The Husband

by Dean R. Koontz

  Leaving the restaurant, stepping into the mild spring night, he saw that his brother, in the Expedition, was on his cell phone.

  As Mitch got behind the steering wheel, Anson concluded the call, and Mitch said, "Was it them?"

  "No. There's this guy I think we should talk to."

  Giving Anson the larger bag of takeout, Mitch said, "What guy?"

  "We're in deep water with sharks. We're no match for them. We need advice from someone who can keep us from being eaten like chum."

  Although earlier he had given his brother the option of going to the authorities, Mitch said, "They'll kill her if we tell anyone."

  "They said no cops. We aren't going to the police."

  "It still makes me nervous."

  "Mickey, I see the risks. We're playing a trip wire with a violin bow. But if we don't try to make some music, we're screwed anyway."

  Tired of feeling powerless, convinced that docile obedience to the kidnappers would be repaid with contempt and cruelty, Mitch said, "Okay. But what if they're listening to us right now?"

  "They're not. To bug a car and listen in real time, wouldn't they have to plant more than a microphone? Wouldn't they have to package it with a microwave transmitter and a power source?"

  "Would they? I don't know. How would I know?"

  "I think so. It would be too much equipment, too bulky, too complicated to conceal easily or to set up quickly."

  With chopsticks, which he had requested, Anson ate Szechuan beef from one container, rice with mushrooms from another.

  "What about directional microphones?"

  "I've seen the same movies you have," Anson said. "Directional mikes work best when the air is still. Look at the trees. We have a breeze tonight."

  Mitch ate moo goo gai pan with a plastic fork. He resented the deliciousness of the food, as though he would be more faithful to Holly if he gagged down a flavorless meal.

  "Besides," Anson said, "directional mikes don't work between one moving vehicle and another."

  "Then let's not talk about it till we're moving."

  "Mickey, there's a very thin line between sensible caution and paranoia."

  "I passed that line hours ago," Mitch said, "and for me there's no going back."

  Chapter 23

  The moo goo gai pan left an unsavory aftertaste that Mitch tried unsuccessfully to wash away with Diet Pepsi as he drove.

  He headed south on Coast Highway

  . Buildings and trees screened the sea from sight except for glimpses of an abyssal blackness.

  Sipping from a tall paper cup of lemon tea, Anson said, "His name is Campbell. He's ex-FBI."

  Alarmed, Mitch said, "This is exactly who we can't turn to."

  "Emphasis on the ex, Mickey. Ex-FBI. He was shot, and shot bad, when he was twenty-eight. Other guys would have lived on disability, but he built his own little business empire."

  "What if they've got a tracking device on the Expedition, and they figure out we're powwowing with an ex-FBI agent?"

  "They won't know that he was. If they know anything at all about him, they might know I did a large piece of business with him a few years ago. That'll just look like I'm putting together the ransom."

  The tires droned on the blacktop, but Mitch felt as though the highway under them were no more substantial than the skin of surface tension on a pond, across which a mosquito might skate confidently until a feeding fish rose and took it.

  "I know what soil bougainvillea needs, what sunlight loropetalum requires," he said. "But this stuff is another universe to me."

  "Me too, Mickey. Which is why we need help. No one has more real-world knowledge, more street smarts than Julian Campbell."

  Mitch had begun to feel that every yes-no decision was a switch on a bomb detonator, that one wrong choice would atomize his wife.

  If this continued, he would soon worry himself into paralysis. Inaction would not save Holly. Indecision would be the death of her.

  "All right," he relented. "Where does this Campbell live?"

  "Get to the interstate. We're going south to Rancho Santa Fe."

  East-northeast of San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe was a community of four-star resorts, golf courses, and multimillion-dollar estates.

  "Jam it," Anson said, "and we'll be there in ninety minutes."

  When together, they were comfortable with silences, perhaps because each of them, as a kid, had separately and alone spent much time in the learning room. That chamber was better soundproofed than a radio-station studio. No noise penetrated from the outside world.

