The Whispering Room

by Dean Koontz

  Jane pulled close on the windows, one after another—and found what she least expected on the second floor, at the pair of tall casement panes near the southeast corner of the house: a child. A boy perhaps nine or ten years old.

  D. J. Michael had never been married, had no offspring. He was an only child with no nieces or nephews.

  Yet here stood a boy, gazing out, towheaded and pale beyond the glaze of window glass, his face not well discerned at that distance. He seemed solemn, though Jane might have been inferring a solemnity in him that matched her mood. Whatever he was feeling, his stillness was unnatural in one so young. She watched him for three minutes, four, and he moved only twice: first to place the palm of one hand against the casement pane, as if some hummingbird or butterfly had ventured close and charmed him from his trance; and then to lower the hand and stand as before, with his arms at his sides.

  As she watched him, he seemed like a revenant rather than a real boy, some child ghost haunting a room where he had died, and she thought of Miles, the boy in The Turn of the Screw. A coldness with no source in the weather came over her there in the witchgrass, because this boy also reminded her of Travis, who was younger but likewise alone and beyond her reach.

  Even from her elevated vantage point, she could not see the first forty or sixty feet behind the house, but thereafter she had a view of terraced lawns descending toward the north wall and a gate to the lake. Paving-stone walkways wandered under specimen trees of several varieties that stood shadeless under the ashen sky. Some trees overhung the walls, which no security consultant would allow. Water spilled from scalloped-bowl fountains, and a snow-white gazebo appeared to be as frosted with ornamentation as the fanciest wedding cake.

  Out from under the screening boughs of a willow, two little girls appeared on a winding path. Jane pulled them as close as the binoculars would allow. She couldn’t see the girls well enough to be certain of their age, though they were surely younger than the boy. One smaller than the other. Walking hand in hand. An indefinable quality of their posture and pace suggested they must be downcast and somehow imperiled, but she might be imagining their mood, ascribing to them the threat that hung over Travis.

  She focused the binoculars once more on the casement window at the front of the house and found the boy gazing out, as motionless as if he had never raised a hand to the glass.

  The sweeper of leaves had gone from the driveway.

  Behind the house, the girls had settled on a white-painted cast-iron bench forged with much filigree. They leaned against each other, like stricken sisters each in need of sympathy.

  Beyond them, a woman came into view on the walkway that they had recently followed. Like the man sweeping the leaves out of the portico, she wore white from head to foot. She stopped at a distance from the girls and stood, watching them.

  With much cawing and a hollow, throaty rattle, a flock of crows came out of the east, following the two-lane blacktop as if they had been born from it. They arced from the road to the roof of the house, where they arrayed themselves along the peak.

  A second scanning of the windows revealed nothing other than the pale-faced boy standing as if at sentry duty.

  Suddenly another boy, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, appeared at the younger child’s side and put an arm around his shoulders. The smaller boy stood unmoving until, after a minute or two, the newcomer led him away from the window into shadows and out of sight.

  Jane lowered the binoculars and backed off from the ridge line and sat in the witchgrass, from which more whiteflies took flight on wings dusted with powdery wax. No bees had yet come into season; nor were there crickets already singing spring songs.

  If the estate on Lakeview Road had once been a secret retreat for David James Michael, it didn’t appear to be one now.

  She had thought that Randall Larkin, shackled to a chair in the abandoned factory, had been too desperate to withhold anything from her. And she believed that D. J. Michael owned this estate through an overseas trust, so the attorney hadn’t entirely misinformed her. But the absence of armed security suggested that the billionaire was not in residence, and the presence of the children argued that the estate served some other purpose.

  Whether Larkin had expected her to kill him or had thought only to squeeze one lie into all the truths he’d told her before flying off to a new life in the Caribbean, his purpose had been malevolent.

  She didn’t think he would have sent her all this way merely to waste her time. More likely, this estate was in some way a trap waiting to spring, and the safest course was to walk away.

