Dean Koontz - (1973)

by Shattered(Lit)

  Filing cabinets stood side by side along one wall, breaking only for a window and an air-conditioning unit. There were three straight-backed chairs, the desk, the chair in which Ackridge sat, and a flagstand bearing a full-sized cotton-and-silk Old Glory.

  "Conscientious objector?" Ackridge asked.

  Alex looked at him, surprised. "What did you say?

  Ackridge showed him the selective service card in his wallet.

  "You have a CO rating here. " Why had he ever kept that card? He was under no legal obligation to carry it with him, especially not now that he was thirty years old. They had long ago stopped drafting men over twenty-six. Indeed, the draft was pretty much of a forgotten thing for everyone. Yet he had transferred the card from one billfold to the next-through maybe three or four of them. Why? Subconsciously had he believed that possession of the card was proof that his non-violent philosophy was based on principle and not cowardice? Or had he simply given in to that common American neurosis-the reluctance and sometimes the inability to throw away anything with a vaguely official look to it, no matter how dated it might be?

  "I did alternate service in a veterans' hospital," Doyle said, though he did not feel he needed to justify himself to Ackridge.

  "I was too young for Korea and too old for Nam," the cop said.

  "But I served in the regular army, in-between wars." He handed back the driver's license and the wallet.

  Alex put the license in the wallet, the wallet in his pocket, and he said, "About the man in the Chevrolet-"

  "You ever try marijuana?"

  Ackridge asked.

  Easy, Doyle thought. Be damn careful. Be damn nice.

  "Long time ago," he told the cop. He no longer tried to find a way to get back to the man in the Automover, because he saw that for whatever reasons, Ackridge didn't care about that.

  "Still use it?"

  "No."

  Ackridge smiled. It was the same bad imitation. "Even if you did use it every day of the week, you wouldn't tell a crusty old cop like me."

  "I'm telling the truth," Doyle said, feeling new perspiration on his forehead.

  "Other things?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Leaning across the desk, his voice lowered to a melodramatic whisper, Ackridge said, "Barbiturates, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine . . ."

  "Drugs are for people who don't really care for life," Doyle said. He believed what he was saying, but he knew it must sound hollow to the cop. "I happen to love life. I don't need drugs. I can make myself happy without them."

  Ackridge watched him closely for a moment, then leaned back in his chair, crossed his heavy arms on his chest. "You want to know why I'm asking all these questions?"

  Alex did not respond, for he was not sure whether or not he wanted to know.

  "I'll tell you," Ackridge said. "I've got two theories about this story of yours-about the man in the Automover. First one is-none of it happened. You hallucinated it all. Could be. Could be like that. If you were really high on something, maybe LSD, you could have given yourself a real bad spook."

  The thing to do, now, was just to listen. Don't argue. just let him go on and, hopefully, get out of here as soon as possible. Still, Alex could not help saying, "What about the side of my car? The paint's gone. The body is all torn up. My door won't open "I'm not saying that is imaginary," Ackridge told him. "But it could be that you side-swiped a retaining wall or an outcropping of rock-anything."

  "Ask Colin," Doyle said.

  "The boy in the car,' Your-brother-inlaw? "

  "Yes."

  "How old is he?"

  "Eleven."

  Ackridge shook his burly head. "He's too young for me to touch.

  And he'd probably just say anything he supposed you wanted him to say."

  Alex cleared his throat, which was tight and dry. "Search the car. You won't find any drugs. "

  "Well," Ackridge said, purposely emphasizing his drawl, "let me tell you my other theory before you go getting your dander up. I think it's a better one, anyway. Know what it is?"

  "No."

  "I think maybe you were tooling along in that big black car of yours, playing king of the road, and you passed some local boy who was driving the only broken-down old pickup he could afford." Ackridge smiled again, and this time it was a genuine smile. "He probably looked at you with your loud clothes and long hair and effeminate ways, and he wondered why you could have the big car while he had to settle for the truck. And, naturally, the more he thought on it, the madder he got. So he caught up with you and held a little duel on the highway. Couldn't of hurt his old wreck. You were the only one with something fancy to lose."

