Winter Moon

by Dean Koontz

  He remained concerned about family finances, but he had hope on that front too. He expected to be back at work in some capacity by August, at last earning a paycheck again. Before he could return to duty on the street, however, he would be required to pass a rigorous department physical and a psychological evaluation to determine if he had been traumatized in any way that would affect his performance; consequently, for a number of weeks, he would have to serve at a desk.

  As the recession dragged on with few signs of a recovery, as every initiative by the government seemed devised solely to destroy more jobs, Heather stopped waiting for her widely seeded applications to bear fruit. While Jack had been in the rehab hospital, Heather had become an entrepreneur—“Howard Hughes without the insanity,” she joked—doing business as McGarvey Associates. Ten years with IBM as a software designer gave her credibility. By the time Jack came home, Heather had signed a contract to design custom inventory-control and bookkeeping programs for the owner of a chain of eight taverns; one of the few enterprises thriving in the current economy was selling booze and a companionable atmosphere in which to drink it, and her client had lost the ability to monitor his increasingly busy saloons.

  Profit from her first contract wouldn’t come close to replacing the salary she had stopped receiving the previous October. However, she seemed confident that good word of mouth would bring her more work if she did a first-rate job for the tavern owner.

  Jack was pleased to see her contentedly at work, her computers set up on a pair of large folding tables in the spare bedroom, where the mattress and springs of the bed now stood on end against one wall. She had always been happiest when busy, and his respect for her intelligence and industriousness was such that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see the humble office of McGarvey Associates grow, in time, to rival the corporate headquarters of Microsoft.

  On his fourth day at home, when he told her as much, she leaned back in her office chair and puffed out her chest as if swelling with pride. “Yep, that’s me. Bill Gates without the nerd reputation.”

  Leaning against the doorway, already using only one cane, he said, “I prefer to think of you as Bill Gates with terrific legs.”

  “Sexist.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Besides, how do you know Bill Gates doesn’t have better legs than mine? Have you seen his?”

  “Okay, I take back everything. I should have said, As far as I’m concerned, you are every bit as much of a nerd as people think Bill Gates is.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “Are they really terrific?”

  “What?”

  “My legs.”

  “You have legs?”

  Although he doubted that good word of mouth was going to boost her business fast enough to pay the bills and meet the mortgage, Jack didn’t worry unduly about much of anything—until the twenty-fourth of July, when he had been home for a week and when his mood began to slide. When his characteristic optimism started to go, it didn’t just crumble slowly but cracked all the way down the middle and soon thereafter shattered altogether.

  He couldn’t sleep without dreams, which grew increasingly bloody night by night. He routinely woke in the middle of a panic attack three or four hours after he went to bed, and he was unable to doze off again no matter how desperately tired he was.

  A general malaise quickly set in. Food seemed to lose much of its flavor. He stayed indoors because the summer sun became annoyingly bright, and the dry California heat that he had always loved now parched him and made him irritable. Though he had always been a reader and owned an extensive book collection, he could find no writer—even among his old favorites—who appealed to him any more; every story, regardless of how liberally festooned with the praises of the critics, was uninvolving, and he often had to reread a paragraph three or even four times until the meaning penetrated his mental haze.

  He advanced from malaise to flat-out depression by the twenty-eighth, only eleven days out of rehabilitation. He found himself thinking about the future more than had ever been his habit—and he could find no possible version of it that appealed to him. Once an exuberant swimmer in an ocean of optimism, he became a huddled and frightened creature in a backwater of despair.

  He was reading the daily newspaper too closely, brooding about current events too deeply, and spending far too much time watching television news. Wars, genocide, riots, terrorist attacks, political bombings, gang wars, drive-by shootings, child molestations, serial killers on the loose, carjackings, ecological doomsday scenarios, a young convenience-store clerk shot in the head for the lousy fifty bucks and change in his cash-register drawer, rapes and stabbings and strangulations. He knew modern life was more than this. Goodwill still existed, and good deeds were still done. But the media focused on the grimmest aspects of every issue, and so did Jack. Though he tried to leave the newspaper unopened and the TV off, he was drawn to their vivid accounts of the latest tragedies and outrages as an alcoholic to the bottle or a compulsive gambler to the excitement of the racetrack.

  The despair inspired by the news was a down escalator from which he seemed unable to escape. And it was picking up speed.

  When Heather casually mentioned that Toby would be entering third grade in a month, Jack began to worry about the drug dealing and violence surrounding so many Los Angeles schools. He became convinced Toby was going to be killed unless they could find a way, in spite of their financial problems, to pay private-school tuition. The conviction that such a once-safe place as a classroom was now as dangerous as a battlefield led him inevitably and swiftly to the conclusion that nowhere was safe for his son. If Toby could be killed in school, why not on his own street, playing in his own front yard? Jack became an overly protective parent, which he had never been before, reluctant to let the boy out of his sight.

  By the fifth of August, with his return to work only two days away and the restoration of a more normal life so near at hand, he should have experienced an upswing in his mood, but the opposite was the case. The thought of reporting to the division for reassignment made his palms sweat, even though he was at least a month away from moving off a desk job and back onto patrol.

