Children of the Storm

by Dean Koontz

  "He could isolate us," Peterson said.

  "You're not isolated so long as we have boats," Blenwell said.

  "But he might not know that."

  "I suppose..."

  Blenwell stepped back, motioning for Peterson to enter Hawk House. The foyer was poorly lighted, and the house curiously still except for the overly loud blare of a television set tuned to a cops and robbers story.

  Blenwell, seeing Peterson's grimace at the rat-a-tat-tat of a phoney submachine gun, smiled and said, "My grandparents watch a lot of television these days."

  Peterson nodded and said, "If I could use your radio, it might not be necessary to take one of your boats."

  "Of course," Blenwell said, then stopped as if jerked on puppet strings. "What's wrong with your own radio?"

  "Someone smashed it."

  Blenwell looked worried. "Rudolph has no idea who might have-"

  "Perhaps an idea, but no proof," Peterson said.

  Blenwell looked at him oddly, then said, "Of course. Well, you can use our radio-phone, sure enough."

  They went the length of the hall, past the lounge where the television set vaguely illuminated two old, motionless people who stared intently at the gray images that danced before them. At the end of the hall, they went into a small, back room which was isolated from most of the house-and here they found the Blenwells' set, as damaged as Dougherty's set had been.

  "You don't seem surprised," Peterson had said, when Ken Blenwell discovered the trouble.

  "I'm not."

  "Oh?"

  "I'm sure this man who's after the Dougherty kids is mad," Blenwell explained. "And madness, rather than breeding stupidity, usually generates abnormal cunning. He wouldn't have smashed your radio and overlooked ours."

  "You make him sound like a damned formidable opponent," Peterson said, not trying very hard to conceal his irritation with Blenwell's off-handed manner.

  In the orange light of the lamp that rested on a pedestal beside the ruined radio-telephone, Blenwell grimaced, wiped at his face as if he were suddenly weary, and said, "Well, my friend, to date, hasn't he proved himself to be just that?"

  "He won't succeed."

  "We hope."

  "I know."

  "Then you know much more than most mortal men," Blenwell had said, looking at him oddly again, as if probing for something, trying to guess how much-of what?-Peterson might know or suspect.

  Peterson had turned away from the other man and walked to the door. Over his shoulder, he said, "Where are your boats?"

  "I'll take you to them," Blenwell said, shouldering past Bill, taking him across the kitchen and out the back door. He walked hurriedly over the rear lawn, to the beach steps and then down. In the center of the cove, in a boathouse alongside the pier where Sonya had first seen Blenwell, they found the sailboat and the cabin cruiser.

  Scuttled.

  Blenwell just stood there, smiling ruefully at the boats as they lay like rocks in the water of the boathouse, so heavy with water that they were not rocked at all by the tide that rolled through the open doors.

  Peterson, his mouth abruptly punk dry with fear, said, "We're really in a tight jam, now, aren't we?" He looked at Blenwell, puzzled by the other man's equanimity in the face of his personal losses, and he said, "You expected this, too, didn't you?"

  "It occurred to me," Blenwell admitted, "that if he'd destroyed your boat and your radio, he might also have visited my boatshed. In fact, I thought it highly probable."

  "You're taking it awfully well."

  "It's done."

  Blenwell turned, and he walked away from the two boats, out of the boathouse and back toward the mansion.

  Following him, Peterson noted his dirty trousers and the slowly drying water stains from cuffs to knees.

  "Surf fishing tonight?" Peterson had asked.

  Blenwell turned.

  He said, "What?"

  Peterson motioned at his wet slacks. "I wondered if you were surf fishing?"

  "Oh. Yes, I was, in fact."

  "Catch anything?"

  "No."

  Back at the house, Peterson said, "You don't have a gun, by chance, do you?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  Bill said, "I think tonight might get pretty rough up at Seawatch. Our man's obviously on the island, and he clearly intends to make his move, his big move, soon. All this other stuff is mickey mouse, just setting the scene for what he really wants to do. I'd feel a lot better if I had a gun. If anything happened to those kids, to Alex and Tina, I'd feel just awful..."