  "Why would I tell you it was an Automover? Why would I make up an elaborate story about a cross-country pursuit?" Doyle asked, barely able to control his anger but painfully aware that any expression of it would land him in jail, or worse.

  "That's easy."

  "I'd like to hear it."

  Ackridge stood up and pushed his chair back, walked over and stood by the flag, his hands clasped behind his back. "You figured that I might not go after a local boy, that I'd favor one of ours over someone like you. So you made up this other thing to get me onto the case.

  Once I'd gone on record, started a full investigation, I couldn't have backed out of it so easily when I learned the real story."

  "That is far-fetched," Doyle said. "And you know it."

  "Sounds reasonable to me."

  Alex got to his feet, his damp hands fisted at his sides. Once it had been easy for him to take this kind of abuse and crawl away without another thought. But now, with the changes that had taken place in him during the last couple of days, excessive humility was not his best suit. "Then you aren't going to help us?"

  Ackridge looked at him with real hatred now. For the first time there was genuine malice in his voice. "I'm not a man you can call a pig one day-then run to for help the next."

  "I've never called any policeman a pig," Alex said.

  But the cop was not listening. He appeared to be looking straight through Doyle when he said, "For fifteen years or better, this country's been like a sick man. It's been absolutely delirious, staggering around and bumping into things, not sure where it was or where it was going or even if it would survive. But it isn't so sick any more. It's casting off the parasites that made it ill. Soon there won't be any parasites at all."

  "I get you," Alex said, shaking uncontrollably with both fear and rage.

  "It will up and kill all the germs and be as healthy as it once was," Ackridge said, grinning broadly, hands still clasped behind his back, rocking on his heels.

  "I understand you perfectly," Alex said. "May I leave?"

  Ackridge laughed in short, sharp barks. "Leave? Gee, I really would appreciate it if you did."

  Colin climbed out of the car and let Alex slide inside, then followed him and pulled the door shut, locked it. "Well?"

  Alex gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could and stared at his whitened knuckles. "Captain Ackridge thinks I might have been taking drugs and imagined the whole thing. "

  "Oh, great."

  "Or that maybe some local boys were harassing us in a pickup. He sure doesn't want to favor us over some good old boys having their fun."

  Colin buckled his seatbelt. "Was it really that bad?"

  "I think he'd have jailed me if you hadn't been along," Doyle said. "He didn't know what to do with an eleven-year-old boy."

  "What now?" He pulled at his Phantom of the Opera T-shirt.

  "We'll fill the gas tank," Alex said. "Buy some take-out food and drive straight through to Reno."

  "What about Salt Lake City?"

  "We'll skip it," Doyle said. "I want to get into San Francisco as soon as I can-and get as far off our schedule as possible, in case that bastard does know our route."

  "Reno isn't just around the corner," the boy said, remembering how far it had seemed on the map. "How long will it take us to get there? " Doyle survey
ed the dusty street, the yellow-brown buildings, and the alkaliskinned automobiles. These were all inanimate objects without intentions of their own, malevolent or otherwise. Yet he feared and hated them. "I could get us into Reno a little after dawn tomorrow."

  "Without sleeping?"

  "I won't sleep tonight anyway."

  "Driving will wear you out, though. No matter how you feel now, you'll fall asleep at the wheel."

  "No," Alex said. "If I feel myself nodding off, I'll pull over to the side of the road and take a fifteen- or twenty-minute nap."

  "What about the maniac?" the boy asked, jerking a thumb toward the road behind them.

  "That flat tire will slow him up some. It won't be easy handling the van by himself, jacking it up . . . And once he's on the road again, he won't drive all night. He'll figure that we stopped at a motel somewhere. If he knows we planned to be in Salt Lake City tonight-and I still don't see how he could know-then he'll be up there looking for us. We can get away from him for good, this time." He started the car. "If the T-Bird holds together, that is."