  He believed he had concealed his fears and depressions from everyone. That night he learned differently.

  In bed, after he turned off the lamp, he worked up the courage to say in the darkness what he would have been embarrassed to say in the light: “I’m not going back on the street.”

  “I know,” Heather said from her side of the bed.

  “I don’t mean not just right away. I mean never.”

  “I know, baby,” she said tenderly, and reached out to find and hold his hand.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “It’s been a bad couple of weeks.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You had to go through it.”

  “I thought I’d be on the street until I retired. It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

  “Things change,” she said.

  “I can’t risk it now. I’ve lost my confidence.”

  “You’ll get it back.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You will,” she insisted. “But you still won’t go back on the street. You can’t. You’ve done your part, you’ve pushed your luck as far as any cop could be expected to push it. Let someone else save the world.”

  “I feel…”

  “I know.”

  “…empty…”

  “It’ll get better. Everything does.”

  “…like a sorry-ass quitter.”

  “You’re no quitter.” She slid against his side and put her hand on his chest. “You’re a good man and you’re brave—too damn brave, as far as I’m concerned. If you hadn’t decided to get off the street, I’d have decided it for you. One way or another, I’d have made you do it, because the odds are, next time, I’ll be Alma Bryson and your partner’s wife will be coming to sit at my side, hold my hand. I’ll be d
amned to hell before I’ll let that happen. You’ve had two partners shot down beside you in one year, and there’s been seven cops killed here since January. Seven. I’m not going to lose you, Jack.”

  He put his arm around her, held her close, profoundly grateful to have found her in a hard world where so much seemed to depend on random chance. For a while he couldn’t speak; his voice would have been too thick with emotion.

  At last he said, “So I guess from here on out, I’ll park my butt in a chair and be a desk jockey of one kind or another.”

  “I’ll buy you a whole case of hemorrhoid cream.”

  “I’ll have to get a coffee mug with my name on it.”

  “And a supply of notepads that say ‘From the Desk of Jack McGarvey.’”

  He said, “It’s going to mean a salary cut. Won’t pay as much as being on the street.”

  “We’ll be all right.”

  “Will we? I’m not so sure. It’s going to be tight.”

  She said, “You’re forgetting McGarvey Associates. Inventive and flexible custom programs. Tailored to your needs. Reasonable rates. Timely delivery. Better legs than Bill Gates.”

  And that night, in the darkness of their bedroom, it did seem that finding security and happiness again in the City of Angels might be possible, after all.

  During the next ten days, however, they were confronted by a series of reality checks that made it impossible to sustain the old L.A. fantasy. Yet another city budget shortfall was rectified in part by reducing the compensation of street cops by five percent and that of the deskbound in the department by twelve percent; a job that already paid less than Jack’s previous position now paid markedly less. A day later, government statistics showed the economy slipping again; and a new client, on the verge of signing a contract with McGarvey Associates, was so unnerved by those numbers that he decided against investing in new computer programs for a few months. Inflation was up. Taxes were way up. The debt-strapped utility company was granted a rate increase to prevent bankruptcy, which meant electricity rates were going to climb. Water rates had already risen; natural-gas prices were next. They were clobbered with a car-repair bill of six hundred forty dollars on the same day that Anson Oliver’s first film, which had not enjoyed a wide or successful theatrical run in its initial release, was reissued by Paramount, reigniting media interest in the shootout and in Jack. And Richie Tendero, husband to the flamboyant and unshakable Gina Tendero of the black leather clothes and red-pepper Mace, was hit by a shotgun blast while answering a domestic-dispute call, resulting in the amputation of his left arm and plastic surgery to the left side of his face.

  On August fifteenth, an eleven-year-old girl was caught in gang crossfire one block from the elementary school that Toby would soon be attending. She was killed instantly.

  Sometimes, life seems to have a higher meaning. Events unfold in uncanny sequences. Long-forgotten acquaintances turn up again with news that changes lives. A stranger appears and speaks a few words of wisdom, solving a previously insoluble problem, or something in a recent dream transpires in reality. Suddenly the existence of God seems confirmed.

  On the afternoon of August eighteenth, as Heather stood in the kitchen, waiting for the Mr. Coffee machine to brew a fresh pot and sorting through mail that had just arrived, she came across a letter from Paul Youngblood, an attorney-at-law from Eagle’s Roost, Montana. The envelope was heavy, as if it contained not merely a letter but a document. According to the postmark, it had been sent on the sixth of the month, which led her to wonder about the gypseian route by which the postal service had chosen to deliver it.

  She knew she’d heard of Eagle’s Roost. She could not recall when or why.

  Because she shared a nearly universal aversion to attorneys and associated all correspondence from law firms with trouble, she put the letter on the bottom of the stack, choosing to deal with it last. After throwing away advertisements, she found that the four other remaining items were bills. When she finally read the letter from Paul Youngblood, it proved to be so utterly different from the bad news she had expected—and so astonishing—that immediately after finishing it, she sat down at the kitchen table and read it again from the top.