  She wanted D. J. Michael, wanted to get him alone and break him and record his confession—but he wasn’t here. She had no further reason to remain in Iron Furnace.

  Except…Both Bertold Shenneck, father of the nanotech control mechanism, and D.J. had links to this town, which suggested that learning the purpose of the estate might provide her with knowledge that would help her hang the billionaire.

  She got to her feet and dusted off her jeans and walked along the south slope of the ridge to the pine woods, on her way back to the Ford, considering approaches to the problem, while behind her the crows racketed off the roof of the mansion. If torn scraps of the previous night itself had snagged on trees and only now come loose, they would have been no blacker than these birds as they shrilled across the ridge and shrieked into the southwest, as though they must be a flock of prophets crying out an impending cataclysm.

  6

  * * *

  The lovely concierge and event coordinator at Iron Furnace Lake Resort, Stacia O’Dell, had eyes the pale green of honeydew melon. She met Luther—posing as Martin Moses, event planner from Atlanta—at the front desk. When he claimed to be inquiring on behalf of a hedge fund that he was not at liberty to name, Stacia was pleased to show what the resort had to offer. She understood that cost was of no concern. Seeking a venue to host a five-day bonding getaway for their fifty highest-tier executives, the principals of a hedge fund would find no price too steep. And when Martin Moses didn’t at once offer a business card, Stacia had the grace not to ask for one, lest she be mistaken for doubting a clearly cultured, well-spoken, quite convincing black man solely because of his race.

  He said, “They tell me they want the ‘Kentucky-Tennessee experience,’ as though Nashville and Louisville are cut from the same cloth. But we’ll forgive them their provincialism.”

  Stacia smiled at his smile. “Well, one thing common to both Kentucky and Tennessee is legendary horses. We have stables here, and even those who’ve never ridden can be matched with a gentle mount. Everyone enjoys our escorted rides through some of the most beautiful scenery in the state.”

  “Yes, I saw that on your website. A unique feature. The usual number-one request is a golf course, and so it was this time. Until yesterday, when my clients informed me that a golf-centered retreat was old hat. They’re interested in being adventurous. If only I’d known, I would have called you two weeks ago, when I planned my itinerary.”

  Stacia conducted a tour of the premises: an average suite; the stunning lake-view restaurant; the coffee shop with its striking Art Deco décor; a gym offering every conceivable resistance-training machine; the conference rooms and banquet hall; an immense outdoor swimming pool; an even more magnificent indoor pool; the riding stables as elegant as the hotel itself; the marina with its variety of boats; the tennis courts. Out of consideration for the guests currently making use of the men’s and women’s spas, Stacia couldn’t show him those, but a handsome brochure folder, which her assistant had ready for him at the end of the tour, contained a DVD depicting the full range of spa services.

  During the tour, he had asked Stacia for a list of conferences and corporate retreats that had been held at the resort during the past three years, as well as any letters from the principals of those organizations that attested to their satisfaction with the experience. These, too, were in the folder she provided.

  As though a business card m
ust be too déclassé for Martin Moses of the premiere event-planning firm A Private Affair, he presented to her a cream-colored place card with embossed borders, on which only the ten digits of an Atlanta phone number appeared in exquisite calligraphy.

  He had researched A Private Affair before leaving Minnesota, learned that Martin Moses was a partner, and had his multitalented wife, Rebecca, calligraph the phone number on six blank place cards.

  “Of course,” he told Stacia, “I’ll be out of the office until next Monday. I find these research trips exhausting, as you might imagine, and to keep myself sane while on the road, I simply refuse to let myself be constantly harassed by my cellphone.”

  “It’s the Devil’s invention,” Stacia O’Dell agreed.

  “But I will certainly follow up with you early next week, Ms. O’Dell. And unless there’s some Shangri-La out there I’ve yet to discover, I expect we’ll be looking for an agreeable date when you have fifty rooms available. This resort, this town—it’s like one of those beautiful bejeweled Fabergé eggs, isn’t it? A mini-paradise.”