  "Doesn't Rudolph have a gun?" Blenwell asked.

  "Yes, he does. But it's the only gun in the whole house, hardly enough in the circumstances. We could do with a bit more protection." He hoped Blenwell didn't see his real reasons behind these questions.

  But the other man looked at Peterson for a long, uncomfortable time, again as if he were probing Peterson's thoughts, were trying to find out exactly how much Peterson knew-about what?-or suspected-about whom?-and as if he had some personal stake in the outcome of this extrasensory investigation.

  At last, he said, "No, I have no gun."

  "You're sure?"

  "Naturally."

  "It wouldn't even have to be a handgun, a pistol or revolver. If you have a rifle-"

  "No guns at all. I don't believe in guns," Blenwell said.

  "Your grandfather?"

  "There isn't a gun in Hawk House," Blenwell had insisted.

  Peterson felt that it was time to drop that line of inquiry before Blenwell realized what he suspected. As pleasantly as he could, he said, "Well, thanks for your help."

  "Good luck," Blenwell had said.

  Peterson had come home, empty-handed.

  His story finished, Bill let go of the arms of the library chair and folded his long-fingered hands together, as if the telling of the tale had somehow relieved him of an inner agony and given him a semblance of peace. To Sonya, he said, "At least, now, I feel fairly certain that Blenwell doesn't have a gun. That would make him twice as dangerous as he is." It was clear to Sonya that Bill no longer had the slightest doubt about who their man was.

  "Of course," she pointed out, "he never has threatened, whoever he is, to kill anyone with a gun."

  "Still, I feel better."

  "Why are you so sure it's Kenneth Blenwell," she asked.

  His arms returned to the arms of the chair, his fingers gripping the leather like talons.

  He said, "His entire attitude was suspicious. He wasn't in the least surprised about the ruined radio or boats. And there was the condition of his clothes, the wet trousers, as if he had been standing in water-as if he had been out sinking a couple of boats."

  "He said he was surf fishing," Sonya said.

  "No," Bill said. "I asked him if he had been surf fishing, and he said that he had been-after a confused hesitation. You see, Sonya, I supplied him with his alibi for the wet trousers, and all he had to do was agree with me. And he did."

  "Then he was lying?"

  "Definitely."

  "How do you know?"

  "You don't go surf fishing in trousers," Bill said. "You either wear a bathing suit or shorts. Or, if you do wear trousers, for some odd reason, you roll them up above your knees."

  "That's pretty flimsy evidence-"

  But he was not finished, and he interrupted her before she could say more. "And even if you've got some weird reason for surf fishing in your streetclothes, you don't go home, when you're done, and walk around in the house wearing dripping pants and wet, muddy sneakers."

  Sonya nodded, but she did not have anything to say this time.

  "And when I asked if he'd caught anything, he said he hadn't-a very convenient situation. If he'd caught a couple of snappers or almost anything of interest, I would have asked to see it-out of simple sportsmanlike curiosity. He realized that; I know he did."

  "You've told Rudolph about this?"

  "First thing, when I came back from Hawk House Su
nday night."

  "And?"

  "He said it didn't mean anything."

  "He's got a great deal of faith in Kenneth Blenwell," Sonya agreed. "That's about the only person he seems to trust."

  "That's just the problem," Peterson said, "that illogical trust." He got out of his chair and began to pace, swiftly, agitatedly, his hands clasped behind his back. "Saine goes blind, deaf and dumb every time that someone points a finger at Blenwell-and yet Blenwell is the one with the best reasons for wanting to hurt the Dougherty family." He turned and faced her, repeated, "Blind, deaf and dumb. Well, blind and deaf, anyway. He's not dumb on the subject; he's quite vocal about Blenwell's innocence. Why in the devil's name is Saine so stubbornly unrealistic on this one, single point?"

  Miserably, she said, "I don't know."

  "Nor do I."

