you're married and running clear across country."
His voice got hard, cold, almost mean. He paused to collect his thoughts. "You were my good luck-two, three, four years ago. When we were together, everything was fine. Now you're going to be out of touch, out of sight . . . I knew I had to be near you, Courtney.
When I followed you to the airport and saw you leave on that 707, I knew I'd have to follow Doyle and Colin and find out where you were living."
She said nothing.
He drove and talked on, hoping to get a positive reaction from her, no longer perplexed by her sudden appearance. "I had lost my job again. There was nothing to keep me in Philly. Of course, I didn't have money to pay movers like this Doyle did. I had to pack and haul my own things. So I'm driving this clumsy van with its poor air conditioning instead of a fancy Thunderbird. I'm not having a run of luck like this Doyle of yours. People aren't treating me as well as they're treating him. But I knew I had to come out to California anyway, to be near you. To be near you, Courtney . . ."
Pretty, quiet, unmoving, she sat there, her slim hands folded in her lap, a nimbus of the day's last light encircling her head.
"It wasn't easy staying on their trail," he told her. "I had to be smart. When they were eating breakfast, I realized they must have a marked map in the car, something that would show me which way they were going. I checked." He gave her a quick glance, grinning, looked at the road again. "I put a wire coat hanger through the rubber seal between the windows and popped the lock button. The maps were on the seat. An address book, too. Your man Doyle is extremely efficient.
He'd written down the names and addresses of the motels where he had reservations. I copied them. And I studied the maps. I know every road they're taking and every place they'll stay overnight between here and San Francisco. Now I can't lose them. I'll just trail along behind. I don't have them in sight this minute, but I'll connect with them later." He talked very fast, running his words together. He was eager for her to understand the trouble he had gone to so that he might be near her.
She surprised him. "George, did you ever see a doctor about your headaches, about your other problems?"
"I'm not sick, damn you!" he shouted. "I've got a healthy mind, healthy brain, healthy body. I'm in good shape. I don't want to hear anything more about that. just forget about that."
" Why are you following them?" she asked, changing the subject as ordered.
Perspiration ran off his brow in several steady streams, fat crystal droplets that tickled his cheeks and neck. "Didn't I just tell you? I want to find out where you'll be living. I want to be near you."
"But if you copied the addresses in Alex's book, you have our new home address in San Francisco. You don't have to follow them to find me. You already know where I am, George.
"Well "George, why are you following Alex and Colin?
"I told you."
"You did not."
"Shut up!" he said. "I don't like what you're implying. I won't listen to any more of this. I'm healthy. I'm not sick. There's nothing at all wrong with me. So just go away. Leave me alone. I don't want to have to look at you."
The next time he looked, she was gone. She had vanished.
Although he had been momentarily confused by her unexpected and unexplained appearance, he was not at all surprised by her disappearance. He had told her to go away.
Toward the end of their affair, just before she broke off with him two years ago, Courtney had said that he frightened her, that these recent black moods of his made her uneasy.
She was still scared of him. When he said "Go," she went. She knew better than to argue. The thoughtless bitch had betrayed him by marrying this Doyle, and now she would do anything to stay in his good graces.
He smiled at the darkening highway.
In the last light of day, with the land drenched in almost eerie orange radiance, Ohio State Police officer Eric lames Coffey drove off Interstate 70 into a picnic and rest area on the right-hand side of the road. He went up the slight incline to the pineshielded clearing, and he saw the empty squad car at once. The dome light still swiveled, transmitting a red pulse to the trees on all sides.
Since four o'clock, when Lieutenant Richard Pulham had been one hour late returning his cruiser to the division garage at the end of his shift, more than twenty of his fellow troopers had been scouring the Interstate and all the secondary access roads leading to and from it. And now Coffey had found the car-identified it by the numerals on the front door-at the extreme west end of Lieutenant Pulham's patrol circuit.
Coffey wished he had not been the one to find it, for he suspected what he would discover. A dead cop. So far as Coffey could see, there was no other possibility.
He picked up the microphone, thumbed the button. "This is 166, Coffey. I've found our cruiser." He repeated the message and gave his position to the dispatcher. His voice was thick and quavery.
Reluctantly he shut off the engine and got out of his own car.
The evening air was chilly. A wind had sprung up from the northwest.
"Lieutenant Pulham! Rich Pulham! " he shouted. The name came back to him in whispered imitations of his own voice. He received no other answer.
Resignedly Coffey went to Pulham's cruiser, bent and stared into the passenger's window. With the sun down, the car was full of shadows.
He opened the door. The interior light came on, weak and insufficient because the dome flasher had nearly drained the battery.
Still, dim as it was, it illuminated the blackening blood and the body jammed rudely into the space before the front seat.
"Bastards," Coffey said quietly. "Bastards, bastards, bastards."