  7

  * * *

  Jane Hawk at the wheel of the canopied electric boat, all but silently cruising across the quiet lake, the waters silver under the tarnished sky, parting for the prow with the faintest sibilance, at the moment no one else abroad in a day too cool to encourage either fishing or exploration of the scenic shoreline…

  In addition to the marina at the resort, another operated in town. She had rented the boat there from a vendor who had explained the simple controls of the vessel and plied her with interesting facts about the history of the lake. Although he had been pleasant, even cheerful, and considerate of her as she’d boarded, something about him troubled her. She wondered if he might have recognized her in spite of the wig, contacts, and glasses. But as she motored away from the dock, he didn’t produce a cellphone or hurry away to seek help, but stood for a minute, waving her off, as though she were a friend rather than a tourist and as if he genuinely cared that she should enjoy her touring. When she had cruised a mile, she decided that what seemed odd about him was nothing more than his enthusiasm in a job that most would have found tedious, especially on such a slow day, as well as a civility bordering on courtliness that she seldom encountered in this culture that grew ever more coarse.

  Two-thirds of the way between the east and west shores, Jane arrived at the walled estate, where the pier projected from its shoreside gate. She didn’t slow, but motored on, in case she might be a watcher watched. Nevertheless, sans binoculars, she studied this approach to the mansion.

  Half an hour later, on her return trip, she made less speed and dared to use the binoculars. A boy of perhaps fourteen or fifteen stood at the nine-foot-high pier gate, each fist wrapped around an iron picket, gazing between them at the lake. She thought he might be the same one who had appeared at the casement window beside the smaller boy and put an arm around his shoulders and led him away. He stood now as though he had contracted the younger child’s melancholy trance, staring at the water as the other had gazed out the window.

  Jane wanted to steer the boat to the pier and tie it up and go to the gate and ask the boy, What is this place? Are you all right?

  Instead, she piloted the boat to the marina from which she had rented it, where the vendor was precisely as pleasant as he had been earlier. Then she set off to explore the town on foot.

  8

  * * *

  A week prior to the event at the Veblen Hotel on Thursday, in anticipation of the tragic death of a fine governor and a beloved congressman and their admirers, Booth Hendrickson, a senior official of the U.S. Department of Justice and trusted associate of David James Michael, seeded eight operatives in town. Their task was to make certain that Cora Gundersun would obtain everything she needed and would stay on track to earn her place in history, but also to take firm control of the investigation in the immediate aftermath of the explosion and fire.

  By Sunday, the eight were reduced to three. They were assigned to be alert for loose ends that might unravel the operation and to tie them off at once upon discovering them.

  The senior agent in charge of this reduced contingent is Huey Darnell, who had called Cora a stupid, skinny bitch to her face. At forty-six, Huey has gone through three wives, all harridans, and has sworn off matrimony. For the past year, he has been married only to booze, though he has concealed the intensity of this relationship from his employers.

  In the rapture of bourbon, he arrives at Tuesday with the conviction that he is on top of the situation—which is when he learns that Sheriff Luther Tillman has taken a weeklong vacation beginning Monday, leaving undersheriff Gunnar Torval in charge. He should at once report this development to Booth Hendrickson. But if there is an Asshole of the Year award, Hendrickson has shelves full of trophies. Although Hendrickson and Huey are simpatico when it comes to a vision for America’s future, Huey prefers not to share his mishandling of the situation with his boss.

  Instead, beginning late Tuesday afternoon, he and the two men remaining in town with him—Hassan Zaghari and Kernan Beedle—take turns conducting surveillance of the Tillman residence from a series of suitable vehicles parked across the street and half a block away. They see the daughter, Jolie, arrive home from school, and shortly thereafter the wife steps out to get the mail from the streetside box. They don’t get a glimpse of the sheriff in the first few hours of their watch, but he’s probably watching sports on TV and drinking beer.