  During the drive, Mitch's silence and his brother's were different from each other. His was the silence of futile thrashing in a vacuum, of a mute astronaut tumbling in zero gravity.

  Anson's was the silence of feverish but ordered thought. His mind raced along chains of deductive and inductive reasoning faster than any computer, without the hum of electronic calculation.

  They had been on I-5 for twenty minutes when Anson said, "Do you sometimes feel we were held for ransom our entire childhood?"

  "If not for you," Mitch said, "I'd hate them."

  "I do hate them sometimes," Anson said. "Intensely but briefly. They're too pathetic to hate for more than a moment. It would be like wasting your life hating Santa Claus because he doesn't exist."

  "Remember when I got caught with the copy of Charlotte's Web?"

  "You were almost nine. You spent twenty days in the learning room." Anson quoted Daniel: " 'Fantasy is a doorway to superstition.' "

  "Talking animals, a humble pig, a clever spider—"

  " 'A corrupting influence,' " Anson quoted. " 'The first step in a life of unreason and irrational beliefs.' "

  Their father saw no mystery in nature, just a green machine.

  Mitch said, "It would have been better if they hit us."

  "Much better. Bruises, broken bones — that's the kind of thing that gets the attention of Child Protective Services."

  After another silence, Mitch said, "Connie in Chicago, Megan in Atlanta, Portia in Birmingham. Why are you and I still here?"

  "Maybe we like the climate," Anson said. "Maybe we don't think distance heals. Maybe we feel we have unfinished business."

  The last explanation resonated with Mitch. He had often thought about what he would say to his parents if the opportunity arose to question the disparity between their intentions and methods, or the cruelty of trying to strip from children their sense of wonder.

  When he left the interstate and drove inland on state highways, desert moths swirled as white as snowflakes in the headlights and burst against the windshield.

  Julian Campbell lived behind stone walls, behind an imposing iron gate framed by a massive limestone chambranle. The ascendants of the chambranle featured rich carvings of leafy vines that rose to the capping transverse, joining to form a giant wreath at the center.

  "This gate," Mitch said, "must've cost as much as my house."

  Anson assured him: "Twice as much."

  Chapter 24

  To the left of the main gate, the stacked-stone estate wall incorporated a guardhouse. As the Expedition drifted to a stop, the door opened, and a tall young man in a black suit appeared.

  His clear dark eyes read Mitch as instantly as a cashier's scanner reads the bar code on a product. "Good evening, sir." He at once looked past Mitch to Anson. "Pleased to see you, Mr. Rafferty."

  With no sound that Mitch could detect, the ornate iron gates swung inward. Beyond lay a two-lane driveway paved with quartzite cobblestones, flanked by majestic phoenix palms, each tree lighted from the base, the great crowns forming a canopy over the pavement.

  He drove onto the estate with the feeling that, all forgiven, Eden had been restored.

  The driveway was a quarter of a mile long. Vast, magically illuminated lawns and gardens receded into mystery on both sides.

  Anson said, "Sixteen manicured acres."

  "There must be a dozen on the landscape staff alone."

&nb
sp; "I'm sure there are."

  From red tile roofs, limestone walls, mullioned windows radiant with golden light, columns, balustrades, and terraces, the architect had conjured as much grace as grandeur. So large that it should have been intimidating, the Italianate house instead looked welcoming.

  The driveway ended by encircling a reflecting pond with a center fountain from which crisscrossing jets, like sprays of silver coins, arced and sparkled in the night. Mitch parked beside it.

  "Does this guy have a license to print money?"

  "He's in entertainment. Movies, casinos, you name it."

  This splendor overawed Mitch but also raised his hopes that Julian Campbell would be able to help them. Having built such wealth after being critically wounded and released from the FBI on permanent disability, having been dealt such a bad hand yet having played it to win, Campbell must be as street-smart as Anson promised.

  A silver-haired man, with the demeanor of a butler, greeted them on the terrace, said his name was Winslow, and escorted them inside.

