The Whispering Room

by Dean Koontz

  The children must be in the back bedroom with the other creep, behind the closed door. Jane didn’t want to go in there after him, putting Holly and Lauren at risk in an exchange of gunfire. But even if he did nothing but bind them, every second they were with him was an intolerable affront to their dignity, every second an auger bit of terror boring more painfully into their psyches.

  She reached for the door, which had almost closed of itself, but before she touched the knob, the remaining kidnapper called out to the dead man.

  “Litvinov, let’s get this shitcan rolling!”

  The door that had just swung nearly shut was thrown open even as the man spoke, even as Jane pivoted toward it. The white-bread escapee from Happy Days materialized on the threshold, saw Litvinov waiting for worms, and ghosted away in the same instant, even as Jane squeezed off two rounds.

  She hadn’t wounded him because he wasn’t screaming, but she hadn’t killed him because there was no sound of him falling, so he was going after Holly and Lauren, maybe to use them as cover, maybe to kill them just for the perverse pleasure of it.

  She went through the door, down low, gun and head first, and he was to her right, his back to the master bedroom, a weapon in his hands, maybe a Glock, his first round too high, the second showering her face with chips of particleboard torn from the door frame an inch above her head, two misses even in that close encounter because he was backing through the half-open door even as he squeezed off those shots.

  Jane couldn’t shoot because of the girls, couldn’t retreat because of the girls, nothing for her but to go after the twisted bastard, pinballing across the narrow hallway to ricochet off the wall beside the bathroom, coming at him on the hard rebound, this indirect approach confusing him, so his third shot went wild as he stepped backward all the way into the bedroom, trying to close the door. She barreled in with everything she had, temporarily deaf from his gunfire, a narrowing wedge of light between door and jamb, he the stronger of the two but maybe rattled by her boldness. She hit the door shoulder first, aware of a muzzle flash as he fired another round, not sure if she was hit or not. She had heard of guys who didn’t know they were hit for half a minute or longer, if they were so out-there on adrenaline and if it wasn’t a body-core wound. He was stronger than she, but he was off balance when she slammed into the door, the wedge widening, and he reeling backward though still on his feet. In this crisis of his making, this must have been his thinking: Maybe he could kill her, but she would at least wound him, probably kill him, and whether or not he killed her, everything had gone wrong, his future now a black hole drawing him to oblivion with its brutal gravity, so that what mattered most was not saving his life that he might live the pinched existence of a fugitive, no, what mattered most now was the same that mattered to King Lear in his sixth act—kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. Staggering backward, he turned away from Jane and toward the girls, turned toward the girls with the gun, scrubbed and barbered like a church boy but more eager to slaughter the girls than to defend himself. Jane shot him three times, and if he fired a round, it missed the sisters. When he was down and surely dead, she moved in close and nevertheless shot him a fourth time, because the prince of this world was also the prince of Hell and full of tricks.

  Her hearing came back with the sobbing of the sisters, to which she would have rather remained deaf. They were unhurt but terrified. And though untouched, they had been robbed of their innocence by the recognition of Evil, not as it was portrayed by Disney villains, but as it was in fact: ruthless and irrational, selfish above all else, convinced of its righteousness and of the beauty of disorder.

  The girls hadn’t been bound, but controlled by intimidation. Calling out to the women that the sisters were safe, Jane led them to the breakfast nook, where they sat at her instruction.

  After a hesitation, she took off her wedding band and slipped it into a pocket of her jeans.

  Her hands shook as she went through kitchen drawers in search of scissors. She realized she was perspiring heavily only when the sweat turned cold, an icy rivulet tracking the course of her spine.

  When she found what she needed, she returned to the mother and grandmother. She freed the former and assessed the injury to the latter, which was minor.

  The grandmother kept thanking God that it was over, but it was not over. Much needed to be done, and quickly.

