by Dean Koontz
peculiar gray light. On the television, an evangelist was gesticulating furiously, but the sound was muted, so he seemed like a crazed and poorly trained mime.
Framed and hung on the walls were needlepoint samplers with quotations from the Bible. Mrs. Karnes evidently had made them herself. Curiously, the quotations were obscure and enigmatic, perhaps taken out of context. Ben couldn’t make much sense of them or quite grasp what spiritual guidance they were supposed to offer:
I WILL LAY MINE HAND
UPON MY MOUTH
- Job, xl, 4
PUT THEM IN MIND …
TO OBEY MAGISTRATES
- Titus, iii, 1
BLESSED IS HE,
WHOSOEVER SHALL NOT
BE OFFENDED IN ME
- Luke, vii, 23
AND JACOB SOD POTTAGE
- Genesis, xxv, 29
The walls also featured framed portraits of religious leaders, but the gallery was an eclectic mix: the pope, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, a couple of faces that Chase recognized as those of tackier television evangelists with more interest in contributions than in salvation. There seemed to be a wealth of religious feeling in the Karnes house—but no clear-cut faith.
Harry Karnes was as drab as his wife and the room: short, only perhaps ten years older than Lora but so thin and prematurely aged as to be on the verge of frailty. His hands shook when they were not resting on the arms of his Barcalounger. He could not look directly at Ben but gazed over his head when speaking to him.
On the sofa beside Glenda, Ben figured that visitors to the Karnes house were rare indeed. One day, someone would realize they hadn’t heard from Lora or Harry in a while and, upon investigation, would find the couple sitting as they were now, but shriveled and shrunken and long mummified, dead a decade before anyone noticed.
“He was a good boy,” said Harry Karnes.
“Let’s not lie to Mr. Chase,” Lora admonished.
“He did well in school, and he was going to college too,” Harry said.
“Now, Dad, we know that isn’t truthful,” Lora said. “He went wild.”
“Later, yes. But before that, Mother, he was a good boy,” said Harry.”`
“He went wild, and you’d not have thought he was the same boy from one year to the next. Running around. Always out later than he should be. How could it end any way but what it did?”
The longer that Chase remained in the warm, stuffy house, the chillier he became. “I’m primarily interested in this physics tutor he had back in the beginning of the year.”
Lora Karnes frowned. “Like I said, the second teacher’s name was Bandoff, but I don’t remember the first. Do you, Dad?”
“It’s in the back of my mind, Mother, but I can’t quite see it,” said Harry Karnes, and he turned his attention to the silently ranting preacher on the television.
“Didn’t you have to pay the man?” Glenda asked.
“Well, but it was in cash. Never wrote out a check,” said Lora Karnes. She glanced disapprovingly at Glenda’s bare legs, then looked quickly away, as though embarrassed. “Besides, he only tutored for a couple of weeks. Michael couldn’t learn from him, and we had to get Mr. Bandoff.”
“How did you find the first tutor?”
“Michael found him through the school. Both were through the school.”
“The high school where Mike attended classes?”
“Yes, but this teacher didn’t work there. He taught at George Washington High, on the other side of town, but he was on the list of recommended tutors.”
“Michael was a smart boy,” Harry said.
“Smart is never smart enough,” his wife said.
“He could have been something someday.”
“Not with just being smart,” his wife corrected.
The Karneses made Ben nervous. He couldn’t figure them out. They were fanatics of some sort, but they seemed to have gone down their own strange little trail in the wilderness of disorganized—as opposed to organized—religion.
“If he hadn’t gone wild like he did,” Lora said, “he might’ve made something of himself. But he couldn’t control himself. And then how could it end any way but how it did?”
Glenda said, “Do you remember anything at all about the first tutor—where he lived? Didn’t Mike go there for the lessons?”
“Yes,” said Lora Karnes. “I think it was in that nice little neighborhood over on the west side, with all the bungalows.”
“Crescent Heights?” Glenda suggested.
“That’s it.”
Turning away from the television, looking over his wife’s head, Harry said, “Mother, wasn’t the fella’s name Lupinski, Lepenski—something like that?”
“Dad, you’re right. Linski. That was his name. Linski.”
“Richard?” Harry suggested.
“Exactly, Dad. Richard Linski.”
“But he wasn’t any good,” Harry told the wall past Ben’s left shoulder. “So we got the second tutor, and then Michael’s grades improved. He was a good boy.”
“Once, he was, Dad. And you know, I don’t blame him for it all. Plenty of blame for us to share in it.”