  Eduardo Fernandez, a client of Youngblood’s, had died on the fourth or fifth of July. He had been the father of the late Thomas Fernandez. That was Tommy—murdered at Jack’s side eleven months before the events at Hassam Arkadian’s service station. Eduardo Fernandez had named Jack McGarvey of Los Angeles, California, as his sole heir. Serving as executor of Mr. Fernandez’s estate, Youngblood had tried to notify Jack by phone, only to discover that his number was no longer listed. The estate included an insurance policy that would cover the fifty-five percent federal inheritance tax, leaving Jack the unencumbered six-hundred-acre Quartermass Ranch, the four-bedroom main house with furnishings, the caretaker’s house, the ten-horse stable, various tools and equipment, and “a substantial amount of cash.”

  Instead of a legal document, six photographs were included with the single-page letter. With shaky hands, Heather spread them in two rows on the table in front of her. The modified-Victorian main house was charming, with just enough decorative millwork to enchant without descending into Gothic oppressiveness. It appeared to be twice as large as the house in which they now lived. The mountain and valley views in every direction were breathtaking.

  Heather had never been filled with such mixed emotions as she experienced at that moment.

  In their hour of desperation, they had been given salvation, a way out of darkness, escape from despair. She had no idea what a Montana attorney would regard as a “substantial amount of cash,” but she figured the ranch alone, if liquidated, must be worth enough to pay off all their bills and their current mortgage, with money left to bank. She felt light-headed with a wild ebullience she hadn’t known since she had been a small child and had still believed in fairy tales, miracles.

  On the other hand, their good fortune would have been Tommy Fernandez’s good fortune if he had not been murdered. That dark and inescapable fact tainted the gift and dampened her pleasure in it.

  For a while she brooded, torn between delight and guilt, and at last decided she was responding too much like a Beckerman and too little like a McGarvey. She would have done anything to bring Tommy Fernandez back to life, even if it meant that this inheritance would never have been hers and Jack’s; but the cold truth was that Tommy was dead, in the ground over sixteen months now, and beyond the help of anyone. Fate was too often malicious, too seldom generous. She would be a fool to greet this staggering beneficence with a frown.

  Her first thought was to call Jack at work. She went to the wall phone, dialed part of the number, then hung up.

  This was once-in-a-lifetime news. She would never have another opportunity to spring something this deliriously wonderful on him, and she must not screw it up. For one thing, she wanted to see his face when he heard about the inheritance.

  She took the notepad and pencil from the holder beside the phone and returned to the table, where she read the letter again. She wrote out a list of questions for Paul Youngblood, then returned to the phone and called him in Eagle’s Roost, Montana.

  When Heather identified herself to the attorney’s secretary and then to the man himself, her voice was tremulous because she was half afraid he would tell her there had been a mistake. Maybe someone had contested the will. Or maybe a more recent will had been found, which negated the one naming Jack as the sole heir. A thousand maybes.

  Rush-hour traffic was even worse than usual. Dinner was delayed because Jack got home more than half an hour late, tired and frazzled but putting on a good act as a man in love with his new job and happy with his life.

  The instant Toby was finished eating, he asked to be excused to watch a favorite television program, and Heather let him go. She wanted to share the news with Jack first, just the two of them, and tell Toby later.

  As usual, Jack helped her clean the table and load the d
ishwasher. When they were finished, he said, “Think I’ll go for a walk, exercise these legs.”

  “You having any pain?”

  “Just a little cramping.”

  Though he had stopped using a cane, she worried that he wouldn’t tell her if he was having strength or balance problems. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Positive.” He kissed her cheek. “You and Moshe Bloom could never be married. You’d always be fighting over whose job it was to do the mothering.”

  “Sit down a minute,” she said, leading him to the table and encouraging him into a chair. “There’s something we have to talk about.”

  “If Toby needs more dental work, I’ll do it myself.”

  “No dental work.”

  “You see the size of that last bill?”

  “Yes, I saw it.”

  “Who needs teeth, anyway? Clams don’t have teeth, and they get along just fine. Oysters don’t have teeth. Worms don’t have teeth. Lots of things don’t have teeth, and they’re perfectly happy.”

  “Forget about teeth,” she said, fetching Youngblood’s letter and the photographs from the top of the refrigerator.

  He took the envelope when she offered it. “What’re you grinning about? What’s this?”

  “Read it.”

  Heather sat across from him, her elbows on the table, her face cupped in her hands, watching him intently, trying to guess where he was in the letter by the expressions that crossed his face. The sight of him absorbing the news gladdened her as nothing had in a long time.

  “This is…I…but why on earth…” He looked up from the letter and gaped at her. “Is this true?”

  She giggled. She hadn’t giggled in ages. “Yes. Yes! It’s true, every incredible word of it. I called Paul Youngblood. He sounds like a very nice man. He was Eduardo’s neighbor as well as his attorney. His nearest neighbor but still two miles away. He confirms everything in the letter, all of it. Ask me how much a ‘substantial amount of cash’ might be.”