  She got up, too, but she did not pace with him. She felt that she didn't have the strength to pace, to do anything but hold herself erect as if she were waiting for a blow against the back of her head. If she started walking back and forth, her nerves would tighten up like springs and, in moments, also like springs, would go boing and snap into ruin. She just stood there in front of her chair, awkward, like a fawn learning to stand by itself, legs trembling, unsure, afraid.

  "There are two main possibilities," Peterson said.

  "What possibilities?"

  "Saine may be ignoring Blenwell simply because he likes him as a friend and doesn't want to have to suspect a friend. That's unlikely. I think Saine would actively consider his own mother if the case called for it."

  "And the other?"

  He looked at her, as if he wondered if he could trust her with his second supposition, then sighed and said, "Saine and Blenwell are involved in some mutual-well, enterprise, here on Distingue."

  For a moment, she did not see what he was driving at, and when she did understand, she rebelled at the possibility. "You can't think that Saine and Blenwell are working together-against the children?"

  "I don't want to think it," Bill said. "God knows, it's the most horrifying notion I've ever had."

  "Rudolph is so concerned for Alex and Tina," Sonya argued. "He's genuinely concerned, worried about their welfare." She remembered how Saine, in one of those rare moments when he had let his guard down, compared Alex to his own son, now dead. Could such a man, possessed of such deep sorrow and containing it so well, actually perform the hideously sadistic acts that the madman had threatened, or even sanction them by a friend or associate?

  "As I said," Bill repeated, "I don't want to believe it, not for a moment. But it's a possibility that shouldn't be overlooked. Kenneth Blenwell could have been the voice on the telephone. If he'd disguised his voice even slightly, no one in the family would have recognized him."

  "But how could he be sure that Saine would be hired as bodyguard?" she asked.

  "Maybe he wasn't certain. Maybe they didn't know each other before Saine came to Distingue. But maybe Blenwell made Saine such a good offer that he couldn't turn it down."

  Shocked, Sonya said, "Then you think that, maybe, Blenwell offered Rudolph a sum of money in return for a chance at the children-and that Rudolph, knowing what this madman had threatened to do, accepted the money and said okay?"

  "I suspect something of that nature might have happened," Bill said, "but with a couple of important differences. Blenwell is the obvious main suspect. When he first came to Distingue, Saine probably saw that as clearly as we do now. Perhaps he exerted himself toward proving or disproving Blenwell's guilt-and proved it. Perhaps he went with it, first, to Blenwell, with the intention of clinching his suspicions. Perhaps Blenwell explained that he did not intend to kill the kids, that those threats had only been so much stage dressing to terrify the Doughertys. Perhaps he convinced Saine that all he wanted was to eventually scare Dougherty into selling the island. Then, perhaps, he offered Saine a sum of money to remain quiet about things. Saine, realizing the children never would be hurt, and being human enough to be swayed by cold cash, took the money and walked away."

  She thought about it a while. "That's a possibility," she agreed. "I can't ever see Rudolph letting anyone harm the kids. But I can see him making a deal if the kids will not be hurt-just barely see it. But at least its a little acceptable."

  "Remember, we're still theorizing," Bill said.

  "Well, let's hope we're right," Sonya said. "If this is what has happened, then the kids are perfectly safe."

  "Are they?"

  He stopped pacing, looking at her, his eyes full of fear.

  "Well, if this theory of yours is correct-and, Bill, it's the most logical, maybe the only logical thing I've heard yet-then no one really wants to hurt Alex or Tina. All that Blenwell wants to do is scare everyone, a goal that he achieved remarkably well."

  Peterson was silent for a time, standing before a wall of books, letting his eyes run over the colorful bindings. At last, he said, "Suppose that Blenwell convinced Rudolph that he didn't want to hurt anyone, least of all two defenseless children, that all he wanted was the island. But also suppose that, in reality, he was lying to Rudolph. Suppose, no matter what he convinced Rudolph of, he really does want to take a knife to the kids, really does want to kill them."

  Her legs shook harder.

  She said, wanting to believe that it was true, "Rudolph wouldn't have been fooled easily. He's a very good man at his job. Sometimes, I feel he can see right through me, right into the center of my mind and know what I'm thinking."

