The Silent Corner

by Dean Koontz

  “Booth? How did you know where I was staying?”

  Booth Hendrickson made an unusual suggestion.

  “Yes, all right,” Silverman replied, and he stood listening for a few minutes. He hung up.

  He felt weak. Shaken by what he had been told, he sat on the bathroom floor, his back to the wall. Shock soon gave way to sorrow threaded through with dismay that Jane could have so profoundly betrayed his confidence in her. He was mortified that his assessment of her, both as an agent and as a person, had been so wrong.

  Eventually he got to his feet. As he was combing his damp hair in front of the bathroom mirror, he saw the phone reflected from the opposite wall, beside the towel rack.

  He turned to stare at it, puzzled. He had the strangest feeling that the phone was going to ring and that it would be Randolph Kohl, director of Homeland Security, calling again.

  He waited, but of course it didn’t ring. He had never in his life had a premonition that came true; and neither did this one.

  Kohl had called minutes earlier, as Silverman had been pulling on a fresh pair of boxer shorts and thinking about booking a flight back to Virginia. Considering the devastating news about Jane that the director of Homeland Security had delivered, there could surely be nothing more to add to her list of crimes.

  Finished combing his hair, he switched on his electric razor and began to shave, meeting his eyes in the mirror. Gradually, his sorrow became twined with anger, with resentment that Jane had for seven years played him for a fool.

  Although it was Sunday, Silverman had work that must not be postponed. He needed to do something about Jane Hawk. She had gone to the dark side. Hell, she had plunged into the dark side. A stain on the Bureau. He needed to stop her.

  When he had dressed but before putting on his sport coat, he took his shoulder rig from the nightstand drawer and shrugged into it, adjusted it, and slipped the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson into the holster.

  The drawer contained a second gun. He had not put it there. He had never seen it before. It was stowed in a Blackhawk reverse-carry holster with adjustable belt clips.

  Mystified, he took the holster out of the drawer and the gun out of the holster. A .45 ACP Kimber Raptor II. Three-inch barrel. Eight-shot magazine. Hardly more than a pound and a half, it was made for easy concealed carry.

  As strange as the existence of the gun might be, stranger still was the fact that he quickly accepted the necessity of it, fixed the holster to his belt, and inserted the pistol.

  A thought kept circling through his mind: Randolph Kohl wants me to have the second weapon. Kohl wasn’t with the Bureau, had no authority over Silverman, and carrying a gun that wasn’t a properly registered duty piece violated FBI rules, but for some reason none of that mattered. Within a minute of finding the pistol, Silverman was fine with it and no longer either concerned or curious.

  He put on his sport coat, looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door, and decided the weapon was all but undetectable.

  1

  * * *

  HAVING FALLEN ASLEEP shortly before 2:00 A.M., Jane broke out of a nightmare, fully awake, at 6:10. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep to be refreshed for what lay ahead, but she wasn’t going to get a minute more just then.

  She showered, dressed, and sat in an armchair with a pen and a notepad and William Overton’s smartphone. After leaving the attorney dead in his closet on Friday night, she’d been too emotionally and physically wrung out to deal fully with the phone when she got back to her motel in Tarzana, and since getting up Saturday morning, she’d been on the run. Now, using the password Overton had given her, she accessed his address book and scrolled through it, writing down names and phone numbers.

  She recognized some of the names, power players in the legal system, as well as in politics, news media, finance, entertainment, the arts, sports, and fashion. Not all of them were likely to be members of Aspasia, but surely at least several were. David James Michael, the Silicon Valley billionaire, was among them, and Bertold Shenneck, of course. The collection of names and numbers was too small for a man whose life had been as complex as Overton’s, which probably meant that these were those he deemed most important and that he kept another digital Rolodex elsewhere.

  Under the listing labeled SHENNECK’S PLAYPEN, in addition to the forty-four-character Web address that she had previously recovered, there were also four street addresses in Washington, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The L.A. address was the one for the Aspasia that she had visited.