Ben felt their weird gloom sucking him down as surely as if he’d been caught in a whirlpool in a dark sea.
Glenda said, “Can you spell that last name for me.”
“L-i-n-s-k-i,” said Lora.
Richard Linski.
“Michael didn’t like him,” Lora said.
“Michael was a good boy, Mother.” Harry had tears in his eyes.
Seeing her husband’s condition, Lora Karnes said, “Let’s not blame the boy too much, Dad. I agree. He wasn’t wicked.”
“Can’t blame a child for all its faults, Mother.”
“You have to go back to the parents, Dad. If Michael wasn’t so perfect, then it’s because we weren’t perfect ourselves.”
As if speaking to the muted evangelist on the television, Harry Karnes said, “You can’t raise a godly child when you’ve done wicked things yourself.”
Afraid that the couple was about to descend into a series of teary confessions that would make no more sense than the words on the needlepoint samplers, Ben abruptly got to his feet and took Glenda’s hand as she rose beside him. “Sorry to have brought this all back into your minds again.”
“Not at all,” Lora Karnes said. “Memory chastens.”
One of the quotations on the wall caught Ben’s eye:
SEVEN THUNDERS UTTERED THEIR VOICES
- Revelation, x, 3
“Mrs. Karnes,” Ben said, “did you make the samplers yourself?”
“Yes. Needlepoint helps keep my hands to the Lord’s work.”
“They’re lovely. But I was wondering … what does that one mean exactly?”
“Seven thunders all at once,” she said quietly, without fervor—in fact, with an unnervingly calm authority that made it seem as if what she said must surely make sense. “That’s how it will be. And then we’ll know why we’ve always got to do our best. Then we’ll wish we’d done better, much better, when the seven thunders roll all at once.”
At the front door, as Ben and Glenda were leaving, Mrs. Karnes said, “Does God work through you, Mr. Chase?”
“Doesn’t He work through all of us?” Ben asked.
“No. Some aren’t strong enough. But you—are you His hand, Mr. Chase?”
He had no idea what answer she wanted. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Karnes.”
She followed them onto the front walk. “I think you are.”
“Then God works in even more mysterious ways than anyone ever knew before.”
“I think you are God’s hand.”
The scorching, late-afternoon sun was oppressive, but Lora Karnes still chilled Ben. He turned from her without another word.
The woman was still standing in the doorway, watching, as they drove away in the battered Mustang.
* * *
All day, from Glenda’s apartment to the Allenby house t
o Hanover Park to the Karnes’s house, Ben had driven evasively, and both he and Glenda had looked for a tail. No one had followed them at any point in their rambling journey.
No one followed them from the Karnes’s house either. They drove until they found a service station with a pay phone.
On the floor of the booth, an army of ants was busy moving the carcass of a dead beetle.
Glenda stood at the open door while Ben searched for Richard Linski in the directory. He found a number. In Crescent Heights.
With change from Glenda’s purse, Ben made the call.
It rang twice. Then: “Hello?”
Ben said nothing.
“Hello?” Richard Linski said. “Is anyone there?”
Quietly, Ben hung up.
“Well?” Glenda asked.
“It’s him. Judge’s real name is Richard Linski.”
11
THE MOTEL ROOM WAS SMALL, FILLED WITH THE RUMBLE OF THE WINDOW-mounted air-conditioner.
Ben closed the door and checked the dead-bolt lock to be sure that it worked properly. He tested the security chain; it was well fitted.
“You’re safe enough if you stay here,” he said. “Linksi can’t know where you are.”
To avoid giving Judge a chance to find them, they hadn’t gone back to her apartment to pack a bag for her. They had checked in without luggage. If everything went well, they wouldn’t be staying the whole night anyway. This was just a way station between the loneliness of the past and whatever future fate might grant them.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, still childlike in her pink socks and twin ponytails, she said, “I should go with you.”
“I have combat training. You don’t. It’s that simple.”
She didn’t ask him why he hadn’t called the police. With what they had learned, even Detective Wallace would at least question Linski—and if Linski was the killer, then the evidence would fall into place. Anyone else would have asked him that tough question—but she was not like anyone else.
Night had fallen.
“I better go,” he said.
She got off the edge of the bed and came into his arms. For a while he held her.
By unspoken mutual consent, they didn’t kiss. A kiss would have been a promise. In spite of his combat training, however, he might not leave Linski’s house alive. He didn’t want to make a promise to her that he might be unable to fulfill.
He unlocked the door, took the chain off, and stepped outside onto the concrete promenade. He waited for her to close the door and engage the deadbolt.
