by Dean Koontz
With a hypodermic syringe, he administered human rabies immune globulin, infiltrating much of it around the wound in her hand, using the remaining volume for an intramuscular injection in the upper part of that arm.
“Now another injection. Human diploid cell vaccine. In your other arm this time.”
The vaccine felt hot as it diffused through the deltoid muscle.
“You need to repeat the vaccine. It’s essential. Three more times. Wednesday. Again next Sunday. And the Sunday after that. I’d rather administer them myself.”
“Not possible, doctor. I have too much to do and too little time to do it. I’ll have to self-inject.”
“That’s not preferable.”
“I know how.”
“I’d already left Santa Rosa. Then Ronnie called about this. I got this course of treatment from a physician here. The vaccine is nearing its expiration date.”
“But I’m not,” she said.
“We all are, Mrs. Hawk. See me Wednesday. For fresh vaccine.”
“There’s no reasoning with me, Dr. Walkins. I appreciate the risk you’re taking. But I’m a stubborn bitch. I’ll self-inject with what you’ve got.”
He gave her a Ziploc bag containing three ampules of vaccine and three hypodermic syringes in sterile packages.
As he taped a gauze pad over the wound in her hand, he said, “Do you know the symptoms of rabies?”
“I’ll bet you’ve written them down for me.”
“There’s a list with the vaccine.”
“I may not even be infected.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just so you give yourself those injections.” He picked up his physician bag. “I’m told I’m not making a mistake with any friend of Mr. Trahern’s.”
“I hope that’s true in my case, doctor. And may I ask…”
“What?”
“Why do you risk this off-the-record work?”
“I watch the news, Mrs. Hawk.”
“That’ll do it,” she said.
As Walkins departed, Jane shrugged into her sport coat and joined Ronnie in the adjacent office, where on the walls military helicopters flew in wars eternal.
He handed her a bottle of beer. She took a long, cold drink.
“Dougal asked about you first thing when he came around.”
“He once said someone was blessed to have me for a daughter. Tell him I’d have been damn proud to be his.”
Ronnie helped her carry her suitcases, the bag of autopsy reports, and the leather tote containing sixty thousand dollars. They loaded everything into the Gurkha.
As she drove away, she checked the rearview mirror. He watched her until she reached the end of the Valley Air approach road and turned out of sight.
34
* * *
AT THE FIRST TRUCK STOP on Interstate 5, she refueled and bought a turkey-and-cheese sandwich and a screw-top bottle of cola. Sitting in the Gurkha, she took apart the .45 Heckler & Koch, with which she had killed Robert Branwick, William Overton, and the dear soul who had once been Nathan Silverman.
She loaded the Colt .45 that she had taken from Overton’s safe on Friday night, which would now be her duty weapon. She would need to find a safe place to shoot and go through a couple hundred rounds until she understood the gun.
She drove south through the vast and lonely San Joaquin Valley, remembering Dougal in his pre-confession surly silence as they had come north less than twenty-four hours earlier, before she’d ever heard his sister’s name, Justine.
Every fifty miles or so, she stopped alongside the road and, when no traffic was near, threw a piece of the dismantled pistol into a field, in one case into a pond.
At the last of these stops, she found that she had left the overcast behind. The wide valley was crowned with stars, and the westering moon glowed with the promise of tomorrow’s light. Night air of crystalline clarity carried on it the distant lights of one farmhouse and another, of tiny communities where people lived out lives that the movers-and-shakers considered tedious if not squalid. All of it was grand beyond her powers of description, full of wonder and potential, all of it precious, all of it worth dying for.
Past midnight, not far from Buttonwillow, she exited the interstate to another truck stop, parked, bought fresh ice for the cooler, and then slept on the backseat, safe behind tinted windows. She dozed off with the soapstone cameo in her hand, and still held it hours later when she woke in morning light. If because of the cameo’s protection she could not say, but though she had earned a thousand nightmares, not one had troubled her sleep.
35
* * *
IN HIS IMMENSE GARAGE in Malibu, the actor helped her transfer everything from the Gurkha to her Ford Escape.
She said, “We thought it would be taking a lot of gunfire, but it never took a single round. Though it was still nice to have the bulletproof windows.”
If he found the Uzi more curious or more interesting than the suitcases, he did not remark on it. He was happy to know that his old sergeant was alive and would likely sell back to him the armored SUV, but he did not ask from what life-threatening injury Dougal was currently recovering.
When Jane was ready to leave, the actor said, “First, I’ve got something you have to see and someone you have to meet.”
“I have a heavy schedule,” she said.
“Humor me, Mrs. Hawk. You owe me a little humoring.”
She couldn’t disagree with that assertion, and she accompanied him to a home theater that seated twenty-four in an elaborate re-creation of an Art Deco movie house. She did not sit, but stood in the opulent darkness as he played for her a recording of a story from the morning news, sized up to the big screen. She saw herself with long blond hair and then as she looked now, and she heard herself labeled a rogue FBI agent, a ruthless outlaw accused of terrible crimes, suspected of two murders.
