The Key to Midnight

by Dean Koontz

  Joanna turned on her cushion to face him directly. Her knee pressed against his leg, sending a pleasant shiver through him. “Do you have any plans for the afternoon?” she asked. “If you’d like to do some sightseeing, I’ll be your guide for a few hours.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but you must have business to attend to.”

  “Mariko can handle things at the club until it opens. I don’t have to put in an appearance until at least six o’clock.”

  “Mariko?”

  “Mariko Inamura. My assistant manager. The best thing that’s happened to me since I came to Japan. She’s smart, trustworthy, and works like a demon.”

  Alex repeated the name to himself until he was sure that he would remember it. If he had a chance to talk with Mariko, she might inadvertently reveal more about her boss than he could learn from Joanna herself.

  “Well,” he said, “if you’re sure you have the time, I’d like nothing better than a tour.”

  He had expected to make up his mind about her during lunch, but he had reached no conclusions.

  Her uncommonly dark blue eyes seemed to grow darker still. He stared into them, entranced.

  Joanna Rand or Lisa Chelgrin?

  He couldn’t decide which.

  8

  At Joanna’s request, the hostess at Mizutani telephoned the Sogo Taxi Company. The cab arrived in less than five minutes, a black car with red lettering.

  Joanna was delighted with the driver. No one could have been better suited than he was for the little tour that she had in mind. He was a wrinkled, white-haired old man with an appealing smile that lacked one tooth. He sensed romance between her and Alex, so he interrupted their conversation only to make certain that they didn’t miss special scenery here and there, using his rearview mirror to glance furtively at them, always with bright-eyed approval.

  For more than an hour, at the driver’s discretion, they cruised the ancient city. Joanna drew Alex’s attention to interesting houses and temples, and she kept up a stream of patter about Japanese history and architecture. He smiled, laughed frequently, and asked questions about what he was seeing. But he looked at her as much as at the city, and again she felt the incredible power of his dark eyes and direct stare.

  They were stopped at a traffic light near the National Museum when he said, “Your accent intrigues me.”

  She blinked. “What accent?”

  “It isn’t New York, is it?”

  “I wasn’t aware I had an accent.”

  “No, it’s certainly not New York. Boston?”

  “I’ve never been to Boston.”

  “It’s not Boston, anyway. Difficult to pin down. Maybe there’s a slight trace of British English in it. Maybe that’s it.”

  “I hope not,” Joanna said. “I’ve always disliked Americans who assume an English accent after living a few years there. So phony.”

  “It’s not English.” He studied her while he pondered the problem, and as the cab started up again, he said, “I know what it sounds like! Chicago.”

  “You’re from Chicago, and I don’t sound like you.”

  “Oh, but you do. Just a little. A very little.”

  “Not at all. And I’ve never been to Chicago, either.”

  “You must have lived somewhere in Illinois,” he insisted.

  Suddenly his smile seemed to be false, maintained only with considerable effort.

  “No,” she said, “I’ve never been to Illinois.”

  He shrugged. “Then I’m wrong.” He pointed to a building ahead, on the left. “That’s an odd-looking place. What is it?”

  Joanna resumed her role as his guide, although with the uneasy feeling that the questions about her accent had not been casual. That sudden turn in the conversation had a purpose that eluded her.

  A shiver passed through Joanna, and it felt like an echo of the chills that she endured every night, when waking from the nightmare.

  9

  At Nijo Castle, they paid the cab fare and continued sightseeing on foot. Turning away from the small Sogo taxi as it roared off into traffic, they followed three other tourists toward the palace’s huge iron-plated East Gate.

  Joanna glanced at Alex and saw that he was impressed. “It’s something, huh?”

  “Now this is my idea of a castle!” Then he shook his head. “But it looks too ... garish for Japan.”

  Joanna sighed. “I’m glad you said that. If you admired Nijo Castle too much, then how could I ever like you?”

  “You mean I’m supposed to find it garish?”

  “Most sensitive people do ... if they understand Japanese style, that is.”

  “I thought it was a landmark.”

  “It is, historically. But it’s an attraction with more appeal for tourists than for the Japanese.”

  They entered through the main gate and passed a second gate, the Kara-mon, which was richly ornamented with metalwork and elaborate wood carvings. Ahead lay a wide courtyard and then the palace itself.

  As they crossed the courtyard, Joanna said, “Most Westerners expect ancient palaces to be massive, lavish. They’re disappointed to find so few imposing monuments here— but they like Nijo Castle. Its rococo grandeur is something they can relate to. But Nijo doesn’t actually represent the fundamental qualities of Japanese life and philosophy.”

  She was beginning to babble, but she couldn’t stop. Over lunch and in the taxi, she had grown aware of a building sexual tension between them. She welcomed it, yet at the same time was frightened of the commitment that she might have to make. For more than ten months, she’d had no lover, and her loneliness had become as heavy as cast-iron shackles. Now she wanted Alex, wanted the pleasure of being with him, giving and taking, sharing that special tenderness, animal closeness. But if she opened herself to joy, she would only have to endure another painful separation, and that prospect made her nervous.