  "Want me to plan a route?" Colin asked.

  Alex nodded. "Back roads. But roads we can make decent time on."

  "This might even be fun," Colin said, opening the map once more.

  "A real adventure. " Doyle looked at him, incredulous. Then he saw, in the boy's eyes, a haunted look that must have matched his own, and he realized that the statement had been sheer bravado. Colin was trying as best he could to stand up under the incredible stress-and he was doing remarkably well for an eleven-year-old.

  "You're really something else," Doyle said.

  Colin blushed. "You too."

  "We make quite a pair."

  "Don't we?"

  "Zooming off into the unknown," Alex said, "without even blinking an eye. Wilbur and Orville."

  "Lewis and Clark," the boy said, grinning.

  "Columbus and-Hudson."

  "Abbott and Costello," Colin said.

  it might have been just the circumstances, but Doyle thought that was the funniest line he had heard in years. It brought tears to his eyes. "Laurel and Hardy," he said when he was finished laughing. He put the car in gear and drove away from the police station.

  The van was as difficult to handle as a stubborn cow. After half an hour of constant struggle, Leland got the wheels blocked and the jack pumped up enough to remove the punctured tire.

  The wind coming across the sand flats made the Chevy sway lightly on its metal crutch. And if the furniture in the cargo hold shifted without warning . . .

  An hour after he had begun, Leland tightened the last nut on the spare and let the van down again. When he heaved the ruined tire into the truck, he realized he should stop at the first service station to get it repaired. But . . .

  Doyle and the kid had gotten too much of a head start already.

  Though it was true that he could pick them up again tonight in Salt Lake City, he did not want to lose the chance of finishing them out here on the open road. The closer they got to San Francisco, the less sure he was of himself and his ability to dispose of them.

  And if he didn't get them out of the picture, what would Courtney think? Courtney was depending on him. if he didn't take care of those two, then he and Courtney could never be together like they wanted.

  Therefore, the tire could wait.

  He closed the rear doors of the van, locked them, and went around to the cab. Five minutes later he was doing ninety-five on the flat, deserted highway.

  Detective Ernie Hoval of the Ohio State Police ate supper in an interchange diner which most of the cops in the area favored. The atmosphere was pretty bad, but the food was good. And policemen were given a twenty percent discount.

  He was halfway through his club sandwich and French fries when the sallow, smart-ass lab technician sat down in the other half of the booth, facing him. "Do you mind some company?" the man said.

  Hoval winced. He did mind, but he shrugged.

  "I didn't know a man like you took advantage of thinly disguised bribes like restaurant discounts," the technician said, opening the menu which the waitress brought him.

  "I didn't when I first started," Hoval said surprised to find that he actually wanted to talk to this man. "But everyone else does . .

  . And there's not much else you can take advantage of-if you want to keep being a good cop."

  "Ah you're just like all the rest of us," the technician said, dismissing Hoval with a brisk wave of the hand.

  "Poor."

  The other man's pale face crinkled in a grin, and he even allowed himself a soft laugh. "How's the club sandwich?"

  "Fine," Hoval said, around a mouthful of it.

  The technician ordered one, without French fries, and a coffee.

  When the girl had gone, he said, "What about the Pulham investigation?

  " I'm not on it full time now," Hoval said.

  "Oh?" "Not much I can do," Hoval explained. "If the killer was going to California in an Automover, he's way out of my territory. The FBI is checking on the names they got from Automover's central records.

  They've narrowed it down to a few dozen. Looks like maybe a couple of weeks until they find our guy. if The technician frowned, picked up the salt shaker and turned it around and around in his bony hands. "A couple of weeks could be too late. When a fruitcake starts to go, he goes fast."

  "You still on that kick?" Hoval asked, putting down his sandwich.

  "I think we're dealing with a psychotic. And if we are, he'll add a few more murders to his record in the next week or two. Maybe even kill himself."

  "This isn't any nut," Hoval insisted. "It's one of your political cases. He won't kill anyone else-not until he gets a chance to set up another cop."