  "Me too," Bill said. He stopped examining the books. "He's made me feel like a butterfly pinned on a collecting tray. But remember, Sonya, that a madman-let's say, in this case, Blenwell-can be terribly clever, cunning and quite convincing."

  "Bill, I don't know what to think anymore!"

  She was trembling visibly now.

  He went to her and encircled her in both his arms, holding her to him like a father with child.

  Fat tears hung in the corners of her eyes.

  "Now, now," he said.

  She wiped the corners of her eyes.

  He said, "I didn't mean to frighten you, Sonya. I just wanted to let you know what I suspect, ask you for your help. You're the only person I felt I could talk to."

  "My help?" she asked.

  He let go of her with one arm and offered her his clean handkerchief, which she took and used.

  "Thank you," she said. "But how can I help? What can I do?"

  "Saine seems to like you better than anyone in Seawatch," he said, brushing a strand of her yellow hair away from her cheek.

  "Since I was almost strangled," she said, "he no longer considers me a major suspect."

  "Well," Bill said, "perhaps you can get to him where I've failed, open his eyes."

  "About Ken Blenwell?"

  "Yes."

  "I've tried before."

  "Try again, and again," he said. "We haven't anything to lose."

  "I guess not."

  "And I'm convinced," Bill said, "that sometime during the storm, Blenwell's going to make his move."

  "I'll talk to Rudolph," she said.

  "Good." He kissed her, lightly on the lips, then more firmly, taking her breath away.

  "I'm okay now," she said.

  "Sure?"

  "Very."

  He looked at her critically, holding her face in one hand, like an artist holding his creation up to good light, and he said, "I can't even tell that you've been crying."

  "I wasn't, really," she said. "Just a tear or two, which can't be counted." She smiled at him.

  He made a funny, mock expression of bedazzle-ment, holding a hand over his eyes to shield his vision. He said, "God, what a smile that is! It's like the light of the tropic sun!"

  "Or a hundred stars," she said sarcastically.

  "That too."

  She laughed, pushed him back playfully and handed over his dampened handkerchief.

  "I will frame it," he told her.

  "No, you'll launder it."


  He grew serious again. "Now, you're sure you're feeling all right, good enough to facing everyone in the kitchen?"

  "Yes," she said. "I've felt better but I've also felt worse. Now, should we get back out there before Bess takes it in her head to come looking for us?"

  He grimaced. "I love that old woman, but-"

  "She tells bad jokes."

  He laughed. "That too, now that you mention it."

  She started for the door.

  "Wait!" he called. When she turned around, he pointed at the stacks of books and said, "We'd better not go back empty-handed, or we'll really be adding fuel to the fire of rumors."

  * * *

  NINETEEN

  During their simple supper and twice during the card games that followed it, as the staff kept each other company, listened to the weather reports and waited to see how bad the winds and the rain would get, Sonya brought up the subject of Kenneth Blenwell in conversation with Rudolph Saine. All three times, his reaction to her suggestions was as it had always been before, and she got absolutely nowhere with him, as if she were trying to roll a boulder uphill.

  Once or twice, when her failure to convince Saine was terribly evident, she saw Bill Peterson throw her an agonized look, and she knew exactly how he felt. Each time, she shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "What can I do more than I have already done? Isn't this a hopeless game I'm playing?"

  By nine o'clock, the weather report said that Hurricane Greta had slowed its advance on the Guadeloupe area and was nearly stationary now, whirling around and around on itself, kicking up tremendous waves and forming an outward moving whirlpool of winds that were more terrible than anything that had been recorded since 1945. These winds and waves were being felt throughout the Caribbean, especially in the Guadeloupe area, but at least Greta had stalled for the time being.

  "Maybe there'll be no need for the storm cellar after all," Bess said, relieved.

  "Awww," Alex said.

  "No pouting," Bess warned.

  The boy said, "But that's not fair! We're hardly ever here during the worst of the hurricane season, and we hardly ever get to see a really good one. We been in the storm cellar only two times before -and one time, we was only there for an hour or two. What kind of danger is an hour or two? That's no fun."