His voice rose with each repetition. "Cop killers," he told the onrushing darkness. "We'll get the sons of bitches."
. . .
Their room at the Lazy Time Motel was large and comfortable. The walls were an off-white color, the ceiling a couple of feet higher than it would be in any motel built since the end of the fifties. The furniture was heavy and utilitarian, though not spartan by any means.
The two easy chairs were well padded and upholstered, and the desk, if surfaced with plastic, gave plenty of knee room and working space. The two double beds were firm, the sheets crisp and redolent of soap and softener. The scarred mahogany nightstand between the beds held a Gideon Bible and a telephone.
Doyle and Colin sat on sepa
rate beds, facing each other across the narrow walk space between them. By mutual agreement, Colin was the first to talk to his sister. He held the receiver in both hands. His thick eyeglasses had slipped down his nose and now rested precariously on the very tip of it, though the boy did not seem to notice. "We were followed all the way from Philadelphia! " he told Courtney as soon as she came on the line.
Alex grimaced.
"A man in a Chevrolet van," Colin said. "No. We couldn't get a look at him. He was much too smart for that." He told her all about their imaginary FBI man. When he tired of that, he told her how he had won a dollar from Doyle. He listened to her for a moment, laughed. "I tried, but he wouldn't make any more bets."
Listening to the boy's half of the conversation, Doyle was momentarily jealous of the warm, intimate relationship between Courtney and Colin. They were entirely at ease with each other, and neither one needed to pretend-or disguise-his love. Then the envy passed as Doyle realized his own relationship with Courtney was much the same-and that he and the boy would soon be as close as they both were to the woman.
"She says I'm costing you too much," Colin said, passing the receiver to Doyle.
He took it. "Courtney?"
"Hi, darling." Her voice was rich and full. She might have been beside him instead of at the other end of twenty-five hundred miles of telephone wire.
"Are you okay?"
"Lonely," she said.
"Not for long. How's the house coming?"
"The carpets are all down."
"No hassles?"
"Not until the bill arrives," she said.
"Painters? "
"Been and gone."
"Then you just have the furniture deliveries to worry about," he said.
"I can't wait for our bedroom suite to get here."
"Every bride's greatest concern," he said.
"That's not what I mean, sexist. It's just that this damn sleeping bag gives me a backache."
He laughed.
"And," she said, "have you ever tried camping out in the middle of an empty, lushly carpeted twenty-by-twenty master bedroom? It's eerie."
"Maybe we should have all flown out," Alex said. "Maybe a furnitureless house would be easier to endure if you had company."
"No," she said. "I'm okay. I just like to gripe. How are you and Colin getting along? "Famously," he said, watching Colin as the boy pushed his glasses up on his pug nose.
"What about this guy following you in the Automover?" she asked.
"It's nothing."
"One of Colin's games?"
"That's all, he assured her.
"Hey, did he really take you for a dollar?"
"He really did. He's a sneaky kid. He's a lot like you."
Colin laughed.
"How's the car handling?" Courtney asked.
"Is six hundred miles a day too much for you, by yourself?"
"Not at all," he said. "My back's probably not aching as much as yours. We'll be able to stay right on schedule."
"I'm glad to hear you say that. I'm a little bit of a sexist myself-and I can't wait to get you in that new bed."
"Likewise," he said, smiling.
"I've had several nights to appreciate the view from this damn bedroom window," she said. "It's even more spectacular tonight than it was last night. You can see the city lights on the bay, all distorted and glimmering."
"I'm homesick for a home I've never slept in," Doyle said. He was also lovesick, and he was made more feverish by the sound of her voice.
"I love you," she said.
"Likewise."
Say it."
"I've got an audience," Doyle said, looking at Colin. The boy was listening, rapt, as if he could hear both sides of the conversation.
"Colin won't be embarrassed by that," she said. "Love doesn't embarrass him at all."
"Okay," he said. "I love you."
Colin grinned and hugged himself.
"Call tomorrow night."
"As scheduled," he promised.
"Say goodnight to Colin for me."
"I will."
"Goodbye, darling."
"Goodbye, Courtney."
He missed her so profoundly that breaking the connection was a little bit like drawing a sharp knife across his own flesh.
When George Leland pulled the rented Chevrolet van into the macadamed lot in front of the Lazy Time Motel the No VACANCY Sign was on, large green'neon letters. He was not disturbed by that, for he had never intended to stay there. He was not as flush as Alex Doyle, not as lucky; he was unable to afford even the Lazy Time's prices. He just drove slowly along the short arm of the L, then down the long branch until he saw the Thunderbird.
He smiled, satisfied with himself. "Just like in the address book," he said. "Doyle, you're nothing if not efficient."
He drove away from the Lazy Time, then, before he might be seen.