  Separation was inevitable—and not because he would go back to Chicago. She ended every love affair the same way: badly. She harbored a strong, inexplicable, destructive urge—no, a need—to demolish anything good and right that developed between her and any man. All of her adult life, she had wanted a permanent relationship and had sought it with quiet desperation. Yet she rebelled against marriage when it was proposed, fled from affection when it threatened to ripen into love. She worried that any would-be fiance might have more curiosity about her when he was her husband than he’d exhibited when he was her lover; she worried that he’d probe too deeply into her past and learn the truth. The truth. The worry always swelled into fear, and the fear swiftly became debilitating, unbearable. But why? Why? She had nothing to hide. Her life story was singularly lacking in momentous events and dark secrets, just as she had told Alex. Nevertheless, she knew that if she had an affair with him, and if he began to feel that they had a future together, she would reject and alienate him with a suddenness and viciousness that would leave him stunned. And when he was gone, when she was alone, she would be crushed by the loss and unable to understand why she had treated him so cruelly. Her fear was irrational, but she knew by now that she would never conquer it.

  With Alex, she sensed the potential for a deeper relationship than she had ever known, which meant that she was walking the edge of an emotional precipice, foolishly testing her balance. Consequently, as they crossed the courtyard of Nijo Castle, she talked incessantly and filled all possible silences with trivial chatter that left no room for anything of a personal nature. She didn’t think she could bear the pain of loving him and then driving him away.

  “Westerners,” she told him pedantically, “seek constant action and excitement from morning to night, then complain about the awful pressures that deform their lives. Life here is the opposite—calm and sane. The key words of the Japanese experience, at least for most of its philosophical history, are ’serenity’ and ‘simplicity.’ ”

  Alex grinned winningly. “No offense meant... but judging by the hyperactive state you’ve been in since we left t
he restaurant, you’re still more American than Japanese.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that I love Kyoto and Japan so much that I tend to run on. I’m so anxious for you to like it too.”

  They stopped at the main entrance to the largest of the castle’s five connected buildings. “Joanna, are you worried about something?”

  “Me? No. Nothing.”

  She was unsettled by his perception. Again, she sensed that she could hide nothing from him.

  “Are you certain you have the time for this today?”

  “Really, I’m enjoying myself. I have all the time in the world.”

  He stared thoughtfully at her. With two pinched fingers, he tugged at one point of his neatly trimmed mustache.

  “Come along,” she said brightly, trying to cover her uneasiness. “There’s so much to see here.”

  They followed a group of tourists through the ornate chambers, and Joanna shared with him the colorful history of Nijo Castle. The place was a trove of priceless art, even if a large measure of it tended to gaudiness. The first buildings had been erected in 1603, to serve as the Kyoto residence of the first shogun of the honorable Tokugawa family, and later enlarged with sections of Hideyoshi’s dismantled Fushimi Castle. In spite of its moat and turrets and magnificent iron gate, the castle had been constructed by a man who had no doubts about his safety; with its low walls and broad gardens, it never could have withstood a determined enemy. Although the palace was not representative of Japanese style, it was quite successful as the meant-to-be impressive home of a rich and powerful military dictator who commanded absolute obedience and could afford to live as well as the emperor himself.

  In the middle of the tour, when the other visitors had drifted far ahead, as Joanna was explaining the meaning and the value of a beautiful and complex mural, Alex said, “Nijo Castle is wonderful, but I’m more impressed with you than with it.”

  “How so?” “If you came to Chicago, I wouldn’t be able to do anything like this. I don’t know a damn thing about the history of my own hometown. I couldn’t even tell you the year that the great fire burned it all to the ground. Yet here you are, an American in a strange country, and you know everything.”

  “It amazes me too,” she said quietly. “I know Kyoto better than most of the people who were born here. Japanese history has been a hobby ever since I moved here from England. More than hobby, I guess. Almost an avocation. Sometimes... an obsession.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly and seemed to shine with professional curiosity. “Obsession? That’s an odd way of putting it.”

  Again the conversation had ceased to be casual. He was leading her, probing gently but insistently, motivated by more than friendly interest. What did this man want from her? Sometimes he made her feel as though she was concealing a dreadful crime. She wished that she could change the subject before another word was said, but she couldn’t see any polite way to do so.

  “I read a lot of books on Japanese history,” she said, “and I attend lectures in history. Spend most of my holidays poking around ancient shrines, museums. It’s almost as if I...”

  “As if you what?” Alex prompted.

  She looked at the mural again. “It’s as if I’m obsessed with Japanese history because I’ve no real roots of my own. Born in the U.S., raised in England, parents dead for nearly twelve years now, Yokohama to Tokyo to Kyoto, no living relatives...”

  “Is that true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “That you have no relatives.”

  “None living.”

  “Not any grandparents or—”

  “Like I said.”

  “Not even an aunt or uncle?”

  “Not a one.”

  “Not even a cousin—”

  “No.”

  “How odd.”

  “It happens.”

  “Not often.”