When Nathan Silverman had walked into Shenneck’s study in Napa Valley, she had known that something like this might be coming. By now she had thought through the means by which she might stay free long enough to get at David James Michael.
Nothing about the story surprised her, except that no reference was made to a violent event at a ranch in Napa Valley. Perhaps they felt that tying the death of Bertold Shenneck to her would wake a sleepy news media and lead them to make connections between Shenneck and Far Horizons, between Far Horizons and David James Michael with his billions, until eventually someone looked back to the innocuous story about regimented mice and saw in it more sinister potential than the value that brain implants might bring to animal husbandry.
When the news story ended and the theater lights came up, she said to the actor, “Yeah, that was something I had to see, sure enough. Now please tell me that the someone I have to meet isn’t going to arrest me.”
He regarded her with the solemn gravitas that he could bring to a role as a prosecuting attorney or a wise counselor of a superhero. “Whatever you’ve got to do, you’re not done doing it yet, are you?”
“No.”
“And you’re not going away to Mexico.”
“No.”
“You seem to have a world of good guys chasing you, but they’re not the good guys, are they?”
“No.”
“Do you have an honest idea of what your chances are?”
“Near zero.”
He fixed her with a long stare from which she did not glance away, and at last he said, “You need to meet my sister.”
36
* * *
THE MOVIE STAR’S SISTER, Cressida, owned a chain of high-end beauty shops and a successful line of cosmetics, but she claimed, with a laugh, to have no background in law enforcement, other than being, for a short time in her youth, on the wrong side of it.
In a guest bathroom, with an array of chemicals and what she called “industrial-quality appliances,” she stripped Jane’s hair of its brunette dye, colored the blond tresses auburn, and added just enough curl to fool the eye into thinking this was a d
ifferent woman.
Later, in the garage, beside her Ford Escape, the actor gave Jane a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
“I have twenty-twenty vision,” she said.
“And you’ll still have it when you put them on. It’s a movie prop, just clear glass for lenses. Get different hats and wear them. Not always the jeans and sport coat, a varied wardrobe. Think of different characters, roles you can play, and costume each one consistently. It takes only little things, like the glasses, to prevent people from recognizing you as the Clyde’s Bonnie they’re seeing on the news.” He gave her a card with his cell-phone number. “I can only offer you frivolous advice. I’ve played an FBI rogue, but I’ve never been one. You have money?”
“Yes.”
“Enough money?”
“More than enough.”
“You understand you can come back here anytime?”
She understood too well that people didn’t always know why they did what they did, that even when they knew their true motives, they often lied to themselves about them. Nevertheless, she had to ask, “Why are you doing this? You have so much to lose, why risk it?”
“For my old sergeant.”
“Is that really all it is?”
“No. Not all.”
“Well, then?”
“When you’ve played the good man who shows up at the right time in enough movies, there comes a point where you either have to try to synchronize your real life with the make-believe—or else admit that you’re one of the biggest phonies who ever lived.”
At last he flashed her the famous killer smile. This time she saw in it the faintest edge of sadness, which she realized was why his smile made millions swoon but also why it broke a million hearts.
37
* * *
SHE PARKED in a supermarket lot in Santa Monica, where she used a disposable phone to call her father’s unlisted line. She was sent to voice mail, as she expected to be. She had not spoken to him in a long time; and now she left a message that she was sure he would be quick to share with authorities.
“Sorry if all this bad publicity affects ticket sales for your current concert tour. But that’s the least of your worries. We both know the truth of what happened long ago, and we both know that in what little time I have left, there’s nothing I need to do more than bring the hard consequences of that night straight home to you.”
Sometimes the only way to reassure your real quarry of his safety was with a bit of misdirection like this.
She dropped the phone through the bars of a storm-drain grating.
38
* * *
ON THE ROAD AGAIN, using another disposable phone, she called ahead to Gavin and Jess Washington, to let them know that she was coming, but also to warn them that she had no time to visit. Her life was now a thousand-mile toboggan ride, a downhill course so treacherous and steep that Olympic luge stars would beg off the race. She did not want to disappoint Travis with a one-hour visit, which would only sharpen his longing for a permanent reunion.
Well after darkfall, Jane parked at the head of their long driveway, shielded from the sight of the house by the colonnades of California live oaks. At 9:40, Gavin walked out to the car to tell her that the boy was sound asleep. Together they returned to the house, where Jess waited in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, the dogs at her feet.
Jane went alone into the house.
As before, he slept by lamplight. Such innocence in a time of such corruption. So small, so vulnerable in a hard world ruled by the aggressive use of force.
When she had carried him from conception to term, she had never imagined that by the time he was five, the world into which she had delivered him would grow so dark. Children were the world as it was meant to be, and they were a light within the world. But for every light, there seemed to be someone bent on extinguishing it.