  When she had completed transcribing the contents of his address book, she consulted the numbers she had for Bertold Shenneck. There were two listings for the scientist’s residence in Palo Alto: the main line and one labeled CLIVE CARSTAIRS, HOUSE MANAGER. She called the second.

  The man who answered had a British accent. Informed by the caller-ID window on his phone, he said, “Good morning, Mr. Overton.”

  “Mr. Carstairs?” she asked.

  “Speaking.”

  “Oh, Mr. Carstairs, this is Leslie Granger, Mr. Overton’s personal assistant. We haven’t spoken before.”

  “Good morning, Ms. Granger. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I trust that nothing untoward has happened to Miss Nolan.”

  At the top of Overton’s address book, programmed for speed dial, had been the name Connie Nolan.

  “Oh, goodness, no. Connie’s just fine. I’m junior in the job, the assistant to the personal assistant. If Mr. Overton gets any busier, I’ll probably have an assistant of my own before too long. The thing is, Mr. Overton wants me to messenger a package to Dr. Shenneck. He thinks the doctor is there in Palo Alto, but he wanted me to confirm as much.”

  “Good that you did,” Carstairs said. “Dr. and Mrs. Shenneck will be at the ranch in Napa Valley through Thursday.”

  “Ah! Then I’ll see that it goes directly there.”

  Overton might have lied. Confirmation of Shenneck’s whereabouts meant that she and Dougal would make a run at him later in the day.

  Carstairs asked, “Should I alert Dr. Shenneck to be expecting a package?”

  “Oh, gee. I don’t know. My boss is incommunicado right now. Let me think. Hmmm. You know what? This is quite a special gift for Dr. and Mrs. Shenneck. I know Mr. Overton spent a small fortune on it. I suspect he’d rather surprise them.”

  “Then I shall remain mum.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Carstairs. You’ve been most helpful.”

  After she turned off the phone, Jane took it into the bathroom, put it on the tile floor, and cracked it underfoot.

  At 8:20, dead phone in hand, she stepped out into a cool, overcast morning. In the leafy branches of the red-bark arbutuses that softened the architecture of the motel, unseen birds with unpleasant voices sounded angry with the way the day had thus far unfolded.

  In front of the diner associated with the motel, she dropped Overton’s phone into a trash can with a domed top and a hinged lid. She went into the restaurant, bought a cruller and a large coffee and a copy of The New York Times. In her room once more, she ate the pastry and drank the coffee and paged through the Times to see how much further the world had descended into chaos since she had last read a newspaper one week earlier.

  2

  * * *

  ANGER WAS A VIOLENT and vindictive emotion. Nathan Silverman’s character was such that he could sustain anger only for a short while. In this case, it quickly settled into righteous indignation and piercing disappointment.

  After dressing, he used the hotel-bedroom phone to call the 24/7 cell number of John Harrow, the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office.

  When Harrow answered, Silverman said, “John, I’m alerting the director, we have a rogue agent from my section, evidently on your turf. It’s Jane Hawk.”

  “Sorry to hear it, but I think you’re being prudent. We need to meet, work out how to proceed.”

  “We have to move faster than that. She’s my responsibility,
so I hope you’ll work with me to jump-start this.”

  “Of course, Nathan.”

  “Get her Bureau ID photo, when she had long blond hair. Pair it with one from Santa Monica, showing her with shorter, dark hair. Get them to every field office with the proper wanted-person wording.”

  “Wanted for what?”

  “Illegal use of FBI ID, impersonating an agent, racketeering, destruction of aircraft, assaulting a federal officer, and murder.”

  “Holy shit, Nathan, what information did you get between last evening and now?”

  “Randolph Kohl called me. He has the goods on her.”

  “Kohl from Homeland Security? Tell me those glory seekers won’t be tramping on our heels every step of the way.”

  “I’ve been assured they’re giving us the professional courtesy of allowing us to rope our own stray calf.”

  “What’s this all about?” Harrow asked. “What’s she up to that involves national security?”