  They followed Winslow across an immense white-marble receiving foyer capped by a coffered plaster ceiling with gold-leaf details. After passing through a living room measuring at least sixty by eighty feet, they came finally into a mahogany-paneled library.

  In response to Mitch's question, Winslow revealed that the book collection numbered over sixty thousand volumes. "Mr. Campbell will be with you momentarily," he said, and departed. The library, which incorporated more square footage than Mitch's bungalow, offered half a dozen seating areas with sofas and chairs.

  They settled into armchairs, facing each other across a coffee table, and Anson sighed. "This is the right thing."

  "If he's half as impressive as the house—"

  "Julian is the best, Mickey. He's the real deal."

  "He must think a lot of you to meet on such short notice, past ten o'clock at night."

  Anson smiled ruefully. "What would Daniel and Kathy say if I turned away your compliment with a few words of modesty?"

  " 'Modesty is related to diffidence,' " Mitch quoted. " 'Diffidence is related to shyness. Shyness is a synonym for timidity. Timidity is a characteristic of the meek. The meek do not inherit the earth, they serve those who are self-confident and self-assertive.' "

  "I love you, little brother. You're amazing."

  "I'm sure you could quote it word for word, too."

  "That's not what I mean. You were raised in that Skinner box, that rat maze, and yet you're maybe the most modest guy I know."

  "I've got issues," Mitch assured him. "Plenty of them."

  "See? Your response to being called modest is self-criticism." Mitch smiled. "Guess I didn't learn much in the learning room."

  "For me, the learning room wasn't the worst," Anson said. "What I'll never scrape out of my mind is the shame game."

  Memory flushed Mitch's face. " 'Shame has no social usefulness. It's a signature of the superstitious mind.' "

  "When did they first make you play the shame game, Mickey?"

  "I think I was maybe five."

  "How often did you have to play it?"

  "I guess half a dozen times over the years."

  "They put me through it eleven times that I remember, the last when I was thirteen."

  Mitch grimaced. "Man, I remember that one. You were given a full week of it."

  "Living naked twenty-four/seven while everyone else in the house remains clothed. Being required to answer in front of everyone the most embarrassing, the most intimate questions about your private thoughts and habits and desires. Being watched by two other family members at every toilet, at least one of them a sister, allowed no smallest private moment... Did that cure you of shame, Mickey?"

  "Look at my face," Mitch said.

  "I could light a candle off that blush." Anson laughed softly, a warm and bearish laugh. "Damn if we're getting him anything for Father's Day."

  "Not even cologne?" Mitch asked.

  This was a jokey routine from childhood.

  "Not even a pot to piss in," Anson said.

  "What about the piss without the pot?"

  "How would I wrap it?"

  "With love," Mitch said, and they grinned at each other.

  "I'm proud of you, Mickey. You beat 'em. It didn't work with you the way it worked with me."

  "The way what worked?"

  "They broke me, Mitch. I have no shame, no capacity for guilt." From under his sports coat, Anson withdrew a pistol.

  Chapter 25

  Mitch held his smile in anticipation of the punch line, as if the pistol would prove to be not a weapon but instead a cigarette lighter or a novelty-store item that shot bubbles.

  If the salty sea could freeze and keep its color, it would have been the shade of Anson's eyes. They were as clear as ever, as direct as always, but they were further colored by a quality that Mitch had never seen before, that he could not identify, or would not.

  "Two million. Truth is," Anson said almost sadly, without bite or rancor, "I wouldn't pay two million to ransom you, so Holly was dead the moment she was snatched."

  Mitch's face set marble-hard, and his throat seemed to be full of broken stones that weighed down speech.

  "Some people I've done consulting work for — sometimes they come across an opportunity that is crumbs to them but meat to me. Not my usual work, but things that are more directly criminal."

  Mitch had to struggle to focus his attention, to hear what was said, for his head was filled with a roar of lifelong perceptions collapsing like a construct of termite-eaten timbers.

  "The people who kidnapped Holly are the team I put together for one of those jobs. They made a bundle from it, but they found out my take was bigger than I told them, and now they're greedy."