  10

  * * *

  Sandra Termindale, mother of Holly and Lauren, daughter of Pamela, wanted to thank their rescuer and didn’t know how, found each attempt inadequate, which didn’t matter, because Jane wasn’t interested in thanks, only in cooperation.

  The women and girls were in the breakfast nook. Sandra couldn’t stop touching her children, stroking their hair. She couldn’t stop crying, either, though this wasn’t a weeping that shook and disabled her; these were tears of relief, a long, liquid unwinding of tension.

  “We don’t even know your name,” Sandra said.

  “No,” Jane said. “You don’t.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Alice Liddell,” Jane lied.

  Standing by the kitchen sink, she ejected the magazine from her pistol. Five rounds remained in it. She replaced it with a spare.

  “Thank God you don’t need that anymore,” said Pamela.

  Jane had left the bedrooms dark but for a dimmed lamp in each. Now she turned out all the lights in the front of the vehicle except for a small ceiling fixture over the nook. The late light at the windows provided only the hot-coal glow of the day sky burning out.

  “We don’t want it dark,” Pamela said.

  “Yes, we do,” Jane said. “Draw as little attention as we can.”

  “The children are frightened. Turn on the lights.”

  Jane addressed the girls. “You don’t look like Marshmallow Marjories. You look boy-tough. You’ve got it together. Am I right?”

  “Maybe,” Holly said.

  Lauren said, “We could, I guess.”

  “Good. Great. Everything will be okay.” To Sandra, she said, “I’ve got to have a word with you, just the two of us.”

  Sandra didn’t want to leave her girls, but she accompanied Jane through the shadowy living area to the front of the vehicle, where they sat in the cockpit chairs. Louder here, the engine idled in a three-note cycle, a mechanical lullaby.

  The sun balanced on the horizon behind them, visible in the extended side mirrors of the RV, bloody red and immense. As the light failed westward, darkness climbed the eastern sky, stippled with suns so distant that they gave no heat.

  “Listen,” Jane said, “the two who left in the Cherokee, they’re expecting their friends maybe half an hour behind them, with you and the girls. When that doesn’t happen, they’ll come back to see why.”

  Shock staunched the woman’s tears. “We need the police.”

  Jane remained patient. “Sandy, that’s the last thing I need. If a cop stops to see why you’ve pulled over, which could happen any minute, that’s as bad for me as if the pair in the Jeep come back.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to, Sandy. If you really want to thank me, then help me get those two out of here as soon as it’s dark.”

  “What two?”

  “The dead guys.”

  “Out of here? To where?”

  “Over the shoulder of the road, roll them down the embankment.”

  “Oh, my God. No, no, no. I don’t want to touch them.”

  “They’re too heavy. I need help.”

  “They’re dead.”

  “Very. So they can’t hurt you.”

  “This is a crime scene or something. Isn’t it a crime scene?”

  “Not if no one knows there’s been a crime.”

  “We can’t pretend it didn’t happen. The police have to know.”

  Jane put a gentling hand on the woman’s shoulder. “You realize what’ll happen to your kids if there’s an investigation?”

  “Holly an
d Lauren? They didn’t do anything.”

  “For one thing, the cops will want to test them for rape.”

  “But they weren’t raped.”

  “Everything you tell the cops will be second-guessed. It always is. These days, no one takes anyone’s word for what happened without looking at how else it might have happened.”

  “But that’s not right.”

  “It is what it is. It’ll be a big story. Everyone will be talking about what happened here, did it happen one way, did it happen another. Speculation whether Holly and Lauren were molested, always speculation. They’ll have to live with that. Boys in school will torment them about it. And not just boys.”

  Sandra’s ashen cheeks pinked, whether with a reflection of the retreating sunlight or mortification. “Children can be cruel.”

  “Are you a widow, Sandy?”

  “Widow? No. Divorced.”

  “Was there a custody fight?”

  The woman’s expression answered the question.

