The Key to Midnight

by Dean Koontz

  “Oh. Yes. I see.”

  “Luckily, I’ve found the key that will unlock the door,” said Inamura. “I have it right here.”

  Alex smiled, pleased with the doctor’s creative approach to the problem.

  “It’s a large iron key,” Inamura said. “A large iron key attached to an iron ring. I’ll shake it. There. Do you hear it rattling, Joanna?”

  “I hear it,” she said.

  Inamura was so skillful that Alex almost heard it too.

  “I’m putting the key in your hand,” Inamura told her, even though he didn’t move from his armchair. “There. You have it now.”

  “I’ve got it,” Joanna said, closing her right hand around the imaginary key.

  “Now put the key in the door and give it a full turn. That’s right. Just like that. Fine. You’ve unlocked it.”

  “What happens next?” Joanna asked apprehensively.

  “Push the door open,” the doctor said.

  “It’s so heavy.”

  “Yes, but it’s coming open just the same. Hear the hinges creaking? It’s been closed a long time. A long, long time. But it’s coming open... open... open all the way. There. You’ve done it. Now step across the threshold.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you across?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. What do you see?”

  Silence.

  At the windows, twilight had given way to night. No wind pressed at the glass. Even the bird was still and attentive in its cage.

  “What do you see?” Inamura repeated. “No stars,” Joanna said.

  Frowning, Inamura said, “What do you mean?”

  She fell silent again.

  “Take another step,” Inamura instructed.

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And another. Five steps in all.”

  She counted them off: “... three... four... five.”

  “Now stop and look around, Joanna.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you see?”

  “No stars, no moon.”

  “Joanna, what do you see?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Be more specific, please.”

  “Just midnight,” she said.

  “Explain, please.”

  Joanna took a deep breath. “I see midnight. The most perfect midnight imaginable. Silky. Almost liquid. A fluid midnight sky runs all the way to the earth on all sides, sealing everything up tight, melting like tar over the whole world, over everything that comes before, over everywhere I’ve been and everything I’ve done and everything I’ve seen. No stars at all. Flawless blackness. Not a speck of light. And not a sound either. No wind. No odors. The earth itself is black. All darkness on all sides. Blackness is the only thing, and it goes on forever.”

  “No,” Inamura said. “That’s not true. Twenty years of your life will begin to unfold around you. It’s starting to happen even as I speak. You see it now, a world coming to life all around you.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Look closer, Joanna. It may not be easy to see at first, but it’s all there. I’ve given you the key to your past.”

  “You’ve only given me the key to midnight,” Joanna said. A new despair echoed in her voice.

  “The key to the past,” Inamura insisted.

  “To midnight,” she said miserably. “A key to darkness and hopelessness. I am nobody. I am nowhere. I’m alone. All alone. I don’t like it here.”

  40

  By the time they left the psychiatrist’s office, night had claimed Kyoto. From the north came a great wind that drove the bitter air through clothes and skin and flesh all the way to the bone. The light of the street lamps cast stark shadows on the wet pavement, on the dirty slush in the gutters, and on the piled-up snow that had fallen during the previous night.

  Saying nothing, going nowhere, Alex and Joanna sat in her Lexus, shivering, steaming the windshield with their breath, waiting to get warm. The exhaust vapors plumed up from the tailpipe and rushed forward past the windows, like multitudes of ghosts hurrying to some otherworldly event.

  “Omi Inamura can’t do anything more for me,” Joanna said.

  Alex reluctantly agreed. The doctor had brought to the surface every existing scrap of memory involving the man with the mechanical hand, but he hadn’t been able to help her recall enough to provide new leads. Thanks to the genius of those who had tampered with her memory, the specifics of the horrors perpetrated in that strange room had been scattered like the ashes of a long-extinguished fire; and the two thirds of her life spent as Lisa Chelgrin had been thoroughly, painstakingly eradicated beyond recall.

  The dashboard fans pushed warm air through the vents, and the patches of condensation on the windshield shrank steadily.

  Finally Joanna said, “I can accept that I’ve forgotten... Lisa. They stole my other life, but Joanna Rand is a good person to be.”

  “And to be with,” he added.

  “I can accept the loss. I can live without a past if I have to. I’m strong enough.”

  “I’ve no doubt about that.”

  She faced him. “But I can’t just pick up and go on without knowing why?” she said angrily.

  “We’ll find out why.”

  “How? There’s no more in me for Inamura to pull out.”

  “And I don’t believe there’s anything more to be discovered here in Kyoto. Not anything important.”

  “What about the man who followed you into that alleyway—or the man in your hotel room, the one who cut you?”

  “Small fish. Minnows.”

  “Where are the big fish?” she asked. “In Jamaica—where Lisa disappeared?”

  “More likely Chicago. That’s Senator Tom’s stomping grounds. Or in London.”

  “London? But you proved I never lived there. That entire background’s fake.”

  “But Fielding Athison is there, the place that fronts on the phone as United British-Continental Insurance. I’m pretty sure they aren’t just small fish.”

  “Will you put your British contacts on the case again?”