  "You're wrong about him," the technician said.

  Hoval shook his head, took a long drink of his lemon blend. "You bleeding-heart liberals astound me. Can't stop looking for simple answers. " FRIDAY The waitress brought the pale man's coffee.

  When she went away, he said, "I haven't noticed any blood on my shirt in the vicinity of my heart. And I am not a political liberal. And I think your answer is more simplistic than mine."

  "The country's going to hell in a handbasket, and you're blaming it all on psychotics and fruitcakes."

  "Well," the technician said, finally putting down the salt shaker, "I almost hope you're right. Because if this guy is a nut, and if he is loose another week or two Eighteen By two o'clock Friday morning, sixteen hours after they had left Denver, Alex felt as if he belonged in a hospital ward for terminally ill patients. His legs were cramped and heavy. His buttocks pinched and burned as if they were jammed full of needles, and his back ached all the way from the base of his spine to the back of his skull. And these were only the first in a long list of complaints: he was sweat-damp, rumpled, and unclean from having missed last night's shower; his eyes were bloodshot, grainy, and sore; the crisp black stubble of his one-day beard itched badly; his mouth was fuzzy and dry and tasted like sour milk; his arms ached dully from holding the damned steering wheel for hour after hour, mile after mile . . .

  "You awake?" he asked Colin. In the darkness, with the gentle country music coming out of the radio, the boy should have been asleep.

  "I'm here," Colin said.

  "Should try to catch a few winks."

  "I'm afraid the car is going to break down," Colin said. "I can't sleep for worrying about "The car's okay," Doyle said. "The body got dented in a little, but that's all. The only reason it begins to shake when we go past eighty-five is that the wheel starts brushing against the indented metal."

  "I'll still worry," Colin said.

  "We'll stop at the next likely place and freshen up," Doyle said.

  "We both need it. And the car's low on gas."

  Late Thursday afternoon they had headed southwest across Utah on a series of back roads, then picked up the secondary two-lane Route 21, which carried them northwest again. The swift desert sunset came
, faded rapidly from a fiery orange-red to solemn purple and then a deep and velvety black. And still they drove, crossing into Nevada and switching over to Route 50, which they intended to follow from one end of the Silver State clear to the other.

  Shortly after ten o'clock they stopped to get gasoline and to call Courtney from a pay phone. They pretended that they were at their motel, because Alex could not see any good reason to worry her now. Though they had been through a harrowing ordeal, it was probably all finished now. They had lost their stalker. There was no need to alarm her unnecessarily. They could give her the full story when they finally got into San Francisco.

  From ten-thirty Thursday night until two o'clock Friday morning, they passed through what had once been the heart of the romantic Old West. The forbidding sand plains lay dark and empty to the left and right. Hard, barren mountains thrust up without warning and fell sharply away, out of place even if they had spent millennia here.

  Cactus loomed at both sides of the road, and rabbits occasionally fled across the pavement in the yellow glare of their headlights. If the trip had gone differently, if there had been no madman on their tail for the last two thousand miles, perhaps Nevada would have been a pleasure, a chance to indulge in nostalgia and a few of Colin's games.

  But now it was a bore, just something to be passed through before they could get to San Francisco.

  At two-thirty they stopped at a combination service station and all-night diner.

  While the Thunderbird was topped off with gas and oil, Colin used the bathroom, freshened up for the next long leg of the marathon drive. In the diner, they ordered hamburgers and French fries. And while those were sizzling, Alex went into the men's room to shave and wash his face.

  And to take two caffeine tablets.

  He had bought a package of them earlier in the night, at the service station where they had stopped just before leaving Utah. Colin had been in the car at the time and had not witnessed the purchase.

  Alex did not want the boy to know about the tablets. Colin was already too tense for his own good. it would not be good for him to find out that Doyle, despite all his assurances, was getting sleepy at the wheel.

  He looked at his reflection in the cracked mirror above the dirty washbasin, grimaced. "You look terrible."