  So Holly had been kidnapped not solely because Anson had enough money to ransom her, but also because — primarily because — Anson had cheated her abductors.

  "They're afraid to come directly after me. I'm a valuable resource to some serious people who'd pop anyone who popped me."

  Mitch assumed he would soon meet some of those "serious people," but whatever threat they might pose to him, it could not equal the devastation of this betrayal.

  "On the phone," Anson revealed, "they said if I don't ransom Holly, they'll kill her and then shoot you down in the street one day, like they shot Jason Osteen. The poor dumb babies. They think they know me, but they don't know what I really am. Nobody does."

  Mitch shivered, for his mental landscape had turned wintry, his thoughts a storm of sleet, an icy and unrelenting barrage.

  "Jason was one of them, by the way. Sweet brainless Breezer. He thought his pals were going to shoot the dog to make their point with you. By shooting him instead, they made a sharper point and improved the split of the remaining partners."

  Of course, Anson had known Jason as long as Mitch had known him. But Anson evidently had remained in touch with Jason long after Mitch had lost track of his former roommate.

  "Is there something you want to say to me, Mitch?"

  Perhaps another man in his position would have had a thousand angry questions, bitter denunciations, but Mitch sat frozen, having just experienced an emotional and intellectual polar shift, his previous equatorial view of life having flipped arctic in an instant. The landscape of this new reality was unknown to him, and this man who so resembled his brother was not the brother he had known, but a stranger. They were foreigners to each other, with no common language, here on a desolate plain.

  Anson seemed to take Mitch's silence as a challenge or even an affront. Leaning forward in his chair, he sought a reaction, though he spoke in the brotherly voice that he had always used before, as if his tongue was so accustomed to the soft tones of deceit that it could not sharpen itself to the occasion.

  "Just so you won't feel that you mean less to me than Megan, Connie, and Portia, I should clarify something. I didn't give them money to start businesses. That was bullshit, bro. I handled you."
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br />   Because a response was clearly wanted, Mitch did not give one.

  A man with a fever can suffer chills, and Anson's stare remained icy though its intensity revealed a feverishly agitated mind. "Two million wouldn't wipe me out, bro. The truth is... I've got closer to eight."

  From behind the burly bearish charm, a goatish other watched, and Mitch sensed, without fully understanding what he meant, that he and his brother, alone in the room, were in fact not alone.

  "I bought the yacht in March," Anson said. "Come September, I'll run my consulting service at sea, with a satellite uplink. Freedom. I've earned it, and no one's gonna bleed me for two cents of it."

  The library door closed. Someone had arrived — and wanted privacy for what came next.

  Rising from his chair, pistol ready, Anson tried once more to sting a reaction from Mitch. "You can take some comfort from the fact that this will be over for Holly quicker now than midnight Wednesday."

  Defined by a confidence and grace that suggested miscegenation with a panther somewhere in his heritage, a tall man arrived, his iron-gray eyes bright with curiosity, his nose raised as if seeking an elusive scent.

  To Mitch, Anson said, "When I'm not home to take their call at noon, and when they can't get you on your cell phone, they'll know my buttons can't be pushed. They'll whack her, dump her, and run."

  The confident man wore tasseled loafers, black silk slacks, and a gray silk shirt the shade of his eyes. A gold Rolex brightened his left wrist, and his manicured fingernails were buffed to a shine.

  "They won't torture her," Anson continued. "That was bluff. They probably won't even screw her before they kill her, though I would if I were them."

  Two solid men stepped from behind Mitch's chair, flanking him. Both had pistols fitted with silencers, and their eyes were like those you usually saw only from the free side of a cage.

  "He's carrying a piece in the small of his back," Anson told them. To Mitch, he said, "I felt it when I hugged you, bro."

  In retrospect, Mitch wondered why he hadn't mentioned the pistol to Anson once they were in the Expedition, in motion, and not likely to be monitored. Perhaps in the deepest catacombs of his mind had been interred a distrust of his brother that he had not been able to acknowledge.