  She turned to face him, and she couldn’t be sure whether his handsome face was lined with sympathy or calculation, concern for her or suspicion. “I came to Japan because there was nowhere else for me to go, no one I could turn to.”

  He frowned. “Almost anyone your age can claim at least one relative kicking around somewhere... maybe not someone you know well or really care about, but a bona fide relative nonetheless.”

  Joanna shrugged, wishing he’d drop the subject. “Well, if I do have any folks out there, I don’t know about them.”

  His response was quick. “I could help you search for them. After all, investigations are my trade.”

  “I couldn’t afford your rates.”

  “Oh, I’m very reasonable.”

  “Yeah? You do buy Rolls-Royces with your fees.”

  “Just for you, I’d do it for the cost of a bicycle.”

  “A very large and ornate bicycle, I’ll bet.”

  “I’ll do it for a smile, Joanna.”

  She smiled. “That’s generous of you, but I couldn’t accept.”

  “I’d charge it to overhead. The cost would be a tax write-off.”

  Although she couldn’t imagine his reasons, he was eager to dig into her past. This time, she wasn’t suffering from her usual, irrational paranoia: He really was too curious.

  Nevertheless, she wanted to talk to him and be with him. There was good chemistry between them. He was a medicine for loneliness.

  “No,” she said. “Forget it, Alex. Even if I’ve got folks out there someplace, they’re strangers. I mean nothing to them. That’s why it’s important to me to get a solid grip on the history of Kyoto and Japan. This is my hometown now. It’s my past and present and future. They’ve accepted me here.”

  “Which is rather odd, isn’t it? The Japanese are pretty insular. They rarely accept immigrants who aren’t at least half Japanese.”

  Ignoring his question, she said, “I don’t have roots like other people do. Mine have been dug up and burned. So maybe I can create new roots for myself, grow them right here, and maybe they’ll be as strong and meaningful as the roots that were destroyed. In fact, it’s something I have to do. I don’t have any choice. I need to belong, not just as a successful immigrant but as an integral part of this lovely country. Belonging... being securely and deeply connected to it all, like a fiber in the cloth... that’s what counts. I need to lose myself in Japan. A lot of days there’s a terrible emptiness in me. Not all the time. Now and then. But when it comes, it’s almost too much to bear. And I think ... I know that if I melt completely into this society, then I won’t have to suffer that emptiness any longer.”

  She amazed herself, because with Alex Hunter, she was allowing an unusual intimacy. She was telling him things that she had never told anyone before.

  He spoke so quietly that she could barely hear. “ ‘Emptiness.’ That’s another odd word choice.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “What do you mean by it?”

  Joanna groped for words that could convey the hollow-ness, the cold feeling of being different from all other people, the cancerous alienation that sometimes crept over her, usually when she least expected it. Periodically she fell victim to a brutal, disabling loneliness that bordered on despair. Bleak, unremitting loneliness, yet more than that, worse than that. Aloneness. That was a better term for it. Without apparent reason, she sometimes felt certain that she was separate, hideously unique. Aloneness. The depression that accompanied one of these inexplicable moods was a black pit out of which she could claw only with fierce determination.

  Haltingly she said, “The emptiness is like ... well, it’s like I’m nobody.”

  “You mean... you’re bothered that you have no one.”

  “No. That’s not it. I feel that I am no one.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “It’s as if I’m not Joanna Rand... not anybody at all ... just a shell... a cipher... hollow... not the same as other people ... not even human. And when I’m like that, I wonder why I’m alive... what purpose I have. My connections seem so tenuous....”


  He was silent for a while, but she was aware that he was staring at her while she gazed blindly at the mural. At last he said, “How can you live with this attitude, this emptiness, and still be ... the way you are?”

  “The way I am?”

  “Generally so outgoing, cheerful.”

  “Oh,” Joanna said quickly, “I don’t feel alienated all the time. The mood comes over me only now and then, and never for longer than a day or two. I fight it off.”

  He touched her cheek with his fingertips.

  Abruptly Joanna was aware of how intently he was staring, and she saw a trace of pity mixed with the compassion in his eyes. The reality of Nijo Castle and the actuality of the limited relationship that they shared now flooded back to her, and she was surprised—even shocked—by how much she had said and by how far she had opened herself to him. Why had she cast aside the armor of her privacy in front of this man rather than at the feet of someone before him? Why was she willing to reveal herself to Alex Hunter in a way and to a degree that she had never allowed Mariko Inamura to know her? She wondered if her hunger for companionship and love was much greater than she had ever realized until this disturbing moment.

  She blushed. “Enough of this soul baring. How’d you get me to do that? You aren’t a psychoanalyst, are you?”

  “Every private detective has to be a bit of a psychiatrist ... just like any popular bartender.”

  “Well, I don’t know what in the world got me started on that.”

  “I don’t mind listening.”

  “You’re sweet.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Maybe you don’t mind listening,” she said, “but I mind talking about it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s private. And silly.”

  “Didn’t sound silly to me. It’s probably good for you to talk about it.”

  “Probably,” she admitted. “But it’s not like me to babble on about myself to a perfect stranger.”