The night was warm and humid. The sky was bottomless.
He left the motel in his Mustang.
* * *
At ten o’clock, Ben parked two blocks from Richard Linski’s house and put on a pair of gardening gloves that he had purchased earlier. He made the rest of the journey on foot, staying on the opposite side of the street from the house.
The well-kept house was the second from the corner: white brick with emerald-green trim and dark-green slate roof. It was set on two well-landscaped lots, and the entire property was ringed with waist-high hedges that were so even they might have been trimmed with the aid of a quality micrometer.
Some windows glowed. Linski was apparently at home.
Ben walked the street that ran perpendicular to the one on which the bungalow faced. He entered a narrow, deserted alleyway that led behind the property.
A wrought-iron gate punctuated the wall of hedges. It wasn’t locked. He opened it and went into Linski’s backyard.
The rear porch was not so deep as the one at the front. It was bracketed by large lilac bushes. The boards didn’t creak under his feet.
Lights were on in the kitchen, filtered through red-and-white-checkered curtains.
He waited a few minutes in the lilac-scented darkness, not thinking about anything, geared down and idling, preparing himself for confrontation as he had learned to do in Nam.
The back door was locked when he quietly tried it. But both kitchen windows were open to admit the night breeze.
Deeper in the house, a radio was playing big-band music. Benny Goodman. One O’clock Jump.
Stooping low, he brought his face to the window and peered between the half-drawn curtains, which stirred in the gentle breeze. He saw a pine table and chairs, a straw basket full of apples in the center of the table, a refrigerator, and double ovens. Cannisters for flour and sugar and coffee. A utensil rack holding scoops and ladles and big spoons and cooking forks. A blender plugged into a wall outlet.
No Judge. Linski was elsewhere in the house.
Glenn Miller. String of Pearls.
Ben examined the window screen and found that it was held in place by simple pressure clips. He removed the screen and set it aside.
The table was just beyond the window. He had to climb onto it as he went inside, careful not to knock over the basket of apples. From the table he eased himself silently to the vinyl-tile floor.
The music on the radio covered what small noises he made.
Acutely aware that he was without a weapon, he considered trying the drawers in the cupboard by the sink and securing a sharp knife, but he quickly dismissed that idea. A knife would bring events to an unnerving point, full circle, except that now he himself would be the slasher—and would be forced to confront directly the issue of not Linski’s sanity but his own.
He paused at the archway between the kitchen and the dining room, because there were no lights in that intervening space except what spilled into it from the kitchen and living room. He didn’t dare risk stumbling over anything in the dark.
When his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he edged across the room. Here, a deep-pile carpet absorbed his footsteps.
He stood at the threshold of the front room, letting his eyes adjust to the brighter light.
Someone coughed. A man.
In Nam, when a mission was especially tense, Ben had been able to devote his mind to its completion with a singleness of purpose that he had never achieved before or since. He wanted to be as brisk and clean and quick about this as he had been about those wartime operations, but he was bothered by thoughts of Glenda waiting alone and surely wondering if the motel-room door would be one of those special doors beyond which lay the thing that she needed.
He flexed his gloved hands and drew a slow breath. Preparing himself.
The smart thing to do was to turn around right now, cross the darkened dining room as quietly as possible, cross the kitchen, leave by the back door, and call the police.
But they would be real police. Not like the police in books. Perhaps reliable. Perhaps not.
He stepped into the living room.
In a large armchair near the fireplace sat a man with an open newspaper on his lap. He wore tortoiseshell reading glasses pushed far down on his thin, straight nose, and he was humming along with Glenn Miller’s tune while reading the comics.
Briefly, Ben thought that he had made a grave mistake, because he couldn’t quite believe that a psychotic killer, like anyone else, could become happily engrossed in the latest exploits of Snoopy and Charlie Brown and Broom Hilda. Then the man looked up, surprised, and he fit Judge’s description: tall, blond, ascetic.
“Richard Linski?” Ben asked.
The man in the chair seemed frozen in place, perhaps a mannequin propped there to distract Ben while the real Judge, the real Richard Linski, crept up on him from behind. The illusion was so complete that Ben almost turned to see if his fear was warranted.
“You,” Linski whispered.
He wadded the comic pages in his hands and threw them aside as he exploded out of the armchair.
All fear left Ben, and he was unnaturally calm.
“What are you doing here?” Linski asked, and his voice was without doubt the voice of Judge.
He backed away from the chair, toward the fireplace. His hands were feeling behind him for something. The fireplace poker.