He went on down the road, past two dozen other motels, some of them like the Lazy Time and some much fancier. At last he came to a shabby wooden motel with a small vacancy sign out front and a spare, undecorated neon sign at the entrance: DREAMLAND. It looked like an eight dollar-a-night dive. He drove in and parked near the office.
He rolled down the window and turned the rear-view mirror so that he could get a look at himself. As he took his comb from his pocket, he noticed several dark streaks on his face. He rubbed at the stains, sniffed the residue, then put it on his tongue. Blood. Surprised, he opened the door and examined himself in the glow of the ceiling light.
Dried blood was spattered over his trousers and smeared all over his short-sleeved shirt. The soft white hairs on his left arm were now stiff and purple with dried blood.
Where had it come from?
And when?
He knew he had not hurt himself, yet he could not understand whose blood this was if not his own. Thinking about it, he sensed the approach of one of his fierce migraine headaches. Then, in the back of his mind, something ugly stirred and turned over heavily; and although he still could not recall whose blood had been spilled on him, he knew that he dared not attempt to rent a room for the night while he was wearing the stuff.
Praying that his headache would hold off for a while, he readjusted the mirror, closed the door, started the truck, and drove away from the motel. He went half a mile down 78 the road and parked in front of an abandoned service station. He opened his suitcase and took out a change of clothes. He undressed, washed his face and hands with paper tissues and his own spittle, then put on the clean clothes.
He still felt travel-weary and headachy, but he was now presentable enough to face the night clerk at the motel.
Fifteen minutes later he was in his room in Dreamland. It was not much of a room. Ten-foot square, with a tiny attaclied bath, it seemed more like a place where a man was put than like one to which he went voluntarily. The walls were a dirty yellow, scarred, finger-stained, even marked with dust webs in the high corners. The easy chair was new and functional yet ancient. The desk was green tubular steel with a Masonite work surface darkened with the wormlike marks of cigarette burns. The bed was narrow, soft, the sheets patched.
George Leland did not really notice the condition of the room. it was merely a place to him, like any other place.
At the moment he was chiefly concerned with staving off the headache which he could feel building behind his right eye. He dropped his suitcase at the foot of the sagging bed and stripped out of his clothes. In the tiny bathroom's bare shower stall, he let the spray of hot water sluice the weariness from him. For long minutes he stood with the water drumming pleasantly against the back of his skull and neck, for he had found that this would, on rare occasion, lessen the severity of and even cure altogether an oncoming migraine.
This time, however, the water did no good. When he toweled off, all the warning signs of the migraine were still there: dizziness, a pinpoint of bright light whirling round and round and growing larger behind his right eye, clumsiness, a faint but persistent naus
ea . . .
He remembered that he had skipped breakfast and supper and had taken only half a lunch in-between. Perhaps the headache was caused by hunger. He was not hungry-or at least he did not suffer the pangs of unconscious self-denial. Nevertheless, he dressed and went outside, where he bought food from vending machines by the pay telephones in the motel's badly lighted breezeway. He dined on two bottles of Coke, a package of peanut-butter crackers, and a Hershey Bar with almonds.
He suffered the headache anyway. It pulsed out from the core of him, rhythmic waves of pain that forced him to be perfectly still lest he make the agony unbearable. Even when he lifted a hand to his forehead, the responding thunder of pain brought him close to the edge of delirium. He stretched out on his bed, flat on his back, twisting the gray sheets in both big hands, and after a while he was not merely approaching the edge of delirium but had leapt deep into it. For more than two hours he lay as rigid as a wooden construction, perspiration rolling off him like moisture from an icy cold water glass. Exhausted, wrung dry, moaning softly, he eventually passed from a half-aware trance into a troubled but comparatively painless sleep.
As always, there were nightmares. Grotesque images flickered through his shattered mind like visions formed at the bottom of a satanic kaleidoscope, each independent of the other, each a horrifying minim to recall later: long slender knives dripping blood into a woman's cupped palm, maggots crawling in a corpse, enormous breasts enfolding him and smothering him in a damp warm sexless caress, acres of scuttling cockroaches, herds of watchful red-eyed rats waiting to leap upon him, bloody lovers writhing ecstatically on a marble floor, Courtney nude and writhing on a bloody floor, a revolver snapping bullets into a woman's slim stomach . . .
The nightmares passed. Soon after, sleep passed as well. Leland groaned and sat up in bed, held his head in both hands. The head ache was gone, but the memory of it was a new agony.
Afterward he always felt crushingly helpless, vulnerable. And lonely.
Lonelier than a man could endure to be.
"Don't feel lonely," Courtney said. "I'm here with you."
Leland looked up and saw her sitting on the foot of the bed. This time he was not the least bit surprised by her magical materialization.
Dean Koontz - (1973) Page 5