  “No. At least not by long distance. I’d prefer to deal with these Fielding Athison people myself.”

  “Go to London? When?”

  “As soon as possible. Tomorrow or the day after. I’ll take the train to Tokyo and fly from there.”

  “We’ll fly from there.”

  “You might be safer here. I’ll bring in protection from the agency in Chicago.”

  “You’re the only protection I can trust,” she said. “I’m going to London with you.”

  41

  Senator Thomas Chelgrin stood at a window in his second-floor study, watching the sparse traffic on the street below, waiting for the telephone to ring.

  Monday night, December first, Washington, D.C., lay under a heavy blanket of cool, humid air. Occasionally people hurried from houses to parked cars or from cars to welcoming doorways, their shoulders hunched and heads tucked down and hands jammed in pockets. It wasn’t quite cold enough for snow. Weather reports called for icy rain before morning.

  Though he was in a warm room, Chelgrin felt as cold as any of the scurrying pedestrians who from time to time passed below.

  His chill arose from the cold hand of guilt on his heart, the same guilt that always touched him on the first day of every month.

  During most of the year, when the upper house of the United States Congress was in session or when other government business waited to be done, the senator made his home in a twenty-five-room house on a tree-lined street in Georgetown. He lived in Illinois less than one month of every year.

  Although he hadn’t remarried after the death of his wife, and although his only child had been kidnapped twelve years ago and had never been found, the enormous house was not too large for him. Tom Chelgrin wanted the best of everything, and he had the money to buy it all. His extensive collections, whic
h ranged from rare coins to the finest antique Chippendale furniture, required a great deal of space. He was not driven merely by an investor’s or a collector’s passion; his need to acquire valuable and beautiful things was no less than an obsession. He had more than five thousand first editions of American novels and collec- tions of poetry—Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Vincent Benet, Thoreau, Emerson, Dreiser, Henry James, Robert Frost. Hundreds of fine antique porcelains were displayed throughout his rooms, from the simplicity of Chinese pieces of the Han and Sung dynasties to elaborate Satsuma vases from Japan. His stamp collection was worth five million dollars. The walls of his house were hung with the world’s largest collection of paintings by Childe Harold. He collected Chinese tapestries and screens, antique Persian carpets, Paul Storr silver, Tiffany lamps, Dore bronzes, Chinese export porcelain, French marquetry furniture from the nineteenth century, and much more—in fact, so much that he owned a small warehouse to store the overflow.

  He didn’t share the house only with inanimate objects. A butler, cook, two maids, and a chauffeur all lived in, and he entertained frequently. He didn’t like to be alone, because solitude gave him too much time to think about certain terrible decisions he had made over the years, certain dark roads taken.

  The telephone rang. The back line, a number known only to two or three people.

  Chelgrin rushed to his desk and snatched up the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Senator, what a lovely night for it,” said Peterson.

  “Miserable night,” Chelgrin disagreed.

  “It’s going to rain,” Peterson said. “I like rain. It washes the world clean, and we need that now and then. It’s a damned dirty world we live in. Enough?”

  Chelgrin hesitated.

  “Looks clean to me,” said Peterson.

  Chelgrin was studying the video display of an electronic device to which the phone was connected. It would reveal the presence of any tap on the line. “Okay,” Chelgrin said at last.

  “Good. We’ve got this month’s report.”

  Chelgrin could hear his own pounding heartbeat. “Where do you want to meet?”

  “We haven’t used the market for a while.”

  “When?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Of course you will, dear Tom,” Peterson said with amusement. “I know you wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “I’m not a dog on a leash,” Chelgrin said. “Don’t think you can jerk me around.”

  “Dear Tom, don’t get yourself in a snit.”

  Chelgrin hung up. His hands were shaking.

  He went to the wet bar in one corner of the study and poured two ounces of scotch. He drank it in two long swallows, without benefit of ice or water.

  “God help me,” he said softly.

  42

  Chelgrin had given the servants the day off, so he drove himself to the market in his dark-gray Cadillac. He could have driven any of three Rolls-Royces, a Mercedes sports coup, an Excalibur, or one of the other cars in his collection. He chose the Cadillac because it was the least conspicuous of the group.

  He arrived at the rendezvous five minutes early. The supermarket was the cornerstone of a small shopping center, and even at eight o’clock on a blustery winter night, the place was busy. He parked at the end of a row of cars, sixty or seventy yards from the market entrance. After waiting a couple of minutes, he got out, locked the doors, and stood self-consciously near the rear bumper.

  He turned up the collar of his gray Bally jacket, pulled down his leather cap, and kept his distinctive face away from the light. He was trying to appear casual, but he feared that he looked like a man playing at spies.

  If he didn’t take precautions, however, he would be recognized. He wasn’t merely a United States Senator from Illinois: He aspired to the office of the presidency, and he spent a lot of hours in front of television cameras and in the poor company of obnoxious but powerful reporters, laying the foundation for a campaign in either two or six years, depending on the fate of the new man who’d won the White House just two years ago. (Considering the sanctimonious and self-righteous lecturing, the numerous episodes of undisguised political duplicity, and the incredible bungling that marked the new man’s first twenty-two months at the helm, Chelgrin was confident that his chance would come in two years rather than six.) If someone recognized him, the meeting with Peterson would have to be rescheduled for another night.