  9

  * * *

  Harley Higgins spent the day preparing for the night. Operating under the theory that he was observed, he oscillated between two behaviors: sometimes prowling the house and grounds restlessly, like a caged tiger agitated by the call of the wild; sometimes sitting slumped on a lawn bench as if depressed or for long periods staring at the lake through the locked pier gate. He hoped to make them wonder if he was contemplating a dash for freedom by that route.

  He also spent time with each of the other seven inmates, always contriving to make the encounters appear casual, always keeping them brief. Because his theory of observation included the possibility that anything he said might be heard, he’d sat on the toilet in his water closet to print two messages on the palms of his hands with a felt-tip pen. His left palm announced, ESCAPE 8:00. LIBRARY. NO SHOES. The plan continued on his right palm: THEY TRACK R SHOES. BLINK 3 IF YES. All seven blinked, and Harley felt that even Jimmy Cole, the most fragile of them, understood and would be there at eight o’clock.

  Always in the past, Harley had chosen to make his break after midnight, when most of the staff had gone to sleep. If they had been monitoring his behavior all day, they might expect him to make a run for it later, according to his pattern, except by the pier gate this time. He decided on eight o’clock instead because most of the staff would be gathered in the main dining room for dinner; the inmates could move through the house with less chance of being seen.

  By conspiring to take the other seven with him, he was putting the getaway at risk. It was easier to pull off a one-boy escape now that he knew about the shoes. Always before, however, his schemes had called for him to escape on foot, and it hadn’t been practical to keep seven other kids together with him through all the hazards that lay ahead. Now that he needed to plan for a barefoot breakout, going as a group was less challenging than it had been previously.

  Besides, he couldn’t leave them in this place. Like him, they were coming apart inside, though faster than he was.

  He was also hopeful that if they could get out of town and to the cops, eight of them would be harder to dismiss than one. The police would have to listen to eight and believe them. They would just have to.

  10

  * * *

  Gallery to gift shop, to T-shirt store, to art-glass shop, to bakery, along residential streets and back to the main drag, Jane explored, not sure what she was seeking, compounding observations that might help her ascertain the nature of this town and what relation it had t
o the walled estate that stood miles from here.

  She was intrigued by the perfection of the crafted buildings and amazed at the cleanliness of everything. She marveled at the matched ranks of graceful trees and wondered about the scarcity of children and the apparent absence of dogs.

  As the cool day grew cooler and the clouds curdled darker, the light-sensitive solenoids controlling thousands of tiny low-wattage white bulbs on the trees brought a holiday glow to the street two hours ahead of twilight, and Iron Furnace showed why locals might call this the Town Where It’s Always Christmas.

  Jane stood on the sidewalk, looking north and south. Although the display dazzled, the effect on her was not Christmasy. Instead, she thought of the pulse and flash of Las Vegas, where the neon was meant to paint a veneer of glamour over the sordid truth of gambling addiction and financial self-destruction. These were Christmas-lights-as-distraction, because in spite of its wholesome aspects, Iron Furnace had a dark vibe that she could feel if not explain.

  Having skipped lunch, she went into an Italian restaurant at just 4:15 and was escorted to one of the empty high-backed booths.

  Phalanxes of red-white-and-green flags hanging from the high ceiling. Wall murals of historic sites in Rome. Red-and-white checkered tablecloths. Candles in red glass votives. They hadn’t missed a décor cliché, but the place looked clean, and mouthwatering aromas threaded the air.

  According to the name embroidered on the display handkerchief in the pocket of the waitress’s uniform blouse, her name was Freya. A pretty girl in her twenties. Coffee-and-cream complexion spotted with cinnamon-colored freckles. She might have had both Ireland and Africa in her heritage. She was quick to smile and shared with her townspeople a demeanor that was pleasant and welcoming.