  “For now, that’s classified. I’ll…I’ll…” A tremor of doubt and confusion quivered through Silverman, but passed quickly. “I’ll lay it out for you in detail as soon as Booth tells me I can.”

  “Booth? Who’s Booth?”

  Silverman frowned. “I meant Kohl. As soon as Randolph Kohl tells me I can share it, I will.”

  “Usually, we’d handle something like this quietly in family as long as possible.”

  “This is an extraordinary matter. Also get her on the NCIC.”

  The National Crime Information Center would put her name and face in front of the entire criminal-justice community, from big-city to small-town police agencies.

  “You mean on the outstanding-warrants list?” Harrow asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do we have a warrant?”

  “A judge will be issuing one momentarily.”

  3

  * * *

  DOUGAL TRAHERN WAITED until ten o’clock to phone Jane’s motel room. After seeking her permission, he came to her room to discuss something with her.

  “I could die today,” he said.

  “We both could.”

  “I don’t want to die this way.”

  Wondering if he meant to back out after coming this far, she said, “What way?”

  He pointed to his mountain-man reflection in the mirrored closet door. “That way.” He handed her a shopping list and his credit card. “Could you get these things for me?”

  Reading the list, she said, “Why don’t you come with me?”

  “I don’t know. I just woke up feeling…”

  “Feeling what?”

  He scowled. “Self-conscious. All right, already?”

  “Self-conscious about what?”

  He pointed at his reflection again. “Do you mind getting those things, or are you gonna grill me like you would a suspect?”

  “Relax, Mr. Bigfoot.”

  “Damn it, you got that from Charlene.”

  “Good woman. Give me an hour. But are you sure about this?”

  “Hell, yes. I’m done being this. I’ll wait in my room.”

  “Leave the do-not-disturb sign on your door so you don’t terrify the maid.” She returned his credit card. “I’ve got cash.”

  He looked distressed. “You shouldn’t have to pay for my stuff.”

  “You paid nearly half a million for wheels to get us here.”

  When she returned from shopping, they started with his hair. She had bought a painter’s drop cloth, which she spread on the floor of his room. He put a chair on the cloth, sat down, and used two bath towels to form a makeshift barber’s smock over his clothing.

  She had also bought a pair of barbering scissors and a steel-toothed comb. “This will be way less than a professional cut.”

  “Every pioneer woman cut her family’s hair, and they lived through it. Just start choppin’.”

  She began by determining which knots couldn’t be combed out. She ruthlessly scissored them away.

  Using the facts about Gee Zee Ranch that Jane squeezed out of William Overton and the satellite photos that Dougal printed, they knew how they planned to get onto the ranch, into the house, and out again alive. But they had not yet discussed other important issues.

  As she clipped his hair, he said, “What is it you could pry out of Shenneck that would make this raid a success?”

  “We can’t get into his Menlo Park labs directly. But when he’s working from the ranch, he has computer access to his research and other files in Menlo Park. I want him to download the specs for the nano-implants, every iteration of the design from day one to the point when they could be injected and would reliably self-assemble.”

  “Will that be enough to bring him down?”

  “Maybe. But I want more. Overton said Shenneck captures and converts coyotes on the ranch, like I told you, so he must have vials of the injectable solution at the house. The thousands of infinitesimal parts of a control mechanism are kept floating in a chilled liquid. They’re designed so they can’t self-assemble till they’re in an environment where the temperature is at least ninety-six degrees Fahrenheit, sustained for at least an hour.”

  Dougal said, “Inside a living mammal.”

  As a greater volume of shorn hair began to fall from Dougal’s head, Jane said, “The nano-parts of the control mechanism are brain-tropic, specifically to concentrations of hormones produced in the hypothalamus. By the time they pass through the capillary walls into the brain tissue, they’ve been in a warm environment long enough to start assembling. I’ll take as many vials as I can find. Preferably some of each kind—those that reduce the girls of Aspasia to a lower level of consciousness, those that program people for suicide and homicide, as many kinds as there are. We need to have them analyzed by authorities…if I ever find an authority I trust.”