  “If it was an ugly custody battle, it’ll be worse the second time around. Sandy, you didn’t endanger the girls by taking them on this road trip, but he’ll argue that you did. And there are going to be people who agree with him, maybe not the judge, but there will be a lot of self-appointed judges who will tell you what they think.”

  Chewing her lower lip, Sandra stared out at the darkening land, at the headlights of the westbound traffic on the farther side of the highway. “What if the police find them and think I killed them?”

  “Nobody’s going to think Sandy Termindale killed anyone.”

  “I don’t even own a gun.”

  “This territory is wild. It’s a long way down the embankment. They won’t be found for weeks. Coyotes will be at them.”

  Sandra shuddered.

  “We want coyotes, Sandy. Unless the cops have DNA evidence on file from previous arrests, there will be so little left they’ll never be identified. And there’s no way they can be linked to you.”

  Sandra’s life to date hadn’t prepared her for how to deal with violence or how to minimize the aftereffect. She seemed unable to look at Jane. “What about the blood?”

  “Clean it up. You and your mom. Come on, Sandy. It’s almost dark enough to do the job.”

  She grimaced. “What about the other two? What if they come looking for us after we’re on the road again?”

  “When they come back here and don’t find you, they’ll know something went very wrong. They aren’t going to chase trouble.”

  “But what if they do?”

  “Where were you planning to stop tonight?”

  “There’s an RV campground near Gallup. We have a reservation.”

  “That’s almost two hundred miles. They won’t look that far. But I’ll tell you what—I’m going that way. I’ll follow you, make sure you’re safe in Gallup before I leave you.”

  “I’m never going to feel safe again anywhere.”

  “To an extent, that’s a good thing.”

  Finally, the woman met Jane’s eyes. “Maybe your name is Alice Liddell. But who are you? What are you? What do I tell my girls?”

  “Tell them I’m the Lone Ranger’s granddaughter. Tell them I’m a guardian angel. You’ll think of something.”

  “A guardian angel with a gun?”

  Jane smiled. “Michael the archangel always has a sword. Others, too. Maybe even angels have to change with the times.”

  When Sandra looked away, Jane reached out, put a hand beneath the woman’s chin, and gently brought her eye to eye again.

  “Your girls were victimized, Sandy. End that here. Don’t make them victims for the rest of their lives. Help them be brave.”

  That entreaty might have brought tears to Sandra’s eyes a few minutes earlier. Not now. She had come to a terrible but essential acceptance, and she would never be the same. “Let’s do it.”

  11

  * * *

  The back door on the starboard side opened outward, screening them from eastbound traffic approaching on the long straightaway.

  Head shaven, one ear diamond-studded, heart stopped and caged in a clutch of shattered bone, stripped of ID, Egon Uri Litvinov resisted in death the disposal of his corpse, perhaps two hundred pounds of stubborn villainy that at times seemed animate, as if his disembodied but lingering spirit strove with limited success to gain entry to his flesh again.

  When they got him out of the motor home and held him half erect between them, Jane peered around the open door that shielded them from oncoming headlights and waited for a gap in traffic. Except for a deep-purple stole of last light outlining the crown of the distant hill, the sky was black with stars, the moon low with its ghostlight of reflected sun. A long-haul big rig shrieked past, nothing immediate in its wake. They half dragged and half carried their burden to the nearby guardrail, its curved cap of metal well designed for their purpose, laid him down across it as if he were curled there in drunken regurgitation, took him by the feet and upended him, so that he landed on his back on the slope beyond. He was rolled onto his side by the shifting action of the gravelstone that layered the steep incline. The scree began to slide, conveying him downward. His weight being greater than that of the small stones that transported him, his momentum increased beyond theirs as he rolled, and with a boisterous flailing of arms and legs, he vanished into low darkness. They could hear him in continuing descent until he met wild brush and tumbled through it to a stillness.