They said that if someone harmed a child, it would be better for him if instead he were hanged about his neck with a millstone and drowned in the depths of the sea. In spite of how she had been hardened by the task that had been put before her, Jane still had the capacity for tenderness, a storehouse of love to pay out when given a chance, an imperative need to mother this child and, for that matter, all children in his name. To be separated from him was a deep-heart sorrow. In spite of all the death, any day that ended with the chance to see this boy was a good day. She hoped that it was not the last good day. But whatever might be coming, she would meet the threat, for it had fallen to her, through no choice of her own, to fashion the millstones and hang them around the necks of the damned.
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DEAN KOONTZ
THE WHISPERING ROOM
1
* * *
CORA GUNDERSUN WALKED through seething fire without being burned, nor did her white dress burst into flames. She was not afraid, but instead exhilarated, and the many admiring people witnessing this spectacle gaped in amazement, their expressions of astonishment flickering with reflections of the flames. They called out to her not in alarm, but in wonder, with a note of veneration in their voices, so that Cora felt equally thrilled and humbled that she had been made invulnerable.
Dixie, a long-haired dappled-gold dachshund, woke Cora by licking her hand. The dog had no respect for dreams, not even for this one that her mistress had enjoyed three nights in a row and about which she had told Dixie in vivid detail. Dawn had come, time for breakfast and morning toilet, which were more important to Dixie than any dream.
Cora was forty years old, birdlike and spry. As the short dog toddled down the set of portable steps that allowed her to climb in and out of bed, Cora sprang up to meet the day. She slipped into fur-lined ankle-high boots that served as her wintertime slippers, and in her pajamas she followed the waddling dachshund through the house.
Just before she stepped into the kitchen, she was struck by the notion that a strange man would be sitting at the dinette table and that something terrible would happen.
Of course no man awaited her. She’d never been a fearful woman. She chastised herself for being spooked by nothing, nothing at all.
As she put out fresh water and kibble for her companion, the dog’s feathery golden tail swept the floor in anticipation.
By the time Cora had prepared the coffeemaker and switched it on, Dixie had finished eating. Now standing at the back door, the dog barked politely, just once.
Cora snared a coat from a wall peg and shrugged into it. “Let’s see if you can empty yourself as quick as you filled up. It’s colder than the cellar of Hades out there, sweet thing, so don’t dawdle.”
As she left the warmth of the house for the porch, her breath smoked from her as if a covey of ghosts, long in possession of her body, were being exorcised. She stood at the head of the steps to watch over precious Dixie Belle, just in case there might be a nasty-tempered raccoon lingering from its night of foraging.
More than a foot of late-winter snow had fallen the previous morning. In the absence of wind, the pine trees still wore ermine stoles on every bough. Cora had shoveled a clearing in the backyard so that Dixie wouldn’t have to plow through deep powder.
Dachshunds had keen noses. Ignoring her mistress’s plea not to dawdle, Dixie Belle wandered back and forth in the clearing, nose to the ground, curious about what animals had visited in the night.
Wednesday. A school day.
Although Cora had been off work for two weeks, she still felt as if she should hurry to prepare for school. Two years earlier, she had been named Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year. She dearly loved—and missed—the children in her sixth-grade class.
Sudden-onset migraines, five and six hours long, sometimes accompanied by foul odors that only she could detect, had disabled her. The headaches seemed to be slowly responding to medications—Zolmitriptan and a muscle relaxant called Soma. Cora
had never been a sickly person, and staying home bored her.
Dixie Belle finally peed and left two small logs, which Cora would pick up with a plastic bag later, after they froze solid.
When she followed the dachshund into the house, a strange man was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee that he had boldly poured for himself. He wore a knitted cap. He had unzipped his fleece-lined jacket. His face was long, his features sharp, his cold blue stare direct.
Before Cora could cry out or turn to flee, the intruder said, “Play Manchurian with me.”
“Yes, all right,” she said, because he no longer seemed to be a threat. She knew him, after all. He was a nice man. He had visited her at least twice in the past week. He was a very nice man.
“Take off your coat and hang it up.”
She did as he asked.
“Come here, Cora. Sit down.”
She pulled out a chair and sat at the table.
Although a friend of everyone, Dixie retreated to a corner and settled there to watch warily with one light-blue eye and one brown.
“Did you dream last night?” the nice man asked.
“Yes.”
“Was it the dream of fire?”
“Yes.”
“Was it a good dream, Cora?”
She smiled and nodded. “It was lovely, a lovely walk through soothing fire, no fear at all.”
“You’ll have the same dream again tonight,” he said.
She smiled and clapped her hands twice. “Oh, good. It’s such a delightful dream. Sort of like one I sometimes had as a girl—that dream of flying like a bird. Flying with no fear of falling.”
“Tomorrow is the big day, Cora.”
“Is it? What’s happening?”
“You’ll know when you get up in the morning. I won’t be back again. Even as important as this is, you need no hands-on guidance.”