  “How long will it take to get all this?”

  “Not long once he starts cooperating.”

  “What if he doesn’t? How do you make him?”

  “Scare the shit out of him,” she said.

  “If that doesn’t work?”

  “Depends on how much pain he can tolerate.”

  “Are we talking torture?”

  She realized that he was watching her in the mirrored closet doors. “Are we talking the future of freedom?” she countered. “Do we want to stop the enslavement of millions of people, the deaths of millions more? Shenneck is Emory Wayne Udell writ large.”

  The name of his sister’s murderer clearly stung Dougal. “I’m not saying torture is never justifiable. I’m just wondering…are you sure you’re capable of that?”

  Meeting the stare of his reflection, she said, “There was a time I wouldn’t have been capable. But then I went to Aspasia. To put a stop to that horror…I can do just about anything.”

  4

  * * *

  FROM THE PHONE in the living room of his suite, Silverman called the front desk and secured his accommodations for another night, this time using his Bureau credit card. His intuition told him that whatever those two briefcases had contained, whatever Jane’s reasons for engaging with Vinyl and Robert Branwick, her business hadn’t concluded when Branwick lay dead on his kitchen floor. More likely than not, she was still in the San Fernando Valley or at least somewhere in greater Los Angeles. Silverman wanted to be here when the quarry surfaced.

  As he was about to go out for a late breakfast or early lunch, his smartphone rang.

  It was John Harrow. “You remember last night, Sherman Oaks, in that kitchen, a pen on the floor, notepad on the table?”

  “I saw the notepad, not the pen.”

  “The lab found indented writing—actually printing—on the top page of the pad. Odds are, it was Branwick doing the printing. He pressed hard with the pen, the way a man will if he’s under duress.”

  “With a gun to his head.”

  “Yeah. The actual page he printed on can’t be found, so it was probably taken away by whoever he printed it for.”

&nb
sp; The lab would have employed oblique lighting to visualize the indented words on the notepad, would have photographed them and subjected the photographic image to enhancement.

  “First,” Harrow said, “there’s a word or name—Aspasia.” He spelled it. “Under that, there’s a name—William Sterling Overton.”

  “Why does that sound familiar?”

  “He’s a hotshot lawyer, a shakedown artist, master-of-the-universe type. Turns out, he’s on our list of people doing business with Branwick when Branwick was Jimmy Radburn. We’d been building a case against him before this blow-up. We’ve got enough to get a search warrant, which we’re doing now that the Vinyl situation has gone critical. Get this, the judge giving it to us is signing it in church. Sure, it’s Sunday, but did you know judges went to church?”

  “I’d heard it rumored about a few.”

  “Overton lives in Beverly Hills. You’re already there, and I’m on my way. Pick you up at your hotel?”

  “I’ll be waiting out front,” Silverman said.

  5

  * * *

  WHEN JANE HAD DONE as much damage as she could to Dougal’s hair, she retreated to her room while he dispensed with his beard using the electric razor that she had bought.

  As she waited for him, she studied the Google Earth photos of Gee Zee Ranch, looking for an error in their plan.

  After a while, Dougal called ahead to say that he would be knocking at her door and preferred not to be shot.

  When he entered the room, his hair was an acceptable version of the everywhichway cut that the motel clerk, Chloe, had sported when, on Friday morning, Jane had asked her to check Star Spotter or Just Spotted to see if William Overton was in town. No one would ask Dougal for the name of his barber, but in this age when imaginative hairstyles of all kinds were in vogue, he wouldn’t draw attention.

  Gone were the camouflage pants. He had gotten a pair of jeans from his duffel bag. Instead of a checkered-flannel shirt, he wore a blue crewneck sweater. He still stood in lace-up butt-kicker boots, and he wore the shiny-black quilted-nylon jacket to conceal the two-holster shoulder rig, but he no longer had a freak-of-the-day look that would cause people to take phone video for sharing on YouTube.