  Once as fresh-faced as an altar boy, still neatly barbered, in faded black denim and cowboy boots, stripped of ID, Lucius Kramer Bell weighed perhaps forty pounds less than Litvinov and was more accepting of his death than had been his associate. During another break in traffic, they brought Bell more easily to the guardrail and tipped him over. By some fluke of physics or of the musculoskeletal performance of the postmortem human form, Bell rolled into a sitting position on the sliding gravelstone, as if the scree were snow and he were sledding, repeating a happy moment of his childhood inspired by one last feeble memory firing in his cooling brain. He went down into his darkness with macabre flair and followed Litvinov into the thrashing brush.

  Jane had taken off her sport coat to avoid soiling it, but she had gotten blood on her hands. She waited in the open doorway of the bathroom as Sandra, looking as grim as if she had just executed two men instead of only helping to dispose of bodies, repeatedly soaped her hands and rinsed them in stinging-hot water until the lather no longer bubbled with even the faintest pink of gore.

  The girls were in the breakfast nook with their grandmother, out of sight around the corner. Later they would spend the night on the living-area floor, sleeping if sleep would find them.

  When Sandra stepped aside and snatched a towel from the rack, Jane took her turn at the sink, scrubbing away the last of Litvinov and Bell. She dried her hands on the same towel, and Sandra took it from her to hang it on the rack.

  Throughout these ablutions, neither said a word, nor did they speak now when Sandra suddenly put her arms around Jane, held her close and very tight. Jane returned the embrace, and they stood awhile in a fierce silence, the mother of Holly and Lauren not able to put into words her tumult of emotions, the mother of Travis in no need of hearing words. She understood too well that this woman had come reluctantly into possession of the truth of the world from which most people spent their lives in flight and denial. Once truth was known, it could not be unlearned, nor could it be forgotten, but lay always in the heart, a darkness for which all the years ahead would be spent seeking whatever light could be found to compensate.

  12

  * * *

  Beyond the road and the headlights and the endless rush of restless humanity, out in the deep darkness of this ancient land, Meteor Crater lay in quiet testimony, as deep as a fifty-story building was tall, four-fifths of a mile wide, older even than the settlements of the Anasazi Indians that had lain in ruins, silent in this same dark, even before Europeans ever walked this territory. Whatever
hurtling mass, asteroid or other, could turn rock to powder by its impact, so had time and violence and cannibalism done to the Anasazi when village turned against village. In a mortal frame of mind, Jane Hawk followed the Termindale motor home to Winslow, on to Holbrook, past the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest, all the way to Gallup, New Mexico, where she saw them checked into the RV park and said good-bye.

  The nocturnes and preludes of Chopin, well performed by various pianists, accompanied her through the lonely red-rock night, across the Continental Divide. None of these piano masters was her famous father, who for his crimes had escaped not merely justice but also all suspicion, who remained even now on tour, his companion being the woman for whom he’d murdered Jane’s mother when Jane was eight years old. He was a brilliant musician, though he could not master everything equally. He avoided Chopin.

  A collection of aching muscles and stiff joints, she arrived in Albuquerque at 11:20 P.M., almost sixteen hours after watching Travis ride away on his pony. She found a motel that might have been rated two stars by a generous critic, paid cash, signed the register with the name on the driver’s license that bore a photo of her with long auburn hair and green eyes, and made no request for a wake-up call.

  She had with her a half-empty pint bottle of vodka, and she bought a Coke from the vending machine. After a shower, she sat abed with a drink and turned over and over in her right hand two objects: first, the cameo that her boy had found and given her for good luck; and then the wedding band that the trucker, Foster Oswald, warned her to stop wearing.

  The wide gold band was not plain, but engraved as Nick had wanted, with his chosen words stacked in two lines and made black with inlaid enamel: You are my beginning / and my end.

  He had believed they would enjoy a long life together, followed by a life thereafter. Just six years later, he was gone, selected by a computer model for extermination.