  Two rows away, the lights of a Chevrolet snapped on, and the car pulled from its parking slip. It came down one aisle, around another, and stopped directly beside the senator’s Cadillac.

  Chelgrin opened the front passenger door, bent down, and looked inside. He knew the driver from other nights—a short, stout fellow with a prim mouth and thick glasses—but he didn’t know his name. He had never asked. Now he got in and buckled his seat belt.

  “Anybody on your tail?” the driver asked.

  “If there were, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “We’ll play it safe just the same.”

  For ten minutes they traveled a maze of residential streets. The driver watched the rearview mirror as much as the road ahead.

  Finally, when it was clear that they were not being followed, they went to a roadhouse seven miles from the supermarket. The place was called Smooth Joe’s, and on the roof it boasted a pair of ten-foot-tall neon cowboy dancers.

  Business was good for so early in the week: sixty or seventy cars surrounded the building. One was a chocolate-brown Mercedes with Maryland plates, and the stout man pulled in beside it.

  Without another word to the driver, Chelgrin got out of the Chevrolet. The night air was vibrating with a thunderous rendition of Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places.” He got quickly into the rear seat of the Mercedes, where Anson Peterson was waiting.

  The instant the senator slammed the door, Peterson said, “Let’s roll, Harry.”

  The driver was big, broad-shouldered, and totally bald. He held the steering wheel almost at arm’s length, and he drove well. They headed from the suburbs into the Virginia countryside.

  The interior of the car smelled of butter-rum Life Savers. They were an addiction of Peterson’s.

  “You’re looking very well, Tom.”

  “And you.”

  In fact, Anson Peterson did not look well at all. Although he was only five feet nine, he weighed considerably in excess of three hundred pounds. His suit pants strained to encompass his enormous thighs. The buttons on his shirt met, but he had no hope of buttoning his jacket. As always, he wore a hand-knotted bow tie—this time white polka dots on a field of deep blue, to match his blue suit—which emphasized the extraordinary circumference of his neck. His face was a great, round pudding paler than vanilla—but within it shone two tar-black eyes that were bright with a fierce intelligence.

  Offering the roll of candy, Peterson said, “Would you like one?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Peterson took a circlet of butter-rum for himself and, with a girlish daintiness, popped it into his mouth. He carefully folded shut the end of the roll, as if it must be done just so to please a stern nanny, and put it in one of his jacket pockets. From another pocket he withdrew a clean white handkerchief; he shook it out and scrubbed vigorously at his fingertips.

  In spite of his great size—or perhaps because of it—he was compulsively neat. His clothes were always immaculate, never a spot on shirt or tie. His hands were pink, the nails manicured and highly polished. He always looked as if he had just come from the barber: Not a hair was out of place on his round head. Occasionally Chelgrin had eaten dinner with the fat man, and Peterson had finished double servings without leaving a solitary crumb or drop of sauce on the tablecloth. The senator, hardly a sloppy man, always felt like a pig when, after dinner, he compared his place with Peterson’s absolutely virginal expanse of linen.

  Now they cruised along w
ide streets with half-acre estates and large houses, heading out to hunt country. Their monthly meetings were always conducted on the move, because a car could be checked for electronic listening devices and stripped of them more easily than could a room in any building. Furthermore, a moving car with a well-trained and observant chauffeur was almost proof against an eavesdropping directional microphone focused on them from a distance.

  Of course it wasn’t likely that Peterson would ever become the target of electronic surveillance. His cover as a successful real-estate entrepreneur was faultless. His secret work, done in addition to the real-estate dealing, was punishable by life imprisonment or even death if he were caught, so he was motivated to be methodical, circumspect, and security conscious.

  As they sped toward the countryside, the fat man talked around his candy. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you engineered the election of this man in the White House. He seems to be determined to set himself up so precisely that you can knock him down with a single puff of breath.”

  “I’m not here to talk politics,” Chelgrin said shortly. “May I see the report?”

  “Dear Tom, since we must work together, we should try our best to be friendly. It really takes so little time to be sociable.”

  “The report.”

  Peterson sighed. “As you wish.”

  Chelgrin held out one hand for the file folder.

  Peterson made no move to give it to him. Instead, he said, “There’s nothing in writing this month. Just a spoken report.”

  Chelgrin stared at him in disbelief. “That’s unacceptable.”

  Peterson crunched what remained of his Life Saver and swallowed. When he spoke, he expelled butter-rum fumes. “That’s the way it is, I’m afraid.”

  The senator strove to control his temper, for to lose it would be to give the fat man an advantage. “These reports are important to me, Anson. Very personal, very private.”

  Peterson smiled. “You know perfectly well that they’re read by at least a dozen other people. Including me.”

  “Yes, but then I always get to read them too. If you just summarize them instead ... then suddenly you become an interpreter. It’s not as private that way. I wouldn’t feel as close to her.”